Read Online Past Tense by Catherine Aird - Free Book Online Page B

bewildered Crosby, looking round and seeing nothing but grass and water in the countryside.
    â€˜In that painting,’ explained the pathologist. ‘The artist, Millais, sent out for plants that grew at the water’s edge while he was working on it. He had some trailing willow branches brought round, too. Mind you, I don’t blame her…’
    â€˜Who?’ asked Crosby, totally lost now.
    â€˜Ophelia. Her lover was a very funny chap with big problems.’ Dr Dabbe’s manner changed as he peered at the body. ‘Millais’s model caught pneumonia but I think this girl might have drowned. Too soon to say, of course. Much too soon. But how and why is a different matter. Or to put it another way it’s the difference between “I shall drown and no one will save me”, which is a cry of despair, and “I will drown and no one shall save me”, which is suicidal.’
    â€˜Yes, Doctor,’ Sloan said stolidly.
    The pathologist was looking round now as two men, heavily burdened with equipment, started to struggle across the field. ‘Ah, here come your happy snappers. When they’re done, Sloan, perhaps I could get a bit nearer and tell you whether she did an Ophelia or her Hamlet pushed her.’

Chapter Six
    At her home, The Old Post Office, in the village of Staple St James, Janet Wakefield was pushing a mug of coffee across the kitchen table to the woman sitting opposite her.
    â€˜Now, Jan, tell me about last night. Everything, mind you,’ said her friend, Dawn. ‘I’m all ears. What’s this Joe Short really like?’
    Janet screwed up her face. ‘Difficult to say.’
    â€˜Oh, come on. You can’t have spent an evening with any man without getting to know something about him. That wouldn’t be natural, not knowing you.’
    â€˜He didn’t give much away, really,’ Janet protested.
    â€˜Tall or short? Fat or thin?’ Fatness was forever at the forefront of Dawn’s mind. She always asked if the milk for her coffee was semi-skimmed.
    â€˜Oh, quite tall. What you might call well built rather than fat – oh, and sunburnt,’ replied Janet. ‘Very pleasant, though, I must say. That’s all, Dawn, honestly.’
    It wasn’t anything like enough for Dawn, who carried on with her interrogation. ‘Married? If not, why not?’
    â€˜I don’t know whether he is or not. He didn’t mention a wife or say anything at all about having any attachments…oh, except that conditions in the wilds of upcountry Lasserta were no place for anyone’s wife and family but he hoped not to be staying there for ever.’
    â€˜What’s his job?’ Dawn’s husband was something unspecified in insurance.
    â€˜He’s an engineer with Cartwright’s Consolidated Carbons. They do something important with querremitte ore – whatever that might be – after it’s been mined.’
    â€˜Bully for them.’
    â€˜Sounds to me more like profits for them,’ said Janet on whom some at least of the essentials of her own husband’s work had rubbed off.
    â€˜How old?’
    â€˜About our age,’ said Janet. ‘Well, under thirty, anyway,’ she added delicately, since she knew Dawn was approaching that highly time-sensitive watershed. ‘About twenty-eight, I should say, now that I’ve seen him properly. What I can’t understand is that while Joe seemed to know all about us – Bill’s family, that is – we didn’t know anything about him. I’ve certainly never been told anything much at all about the history of the Shorts.’
    â€˜Not even that this particular one existed,’ remarked Dawn pertinently.
    â€˜No.’ She shook her head. ‘Bill’s never talked about that side of the family at all. I’m not even sure that he knew a lot about it himself, although now I come to think about it I remember there