Read Online The Janeites by Nicolas Freeling - Free Book Online Page A

picture of exactitude in the office, is almost sloppy in her kitchen; a quick-moving energetic woman with grey hair, good legs, something of a bosom, she has also good judgment: between them, William thinks he’ll get good advice, and he’s quite right.
    “Why on earth attack this man? Violent, and looks premeditated, certainly a waylay. Liked, around there: most of them don’t even know he’s a doctor, hardly any that he’s a Jesuit. That makes no sense. His professional frequentations, just as preposterous. Intellectual jealousy? – he’s getting the credit for my work – utter bullshit.” Albert doesn’t believe in ‘bad language’ and would never say even ‘bullshit’. Bernadette hears much worse in the Palais de Justice, had been called a motherfucker that morning (unlikely though this seems) said, “This sounds like a fanatic.”
    “I’d agree there, but on what grounds? Some private belief of his own? Somebody unbalanced about Jesuits? Or about doctors?” Albert wiped his mouth, said “Maybe both. Where does Doctor Valdez stand, for example, on the subject of abortions?”
    “Legal termination of unwanted pregnancy,” corrected Bernadette. “A tricky subject, and people get very heated indeed.”
    “You may have got something there.”
    “Opens up a number of hypotheses. There is for example euthanasia. Or the move to legalize cannabis in certain therapies. Within the deontology there are several grey areas. We might for instance assume that Doctor Valdez would have unrestricted access to morphia. Which is very far from any supposition that he has made any illegal or even irresponsible use of medicaments.”
    “But from what you tell us,” suggested Albert, “might he have made an unguarded remark? Frivolous, or just ironic. Fanatics have no sense either of humour or proportion.”
    “Lacking any shred of evidence” in very much the ‘judge’s voice’, “this is vulgar and tendentious speculation, reminds you only to keep your mind alert to different possibilities which may exist. We’re going to have supper off the kitchen table.”

    Dr Valdez hasn’t at all made up his mind what – if anything – he can do about William. Essential facts – the wife, and he’ll have to talk to Professor Rupprecht. Early days yet. But the Crab – people think of it as slow and lumbering, and so it often is. But one day out in California, where they think about these things, a friend in the Santa Cruz faculty brought him to the beach. He had seen there an extraordinary crab, of phenomenal speed and agility. Put on his mettle he had tried to catch it – the local people laughing heartily at mounting frustration and fury towards the skitter-critter. ‘Popularly known as a Sally Lightfoot.’ Seen as a lesson, salutary.
    It wasn’t any affair of Silvia’s so that he had rung the Marquis’s secretary.
    “Joséphine’s address? Sure but I have to ask permission; will you hang on?” Then a throat-clearing noise and the Marquis, sounding amused.
    “That will be very good for her. And we’ll grease the slipway. Patricia will tell her to await you in a proper frame of mind. That will be better than her thinking herself important at your coming to see her. I can’t stop for a chat dear boy, I’m rather pressed.”
    The Santa Cruz campus was in an area ‘zoologically interesting’.
    “Are there pumas?” he’d asked, impressed.
    “Certainly. Saw one the other day out of my bedroom window.”
    “What was it doing?”
    “Drinking out of the swimming-pool.” Didn’t sound Menacing.
    “Do you do anything about that?”
    “No. Keep the dogs indoors.” Somebody changed the subject, pumas being no cause for excitement hereabouts. Raymond is wondering now what you do if when out for a walk you meet a puma. You’d stay still, wait quietly for it to go away; it’s concerned with its own affairs. Supposing it decided it didn’t like you? He has no ideas.
    The Strasbourg-Paris shuttle is what