The Cruellest Month by Hazel Holt

Author:Hazel Holt [Holt, Hazel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: regency, world war ii, cosy mystery, female detective, mrs malory, cozy mystery, rural wartime england, british detective, oxford, hazel holt
Publisher: Hazel Holt
Published: 2011-01-09T08:17:20.216000+00:00

Chapter Nine

Although the following morning was bright and sunny I no longer felt the same euphoria I had known the day before as I walked through the Parks. The flowers and the blossom on the trees seemed almost unbearably beautiful – Housman not Browning, I felt, fitted my mood today. Or Eliot. April is indeed the cruellest month, mixing memory not with desire exactly, but with a kind of indefinable yearning, the restlessness that had led me into foolish thoughts about Bill Howard. Spring is for the young, I told myself sternly, it is the youth of the year. Middle age is autumnal, with the sere and yellow leaf, not the delicate green of unfolding buds, and this feeling of being poised on the edge of some great adventure is unsuitable and unbecoming and will only end in tears.

I settled down to work and managed to lose myself, as mercifully I can, in another, more sober world, not surfacing until nearly half past one. I knew that all the pubs and most of the cafés would be very crowded, so I made my way to a small vegetarian restaurant so tucked away down a side street that only its regular customers know of its existence. Harriet (a born-again Vegan) had discovered it and I’d been there several times with Betty. I noticed gratefully that they’d relaxed their original strict principles because there was a cheese topping on the very good ratatouille.

I opened my book and had just started to eat, when a voice behind me said, ‘Isn’t this a coincidence – I’ve just been posting a parcel to you!’

It was Molly Richmond. She put her tray down and distributed various dishes around the table.

‘How nice to see you,’ I said. And, indeed, it really did seem like a heaven-sent opportunity to ask some of the questions that were churning round in my mind.

‘I found Gwen’s diary,’ she said, breaking up bits of bread and stirring them round in her soup. ‘I thought there were two of them but I could only find one. Still it should give you some idea of what it was like to live in the countryside in wartime.’

We talked a little about the war and then, when there was a pause in the conversation, I said, ‘I had dinner with the Fitzgeralds last night, I believe your sister knew them.’

She stared at me, her face looking particularly large and round across the small table.

‘The Fitzgeralds? Elaine and Arthur?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am very surprised that Gwen’s name was mentioned in that household,’ she said. Her voice was hard and cold.

‘I think I may have mentioned her,’ I said vaguely. ‘Do you know them too?’

‘Elaine Fitzgerald was my dearest friend. She was also my teacher. Everything I know about painting I have learnt from her.’

‘You say was,’ I ventured.

‘How could I bring myself to face her after the terrible thing that Gwen did to them both.’

There was a moment’s silence. I longed to ask the question, but somehow I couldn’t.

Then Molly said, ‘She killed their brother Lance, who was, as you may know, the light of their lives.

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