Above Suspicion Read Online Free PDF

mists were rising from the fields on either side of them, encircling the roots of the willows which edged the banks.
    “When I used to read my Virgil this is what I thought the Styx might be like,” said Frances. Then suddenly, “Richard, what are you planning to do in Paris?”
    “Water carries sound,” he reminded her. To prove his words, they heard low voices and the laugh of a girl, before they saw two punts drifting to meet them.
    “You have your moments, don’t you, Richard? By the way, I think you will like the hat I bought yesterday in London. A little white sailor with no crown to speak of, yards of black cloud floating down the back, and a saucy red rose perched over one eye.” She heard Richard laugh behind her. “Practical, isn’t it?”
    “Very,” he said, and laughed again. “Good Lord—trust a woman to think up something like that.”
    Frances was serious again. “Richard, do you think there will really be war this summer?”
    “It’s anyone’s guess. The President was lunching yesterday with Halifax. He said—”
    “Halifax?”
    “Yes. He said no one in the Cabinet knew. It all depended on one man.”
    Frances was silent for a space. When she spoke, her voice trembled with its intensity.
    “I resent this man. Why should the happiness of the whole civilised world depend on him? Why, for instance, should I, an Englishwoman, have to look at my countryside and even as I look remember that last September I had planned to help to take the Brown children in this canoe up this river, to hide them under the willows until the air raids had passed? I had blankets and towels and tinned food and chocolate all packedin a basket. A Hitler picnic indeed. There is not one of us who hasn’t had fear and horror creep into all our associations. As I pass these willows I keep wondering just which one of them might have been sheltering the Brown children, and whether it would have done its job. And all because of one man. Think of it, Richard, there wasn’t a farmer who didn’t look at his land and the farmhouse his great-great-grandfather had built and wonder. There wasn’t a townsman who didn’t look at his business or his home and everything he had earned for himself and wonder. There wasn’t a man or woman who did not look at the children and wonder. Richard, I resent this man and his kind of people.”
    “You aren’t the only one.” Richard pointed the nose of the canoe back down the river. “You aren’t the only one. We have all had a year of brooding. And we have all come to the same decision. If anything does start the man who starts it will be sorry he ever thought of himself as a kind of god. But take it easy, Frances. Promise me you will stop worrying while we are on this holiday. It may be the last”—he paused—“for a long time, anyway. There is nothing more that rational beings can do, anyway, except wait and watch. And when it comes the Brown children will have better protection than the willows this September. And that’s something.”
    “Yes, that’s something.” Frances’ voice was quieter. “But when I meet some of those armchair critics who sit beside their radio in a part of the world which can’t be bombed from Germany and hear them tell me how England should have fought I am liable to be very very rude. And I bet, if war does come, these same people will suddenly start talking about the greatness and glories of peace. Britain will then be just anotherof those belligerent countries. That is how we will be dismissed, as if neutrality implied a special sanctity. There now, Richard, I’ve got it all out of my system. I shan’t mention it again.”
    “That’s the girl. Remember this part of the river?”
    Frances gave a shaky laugh. “Yes, darling. I was a sweet girl undergraduate, and you were in all the importance of your final year. Good bathes we had, too, in just this kind of moonlight. Look, there’s some more of us.” Some punts were moored under a bank and