The Honey Trap
Rowan Morley, big and beautiful, made quite a splash when she went overboard from a pleasure launch into the Thames. Fortunately help was at hand, but Rowan’s rescuers were bewildered when she insisted on denying the existence of what seemed to them a clearly murderous attack.Even when she was whisked away to an Oxfordshire village to act as housekeeper to two hapless males, Rowan remained a focus of mystery. Meanwhile Aran Hunter, art restorer, chafed at his inability to protect her; Frederick Flowers retired civil servant, feared for her; Wayne Denny, general factotum of a fleet of Thames houseboats, lusted after her; and Inspector Laurence Erskine of Special Branch, now working with Interpol, found himself involved willy-nilly when he learned that Rowan’s previous employers were connected with a case he had been working on for months.None of them, except perhaps Erskine, could believe this glorious girl was involved in international crime, but when murder struck close to home it became a matter of life and death to discover what Rowan Morley, wittingly or unwittingly, knew or possessed.
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VIVIEN ARMSTRONG
The Honey Trap
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain in 1992
Copyright © Vivien Armstrong 1992
Vivien Armstrong asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780002323857
Ebook Edition © November 2016 ISBN: 9780008228392
Version: 2016-11-29
The Honey Trap
Rowan Morley, big and beautiful, made quite a splash when she went overboard from a pleasure launch into the Thames. Fortunately help was at hand, but Rowan’s rescuers were bewildered when she insisted on denying the existence of what seemed to them a clearly murderous attack.
Even when she was whisked away to an Oxfordshire village to act as housekeeper to two hapless males, Rowan remained a focus of mystery. Meanwhile Aran Hunter, art restorer, chafed at his inability to protect her; Frederick Flowers, retired civil servant, feared for her; Wayne Denny, general factotum of a fleet of Thames houseboats, lusted after her; and Inspector Laurence Erskine of Special Branch, now working with Interpol, found himself involved willy-nilly when he learned that Rowan’s previous employers were connected with a case he had been working on for months.
None of them, except perhaps Erskine, could believe this glorious girl was involved in international crime, but when murder struck close to home it became a matter of life and death to discover what Rowan Morley, wittingly or unwittingly, knew or possessed.
CONTENTS
Littering the muddy shallows behind World’s End, dozens of small houseboats bob up and down on the tide like long discarded champagne corks. The long arm of Battersea Bridge encloses one side of the flotilla, the smart new towers of Chelsea Harbour posing against an orange sky enclose the other.
It is late evening in September. Warm as velvet. Two men relax on the deck of Christabel: one old, the other aggressively young with bleached hair, his tanned legs gracefully crossed in freshly laundered shorts.
‘Another, Frederick?’ The young one refills brandy glasses and they sink back, companionably silent, regarding the occasional passing of a launch upstream. High tide has raised the vessels by more than twelve feet as if to provide a better view. The Christabel rocks as if on tiptoe, ready to break anchor despite the solid pontoons.
The deck is scrubbed, pale boards evidence of a perfect summer, its perimeter hedged with neat window-boxes beyond which the oily swirl of the Thames slaps against the hull. The boat swings gently, rising and falling with soporific rhythm.
‘What time’s your appointment tomorrow, Frederick?’
‘Don’t you worry about me, my boy. I’ll push off about ten, give myself plenty of time. See myself off. Just routine tests, shouldn’t take more than an hour. I’d quite like to saunter up to the Arts Club after lunch. You’ve got plenty on, dare say?’
‘Nothing till three. I’ll drive you over to the clinic and drop you back at the club on the way back. It’s no trouble. I’ve got to check some locations in Regent’s Park. Tie up a few loose ends before I meet this chap. A photographer.’
‘Another book?’
‘Secret Interiors of Georgian London.’
Grimacing in mock dismay, the old man placed his glass on the burnished milk churn which served as a side table and lit his pipe.
‘Who buys these picture books, Simon?’
‘Illiterates.’
‘Sell well?’
‘Ever-expanding market of non-readers. Tourists, nosey-parkers, hairdressers. You’d be surprised.’
‘Not cheap, I’ll be bound.’
‘A bloody expensive business to set up,’ Simon countered defensively. ‘But the sort of thing that goes well in America, not just here.’
