The Fatal Flying Affair (A Lady Hardcastle Mystery, #7)

by T.E. Kinsey

Littleton Cotterell might have won, but it’s always hard to tell with cricket.

The colossal sliding doors on one of the short sides of the building were open to allow a cooling breeze to blow in. Even only partly opened it would have been possible for three Clydesdale horses and a Friesian cow to pass through in line abreast, and still leave room on either side for a policeman on a bicycle and two men pushing a grand piano.

‘Oh, you don’t know the half of it. I see all their personnel files – it’s part of my job to keep the records up to date, you see? His full name is Rupert Gilbert Hubert Herbert.’

‘I’m an engineer, Lady Hardcastle,’ he said. ‘I can’t offer you certainties. We deal in probabilities and margins of error. We can calculate the stress on a spar to the tiniest fraction of a pound-force per square inch in a perfect world, where all materials are uniform and always behave exactly as the simplified equations predict. But that’s not how it works in real life, unfortunately. Trees tend not to grow their wood in accordance with strictly controlled manufacturing tolerances. Canvas is a little more reliable, but it’s still woven from an organic substance. Our rigging wires are made under tightly controlled conditions, but they’re fitted and tightened by hand. The only thing we can predict with one hundred per cent confidence is that the lump of meat in the pilot seat will behave like an idiot at some point. Even then we can’t say at exactly what point.’

‘British industry is entirely fuelled by tea. It’s classed as an essential supply by the government.’ ‘I can well believe it.’

‘That’s how all Englishmen talk about their country. They’re cynical about everything. They think the government is useless and makes the most appallingly poor decisions on all matters at home and abroad. That’s how one knows they’re English.’

I had nothing to worry about – my life was calm and peaceful for the most part – but my beloved brain had decided that a life free of anxiety was a life wasted. To induce what it clearly considered to be the appropriate levels of dread and discomfort, it had trawled through recent events looking for something to fret over. Having found nothing, it had decided to catalogue every mistake I had ever made and every embarrassment I had ever suffered. In chronological order. That did the trick. Well done, brain.

‘On that first evening, just after Em nearly shot me.’ ‘I never nearly shoot people, dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘They’re either shot or not shot. You were not shot.’

‘A conversation with you is just a box of parts we have to assemble for ourselves, isn’t it?’ she said.

A male African elephant stands roughly 3.2 metres (10’6”) tall. All the heights have been accurately converted into standardized elephants.