Read The Courtesy of Death for Free Online

lived in so
delightfully free and easy a way.
    ‘He told me about you,’ Mrs Dunton said. ‘He’s round the back somewhere. Pat will show you. And supper is at seven and of course you’ll stay for it.’
    Pat, with a pair of plaits which were gloriously clean and golden and a pair of jodhpurs crusted with mud and horsehair, led me round the house and handed me over to her father. He was in a deck
chair, a tray of drinks and a book at his side, and he greeted me, like the rest of them, as if I were his next-door neighbour. I told him where I had been in the course of the day, and after a
drink and some casual conversation asked:
    ‘Do you remember saying that this country was full of the intelligent half-educated?’
    ‘I don’t. But after dinner it’s quite likely.’
    ‘Have you ever run across the idea of apologising to anything you kill before you kill it?’
    ‘I’m a psychiatrist, not a surgeon,’ he said.
    Vaguely and incompetently I tried to explain what I meant.
    ‘Now, which of these coons have you been talking to?’ he asked. ‘Aviston-Tresco?’
    ‘Who’s he?’
    ‘Our most fashionable vet. And a damned good one.’
    ‘What does he look like?’
    ‘Very much the country gentleman. Well-dressed, compact, with a short, dark moustache. I’d put him down as a major in a cavalry regiment, if there were any cavalry
regiments.’
    ‘Has he anything to do with the transparent woman?’
    ‘Not so far as I know. But I tell you who is a close friend of his—that queer fish Barnabas Fosworthy who gave you his unasked opinion on the origin of tin.’
    ‘Is there anyone among your vet’s associates who farms on the top of the Mendips and rides a big, grey gelding?’
    ‘Yes. Why?’
    ‘Nothing. He was keeping me under observation this afternoon, and at last rode up to see what I was doing. I mentioned sites for pubs.’
    Dunton began to interrogate me in the pleasantest possible way. Where had I been looking for my inns, and since when? What places had I inspected? I answered with a frankness which must have
convinced him of my sincerity; but he was a modest man and distrusted his own judgment.
    ‘I’m going to be indiscreet,’ he said at last. ‘Isn’t your pub-hunting cover for something else?’
    ‘Good God, no! Why do you think so?’
    ‘Because you have asked a number of connected questions.’
    ‘Just curiosity,’ I replied—which was true enough so far as it went. ‘An innkeeper is like a priest. He wants to know all about the parish before he accepts the
living.’
    ‘Neat!’ he smiled. ‘But if you ever feel like telling me all the truth, remember that psychiatrists keep just as many secrets as landlords and priests.’
    This was too good a chance to miss. I told him that an impulsive act of mine, which seemed charitable at the time, had involved me with a bunch of believers in something odd, and I wanted to
know what they did believe.
    ‘I’ve had a patient among them and got some of it out of her,’ he said. ‘All life is one and interchanges communication. Death is a mere break in continuity, but it may
be momentarily inconvenient or painful. So, if you hand it out, you should express regret. That somehow creates unity with the victim and wipes the slate clean. My patient was obsessed by hunting.
In her Rorschach tests she saw antlers, tusks, foxes, heads of imaginary animals. Always death and relics of death.
    ‘Well, such a creed is attractive to anyone who loves killing birds and beasts. It has some affinity to the sorrow which big-game hunters tell us they feel when they have destroyed a very
fine animal. I feel it myself when my daughters send for me to squash a large, very perceptive spider. There’s a moment of fellowship with the creature. The funny thing is that this belief is
also a comfort to people who hate killing—like this Fosworthy who won’t and Tom Aviston-Tresco who has to.’
    ‘You mean that if one were shooting pheasants,’ I asked