Night at the Vulcan by Ngaio Marsh Read Free Book Online

putting Poole into a dinner jacket. Their backs were turned to Martyn. “Yes?” Poole said,
    “Miss Hamilton would like her cigarette case, if you please.”
    “I haven’t got it,” he said and shouted: “Helena!”
    “Hullo, darling?”
    “I haven’t got your case.”
    There was a considerable pause. The voice beyond the wall called: “No, no. Ben’s got it. Mr. Bennington, Martyn.”
    “I’m so sorry,” Martyn said, and made for the door, conscious of the little dresser’s embarrassment and of Poole’s annoyance.
    Mr. Clark Bennington’s room was on the opposite side of the passage and next the Greenroom. On her entrance Martyn was abruptly and most unpleasantly transported into the immediate past — into yesterday with its exhaustion, muddle and panic, to the moment of extreme humiliation when Fred Badger had smelt brandy on her breath. Mr. Bennington’s flask was open on his dressing-shelf and he was in the act of entertaining a thick-set gentleman with beautifully groomed white hair, wearing a monocle in a strikingly handsome face. This person set down his tumbler and gazed in a startled fashion at Martyn.
    “It’s not,” he said, evidently picking up with some difficulty the conversation she had interrupted, “it’s not that I would for the world interfere, Ben, dear boy. Nor do I enjoy raising what is no doubt a delicate subject in these particular circumstances. But I feel for the child damnably, you know. Damnably. Moreover, it does rather appear that the Doctor never loses an opportunity to upset her.”
    “I couldn’t agree more, old boy, and I’m bloody angry about it. Yes, dear, wait a moment, will you?” Mr. Bennington rejoined, running his speeches together and addressing them to no one in particular. This is my wife’s new dresser, J.G.”
    “Really?” Mr. J. G. Darcey responded and bowed politely to Martyn. “Good morning, child. See you later, Ben, my boy. Thousand thanks.”
    He rose, looked kindly at Martyn, dropped his monocle, passed his hand over his hair and went out, breaking into operatic song in the passage.
    Mr. Bennington made a half-hearted attempt to put his flask out of sight and addressed himself to Martyn.
    “And what,” he asked, “can I do for the new dresser?”
    Martyn delivered her message. “Cigarette case? Have I got my wife’s cigarette case? God, I don’t know. Try my overcoat, dear, will you? Behind the door. Inside pocket. No secrets,” he added obscurely. “Forgive my asking you. I’m busy.”
    But he didn’t seem particularly busy. He twisted round in his chair and watched Martyn as she made a fruitless search of his overcoat pockets. “This your first job?” he asked. She said it was not and he added: “As a dresser, I mean.”
    “I’ve worked in the theatre before.”
    “And where was that?”
    “In New Zealand.”
    “
Really
?” he said, as if she had answered some vitally important question.
    “I’m afraid,” Martyn went on quickly, “it’s not in the overcoat.”
    “God, what a bore! Give me my jacket then, would you? The grey flannel.”
    She handed it to him and he fumbled through the pockets. A pocket-book dropped on the floor, spilling its contents. Martyn gathered them together and he made such a clumsy business of taking them from her that she was obliged to put them on the shelf. Among them was an envelope bearing a foreign stamp and postmark. He snatched it up and it fluttered in his fingers. “Mustn’t lose track of that one, must we?” he said and laughed. “All the way from Uncle Tito.” He thrust it at Martyn. “Look,” he said and steadied his hand against the edge of the shelf. “What d’you think of
that
? Take it.”
    Troubled at once by the delay and by the oddness of his manner Martyn took the envelope and saw that it was addressed to Bennington.
    “Do you collect autographs,” Bennington asked with ridiculous intensity—“or signed letters?”
    “No, I’m afraid I don’t,” she said