Read Online The Dead Songbird (The Northminster Mysteries) by Harriet Smart - Free Book Online Page A

As he ploughed through the fraught months of Laura’s pregnancy and then all the disasters that followed, Giles began to see why Johnny had never married. Edward’s death and Laura’s subsequent descent into that miserable, impossible state of living death which now afflicted her, made him think that an obsession with perpetuating a family name was folly. The world existed balanced on a knife edge. One could fall either way – into happiness and prosperity or into unimaginable tragedy. Giles, who had never had much of a stock of self-love or any taste for amateur dramatics, had never fancied he might become a tragic hero. He had tried to live a practical, cheerful, energetic life and had married in hope, not of a great love affair, but for a contented family life, such as that he had known from his own boyhood. His own parents had married in obedience to their parents’ wishes and had made a good bargain of it. He had hoped for nothing more, and had been prepared to work to achieve it.
    But with Laura, he soon found that her illness was not one that could be dealt with easily. He found he was in possession of a broken-down house, through the empty rooms of which starlings flapped their inky wings and fouled the floors. Good landlords kept their properties in repair but the more he tried, the less viable the structure became. It had crumbled in his hands, leaving nothing to repair.
    But that, he told himself as he walked briskly along, was no reason not to try again.

Chapter Nine
    After dinner, Felix found himself standing next to Miss Kate Pritchard at the piano, as she searched through her music, at his request, looking for the aria he had heard Mrs Morgan singing.
    “I think it is an air from Theodora,” she said. “With rosy steps,” and she picked out the melody.
    “That is it,” he said.
    “I can’t sing it for you, I am afraid. For one, it is too hard for me,” she said, “and I have no wish to spoil your memory of hearing Mrs Morgan sing it. You were lucky.”
    “It was remarkable,” he said, looking over the music.
    “And I don’t think my father wishes us to have any music tonight,” she said, glancing across the room to where the Dean sat talking to another of the dinner guests, “in the circumstances.”
    “Yes, yes of course,” said Felix.
    “A ridiculous idea,” she said. “Not at all what Mr Barnes would have liked.”
    “Did you know him?”
    “I knew his voice well,” she said. “And his playing. And we shared a teacher of course.”
    “Oh, who?”
    “Mr Watkins,” she said.
    “Is he a good teacher?”
    “Yes. I was getting on very well with him until my father –” She broke off with a sigh. “He has notions, you see.”
    “Your father?” Felix said.
    “I am sure your father has notions too. He is a clergyman, is he not?”
    “Yes. Plenty of notions.”
    “It seems to be a feature of the profession,” Miss Pritchard said.
    “Not just the clergy,” said Felix thinking of Lord Rothborough and his little lecture in the Minster. He would not like to see him standing there in the corner of the drawing room with Miss Pritchard, having what a casual, conventional observer might label a vaguely flirtatious conversation.
    “Papa’s idea was that I was taking it all too seriously. That composition was not an appropriate study for a young woman. And of course since that terrible business with my sister and Mr Rhodes, well, he is apt to be –”
    “I understand. Then perhaps I ought not monopolise you. I wouldn’t like to cause any difficulty, pleasant though this is,” he added.
    “I can’t keep you against your will,” she said. “And we ought to see to the proprieties, but –”
    “But?”
    “I would rather you stayed. I know everyone else so well. They have nothing new to say. You heard the conversation at dinner, how thrilling it was not?” He nodded. “And although my father might be disquieted, my mother will not be.”
    “Oh,” said Felix, thinking