Murder at Church Lodge by Mosse Greg

Author:Mosse, Greg [Mosse, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781399715133
Google: TPykzwEACAAJ
Amazon: 1399715135
Barnesnoble: 1399715135
Goodreads: 123204442
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2023-07-13T06:00:00+00:00

***

Derek Fieldhouse had told her to come to the kitchen so she went in through a narrow pedestrian gate in the six-foot brick wall and found herself at the side of the house, in a beautiful kitchen garden. Where Nigel Bacon’s had been sterile and over-formal, the Fieldhouses’ plot was a delight. Everywhere she looked, edible and aromatic plants merged into one another, even now in late winter, full of promise for spring. There were even some stone planters with geraniums, planted out early and covered with glass cloches to protect them from frost.

The top half of the stable-style kitchen door was open. As Maisie approached, a beautiful red cocker spaniel jumped up, straining to put its paws on the rail.

‘Well, hello there,’ Maisie told the dog. ‘Aren’t you handsome.’

‘One does one’s poor best,’ called Derek Fieldhouse, jokily misunderstanding. ‘Come in, now, come in.’

Maisie stepped over the threshold. ‘Thank you, Mr Fieldhouse.’

‘And please call me Derek, not Mr Fieldhouse,’ he insisted. ‘I’m a simple chap. I went to school with my ploughmen. My father didn’t want me getting ideas above my station. I’m not going to stand on ceremony now, am I? But you went to the posh school, isn’t that right?’

‘I suppose,’ said Maisie.

It really was annoying how often people brought that up.

‘Enjoy it?’ he asked. ‘You don’t look like you did.’

‘Actually,’ she told him, impressed by his perceptiveness, ‘I regret it, in a way.’

‘People make assumptions, do they?’ asked Derek, sympathetically.

‘They do,’ said Maisie, glad to say out loud something that had been bothering her on and off since she arrived. ‘First of all, that you come from wealth, which was absolutely not the case for Stephen or for me. We were just lucky that an aunt with nothing else to spend her money on remembered us. Then, second, people decide that you think you’re better than everyone, better than those who didn’t have the same advantages. But don’t we all know people who turned out very well from unhappy circumstances and people who, despite their coddling, ended up . . .’

She stopped, getting rather close to expressing what she really thought of how Stephen had turned out. Derek seemed on the same wavelength.

‘That’s exactly what I thought you might say. Good God, it’s easier to fail than to succeed. And it’s easier to take the short cut than go the hard way. Not everyone learns that early enough.’

‘Do you mean my brother? I’m under no illusions. You can speak your mind.’

‘Always do,’ he assured her. ‘Now, listen, didn’t I tell you he and I were close? Yes, he did some silly things, but I honestly believe he’d seen the light.’

‘What silly things?’ she asked, not wanting to interrupt his train of thought with her own ideas.

‘I suppose you know about June?’ Maisie was about to share her shock at the young woman’s death, but it was clear that wasn’t what Derek was referring to. ‘Stephen didn’t like the fact that people thought of him as a, what’s the word, a cad, a seducer?’

‘That sounds about right.

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