The Second Shot by Anthony Berkeley Read Free Book Online Page B

with me?’ I asked De Ravel.
    ‘Oh, probably,’ he said, with rather more indifference than I cared about. After all, it should have been the duty of all of us to keep the conversational ball rolling.
    ‘I don’t, at all,’ said his wife, in her deep, lazy tones. ‘I’m sure that if anyone was murdered at Minton Deeps, John would be able to detect the criminal at once.’
    It was then that Armorel had her fatal inspiration. ‘Well,’ she cried, ‘let’s murder somebody and see.’
    I think we all sat up.
    ‘Really, Armorel!’ exclaimed dear Ethel.
    ‘No, not really at all, silly. Pretend to, I mean. I think it’s a jolly good idea, don’t you, Paul?’ Positively, Armorel was getting quite excited over her strange notion. ‘We could leave all the right clues about, you see, and then set John to detect it. The murder game, with variations.’
    ‘By Jove, Armorel, that’s a great scheme.’ To my surprise Paul de Ravel, whom I would have credited with better sense, was almost as enthusiastic as Armorel herself. ‘We should have to act it properly – work out a story and all that – to make sure of leaving just the right clues and no more.’
    ‘We could get any amount of fun out of it,’ Armorel shouted. ‘It’d be better than all the charades in the world.’
    ‘Every time. What do you say, darling?’ Naturally Paul had to refer the thing to his wife before taking any decision.
    Mrs de Ravel stretched herself delicately; her polished skin, very white, gleamed in the lamplight; her sinuous body seemed to coil itself into a new position in her chair. She had not watched the door once since Eric and Elsa Verity disappeared through it, but I knew, Ethel knew, everyone in the room except her besotted husband knew that she was waiting, waiting, waiting; just doing nothing at all but waiting. And for what? That nobody knew.
    She smiled at her husband – a curious smile, I thought, in which a faint contempt was blended with a hint of indescribably malicious amusement, as if at some joke that only she could see and which she would not share with anyone. Her words, however, were banal enough, though spoken in those tones of hers which lent a vast significance to the most platitudinous of sentiments. ‘I think the idea has great possibilities,’ she said slowly. It was a lot of preparation for so simple a statement, but that was just like Sylvia de Ravel.
    ‘We’ll show John up,’ gloated Paul, twirling his little black moustache. One would hardly have thought that the man was turned thirty-five; he was putting himself on a level with Armorel.
    Ethel and I, as apparently the only members of the gathering to retain our common sense, endeavoured to pour cold water on the idea, but to no purpose. Even John Hillyard added his weight to it.
    Indeed he made things even worse. ‘Why confine the showing up to me?’ he said, in his slow way. ‘Why not show up the whole tribe? Make a party of it. Invite them all. Half a dozen at least live this side of Devonshire. I’ll ring them up, if you like; I’ve met most of ‘em’.
    ‘Yes!’ shrieked Armorel. ‘Tell them like this, John:“Tomorrow morning a murder will be committed in the bluebell wood at Minton Deeps. All necessary clues will be in evidence, and detectives will be admitted to the body five minutes after death. Spot the criminal.” ’
    ‘That’s the idea,’ grinned John, who really appeared to have taken leave of his senses.
    ‘Whom can we get?’
    I shrugged my shoulders at Ethel with a smile. She smiled back resignedly. The children, I gathered, were to be allowed to have their games.
    ‘Well, there’s Alicia Dammers, near Exeter,’ John was saying. ‘She’s a distinguished authoress, but she has published a detective story. And Morton Harrogate Bradley, at Salcombe. Oh, plenty of them. Yes, and another distinguished authoress who’s gone in for detective stories as a side line, Mrs Fitzwilliam; you know, she writes under the name