Read Online The Death of Pie by Tamar Myers - Free Book Online

poor dear had kissed a hornets’ nest, so red did her face become. Fortunately, Agnes can’t be both English and angry at the same time, so she ditched the fake accent.
    â€˜ Downton Abbey isn’t just a silly show, Mags! That was a terribly insensitive remark to make at a time like this. No wait; you don’t even know what I’m talking about, do you? Do you ? And I bet that you wouldn’t care if you did.’
    â€˜Well,’ I said, ‘I sort of feel like a sheep that has been asked a geometry question. Although in the spirit of full disclosure, I don’t know very many sheep that have been asked such questions.’
    My dearest friend did not seem to appreciate my effort to answer honestly in an amusing manner. More is the pity, if you ask me.
    â€˜Matthew is dead!’ she shouted. ‘D.E.A.D. – dead! He was killed when his car ran off the road and hit a tree. Now I’ll never get married!’
    â€˜ Excuse me?’
    â€˜Don’t you see? Now I’ll have to help Tom sort out the problems of the estate—’
    I waved my gangly arms in front of her Chinese lantern eyes. ‘It isn’t real!’ I shouted back. ‘It’s a television show . They are made-up people with invented lives.’
    â€˜That may be, Mags, but it is a real castle; I read that in the TV Guide . And it is still occupied by a real Lord and Lady.’
    That did it; that hiked my hackles. We plain people, we who are proud of our humility, we who sailed to the shores of the Thirteen Colonies in 1738, book no truck with inherited rank.
    â€˜Aha!’ I said, spotting an easy avenue in which to score. ‘We’re not supposed to call anyone ‘Lord’ except God or Jesus. If you don’t believe it, then look it up in the King James Bible , which was written by the English themselves. Besides, the Our Father is also known as the Lord’s Prayer, not the Earl’s Prayer.’
    My friend smiled. ‘Now you’re being silly. You know that the English didn’t write the Bible; English wasn’t even a language when the Bible was written.’
    I returned her smile. ‘Agnes, might I come in, dear? If you fix me a cup of tea and some ginger biscuits, I’ll let you lay your hoary head upon my shoulder and have a proper cry.’
    For the record, Agnes is one of those women who proudly claims her gray hair. It is her staunch belief that dyeing one’s hair is the same thing as lying. That is, of course, unless the face that goes with the colored hair is as shrivelled as a prune. Agnes, however, is a ‘fluffy’ woman, with a full, round face. In her own words: ‘Fat don’t crack.’
    It requires more to sustain that face than just ginger biscuits and tea. ‘I have a broken heart, Mags,’ Agnes said. ‘It’s either going to be lunch at the Sausage Barn or I’m taking to my bed with pumpkin pie and a can of whipped cream.’
    â€˜Then its lunch,’ I said, ‘but I’ll have to call home first. Freni was making a big pot of stew but I’m sure that she’ll understand.’ I can always be coaxed to eat out in a restaurant, even if that means eating at the Sausage Barn, which is owned by my second-best friend /arch-nemesis, Wanda Hemphopple.
    â€˜Sure, Freni will understand,’ said Agnes as she practically pushed me off the kitchen steps and made a beeline for my car. ‘That woman always understands.’
    But Agnes made it only halfway to the cruiser before she stopped dead in her tracks, causing a one-person pileup. Believe me, when one is as tall and spindly as a clothesline pole, with the musculature of a spaghetti strand (that is to say, none), it is possible to fold up rather easily on oneself.
    â€˜Aack!’ I squawked.
    â€˜What the heck is that?’ Agnes said.
    â€˜What does it look like, dear?’ I said, rubbing my nose while at the same time trying