Read The Ghost Who Fed Them Bones for Free Online Page A

Brussels once, at La Monnaie, for three days. We packed the place out. Stayed at the Agenda hotel, if you know it.”
    “I’ve heard of it.”
    “Yeah, that was quite fun. Anyway, must fly!” His voice soars like a sax solo at the end of the sentence, and he turns-tail and extracts himself.
    I always find it strange how different people are as real people when they are not flaunting themselves in groups.

    * * *
    Somebody, somewhere, has suggested an outing to St. Guil aume-le-Désert, Sarah I assume, because she seems to be the one organising it. Peter, John, Fiona, Sarah, Mr. Harding (John and Sarah’s dad), Inspector John, Mike and I are up for it, with Natalie in tow. The French contingent is disdainful. It wouldn’t be seen dismembered in a place that touristy which didn’t have a rugby team that repeatedly won the national championship thirty years ago (most of the French gang comes from around Béziers, which did). It’s impressive how long people can cling onto past ephemeral glories when they hail from a long-lost two-dog town.
    I would have preferred to visit Uzès because in twenty years of living in and visiting the region I have never yet seen the place, and it is meant to be quite special according to al my friends around Montpel ier who have ever discussed it.
    However, the core of the trip committee has determined that it is too far to reach at this time in the afternoon, given that we have to be back for dinner tonight.
    Mike and I have been to St. Guil aume-le-Désert a few times and actual y rather like the place. We have fond memories of playing with the taps once and getting ourselves soaking wet, buying lots of wooden toys and eating massive sugar-disc lol ipops. I guess that it must have a similar appeal to some of the others too because visiting it has al the air of a familiar annual ritual.
    We go in three cars: ours, Inspector John’s and one of the Affligem ones – a people carrier - so we could have gone in one less, except that Mike and I wil be peeling off afterwards to go into Montpel ier with Natalie rather than to return to Freyrargues for dinner.
    The Earl and the Countess have no intention of joining us, of course. They kiss the family, wave the rest of us regal y away, and turn back to their guests.
    Natalie is OK in the car, seductively loving and cheerful in fact, leaning up against me and addressing observations to me with individual intensity, but once she reaches the car park her whole attitude changes. She looks lost somehow among this band of English trippers, on foreign soil in her own country. An hour later she is pouting fit to ooze poison, making it transparent that joining us was a hideous and tedious mistake, and that she would rather be tucked up with Marcel, probably, on safer ground. When the French want to make arses of themselves, they certainly go flat-out. I don’t try to reason with her. She does what she likes. I appreciate that this straggling group of Brits may appear pitiful y shambolic and unsophisticated in its own way, but at least it seems at ease with itself.
    I find myself strol ing alongside Mr. Harding instead – “Cal me Alan”.
    “Everyone tel s me that you have psychic powers,” he leads off the conversation.
    “Everybody tel s me that so do you,” I counter.
    He chuckles modestly. “No, I don’t, and especial y not any more. I think I was channel ed in a way once upon a time, but al that left me years ago. And you?”
    “I only said that Inspector John’s house felt spooky, that’s al . I don’t think that you have to be especial y clairvoyant to observe that.”
    “Maybe more clairvoyant than most of this crowd,” Alan observes col egiately. “So you don’t claim special powers otherwise?”
    “No.”
    “Pity.”
    “It would have made me more interesting?”
    “It would have made you more useful. Poor John is getting quite distressed about it al . You could at least have joined him in tracking down the rest of the remains,