False Scent by Ngaio Marsh Read Free Book Online

of her own loving-kindness. She returned to the house and found Richard in the hall.
    “Darling!” she cried. “All settled! I’ve seen your buddies and asked them. The old fuddy-duddy’s heaven, isn’t he? Out of this world. And the girl’s the nicest little thing. Are you pleased?”
    “But,” Richard said, amazed. “Are they…? Did Anelida say they’d come?”
    “My dear, you don’t imagine, do you, that a bit-part fill-in at the Bonaventure is going to turn down an invitation to my birthday party!”
    “It’s not a bit-part,” Richard said. “They’re doing
Pygmalion
and she’s playing Eliza.”
    “Poor child.”
    He opened his mouth and shut it again.
    “There’s something,” Miss Bellamy said, “so endlessly depressing about those clubs. Blue jeans, beards and a snack-bar, no doubt.” He didn’t answer and she said kindly, “Well! We mustn’t let them feel too lost, must we? I’ll tell Maurice and Charles to be kind. And now, sweetie, I’m off to keep my date with the Great Play.”
    Richard said hurriedly, “There’s something I wanted to alter… Could we…”
    “Darling! You’re such heaven when you panic. I’ll read it and then I’ll put it in your study. Blessings!”
    “Mary — Mary, thank you so much.”
    She kissed him lightly and almost ran upstairs to read his play and to telephone Pinky and Bertie. She would tell them that she couldn’t bear to think of any cloud of dissonance overshadowing her birthday and she would add that she expected them at six-thirty. That would show them how ungrudging she could be. “After all,” she thought, “they’ll be in a tizzy because if I
did
do my stuff with the Management…” Reassured on all counts she went into her room.
    Unfortunately, neither Bertie nor Pinky was at home, but she left messages. It was now one o’clock. Half an hour before luncheon in which to relax and skim through Richard’s play. Everything was going, in the event, very well. “I’ll put me boots up,” she said to herself in stage cockney and did so on the chaise-longue in the bow-window of her room. She noticed that once again the azaleas were infected and reminded herself to spray them with Slaypest. She turned her attention, now growing languid, to the play.
Husbandry in Heaven. Not
a very good title, she thought. Wasn’t it a quotation from something? The dialogue seemed to be quite unlike Dicky: a bit Sloane Square, in fact. The sort of dialogue that is made up of perfectly understandable phrases that taken together add up to a kind of egg-headed Goon show. Was it or was it not in verse? She read Dicky’s description of the leading woman.
     
    “
Mimi comes on. She might be nineteen or twenty-nine. Her beauty is bone-deep. Seductive without luxury. Virginal and dangerous.
”
     
    “Hum!” thought Miss Bellamy.
     
    “
Hodge comes out of the Prompt corner. Wolf-whistles. Gestures unmistakably and with feline intensity.
”
     
    Now, why had that line stirred up some obscure misgivings? She turned the pages. It was certainly an enormously long part.
     
    “
Mimi: Can this be April, then, or have I, so early in the day misinterpreted my directive
?”
     
    “Hell!” thought Miss Bellamy.
    But she read one or two of the lines aloud and decided that they might have something. As she flipped over the pages she became more and more satisfied that Dicky had tried to write a wonderful part for her. Different. It wouldn’t do, of course, but at least the loving intention was there.
    The typescript tipped over and fell across her chest. Her temperaments always left her tired. Just before she dropped off she suffered one of those mysterious jolts that briefly galvanize the body. She had been thinking about Pinky. It may be fanciful to suppose that her momentary discomfort was due to a spasm of hatred rather than to any physical cause. However that may be, she fell at last into an unenjoyable doze.
    Florence came in. She had the flask of scent