Free Shilo's Secret by Judith Stephan Page A

disappeared.
     
                                                                          * 
     
       Stratt lay on his bed and stared mesmerised at the fan spinning idly on his ceiling. He subconsciously toyed with the chain around his neck, fingering the lion’s head. Perhaps he had been too hard on her, but she needed, once and for all, to be put in her place. She had prejudged him. She thought he was a nothing. She had thought he was “the help”, a servant to her, that he was uneducated … if only she knew. She probably thought she was slumming it going out with him in the dark hours before dawn … like a naughty school girl ignoring a curfew … like forbidden fruit. She was only focused on class and wealth and social standing. Why was it so important to her? He did not mean everything he had said, especially the bit about wanting nothing to do with her. His head had said it was a good idea but his heart wanted everything to do with her. Everything. He would just have to play it cool for a few days and then see what would happen. What will be, will be, he thought to himself.
     
                                                             *
     
       Lady Carina Delucci sat opposite her husband at the other end of the gleaming mahogany dining room table. They both had a newspaper and it was common practice to exchange snippets of news over breakfast.
     
    “Have you seen this on the front page, dear?” she said, tapping the paper. “Isn’t it awful? This killer goes around picking up women, killing them and then, and then leaving them just as they fall…” she drifted off.
     
    “I’ve read it. It’s shocking!” Henri said, buttering another piece of toast and reaching for the marmalade. “He doesn’t perform necrophilia though, does he? ”
     
    “What?” his wife replied innocently.
     
    “Having sex with dead people,” he replied.
     
    “Henri!”
     
    “I do it all the time,” he continued winking at his wife, who even after twenty-five years of marriage still looked so appealing to him. Her hair was loose now, and the fine spray of wrinkles around her eyes made it look like she was always laughing.
     
    “What do you mean?” she asked, recognizing the mischievous twinkle in his eye.
     
    “I feel this body in my bed. It’s fast asleep, dead to the world, and I give it to her.”
     
    She blushed. “I’m not asleep for long, Henri. That thing always manages to wake me up.”
     
    “Come on, Carina, how would you feel like some after breakfast necrophilia?” he said laughing as he rose and starting to walk around the table towards his wife. He stood behind her and slipped his hands down the front of her gown until he touched her breasts. She giggled and grabbed his hands.
     
    “You’re such an animal, my dear,” she said in mock coyness, but he knew she was the animal once the bedroom door was closed and she was away from the prying eyes of the staff.
     
                                                                                 *
     
     
    Shilo did not speak to Stratt for the next four days: Circumstances dictated that they were to miss each other. Shilo was mostly locked away from the sun’s penetrating rays, and Stratt was out in the reserve doing job. He took Michaela and Dorianne out to the Elephant Pools on the third day. It was the perfect opportunity to talk to Michaela about Shilo.
     
    “So what is it with your sister, anyway?” asked Stratt, as he and Michaela sat in the front of the Jeep watching a bachelor elephant having a mud bath.
     
    “What do you mean?” she said.
     
    “I lost my temper with her the other day …I know I shouldn’t have, with her being a guest here and all but she has just got this way of making you feel like absolutely nothing at all, like an