Read Over the High Side for Free Online Page A

found compelling and very lucid. It has influenced my recent thinking.
    Of the little train-train there is not much to say. Children, thank God, well, garden beginning again to give me pleasure (the crocuses were remarkable this year) and the feeling of again living out of doors, walking, finding ‘countryside’ still not too far away (Killiney is still, just, Killiney) – all this does me good, makes me happy for once to eat and breathe and be alive. You know how my disgust with the world has given me a sombre outlook.
    How I sympathize with present trials. How I wish I could help! E. is well-meaning, but his own position is too shaky … anything but the solid planks you need for a venture. Jim or M. would
not
strike the right note. Oddly a student acquaintance is the son of an ‘influential personage’ – but said i.p. sounds a pompous ass. It is a pity – Anna’s flat is empty again too just now, not for long of course.
    Do let us hear from you soon. There are one or two paragraphsin your letter that I have disregarded, as you see, but I imagine you will prefer it so. Your finishing ‘stroke’ could only cause a bitterness likely to be more lasting than we could wish – or endure. There – my love to Anna. How I should enjoy coming to spend a few days with you: spring in A’dam – I think of it with longing. E. would have a fit!
    Your always faithful loving
Stasie.
    More talkative, more fluent, more literary. Brighter; closer to Pa. Closest resemblance/affinity to Pa? What is all the mumbo-jumbo? What is ‘physiological cross’?
    What was the ‘finishing stroke’? Neurotic-sounding woman. Whatever it was, it had just finished him, with a smart tap between the eyes. He yawned enormously: Arlette looked across at him.
    â€˜Little man, you’ve had a busy day.’
    â€˜What I need is something as silly, frivolous and utterly superficial as one can get.’
    â€˜In that case turn the television on.’
    â€˜No cowboy pictures this time of night,’ said Van der Valk, sadly.
    *
    It was such a beautiful day that he was vastly disinclined to sit in the lousy office. But he had to: when a homicide came one’s way it occupied the whole of one and everything else could go hang. He had often noticed that they chose to arrive when the weather was unusually nice or – more frequently – unusually nasty. The September sunshine was delicious, not too hot; he opened all the windows as wide as they would go and turned to be mellow – he felt mellow – with Madame Martinez, who had abandoned her fur coat, and taken pains with her appearance.
    â€˜How do you feel?’
    â€˜Numb. Not believing it yet, quite. But calm. Reasonable.’
    â€˜Thinking of the future?’
    â€˜I have to, I suppose.’
    â€˜A job?’
    â€˜That’s no problem. I’m a trained secretary. I must work because I haven’t a penny. And it will be good for me. I can’t sit heaving sighs in white linen. Poor Vader’s dead. But I knew the day would come.’ Her voice went momentarily off-key. ‘I must react, you know.’
    â€˜He was murdered, you know.’
    â€˜I’m trying – been trying – what do you say? – to rationalize. Oh, it sounds awful. All night … but what can I do? It’s the same, to him. Better, maybe. He couldn’t have endured something lingering … impotence. He’d have fretted himself into dying: perhaps he’d have suffered more. Do I sound abominable? Callous?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜The hospital said he didn’t feel pain. I suppose they tell everyone that. But it can’t have lasted long.’
    â€˜It’s true. It’s even possible he never even realized he’d been stabbed. Stabbed,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t care for the word. Too melodramatic. That is my job in a way – to deflate melodrama. You are