Laying Down The Shawl Of Cynicism (Double Crossing 2)

DOUBLE CROSSING : CHAPTER 11 

2

Was it that mixture of cynicism and suspicion that had made her hold back last night when she recounted her adventures to to Cyrus and her Aunt Winnie. She had told them about Hanfstaengl but not about Tomlinson. She had told them of the loss of Elspeth Fromm, but had trimmed the story of her death of many of the more frightening implications. She had mentioned the blouse, indeed she had shown it to her aunt, but she had kept hidden - from both sight and the conversation - the curious document. It wasn't that she didn't trust her audience, it was more that she was practicing a sanitised version of her crossing in the hope that she would be able to adopt it herself. She wanted there to be simple explanations. She needed motives that were open. But she knew, deep inside, that the shawl of cynicism and suspicion would be difficult to lay down.

As she tried to sleep last night she had once again gone over the events in her mind, testing the various episodes in the hope of finding simple explanations. Eventually she had decided that she would tell her Aunt the next morning after breakfast. Cyrus had gone off to his own apartment after supper last night and announced that he would be out of the city for a couple of days.It was an ideal opportunity for Alice and her Aunt to rediscover each others' lives. But after breakfast was finished, Alice could still not find a form of words in which she could express her fears and her anger without it sounding like a second-rate film script. If Winnie had realised that something was troubling her niece, which undoubtedly she had, she had, more likely than not, put it down to the duplicity of Henry Carter and the manifestations of a freshly broken heart.