Magpie Murders Read Online Free PDF Page B

curtains, the magenta walls, the aspidistra on the window sill and the little wooden crucifix hanging from the Welsh dresser where she could see it at the start of every day. She glanced at the breakfast things, still laid out on the table: a single plate, one knife, one spoon, one half-empty jar of Golden Shred marmalade. All at once, she felt the onrush of emotions that she had grown used to over the years but which she still had to fight with all her strength. She was lonely. She should never have come here. Her whole life was a travesty.
    And all because of twelve minutes.
    Twelve minutes!
    She picked up the kettle and slammed it down on the hob, turning on the gas with a savage twist of her hand. It really wasn’t fair. How could a person’s whole life be decided for them simply because of the timing of their birth? She had never really understood it when she was a child at Pye Hall. She and Magnus were twins. They were equals, happily protected by all the wealth and privilege which surrounded them and which the two of them would enjoy for the rest of their lives. That was what she had always thought. How could this have happened to her?
    She knew the answer now. Magnus himself had been the first to tell her, something about an entail which was centuries old and which meant that the house, the entire estate, would go to him simply because he was the firstborn, and the title, of course, because he was male, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. She had thought he was making it up just to spite her. But she had found out soon enough. It had been a process of attrition, starting with the death of her parents in a car accident when she was in her mid-twenties. The house had passed formally to Magnus and from that moment, her status had changed. She had become a guest in her own home and an unwanted one at that. She had been moved to a smaller room. And when Magnus had met and married Frances – this was two years after the war – she had been gently persuaded to move out altogether.
    She had spent a miserable year in London, renting a tiny flat in Bayswater and watching her savings run out. In the end, she had become a governess. What choice was there for a single woman who spoke passable French, who played the piano and who could recite works of all the major poets but who had no other discernible skills? In a spirit of adventure she had gone to America; first to Boston, then to Washington. Both the families she had worked for had been quite ghastly and of course they had treated her like dirt even though she was in every respect more experienced and (although she would never have said it herself), more refined. And the children! It was clear to her that American children were the worst in the world with no manners, no breeding and very little intelligence. She had, however, been well paid and she had saved every penny – every cent – that she had earned and when she could stand it no more, after ten long years she had returned home.
    Home was Saxby-on-Avon. In a way it was the last place she wanted to be but it was where she had been born and where she had been brought up. Where else could she go? Did she want to spend the rest of her life in a bedsit in Bayswater? Fortunately, a job had come up at the local school and with all the money she had saved, she had just about been able to afford a mortgage. Magnus hadn’t helped her, of course. Not that she would have dreamed of asking. At first it had galled her, seeing him driving in and out of the big house where the two of them had once played. She still had a key – her own key – to the front door! She had never returned it and never would. The key was a symbol of everything she had lost but at the same time it reminded her that she had every right to stay. Her presence here was almost certainly a source of embarrassment for her brother. There was some solace in that.
    Bitterness and anger swept through Clarissa Pye as she stood on her own in her