Читать книгу Scales of Justice - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 19

Nurse Kettle had left her bicycle in the village where she was spending the evening with the Women’s Institute. She therefore took the River Path. Dusk had fallen over the valley of the Chyne and as she descended into it her own footfall sounded unnaturally loud on the firm turf. Thump, thump, thump she went, down the hillside. Once, she stopped dead, tilted her head and listened. From behind her at Uplands, came the not-unfamiliar sound of a twang followed by a sharp penetrating blow. She smiled to herself and walked on. Only desultory rural sounds disturbed the quiet of nightfall. She could actually hear the cool voice of the stream.

She did not cross Bottom Bridge but followed a rough path along the right bank of the Chyne, past a group of alders and another of willows. This second group, extending in a sickle-shaped mass from the water’s edge into Bottom Meadow rose up vapourishly in the dusk. She could smell willow-leaves and wet soil. As sometimes happens when we are solitary, she had the sensation of being observed but she was not a fanciful woman and soon dismissed this feeling.

‘It’s turned much cooler,’ she thought.

A cry of mourning, intolerably loud, rose from beyond the willows and hung on the night air. A thrush whirred out of the thicket close to her face and the cry broke and wavered again. It was the howl of a dog.

She pushed through the thicket into an opening by the river and found the body of Colonel Cartarette with his spaniel Skip beside it, mourning him.