Death at the Bar by Ngaio Marsh Read Free Book Online Page B

some kind of free pass into a female establishment at Oxford.”
    “Yes. I know.”
    “ ’Ess, and comes home at the end of it a dinky lil chit, sure enough, and husband-high; but speaking finicky-like and the equal of all the gentlefolks in the West Country.”
    “Well?” said Watchman.
    “Well, sir, that’s fair enough. If she fancies our Will above the young sparks she meets in her new walk of life, good enough. I’m proper fond of the maiden, always have been. Good as a daughter to me, and just the same always, no matter how ladylike she’m grown.”
    Watchman stood up and stretched himself.
    “It sounds idyllic, Abel. A charming romance.”
    “Wait a bit, sir, wait a bit. ’Bain’t so simple as all that. These yurr two young folks no sooner meets again than my Will sets his heart, burning strong and powerful, on Decima Moore. Eaten up with love from time he sets eyes on her, was Will, and hell-bent to win her. She come back with radical notions same as his own, and that’s a bond atween ’em from the jump. Her folks don’t fancy my Will, however, leastways not her mother, and they don’t fancy her views neither, and worst of all they lays blame on Will. Old Jim Moore comes down yurr and has a tell with me, saying life’s not worth living up to Farm with Missus at him all day and half night to put his foot down and stop it. That’s how it was after you left last year, sir, and that’s how ’tis still. Will burning to get tokened and wed, and Dessy—”
    “Yes?” asked Watchman as Abel paused and looked fixedly at the ceiling. “What about Decima?”
    “That’s the queerest touch of the lot, sir,” said Abel.
    Watchman, lighting his pipe, kept his eye on his host and saw that he now looked profoundly uncomfortable.
    “Well?” Watchman repeated.
    “It be what she says about wedlock,” Abel muttered.
    “What does she say?” asked Watchman sharply.
    “ ’Be shot if she haven’t got some new-fangled notion about wedlock being no better than a name for savagery. Talks wild trash about freedom. To my way of thinking the silly maiden don’t know what she says.”
    “What,” asked Watchman, “does Will say to all this?”
    “Don’t like it. The chap wants to be tokened and hear banns read like any other poor toad, for all his notions. He wants no free love for his wife or himself. He won’t talk to me, not a word; but Miss Dessy does, so open and natural as a daisy. Terrible nonsense it be, I tells her, and right-down dangerous into bargain. Hearing her chatter, you might suppose she’ve got some fancy-chap up her sleeve. Us knows better, of course, but it’s an uncomfortable state of affairs and seemingly no way out. Tell you what, sir, I do blame this Legge for the way things are shaping. Will’d have settled down. He
was
settling down, afore Bob Legge came yurr. But now he’ve stirred up all their revolutionary notions again, Miss Dessy’s along with the rest. I don’t fancy Legge. Never have. Not for all he’m a masterpiece with darts. My way of thinking, he’m a cold calculating chap and powerful bent on having his way. Well, thurr ’tis, and talking won’t mend it.”
    Watchman walked to the door and Abel followed him. They stood looking up the road to Coombe Tunnel.
    “Dallybuttons!” exclaimed Abel. “Talk of an angel and there she be. That’s Miss Dessy, the dinky little dear, coming in to do her marketing.”
    “So it is,” said Watchman. “Well, Abel, on second thoughts I believe I’ll go and have a look at that picture.”
     
    iii
    But Watchman did not go directly to Coombe Rock. He lingered for a moment until he had seen Decima Moore go in at the post office door, and then he made for the tunnel. Soon the darkness swallowed him, his footsteps rang hollow on the wet stone floor, and above him, a luminous disc, shone the top entry. Watchman emerged, blinking, into the dust and glare of the high road. To his left the country rolled gently away to Illington,