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

begun almost as a joke began to look like a serious problem. You cannot drop a large foreign object into a still and mantled pool without starting dangerous and disruptive ripples.
    ‘What about his wife?’ George wondered. ‘How’re they making out with her? She could well be the last straw.’
    ‘Ah!’ said Sergeant Moon cryptically, and sat thinking for half a minute before he expressed any further opinion. ‘Now there we’re up against a different problem. How did he ever come by her, in the first place? And if you know what to make of her, you tell me, because
we
don’t! All that Estee Lauder and haute couture, and sports car and all, and she breezes into the shop and asks for Woodbines, and cheerfully, too. Or drops off when Charlie’s frying, just by the way when she smells the oil, and picks up a paper-full of fish and chips. Not when he’s with her, but then, he seldom is. And still looking like a million dollars, with all the aplomb in the world. I bet she does the lady of the manor as to the manor born – if you’ll pass over the pun. Out of the manor she looks the same but acts different. As if she’d bust out of school. And I tell you this, she fetches a few of her husband’s mates buzzing like bees round a flower – that big fair fellow who’s been advising on marketing some of the Mottisham Abbey stuff, for one – but there’s more than one local chap been risking his fingers round the fire, too. And I wouldn’t say but what she enjoys them just as much, if not more. Novelty, I reckon. Most people thought she’d be bored to hell, stuck up there in the hills at the back of beyond, but if you ask me, she’s not losing any sleep over being rusticated, the other way round, in fact. It’s been an eye-opener.’
    ‘I suppose he hasn’t got her into the Women’s Institute yet?’ said George, and had to smile at the idea.
    ‘No, he does the joining, she presides at home and looks handsome. And keeps his friends and rivals coming,’ said Moon with shrewd perception, ‘so he knows what they’re up to. But as far as public functions go, her job is just to be his consort. I don’t think public distinction for her was ever in the contract.’
     
    At St Eata’s church in Abbot’s Bale it was the custom of the trebles, during the sermon, to amuse themselves with various ingenious games invented by themselves. The choir-stalls, part of the elaborate renovations perpetrated in the nineteenth century, were deep, and covered a multitude of sins. The boys on the
decani
side had to be wary, since a couple of the tenors behind them were tall enough to see down into the stall in front, even when seated, but happily they were also the two who were most likely to be dozing themselves. The Reverend Stephen’s sermons were painstaking and worthy, but not exciting. They also tended to end abruptly, which gave an added spice of danger to some of the games. Passing the chocolate orange, for instance (orange by courtesy of Toffee Bill, whose mother kept the village shop, and paid for by communal funds!), entailed slipping the orange from hand to hand all along the
cantoris
side to the altar end of the stalls, each boy detaching one section for himself, whereupon Ginger Gibbs, last in the line, had the hair-raising job of lobbing the remnant, precariously re-wrapped in its gold foil, across the intervening space to Bossie Jarvis on the
decani
side, so that the progress could continue along that stall, too. Nobody had yet thought of a way of getting the few remaining sections across the other end, in full view of the congregation. If any survived, the direction had to be reversed. Judging the right instant to throw required immense coolness and precision. Neither Ginger nor Bossie had ever yet been caught in the act.
    There were other pursuits, of course. Those who still carried clean handkerchiefs sometimes tied them into animal shapes, and gave puppet-shows, mainly for their own stall, but sometimes,