Let's Kill Uncle Read Online Free PDF Page A

sprinkled with brown sugar, a cup of very weak tea, an apple peeled and cut into tiny pieces so that he should not tire himself unduly chewing, and a plate of arrowroot biscuits.
    Sergeant Coulter sighed.
    Barnaby looked up at the policeman, his expression one of outraged manhood.
    Sergeant Coulter sighed again. Nursery food for a strapping, active child like this.
    He put his finger against his lips.
    ‘Shhhhh!’ He said and leaned over the boy.
    ‘Barnaby,’ he whispered, ‘eat it now, like a good boy. I’ll speak to them and see you get some decent food tomorrow. Don’t make a fuss tonight. It’s been a long time since they had a boy around.’
    Barnaby looked at him blankly, then at the food.
    He shook his head.
    Sergeant Coulter placed an arm on either side of the table and leaned closer to the boy.
    ‘I thought you said you wanted to be a Mountie. The first thing you have to learn is to do what you’re told.’
    He leaned back.
    ‘Eat it,’ he said in a low, even tone.
    Barnaby stared at him.
    The hard eyes of the Mountie regarded him with detachment. Suddenly Barnaby smiled, a quick, cheerful grin.
    ‘Okay,’ he said and began eating.
    ‘That’s better,’ said Sergeant Coulter, and the boy gazed up at him with adoring eyes.
    ‘Now another thing, Barnaby. I don’t want to hear any swearing from you in front of Mr and Mrs Brooks. Do I make myself clear?’
    Barnaby nodded agreeably.
    Sergeant Coulter walked to the beaded curtain, stopped and turned.
    ‘Oh, yes, there’s one more thing. You wouldn’t happen to know who opened the bars of Mr Allen’s sheep pen and drove all the sheep out, would you?’
    ‘Nope,’ said Barnaby Gaunt.
    ‘Really?’ said Sergeant Coulter. ‘That’s odd. You see, Mr Allen saw a blond boy running down the road after the sheep.’
    ‘Did he?’ said Barnaby.
    ‘Yes, he did,’ said Sergeant Coulter. ‘And this Island isn’t exactly overrun with little blond boys. As a matter of fact, you’re the only one.’
    ‘Am I?’
    Sergeant Coulter nodded.
    ‘You watch your step, young man.’
    Sergeant Coulter was thirty feet from the store when that clear treble echoed again through the quiet dusk.
    ‘No! I’m not having any bloody bath and I’m not saying any God-damned prayers!’
    Sergeant Coulter paused momentarily, then walked on. He’d have to watch that boy. He had all the earmarks of a juvenile delinquent.
    Unshriven, unrepentant and unwashed, Barnaby lay on his cot in the Brooks’ parlour.
    Mr Brooks held the flickering coal oil lamp high as he and Mrs Brooks gazed with awe at the sleeping child.
    It had come to pass, even as Dickie had prophesied. Changed in corporeal form, perhaps, but here nevertheless, as he had promised them through the lips of the medium.
    Slumber cast a spell of tranquillity on Barnaby’s stubborn face. His cheek lay on one grubby hand, while the shadow of a smile played on his lips. Asleep he looked quite sweet-natured.
    The voice at the séance had not sounded like Dickie’s but as the medium had explained, Dickie was on too high an astral plane to descend personally, and he had to be relayed through the spirit control, White Deer.
    White Deer had delivered the message as clearly as though Dickie had been in the room. Yes, Dickie was very happy on his astral plane, but it saddened him to see them grieving. Yes, he would comfort them.
    They had never doubted it. And here was little Barnaby.
    Mr Brooks turned to Mrs Brooks.
    ‘I think, perhaps, that we had better not discuss this with Sergeant Coulter or Mr Rice-Hope,’ he whispered.
    Mrs Brooks nodded.
    Everyone was entitled to his own beliefs, of course, even Sergeant Coulter. Albert had always had a hard, uncompromising streak in him, still, surely it had been unkind of him to refer to the medium, whom he had never even met, as a fraud. Or, to quote Albert’s exact words, ‘A bunko artist’.
    Upon their return from the séance, which had taken place in the city, they had