A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell Page B

I will repay.” Joan Smith was merely his humble and energetic instrument.
    She had long wanted to know more about the interior of Lowfield Hall and the lives of its occupants—more, that is, than she could gain by occasionally steaming open their post. Now was her chance. She had met Eunice, their initial chat had been entirely satisfactory, and here was a post card come from Crete, from Melinda Coverdale, and addressed to Miss E. Parchman. Joan kept it back from the regular postwoman’s bag and on the Monday she took it up to the Hall herself.
    Eunice was surprised and not a little put out to see her. She recoiled from the post card as from an insect with a sting and muttered her usual defence:
    “I can’t see that without my glasses.”
    “I’ll read it to you, shall I, if I won’t be intruding? ‘This is a super place. Temperature in the upper 80s. We have been to the Palace of Knossos where Theseus killed the Minotaur. See you soon. Melinda.’ How lovely. Who’s this Theseus, I wonder? Must have missed that in the paper. There’s always a terrible lot of fighting and killing in those places, isn’t there? What a lovely kitchen! And you keep it like a new pin. Eat your dinner off the floor, couldn’t you?”
    Relieved and gratified, Eunice came out of herself enough to say, “I was just going to put the kettle on.”
    “Oh no, thank you, I couldn’t stop. I’ve left Norm all alone. Fancy her writing ‘Melinda’ like that. I will say for her, she’s no snob, though there are sides to her life distressing to the Lord in His handmaiden.” Joan uttered this last in a brisk and practical way as if God had given her His opinion while dropping in for a natter. She peered through the open door into the passage. “Spacious, isn’t it? Could I just have a peep in the drawing room?”
    “If you want,” said Eunice. “
I’ve
no objection.”
    “Oh, they wouldn’t mind. We’re all friends in this village. And speaking as one who has been a sinner herself, I wouldn’t set myself above those who haven’t found the strait gate. No, you’ll never hear me say, ‘Thank God I am not as other men are, even as this publican.’ Beautiful furnishings, aren’t they, and in the best of taste?”
    The upshot of all this was that Joan was taken on a tour of Lowfield Hall. Eunice, somewhat overawed by all this educated talk, wanted to show off what
she
could do, and Joan gratified her by frequent exclamations of delight. They went rather further than they should have done, Eunice opening Jacqueline’s wardrobe to display her evening gowns. In Giles’s room, Joan stared at the cork wall.
    “Eccentric,” she said.
    “He’s just a bit of a boy,” said Eunice.
    “Terrible, those spots he has, quite a disfigurement. His father’s in a home for alcoholics, as of course you know.” Eunice didn’t, any more than anyone else did, including Jeffrey Mont.“He divorced her and Mr. Coverdale was the co-respondent, though his wife had only been dead six months. I don’t sit in judgement, but I can read my Bible. ‘Whosoever shall marry a divorced woman, committeth adultery.’ What’s he got that a bit of paper stuck up there for?”
    “That’s always there,” said Eunice. Was she at last to discover what Giles’s message to her said?
    She was.
    In a shrill, amazed, and outraged tone, Joan read aloud:
    “ ‘Warburg’s friend said to Warburg, of his wife who was ill, “If it should please God to take one or other of us, I shall go and live in Paris.” ’ ”
    This quotation from Samuel Butler had no possible application to anything in Giles’s life, but he liked it and each time he read it it made him laugh.
    “Blasphemous,” said Joan. “I suppose it’s something he’s got to learn for school. Pity these teachers don’t have more thought for a person’s soul.”
    So it was something he had to learn for school. By now Eunice felt quite warmly towards Joan Smith, sent by some kindly power to