WRATHCHILD INVESTIGATIONS: The Curious Case of Clara Chase.

[Keeper]

The Curious Case of Clara Chase

Chapter One

I'd only been on Asher for two days when I found myself sitting outside St Bartholomew's Hospital with responsibility for a fourteen-year-old girl.

It wasn't quite what I'd expected when I'd taken the case.

Then again, I'd learned a long time ago that expectations were generally the first things to go wrong.

We'd come to St Bartholomew's because our investigation had led us there. That was about as far as we'd got. We didn't know what we were looking for, only that whatever we were looking for appeared to have something to do with the hospital. Grace, Tom, Marlowe and I had been working on the problem together, while Nathaniel and Clara had arrived separately and met us there.

Nathaniel had shown us around the hospital, which was doing its best to function while the Navy used it for military casualties. It was a busy place, and there were enough uniforms and stretchers moving through the corridors to make me feel as though I'd wandered into somebody else's war.

I hadn't expected Nathaniel to be called away.

A messenger found him while we were still talking, and after a brief conversation Nathaniel came over to me. He looked towards Clara before speaking.

"Arthur, would you mind staying with Clara while I deal with this?"

"Of course."

He seemed relieved.

There wasn't much more to it. He went over to Clara and explained that he had to leave for a while. She listened carefully, nodded and gave him a small smile. She didn't look frightened, and she certainly didn't make a fuss. She simply accepted that her father had something he needed to deal with.

When Nathaniel turned away, Clara looked at me.

"Mr Wrathchild?"

I smiled.

"Arthur will do."

She hesitated for a moment before nodding.

"Very well, Arthur."

It was a small thing, but I remember it. She was polite without being timid, and there was already something about her manner that told me she wasn't quite the ordinary fourteen-year-old girl I'd expected.

Nathaniel disappeared back into the hospital with the messenger, leaving Clara and me standing there.

I glanced towards the doors, then back at her.

"Well, I suppose we'd better get out of everyone's way."

She followed me without complaint.

My car was parked a short distance away, and I opened the passenger door for her before walking around to the driver's side. She climbed in, settled herself comfortably and waited while I started the engine.

I pulled away from the hospital without having the slightest idea where I was going.

That was the first problem.

The second was that I'd been asked to keep Clara company, which was a considerably less specific instruction than "take her somewhere".

For a while I drove without saying anything. London passed around us in the usual mixture of traffic, uniforms and wartime inconvenience. Clara watched the streets through the window, apparently content to let me decide where we were going.

Eventually I glanced across at her.

"So, what would you like to do?"

She looked at me.

"What?"

"I've been asked to keep you company while your father is busy. I thought we might as well do something with the time."

She considered the question.

"I don't know."

I waited for her to add something.

She didn't.

I wasn't exactly an expert in what a fourteen-year-old girl liked to do in wartime Britain, but I had a rough idea. The pictures were an obvious possibility. Shopping for a new dress, assuming we could find one and she had the coupons for it. The zoo might have been worth a visit. There were probably a dozen other things that a girl her age would have considered far more interesting than sitting in the passenger seat of a stranger's car.

Clara seemed to have nothing in particular in mind.

I didn't rush her.

I'd only known the girl for two days, but I'd already noticed that she was bright. Very bright, in fact. She watched people carefully, listened when adults were talking and seemed to understand rather more than she let on. There was a maturity about her that was difficult to miss.

But she was still fourteen.

Nearly fifteen, although I hadn't yet learned quite how important that distinction was.

Her circumstances had put more restrictions on her life than most girls her age had to deal with. That didn't mean her father had made every decision for her. From what I'd seen, Nathaniel did his best to give her as normal a life as he could whenever circumstances allowed it.

This just wasn't a particularly normal set of circumstances.

I looked across at her again.

"Nothing comes to mind?"

She shook her head.

"Not really."

I nodded and kept driving.

After a little while she looked at me.

"What would you do?"

I laughed.

"That's a dangerous question."

"Why?"

"Because my idea of a good afternoon probably isn't the same as yours."

"What would your idea be?"

I thought about it.

"A decent meal, a drink and somewhere I could sit without somebody asking me questions."

She smiled.

"I don't think that's very exciting."

"I didn't say it was."

That made her laugh quietly.

It was the first time I'd heard her laugh properly, and I remember thinking that it suited her better than the serious expression she'd worn most of the morning.

I turned onto another street and glanced across at her.

"All right. Your turn."

"My turn?"

"You're the one I'm supposed to be looking after. If we're going to spend the afternoon together, you might as well have some say in what we do."

She thought about that.

This time, when she looked out of the window, there was a little more interest in her expression.

"I'd like to see more of London."

"That's easy enough."

She looked back at me.

"Would it be all right?"

There was the politeness again.

I realised then that Clara wasn't asking because she needed permission to have an opinion. She was asking because she'd been handed over to someone she'd only known for two days and wanted to know what the rules were.

I smiled.

"I think we can manage that."

"Thank you, Arthur."

"You're welcome."

And that was how the afternoon began.

At the time, I thought we'd simply spend a few hours seeing London and then return to St Bartholomew's when Nathaniel was finished.

I was wrong about the afternoon.

I was also wrong about how much I was going to learn about Clara Chase before the day was over.