A Death in Two Parts Read Online Free PDF

lot on our plate these days it’s hard to find the time … God knows how I’m going to get through this Christmas – you’ll have to be an angel and help out with the housekeeping; I’m sure you’re wonderful and Mary’s no earthly use – far too busy looking after her complexion. Not that I blame her; after all, a girl’s face is her fortune, isn’t it? I’m so glad you turned out so nice-looking, my dear; I always told Motherthat puppy fat wouldn’t last. She was in despair about you, poor Mother, and of course we hadn’t the money to take you in hand.”
    Much to Patience’s relief, Josephine ended her monologue at this point by getting out
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and devoting herself systematically to its contents. She was free at last to stare out of the window into the moving darkness and brood about the disconcerting happenings of the day. She had practically got used to being penniless by now, the shock of that having been lost in the still greater one of almost being arrested. Who? she asked herself over and over again. And why? She had got no further than this, though almost an hour had passed, when Josephine roused her. “Only five minutes to Leyning,” she said. “Mark is meeting us with the station wagon, the dear thing. Be prepared to be bowled over, my dear. Oh, by the way” – she was busy applying a new layer to the mask of make-up – “about salary; you’ll have to talk to Mother. She still holds the purse-strings – and pretty damned tight, too, I can tell you. You’d better be firm with her, the old skinflint.” Disconcertingly, those were the first genuine-sounding words Josephine had spoken.
    If Patience was not bowled over by Mark Brigance, she was pleasantly surprised. The disagreeable and bullying little boy she remembered with such dislike had turned into a young man whose black Byronic handsomeness would have been formidable if his manner had not been so friendly. In the course of taking their bags and shepherding them into the car, he made Patience feel that there was a strong and pleasant bond of cousinship between them that she had totally forgotten. Any minute, she thought, they would be talking about the good old days.
    In fact, Mark and his mother were busy with an almost unintelligible interchange of family gossip on the front seat. She caught a few phrases: “Mary and Tony Wetherall on Saturday night… Gran had another tantrum this morning …What do we do about Christmas boxes? … Uncle Seward’s blasted piano …”
    This, very emphatically from Mark, reminded Patience that Josephine had told her nothing about her older brother and his family. Seward had decided at an early age that he was a pianist of genius. His mother’s determined opposition had merely confirmed him in his belief, and it was only after he had run away from home to take up his career that the horrid truth of capable mediocrity had come home to him. He had struggled on for some years until the combination of an ailing wife and four children too close together became too much for him and he staged a prodigal’s return, though there were more husks than veal in his reception. Still, his mother had taken him in, had even allowed him to give piano lessons to all her grandchildren and had borne with his discovery of latent genius in each one in turn. Encouraged by her more comfortable circumstances, his wife Grisel had remained an invalid dwindling on to a sofa – almost, it would seem, in competition with her mother-in-law, had that energetic old lady allowed such a thing in her house. Of the four children who had originally precipitated the return, two – the most talented two, their father maintained – had shortly afterwards died in an epidemic of diphtheria, leaving a girl and boy, Leonora and Ludwig, in an unhappy minority among their cousins. Priss could always be relied on to side