The Poisoning Angel Read Online Free Page B

you enjoy doing?’ the clergyman asked the girl in
brezhoneg
.
    ‘Cooking, Monsieur le recteur.’
    ‘Fine, then you’ll help your godmother peel the vegetables, wash up, put the stores away in the outbuilding, and learn French. Give me your bag. Goodness, the man who brought you here lost not only his life but one of his shoelaces as well.’

Bubry
    In the presbytery kitchen, Thunderflower was having her hair done by her godmother. Standing opposite a piece of broken mirror fixed to the door, the Jégado girl glanced at her reflection from time to time. Behind her back she could see her mother’s sister smoothing her long blond hair out towards the top of her head and rolling it into a chignon, and then she felt hairpins sliding in against her scalp.
    The niece gave a hasty glance to the right. She asked for a pause before her aunt should go on to the next phase of the hairdressing, just long enough for her to go and dip a ladle into the saucepan and blow on the surface of the broth to drive the gathering froth to the edges.
    ‘You must always remove it as it forms. You were the one who taught me that, Godmother, as well as the correct way to brown butter. Will you teach me lots of other things?’
    ‘A good cook never gives away all her little secrets,’ smiled her maternal aunt, who was dressed in a Lorient apron with a large bib that covered her shoulders. ‘Come on, back here.’
    Once back in position in front of the door with the piece of broken mirror, Thunderflower passed a significant milestone: a Breton headdress was positioned on top of her chignon. It was just a simple square of white tulle, as befitted a domestic, but it was edged with lace. Her godmother explained how it was arranged, folding it here, turning it up there, in the local manner.
    ‘Each district has its own kinds of embroidery and folds. There we are, now everyone can see you’re a grown-up girl. Just look at you with your mane neatly tamed at last. Wouldn’t anyone think you were an angel fit to receive Holy Communion without the need for confession first?’
    Thunderflower burst out laughing, caught in a ray of sunlight that lit up a sideboard, and she saw her reflection swing round as the abbé Riallan opened the door and came into the kitchen, asking, ‘Who would you give Holy Communion to, Mademoiselle Liscouet?’
    ‘Why, my goddaughter, of course. We can only congratulate ourselves on her.’
    The priest of Bubry noticed the headdress. ‘Are you thirteen already then?’
    ‘This very day, 16 June!’ exclaimed her godmother.
    ‘That calls for a celebration,’ said the gentle, elderly priest. ‘I was about to leave for Pontivy to meet the abbé Lorho, who willbe replacing me soon. Would you like to come with me, Hélène? While I’m at the church you could buy some goodies, as it’s your birthday, and also whatever we need to sort out the rat problem in the outbuilding before my successor gets here.’
    ‘Of course, with pleasure,
aotrou beleg
.’
    ‘Monsieur le curé,’ the clergyman corrected the girl.
    ‘Oh, yes, sorry … Of course, Monsieur le curé.’
    With that she undid the ties on her apron while the man of the Church heaped praise on her.
    ‘That’s all right. The French language will come. Still a few Bretonisms sometimes, but you’re making excellent progress.’
     
    Once outside the presbytery gates, while a stable boy was harnessing a clapped-out pony to the cart into which the priest clambered with some difficulty, Thunderflower had a good look at the village of Bubry, a higgledy-piggledy collection of houses with water troughs, a firewood seller and, above all, mills. Near the market where meat was sold, a butcher reminded Riallan he should send someone for what was due to him: ‘… because when an ox or pig is slaughtered the head is kept for Monsieur le curé.’ Hélène was just lifting her buckled shoe on to the running board when she stood back down, most astonished to see, across from