Free The Resurrection Man by Charlotte MacLeod

her tongue, fitted a blood-pressure cuff around her flaccid, flabby upper arm, took her wrist in one hand and his stethoscope in the other, and listened. He took out the thermometer and shrugged.
    “You’ll live.”
    “I’d prefer not to.”
    “Humbug. So this is Kay’s granddaughter? The little girl who came to see our fish? I thought that was Walter’s daughter.”
    “This is Walter’s daughter, Jim. They grow up, you know. Don’t you think she favors Kay?”
    “Very much, now that you mention it. Kay was a lovely woman. I never could understand why she married that brother of Theodore’s. Albert, was it?”
    “No, Howard, the handsome one. Howard wasn’t such a bad fellow. At least he wasn’t always off chasing after some skirt, like Albert.”
    “But he wrote poetry.”
    “You can’t hang a man for that, Jim. Though I will say Howard carried it too far. I don’t see why people who insist on reading their own verses out loud every chance they get always have to put on those dying-duck voices. That was the one thing in the world George dreaded, Howard Kelling coming at him with a piece of paper in his hand.”
    Anora was talking fast and loud now, working off some of her shock in the way most natural to her. “George wasn’t afraid of anything living or dead, except having to listen to Howard’s poems. Most people didn’t realize that, you know, they thought George was just a dim old stick. But I swear to you, George Protheroe was as brave as any man who ever lived. He’d have outfaced a charging lion. Who did this man say he was?”
    The man in the tan suit stepped closer. “Lieutenant Levitan, Mrs. Protheroe. I’m in charge of homicide. So you’re saying your husband wouldn’t have been afraid of somebody coming at him with a spear?”
    “Lord, no. Spear or cannon, it wouldn’t have made a particle of difference to George. He’d have walked straight up to that murdering devil and laughed in his face. And I suppose that’s exactly what he did.”
    “Who found him, Mrs. Protheroe?”
    “I—” Anora choked up. Sarah took her hand.
    “It’s all right, Anora. Don’t talk if it hurts.”
    “Huh. Do you think anything could hurt worse than I’m hurting already? I found him myself.”
    “When was this?” asked Levitan.
    “I don’t know. Half-past seven, maybe. Eight o’clock. We’re not an early-rising household. We’re all old, we nap a lot.”
    “Pretty bad, wasn’t it?”
    “Yes. It wasn’t so much that George was dead, you know. I was prepared for that, as much as one can ever be. I knew something was bound to happen fairly soon. It was the spear I couldn’t stand. And the blood. So horribly much blood.”
    Levitan wasn’t letting her drift off again. “What about that spear, Mrs. Protheroe? Where did it come from?”
    “I don’t know. There’s so much stuff in this house. I don’t remember any spear, but I’m old. I forget. Anyway, there it was sticking up out of him like a bean pole. From his heart. He had an enlarged heart, didn’t he, Jim?”
    “Yes, Anora. George had a big heart in every way, God rest him.”
    “I couldn’t have stopped him, Jim. Nobody could. I just wish I’d gone with him.”
    “You can’t go yet, Anora,” Sarah protested. “We need you here.”
    “Fiddlesticks! George needed me, nobody needs me now. And don’t you go trying to cheer me up, Sarah Kelling. If I want cheering, I’ll hire a band.”
    Yet Anora was sounding a shade less desolate. Phyllis came in with tea and a basket of tiny cornmeal gems, hot from the oven. Cook’s palpitations must have subsided. Sarah poured, Anora took a cup, Phyllis pressed her to try the gems.
    “Please take one, Mrs. Protheroe. Cook’s feelings will be hurt if you don’t.”
    “Huh. And I’m not supposed to have any feelings, is that it?” But Anora picked up one of the steaming morsels, eyed it resentfully for a second, bit off a nibble, and washed it down with a mouthful of tea. Levitan,