After the Funeral Read Online Free Page B

here, and Richard, and Leo, all that was good, but it was over. She had her own activities and friends and interests. Yes, her interests... And now, with the income Richard had left her, she would be able to keep on the villa in Cyprus and do all the things she had planned to do.
    How worried she had been lately over money - taxation - all those investments going wrong... Now, thanks to Richard's money, all that was over...
    Poor Richard. To die in his sleep like that had been really a great mercy... Suddenly on the 22nd - she supposed that that was what had put the idea into Cora's head. Really Cora was outrageous! She always had been. Helen remembered meeting her once abroad, soon after her marriage to Pierre Lansquenet. She had been particularly foolish and fatuous that day, twisting her head sideways and making dogmatic statements about painting, and particularly about her husband's painting, which must have been most uncomfortable for him. No man could like his wife appearing such a fool. And Cora was a fool! Oh, well, poor thing, she couldn't help it, and that husband of hers hadn't treated her too well.
    Helen's gaze rested absently on a bouquet of wax flowers that stood on a round malachite table. Cora had been sitting beside it when they had all been sitting round waiting to start for the church. She had been full of reminiscences and delighted recognitions of various things and was clearly so pleased at being back in her old home that she had completely lost sight of the reason for which they were assembled.
    “But perhaps,” thought Helen, “she was just less of a hypocrite than the rest of us...”
    Cora had never been one for observing the conventions. Look at the way she had plumped out that question: “But he was murdered, wasn't he?”
    The faces all round, startled, shocked, staring at her! Such a variety of expressions there must have been on those faces...
    And suddenly, seeing the picture clearly in her mind, Helen frowned... There was something wrong with that picture...
    Something...?
    Somebody...?
    Was it an expression on someone's face? Was that it? Something that - how could she put it? - ought not to have been there...?
    She didn't know... she couldn't place it... but there had been something - somewhere - wrong.

After the Funeral
    V
    Meanwhile, in the buffet at Swindon, a lady in wispy mourning and festoons of jet was eating bath buns and drinking tea and looking forward to the future. She had no premonitions of disaster. She was happy.
    These cross-country journeys were certainly tiring. It would have been easier to get back to Lytchett St Mary via London - and not so very much more expensive. Ah, but expense didn't matter now. Still, she would have had to travel with the family - probably having to talk all the way. Too much of an effort.
    No, better go home cross-country. These bath buns were really excellent. Extraordinary how hungry a funeral made you feel.The soup at Enderby had been delicious - and so was the cold soufflé.
    How smug people were - and what hypocrites! All those faces - when she'd said that about murder! The way they'd all looked at her!
    Well, it had been the right thing to say. She nodded her head in satisfied approval of herself. Yes, it had been the right thing to do.
    She glanced up at the clock. Five minutes before her train went. She drank up her tea. Not very good tea. She made a grimace.
    For a moment or two she sat dreaming. Dreaming of the future unfolding before her... She smiled like a happy child.
    She was really going to enjoy herself at last... She went out to the small branch line train busily making plans...

After the Funeral

Chapter 4
    Mr Entwhistle passed a very restless night. He felt so tired and so unwell in the morning that he did not get up.
    His sister who kept house for him, brought up his breakfast on a tray and explained to him severely how wrong he had been to go gadding off to the North of England at his age and in his frail state of