The Glimpses of the Moon Read Online Free Page A

– and he scowled up that path that leads back to Mrs Clotworthy’s cottage, and then when he got opposite the old elm he scowled at Gobbo too.’
    â€˜Scowled?’ said Padmore in some surprise. He evidently had no idea that Burraford’s Rector, a naturally splenic man, was apt to be irked by the mere sight of a parishioner, no matter how harmlessly occupied. ‘Scowled. I see. Yes. And what did he do then?’
    â€˜Went on past.’
    â€˜But if Hagberd had been there, talking to Gobbo, then he must have seen him, mustn’t he?’
    â€˜No. Not if Hagberd was round at the back of the old elm. Because look at how thick that trunk is.’
    â€˜Yes, I see that, but – but – Look, let’s put it this way. Was Gobbo facing right?’
    â€˜No, left’
    â€˜I’ll try again. What I meant was, was Gobbo facing the right way to have been talking to Hagberd if Hagberd was at the back of the elm?’
    â€˜Oh, that. Yes. Sure he was.’
    â€˜We’ll have to ask the Rector,’ said the Major. ‘There’s nothing else for it.’
    â€˜But if he’d seen Hagberd talking to Gobbo, he’d be bound to have told the police.’
    â€˜Yes, my dear fellow, but as we were saying before, if Gobbo was seen talking to
someone,
that would verify his story at least to
that
extent. We’ve got to go on inquiring, it seems to me, so long as there’s anything left to inquire about Jack, don’t you agree?’
    â€˜Gracious, yes, Major. It’s all very interesting – quite an excitement I’m only sorry I can’t help you more over it myself, but it was that rhubarb Isobel gave me for lunch that day.’

2. Alps on Alps Arise
    Though we write ‘parson’ differently, yet ’tis but ‘person’ … and ’tis in Latin
persona,
and
personatus
is a parsonage.
    John Selden:
Table-Talk
1
    So they left Jack Jones and went back downstairs to the bar, which by now was beginning to fill up a bit. Gobbo was still asleep - bent forward at an alarming-looking angle, as though putting his head down to ward off a faint - and Padmore, who wanted to ask him more questions, said that it would be only humane to wake him, and set him upright again. But the Major disagreed. They had much better see the Rector first, he said, and then if necessary refer the matter back to Gobbo later. As to Gobbo’s posture, he often slept that way, and it seemed if anything to do him good, possibly by easing the pressure of his heart on his diaphragm, or vice versa. This transferable-vote hypothesis having subdued Padmore temporarily, they retrieved the whippet Fred, and Fen’s sack, and went out into Indian summer.
    The small birds had all disappeared, no doubt on the first leg of a migration, and so had the cat. From the kennels of the Glazebridge and District Harriers, three quarters of a mile away, came a clamour of hounds, at this distance uncannily suggestive of the bawlings of football fans attending a match. Suddenly there was a muffled explosion, and the near-side rear tyre of Padmore’s hired car subsided to a rubber pancake.
    â€˜Now
look what’s happened,’ said Padmore.
    But the Major said that he was supposed to walk anyway, for the benefit of his arthritis, so after Padmore had stared fixedly at the car for several moments, the expedition to the Rector set off on foot. Waving good-bye to Jack Jones at his window, it turned left along the lane in the direction of Aller and Glazebridge - past the church with its tall tower (‘Popish’, was theRector’s opinion of church towers) and ring of seven bells (‘Popish’); past the Old Parsonage, where Mrs Leeper-Foxe had had her dreadful experience while eating breakfast; and so, after a couple of hundred yards, out of Burraford into what once, before the Central Electricity Generating Board got at it, had been open country.
    Power-lines marched