Dark Undertakings Read Online Free

as Jim, though his other features were altogether different: eyes narrow and close together, the outer corners downward-sloping , giving him an appearance of permanent anxiety. Where Jim had been renowned for his reliable good cheer, David was never perceptibly happy. Trouble with David had been a perpetual current in the Lapsford family. He had been retrospectively diagnosed, after years of worry and hard work, as suffering from a condition labelled Attention Deficit Disorder. Jim had found it more amusing than worrying. ‘Stating the obvious, if you ask me,’ he’d laughed. Monica had silently wished they’d at least been able to put a name to the trouble in those early years when the boy had been so impossible. It would have reduced her feelings of guilt.
    More recently, David had caused the biggesttrauma in their lives by disappearing for almost a year. Since his reappearance, he had been keen to make amends, with partial success. Monica and Philip had been pleased to see him; an angry Jim a lot less so.
    Monica sighed now and turned to her other son. ‘Phil, we’ll have to phone people. The printworks, for a start. They’ll be wondering where he is by now. I think he was supposed to be paying some outside calls this morning, which explains why nobody’s phoned. And one of the biddies from next door will be around in a minute. They’re sure to have noticed something. Do you think you could go and tell them?’
    Philip groaned. ‘Don’t the police usually do all this for people? It’s too much, leaving everything to us. Weren’t the police called, when you found him this morning?’
    Monica shook her head.
    ‘But why not?’ he pursued. ‘Isn’t it the law, when there’s a sudden death?’ He looked from face to face, bewildered. Monica felt sorry for him, at the same time as needing him to be strong. She never doubted that she could trust him; she knew the bond between them could withstand even this catastrophe. David, on the further edge of the triangle, clasped his quivering hands into fists, the knucklesstanding out pathetically. She closed her eyes for a moment before explaining.
    ‘I phoned Dr Lloyd. He came right away.’
    David gave another grating laugh. ‘Typical! If Dad had been still alive, the doctor would probably have taken hours.’
    ‘If he’d been alive, I would have called an ambulance.’
    ‘So you knew he was dead?’ David said the word flatly, deliberately, refusing to skirt around it. He heard his brother take in a small breath of pain, and felt a mixture of impatience and satisfaction.
    ‘Yes,’ said Monica weightily, knowing it was important to emphasise this point. ‘It was obvious. His mouth was hanging open, with this nasty sort of froth on his lips, and there was no breath or pulse.’ The odd loosening in her chest increased. Almost forgetting her sons, she relived those minutes. ‘He was cold – or not so much cold as if he was made of clay. Sort of dense . It’s difficult to describe.’ She grimaced, and put both hands across her stomach. ‘It makes me feel so awful to think I was lying in bed with him dead beside me, and I never knew. Not until the radio turned itself on, and he never got up to make the tea. That’s when I knew something was wrong with him.’ A tear gathered itself, but never fell. ‘All I could think about was how Jim never gotill. He didn’t have one day in bed all our married life. I was the one to get flu and backache and sprained ankles. Jim was invincible – that’s what we used to say. But there he was, all sunk and flat – not him at all any more.’
    Philip shifted in the chair, his face white. ‘Mum – don’t.’
    ‘It’s all right, darling. I don’t mind talking about it.’ Philip bit his lip.
    She went on, compulsively, ‘And then I suppose I must have shaken him a bit, and said something. I did. I said, “Jim, are you all right?” Isn’t that stupid! But you don’t believe it, when it happens like that, out of