Ellis Peters - George Felse 13 - Rainbow's End Read Online Free PDF

effectively.’
    ‘Trouble is we’ve left it late, not wanting to throw out any man until we were sure. And then, the vicar being newish and not thoroughly clued up yet made his mistake, and now he’s stuck with it, and so are we.’
    ‘And what’s he really like as organist?’ asked George curiously. ‘From all I hear, he can play any keyboard instrument like nobody’s business. Obviously the Reverend thought he was getting a prize. Does that work out?’
    ‘George, if we’ve got a resistance movement in the general population, believe me, we’ve got seething revolution in the choir. You won’t hear a voluntary in our church now earlier than Durufle or Messiaen, or an anthem or a chant or a hymn-tune more than twenty years old. The things he’s asking those boys to sing you wouldn’t wish on a dog-pack! You should see young Bossie’s face, soaring to that high F of his and looking like it tastes vile. All new and fashionable and with-it, I’m sure, but with what? Not harmony, nor melody, that’s for certain. And what about all the rest of us, brought up on Welsh hwyl and classical form? Nothing to get our teeth in at all! Congregations are dropping off you know how frustrating it can be, coming all primed to sing your heart out, and very creditably, mind you, we know what’s what; and then to be baulked by a parcel of discords fighting out a life-or-death struggle! No, let him be as expert as he likes, he knows nothing and feels nothing about music. If he did, he’d know what he’s stirring up, and believe me, he hasn’t got a clue.’
    George thought of Miss de la Pole, with her finger on the valley’s pulse like a family doctor, saying almost absently: ‘What a pity he isn’t in the least degree musical!’
    ‘You do seem to have acquired a king-sized headache,’ he said with sympathy. ‘You’ve frozen out tougher propositions before, though. What’s so special about this one?’
    ‘A hide like a rhinoceros,’ said Sergeant Moon succinctly, ‘and far better insulation. With the money he’s got he can isolate himself inside his own world, apart from actual functions at which he has to appear officially. He can bring in his own society, be independent of us and anything we may feel about him. Do you realise we’ve never had a rich man living among us since the eighteenth century? The mistake was ever to let him in. Now he’s in I’m damned if we know how to get at him.’
    ‘Somebody’ll find a way,’ said George, rather too lightly.
    ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ agreed Sergeant Moon, not lightly at all.
    ‘As bad as that? Look, Middlehope has digested some pretty odd customers in its time, and turned them into part of the soil. Is Rainbow really impossible?’
    ‘Others,’ said Moon seriously, ‘have blundered in and fought it out with us on equal terms, we can appreciate that. They end up talking loftily about the next arrivals as incomers, and then go on to assimilate them. Nobody’s going to assimilate Rainbow, he isn’t fighting it out on equal or any terms. He came in and asserted his own terms, no question of adapting, no question of parleying or feeling his way, no acknowledgement that Middlehope has any identity of its own. Have you ever walked round with a twig of blackthorn stuck in your sock? He’s got to go! He’s something we can’t afford. He cripples us. So something’s got to be done. The hell of it is, everybody’s asking, what?’
    And well they might, where the foreign body was fully provided with funds, society, interests of his own, independent of the community in which he had set up house. Even if they gradually froze him out of all the offices he had acquired – and that would take some doing! – he still had space and wealth enough, transport to where he was welcome, the means to import his own kind to fill any gaps left by the defection of the natives. He was the least vulnerable intruder with whom Middlehope had ever had to deal. What had