Grave Mistake by Ngaio Marsh Read Free Book Online

the Marquise de Sevigné in Paris, which she had made but a feeble attempt to hide from the dietetic notice of her doctor. Above all, there was the pervasive scent of almond oil enclosed in a thin glass container that fitted over the light bulb of her table-lamp. Altogether the room, like Sybil herself, went much too far but, again like Sybil, contrived to get away with it.
    “Splendid,” said Dr. Schramm, withdrawing his stethoscope. He turned away and gazed out of the window with professional tact while she rearranged herself.
    “There!” she said presently.
    He returned and gazed down at her with the bossy, possessive air that she found so satisfactory.
    “I begin to be pleased with you,” he said.
    “Truly?”
    “Truly. You’ve quite a long way to go, of course, but your general condition is improving. You’re responding.”
    “I feel better.”
    “Because you’re not allowed to take it out of yourself. You’re a highly strung instrument, you know, and mustn’t be at the beck and call of people who impose upon you.”
    Sybil gave a deep sigh of concealed satisfaction.
    “You do so understand,” she said.
    “Of course I do. It’s what I’m here for. Isn’t it?”
    “Yes,” said Sybil, luxuriating in it. “Yes, indeed.”
    He slid her bracelet up her arm and then laid his fingers on her pulse. She felt sure it was going like a train. When, after a final pressure, he released her she said as airily as she could manage: “I’ve just written a card to an old friend of yours.”
    “Really?”
    “To ask her to lunch on Saturday. Verity Preston.”
    “Oh yes?”
    “It must have been fun for you, meeting again after so long.”
    “Well, yes. It was,” said Dr. Schramm, “
very
long ago. We used to run up against each other sometimes in my student days.” He looked at his watch. “Time for your rest,” he said.
    “You must come and talk to her on Saturday.”
    “That would have been very pleasant.”
    But it turned out that he was obliged to go up to London on Saturday to see a fellow medico who had arrived unexpectedly from New York.
    Verity, too, was genuinely unable to come to Greengages, having been engaged for luncheon elsewhere. She rang Sybil up and said she hadn’t seen Prue but Mrs. Jim reported she was staying with friends in London.
    “Does that mean Gideon Markos?”
    “I’ve no idea.”
    “I’ll bet it does. What about ghastly C.C.?”
    “Not a sign of him as far as I know. I see by the shipping news that the
Poseidon
came into Southampton the day before yesterday.”
    “Keep your fingers crossed. Perhaps we’ll escape after all.”
    “I think not,” said Verity.
    She was looking through her open window. An unmistakable figure shambled toward her up the avenue of limes.
    “Your stepson,” she said, “has arrived.”
     
    iii
    Claude Carter was one of those beings whose appearance accurately reflects their character. He looked, and in fact was, damp. He seemed unable to face anything or anybody. He was almost forty but maintained a rich crop of post-adolescent pimples. He had very little chin, furtive eyes behind heavy spectacles, a vestigial beard and mouse-coloured hair that hung damply, of course, halfway down his neck.
    Because he was physically so hopeless, Verity entertained a kind of horrified pity for him. This arose from a feeling that he couldn’t be as awful as he looked and that anyway he had been treated unfairly: by his Maker in the first instance and probably in the second, by his masters (he had been sacked from three schools), his peers (he had been bullied at all of them) and life in general. His mother had died in childbirth and he was still a baby when Sybil married his father, who was killed in the blitz six months later and of whom Verity knew little beyond the fact that he collected stamps. Claude was brought up by his grandparents, who didn’t care for him. These circumstances, when she thought of them, induced in Verity a muddled sense of