Read Online Death on the Holy Mountain by David Dickinson - Free Book Online Page A

been swept off her feet by Captain Rufus Bracken, so tall and slim, so handsome
in his uniform, so distinguished with his moustaches, so obviously rich with his estates in Derbyshire. Six weeks later they were married after a whirlwind romance. The cynics or the realists
hinted that Alice must have been pregnant. It was widely known that his commanding officer at the time, unlike his predecessors or his successors, was a convinced puritan who did not approve of
conniving at the sudden dispatch of young Englishmen about to become fathers off to far distant shores. In his book they had to stay and do their duty. And, in fact, the cynics were wrong. Alice
was not pregnant. She was, however, not entirely pleased with her first glimpse of the vast estates in Derbyshire. The house, she declared, was little better than a fishing lodge in Ireland; the
income, she realized all too soon, was non-existent. They returned to Ireland where they were eventually given a small house to live in and a modest allowance by her mother’s second cousin,
Richard Butler of Butler’s Court.
    The wooing, the pursuit, the chase had interested Captain Bracken greatly. The reality of marriage did not. He had no interests apart from masculine pursuits. It was perfectly fine to woo a girl
with tales of the past heroism of his regiment. As the marriage lengthened from weeks into months, the stories began to pall. On his time away from military duties at Butler’s Court he found
it hard to relate to the Butlers with their endless talk of horses he hadn’t seen or hunts he hadn’t attended. After one terrible row about money Captain Bracken had applied, in his
fury, to be posted abroad. He had been sent to India, to the North-West Frontier, where his relations with the Pathan tribesmen were no more satisfactory than they had been with the Anglo-Irish
gentry. The Captain was an indifferent correspondent, his letters sometimes taking months to arrive and containing little but inane gossip about army wives and the tiresome intrigues at The Club.
Alice did not mourn his passing, except in one respect. She missed him physically. Of the loss of his conversation she was not concerned. Sometimes she wished he would never come home and would
leave her to a lifetime of flirting with Ireland’s young men. Sometimes she even wished he was dead so she could marry again. Then she would reproach herself greatly and tell herself that she
was a wicked person who deserved no portion of God’s grace in this world or the next.
    And so it was that she came to be lying on the ground with John Peter Kilross dropping strawberries into her mouth as she toasted herself in the sunshine. Had she thought about it – but
Alice was not a great one for thought – she might have realized that this Johnpeter, the two Christian names usually run together for reasons nobody could now remember, was remarkably similar
to the departed Captain Bracken of the moustaches. Only it was the voice with the young man Kilross, a voice so soft and charming that the young ladies would flock round him to hear the latest
poetry or listen to him singing. Like the absent husband, Johnpeter was the fifth son of a moderate estate in County Kildare and, like Alice, a cousin of Richard Butler on his mother’s side.
And while the Irish peasants divided their holdings among their children so they became smaller and smaller over time, the Anglo-Irish landlords always passed the estate on intact to the eldest son
in the hope that it would grow larger and larger. So Johnpeter had few possessions apart from a pair of fine hunters and a set of silver goblets left him by his grandmother.
    ‘I wish I could lie here for ever,’ said Alice languidly, as the strawberries continued to drop into her mouth.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ replied the young man, and his voice was like honey in the girl’s ears, ‘there are still plenty left.’
    Some fifty feet away, Lord Francis Powerscourt was sitting opposite