Anglo-Irish Murders Read Online Free PDF

is the presence of such people at this conference that has attracted vast amounts of money.’
    ‘Should one write a letter to someone about this?’ asked Miss Grace anxiously. ‘Perhaps Gertrude might be able to do something.’
    ‘Frankly, Grace, I think the best thing we can do is change the subject and have a snifter of that brandy I brought.’
    ‘That would be agreeable, Ida,’ said Miss FitzHugh. ‘We can pretend we are living in more gracious times.’
    ***
    ‘I don’t know about you,’ said Amiss, as they drove down the drive, ‘but I’m chilled to the bone.’ He looked through the windscreen at the driving rain and shivered.
    ‘I’m forced to admit that Grace and Lavinia are a lot tougher even than me,’ said the baroness, turning the heater to maximum. ‘Mind you it’s central heating that’s made wimps of us all. Twenty years ago I wouldn’t have noticed the cold. I’m really a bit ashamed of having chickened out of staying the second night. But very relieved I did.’
    ‘It was the damp more than the cold. I swear those sheets were wet despite the stone hot-water bottle.’
    ‘In my case it was because of. The bottle leaked.’
    ‘I’m not surprised you decided to cut and run.’
    ‘Still, it came as little surprise. If you visit what the Irish allude to as the “ould dacency,” these hardships are to be expected. At least the sheets were linen. Apart from the bits that were holes, that is.’
    ‘As you know, Jack, I have no standards. I’d prefer dry polyester to wet satin, any day.’
    ‘With luck we’ll find a hotel that has dry linen. I have one in mind.’
    ‘Do you think the ladies believed our excuse?’
    ‘They absolutely accepted that you needed a phone socket that took a modem. Didn’t know what you were talking about, but believed you.’
    ‘Well, it’s true anyway. God knows what messages I’ve missed. Especially since the mobile wasn’t working at Knocknasheen either.’
    She turned right and put her foot down hard on the accelerator. ‘So what did you think of them? Good old girls, aren’t they?’
    ‘I won’t forget them easily.’
    She blew the horn at a wobbling cyclist, causing him to panic and almost tumble into the ditch. Passing him at high speed, almost too late, she spotted a signpost for Mayo and turned the steering wheel so violently that the car missed by only an inch crashing into a stone wall. She affected not to notice Amiss’ intake of breath. ‘Hardly anyone realises the Prods were all but eradicated in the south, since the Catholics are so good at the rhetoric of tolerance and have largely pretended discrimination and violence were a curiously northern phenomenon. The northern Catholics never shut up whingeing and the stiff-necked old Ulster Prods, of course, told their side of the story with all the charm and subtlety of an aardvark.’
    ‘I know what you mean. Gardiner Steeples has caused me less trouble than almost anyone else involved in this conference, yet he comes across as truculent and churlish.’
    ‘Who’s Gardiner Steeples?’
    ‘One of the very few unionists who look like turning up. Most of them think it’s a complete waste of time and will be MOPE-driven.’
    As they rounded the next corner, she jammed on the brake just in time to prevent them crashing into a tractor which was ambling gently down the middle of the road. ‘Bloody fool. Why doesn’t he pull in? Doesn’t he realize it’s me?’
    Amiss ignored the increasingly petulant denunciations that accompanied the gesticulating and horn-blowing—all of which made no visible impact on the course of the tractor. They proceeded in a stately procession at eight miles an hour until suddenly and without warning the machine turned left into a hidden opening. As they shot by, the baroness shook her fist and the driver responded with a smile and a happy wave. ‘Moron,’ she yelled at his image in the mirror.
    ‘I suspect he’s deaf, Jack.’
    ‘And blind.