The Second Mister Read Online Free Page B

neuter genders.
    Aunt Gethsemane was unyielding in her application of the scheme and had no regard at all for the considerations that one would expect to be foremost in the mind of a less imaginative gardener, such as soil composition or exposure to wind. The part of the bed assigned to plants with feminine names of the first declension was unfortunately a frost pocket where my aunt insisted on attempting to grow various species of the genus acacia which, having their origin in Australasia, are rather tender and not easily grown out of doors except in the mildest parts of the country. Each spring she planted at least six new samples which never survived beyond the following Christmas, grammar fatally bowing to temperature.
    As she got older her obsessions became even more intense. It had become her custom to give herself a special treat each year by visiting Kew Gardens on her birthday. When she reached the age of sixty-five she contracted a severe dose of food poisoning by eating moussaka in an establishment called ‘ The Thucydides Takeaway’ . She was released from hospital a few days later but immediately declared war on all plants whose names had a Greek origin.  Several fine crinodendrons and fremontodendrons were cut down and burned on the basis that they were examples of “ Hellenistic degeneracy .”
    I had become increasingly reluctant to visit her. As her eccentricity intensified it had become more difficult to communicate with her. For several years she had been vehemently denouncing botanical Latin as being greatly inferior to the classical form, particularly because it lacked the vocative case, which in turn prevented her from conversing with her flowers and shrubs. She rarely spoke to me about anything other than horticulture but her sentences became increasingly difficult to understand as she insisted on using whenever possible, images and analogies drawn from the grammar book. Her plants never died but quite large numbers of them “ plunged into the perfect indicative ” and a shrub that was looking a little sickly was usually said to be “shamelessly flirting with the subjunctive.”
    Aunt Gethsemane’s insistence on confining our conversation to the botanical had one major exception: my interviews with her always ended with her haughtily informing me that she was cutting me out of her will. I was not in the least disappointed by this as I knew that she had no money due to the large number of plants that she continually purchased and I also knew that she had been left the house in which she lived for her life only. I have never been foolish with money but during my visits I always slipped a ten pound note under a potted aspidistra that she kept in her hallway; the money was always gone the next time that I called to her. A neighbour, however, told me that my aunt had once confided in him that she hid all her loose money under the pot whenever she saw me coming as she was convinced that the only reason that I came to visit her was to see what I could steal from her.
    It is not easy to explain why I felt I had an obligation to warn Aunt Gethsemane that I was about to be charged with murder as the significance of blood relationships has always been a great mystery to me. After I had been released from the Police Station I went home and washed and slept for a couple of hours and then walked the short distance to my aunt’s house. When I arrived there was no sign of her but when I was halfway up her avenue the hall-door suddenly opened and she came running across the lawn waving a large lopping shears in the air. She hurried past me muttering something to the effect that the bat tles of Salamis and Marathon were disasters from which civilisation had never recovered and then suddenly disappeared into an evergreen clump. Seconds later I heard a triumphant shout and Aunt Gethsemane emerged onto the lawn holding a tiny rhododendron seedling. She marched towards me like an old despot of Rome celebrating the