The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake Read Free Book Online Page A

does.’
    ‘Well, yes and no,’ I said, rather overwhelmed by this frontal attack. I couldn’t take my eyes off her mouth. She opens it eagerly when one begins to speak, as though she’s about to guess what one is going to say. A not unattractive mannerism. I really can’t imagine what Callaghan meant when he called her ‘dumb’: frivolous, no doubt, but not dumb.
    I was floundering about, trying to say something to the point, when someone bawled out her name. She had to get back on the set. Despair. I saw it all slipping out of my hands. It was this that made me screw up my nerve and ask her if she’d have lunch with me some time soon, at the Ivy, I added, guessing her tastes. It worked like a charm. ‘Little lambs eat ivy,’ as the riddle goes. She looked at me, for the first time, as though I were really there and not an extension of her own fantastic little ego, and said Yes, she’d love to, what about Saturday? So that’s that. Callaghan gave me an ambiguous look, and the party broke up. The ice – though that is scarcely the correct word where Lena’s concerned – has been broken. But how, in heaven’s name, am I to get any further? Lead the conversation round to motor cars and manslaughter? Transparent.

24 July
    WELL, SAY WHAT you like, the expenses of this murder are going to be very heavy. Apart from the expense of spirit and the waste of shame involved in entertaining Lena, there are the actual bills. The girl eats with astonishing gusto – the little contretemps of last January does not seem to have impaired her appetite for long. Of course, I shall save a certain amount on ammunition and/or poison; I’ve no intention of using such crude and dangerous methods upon George. But the road to George, I can see, is going to be paved with five-pound notes.
    You perceive, gentle but no doubt perspicacious reader, that I’m in good spirits as I write this. Yes, you’re right. I believe I’m getting warmer, I believe I’m really moving in the proper direction.
    She turned up at the Ivy today in a sophisticated dress, black with touches of white, and one of those cute little eye-veils, all set to absorb lunch and admiration in equal quantities. I think I played up to her pretty well. No, let’s be honest, I had no difficulty at all in playing up to her, because she’s really quite a fascinating creature in her way and it will obviously pay me to combine pleasure with business, as long as I don’t get soft. She pointed out two famous actresses lunching there and said didn’t I think they were divinely beautiful creatures, and I said Yes, not so bad, suggesting with a look that they couldn’t hold a candle to Lena Lawson. Then I pointed out a bestselling novelist to her, and she said she was sure my books were much nicer than his. So that made us all square, and things were going famously.
    After a bit, I found myself telling her all about myself – all about Felix, that is. My early struggles, my travels, my legacy and the fat income from my books (an important part of the saga, this). There’s no harm her knowing the size of my bank balance; my brass may succeed where my beard fails. Of course, I kept the story as near to my real life history as possible. No point in gratuitous embroidery. I was chattering away – the solitary with an audience at last, quite an agreeable sensation – feeling no urgent desire to force the issue, when suddently I saw an opening and took it. She asked me if I’d lived in London for long. I said, ‘Yes, off and on. I find it easier to work here. I really preser the country, though – I suppose that’s because I’m a countryman. I was born in Gloucestershire.’
    ‘Gloucestershire?’ she said, almost in a whisper. ‘Oh, yes.’
    I was watching her hands. They tell more than the face, especially when it’s an actress. I saw the nails of her right hand – they are varnished red – bite into the palm. But that wasn’t all. The point is, she didn’t say