Fate Worse Than Death by Sheila Radley

infant piety in an age when early death was all too common.
Now in the heat of youthful blood
Remember your Creator, God.
Behold the months come hast’ning on
When you shall say, My joys are gon.
    Martin was silent for a moment. Then he said, with no thought of acquisition, ‘Oh, I do like that!’
    His aunt, who had been searching through a deed box, produced an old notebook. ‘Here you are,’ she cried triumphantly, ‘the family tree. I worked it out years ago, and I want you to have this book and pass it on eventually to your children. Now, I’ll show you where Maria Bethell comes in. She married –’
    Con held the notebook at arm’s length and screwed up her eyes. Marjorie Braithwaite was always telling her that she ought to wear her spectacles on a chain, and that was why she didn’t. It was a nuisance, though, to be forever mislaying them; and not merely a nuisance but an increasingly frequent reminder of the way her mind was fraying at the edges. ‘Oh crikey, I can’t read a thing without my specs. Where do you suppose I left them, Martin?’
    â€˜Oh, Aunt .’ He sighed good-humouredly, and ran them to earth in the pantry.
    â€˜Thank you, dear,’ said Con vaguely when he returned them. ‘Such a help to have a detective in the family … Ah, that’s better. Now look, here’s Maria Bethell. She married your great-great-grandfather’s brother George in 1853, but died a year later in childbirth. So the verse on her sampler was sadly prophetic, poor child. I say, would you like to take that, too, Martin? The sampler, I mean?’
    He demurred; he said that he couldn’t deprive his aunt of something she liked to keep hanging in her bedroom, something that would be perfectly easy to move to her new house. But he was careful not to refuse the offer.
    The fact was that Alison would love the sampler. Martin had thought of her as soon as he saw it, and now he longed for an opportunity to show it to her. He wanted to see and share her pleasure in it – and he hoped too that it would make her realize that he wasn’t the grasping, insensitive man she took him for. Surely, if she saw his appreciation of craft work and heard from him the moving story of Maria Bethell’s short life, Alison couldn’t help but soften towards him?
    That is, if she ever spoke to him again.
    â€˜Of course,’ admitted Con, mistaking his unaccustomed quietness for reluctance, ‘I can quite see that the verse on the sampler isn’t exactly appropriate for a modern bachelor. I don’t want to embarrass you –’
    â€˜On the contrary.’ He gave her his best smile. He liked the sampler anyway, and if Alison was fool enough to throw away the prospect of being his eventual wife, to hell with her. There were other pretty girls; and pretty girls with better – more suitable – family backgrounds than Alison’s. He’d been dreading the idea of having that dim, fussy, suburban little Mrs Quantrill as his mother-in-law.
    â€˜In my job,’ he went on, ‘I have to spend a lot of time thinking about people who’ve come to untimely ends, so the verse is entirely appropriate. Really, Aunt Con, the sampler’s quite the nicest thing you could offer me. Yes please, I’d love to take it. And you can be sure –’
    â€˜Constance!’
    They both started as an authoritative voice called up from below. Marjorie Braithwaite had as usual marched into the house without ceremony. ‘Constance, where are you? Your casserole’s burning!’
    Aunt and nephew exchanged grimaces. ‘You’re too late,’ called back Con, with some satisfaction. She went downstairs, turning her long feet cautiously sideways as she negotiated the narrow treads. ‘The casserole’s burned to a frazzle already. Yes … yes, as you said … we’ll be having a cold supper, which is what you suggested