Furious Old Women Read Online Free PDF Page B

shoes?”
    â€œHer overshoes, you mean?” asked Naomi watchfully. “Wasn’t she wearing them?”
    â€œI believe not.”
    â€œI’ll see,” said Naomi.
    When she returned she said simply that they were nowhere to be found.
    â€œPerhaps if she had not got them on when she was found she left them in the church?” suggested Naomi.
    â€œThen surely Mrs Rumble would have come on them?” said Mrs Bobbin.
    â€œWell, you know what
she
is,” said Naomi meaningly.
    â€œYes,” admitted Mrs Bobbin.
    â€œYou mean,” said Carolus, “that your sister probably wore her galoshes and took them off while she was in the church?”
    â€œIt seems possible.”
    â€œThen either she forgot them when she left or else something happened to her while she was still in the building?”
    â€œIf Mrs Rumble found them there, yes.”
    â€œI shall have to see her tomorrow, then. Would your sister have taken anything with her from here if she went to clean brass in the church?”
    â€œNo. The things she used were kept in a cupboard in the vestry.”
    â€œMrs Rumble will know if they had been disturbed?”
    â€œMost unlikely. She had nothing to do with the brass.”
    â€œShe lives near the church?”
    â€œJust opposite.”
    â€œWell, thank you, Mrs Bobbin. I shan’t have to trouble you again, I hope, though I would like to see Miss Flora as soon as possible.”
    â€œHave a cup of tea before you go? You run along, Naomi. I’ll get it myself.”
    Half an hour later Carolus left the house and walked towards the church. It would be too late, he decided, to see much of the building but it was at about this time, according to.Naomi’s and Mrs Bobbin’s conjectures, that Millicent Griggs would have taken this way nine days ago.
    He could make out the tall shape of the square tower which stood apart from the village. Beside it was a fair-sized house which he took to be the vicarage and a small cottage which was probably Rumble’s.
    As he stood there a woman’s figure approached him from the direction of the church and cottage.
    â€œGood-night, Naomi,” he said as the tall girl passed.
    â€œOh! Oh, good-night.”
    â€œBeen to see Mrs Rumble?” asked Carolus.
    â€œNo! What? I was just … Why do you … Oh, leave me alone. I’ve told you everything. Why do you keep on?”
    â€œI just said good-night,” said Carolus. “Don’t forget when you do want to tell the truth….”
    But Naomi was gone.

4
    T HAT evening Carolus paid his first visit to the Black Horse. He found it fairly crowded and after a while wondered what recommended it. Most pubs have something in their favour, something with which to enter the more or less bitter competition with their fellows. Where all have grown so stereotyped, each has to find a way faintly to distinguish it from the rest. So one will have a waggish, or a generous or a popular landlord, another a personable landlord’s wife or daughter; in another there will always be a bright warm fire while yet another has beer from a brewery whose advertising has been successful in making men believe its beer is different from and better than the rest. In one there will be good darts, yet another is supposed to give a larger than ordinary measure of spirits. Yet all, being brewery-owned, licensing-hours-observing, well-regulated, standardized swilling-houses for standardized products at standardized prices, have lost all character, and in a few years their customers will be as standardized as they are. English pubs have ceased to differ one from another except superficially, their signs,their furniture, the way in which their antiquity has been restored may vary slightly, but there it ends.
    What made the gathering in the Black Horse choose it from among the three in the village? Not the landlord, surely, for a more dull and surly-looking man than