The Immortality Plot

The Immortality Plot - chapter 26

Grace Ryan looked around and then back at the stage. How had Delaney moved so quickly? She could see him standing by the ornate wall in semi-darkness close to what looked like a door that was just in the process of closing. Ryan gathered her documentation and stood up, placing the folders on her chair to retain her seat. She walked to the back of the hall passing on the way the flamboyant figure of Chantelle Dubois who glanced up at her momentarily and smiled then returned her gaze to the presentation.

As Ryan passed, Lucius Gynt, behind the applied make-up and lipstick of the pouting Chantelle, was thinking hard. What had Letski said? Delaney, the husband of that interfering journalist, thought he was on to something but in reality he wasn’t and he had booked into this seminar to follow up a lead. And, he was almost certainly that Monk character that was making all those threatening insinuations.

What lead?

What could he possibly be following up here?

Letski had said that Delaney would not leave the seminar alive. Presumably that was why the two stone-faced individuals standing at the very back, and clearly not here to be transfixed by dreams of success, had started to inch their way around the edge of the room in Delaney’s direction.

Well, they could take care of Delaney as far as Gynt was concerned. But, wait. Gynt could hear the bears whispering to him.

If Rattin was here and Delaney was here was that just a co-incidence? He didn’t think so. And why had the main speaker, Craig Martin, been so palsy-walsy with Rattin? Logically, Gynt pondered, there was only one donor left. She would be sent to meet her maker early tomorrow morning. And he, Lucius Gynt, was to be the beneficiary. But, Gynt reminded himself, he had come here to dispose of Rattin because he could not be certain how much he knew about him.

This was a public place with visitors and members coming and going. If Letski was going to arrange the demise of Mr. Delaney, then was that why that library reading room was closed to the public with the blank faced muscle bank standing guard? And if Lucius Gynt was going to put Mr. Claude Rattin to sleep, that would make two homicides inside this building on the same day. This was suddenly turning into a high-risk venture.

So, what was Chantelle’s plan of action? Best to keep a watching brief. If Delaney was going to meet his end then Gynt didn’t want to get in the way. But it would be fun to observe without being seen. Then if Delaney’s death caused an immediate furoré he would have to improvise. Either way Chantelle had to be hovering unseen within striking distance of the action.

Chantelle casually stood and slinked to the back of the room and looked across. Delaney was walking through the door at the corner followed by that woman, what was her name? Ryan. Grace Ryan. The two assassins, for that’s what Gynt assumed they were, had increased their pace. Chantelle did likewise.

Delaney found himself in an empty corridor. This too, he presumed, had been closed to public and members alike. It served as a secondary route to the Gordon Reading Room. Behind him the door opened.

“Grace,” he whispered. “This could be dangerous.”

“I’ll be your second pair of eyes,” she said.

“Were you followed?”

“Of course not.”

Delaney smiled to himself and pulled Ryan close to him into an alcove. He put his fingers to her lips. Ryan was pressed up against him as he gently manoeuvred her so that she was behind him and he was protecting her. She could smell his skin and the warmth of his body through his rough linen coat. Stop it, woman, she commanded herself.

Concentrate.

The door opened slowly, cautiously. Two figures came through from the banqueting room and stood together in the corridor looking both ways. There were intermittent shafts of light filtering through a series of stained glass windows that were positioned along the length of the corridor that looked out over an interior courtyard. This bathed the long passage in a patchwork pattern of light and shade. It was dusty and the thick pile carpet deadened ambient sound and footfalls.