Fast Fiction: Falling For Fleur
"Just be careful, that's all, just keep your eyes open.'' Richard Mallinson tells a sinister tale which involves a mysterious death and a warning phone call.
‘Who is speaking, please, do I know you?’
‘Just be careful, that’s all, just keep your eyes open.’
‘What do you mean by care-’ but the line had gone dead.
Herbert Raustone put the receiver down. He was shaking.
It had been a man’s voice, deep, rather like his own. But what had it all been about? Was he being threatened?
He would ask his young friend Fleur, who lived in the flat below.
‘Drinks this evening, Fleur?’ he said on the phone.
*
They settled down - gin and tonic for her, whisky for him.
‘I’ve had a bizarre call,’ he said and gave her the details.
‘Oh God,’ said Fleur, ‘he’s at it again.’
‘At it again?’
‘Yes, my brother, he must have found out about you and is trying to warn you about me.’
‘Why the devil should he do that?’
She sipped her drink and looked at him with her frank blue eyes.
‘My father died mysteriously,’ she said, ‘and my brother believes that I was responsible and that I am a threat to older men.’
She laughed and sipped her drink.
‘He really is quite mad,’ she said, flushed, beautiful, and at that moment Herbert Raustone fell in love with her, as she knew he would.
*
A few weeks later Herbert changed his will in Fleur’s favour and died soon afterwards of natural causes.
‘I couldn’t have timed it better myself,’ said Fleur’s ‘brother’.
