Free The Killing of Olga Klimt by R. T. Raichev Page B

It’s the kind of silliness people employ when they want to hide something. I did say I could read Mr Eresby’s mind, didn’t I? I think Mr Eresby has decided he no longer requires my services. I think it is only a question of time before he gives me the sack. Am I being paranoid?
    ‘You will be interested to hear that the coffee here is nearly as good as the coffee you make back home.’ Mr Eresby turns towards Olga. ‘Bedaux makes excellent coffee.’
    ‘I don’t like coffee. Coffee – what do you say? – puts stains on my teeth!’ She tosses her head and pouts. She bends over the bowl of roses that stands on the bedside table and pretends to smell them.
    She is as nervous as a cat.
    ‘I believe the coffee has made me uncommonly talkative, Bedaux. At least, I think it’s the coffee’s fault, if “fault” indeed is the right word. Now I am talking like you!’ Mr Eresby laughs, then he strokes Olga’s fair hair. ‘Can coffee have faults, Olga?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Why do you ask such foolish questions?’
    I clear my throat. ‘I hope they put the flowers out at night, sir. It is not healthy to keep them beside your bed while you sleep. Most flowers exude a certain subtle poison.’
    ‘Oh nonsense,’ Mr Eresby says dismissively.
    I watch Olga pick up a rose. She starts plucking off its petals. She starts speaking. ‘A little, a lot, passionately, not at all. Not at all .’
    I feel a cold hand around my heart.
    ‘Everything quiet on the Sloane Square front, Bedaux?’ Mr Eresby asks.
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘We haven’t been burgled yet, I trust?’
    ‘No, sir.’
    Olga says she wants to smoke.
    ‘You know you can’t, darling,’ Mr Eresby says.
    ‘Why can’t I smoke?’
    ‘Because it’s not allowed here.’ Mr Eresby strokes her hair again.
    I don’t like him touching her. I feel like ripping off his arm.
    A minute or so later I leave Mr Eresby’s room. As I walk down the corridor, I pass the nurses’ room. The door is ajar. I catch a glimpse of the Nanny Everett nurse talking to another, younger nurse.
    ‘ No ,’ I hear the younger nurse gasp. ‘Not kill him?’
    I halt and listen.
    ‘That’s what she said. It was quite a confession. It was all part of some plan or other, she said, which she’d never intended to carry out. She threw herself across Mr Eresby’s bed. Oh you should have seen her. She was in floods of tears. She didn’t even wait for me to leave the room. She said she loved him, only him, that he was the only man she’d ever loved, not Mr Beddoes, whoever that may be. She said she hated Mr Beddoes but she was also scared of him.’
    ‘She is Russian or something, isn’t she?’ the younger nurse says. ‘She was probably play-acting.’
    What the older nurse meant was ‘Bedaux’, of course, not ‘Beddoes’.
    I have been in a number of tight corners, but never for an instant have I lost my self-possession. Yet, I must admit this thoroughly unexpected revelation of Olga’s treachery does give me a nasty shock.
    She said she loved him, not Mr Beddoes.
    This time it is I who is walking like a clockwork toy soldier.
    As I leave the clinic, I wonder what my next move should be.

10
THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER
    Dusk had fallen and for the first time there was an autumnal nip in the air. Although it was some time before the clocks went back, the heat wave was over and one could already feel the insidious approach of winter.
    The walk from the bus stop seemed endless. There was hardly any traffic and not a single person in sight. Something was wrong with the street lights, not one of them was on! It was also very quiet, oh so quiet! Olga thought it the deepest silence she had ever known since she had started living in London. It felt heavy and oppressive. One can’t see a silence but she did; she imagined it as a great dark beast lying sprawled over the neighbourhood, over the street and the houses, deadening every sound beneath its soft fur …
    There was a