The Inspector Walter Darriteau Murder Mysteries - Books 1-4 David Carter (autobiographies to read txt) 📖

in the morning till the last at night. The second or third time I saw her I glimpsed her knickers, as she’d curled her legs beneath her at the vicarage tea party. I’d looked away and Dennis told me off about that too. It was an image framed in time that returned to me time and again. It still occasionally does. I know it shouldn’t, but it does, locked in my head, as if to tease me, as if to remind me of something I never had, something I could never attain, as if to say: You’ve wasted an opportunity there! You ass! You’re an ASS!

The ironic thing was that at one time she had a real crush on me. She bought me a rabbit’s foot, especially for my big concert on the radio. I was too stupid or too embarrassed to notice her feelings, and it was a couple of years later, when she returned from college during the summer holidays, that I finally asked her to the pictures. It wasn’t easy persuading her either. I had to ask her four times before she agreed. Later, I discovered she only consented because her father, the vicar, encouraged her to do so. Imagine how I felt. The girl at my side was there because her father asked her to be, not because she wanted to be.

That night I made a complete and utter fool of myself.

I wasn’t the first young man to do so on their first meaningful date, and I won’t be the last, but that doesn’t erase the hurt one feels when looking back on it from some years later.

On the way home I pushed her against the back of the bus shelter and kissed her. She didn’t resist; she didn’t cry out; she didn’t do a thing. Her response was spelt out through her icy lips. I imagine now that she must have grimaced through the whole experience, though I was far too smitten to realise that, and too innocent to understand that it was any different to how it should have been. Maybe I had an inkling. If I did, I buried it in the outer reaches of my expanding mind. I didn’t want to know a thing, other than what I saw and felt and smelt in front of me.

Flushed with success, for I had dreamt of kissing those pink cherry lips for weeks, no months, nay years, I pressed onward, determined to achieve my goal, as any hot-blooded male might, strike while the iron is hot, show her you love her, as the agony aunt pages always say, tell her you love her, they always recommend. How is she ever to know how you feel if you don’t tell her? So I did.

‘I love you, Machara,’ I said.

She didn’t say a word. She was probably squirming with embarrassment.

I loved everything about her, even her name I found alluring. I had never met a Machara before, still haven’t. I loved her to bits, and what does a passionate man do when he loves someone? Asks them to marry him, that’s what, so I did.

‘Will you marry me, Machara McGowan?’

She giggled derisorily.

I didn’t look into her eyes; I couldn’t, because my head was set to one side of hers. I was staring at her neat left ear that was poking through her bonnet of black hair, that ear, a white protuberance that resembled those ultra precious mushrooms one finds in the forest early on a Sunday morning, a variety you never see in the shops. That night in the bus shelter there was something particularly sensual about her ear, I still remember that, it’s difficult to explain, I could have bitten it off, though I didn’t understand it at the time.

When she spoke she said, ‘I couldn’t possibly marry you, you’re no-ooo a Scot.’

She didn’t reject me because I was too young, too inexperienced, too short, too nervous, too lacking in prospects, too ugly, too dull, too horrendous, she rejected me because I didn’t belong to the Scottish race. Stupid girl! How peculiar was that? I suspect it was a condition that would one day come back to haunt her, and only two years after that she did indeed find her ideal man.

Robertson was six feet four inches tall, broadly built, sandy beard and hair, with a glint in his eye. His highland accent alone was enough to win Machara’s heart, or so she imagined, and the fact that he wore a kilt, and his birth was registered in Fort William, would have clinched the deal.

When I heard the news, I was mortified. 

I didn’t understand how the love of my life could want to marry this huge ginger pig, this hairy legged oaf who delighted in prancing around in a green and yellow tartan skirt. But marry him she did, in her father’s church, where I had once led the choir. I didn’t attend, I couldn’t bring myself to do so, for when the Reverend Blair McGowan stood up and uttered the immortal words: Is there any lawful impediment as to why these people should not be joined in holy matrimony, I knew I would have jumped to my feet and yelled: ‘He’s no-ooo a Scot!’

’Cept he was, and she did.

It didn’t turn out well.

Robertson Brothy had a weakness.

Many men do.

His fatal weakness was not women, or girls, or even boys, or gambling, or money, or calories, or whisky, or drink, or lack of ambition, or laziness, or of being a bully, or of being violent, no, his weakness was one of egotism.

Robertson Brothy loved himself above all others.

He was used to getting his own way in all things. He possessed a booming voice and adored the sound of it. He would dominate conversations, he would talk others down, he would talk over people, and talk endlessly about himself and his life and his successes. He would cut others short, often in a rude manner, without ever seeming to notice, he would