Kirwan, Professor of Physics, she now knew, without giving a reason other than saying it was important and personal, and with the thinking that, once she was in the house, she could explain then and retrieve her diaries herself so that no one could get to them first.
Only to discover that the professor himself didn’t take calls at home at all. He had an extremely officious secretary to do it for him during working hours, long working hours at that, and an answering machine he never responded to at other times.
Nor was this secretary—and Bunny had told her what a dragon the woman was, always sneaking up behind her to check what she was doing—at all interested in making an appointment for Aurora with the professor without good reason, saying he was far too busy at the moment unless she could state her case.
Aurora had thought swiftly, then explained that she was the previous owner’s daughter, she’d been away at the time of the sale and she’d just like to check that nothing of hers had been left behind.
‘Definitely not,’ Miss Dragon Hillier had said coldly down the line. ‘I checked the house myself and you can rest assured there was nothing that shouldn’t be here! Good day.’ And she’d put the phone down heavily.
Aurora had taken the receiver from her ear and breathed fierily. But she’d forced herself to calm down and devise Plan B. Of course! She would simply roll up, after office hours, and corner the professor in his den without his dragon lady protector. But this professor of physics had proved to be extremely elusive. She’d rolled up to her old address five times in as many days to find no one home. The fifth time had been when the germ of an idea had started to niggle at the back of her mind.
‘What’s he like?’ she’d asked Bunny, over the phone. It had occurred to her to ask Bunny to get her diaries for her, but she’d discarded the idea immediately on the grounds that she could lose Bunny her job—especially since Miss Hillier was a such a sticky beak. But would a few simple questions do any harm? she’d pondered.
‘Don’t know, I’ve never met him, only the dragon, she hired me on your father’s recommendation,’ Bunny had replied. ‘And he’s always gone by the time I get to work and doesn’t seem to come home during the day. Mind you, it’s only been a few weeks, but I’ll tell you what, love, I think he’s a regular old fuddy-duddy. She’s certainly as fussy as can be and I guess it comes from him!’
‘Has he made any changes, Bunny?’ Aurora had asked a little hesitantly. ‘And has he got a wife or—’
‘Nope, he’s a bachelor. Can’t for the life of me understand why he wants to rattle about in a house that size—he doesn’t even have a dog, although there is a cat. As for changes, none so far although I heard her talking to a builder on the phone to get a quote to brick up the fireplaces in the bedrooms, the ones your dad always used to say were such a waste in a climate like Brisbane.’
Aurora had almost dropped the phone. ‘I see,’ she’d said rather hollowly.
‘You OK, pet?’ Bunny had enquired, then continued without waiting for an answer, ‘Must say the place is beautifully furnished, lots of antiques that take a powerful lot of dusting, mind. You would think he’d have a dog to guard it all, especially as he’s away an awful lot, apparently. I also heard her book him an air ticket to Perth for next weekend, flying out Friday, coming back Monday, but they didn’t even change the locks as new owners often like to do. I guess the old place is pretty hard to get into when you stop to think about it, though.’
‘Yes.’ Aurora had swallowed. ‘Yes.’ And she’d let Bunny ramble on for a few minutes more before ending the conversation. Then she’d up-ended the contents of the suitcases Bunny had packed with her clothes and personal possessions that had come from the house, and fallen on an old wallet to find her laundry door key still sitting snugly in a zip-up compartment…
She came back to the present with a sigh. She still might not have done it if she hadn’t rung once more and tried again to get past Miss Hillier, this time to be told flatly that the professor was busier than ever and would she please stop bothering them! There’d also been a curious innuendo in the other woman’s scathing tones that she’d been unable to pin down but it was almost as if she, Aurora, should be ashamed of herself for some reason—it was this strange insinuation that had added fuel to the flames and made her decide to take things into her own hands.
So what to do now? she wondered. Would the professor and his dragon lady secretary associate her calls with this home invasion? Should she step forward and confess?
The phone rang as she was thinking these thoughts and it was Bunny, deliciously full of news. Believe it or not, the professor had been robbed! Well, Bunny had gone on to explain, he’d come home early from Perth on account of some virulent bug that had laid him low and put himself straight to bed, only to wake around midnight ravaged by a headache and thirst. He’d stepped out of his bedroom, stood for a few minutes wondering where the light switch was as often happened to people in new homes, then, despite feeling extremely groggy and unwell, had noticed a strange light at the bottom of the stairs.
And, when someone had begun to ascend the stairs, between wondering whether he was hallucinating and definitely not feeling well enough to grapple with a burglar, he’d stayed quite silent until the intruder had literally walked into his waiting arms—only to knock himself out briefly in the ensuing mêlée.
‘You don’t…say!’ Aurora commented feebly at this first break in Bunny’s narrative. ‘Is…is he all right? Was anything stolen?’ she forced herself to add.
No, nothing was missing, Bunny reported, but that could have been because the intruder had been disturbed; no, he was back in bed but mainly because of a virus he’d picked up and—here Bunny chuckled—would you believe it? He’d actually left the front door ajar when he’d come home which was, according to the police, tantamount to issuing any stray burglar who happened to be ‘out and about casing joints’ an open invitation!
‘How…bizarre!’
Bunny agreed, still chuckling. ‘Talk about the absent-minded professor! Although, he was pretty crook.’
‘So…so what are the police going to do?’ Aurora asked.
‘Well, love, there’ve been a few burglaries in the area, apparently, and they suspect there’s a bit of a gang at work, must have been them, they reckon, but they didn’t sound too hopeful of pinning them down on this one. In all the chaos of the storm—we got three broken windows and the garden is kind of flattened—they can’t find any evidence of anyone being on the property.’
Aurora swallowed, mainly with relief, as Bunny chatted on about how she’d been given the day off. And when Aurora finally put the phone down, she thought she might have had a very lucky escape; she told herself she would never do anything as foolish again, but there still remained the problem of her diaries…
It took her a week to acknowledge that she would either have to come clean with the professor and resign herself to either he or Miss Hillier reading them before she got to them, or resign herself to having them bricked up for ever, assuming the builder doing the bricking up didn’t find them.
Then, out of the blue, came a ray of light. Her programme director, Neil Baker, asked her if she’d like to accompany him to a house-warming party. They’d actually met overseas and laughed at one of life’s little coincidences that they should be working together back in ‘Oz’, but there’d never been any romantic spark between them.
‘You wouldn’t be between girlfriends, Neil?’ she teased.
