Last Respects

Начало книги

“Aird is a quiet, careful writer who gives readers a fine taste of life in the English countryside.”

—Chicago Sunday Times

The Very Best of Catherine Aird

Henrietta Who?

His Burial Too

A Late Phoenix

A Most Contagious Game

Passing Strange

The Religious Body

Slight Mourning

Some Die Eloquent

Stately Home Murder

Parting Breath

Acknowledgment

Michael Burnham, ship scientist

Ma plume pour toutes mes tantes.

1

Suspicion does not become a friend.

The man wasn’t alive and well and living in Paris.

He wasn’t living in the county of Calleshire, England, either.

And he certainly wasn’t alive and well. Actually he wasn’t living anywhere. He was dead. Obviously dead.

Horace Boiler was so sure about that that he didn’t hurry after he had seen him. Not that Horace Boiler was the hurrying sort. In addition to which he was out fishing at the time and fishermen never hurry. It was a universal truth. You couldn’t catch fish if you hurried. The fish didn’t like it: they stopped feeding at once. Like primitive man, fish equated hurry with danger and either kept their heads down or made off. In Horace Boiler’s considered opinion civilised man had a lot to learn about hurrying.

Читать дальше →