Elegy for Eddie Read Online Free PDF

through the trees on Fitzroy Square by the time Maisie and Billy took their seats at the big table alongside the window. Billy had already pinned out a length of plain white wallpaper upon which they would transcribe their notes using pencils and thick wax crayons of different colors.
    “Sandra came back from Fleet Street—she left this for you.” Billy handed Maisie a sealed envelope.
    “Oh, good. She seems to be getting on very well, don’t you think?”
    Maisie had been concerned that Billy might not take to having another employee at the office, but the two seemed to have settled into working together.
    “I think so, Miss. She’s still looking gray around the edges, though. I reckon a young woman like her shouldn’t be expected to wear her widow’s weeds for a year—all that black can’t be doing much to cheer her up.”
    “I think you’re right, Billy. I’ll see if I can talk to her about it. In fact, the best person to have a word with her would be Mrs. Partridge—she always speaks so highly of Sandra, and says that since she’s been working part-time for her husband, she has really organized his papers beyond belief,” said Maisie. “I’m so glad I found out that Mr. Partridge was looking for clerical help and was able to recommend Sandra for the position—we don’t have enough work to keep her occupied full-time here, so it was a stroke of luck all around. Mrs. Partridge is so thrilled because Douglas is extremely happy with Sandra’s work—which gives him more time with the family—so it wouldn’t be a surprise if she endowed Sandra her entire collection from last year.”
    “Bit of a woman for the latest fashions, isn’t she?”
    “Oh, no doubt about it. Paris would go out of business without Priscilla.” Maisie looked at the notes, each circled with a thick colored crayon of contrasting color. “Let’s see what we’ve got in the way of rough edges to start nibbling at here. Thinking back to your interviews, did anything stand out? Was something said at any point that made you look up and want to dig deeper?”
    Without glancing at his notepad, Billy nodded. “I’ve still got a couple to do in the morning, and Mr. Riley said there were a few other blokes at the market who might have a word or two to add, so I’ll go down there tomorrow before the gentlemen come back here in the afternoon.” He paused, tapping a crayon on the wallpaper, leaving a series of dots at the edge of the sheet. “These men didn’t see Eddie regularly, not daily, as a rule, though they said they usually crossed paths with him a couple of times a week—what with all them horses down the market, it wasn’t unusual for the word to go out to get Eddie over there. Mind you, this is what gave me a bit of a chill—each and every one of them said that Eddie hadn’t been himself for a while. Not all of the time—he wasn’t going round with a face as long as a week every day—but they said that you’d watch him walk down the road, and it’d be as if he had something on his mind. And what Mr. Riley said made sense, though at first it don’t sound very kind of him, but he said, ‘It was a bit queer seeing him looking like that, as if he had worries, because Eddie wasn’t normally like that—he didn’t have enough up there to hold thoughts for long enough.’ ”
    “Oh dear, that does sound a bit harsh, but Jesse wouldn’t have meant it badly. He thought the world of Eddie.”
    “He said that, Miss, and you can tell they all looked out for Eddie. Mr. Riley told me that Eddie’s thoughts weren’t in his head, like with most people.” Billy put his hand on his chest. “He said that this is where Eddie held his thoughts, and when he saw him looking, you know, sad, he was worried that his thoughts had started weighing upon his heart, and his heart was the best of him.”
    “Mrs. Pettit said the same thing, that Eddie had not been himself. She wondered if he’d been feeling poorly and didn’t want to