The New Sonia Wayward by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page B

had now at last accurately analysed the whole situation. And he just didn’t know where to turn. In fact, it wasn’t Sonia Wayward who was at sea, after all. It was her husband. Murder wouldn’t do – for as soon as the people in the yacht told their story he would almost certainly be done for. Only one course remained open to him: the most disagreeable he could conceive. He must throw himself on Sonia’s mercy.
    After all, he said to himself as he unlocked the lavatory door and emerged again into the corridor, it wasn’t as if he had acted in any criminal way against Sonia. On the contrary, hadn’t he just this moment turned down the idea of murdering her? He had never even acted in any unfriendly spirit against her. If he had been a trifle unceremonious with her, that had been when he had supposed her to be dead. What he had done had been the result partly of shock and partly of a positively laudable plan to keep, so to speak, Sonia Wayward’s flag flying. If Sonia were reasonable – but unfortunately no woman is that – she would feel, on balance, that she owed him a certain gratitude for his conduct of the affair.
    Of course she might be nursing entirely mistaken notions. She might imagine that it hadn’t been a mere dead body that he had supposed himself to have chucked overboard. If this were so, the sooner he made an effort to re-establish himself in her good graces the better. It would be very awkward, for instance, if unjust indignation, bubbling up in her during the course of this journey, prompted her to leave the train at Oxford – which was the next stop – for the purpose of communicating with the police. Yes, he had better nerve himself to seek her out at once. There was something to be said, perhaps, for a first interview in the publicity, or semi-publicity, of a railway compartment.
    Petticate moved forward along the train. His vision was at least no longer playing tricks with him, and he could take in his fellow travellers, compartment by compartment, as he walked. There wasn’t, after all, any great crowd. Here and there even a second-class compartment was entirely empty. In others there were pieces of hand-luggage but no passengers. That meant that people were having tea in the restaurant car in front. Perhaps Sonia was there.
    He went on, glancing into one compartment after another. It was a most disagreeable occupation. At any moment he might find himself looking into the accusing eyes of his wife. The thought made him remember – and for a second or two it brought a quite fresh sense of shock – that they were eyes which he had clumsily attempted to close, when Sonia was lying in her coma in the cockpit of the yacht. Her eyes, being a very unusual dark green, were her most striking feature. And Petticate felt a most disconcerting dread at the prospect of meeting them. Nevertheless he pressed on. He pressed on, in fact, until he was brought up short by colliding with some massive but more or less pneumatic obstacle. He had been so intent upon the successive compartments as he passed them that he had bumped straight into a passenger walking in the other direction.
    Much to Petticate’s alarm, the passenger roared aloud. And he was very little reassured when he realized that the roar was a roar of laughter, and moreover that it proceeded through female lips. There could be only one explanation, and a glance, as he recovered balance, assured him of its correctness. Here, most disastrously, was another neighbour. It was Mrs Gotlop herself.
    ‘Why – if it isn’t my own enchanting Blimp!’
    Mrs Gotlop, who combined large expanses of tweed with a profusion of rings, earrings, and bangles of obtrusively barbaric suggestion, had seized Petticate’s hand in a savage grip. He disliked this even more than being greeted with such a foolish and impertinent nickname. But no sort of indignation ever registered with Mrs Gotlop, and by now Petticate was, after all, pretty well used to her. For