The Gazebo by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online Page A

business?’
    ‘Haven’t made up my mind yet. Partnership in a going concern, I think. I’ll get the house first.’
    ‘And the wife?’ She looked at him between her darkened lashes.
    He said lightly, ‘They might go together.’
    ‘And what do you mean by that?’
    ‘Oh, just my joke. The fact is I’ve got my eye on a place already. Used to see it when I was a kid and thought I’d like to live there some day. Never thought it’d come off, but you never know your luck – someone tipped me a winner and I made a packet. So it’s me for No. 1 Belview Road.’
    Fancy his wanting to buy the Grahams’ house and settle down in Grove Hill. She could think of a dozen better ways of spending money than that. She could think of a dozen better ways of helping him to spend it.
    She said with a dash of malice,
    ‘Well, your luck is out. There’s someone after it already.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘The Grahams happen to be friends of mine. I don’t know that they want to sell. They’ve been offered seven thousand, and they’re not jumping at it.’
    He gave an incredulous whistle.
    ‘Seven thousand? You’re kidding!’
    ‘Well, I’m not.’
    ‘Who’s the sucker?’
    ‘A man called Blount.’
    His face changed so suddenly that she was startled. He said in a voice that was more like the snarling of an animal,
    ‘The dirty double-crossing swine!’
    SIX
    MISS MADISON WAS always extremely offended if anyone alluded to her establishment as a boarding-house. The word had drab associations. It suggested something inferior to an hotel. Miss Madison took Paying Guests. The term guest house was not unacceptable. It was her aim to provide cheerful surroundings, nourishing and appetizing food, and the amenities of home at a moderate charge. Since she was a very good cook, her rooms were seldom empty. Old Mr Peters had occupied one of them ever since his wife died ten years ago. He might be a disconsolate widower, but the Miss Pimms often remarked on how much younger and better he had looked since he had gone to live at Miss Madison’s.
    Each of the rooms was furnished in a distinctive colour and was known by that name. Mr Peters had the Red Room. Old Mrs Bottomley, who had been there nearly as long as he had, occupied the Blue Room. She was in her middle eighties, and she had one of those fair downy complexions which seem to get fairer and downier as time goes on. She was a very nice old lady. She had blue eyes and fluffy white hair, and she really looked charming in her pale blue room. Mr and Mrs Blount were in the Pink Room, which was a pity, because poor Mrs Blount had no complexion at all, and the flowered carpet, the pink walls and curtains, and the twin beds with their rose-coloured bed-spreads, only made her look paler and plainer than ever. The pink was also very unfortunate as a background for her rather sparse sandy hair. Not that she herself was in the way of noticing such things as colour effects, but it afflicted Miss Madison who was. If another double room had been vacant, she would have pressed the Blounts to take it, though really when she came to think it over she didn’t know which of the other colours would have been any better. Yellow or green wouldn’t have been too bad with the hair, but she felt shaken when she considered what they might do to that pale flat face, those dull pale eyes. Miss Madison decided that it wasn’t worth worrying about. People who worried disseminated gloom. She considered cheerfulness to be a duty.
    Mrs Blount sat in the easy chair in her pink bedroom with a gaily coloured magazine on her lap. It was one of those publications which announce themselves frankly as appealing to Woman with a capital W. It contained household hints, the kind of love story in which everything always comes right in the end, advice on dress, on health, on the conduct of your love-life, on how to manage your house, your children, your husband, together with answers to correspondents, and most