Was It Murder?

Read Was It Murder? for Free Online

Book: Read Was It Murder? for Free Online
Authors: James Hilton
Tags: Fiction, General
and Anne Brontë were allotropic personalities of the same human or perhaps inhuman being.  The Head listened attentively and appeared impressed.  In such wise the time passed pleasantly enough until the ringing of the chapel bell for evening service.  The Head, it seemed, was not going to attend.  “I have some letters to write,” he explained.  “But you go, most certainly.  Supper will be immediately afterwards.  We do not dress on Sundays.”
    In one of the rear pews of the rather ornate chapel, as the School began to stream in, Revell sought to capture the real, genuine, hundred-per-cent thrill of the Old Boy dreaming of past days.  He was far more conscious of a thrill, however, when Mrs. Ellington came to sit in the pew beside him.  She smiled cordially, and her husband, next to her on the other side, leaned forward with a nod of reluctant recognition.  “I wondered if you would be here,” she whispered, “and to tell the truth, I rather hoped you wouldn’t.”
    Of course he asked why.
    “Because Captain Daggat is preaching.  He really is AWFUL.”
    Revell was thoroughly amused.  “So I’ve been told already to-day.”
    “Oh yes, by Mr. Lambourne, I know.  He said he had met you.  He also said you had written a novel.  Have you really?”
    “England expects,” replied Revell, lightly purloining some one else’s epigram, “that every young man some day will write a novel.”
    “But you have, haven’t you?  Do tell me what it’s called—Mr.
    Lambourne gave me the name, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.”
    “Ancient Lights,” answered Revell, frowning heavily.  (Every time he uttered it, it always sounded sillier, but this was the first time he had ever whispered it to his neighbour in a place of worship.)
    “Ancient Rights?”
    “No, Lights,” he enunciated, as loudly as he dared.
    “How interesting!  I must get Mudie’s to send it down with their next batch.”
    The announcement of the opening hymn put an end to further conversation.  She was a fool, he thought, as he sang an intermittent and languishing alto.  A charming and attractive little fool, no doubt; but a fool for all that.  Yet with a half-sideways glance at her dark and sparkling eyes, he felt again the thrill of proximity.
    Even apart from his neighbour, he found the chapel service quite interesting, especially as Daggat, within five minutes of beginning his sermon, supplied a perfect clue to the mystery of the note in Marshall’s algebra-book.
    He would take as his text, began Daggat, in a mournful monotone, part of the eighteenth verse of the twenty-second chapter of Jeremiah.  Jeremiah, twenty-two, eighteen.  “They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah my brother! or, Ah sister! they shall not lament for him, saying, Ah Lord! or, Ah his glory!”  As it was the last Sunday before the vacation, he thought it would not be unfitting to review in retrospect the manifold blessings and trials of the past Term.  It was a good thing, every now and then, to stop and take a look behind us along the path of life, as it were, and so draw lessons from the past to help us in the future.  There had been one happening, at least, within the memory of them all, that had brought them the deepest and most profound sorrow.  Into their midst, unlooked for and without warning, there had come the Angel of Death. . . .
    “You may remember,” went on Daggat, entering upon his second half-hour with a preliminary swig of water from the tumbler on the pulpit-ledge, “you may, I say, remember words which I addressed to you here, from this same pulpit, upon the first Sunday of this Term.  How little did I, or any one of us then, imagine that, so shortly afterwards, my words would appear prophetic!  And yet it should be a lesson to us—a much needed lesson in this age of boastful science and too-confident invention—a lesson to us never to forget, even for a moment, that our health, our happiness, even the very breath of

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