The rivals of Sherlock Holmes : early detective stories by Unknown Author Read Free Book Online Page B

said the vicar. “That would be perfect Have you any slides or pictures? They’d be most appreciated.”
    “Very little of it’s unpacked, I’m afraid. You understand we’ve just moved in.”
    “Absolutely,” said the vicar. “We won’t make any firm dates. But if you agree in principle I can announce it in the church bulletin.”
    “Go ahead,” said Emma, urging Munday to agree. “All right,” said Munday. It was not what he had planned, the learned society, the paper read to scholars
    at the Institute of African Studies. It ridiculed that image of himself journeying to London or' Oxford to deliver a lecture.
    “Thanks very much,” said the vicar. “And now I will let you good people have your dinner!”
    “I’ll see you to your car,” said Munday.
    “Don’t bother,” said the vicar. “I know my way out I’ve been here dozens of times.”
    When the vicar’s car drove past the window, Munday said, “Dozens of times. That reminds me—”
    “You embarrassed me,” said Emma. “You were horrid to him. That poor man—he was so uncomfortable.”
    “It’s like a sickroom in a hospital. Hundreds of people have been in it. The vicar knows it well, that room, all the others who’ve died in your bed. He knows something you don’t.”
    “You’ve been so morbid lately.”
    “I have reason to be,” said Munday. “Emma, my heart.”
    “But you go on about it.”
    “So would you.”
    “No,” she said. “I’d try not to think about it.”
    “People come here to die,” said Munday. “New people in the village. Did you hear him? He means retired people—‘like yourselves.* ”
    “I’ll start the dinner.”
    “Emma—” There was something more Munday wanted to say; he had the will and he opened his mouth, but the words eluded him, the thought had been wiped from his mind. He struggled dumbly with what he recognized as stupidity; his mind wouldn’t move. He said, “Nothing. I’ll see to this unpacking.”
    Just before they sat down to eat, Emma said, “Do take that carton of rubbish outside.”
    “It can wait,” said Munday.
    “No,” said Emma. “I want you to do it now.” She opened the door for him, and a damp draft rolled into the kitchen.
    “I’d rather not go outside just now.”
    “For my sake,” Emma said in a tremulous voice.
    “You’re not going to cry,” said Munday.
    “Alfred, please”
    “As you wish,” he said.
    The rain had stopped. He put the carton in the shed and shut the door, and he had just started back to the house when he heard an owl call him. It was a low distinct hoot, in bursts, like a bewildered child mispronouncing a curse in the dark. He went to it, it drew him through the yard. He couldn’t see the owl; it stopped; it began again, the clear notes reaching Munday and making him feel as if the hidden bird was speaking directly to his fear.
    Munday walked into the road; the hoots ceased. He imagined the plump thing roosting above him in the row of oaks he had seen that morning. He could see their outer branches and the lower part of the trunks illuminated by the light from the windows of the house. A few steps down the road and he was in darkness; he smelled the wet trees and now in the black he heard them dripping—that dripping, it was fast, from many branches, a crackling patter on the dead leaves and on the road, a kind of sprinkling which went on and on, the rapidity insisting he remember. He was afraid; his fear was new, and the fear made his thoughts formal. He thought: There is no jungle as strange as this. He thought: When have I ever been in jungle? He admitted he never had, there was none. He had driven through rain-forest and he had camped in low bush with guides and porters; he had marveled at the pathless forest that stretched behind the Yellow Fever Camp. In the daytime, sun flashed on its wetness; at night it was loud with the scrapings of locusts, but not one low owl and all those quickly dripping trees. There, he had been