A Fine Summer's Day Read Online Free PDF

attended to all the arrangements for Friday evening, the caterers and florists, the small orchestra and the wines. He tried to concentrate on that, but he found that the case in Dorset was still troubling him, and he turned instead to the newspapers he’d bought before boarding.
    They offered little cheer.
    Europe was aflame with charges and countercharges after that business in Sarajevo. Austria was in the mood to blame all of Serbia and punish its people accordingly. As the investigation into the appalling events dragged on, Russia was taking a hand in the matter, declaring that she spoke for all Slavs and would stand by the Slavic Serbs, in the eventthat Austria decided on military action. There had been other assassinations, long before the bombing of the motorcade in the Archduke’s procession, but killing the heir to the throne was not simply murder, it was an act of treason, and Vienna’s position was that the troublesome Serbs deserved to be taught a sharp lesson. The fact that they were Slavs had nothing to do with it, and Austria told Russia to mind her own business.
    Rutledge shook his head. He didn’t envy the policemen, Austrian or Serbian, who had to get to the bottom of this business and keep a lid on the powder keg of emotions that threatened the peace of the Balkans. Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, was well into his sixties. His wife, the Empress Elisabeth, had been assassinated years before by an anarchist, his only son had died in a murder-suicide pact, and now the Archduke, his heir, was dead. The fate of Europe might well depend on what a bitter old man decided.
    The clergyman across from him, seeing him set aside the newspapers, asked if he might read them. Rutledge passed them to him. Sometime later, he too set them aside.
    â€œNasty business,” the clergyman said, gesturing to the headlines. “I hope we don’t find ourselves drawn into it. Although I don’t quite see how. Still. You never know.”
    â€œHotheads,” the third man in the compartment agreed. “For one thing the Emperor may be past controlling his own people. For another, Tsar Nicholas is too foolish to see where this claim to be the savior of the Slavs could lead him. There’s the German treaty with Austria. If she goes to war with Russia, Germany easily could find itself involved.”
    â€œWell,” the clergyman said, “my wife’s sister lives in Vienna. Married a banker there. For her sake, I hope this comes to nothing.”
    I t was late when the train pulled into Moresby. There had been some trouble on the line after York, and they had waited an hour or more for it to be resolved.
    The town was dark and quiet, the stillness broken only by the soft whisper of the sea from the harbor. No one was waiting to meet him, and so Rutledge went directly to the Abbey Hotel, recommended to the Yard by the local Inspector. There he ordered a light dinner sent up to his room and then went to bed.
    At first light he rose and looked out his window. The town curved around a pretty harbor, where pleasure craft bobbed on the incoming tide. The fishing fleet was just visible on the horizon, sails turned red by a distant sunrise. On either side of the harbor mouth, the land rose sharply to headlands that jutted into the sea, protective arms securing the anchorage. On the higher eastern headland stood the magnificent ruins of Moresby Abbey. Only a shell, the roofless walls soared into the sky, and where the great stained glass windows had once hung, only the frames were left, a tracery against the blue above. The western headland, on the other hand, was wild country given over to nesting seabirds.
    In winter storms, a dark and angry sea would pound those cliffs and roll unhindered into the center of the town, lapping at storefronts, and sometimes tearing vessels from their moorings and leaving them stranded on shore as the waters receded.
    But on this day as the sun