Sure and Certain Death by Barbara Nadel Read Free Book Online Page B

rather monk-like in appearance, I’ve always thought, Father Burton folded himself into the armchair in front of me and then steepled his fingers underneath his chin. ‘She was a good woman, Dolly O’Dowd. What she did to deserve such a fate, well . . .’
    ‘Do you think it might be the same person killing all these ladies?’ I asked him.
    Father Burton shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Francis,’ he said. ‘It’s the police you’d have to ask about that. I’m just a priest.’ He took a sip from his teacup and then put it down on the table beside him. ‘But it seems odd to me that if the same person is killing these women he should choose such different victims.’
    ‘They’re all around about the same age.’
    ‘Yes, but a spinster, a respected widow and someone like Violet Dickens . . .’
    He left what Violet Dickens was or had been like hanging in the air. Father Burton is not one who talks easily about what he generally expresses as ‘immorality’. Not that, from what Albert had said at least, Violet could have been considered exactly immoral. Although no churchgoer myself, I knew this priest well enough to know not to push him, and so I just waited for him to talk, which eventually he did.
    ‘Of course poor Violet had a cross to bear in the form of her husband,’ he said after a very long pause. ‘In a place of drinkers like Canning Town, it’s quite something to be known and almost made into a figure of myth for your drinking. But Frederick Dickens is such a man.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘When the police told me that the poor woman had been dead in the attic of that house for weeks and Frederick and that other creature completely unaware, I wasn’t surprised.’
    ‘You weren’t?’
    ‘Blind drunk the pair of them! God Almighty, Francis, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Violet had been dead since before the bombing started! All those men have done for years is drink. Not even sober at her funeral!’
    ‘I didn’t know they’d been . . .’
    ‘Oh, it was the woman who claims to speak to the dead who ran the funeral,’ Father Burton said. ‘God help us, Francis, that a Catholic woman like Violet should seek counsel from such people . . .’ He stopped briefly in order, I imagined, to collect himself once again. His normally colourless face was pink with fury. ‘Table-turning and ectoplasm and what have you! God help us!’
    Albert had said Father Burton hadn’t approved of Mrs Darling. Not that I had really come to see him about her.
    ‘Father,’ I said, ‘I know that Albert Cox told you about the posy he found on Violet Dickens’s grave . . .’
    ‘During Mrs Salazar’s funeral, yes,’ Father Burton said. ‘A vile note! He gave it to the police, I believe.’
    ‘He told me about it because I’m doing Dolly’s funeral with you, Father, and Albert, well, he says we should be on the lookout maybe . . .’
    ‘For what? Deranged people carrying flowers with offensive cards attached? Why would anyone want to do such a thing to Dolly O’Dowd?’
    ‘Why would anyone do such a thing to Violet Dickens?’
    ‘Francis, she drank her drop too, you know. And it is well known that the first of her seven children was born only three months after her wedding . . .’
    ‘Father, whoever wrote that note called Violet a Nazi!’ I said. ‘That’s nothing to do with her love life or her drinking!’
    ‘No, but . . .’
    ‘Well, I’m sure she wasn’t a Nazi! But what if this horrible flower-sender sends something unpleasant to Dolly’s funeral?’
    The priest looked down for a moment as if he was a little ashamed of what he had said about Violet Dickens. I didn’t think he was in reality, but I hoped that he’d taken my point anyway.
    ‘Albert told you, and me, so that we can keep an eye open,’ I said. ‘Mrs Bentham wants her sister’s funeral to be quiet and discreet, as do all of us.’
    ‘We don’t know when that ghastly posy was put on Violet’s