Death and the Dancing Footman by Ngaio Marsh Read Free Book Online Page B

Nicholas. And he added loudly: “Look here, what’s Jonathan up to?”
    “What do you mean, darling?” asked his mother quickly.
    “Nothing,” said Nicholas. “But I think I recognize the car.” He hung back as the others went into the house, and waited for Mandrake. He still wore Jonathan’s cape over his uniform and it occurred to Mandrake that since Nicholas allowed himself this irregularity he must be very well aware of its effectiveness. He put his hand on Mandrake’s arm. The others went into the house.
    “I say,” he said, “
is
Jonathan up to anything?”
    “How do you mean?” asked Mandrake, wondering what the devil Jonathan would wish him to reply.
    “Well, it seems to me this is a queerly assorted house-party.”
    “Is it? I’m a complete stranger to all the other guests, you know.”
    “When did you get here?”
    “Last night.”
    “Well, hasn’t Jonathan said anything? About the other guests, I mean?”
    “He was very pleased with his party,” said Mandrake carefully. “He’s longing for it to be an enormous success.”
    “Is he, my God!” said Nicholas. He turned on his heel and walked into the house.
    Mrs. Compline and Chloris went up to their rooms; the three men left their overcoats in a downstairs cloak-room where they noticed the twin of Jonathan’s cape. When they came back into the hall they could hear voices in the library. As if by common consent they all paused. There were three voices — Jonathan’s, a masculine voice that held a foreign suggestion in its level inflections, and a deep contralto.
    “I thought as much,” said Nicholas, and laughed unpleasantly.
    “What’s up?” William asked Mandrake.
    “Nothing, so far as I know.”
    “Come on,” said Nicholas. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go in.”
    He led the way into the library.
    Jonathan and his new arrivals stood before a roaring fire. The man had his back turned to the door, but the woman was facing it with an air of placid anticipation. Her face was strongly lit by a wall lamp and Mandrake’s immediate reaction to it was a sort of astonishment that Jonathan could have forgotten to say how spectacular she was. In Mandrake’s world women were either sophisticated and sleek or hideous and erratic. “Artificiality,” he was in the habit of saying, “is a fundamental in all women with whom one falls in love, and to so exquisite an extreme has artifice been carried that it sometimes apes nature with considerable success.” This subtlety of grooming appeared in Madame Lisse. Her hair was straight and from a central parting was drawn back and gathered into a knot at the nape of her neck. It lay close to her head like a black satin cap with blue high-lights. Her face was an oval, beautifully pale; her lashes needed no cosmetic to darken them; her mouth alone proclaimed her art, for it was sharply painted a dark red. Her dress was extremely simple, but in it her body seemed to be gloved rather than clothed. She was not very young, not as young as Chloris Wynne, not perhaps as pretty as Chloris Wynne either, but she had to the last degree the quality that Mandrake, though he knew very little French, spoke of and even thought of as “
soignée
. And, in her own vein, she was exceedingly beautiful.
    “Madame Lisse,” Jonathan was saying, “you know Nicholas, don’t you? May I introduce his brother; and Mr. Aubrey Mandrake? Hart, do you know…” Jonathan’s introductions faded gently away.
    Dr. Hart’s bow was extremely formal. He was a pale dark man with a compact paunch and firm white hands. He was clad in the defiant tweeds of a firmly naturalized ex-Central-European. Mandrake gathered from his manner that either he had not met Nicholas Compline and didn’t wish to do so, or else that he had met him and had taken a firm resolve never to do so again. Nicholas, for his part, acknowledged the introduction by looking at a point some distance beyond Dr. Hart’s left ear, and by uttering the words