Evil Angels Among Them Read Online Free

Foxglove Cottage. But we got here ahead of the removal van, so we thought we’d have a look round the village. I wanted to see the church – I have heard about it.’
    For a moment Harry stared at her, his mouth open. ‘Foxglove Cottage?’ he said at last. ‘Old Miss Ivey’s place? But that’s been empty for months – no one told me that it had been sold!’
    â€˜It all happened quite quickly,’ she explained. ‘It was just what we’d been looking for, and since it offered vacant possession there wasn’t any reason to wait – not for me and Bryony, anyway.’ Putting out her hand, she added, ‘I’m Mrs English, by the way. Gillian English. And my daughter Bryony.’
    Harry had regained his composure; he took her hand and shook it with solemn ceremony. ‘Very pleased to meet you, Mrs English. Welcome to Walston. This is quite an event – we don’t get many newcomers here.’ All thoughts of church treasures fled as, with a grin, he went on, ‘And you’ll be wanting to know all about the village. Well, you’ve come to the right place, I can tell you. I’ve been here all my life, bred and born in this village, and there’s nothing about Walston that Harry Gaze doesn’t know! And about the people in it, I might add.’
    â€˜How convenient.’ Her tone might have been ironic, but the old man took her words at face value.
    â€˜I suppose you’ve met Enid Bletsoe, across the road from you at The Pines?’
    She shook her head. ‘No, I haven’t met anyone yet.’
    â€˜Well, I expect it won’t be long before you meet Enid,’ Harry predicted with a sage nod. ‘Enid doesn’t let much get past her. Especially these days, since the young doctor’s made her retire as his receptionist. She don’t have anything better to do than look out her window and mind other folks’ business for them.’
    Gillian, not by nature a curious person, nonetheless saw the value in gleaning a bit of information about her nearest neighbour. ‘She lives alone, then?’
    â€˜Most of the time. There’s a grandson, young Jamie, as she brought up herself from a tiny thing, but he’s away at university these days. Oxford or Cambridge or some such – I can’t remember. His parents was killed when he was a baby,’ Harry added. ‘Enid’s son and his wife, killed dead in a car crash out on the old Norwich road. Jamie’s the apple of Enid’s eye, I don’t need to tell you.’
    â€˜She’s a widow, then?’
    Harry chuckled, and lowered his voice so that Bryony couldn’t hear. ‘That’s what she’d like you to believe, any road. But there’s some of us in this village as remember as clear as yesterday the day when Jack Bletsoe up sticks and left. Years ago, it was – young Jamie’s father wasn’t more than a baby himself. Jack up sticks and left her to bring up that baby wholly on her own. No one in Walston’s seen Jack Bletsoe since – he might be dead for all I know. I suppose that would make her a widow, wouldn’t it?’ He winked roguishly. ‘Not that it makes any difference, mind you – there’s not a man in Walston, bachelor or widower, as would take that one on, with or without young Jamie.’
    Gillian gave a bemused smile which the verger took as encouragement to continue. ‘And her sister, Doris Wrightman. She’s not much better, I can tell you. Two of a kind, they are.’
    Her expression grew even more bemused as he went on to deliver a succinct and sometimes scurrilous overview of the people she was likely to encounter in her first days in Walston: churchwarden Fred Purdy, proprietor of the village shop, whose wife was suffering from terminal cancer and whose unmarried daughter had presented him with a grandchild, scandalising the village; Roger Staines, the other