A Christmas Guest Read Online Free PDF Page B

wish to avoid scandal, and refuse even to consider it, and Maude deserved better than that! Perhaps it rested with Mariah Ellison, and no one else, to face the truth.
    A few minutes later the doctor arrived and was taken upstairs.
    â€œHeart failure,” he informed them when he came down again. “Very sad. She seemed in excellent health otherwise.”
    â€œShe was!” Grandmama said quickly, before anyone else could reply. “She was a world traveler, walked miles, rode horses, and even camels. She never spoke of any ailment at all.”
    â€œIt can come without warning,” the doctor said gently.
    â€œAn attack that kills?” Grandmama demanded. “She did not look as if she were in that kind of agony!”
    â€œNo,” he agreed with a slight frown. “I think it more likely that her heart simply slowed and then stopped.”
    â€œSlowed and then stopped?” Grandmama said incredulously.
    â€œMama-in-law!” Caroline remonstrated.
    â€œI think it may well have been peaceful,” the doctor said to Grandmama. “If that is of comfort to you? Were you very fond of her?”
    â€œShe barely knew her!” Caroline said tartly.
    â€œYes, I was fond of her.” Grandmama contradicted her, equally tartly.
    â€œI’m very sorry.” The doctor was still gentle. He turned to Joshua. “If I can assist with arrangements, of course I shall be happy to.”
    â€œThank you,” Joshua accepted.
    â€œWe shall have to inform the rest of her family,” Grandmama said loudly. “Bedelia whatever-her-name-is.”
    â€œI have been thinking how on earth I can write such a letter,” Caroline acknowledged. “What to say that will make it … 
better
sounds absurd. If I simply say that we are terribly sad to inform them, will that be best?” She looked worried, and “sad” would be no exaggeration. There was a grief in her face that was quite genuine.
    Grandmama’s mind was racing. What was she allowing herself to think? Heart slowing down? Nuts that everyone knew were indigestible? One dose of peppermint water? Had Maude been murdered? Preposterous! That’s what came of allowing one’s daughter to marry a policeman. This was Caroline’s fault. If she had been a mother of the slightest responsibility at all she would never have permitted Charlotte to do such a thing! Thomas Pitt, as a law enforcement official, was not a suitable husband. He had absolutely nothing to commend him, except possibly height?
    But if someone like Pitt could solve a crime, then most certainly Grandmama could. She would not be outwitted by a gamekeeper’s son, half her age!
    And if Maude Barrington had been murdered, then Mariah Ellison would see that whoever had done so was brought to justice and answered to the last penny for such an act. Maude might have been an absurd woman, and a complete nuisance, but there was such a thing as justice.
    Grandmama felt as if a light and a warmth had gone out of the air and a heaviness settled in its place, which she did not understand at all.
    â€œYou should not write,” she said firmly to Caroline. “It is far too dreadful and sudden a thing to put in a letter, when apparently they live so near. Snake, isn’t it? Or something like that.”
    â€œSnave,” Caroline corrected. “Yes. It’s about four or five miles away. Still well within the Marsh. Do you think I should go over and tell them myself?” Her face tightened. “Yes, of course you’re right.”
    â€œNo!” Grandmama said quickly. “I agree it should be done personally. After all, she was their sister, however they treated her. Perhaps they will even feel an overwhelming guilt now.” She thought that extremely unlikely. They were obviously quite shameless. “But I will go. You have arrangements to make for Christmas, and Joshua would miss you. And I imagine I actually spent