Requiem for Robert by Mary Fitt

Author:Mary Fitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Golden Age mysteries british;1940s murder mysteries;bibliomysteries;murder mystery series;vintage murder mystery
Publisher: Moonstone Press
Published: 2022-08-31T12:10:29+00:00

7

They timed their moment well: they chose to go one August, when Geraldine was staying with me, and Robert had gone up to Scotland for a fishing holiday with some friends.

When Robert got back, he found Natalie’s letter awaiting him. He wrote to me, quite curtly. ‘Natalie has left me. Will you come back here? I want to talk to you.’ Geraldine had just passed her seventh birthday when this happened: I packed the child’s things, and set off at once to Corry Falls.

Robert had not told me in his letter that Josey was involved; he preferred to break that news to me by word of mouth. As soon as we were able to talk, he said, ‘She has gone. She hated it here. She’ll never come back. Of course I shall provide for her. I can’t divorce her: she knows that.’

I said, ‘She may expect it, all the same. She is not of the same faith as you, and I doubt if she’ll think the rules of your Church apply to her.’ I added, ‘She thinks she’s the grand exception to every rule.’

He paced up and down – we were in the study, where he had taken to living more and more of late years – looking out of the windows from which there is a splendid view of the valley. ‘I cannot,’ he said. ‘I would if I could, for Josey’s sake. What a horrible position he has put me in! He will think I am acting out of vindictiveness. He – even he – will never understand the sort of obedience I owe to the religion of my fathers.’

I said, ‘Have you spoken to Father Brennan?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Robert. ‘But I knew what his answer would be. What else could he say? He is bound, as I am, by the rules of the Church. He is not a judge: he is an interpreter. But the way, you know I am thinking of transferring them from the Bailey Chapel to a new church here?’

He explained to me then that he had it in mind to give to the Church a piece of land, a field he had bought in the village, and also a sum of money to start a building fund. The Bailey Chapel, he said, was falling into disrepair, and it would cost more to put it right than to help them to build another. Since the Hall had been so long in ruins, the neighbouring houses and cottages had gradually emptied and tumbled down, or been taken over by other families who had no link with the Raynalds, and who worshipped elsewhere. So that poor old Father Brennan and his younger assistant were left amid a pile of crumbling masonry, like the ruins of old Mistra, a ghost village, with no congregation except ourselves, when we drove over to Mass on Sundays, and a few who still followed us.

Robert said, ‘If I can move them there they will be near us on the one hand, and the Friary on the other.

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