Read Online Gay Phoenix by Michael Innes - Free Book Online

that it had. Moreover Butter could scarcely apprehend the slightest danger to attend the forthcoming business meeting in a respectable public house.
    Could matters be so contrived, however, that this confidence on Butter’s part would turn out to have been misplaced? Was there some neat and safe way of ensuring that the undertakers would be running their tape measure over an obscure hotel employee before the night was out?
    This large question was still with Povey as he drank his third glass. He had some quite wild and desperate thoughts. If in the wretched pub opposite the bandstand he contrived the appearance of a drunken quarrel with Butter and bashed his skull in with a pint pot he would probably get off with a stiff sentence for manslaughter. But would it be any less stiff than what came one’s way for forgery, embezzlement and whatever other crimes and misdemeanours were incidental, in the eyes of the law, to the perfectly rational expedient of taking on the identity of a wealthy elder brother?
    Povey tried again. Could he suggest to Butter that a desirable privacy for their discussion could be obtained by taking a late evening stroll along the virtually deserted pier, and then at a suitable opportunity simply topple his victim into the sea? Unfortunately Butter wasn’t a fool, and if he agreed to such an expedition – which was unlikely in itself – he would take damned good care of himself in the course of it. In fact any proposal which involved taking Butter unawares was a dead duck from the start.
    Another inferior waiter had wheeled up another trolley. Povey stared in a mild nausea at the sticky or glazed or glutinous concoctions it displayed. Some looked so effectively poisonous that he would have given half his fortune to be able to ram Butter’s snout hard into one or other of them. Gloomily, he waved the thing away, and called for Stilton instead. It was just after this had been scooped out for him that he became aware he was being observed.
    Often enough in a large restaurant, of course, you are conscious of something of the kind. Another guest – usually a solitary one – finds himself with nothing better to do than to take a perfectly idle interest in you. He studies your feeding habits, or speculates on your bank balance or your sexual tastes. Perhaps the man a few tables away was doing no more than this. Povey was disturbed, all the same, and in a moment he realized why; here was the same person who had appeared to be taking an unnecessary and covert interest in Butter and himself earlier in the evening.
    It was possible that the man’s scrutiny proceeded merely from the fact that he believed himself to have recognized, behind the dark glasses, the elusive and mildly interesting Charles Povey. Although extremely wealthy (far wealthier than Arthur in his most sanguine moments had anticipated), Charles had been in no sense a prominent public figure, and identifying him would scarcely be a matter for major excitement. Still, over the past year or so he had been getting increasingly into the press – for the simple reason that, not being Charles but Arthur, he had been obliged rather to play up the elusiveness. It was one of the increasing difficulties of the situation that this reputation for major eccentricity was almost bound to grow. It was already turning up in the gossip columns from time to time. So here was a tolerably familiar and unalarming explanation of why this fellow was intermittently staring at him.
    Povey was alarmed, nevertheless. His new and shocking situation vis-à-vis the abominable Butter was quite enough to account for this; it was a state of affairs that would render anybody jumpy. But some other and obscure factor was at work, and presently it came to him. That afternoon, and while all-unconscious of what impended over him, Arthur Povey had been feeling not only carefree but positively gay, and he had signalized a state of mind not now very familiar to him by entering a