Fog of Doubt by Christianna Brand Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t think he’s guessed?’
    â€˜Well, he’s a doctor,’ said Matilda, shrugging hopelessly. ‘Honestly, darling, I don’t know whether we ought not to tell him.’ And yet she was desperately reluctant to do so. Thomas’s heart was buried so deep, under so many layers of reserve and detachment and astringent unsentimentality, that if he broke it over this affair of his precious Rosie, there was no knowing how to apply the balms that might help to mend the heart of an easier man. ‘Oh, by the way, I don’t know how you’ll feel about this, but Raoul Vernet’s in London. He’s coming to dinner to-night.’
    Rosie sat bolt upright in bed and her jaw dropped. ‘ Raoul? ’
    Yes, I expect Raoul knows a thing or two about you, my puss! thought Matilda. Though what he could have to tell more shattering than Rosie’s own blithely shameless confession, it was difficult to imagine. Poor man, she thought, now that one comes to consider it, he’s probably coming here, trembling, to warn us of her affair with her student, never dreaming that she’s already quite gaily informed us herself. She said: ‘You needn’t see him if you don’t want to.’
    â€˜I don’t want to see anyone,’ said Rosie. She sat up in bed hugging herself and looking very white. ‘I’ve got a frightful pain.’
    â€˜A pain? Where? What kind of pain?’
    â€˜Well, just a pain , Tilda, all over. I mean, sort of all over here,’ said Rosie, making a circular movement with one hand in the general area of her stomach.
    Matilda looked at her dubiously. ‘What—all of a sudden, like this?’
    â€˜Sudden! I like that,’ said Rosie. ‘I’ve been dashing back and forth to the huh-ha all morning.’
    â€˜Well, stay where you are for a bit,’ said Matilda, not very sympathetically. She went down to the telephone with Gabriel, the poodle, at her heels, and rang up Thomas’s partner. ‘I say, Tedward, I’m terribly sorry to worry you, but Rosie doesn’t seem too well. You wouldn’t be passing this way, would you? Thomas has gone.’
    â€˜I’ll drop in this morning, Tilda,’ said Tedward immediately.
    â€˜Oh, bless your little cotton socks, Tedward, could you?’
    â€˜I’ll be round,’ said Tedward, cheerfully.
    Melissa was coming downstairs from Granny’s room. ‘Is Mrs. Evans all right?’
    â€˜Yes, she’s fine,’ said Melissa. ‘She’s in the desert to-day—I think she’s in an old silent film or something, ackcherly, The Shake or something.’ She added with a rare gleam of humour that that was rather a comfort because there was no chance of a flood in the desert and very little of earthquake or fire so they ought to have a quiet morning.
    Matilda sent her out shopping for to-night’s dinner, and lugged the baby in from the deepening fog. Tedward arrived and was closeted with Rosie. He came downstairs and accepted a cup of coffee in the office. ‘I don’t think it’s anything out of the way. What brought on this pain, do you know?’
    â€˜I think it was the mention of a gentleman called Monsieur Raoul Vernet from Geneva. He’s coming to dinner to-night.’
    â€˜From Geneva?’ said Tedward.
    â€˜Yes, he’s suddenly turned up and says he wants to talk to me. I suppose she’s scared of him spilling the beans—though I should have thought she’d spilt enough herself, already.’
    â€˜She’s told you everything has she?’
    â€˜Yes, she’s perfectly frank about it; she doesn’t seem in the least ashamed.’
    â€˜They aren’t these days,’ said Tedward, tolerantly. ‘Who is this Raoul Vernet?’
    â€˜Well, he’s a chap I did a bit of bundling with myself four years ago; I met him when Thomas was at some conference at Lucerne or somewhere