Read Online Poor Tom Is Cold by Maureen Jennings - Free Book Online

“I’m sure Mr. Murdoch won’t keep us.”
    Eakin turned to her, glaring in a little spurt of anger.
    “Aggie, it’s frigging freezing in here. I’m going to light the bloody fire.”
    His sister didn’t retaliate for his rudeness except by a visible tightening of her lips.
    “Mr. Murdoch, will you take that chair?” She indicated an armchair next to the fireplace. He sat down, took off his damp hat, and placed it beside the chair. The mantel was draped with black crepe and the mirror above was covered with a grey gauze. He wondered who had died.
    Eakin had got a blaze going right away and stretched out his hands to the flames. Then, predictably, he turned to warm his backside. Mrs. Curran took a seat on the Turkish couch opposite him, while her husband remained by the door.
    “Shall I light the lamps, Augusta?” In the gloom, Peter Curran would have been a sinister-looking fellow exceptthat his whole bearing was so hangdog, Murdoch felt sorry for him.
    She didn’t look in his direction at all but addressed the air in front of her. “I would have thought it was obvious we need some light.”
    Murdoch took a quick glance around the room. There were other crepe trimmings on the sideboard and around the pictures on the walls. The furniture was dark hued and, although the plush green coverings were thick and patterned with gilt flowers, the effect was gloomy. The house wasn’t that grand and he had the impression the drawing room wasn’t much used. Probably a family aspiring to a lifestyle beyond their class. Fine furniture but not fine manners. On the other hand, to be fair, it had been his experience that ungraciousness could be found at any level of society.
    Curran lit a lamp from the sideboard and brought it closer to where they were sitting. Augusta pointed wordlessly at a small japanned table and he placed it there.
    Murdoch took out his notebook to indicate he was ready to start. Frank Eakin, smelling slightly of singed corduroy, came and sat beside his sister. The family resemblance was strong. Short nose and round chin, fair complexion. Augusta had light brown hair that she wore pinned tightly in a knot on top of her head. Eakin was trying without much success to sport side whiskers and a moustache.
    “Is this everybody in the house?” asked Murdoch.
    “No, there’s Mr. Eakin, our father, but I’m afraid he is indisposed. Besides, I’m sure he could not help you. He always takes a sedative at night. Nothing would wake him.”
    “Anyone else?”
    “There’s Mr. Jarius Gibb. You must have met him. He’s the foreman of the coroner’s jury. He is our older brother.”
    “Stepbrother,” interrupted Eakin. “His mother was a widow when she married our father. Unfortunately, she did not live too much longer afterward. Father married for the second time. This Mrs. Eakin, Harmony by name and nature, was our mother.”
    He was offering this information in a chatty way that Murdoch found odd. As did his sister, obviously, because she frowned at him.
    “Frank, really! I doubt that is relevant to the officer’s enquiry.”
    Murdoch had a vivid image of the two of them as small children ready to squabble at any moment. But that early animosity seemed to have hardened into mutual disdain.
    He addressed Eakin, trying to be as delicate as he could. “And your wife, sir? She was in the house last night, I assume.”
    “Who?”
    “Mrs. Eakin, the lady who …” He waved vaguely in the direction of the door.
    “That’s not my wife. She’s married to my father. As I said, Mother died last year. My father married again this April. Quick you might say. Properly speaking, the woman you saw is my stepmother, young as she is.”
    There was a strange sound from Curran, and Murdoch could have sworn he had guffawed and stifled it immediately. He looked over at Curran but he was sitting in the shadows behind the light and he couldn’t see his expression.
    “Mrs.
Nathaniel
Eakin was indeed in the house,”