Dead or Alive by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online

called Ledstow. There’s a lake, and a house, and an island. Uncle Henry was as pleased as Punch about the island. The house is on the bank, but there’s a sort of covered bridge that goes over to the island. It was built by an eccentric old lady who thought people were trying to murder her, so she had her own rooms on the island. She used to sleep there and just come over to the house in the daytime. Uncle Henry was most frightfully bucked. The bridge had a door at each end, and once he’d locked those doors behind him it was going to be as good as being on a desert island—nobody could get at him, nobody could disturb him. He was so full of it that after all I didn’t tell him the things I’d gone down there to tell him.”
    â€œOh, my dear!” said Bill involuntarily.
    Meg looked at him, half rueful, half smiling.
    â€œDarling Bill, I couldn’t. He was all pleased and happy. What was the good of upsetting him? It wasn’t as if he could do anything about it really. So I came away, and after that he just faded out.”
    â€œWell, he’s got to fade in again,” said Bill grimly. He was having some tolerably harsh thoughts about Henry Postlethwaite. You can’t stand in the place of a girl’s parents for years and then go off casually to an island and leave her with a disappearing husband and no money. The Professor was a vague old boy, but Bill felt perfectly competent to get through the vagueness and make him sit up and take notice. He restrained the feelings with which he was seething and said,
    â€œI’m going down to see him—probably tomorrow.”
    â€œOh, you mustn’t!” said Meg quickly.
    â€œI’m going to.”
    Meg sighed. Bill was most dreadfully obstinate. If he had made up his mind to go, he would go. And quite suddenly she didn’t want to go on talking about Uncle Henry. She said so before she knew that she was going to say anything at all.
    â€œOh, Bill, don’t let’s talk about it any more. I—oh, Bill, please —”
    She didn’t finish her sentence—she didn’t need to finish it. Her sudden flush and the distressed look in her eyes spoke for her. She wanted to leave all those things which had hurt her. She wanted to get away from them, to forget for an hour, to stop thinking, to take this evening as a respite from endurance, and in that respite to give herself up to all the gay and pleasant surface impressions with which she was surrounded—lights, flowers, music; the sort of food she hadn’t tasted for months; Bill looking at her as if he found her good to look at.… She wanted to draw a charmed circle round this hour and keep it happy. She had been unhappy for two whole years. She wanted her hour.
    They had their coffee and rose to go. It was just then that an odd thing happened. A couple who were sitting at the table behind them got up, the man of a flushed amplitude with a hanging jowl and bright greedy eyes, the woman a platinum blonde in a backless dress of silver gauze, hair, dress and skin all pale, all shimmering under the many lights. Bill, at a cursory glance, took her for the next thing to an albino and felt vaguely repelled. Before he got any farther than that, Meg, a pace in front of him, checked suddenly. She turned, and as she turned, he saw her hand go up to the neck of her dress and come down again with a little crumpled handkerchief just showing between her fingers. The handkerchief fell to the floor. Bill picked it up, but when Meg had thanked him and moved on again the couple were still beside their table. The woman was lighting a cigarette. Her eyes were a pale, hard grey. She used an odd shade of lipstick, the colour of—now what in mischief’s name was it the colour of?
    Meg went past without a glance, and Bill followed her. Then, when they had almost reached the door, he looked round again.
    The woman was holding her cigarette between the first