Read Online An Act of Evil by Robert Richardson - Free Book Online

under a false name in a Frinton guest house. Caught a plane to Outer Mongolia. Entered a bloody nunnery.”
    “ I’m trying to help!” Tess snapped.
    “ What sort of goddamned help is loss of memory?”
    “ Stop it, the pair of you!” Melissa interrupted. “I know Diana was your friend and you’re both worried, but she was also a guest in our home and, even though we hardly knew her, we happened to like her very much. This is bad enough for everyone without you two starting a slanging match.” She glared at them as they both apologised. “That’s better. Now, it may not seem very important to you at the moment, but the festival is still going on and it’s the first of the Mystery Plays tonight. You both said you’d come and you may as well let it take your minds off all this for a while and let the police get on with their job. Now just find something to do for a couple of hours.”
    Tess went to wash her hair and have a bath while Maltravers looked in Michael’s study for a book to occupy his mind. Passing over the shelves of religious and ecclesiastical volumes, he picked up a copy of Brewer’s Phrase and Fable and flicked idly through until he spotted a section on misprinted Bibles. The Latimer Mercy theft had been completely driven from his mind but, as he read the list of variously erroneous editions, he turned over the possibility of a connection between the theft and Diana’s disappearance but could see none. His mind was still considering it as he told Melissa he was going for a stroll round the cathedral.
    He was pounced on by Miss Targett, who leapt out from behind the tourists’ shop stall as he entered the south transept, the phrases of concern, heightened by her brief meeting with Diana, rushing at him like a torrent. As he made suitable responses in what fleeting intervals she afforded him, he glanced round for a means of escape and suddenly saw the Succentor.
    “ Mr Webster!” he called in desperation and relief. “If you have a moment? If you’ll forgive me Miss Targett, I really must…” and he made a swift retreat to where Webster was looking towards him in a puzzled manner.
    “ Sorry about that,” he said as he reached him. “You were a passing means of salvation from Miss Targett.”
    Webster smiled understandingly. “She can be a little trying,” he said. “Let’s go this way.” They walked towards the Lady Chapel end of the cathedral, out of sight of Miss Targett.
    “ I’ve just been giving a statement to the police about Miss Porter,” Webster continued. “I remember talking to her at the garden party but I don’t think I was able to give them any useful information. This must be dreadfully worrying for you all. What with this and the Latimer Mercy business I don’t think there have ever been so many policemen about the cathedral.”
    “ I’m afraid this latest business is causing a great deal of upset all over the place,” Maltravers replied. Then, as the reason for his going to the cathedral was to try and stop dwelling on the subject of Diana, he turned the conversation back to the Latimer Mercy.
    “I’ve just been reading about misprinted Bibles and I didn’t realise there were so many,” he said. “I knew about the Wicked Bible which left ‘not’ out of the seventh Commandment, giving divine approval to adultery, but I’ve never heard of the Wife Hater Bible of 1810 which quoted…Luke was it?...as ‘If any man come to me and hate not his father and his mother, yea and his wife also’ instead of ‘life’; or the one which said ‘sin on more’ instead of ‘sin no more’. Actually the one I liked best was the Printers Bible which had David complaining ‘Printers have persecuted me without cause’ instead of ‘Princes’. I thought it would go rather well on the desk of the Editor of the Guardian .”
    Webster smiled thinly. “Yes, I expect so, although the Bible is the word of God and personally I feel that misprinted editions are