Strike Out Where Not Applicable by Nicolas Freeling Read Free Book Online Page A

attack?’
    â€˜Correct. Does this young chap say he was subject to vertigo?’
    â€˜No. He said he didn’t believe in it, for reasons he’d tell me but he didn’t.’
    â€˜I can. Constitution is remarkable, going by these lurid tales of overeating and drinking you tell me.’
    â€˜Hearsay.’
    â€˜Because you can take it from me he died from being hit on the head by an object forming a depressed fracture; cranial trauma and nothing else. Damn, I’m in that piddle of a pond again.’
    â€˜He might have been hit by a golf ball. Picking it up afterwards for me to find in his pocket.’
    â€˜Was there anything interesting in his pockets?’
    â€˜A box of cigars, three dirty handkerchiefs, a large assortment of keys and a bottle of laxative pills.’
    â€˜You’re not satisfied, then?’
    â€˜Not the least bit. I say – a brand new Dunlop.’
    After the roast beef was the equally classic apple tart with cream.
    â€˜Sit down. I want to talk.’
    Arlette, who had overeaten slightly – also rather classic – poured herself a small glass of kummel.
    â€˜Tell me about these people. You’ve often made remarks about one or the other. Could you make a potted biography? Like Stendhal.’
    â€˜Bigillion, a good heart, an economical and honest man, chief greffier to the Tribunal of the First Instance, killed himself around 1827, fed up I believe with being cocufied, but with no real bad feeling towards his wife’ – it was one of his favourite passages from a favourite bedtime book,
The Life of Henry Brulard
.
    Arlette lit a cigarette slowly, remembering an occasion in the north of Holland when she had been told to study the habits of a suburban street. She had been horrified – younger then. She was no longer alarmed that people she habitually met and talked to were criminals.
    â€˜I began by being disgusted with the atmosphere. Later I found it amusing, but I was sorry for Janine, who is more sensitive to snubs, and I remember what that was like – you know the way they have here of being anti-French and how it hurt my feelings once upon a time. Recall that cretinous woman who said she couldn’t understand anyone ever going to France – what was there in France? – nothing! These sisters have something the same act, and one reminded me the other day – she said, “Paris is finished of course – you can’t get anything there!” They go into ecstasies about Mary Quant! They talk pidgin English and tell each other about London; they buy copies of the
Observer
and leave them lying about. Lot of namedropping – they gas on about Harrods. I’m isolated, which doesn’t bother me, but is rougher on Janine, who sticks to me for support and talks French – she’s Dutch of course, but out of a bread-and-cheese family, and talks French to hide her accent, which is like them, but rather sweet. She’s shy, really. Do I go on?’
    â€˜Marion.’
    â€˜Can’t make my mind up. Times I think she’s a bitch, others I like her. She has a good act of letting Francis rule the roost, but on the quiet I think she makes the decisions. That might be why he blusters – that act of shouting at stable-girls. She surprises one sometimes – nobody’s nasty all the time, are they?’
    â€˜Make a pretty convincing effort sometimes. Go on.’
    â€˜Francis forces things sometimes by simply shouting her down – even making scenes in public – but she knows how to give in graciously. Where money is concerned I’m sure she has the last word – they achieve quite a good balance.’
    â€˜Marguerite?’
    â€˜She’s the kind of person everyone likes. Immense charm. Lotsof vitality. Dresses oddly – she’s stocky, solid, with a lot of bum and those great massive breasts that strike you down – but she has a lot of good looks.