A Christmas Escape by Anne Perry

behind and check that Quinn was still there, keeping up.
    The mountain fell quiet for a while. Was it dying down, all over, and they were running for nothing? Or was it building up to a really major eruption, one that would send a huge lava flow halfway down to the sea?
    Suddenly Candace spoke again, quickly, letting go of Charles’s hand so she could face him more easily.
    “Somebody will be glad Uncle Roger is dead, you know?” she said with anger hardening her voice.
    He was startled. “Really? Why?”
    “He was owed a lot of money,” she replied. “I mean a real lot. Maybe it was more than someone could afford to pay.”
    “How do you know that?” he asked.
    “He was angry,” she said. “Anyone who didn’t know him wouldn’t have seen it. But I did. He never used bad language, he just said ‘It doesn’t do.’ That meant it couldn’t be allowed. It was unacceptable. ‘Unacceptable’ was the worst word to Uncle Roger. It meant you were finished.”
    “Do you know who it was?” It wouldn’t have anything to do with this now, here on Stromboli, but if she wanted to talk, then he was happy to listen. It was better than grieving silently, feeling as if she were alone.
    “No. But it was somebody who cheated him, I do know that. He said he didn’t know yet how to prove it.” She thought for a moment or two. They walked perhaps another twenty yards. The path was twisting and turning more here, and the wind was blowing the smoke their way.
    Ahead of him Charles could see that Isla was getting tired. They had gone no more than a mile and a half, much less than halfway. Still, that was good progress, if the mountain stayed quiet.
    “I don’t think he cared about the money,” Candace went on suddenly. “I think it was the dishonesty that annoyed him. It was something to do with Grandmama. Maybe the money was owed to her; and since she died about three years ago, of course the debt would come to Uncle Roger.”
    “That means it is owed to you now,” he said gently. “Your uncle told me you have no other close family.”
    She stared at him in surprise. “I never thought of that. I suppose it would. I can hardly collect it, though, because I don’t even know who it is that owes it, or how much it is.”
    He should not have been surprised. Finbar would want to protect her as much as possible. Why had he even told her about it at all?
    “How did you know about it?” he asked, then instantly realized how insensitive he was. He could so easily sound as if he were criticizing Finbar, who had no chance to defend himself or explain.
    “Oh, it was by accident, really,” Candace answered. “We were talking about Grandmama, and he got angry. I thought he was cross with me, and he had to explain that it wasn’t me, it was someone else. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, just that she never knew about it, and he was glad of that.”
    “But he didn’t say why, or what the nature of it was?”
    “No.” She smiled a little ruefully. “You couldn’t make Uncle Roger tell you something if he really didn’t want to. He thought Grandmama was marvelous, more completely alive than anyone else he knew. So she was. I’d love to be like her one day.”
    Charles wanted to change the subject from Finbar. “Tell me about her,” he asked. “What would you like to be that was like her?”
    “Funny,” she said immediately. “I never knew anyone who could make people laugh the way she did. I love to hear real laughter that’s not unkind. Mr. Bailey used to laugh, but it was horrid. The sort of laugh you give when someone else makes a fool of themselves.”
    She was right: Bailey had had no joy in him, not that Charles saw, anyway.
    “What else about your grandmother?” he asked.
    “She enjoyed things, all kinds of things—old things she’d had for a long time, like music, paintings, places she’d been to lots of times. But she loved new things, too, things she’d never seen before or tasted, new inventions.