A Night of Errors by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online

to her. The property of Sir Oliver Dromio, fifth baronet. But if Lucy had actually become… Again the flame of anger licked up in Mary Gollifer. Then her heart sank for a moment to her evening shoes. A figure in a dinner-jacket was pacing the terrace with overt and uncivil impatience. She looked again and sighed with relief. It was not Oliver but his uncle, Sebastian Dromio. He was a disagreeable old man to whom she was entirely indifferent.
    In large houses and among well-bred people guests do not commonly overhear embarrassing conversations about themselves. That Mrs Gollifer did so was substantially Swindle’s fault.
    Just before leaving home Mrs Gollifer had told her butler, a retainer almost as far declined into the vale of years as Swindle himself, to telephone Sherris Hall with the information that she might be late. Swindle, being hard of hearing, had made no more of this than a mere mumble. Whereupon, with the obstinacy or malice of the aged, he had chosen to announce to his mistress that Mrs Gollifer was unable to dine. When Mrs Gollifer actually arrived she was shown, according to the familiar habit of the house, into Lady Dromio’s boudoir. At that moment Lady Dromio and her adopted daughter were conversing over some final adjustment of dress in the elder lady’s bedroom next door. Mrs Gollifer would have interrupted them at once. But the first two words stopped her.
    ‘Oliver’s Gollifer!’ Lucy Dromio’s voice held what was not a sympathetic laughter. ‘How many of the silly stories about Oliver are nasty too, mamma. But not many are so exquisitely cacophonous.’
    ‘Lucy, dear, it is to be wished that you would not colour so when Oliver’s name is mentioned in such connexions. It will be remarked.’
    ‘Then why mention it?’
    ‘Because before Swindle told me that Mary Gollifer was not coming to dinner I thought I had better warn you of this piece of scandal in Sebastian’s mind. Not that I really understand it. He seems to think that Mary has been getting money from Oliver.’
    ‘Because she is his mistress ? Was ever anything so absurd! For surely it would be the other way round. Oliver would require quite a lot of money from the lady.’
    ‘Lucy, that is not nice.’ There was unusual agitation in Lady Dromio’s voice. ‘And I wonder that you can make such jokes about Oliver. Especially when you–’
    ‘Yes, mamma. But uncle Sebastian must be mad. For surely Mrs Gollifer has lots of money. Her son Geoffrey is enormously wealthy.’
    ‘Well, dear, I do not know that Mary has as much money as she had. So many people haven’t. And, as I say, I don’t at all understand what Sebastian means. He seems merely to have come upon some hint of money transactions between these two, and he may have got it quite muddled. But I mentioned it because he might have been very tactless and brutal and I should have needed you to help me head him off. But as Mary isn’t coming–’
    ‘She has come.’ And Mrs Gollifer, gathering her skirts and her courage about her, swept through to the adjoining room.

 
     
3
    It was quarter to nine when Geoffrey Gollifer drew up outside his mother’s house and ran indoors, almost colliding with Martin, the butler, who had held so luckless a telephone conversation with Swindle an hour before.
    ‘Good evening, Martin. Is my mother at home?’
    ‘Why, good evening, Mr Geoffrey. This is a great surprise. And Mrs Gollifer is out, sir, I’m sorry to say. Dining at Sherris and drove herself over in the car. I understood her to say you would be sailing tomorrow morning, sir.’
    ‘And so I am, Martin. That’s what I’ve come about. It seems that when I brought my mother back from Switzerland in January I left my passport with hers. I think I’ll drive over and ask her about it… I suppose Miss Lucy is at Sherris?’
    ‘I suppose so, Mr Geoffrey.’ Martin’s tone was benevolent.
    Geoffrey Gollifer glanced at his watch. ‘Would you say they’d have finished