Hangmans Holiday by Dorothy L. Sayers Read Free Book Online Page A

affirmative, using a mixture of Spanish and Basque which she seemed to understand well enough.
    “I didn’t know you were a Basque scholar,” said Langley.
    “Oh, one picks it up. These people speak nothing else. But of course Basque is your speciality, isn’t it?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “I daresay they have told you some queer things about us. But we’ll go into that later. I’ve managed to make the place reasonably comfortable, though I could do with a few more modern conveniences. However, it suits us.”
    Langley took the opportunity to mumble some sort of inquiry about Mrs. Wetherall.
    “Alice? Ah, yes, I forgot—you have not seen her yet.” Wetherall looked hard at him with a kind of half-smile. “I should have warned you. You were—rather an admirer of my wife in the old days.”
    “Like everyone else,” said Langley.
    “No doubt. Nothing specially surprising about it, was there? Here comes dinner. Put it down, Martha, and we will ring when we are ready.”
    The old woman set down a dish upon the table, which was handsomely furnished with glass and silver, and went out. Wetherall moved over to the fireplace, stepping sideways and keeping his eyes oddly fixed on Langley. Then he addressed the armchair.
    “Alice! Get up, my dear, and welcome an old admirer of yours. Come along. You will both enjoy it. Get up.”
    Something shuffled and whimpered among the cushions. Wetherall stooped, with an air of almost exaggerated courtesy, and lifted it to its feet. A moment, and it faced Langley in the lamplight.
    It was dressed in a rich gown of gold satin and lace, that hung rucked and crumpled upon the thick and slouching body. The face was white and puffy, the eyes vacant, the mouth drooled open, with little trickles of saliva running from the loose corners. A dry fringe of rusty hair clung to the half-bald scalp, like the dead wisps on the head of a mummy.
    “Come, my love,” said Wetherall. “Say how do you do to Mr. Langley.”
    The creature blinked and mouthed out some inhuman sounds. Wetherall put his hand under its forearm, and it slowly extended a lifeless paw.
    “There, she recognises you all right. I thought she would. Shake hands with him, my dear.”
    With a sensation of nausea, Langley took the inert hand. It was clammy and coarse to the touch and made no attempt to return his pressure. He let it go; it pawed vaguely in the air for a moment and then dropped.
    “I was afraid you might be upset,” said Wetherall, watching him. “I have grown used to it, of course, and it doesn’t affect me as it would an outsider. Not that you are an outsider—anything but that—eh? Premature senility is the lay name for it, I suppose. Shocking, of course, if you haven’t met it before. You needn’t mind, by the way, what you say. She understands nothing.”
    “How did it happen?”
    “I don’t quite know. Came on gradually. I took the best advice, naturally, but there was nothing to be done. So we came here. I didn’t care about facing things at home where everybody knew us. And I didn’t like the idea of a sanatorium. Alice is my wife, you know—sickness or health, for better, for worse, and all that. Come along; dinner’s getting cold.”
    He advanced to the table, leading his wife, whose dim eyes seemed to brighten a little at the sight of food.
    “Sit down, my dear, and eat your nice dinner. (She understands that, you see.) You’ll excuse her table-manners, won’t you? They’re not pretty, but you’ll get used to them.”
    He tied a napkin round the neck of the creature and placed food before her in a deep bowl. She snatched at it hungrily, slavering and gobbling as she scooped it up in her fingers and smeared face and hands with the gravy.
    Wetherall drew out a chair for his guest opposite to where his wife sat. The sight of her held Langley with a kind of disgusted fascination.
    The food—a sort of salmis—was deliciously cooked, but Langley had no appetite. The whole thing was an outrage,