Slight Mourning Read Online Free Page B

oughtn’t to be there then they’ll be wanted as evidence and be preserved.”
    â€œFor ever?”
    Sloan sighed. “We could offer them to the Black Museum, I suppose …”
    â€œAnd if not,” persisted Crosby hoarsely, “will they have a special service for his liver and his lights or …”
    Sloan never did hear Crosby’s idea of a suitable alternative, and a sudden bob of activity on the part of Miss Nellie Roberts’ straw hat saved him from having to take official notice of the question.
    The organ music died precipitately away and—following Nellie’s lead—the congregation got to its feet. Through the open door from the direction of the lich-gate could be heard the crunch of feet upon gravel and then, approaching the church porch, the firm voice of the present rector of St. Leonard’s, Constance Parva, beginning the Order for the Burial of the Dead.

THREE
    First on her feet was Miss Cynthia Paterson. She was slightly ahead of Nellie Roberts’ blue straw hat because she’d been keeping her ear subconsciously attuned to Gregory Fitch’s minute bell. He’d stopped his tolling when the cortège reached the church, his task done for the moment.
    Just like the inscription on the bell said “Too the grave do summons al” so Bill Fent had answered the summons now.
    Like Detective Inspector Sloan, she too noted that all the guests who had been at the dinner party at Strontfield Park were now in the church. From there onward her thoughts were rather different.
    Fellowship was the image which sprang to her mind.
    Fellowship and Jollity to be precise.
    Fellowship was a character in another piece of early literature to which her late father had been addicted in his own old age— The Summoning by Death of Everyman . More to the point than most sermons, but too strong for modern congregations, as he’d often declared before going down to the church to deliver a well-thought-out piece of scholarship about the Hittites.
    They’d all come to church today—the guests of Saturday night. She wasn’t surprised. She’d expected to see the Renvilles, the Marchmonts, the Washbys, and the professor here. In the play Fellowship would only go so far with Everyman when poor Everyman had to report to Death. They—the guests—were Saturday night’s Fellowship and Jollity at Friday’s funeral, who would also come thus far and no further.
    And now she came to think of it, Fellowship had been the first of his companions on the way to desert Everyman. Even Knowledge had stayed by his side a little longer. Then Knowledge too had left him …
    She heard the approaching funeral party reach the church porch.
    Kindred, Discretion, Beauty, Strength, and Five Wits had all stayed with the allegorical Everyman for a while and then gone, leaving him with only Good Deeds to support him in his rendering to Death.
    Kindred, she thought confusedly, were still with Bill Fent—would stay with him just a short while longer. They would be behind the coffin. That would make Saturday night’s party complete.
    Twelve. Fellowship, Kindred, and Everyman …
    She turned her gaze toward the door and marked off Bill Fent’s kindred as they entered the church.
    Helen Fent, Bill’s widow, a dark-haired, intense woman, pale but outwardly composed.
    Or doped for the morning. You never knew these days, though Cynthia herself never touched anything stronger than aspirin …
    Helen was being supported by Bill’s cousin Quentin Fent.
    Then came Annabel Pollock, another cousin, looking quite distraught and leaning heavily on the arm of an elderly man. An uncle on the mother’s side, Cynthia Paterson thought.
    After them came the usual miscellaneous assortment of distant relatives dredged up by a family funeral and made prominent by occasion. They, decided Cynthia from her vast human experience, would have come to Constance Parva