Free Absent in the Spring by Agatha writing as Mary Westmacott Christie Page B

past the church and had joined him and said, ‘Whatever are you doing here, Rodney?’
    He had laughed and said, ‘Considering my latter end, and what I’ll have put on my tombstone. Not granite chips, I think, they’re so genteel. And certainly not a stout marble angel.’
    They had looked down then at a very new marble slab which bore Leslie Sherston’s name.
    Following her glance Rodney had spelled out slowly:
    â€˜Leslie Adeline Sherston, dearly beloved wife of Charles Edward Sherston, who entered into rest on 11th May, 1930. And God shall wipe away their tears.’
    Then, after a moment’s pause, he had said:
    â€˜Seems damned silly to think of Leslie Sherston under a cold slab of marble like that, and only a congenital idiot like Sherston would ever have chosen that text. I don’t believe Leslie ever cried in her life.’
    Joan had said, feeling just a little shocked and rather as though she was playing a slightly blasphemous game:
    â€˜What would you choose?’
    â€˜For her? I don’t know. Isn’t there something in the Psalms? In thy presence is the fullness of joy . Something like that.’
    â€˜I really meant for yourself.’
    â€˜Oh, for me?’ He thought for a minute or two – smiled to himself. ‘ The Lord is my shepherd. He leadeth me in green pastures . That will do very well for me.’
    â€˜It sounds rather a dull idea of Heaven, I’ve always thought.’
    â€˜What’s your idea of Heaven, Joan?’
    â€˜Well – not all the golden gates and that stuff, of course. I like to think of it as a state . Where everyone is busy helping, in some wonderful way, to make this world, perhaps, more beautiful and happier. Service – that’s my idea of Heaven.’
    â€˜What a dreadful little prig you are, Joan.’ He had laughed in his teasing way to rob the words of their sting. Then he had said, ‘No, a green valley – that’s good enough for me – and the sheep following the shepherd home in the cool of the evening –’
    He paused a minute and then said, ‘It’s an absurd fancy of mine, Joan, but I play with the idea sometimes that, as I’m on my way to the office and go along the High Street, I turn to take the alley into the Bell Walk and instead of the alley I’ve turned into a hidden valley, with green pasture and soft wooded hills on either side. It’s been there all the time, existing secretly in the heart of the town. You turn from the busy High Street into it and you feel quite bewildered and say perhaps, “Where am I?” And then they’d tell you, you know, very gently, that you were dead …’
    â€˜Rodney!’ She was really startled, dismayed. ‘You – you’re ill. You can’t be well.’
    It had been her first inkling of the state he was in – the precursor of that nervous breakdown that was shortly to send him for some two months to the sanatorium in Cornwall where he seemed content to lie silently listening to the gulls and staring out over the pale, treeless hills to the sea.
    But she hadn’t realized until that day in the churchyard that he really had been overworking. It was as they turned to go home, she with an arm through his, urging him forward, that she saw the heavy rhododendron bud drop from his coat and fall on Leslie’s grave.
    â€˜Oh, look,’ she said, ‘your rhododendron,’ and she stooped to pick it up. But he had said quickly:
    â€˜Let it lie. Leave it there for Leslie Sherston. After all – she was our friend.’
    And Joan had said quickly, what a nice idea, and that she would bring a big bunch of those yellow chrysanthemums herself tomorrow.
    She had been, she remembered, a little frightened by the queer smile he gave her.
    Yes, definitely she had felt that there was something wrong with Rodney that evening. She didn’t, of course, realize that he was on