Hallowe'en Party / Вечеринка на Хэллоуин. Книга для чтения на английском языке

�You like apples, don’t you,’ said Joyce. �I read you did, or perhaps I heard it on the telly. You’re the one who writes murder stories, aren’t you?’

�Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver.

�We ought to have made you do something connected with murders. Have a murder at the party tonight and make people solve it.’

�No, thank you,’ said Mrs Oliver. �Never again.’

�What do you mean, never again?’

�Well, I did once, and it didn’t turn out much of a success,’ said Mrs Oliver.

�But you’ve written lots of books,’ said Joyce, �you make a lot of money out of them, don’t you?’

�In a way,’ said Mrs Oliver, her thoughts flying to the Inland Revenue[9 - Inland Revenue – Государственная налоговая служба Великобритании (в 2005 г. объединена с Государственной таможенно-акцизной службой)].

�And you’ve got a detective who’s a Finn.’

Mrs Oliver admitted the fact. A small stolid boy not yet, Mrs Oliver would have thought, arrived at the seniority of the eleven-plus, said sternly, �Why a Finn?’

�I’ve often wondered,’ said Mrs Oliver truthfully.

Mrs Hargreaves, the organist’s wife, came into the room breathing heavily, and bearing a large green plastic pail.

�What about this,’ she said, �for the apple bobbing? Kind of gay, I thought.’

Miss Lee, the doctor’s dispenser[10 - doctor’s dispenser – фармацевт], said, �Galvanized bucket’s better. Won’t tip over so easily. Where are you going to have it, Mrs Drake?’

�I thought the bobbing for apples had better be in the library. The carpet’s old there and a lot of water always gets spilt, anyway.

�All right. We’ll take them along. Rowena, here’s another basket of apples.’

�Let me help,’ said Mrs Oliver.

She picked up the two apples at her feet. Almost without noticing what she was doing, she sank her teeth into one of them and began to crunch it. Mrs Drake abstracted the second apple from her firmly and restored it to the basket. A buzz of conversation broke out.