Singing in the Shrouds Read Free

perfect Chips. To his intimates he could be hell.
    He was fond of reading about crime, whether fictitious or actual, and had dwelt at some length on the
Evening Herald’s
piece about the Flower Murderer, as in its slipshod way it called this undetected killer. Mr. Merryman deplored journalese and had the poorest possible opinion of the methods of the police, but the story itself quite fascinated him. He read slowly and methodically, wincing at stylistic solecisms and bitterly resentful of Miss Abbott’s trespassing glances. “Detested kite!” Mr. Merryman silently apostrophized her. “Blasts and fogs upon you! Why in the names of all the gods at once can you not buy your own disnatured newspaper!”
    He turned to page 6, the
Evening Herald
out of Miss Abbott’s line of sight, read column 2 as quickly as possible, folded the newspaper, rose, and offered it to her with a bow.
    “Madam,” Mr. Merryman said, “allow me. No doubt you prefer, as I confess I do, the undisputed possession of your chosen form of literature. Perhaps you have already seen it?”
    “No,” said Miss Abbott loudly. “I haven’t and what’s more, I don’t want to. Thank you.”
    Father Charles Jourdain muttered whimsically to his brother-cleric, “Seeds of discord! Seeds of discord!” They were in the seat opposite and could scarcely escape noticing the incident.
    “I do hope,” the brother-cleric murmured, “that you find someone moderately congenial.”
    “In my experience there is always someone.”
    “And you
are
an experienced traveller.” The other sighed, rather wistfully.
    “Would you have liked the job so much, Father? I’m sorry.”
    “No, no, no, please don’t think it for a moment, really. I would carry no weight in Durban. Father Superior, as always, has made the wisest possible choice. And you are glad to be going — I hope?”
    Father Jourdain waited for a moment and then said, “Oh, yes. Yes. I’m glad to go.”
    “It will be so interesting. The community in Africa—”
    They settled down to talk Anglo-Catholic shop.
    Mrs. Cuddy, overhearing them, smelt Popery.
    Tlie remaining ship’s passenger in the bus took no notice at all of her companions. She sat in the front seat with her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her camel’s-hair coat. She had a black Zouave hat on the back of her head and a black belt round her waist. She was so good-looking that all the tears she had shed still left her attractive. She was not crying now. She tucked her chin into her scarf and scowled at the bus driver’s back. Her name was Brigid Carmichael. She was twenty-three and had been crossed in love.
    The bus lurched up Ludgate Hill. Dr. Timothy Makepiece put down his book and leaned forward, stooping, to see the last of St. Paul’s. There it was, fabulous against the night sky. He experienced a sensation which he himself would have attributed, no doubt correctly, to a disturbance of the nervous ganglions but which laymen occasionally describe as a turning over of the heart. This must be, he supposed, because he was leaving London. He had come to that conclusion when he found he was no longer staring at the dome of St. Paul’s but into the eyes of the girl in the front seat. She had turned, evidently with the same intention as his own, to look out and upwards.
    Father Jourdain was saying, “Have you ever read that rather exciting thing of G.K.C.’s,
The Ball and the Cross
?”
    Brigid carefully made her eyes blank and faced front. Dr. Makepiece returned uneasily to his book. He was filled with a kind of astonishment.
     
    At about the same time as the bus passed by St. Paul’s, a very smart sports car had left a very smart mews flat in Mayfair. In it were Aubyn Dale, his dearest friend (who owned the car and sat at the wheel in a mink coat) and their two dearest friends, who were entwined in the back seat. They had all enjoyed an expensive farewell dinner and were bound for the docks. “The form,” the dearest friend