Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online Page A

handsomer. Richard piloted Frances carefully across the Boulevard des Capucines, and gave her an encouraging smile. “Cheer up, old girl. The first bathe is always the coldest.”
    They had arrived between the dinner and the after-theatre crowds. There were a few vacant tables. Richard led the way to one on the left-hand side. As they sat down, a waiter appeared like the traditional white rabbit out of a hat.
    “Coffee,” said Richard, “and Cointreau for you as usual, Frances? I think I’ll have one too. Yes, coffee and two Cointreaux.”
    Frances repressed a wifely smile. He always enjoyed ordering in French, even in moments like these. Poor old Richard, how he hated Cointreau.
    They settled comfortably in their chairs, lit cigarettes, and looked at the traffic with the right amount of interest. The people at the other tables were the usual mixture of foreigners and Frenchmen. Two nights ago the same kind of crowd had seemed gay and harmless. Tonight they seemed gay. Frances shook herself out of her imagination to admire the way in which the waiter poured the Cointreau.
    “Penny for them,” said Richard:
    “I was thinking how people with guilty consciences develop persecution mania.”
    “Yes, they could, couldn’t they? I felt the same.” But what worried them most was how long they had to wait. Frances sipped her Cointreau. She noticed with amusement that Richardwas restricting himself to coffee. As she listened to him, making conversation with one eye on his watch, she repeated to herself just what she had to say when the time came. She was the amateur actress taking one last look at her script as she waits in the wings. Her cue came sooner than she had expected.
    A large, expensively draped woman was making her way with difficulty past their table. It seemed to Frances that it might have been the large lady who had brushed against the table, and sent the coffee swilling into the saucer. Yet Richard’s Cointreau glass lay carefully pointed away from them, so that the liquor trickled slowly over the other side of the table. Richard looked at it with some annoyance and resignation. The large lady continued oblivious on her way, trailing clouds of expensive perfume. The waiter staged his arrival from nowhere. He wiped and apologised with equal vigour.
    Frances sat very still. She was conscious of the smile on her lips which had settled there and wouldn’t come off, as if she were having her photograph taken. She watched a man enter. Richard’s back was turned towards him, and he hadn’t noticed him yet. She let her eyes travel slowly back to their own table; she sensed, rather than saw, him making his way out of the restaurant. He was walking unhurriedly, and he would pass their table. Now he was almost behind the waiter, whose broad back blocked the narrow passage effectively as he bent to pick up the coffee cups. Richard was watching her. He was waiting.
    “I was telling you about Mrs. Rose.” As she spoke she flipped her cigarette case open. “She told me to be sure to go to Le Lapin Agile. Mrs. Rose said we would like it.”
    “Why?” Richard seemed more interested in ordering another drink.
    That’s just my sweet husband, she thought a trifle bitterly, and lighted her cigarette. She noticed the rug vendor with the turban who was silently offering his wares at another table.
    “She was born in India,” she said. Now let’s see what Richard can make of that.
    The waiter became aware of the man who was trying to edge impatiently past him. He stepped aside, but not in time. He must have knocked the man’s elbow, for the cigarette fell from his hand on to their table. The man caught it as it rolled and picked it up. There was just time for them to notice the peculiar way he wore the watch on his wrist and the peculiar time it showed on its clearly marked face.
    “India?” Richard was asking with a display of interest. “Oh, yes, she was a great rope-climber in her day, wasn’t she?”
    The man