Read The Discourtesy of Death (Father Anselm Novels) for Free Online Page B

mine, as it happens. Recently appointed.’
    Anselm read out her judgement in the kind of voice he might have used if he’d ever been elevated to the bench – slow, ponderous and vaguely sad:
    You are a well-known figure. You stand high in the public eye. You have – by fortune, talent and ambition – assumed a position of considerable importance in the civic life of this country. Even an eleven-year-old boy recognised your face. You have made moral problems and their analysis your special territory. You have not flinched to make stirring judgements about the actions of politicians and churchmen. You have sentenced many to ignominy, arguing that example is the touchstone of integrity. For this reason your own conduct falls under special scrutiny. Everyone understands the frustration caused by street works, spilled shopping and snagged traffic. We can all imagine that being recognised in the street might not be a welcome adjunct to celebrity. Everyone in this courtroom cannot but fail to have profound sympathy for your personal circumstances. But your response to these trials was nothing short of astonishing. You picked up a brick. You hurled it through a window at a child who dared to face you down. You broke his jaw and collar bone. You might have killed him. You traumatised all those present. You damaged property. You have, in passing, shattered your reputation.
    Mitch thought for a moment while Anselm placed the report back on the table. ‘Is this the new right and wrong?’
    ‘I doubt it. He asked for no mercy.’
    ‘Bloody right. Didn’t deserve any.’
    ‘He did, actually. But to understand why, you have to go back to the days when he’d just begun to make a name for himself. Before he’d found notoriety.’
    Anselm picked up another photograph, copied from a newspaper article.
    ‘This is Jennifer,’ he said, pinning the picture beside that of her husband.
    She had that alarming vulnerability captured by Degas. The same athleticism. A certain tiredness linked to fabulous energy. Her facial bones were clean cut, her eye sockets deep and dark. Anyone sitting in the back row couldn’t fail to notice her.
    ‘Started out as a dancer with the Royal Ballet but packed it all in just after she’d won her place. A career cut short. According to some, a Fonteyn in the making.’
    ‘Why stop?’
    ‘Motherhood. Shortly after meeting Peter she had a boy, Timothy. Never performed with the company again. Stayed at home looking after her son while Peter’s star rose higher in the firmament. School runs and the like until, ten years later, she opened a dancing school in Sudbury – nothing high powered, just something for the kids to do after school and at the weekends, but serious enough to pull in a brass band for a summer show. We’ll never know Jennifer’s true ambitions because things didn’t work out as planned. She put herself on the programme to give the mums and dads an idea of where the hard work might lead if Jack and Jill ever took dancing seriously.’
    ‘What happened?’
    Anselm became ponderous. ‘It had been a long time since Jennifer had captivated an audience. Maybe she got carried away. Maybe she’d failed to measure her steps. Whatever the reason, she fell off the stage and broke her back.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘She was paralysed from the chest down.’
    Mitch didn’t respond, but the control revealed something deep and compassionate, the knowledge of pain that brings everyone together when a tragedy occurs.
    ‘Aged twenty-nine,’ said Anselm, as if Mitch had asked a question.
    Peter – by now a celebrity – abandoned his media commitments and took an open-ended sabbatical from teaching. He became her nurse, on hand by day and night.
    ‘I imagine both of them thought that things wouldn’t get any worse,’ surmised Anselm.
    ‘They couldn’t.’
    ‘Well, they could and they did. After eighteen months or so, Jennifer was diagnosed with bowel cancer.’
    ‘
Cancer?
’
    ‘Advanced and