The Far Side of the Sun Read Online Free PDF Page A

Ella Sanford. Her huge angry eyes glared at Dodie. Tears were careening down her cheeks.

Tilly Latcham’s sharp voice demanded, ‘Emerald, what has happened?’

All Emerald could do was sway from side to side. ‘Leave her be,’ she growled. ‘This is private.’

‘Nonsense, Emerald.’ Tilly started to march past her. ‘What is that hellish sound?’

Dodie hurried forward, aware now that the sound was a woman’s voice.
     
    Dodie didn’t know which was worse. The terrible keening that tore something loose within her or the numbing silence when Ella Sanford suddenly ceased the noise. She stood frozen inside the chicken pen, staring around her with a stricken bemused expression on her face.

The gate to the pen stood wide open. There was no need to shut it. Not now. Dodie counted the hens. More than a hundred of them, sprawled dead on the tufted grass like small mounds of autumn leaves. Golds and browns, warm russets and vibrant butter yellows. Some with their necks wrenched over at odd angles, others with their heads sliced clean off and discarded on the ground. Flies were thick, gathering into black shrouds that glistened in the sun.

Dodie went to Ella, but the maid was already there, standing shoulder to shoulder with her mistress, her hand hitched into the back of Ella’s collar as though holding her up on her feet. Ella didn’t shake, didn’t cry. Her face wasn’t white or even grey, it was a strange blue colour that frightened Dodie, with one small speck of crimson on each cheek.

‘Whoever did this,’ Ella hissed through her teeth, ‘deserves to be boiled in oil.’

It was an oddly biblical pronouncement.

This was the start, Dodie could sense it. The start of something worse.
     
    They dug a large pit, Dodie and the gardener, and when it was finished, the mass grave was sealed up. Ella stood beside it, bare-headed under the sun. Tilly had drifted up to the house in search of a drink, while Emerald started stripping out the henhouses with loud bursts of ‘Oh Lordy, oh lordy, this world ain’t fit for decent souls to live in.’ So they were standing alone by the grave when Ella said, ‘Who would do this, Dodie?’

‘It’s a warning, Ella.’

‘A warning? Against what?’

‘Against going to tell the police what went on that evening you called in at Westbourne collecting for the Red Cross. Now that Sir Harry is dead, they think you might be tempted.’

Ella shook her head. ‘But I saw very little.’

‘You saw Morrell.’

‘Yes. And I saw a box of gold coins.’

They looked at each other in silence.

‘Is that enough,’ Ella said in a low voice, ‘to cause…⁠’ her gaze swept over the empty enclosure, ‘… this?’

‘I believe it’s enough to cause far worse than this.’

Ella’s attention snapped back to her. ‘Your Mr Hudson arrested on a trumped-up murder charge, you mean?’

Dodie nodded. ‘Ella, we need to know whether the box of coins is back in Sir Harry’s house somewhere.’

The crimson smudges on Ella’s cheeks contracted. ‘I know the man to ask.’

‘Oh my poor Ella, I’m sorry.’

She stepped back, detaching herself from him and looked up into his face. ‘I don’t want your sympathy, Dan, I want your help.’

‘Of course, let’s fill out an Incident Form at the police station and —’

‘No. That’s not what I mean.’

‘What then?’

They were standing on the wharf in the shade of a stack of crates that was waiting to be loaded on board one of the military ships that nudged into the harbour each day. Ahead of them lay the Sponge Exchange building and off to one side the fishing boats bobbed like noisy children alongside the quay, with Hog Island lying just offshore behind them in the shape of a great beached whale. Gulls shrieked and men hauled ropes and shouted to one another. There were five heavy bombers losing height as they came in to land. A seemingly normal day in the busy life of the harbour of New Providence Island. But today