Sure and Certain Death Read Online Free

boils down to the fact that Nan thinks that Aggie is common and ‘fast’ and Aggie finds all religion and religious people hypocritical.
    ‘Well, I get sick of it!’ Aggie said to the Duchess. ‘Her passing judgement on everybody!’ Then, in the absence of our mother saying anything more, she attacked Nancy once again. ‘Who do you think you are? The Pope?’
    Nan, outraged by such blasphemy, was left speechless. The Duchess however said, ‘Now, Agnes, that isn’t a nice thing to say . . .’
    ‘Mum, I’m a married woman with two kids!’ Aggie said. ‘I can have my own opinions!’
    ‘Yes, but . . .’
    ‘You do what you like, it’s your soul!’ Nan, who had found her voice, now said bitterly. ‘But to take the name of the Holy Father in vain . . .’
    It went on. I smoked and drank my tea and tried not to get involved. Like Aggie, I’m not religious, but I know that the church is all that Nancy really has. She believes, and that belief helps her. After what I saw in the Great War, as well as what’s been going on since the bombing started up here, I can’t see that any sort of loving God can exist. Aggie, whose husband left her for another woman, alone and unprovided for with their two kids to bring up, can’t take to that idea either. Her little ’uns are evacuated out in Essex and she makes the little money she does have working at Tate and Lyle’s sugar works down in Silvertown. On a Friday night she likes a drink or two in one of the local pubs. She even gets, and likes to get, some little attention from men from time to time. She’s an attractive girl who takes care of herself, and so I think, why not? But Nancy thinks it’s wrong, that Aggie is loose and sinful and that her immortal soul is in great danger. Poor Nan is jealous – there’s never been anyone special in her life – but she does genuinely care about her sister too. Not that Aggie appreciates it.
    As usual the argument ended with Aggie storming off to go and put her face on up in her bedroom. After that came a tense silence. Knowing that I was probably the only person who could put a stop to it, I said, ‘Nan, you were telling us about the woman found dead on Freemasons Road . . .’
    Nancy, as is very often her custom, acted as if she hadn’t heard until she was absolutely ready to speak again. I’d almost given up hope of a reply when she said, ‘People are saying that she was murdered.’
    If, as Nan had told us, people said that Violet Dickens’s insides had been torn out, then murder was probably the most likely cause.
    ‘They’re saying it’s the Ripper again, like they did with Nellie Martin,’ Nan continued.
    The Duchess, who hadn’t come to live in England since long after Jack the Ripper’s career had ended, but knew the story nevertheless, said, ‘But those murders took place in Whitechapel, Nancy. And many years ago now, before you were born. Jack the Ripper must be dead now, I think.’
    ‘Some people think that the Ripper weren’t human,’ Nan said with a gleam of superstitious fear in her eyes. That Jack the Ripper had been some sort of ghost or demon wasn’t a new story. When a crime remains unsolved, the mystery takes on a life of its own, and Nan, for one, was the sort who took on that kind of thing. But I didn’t want to put her down myself. She’d just had enough of that from Aggie.
    ‘Well, Ripper or not,’ I said, ‘there’s nothing to say the two women were killed by the same person.’
    ‘That’s very true, Francis,’ the Duchess agreed. Whether she actually believed what she was saying or not, I didn’t know. Like me, she was mainly interested in calming Nancy down.
    ‘And besides,’ I said, ‘much as you disliked her, Nan, Nellie Martin wasn’t a, well, a . . .’ I hesitated to use the word ‘prostitute’, ‘a loose woman, was she?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘And Violet Dickens?’
    ‘Don’t know about her,’ Nan said. ‘She was married but there was a lodger,