Unholy Dying by Robert Barnard

Unholy Dying by Robert Barnard

Author:Robert Barnard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner


CHAPTER 11

Feminine Unease

Edith Preece-Dembleby set out from her home on Thursday morning with the intention of calling on her brother at his office. The nagging anxiety she had that he was involved in something had only grown since their conversation on the telephone, and it had coalesced with her general uneasiness about the parish that she loved, the priest she respected, and the priest she did not respect, adding up to a general feeling that somehow things were out of joint. Edith was essentially a watcher, a cataloger of life’s ills and follies, but there were times when she felt imperatively the need for action, and at such times she could be decisive.

Halfway to her brother’s office, however, she changed her mind. Walking had clarified her thinking, as it often did. If she visited Raymond, and even if he was unencumbered with a client, she would be subjected to exactly the same line as he had taken on the telephone: This was not her business, not women’s business at all, it was a parish matter, confidential to the two trustees and the Bishop, and he wasn’t willing to say one syllable more. She was perfectly capable of dealing with her brother on a personal, domestic, psychological level, and would quite often have the better of any disagreement of that sort. On the professional work level of his life she was at a disadvantage, having no education or training beyond her sixteenth year, and in any case liable to be put in the wrong, as anyone would be, by the plea of confidentiality.

She determined instead to visit her brother’s home, an imposing late-Victorian dwelling not unlike the one she had shared with him for years, just over the border of Shipley and Saltaire. He had bought it as a bargain when he was married, pleased to stick with the sort of house he knew, and had then spent a fortune bringing it up to his standards of comfort and suitable middle-class elegance. She shook her head, in fact, at the amounts he had spent on central heating, decorating, and overly plush furnishings. She did the four-minute walk briskly, her mental clock ticking away the whole time. When she arrived there the door of the house on Elmtree Lane was opened by her sister-in-law, her smile expressing genuine pleasure.

“Edith—this is a surprise.”

“Hello, Nora. Do you have a minute?”

“Of course. I’ve got coffee on. Come in.”

“This isn’t really a social call, but—”

Nora waved any protest aside, and in a matter of minutes they were in the living room, with its bulky and conventionally handsome furniture, and Edith was ushered into one of the cretonne-covered chairs, while Nora bustled back to the kitchen to fetch a tray of coffee with Marie biscuits on a delicate silver stand. Nora was, on the surface, as conventional a person as her second husband, but Edith felt she had never got to know her well enough to judge whether this was anything more than a facade.

“Was it the June bazaar?” she asked now, settling back into the embrace of her own armchair.



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