Fete Fatale Read Online Free

suggesting . . . I’m so new here, I don’t really catch the nuances ,’ explained Mrs Nielson.
    â€˜Mrs Culpepper keeps a hat shop and a husband,’ I informed her. ‘The hatshop doesn’t make any money, I don’t suppose, but it gives her an interest. We all buy hats there now and then, probably because we think that Franchita with an interest is a lot more bearable than she would be without one. Hexton-on-Weir must be one of the few places left that can support a hat shop. There are certain occasions when a hat is de rigueur here.’
    â€˜And the husband?’
    â€˜I believe he was retired early from a university somewhere or other. I think they simply stopped doing whatever it was he taught. He says “Yes” and “No” very prettily, and that’s about all I know about him. He has a pension, and she has a bit of privatemoney, so they manage quite nicely. But her enthusiasm in this new vicar business is quite spurious. She hardly ever comes to church—and never in the winter, which according to Marcus is the real test.’
    â€˜I’m only an occasional attender myself,’ Mrs Nielson said, and added in a rush of confession: ‘More to get to know people than anything else. That’s rather terrible, isn’t it— using religion like that. Actually, I happened to be there for the last sermon of the previous priest—the Reverend Primp, wasn’t that his name? I suppose it wasn’t a fair test, he being so close to his heart attack, but he wasn’t very exciting.’
    â€˜He never was. Dull as ditchwater. That’s what they want here: someone who’ll confirm all their existing ideas. An exciting man would never fit in, not in Hexton. Perhaps that’s what they’re afraid of with Father Battersby. Maybe they think his celibacy would make him exciting.’
    By now Mrs Hussein had brought a newspaper and a bucket and cloth, and evidence of Oscar’s visit had been removed. I went up to the counter to make my purchases, and I put the matter out of my mind.
    Nobody else did, though. I was aware, wherever I went during that week, that nobody was talking about anything else. Buzz-buzz it went, in the off-licence, the draper’s, the Mary Rose Tea Shop and over the privet hedges. So that when Mrs Culpepper rang me up to ask us round for drinks on Good Friday, I knew it was to thrash about in the subject yet again—though, adept at killing two birds with one stone, she barked, ‘And tell Marcus to bring the stuff for Oscar’s last injection,’ before she banged down the phone.
    When we got there, Franchita Culpepper was celebrating the crucifixion of Our Lord with a gin and tonic. Howard, her husband, seemed to have something beery tucked away somewhere, but he could only get to it in the intervals of being barman for everyone else. True, his services were not much called for by the Mipchins—she a dowdy, sharp-eyed creature of Scottish extraction, who ostentatiously demanded an orange squash, he a retired tax inspector with a Crippen moustache and a sense of humour, who was allowed to clutch at a single sherry that must have got warmer and warmer every time he took his occasional sips. Mrsand Colonel Weston, on the other hand, knocked it back cheerfully, the Colonel in particular, and so, I noticed, did Marcus, when he came in from the kitchen where he had been giving Oscar his jab. Both, of course, were getting up Dutch courage—something warming before the enemy attacked, a good solid breakfast before being hanged. We all settled down in the Culpeppers’ drawing-room, stacked with the ’thirties memorabilia which they collected, and waited for the attack.
    â€˜You’ve been to see Mary?’ barked Mrs Culpepper genially at Marcus. I rather liked Franchita Culpepper: she must have been a funny, sexy lady in her prime, and much of her bossiness now came from being bored.