Suspicious Circumstances by Patrick Quentin Read Free Book Online Page A

those terrifying owls with ears which swoop by night on their prey.
    ‘Okay,’ she said and she flourished an arm like Mark Antony inflaming the Plebs in the Forum, ‘The time has come to make a speech. The time, the place — and the girl, if indeed she can be called a girl.’
    Ronnie jumped up and shouted, ‘Norma.’
    She ignored him and repeated, ‘The time has come for a speech. Speech. I have a philandering husband. Okay. He philanders from coast to coast, even stooping so low as to philander with a British-type so-called actress by the name of Sylvia La Mann, which is philandering more or less at its crummiest level. Okay. For all I care, he can continue to philander with almost anything in and out of skirts. But at one point I draw the line. Here is my line. I will not have my husband philandering with the oldest living motion-picture actress next to Clara Kimball Young and furthermore I will not have the oldest living motion-picture actress coo over me and be a spotless angel and nuzzle me with little friendly nudges and stuff me with lethal Swiss goodies out of the honeyed sweetness of her heart when all the time this oldest living motion-picture actress, be she Bulgarian, Rumanian, Swiss or Eskimo, is sneakily, schemingly, underhandedly, Swissishly trying to steal my husband, who is a bum anyway, who is …’ She swayed … ‘who is furthermore…’
    They had all been sitting, paralyzed, looking at her. Then suddenly Ronnie snapped. Ronnie, who was wildly temperamental, was always snapping. He clutched at his hair and screamed.
    ‘Enough. I won’t. I won’t. I won’t. I’ve had enough. I won’t.’ He flung out his finger at Norma. ‘Consider yourself fired as Ninon de Lenclos; consider yourself divorced as a wife; consider yourself, as far as I am concerned, the last woman on earth.’
    He swung around to Mother then. ‘Anny, dearest Anny, don’t pay any attention to this sweatered serpent, this oomph-owl. Take the part, I beg you, I implore you, I beseech you — take the part.’
    And then, to Pam’s utter astonishment, Mother made the switcheroo of all time. Pam thought it was the insult to the fondue that did it, because Mother had a very Swiss feeling about her fondues. If even Mr de Mille were to criticize them, he’d be her enemy for life. In any case, she just stood looking at Ronnie, then very slowly she turned on Norma a long, reproachful glance.
    ‘I have tried,’ she said. ‘As heaven is my witness, I have tried for old time’s sake to be a good friend to you, Norma Delanay. But now at last I realize there is no one — no one in the world — who can help you. I wash my hands.’
    She turned back to Ronnie then, doing the washing-of-hands bit. ‘very well, Ronnie dear. This is all my fault. I urged you to do this for Norma against your better judgment. I see now that I was wrong. And the least I can do, to show you how truly sorry I am, is to take the part.’
    Pam’s hopes surged up all over again, but they subsided almost instantly because of Norma. Giving her greatest interpretation to date of the Double-Crested Long-Eared Screech Owl, she lurched towards Mother and then stopped dead.
    ‘So,’ she said. ‘Not only my husband but my part. You steal not only my husband but my part. You steal…’
    And Ronnie broke in, shouting, ‘Shut up. Terrible woman, you’re out, out, out, ultimately out. Shut up.’
    And Norma got immensely grand then, Pam said. She clutched for the pearls around her sweater, missed them and then got them and elegantly crooked her little finger through them.
    ‘So this is the set-up with which we are now confronted. You will give my part to Anny, will you?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Ronnie.
    ‘And you will divorce me, will you?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Ronnie.
    ‘Hoh,’ said Norma. ‘You? Divorce me? Although it seems to have escaped your attention, there happens to be such a thing in the divorce laws as adultery, which little thing you happen to have