Pagan Spring: A Mystery (A Max Tudor Novel) by G.M. Malliet Read Free Book Online

Thaddeus’s own skills in home repair were nonexistent. The estate agent, Bernadina Steed, had warned them that she saw potential problems, which was why Bernadina had become a rather trusted friend since the move into the house. Melinda had come to rely on her, first of all, for recommendations as to trustworthy local repairmen and other experts, and, second, for her no-nonsense and forthright approach to life. Despite outward differences, the two women had found they had much in common—things that others might have seen as a hindrance to friendship.
    Melinda, if anything, was looking for a way out, a release valve. Common cause against Thaddeus was one such release.
    The enemy of my enemy is my friend, thought Melinda.
    She now critically surveyed her appearance as she twirled a lock of coffee-colored hair around her curling iron, a match for her husband’s. She’d been styled and highlighted just that morning at the Cut and Dried. But the nearness of the village to the English Channel and the time of year meant humidity, and that meant constant vigilance on Melinda’s part to ensure the curl did not expand, spongelike, by the end of the day.
    As she preened and primped, adding a little wing of black eyeliner to the corner of each eye, she thought about the choice she’d made. Choices, rather. The glamorous life she’d pictured when she’d married Thaddeus had lasted exactly five years, which time Melinda had largely spent, like Lucy Ricardo, trying to talk her husband into putting her into a show or even writing a play just for her. In the sixth year, Thaddeus had started talking about retirement. In the seventh, it had become clear that he pictured retirement as meaning a return to the village of his youth. It seemed he had fond memories of his time here, the son of the local saddler.
    “Big fish in a small pond” was the phrase that kept going through Melinda’s mind.
    A nearly empty martini glass rested on the dressing table, at her left hand. Thaddeus never seriously objected to her copious drinking, since alcohol helped keep her thin. So did smoking, but he’d made her give that up, due to the secondhand dangers.
    Now she took a final sip as she opened her jewelry box and pulled out the antique earrings Thaddeus had given her as a wedding present. They were still her favorites, second only to the antique pair she’d lost a few weeks before, which had been an engagement present.
    She’d be willing to bet these earrings and everything else in the jewelry box that what Thaddeus really liked about this place, Nether Monkslip, was the chance it gave him to lord it over the peasants. But he’d been shocked to realize the peasants had mostly moved on, and more sophisticated urban escapees had taken their place. Thaddeus was a celebrity, to be sure, but—much to his disappointment—he was not being hailed as a god.
    She held the earrings up to catch the last of the light. They were a Victorian design of gold and enamel in the shape of two butterflies. They dangled fetchingly from her earlobes, catching the light as it bounced off the tiny embedded diamonds.
    She switched off the curling iron. She didn’t see how, at the age of forty-five, she was expected to survive if she left him. Her foreshortened view of her future clouded every judgment, every decision. It was like reading a map using a magnifying glass—she could not see anything to the north or south, anything beyond the area of focus. She knew that if she pulled back, if she lifted her gaze, she might be able to see the whole path ahead, but somehow the will to do that had deserted her. Thaddeus controlled everything—her, her looks, her friends (he did not approve of Bernadina, of course), her makeup, the very food she ate.
    And the purse strings. Always, and at the bottom of her indecision, lay that simple fact.
    Thaddeus held the purse strings very tightly indeed.

 
    Subject: The Villagers
    From: Gabrielle Crew ([email protected])
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