Whiteout - Ken Follett [109]
The tension spoiled Miranda’s breakfast. She had to talk to her father about this. She swallowed, coughed, and pretended to have something stuck in her throat. Coughing, she got up from the table. “Sorry,” she spluttered.
Her father snatched up a glass and filled it at the tap.
Still coughing, Miranda left the room. As she intended, her father followed her into the hall. She closed the kitchen door and motioned him into his study. She coughed again, for effect, as they went in.
He offered her the glass, and she waved it away. “I was pretending,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you. What do you think about our guests?”
He put the glass down on the green leather top of his desk. “A weird bunch. I wondered if they were shady friends of Kit’s, until he started questioning the girl.”
“Me, too. They’re lying about something, though.”
“But what? If they’re planning to rob us, they’re getting off to a slow start.”
“I don’t know, but I feel threatened.”
“Do you want me to call the police?”
“That might be an overreaction. But I wish someone knew these people were in our house.”
“Well, let’s think—who can we phone?”
“How about Uncle Norman?” Her father’s brother, a university librarian, lived in Edinburgh. They loved each other in a distant way, content to meet about once a year.
“Yes. Norman will understand. I’ll tell him what’s happened, and ask him to phone me in an hour and make sure we’re all right.”
“Perfect.”
Stanley picked up the phone on his desk and put it to his ear. He frowned, replaced the handset, and picked it up again. “No dial tone,” he said.
Miranda felt a stab of fear. “Now I really want us to call someone.”
He tapped the keyboard of his computer. “No e-mail, either. It’s probably the weather. Heavy snow sometimes brings down the lines.”
“All the same . . .”
“Where’s your mobile phone?”
“In the cottage. Don’t you have one?”
“Only in the Ferrari.”
“Olga must have one.”
“No need to wake her.” Stanley glanced out of the window. “I’ll just throw on a coat over my pajamas and go to the garage.”
“Where are the keys?”
“Key cupboard.”
The key cupboard was on the wall in the boot lobby. “I’ll fetch them for you.”
They stepped into the hall. Stanley went to the front door and found his boots. Miranda put her hand on the knob of the kitchen door, then hesitated. She could hear Olga’s voice coming from the kitchen. Miranda had not spoken to her sister since the moment last night when Kit had treacherously blurted out the secret. What would she say to Olga, or Olga to her?
She opened the door. Olga was leaning against the kitchen counter, wearing a black silk wrap that reminded Miranda of an advocate’s gown. Nigel, Elton, and Daisy sat at the table like a panel. Kit stood behind them, hovering anxiously. Olga was in full courtroom mode, interrogating the strangers across the table. She said to Nigel, “What on earth were you doing out so late?” He might have been a delinquent teenager.
Miranda noticed a rectangular bulge in the pocket of the silk robe: Olga never went anywhere without her phone. Miranda was going to turn and tell her father not to bother to put his boots on, but she was arrested by Olga’s performance.
Nigel frowned with disapproval, but answered all the same. “We were on our way to Glasgow.”
“Where had you been? There’s not much north of here.”
“A big country house.”
“We probably know the owners. Who are they?”
“Name of Robinson.”
Miranda watched, waiting for an opportunity to quietly borrow Olga’s phone.
“Robinson doesn’t ring a bell. Almost as common as Smith and Brown. What was the occasion?”
“A party.”
Olga raised her dark eyebrows. “You come to Scotland to spend Christmas with your old friend, then you and his daughter go off to a party and leave the poor man alone?”
“He wasn’t feeling too well.”
Olga turned the spotlight on Daisy. “What sort of a daughter are you, to leave your sick father at home on Christmas Eve?”
Daisy stared back in mute anger. Miranda suddenly feared