Evil Angels Among Them Read Online Free Page A

churchwarden, dismissed as ‘an egghead’; Marjorie Talbot-Shaw, clergy widow and the secretary of the PCC; former churchwarden Ernest Wrightman, who still seemed to have his finger in any number of pies; young Doctor McNair, a non-churchgoer who was nevertheless an important and respected member of the village community; Quentin and Diana Mansfield, relative newcomers to the village, who owned Walston Hall; Cyprian Lawrence, the reclusive and unpopular organist. The rapid-fire barrage of unfamiliar names and information was imperfectly absorbed by its recipient, who nonetheless managed to nod her head in the right places.
    â€˜So.’ Harry paused for breath. ‘That’s just about everyone who’s important. Excepting, of course, for the Rector. I expect as you’d like to know about him.’
    â€˜Father Fuller?’ said Gillian. ‘I saw his name on the notice board outside.’
    Harry chuckled. ‘Oh, no. Father Fuller was the last rector. Retired near on to two years ago and died last year. We just haven’t got round to changing the notice board. New Rector’s been here well under a year – name of Stephen Thorncroft. Young fellow, with good solid high churchmanship. But it’s always difficult to break in a new rector. Mind you, we haven’t had to do it for quite a while – Father Fuller was here near on to thirty years.’ He laughed. ‘I reckon Father Thorncroft will be all right once we’ve knocked the corners off him. These young fellows always have wholly grand ideas – takes them a while to learn the facts of life. And,’ he added, grinning, ‘he’s got other things on his mind – like a pretty new wife. Just married, and she’s a right corker. No red-blooded young man wants to be worrying about a church and its problems when he’s got a pretty new wife to occupy him.’
    Gillian thought about the riches of information that Harry Gaze had so freely proffered as she and Bryony walked back through Walston village towards Foxglove Cottage, trying to remember what he’d said about various individuals. It had all come too soon, she reflected ruefully: before she had any faces to attach to the multitude of names that he’d fired at her.
    Walston consisted to a large extent of one main street sloping down from the gentle rise on which St Michael’s Church had reigned for centuries, past school and almshouses to what passed for the village centre. Gillian looked about her with interest. There, across from the war memorial and the shabby Village Hall, was the village shop. Alfred Purdy, Proprietor, it announced on the cheerful striped awning. Fred Purdy. Yes, she remembered: he was one of the churchwardens. And next to it was Gaze’s Garage, clearly once a livery stable, with one petrol pump and a forecourt where middle-aged ‘young Harry’ sold a few second-hand cars.
    The pub beyond, the Queen’s Head, featured on its sign the disembodied but otherwise serene face of Anne Boleyn; Gillian recalled from her history books that the Boleyn family had come from Norfolk, not far from Walston. The Queen’s Head showed signs of having been smartened up considerably in recent years, probably to its detriment; its former rustic charms had given way to double-glazed windows and other appurtenances of twentieth-century life, including a satellite dish sprouting incongruously from its tile roof.
    A discreet brass plaque announced the location of the doctor’s surgery, which occupied a beautifully proportioned Georgian brick house set back just a short distance from the pavement. Dr McNair – young Dr McNair, Harry Gaze had called him, Gillian remembered. He’d said that the ‘new doctor’ had taken over the practice from his uncle, ‘old Dr McNair’, some fifteen years past, which didn’t exactly make him a youngster, she reflected with a wry smile.
    Immersed in her own