Furious Old Women Read Free

had nothing to say in the matter?”
    â€œWhat could he do between two women like Millicent and Grazia? His great ambition is to be all things to all men, a good mixer, popular, tolerant—you know the type. Grazia will bowl him over like a ninepin. As for the curate, he’s considered ‘good with boys’. Scouts and that.”
    â€œWho else is on the parochial scene?”
    â€œOnly one Churchwarden who counts—Commander Fyfe. He’s not what you would imagine a retired Naval Officer to be like. Then there’s Rumble who is both verger and sexton and who found the body. You’ll meet him for yourself. I won’t spoil your first impressions.”
    â€œWho else am I likely to meet?”
    â€œThe publican of the Black Horse, George Larkin. Perhaps you had better hear straight away what someone in the village is bound to tell you sooner or later, that is that when he was chauffeur to my father many years ago there was a scandal of some sort. I was at boarding school at the time and have never from that day to this heard the story in full but I believe he ran away with Millicent. My father found them a week later down at Brighton and everything was hushed up. Larkin had a pub bought for him up in Westmorland or somewhere on condition that he did not return here. He waited till after my father’s death then returned, since this is after all his native place. His own pub had flourished and he bought the BlackHorse. He is a widower now and in his seventies though his son is barely twenty.”
    â€œAnyone else?”
    â€œOh, the village has the usual local characters. Rather irritating, most of them, I find. There’s a poacher called Mugger who is rather notorious. The village policeman, Slatt, I consider to be of sub-normal intelligence but doubtless I’m prejudiced. You’ll come on others unless you produce a solution almost at once.”
    â€œI don’t think that’s likely. It’s all too vague.”
    â€œBut tempting?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThen do your damnedest. Because, as I say, I’m furious. This is the
end.
I’ve been pretty annoyed for years with this silliness called modern life. It irritates me to make no progress at all except towards old age. I could strangle the self-pitying young people who moan at the mess around them and do nothing about it. But I’ve never yet been angry on a personal score, I mean at something which happened to me. When I hear that my elder sister has been battered to death and thrown in an open grave, I find it too much. I’m livid. So don’t take too long in solving the thing. I understand you’re clever. For goodness’ sake show it. And help yourself to another drink—don’t sit looking at an empty glass.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œWhen will you start your enquiries?”
    â€œTomorrow,” said Carolus.

2
    C AROLUS drove the forty miles from the village of Gladhurst to the town of Newminster where, in the Queen’s School, he was Senior History Master.
    The Queen’s School, Newminster, is, as its pupils find themselves under the necessity rather often of explaining, a public school. A minor, a small, a lesser-known one, they concede, but still in the required category. It has a hundred and sixty day-boys, ninety boarders and a staff of eighteen. Its buildings are old, picturesque and very unhygienic and one of its class-rooms is a show-piece untouched from the Elizabethan Age in which the school was founded.
    At the school Carolus occupied an equivocal position. He was an extraordinarily good teacher but as a member of the staff he gave the headmaster, Mr Gorringer, many unquiet hours. His excessively large private income and Bentley Continental motor-car, his habit of dressing rather too well and keeping up an extravagant establishment for himself did not endear him to the staff, who were sparsely paid, conscientious men. His known interest in