Was It Murder? Read Online Free Page A

there’s only one thing I’d wanted to be—a batman.  The
    morning miracle of ham and eggs—“
    “Yes,” she interrupted, “cooking is rather fun.  And Molly prefers it to going to chapel, I know, but we—or rather, my husband—has to insist on her going to the first service, even if she misses the others.  It’s an old school custom, I suppose.”
    “I wonder,” said Revell, with that air of slightly cynical abstraction that always or nearly always interested women, “is Oakington really old enough to have any old customs?”
    “I don’t know.”  She was, he perceived, out of her depth.  But his spirits rose as he contemplated her; she would at least relieve the concentrated boredom of a breakfast with Ellington.  Ellington, in fact, appeared on the scene almost at that moment.  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he grunted, and to his wife he added, rather sharply:
    “Why didn’t you show Mr. Revell into the drawing-room?”
    “I’m so glad she didn’t,” interposed Revell.  “A drawing-room in a morning is like—“  He paused, trying to think of some epigram, either original or purloined; but as neither the housemaster nor his wife appeared to be listening he gave up his effort and merely smiled.  And Mrs. Ellington faintly smiled back.
    Eyeing her a little later across the breakfast-table, he guessed her to be anything between twenty and thirty years younger than her husband.  Vivacious in a shy, limited kind of way, she talked a good deal about nothing in particular, and Revell, as he had expected, found her animated chatter a pleasant antidote to Ellington’s ponderous small-talk.  Ellington was, undoubtedly, a prime bore; his conversation consisted almost entirely of house-match anticipations.  Once or twice Revell tried to take things in hand himself, but without much success.  Even his less-subtle witticisms passed unnoticed, though occasionally, a minute or so too late, Mrs. Ellington responded with a scared little laugh, as if she were just beginning to feel her way cautiously into an unfamiliar world.
    It began to rain towards the end of the meal.  “Bad time of the year for a visit,” commented Ellington.  “Nothing but rain and fog.  Been a pretty bad Term altogether, in fact.”  Revell waited to see if this were to be a prelude to some remark about the Marshall affair; and so, perhaps, it might have been but for the sudden intrusion, amidst numerous jocund apologies, of a small-statured, red-faced, cheery-looking person whom Ellington introduced as “our padre—Captain Daggat”.  The two seemed on good terms; Ellington made Daggat take a cup of coffee, although the latter insisted that he had already breakfasted.  “Snug little place, this, eh?” he said, winking at Revell.  “Not so bad being a married housemaster.” He sat down at the table and dominated the talk by sheer fatuousness.  He made foolish jokes with Mrs. Ellington, talked shop with Ellington himself, and addressed Revell from time to time with that slangy familiarity which a certain type of parson cultivates in the belief that it makes people feel “at home” with him.  Towards ten o’clock, when Ellington had to rush away to take a class in scripture, Revell made polite excuses to go.  But Daggat hung on to him mercilessly.  “Come along, old chap.  You’ll enjoy a stroll round the old place, even if it IS raining.  Good-bye, Mrs.  Ellington, and many thanks. . . .  Seen our War Memorial Hall yet, Revell?”
    Despairingly Revell allowed himself to be piloted from place to place.  They explored the Memorial Hall, the Museum, the Library, and the new science laboratories.  Revell summed up Daggat as that commonest of types, the athletic parson.  His slang, his bubbling eagerness to be of service, his frequent references to the War (which he seemed to recollect as a sort of inter-school rugger-match on a large scale)--all would have jarred inexpressibly had not Revell been