The Avalon Chanter by Lillian Stewart Carl Read Free Book Online

would have thought
she’d never eat again, but no. Her appetite couldn’t be defeated
for long. She indulged in a quick fantasy of scones or chips or
something else fattening and comforting. Her pace steadied.
    The sun had dipped below the horizon, but its
light lingered on the clouds that were rising up the sky from the
west, coloring them pink and gold and peach. In the east the
evening star rose in turn. J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sam Gamgee had seen a
star above the mirk of Mordor and realized beauty and peace still
existed beyond the shadows of Middle-earth. Or of the real
Earth.
    “ You’ve got to admire Maggie for
holding it together long enough to talk to the reporters,” Jean
told Alasdair. “That couldn’t have been long after she discovered
the body.”
    “ We have only her word for when she
discovered the body.”
    “ Well yes, but—Tara was there, too.
Wasn’t she? We had to bully her into taking us to the
scene.”
    Unsurprisingly, Alasdair committed himself to
nothing.
    Maggie and Tara stopped by the Land Rover,
Tara looking back at Jean and Alasdair. “I’ll run you into the
village as soon as I’ve got Mags squared away.”
    “ Thank you,” Alasdair replied. “We’ll
walk. It’s not so far.”
    “ You think? You could walk to the far
end of the island in half an hour. Whatever, the B and B’s just
this side of the pub, on the corner of Cuddy’s Close.”
    “ Thanks.”
    Instead of climbing into the car themselves,
mother and daughter walked on down the narrow blacktop road, past
the cemetery, past the darkened church. Jean and Alasdair followed
a discreet dozen paces behind. Enough light was left for her to
read the sign with its simple Church of England cross-in-a-circle
logo: The Parish Church of St. Hilda.
    Tara steered Maggie along the low stone wall
surrounding the manse, the vicar’s house between the church and the
music school, through a wrought-iron gate and up the garden
path.
    “ I guess Farnaby’s church doesn’t rate
a full-time vicar anymore,” said Jean.
    Alasdair replied, “Nothing like the Lauders
living above the shop.”
    The manse’s Gothic Revival details seemed
overwrought compared with the simplicity of the other buildings in
the village. Light shone from the windows, defining their pointed
arches, and from the ceiling of a porch whose support posts were
decorated with scalloped trim. In other parts of England the
protuberance of the porch would be hung with vines. This one
sported a couple of shovels leaning against a post and a wicker
basket holding what looked like scraps of stone. What an American
would call the front yard was filled with more unkempt garden beds.
A large wheelbarrow rusted away beneath a hillock of weeds, and the
water in a birdbath was slimed with algae.
    The door opened. A stooped, scrawny woman
peered out. Her white hair was set in the bangs and flipped ends of
the sixties and a knitted shawl in a subtle shade of purple draped
her shoulders. “Maggie? Where were you?”
    “ I was over at the priory, Mum, as
usual.” Maggie’s voice carried the forced cheerfulness usually
applied to a fretful child.
    Elaine’s voice sounded thin and tentative.
“Is your father there? He’s late for his, his—the meal. Tea.”
    After what Jean could only call a pregnant
pause, Maggie replied, “He’s not coming tonight, Mum.”
    “ Oh. Pity.” The pallid face turned
toward Tara. “How do you do. I don’t believe we’ve been
introduced.”
    “ Tara Hogg,” the young woman told
Elaine. “Nice to meet you.”
    Jean’s stroll slowed to a dawdle. She
tried to reconcile this haggard woman with the elegant studio
portrait on the back of Elaine Lauder’s controversial The Matter of Britannia , a book that
had thrown a few scholarly planets out of their orbits at its
publication. She tried to reconcile this woman with Maggie, for
that matter, to no avail.
    A woman about Tara’s age drew Elaine back
into the house. From her smock with its glint of