Mystery at the Rectory (Musaicum Vintage Mysteries). Dorothy Fielding

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       Dorothy Fielding

      Mystery at the Rectory

      (Musaicum Vintage Mysteries)

      Published by

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      2021 OK Publishing

      EAN 4064066381493

      Table of Contents

       CHAPTER ONE

       CHAPTER TWO

       CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       CHAPTER TWELVE

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

       CHAPTER FIFTEEN

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN

       CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

       CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

       CHAPTER NINETEEN

       CHAPTER TWENTY

      CHAPTER ONE

       Table of Contents

      THE rector got up from his writing table and laying his pipe down, stood a moment as though collecting his thoughts. A distinguished-looking man of around forty was John Avery, with his tall spare figure, his clever, scholarly face. He was frowning as he absent-mindedly straightened a yellow china jar on the corner of the mantelshelf. Then he returned to his knee-hole table, and, taking an apple from a plate which always stood on the corner, began slowly to eat it, still with a look of abstraction on his face, still with some inner discomfort marking a frown on his fine forehead.

      The apple automatically disposed of, he drew out his watch and looked at it. Four o'clock. His sister-in-law would probably be in her own sitting-room.

      Stepping out into the rectory's big hall-lounge, he went up the stairs, broad and curving, and with a gentle preliminary knock opened a door giving on a room of blue and white harmonies. The rector's sister-in-law—Doris Avery, whom most of her circle, including the rector, voted a very beautiful woman—sat writing at one of the windows the strong light struck flaming gleams from the burnished hair that grew in a lovely crescent around her smooth white forehead. Otherwise, however, her features were just averagely good; the hazel eyes of no particular size or shape, their shade dependent, like most eyes of that colour, on the mood of the moment, and the mouth similarly neutral in its general placidity, though the mobile lips looked ready to smile on the least occasion. Her seated figure, too, revealed a length of slender limbs that bespoke her tallness and fine proportions when up on her smartly-shod feet.

      As she caught sight of him, she gave an exclamation of pleased surprise. "Why, John! I thought of you as still a captive in Damascus—or was it Ephesus? But since you're free—try this chair."

      The cheery invitation, although he seated himself in accordance with it, failed to dissipate the troubled expression on John Avery's face as he said with evident reluctance: "My dear Doris, I'm afraid you'll think me unpardonably impertinent for what I've come up to say to you. But I feel it a friendly no less than a conscientious duty."

      At her glance of inquiry he said in a low but firm voice: "It's about Anthony. Revell." Adding gravely, as her raised eyebrows and puzzled expression continued to silently question his meaning, "Are you being quite fair to him, Doris? I know your devotion to Dick, of course. But Revell may not realise it so fully. It's not the first time that something in his voice and look, when talking with you, has given me the same anxious fear that he may possibly misunderstand your quick sympathies. But it has nerved me to say frankly that I think it would be well for him to see less of you, my dear."

      Doris Avery had a very charming laugh. It rang out now. Then she stifled it to exclaim: "My dear John! How deliciously flattering! But you should say it to Olive Hill. Not to me."

      "Olive Hill?" he repeated blankly.

      "She would be pleased at your tone!" Doris spoke with a spice of malice in her own. "Yes, Olive Hill. But don't say a word yet, or you'll choke him off. He has intervals of qualms. Olive may yet be sacrificed—but he is tempted."

      The rector got up. His handsome face was all alight now. Gone was the touch of austerity which showed when he was grave.

      "I confess I never thought of that simple explanation." He did not add that it had never occurred to him that any man would fall in love with Olive Hill when Doris Avery was before his eyes. Though Olive had an interesting face and really fine eyes. Olive was his sister Grace's companion. A slender brown-haired girl whose quietness had won her the nickname of "Mousie" as a child. She was an orphan. Her father had been a colonel in an Indian cavalry regiment and her mother a friend of Grace Avery's mother. Except for certain set duties, Olive was treated at the rectory exactly as a member of the family.

      Grace came in now and sank into a chair with some compliment to Doris on how charming her room always looked.

      "Wait till it gets its new covers," Doris said to that. "Olive's engineering them. Blue taffetas with black and white embroideries here and there. Awfully smart. By the way, Grace, I've just been confiding to John's well-known discretion—as now to your own—that Olive's the magnet responsible for Anthony Revell's increasingly frequent calls."

      Grace looked perturbed. The news seemed unwelcome. "Surely you're mistaken, Doris," she said slowly, but was silenced by the smiling assurance: "I have it from Anthony himself, my dear. Only just now he was asking me whether I thought he had a chance with her.