Buffet for Unwelcome Guests by Christianna Brand Read Free Book Online

can come if you like—playing Celia.” It was not for James Dragon to say that: it was for Arthur Dragon, their producer, to assign the parts to the company…
    ‘It was the dressing-gown, I think, that started me off on it,’ said Inspector Cockrill, thoughtfully. ‘You see—as one of them said, the profession is not fussy about the conventional modesties. Would Glenda Croy’s husband really have knocked?—rushing in there, mad with rage and anxiety, would he really have paused to knock politely at his wife’s door? And she—would she really have waited to put on a dressing-gown over her ample petticoat, to receive him? For her father-in-law, perhaps, yes: we are speaking of many years ago. But for her husband…? Well, I wouldn’t know. But it started me wondering.
    ‘At any rate—he killed her. She could break up their tour, she could throw mud at their great name: and he had everything to lose, an ageing actor who had given up his own career for the company. He killed her; and a devoted family and loyal, and “not disinterested” company, hatched up a plot to save him from the consequences of what none of them greatly deplored. We made our mistake, I think,’ said Cockie, handsomely including himself in the mistake, ‘in supposing that it would be an elaborate plot. It wasn’t. These people were actors and not used to writing their own plots: it was in fact an incredibly simple plot. “Let’s all put on our greasepaint again and create as much delay as possible while, under the Clown make-up, the red mark fades. And the best way to draw attention from the Clown, will be to draw it towards Othello.” No doubt they will have added civilly, “James—is that all right with you?”
    ‘And so,’ said Inspector Cockrill, ‘we come back again to James Dragon. Within the past hour he had had a somewhat difficult time. Within the past hour his company had been gravely threatened and by the treachery of his own wife; within the past hour his wife had been strangled and his father had become a self-confessed murderer… And now he was to act, without rehearsal and without lines, a part which might yet bring him to the Old Bailey and under sentence of death. It was no wonder, perhaps, that when the greasepaint was wiped away from his face that night, our friend thought he seemed to have aged…’ If, he added, their friend really had thought so at the time and was not now being wise after the event.
    He was able to make this addition because their friend had just got up and, with a murmured excuse, had left the room. In search of a white rabbit, perhaps?

Blood Brothers
    ‘A ND DEVOTED, I HEAR, ’ he says, ‘David and Jonathan,’ he says. ‘In fact you might properly be called,’ he says, with that glitter in his eye, ‘blood brothers?’
    Well, he can sneer but it’s true we was pally enough, Fred and me, till Lydia came along. Shared the same digs in the village—Birdswell’s our village, if you know it?—Birdswell, in Kent. Everyone in Birdswell knows us—even if they can’t easily tell the difference between us—and used to say how wonderful it was, us two so alike, with our strong legs and big shoulders and curly red hair, like a kid’s: and what a beautiful understanding we had, what a bond of union. People talk a lot of crap about identical twins.
    Lydia couldn’t tell the difference between us either—seemingly. Was that my fault? Fair enough, she was Fred’s girl first—unless you counted her husband, and to some extent you did have to count him: six foot five, he is, and it isn’t only because he’s the blacksmith that they call him in the village, Black Will. But she switched to me of her own accord, didn’t she?—even if I wasn’t too quick to disillusion her, the first time she started with her carryings-on, mistaking me for Fred. ‘ I can’t help it if she fancies me more than you, now,’ I said to Fred.
    ‘You’ll regret this, you two-timing, double-crossing