Naughty In Nice (A Royal Spyness Mystery)

asked him, and I told him. And do you know what? He laughed. ‘Oh, dear me. The family has come down in the world, hasn’t it? Your father was such a clever chap too,’ he said, ‘clever in some ways, but really stupid in others. Not a businessman, and apparently neither are you.’ Then he looked back at me. ‘I presume you knew who I was when you applied for the job?’
    “‘Yes, I did,’ I said. ‘I took this job for one reason: to avenge my father’s death.’
    “He looked at me and laughed again. ‘How melodramatic. And how do you plan to accomplish this? Steal the plans for the car back from me?’ He actually walked ahead of me out toward the pool. I picked up a rock and I hit him hard over the back of the head. ‘Like this!’ I said. Then I pushed him into the pool. And you know what? I’m not one bit sorry. He was a poor excuse for a human being who deserved to die. I am sorry about the others, though. I’m not a born killer. But they were sure to have remembered something if the police questioned them, something like the motor being parked that gave away that I was there.”
    He looked in my direction again. “It seemed so easy. I waited until the road was empty then drove back into town again. Made sure people noticed me at all the shops. Perfect alibi, wouldn’t you say? Except that you were determined to find the girl who looked like you.” He stiffened suddenly, glancing in the rearview mirror. A large sleek sports car had swung into view. It was still far behind but gaining on us.
    “I think we’re being followed after all,” he said. “It’s not the police. Who can it be?”
    The only person I knew who drove a car like that was the marquis. Hope was tinged with fear. If it really was Jean-Paul, was he coming to save me or to finish me off?
    “No problem. We can go faster.” He put his foot down. The engine whined in protest. The rocks shot past us as a blur. The big car was keeping pace. A rock wall loomed up ahead of us. I think I screamed as we shot into the darkness of a tunnel and then out again the other side without slowing at all. We approached a small hamlet where a stream tumbled down to the sea below, its course marked by a line of greenery. Suddenly a farm cart, pulled by a great yellow horse, lumbered out from between two buildings. Johnson shouted and jammed on the brakes. Tires squealed as the car skidded, hit the low wall and bounced back into the road again. Johnson cursed, jamming the car into a low gear as he tried to steer around the terrified and rearing animal.
    I had been waiting for the slimmest of chances to escape. Even though the car was still moving, I saw the bushes beside the road, instead of that forbidding wall. I threw open my door and fell out, rolling onto the spiky plants beside the asphalt. I had expected it would hurt but I hadn’t anticipated how much. I felt stones cutting into me and the breath knocked out of me as I hit the ground and rolled. I came cannoning into the bushes, which yielded under my weight, then I felt myself sliding down into nothingness. I grabbed wildly as branches slipped past me, scratching at my arms and face. Somehow my hands managed to hold on to a small branch and I came to a halt, half suspended, half dangling out over the most horrendous of cliff faces.
    My position was so precarious I wasn’t sure what to do next. Leafy branches were in my face. Some kind of stump was sticking into my back, holding me out from the cliff, as my hands clutched at a branch that was bending with my weight. When I looked down all I could see were rocks, hundreds of feet below. At any second I expected to feel the thud of a bullet into me, or to feel the slender branch finally yield and crack beneath my sweaty fingers. Instead I heard a great boom far off, then I spotted a fireball somewhere below me. Fire raced up the cliff, consuming the scrub it met. As it came upward it spread. Through the leaves and twigs below me I could see orange flames licking their way out toward me, like a hungry dragon devouring everything in its path.
    I was hanging facing out, away from the cliff face, and I couldn’t work out how to turn myself around to use that stump that was digging into my back. I wished I had been more diligent in gymnastics classes at school. The fire was directly below me now and I certainly didn’t relish the prospect of being burned alive. This spurred me into taking the leap of faith and letting go with one hand. The