Requiem for a Wren Read Online Free PDF

London, but I don't think she really knows.'
    'That doesn't line up with her being a farmer's daughter.'
    'I know.'
    We sat silent for a minute. Then I glanced at him, and said, The coroner's coming here tomorrow morning, with the police?'
    He nodded. 'They've got to give a certificate for burial. There'll have to be an inquest, of course.'
    'Bit awkward, if we don't know who she was.'
    He bit his lip. 'I know,' he said. I glanced at him, and there was an old man's tremor moving his head, the first time I had seen it. 'It makes us look - well, careless.'
    'I wouldn't worry about that, Dad,' I said. 'It's not as if she was a young girl that you were responsible for. She was a grown woman.'
    His hand moved to his chin, as if to stop the tremor. 'I know' he replied. 'But it looks bad all the same. As if we didn't care.'
    He turned to me. 'It's a very good thing for your mother that you've come home, Alan. It's going to take her mind off it. Be with her as much as you can till the funeral is over. Tell her about England - anything.'
    'She's going to miss her, is she?'
    He nodded. 'She's going to miss her a great deal. When a woman's getting on in years and not very well, it's a great comfort to have a girl about the place who's sensible and responsible. She's a great loss to your mother, Alan.'
    I nodded slowly. 'Mother was fond of her?'
    'I think so. Yes, I think she was,' my father said. 'The girl
    27
    kept her place, but she used to think ahead and do things for your mother before she thought of asking for them, if you understand what I mean. She was very thoughtful for your mother in that way.'
    If she had been thoughtful for my mother it seemed to indicate that she had liked being at Coombargana; indeed, everything that I had heard seemed to point that way. She had never even bothered to take the holidays that were due to her. Then why had she taken her own life? I glanced at my father. 'What do you think about this theory of Mother's, that it was an accident?' I asked. 'I didn't want to say too much in front of Mother. Would you say she was a suicidal type?'
    He said, 'I simply don't know, Alan. I don't know what a suicidal type looks like. To me she was just an ordinary, decent girl, not very good looking. I wouldn't have expected her to commit suicide - I'd have said she was too level-headed. But who's to say?'
    'Do you think it was an accident, Dad?' I asked. 'I've never heard of anyone taking an overdose of sleeping tablets by mistake. I mean, you've got to eat such a lot, and gulp down such a lot of water. How many does the doctor say she took?'
    'More than twenty.'
    'Well, surely to God, that couldn't have been a mistake. You can't go on taking tablet after tablet till you've taken twenty, by mistake. If it had been one, or even two, it might be possible. But not twenty.'
    'If it was deliberate,' my father said, 'she wouldn't have left two tablets in the bottle, would she? She'd have taken the lot, to make sure.'
    There was a pause. 'I can't think it was an accident,' I said at last. 'I'm sorry. Dad, but I should say it was deliberate.'
    He stood up, and I was deeply sorry for him, for he looked so old. 'Well, don't tell your mother that,' he said. 'It's better if she thinks it was an accident. I'm hoping that we'll get the coroner to see it that way in the morning. If it was deliberate we'll probably never know the reason, and there's no sense in stirring up trouble.'
    We left the shed and got back into the Land Rover and
    28
    went on with our tour around the property. In the evening light we came to his trout hatchery by the river, a series of little pools with water running through controlled by little sluices from the river, overhung by weeping willow trees. When I had written to tell them that I would be coming home next spring my father had had this disused hatchery put in order and commenced to breed up about a thousand little fish with which to re-stock the river against my return; he intended to keep them a