The Murder at the Vicarage Read Online Free PDF Page A

that night. When
     Griselda burst in and scolded me, pointing out that it lacked two minutes to dinner time,
     I was quite taken aback.
    “I hope everything will be all right,” Griselda called up the stairs after me. “I've
     thought over what you said at lunch, and I've really thought of some quite good things to
     eat.”
    I may say, in passing, that our evening meal amply bore out Griselda's assertion that
     things went much worse when she tried than when she didn't. The menu was ambitious in
     conception, and Mary seemed to have taken a perverse pleasure in seeing how best she could
     alternate undercooking and overcooking. Some oysters which Griselda had ordered, and which
     would seem to be beyond the reach of incompetence, we were, unfortunately, not able to
     sample as we had nothing in the house to open them with Ñ an omission which was discovered
     only when the moment for eating them arrived.
    I had rather doubted whether Lawrence Redding would put in an appearance. He might very
     easily have sent an excuse.
    However, he arrived punctually enough, and the four of us went in to dinner.
    Lawrence Redding has an undeniably attractive personality. He is, I suppose, about thirty
     years of age. He has dark hair, but his eyes are of a brilliant, almost startling blue. He
     is the kind of young man who does everything well. He is good at games, an excellent shot,
     a good amateur actor, and can tell a first?rate story. He is capable of making any party
     go. He has, I think, Irish blood in his veins. He is not, at all, one's idea of the
     typical artist. Yet I believe he is a clever painter in the modern style. I know very
     little of painting myself.
    It was only natural that on this particular evening he should appear a shade
    
    
     distrait
    
    
     . On the whole, he carried off things very well. I don't think Griselda or Dennis noticed
     anything wrong. Probably I should not have noticed anything myself if I had not known
     beforehand.
    Griselda and Dennis were particularly gay Ñ full of jokes about Dr. Stone and Miss Cram Ñ
     the Local Scandal! It suddenly came home to me with something of a pang that Dennis is
     nearer Griselda's age than I am. He calls me Uncle Len, but her Griselda. It gave me,
     somehow, a lonely feeling.
    I must, I think, have been upset by Mrs. Protheroe. I'm not usually given to such
     unprofitable reflections.
    Griselda and Dennis went rather far now and then but I hadn't the heart to check them. I
     have always thought it a pity that the mere presence of a clergyman should have a damping
     effect.
    Lawrence took a gay part in the conversation. Nevertheless I was aware of his eyes
     continually straying to where I sat, and I was not surprised when after dinner he
     man?uvred to get me into the study.
    As soon as we were alone his manner changed.
    “You've surprised our secret, sir,” he said. “What are you going to do about it?”
    I could speak far more plainly to Redding than I could to Mrs. Protheroe, and I did so. He
     took it very well.
    “Of course,” he said, when I had finished, “you're bound to say all this. You're a parson.
     I don't mean that in any way offensively. As a matter of fact I think you're probably
     right. But this isn't the usual sort of thing between Anne and me.”
    I told him that people had been saying that particular phrase since the dawn of time, and
     a queer little smile creased his lips.
    “You mean every one thinks their case is unique? Perhaps so. But one thing you must
     believe.”
    He assured me that so far Ñ “there was nothing wrong in it.” Anne, he said, was one of the
     truest and most loyal women that ever lived. What was going to happen he didn't know.
    “If this were only a book,” he said gloomily, “the old man would die Ñ and a good riddance
     to everybody.”
    I reproved him:
    “Oh! I didn't mean I was going to stick him in the back with a knife, though I'd offer my
     best thanks to