Read Online The Resurrection Man by Charlotte MacLeod - Free Book Online

few years ago, after their Pierce-Arrow finally disintegrated into a little heap of fine gray powder. Dennis used to drive the car and do odd jobs: mow the lawn, weed the flower beds, wash the windows, that sort of thing. Since he retired they’ve been hiring people to come in by the hour and using the local taxi service when they’ve wanted to go anywhere, which they mostly don’t.”
    “It’s a big place to keep up. She might consider going into one of those new retirement complexes.”
    “I don’t know, Max. I can’t picture Anora’s ever leaving that house until she’s carried out feet first. If something’s happened to George, I expect she’ll wind up playing nursemaid to Cook and Phyllis. If she’s able. Oh, I do hope she hasn’t had a stroke! What she really ought to do is find a nice couple to live in, though I can’t imagine who’d be willing to take on a job that size.”
    “She’d find somebody.”
    Max couldn’t think who’d want the job either, but he was of a sanguine disposition. He deliberately switched the talk to his mother’s latest clash of wills with the gas company, Sarah was laughing by the time they pulled up in front of the Protheroe house.
    This was a neighborhood of big old wooden houses with good-sized yards around them. Their architecture varied from the sublime to the near-ridiculous; the Protheroes’ was in the beporched and beturreted style of the late Gothic revival, with a dash of Anglo-Indian bungalow and just a touch of the Taj Mahal. Unity had been attempted by painting all its ins, outs, ups, and downs in the same rich chocolate brown, and all the trimmings in white. To some, the house suggested a giant devil’s-food cake iced by a mad condittore ; it had always made Sarah think of a Bailey’s hot-fudge sundae with whipped cream, marshmallow, and walnuts. But no cherry on top. Even today she felt a momentary twinge of regret at not being able to spy something shiny, round, and red perched atop the front gable.
    Everybody who came to the house, or even walked past, got the feeling that it had been set a little too close to the road. In fact, the road had been brought a little too close to the house after the horse had been totally eclipsed by the small, high-riding horseless carriage; and these in turn by the Packard, the Peerless, the Marmon—great boxes on wheels that needed more room to pass each other going and coming. As a result, the graveled turnaround was not quite so spacious as it ought to be. Sarah decided she’d better leave the driveway free for a possible ambulance, and parked at the curb.
    Phyllis must have been waiting with her nose pressed to the window, she’d got the front door open before Sarah and Max were halfway up the front steps. Sarah was about to give the tearful servitor a comforting hug when she caught sight of Anora, huddled on the parquet floor next to the newel post, swathed in a shocking-pink down comforter, immobile as Plymouth Rock. She couldn’t see Anora’s face, it was turned toward a dark-red mound a little bit farther into the hallway.
    The mound was George. He was lying face up in a welter of clotted blood, his maroon bathrobe decently pulled down over his fat legs. A pole about the size and length of a garden rake was sticking straight up out of his chest. Max yelped “Police!” and glared around for a telephone.
    “Right over there,” said Sarah. “In the corner behind the stairs. Be careful, don’t—”
    Step in the blood. She couldn’t say it. She knelt beside Anora, trying not to look at what was beside her, and unwrapped enough of the comforter so that she could get her fingers on the dazed woman’s wrist. Sarah wasn’t much good at pulses, but she could at least tell that Anora’s was beating, not racing, not lagging too far behind where it probably ought to be. The beats were strong enough to count, for whatever good that might have done. Sarah didn’t try, it was enough to know the heart was still on