Read Online Cast For Death by Margaret Yorke - Free Book Online

Sunday he went to lunch with Jane, where he spent the afternoon clipping a hedge with his brother-in-law, and burning the trimmings. Andrew helped them both. Patrick left after tea, pleasantly tired and smelling of wood smoke.
    ‘Patrick’s broody,’ said Jane, when he had gone.
    ‘Oh?’ Michael was used to her speculations about her brother. She often fretted rather crossly about his mode of life.
    ‘Mm. His mind kept wandering. Didn’t you notice?’
    ‘Not really. We were just busy with the hedge,’ said Michael, who was blessed with an equable disposition and did not go looking for trouble.
    ‘We’re very good for him. He’s gone back to college now to dine in grandeur,’ said Jane. ‘If it wasn’t for us he’d know nothing about daily life and hedge-cutting. He’s got that suicide business on his mind, I suppose. I wish he’d leave it alone.’
    ‘He’s been useful, several times.’
    ‘I know. But he finds things out about himself while he’s uncovering crimes, and it’s not always happy for him,’ said Jane.
    ‘Darling, he’s a grown man – and he’s been a fellow of his college for a good many years now. Don’t worry so much about him.’
    ‘I’m not exactly worrying. I just think he compensates in some way for his own personal failures by sorting out other people’s,’ said Jane.
    ‘Is there anything wrong with that?’
    ‘No, not if it helps all round in the end. But it’s vicarious living. Don’t you agree?’
    ‘Well—’ Michael was not sure. ‘Up to a point, perhaps.’
    ‘He likes running home to St Mark’s when he’s had enough of the real world,’ said Jane. ‘It’s a retreat.’
    ‘Well, at least he makes little forays outside,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t shut himself up the whole time, like some academics.’
    ‘I hope he brings his Greek friend to see us,’ Jane said. ‘I want to meet him.’
    ‘He probably will,’ said Michael. ‘He’ll want to show him our English way of life.’
    Back at St Mark’s, Patrick was not dining in the grandeur imagined by Jane, for the college staff were having a rest and the kitchens were closed. He was, in fact, opening a tin of soup and eating biscuits and cheese for his supper. He had forgotten to shop, and the bread in his plastic bin was covered in flourishing mould.
    He was delighted when, at nine o’clock, Manolakis rang up to report his business in London concluded and to ask if he might return the next day.

 
Part VII
1
     
    Manolakis was eager for the experience of travelling by British Rail; trains were not a feature of life in Crete. However, Patrick insisted that he had a call to make in Dean Street and would collect him afterwards.
    He parked in Soho near the office of the agent whose address he had been given at the Fantasy Theatre. It was above a pizza restaurant, and strong, cheesy smells filtered up the stairway to the dark passage above, where a glass door bore the name Leila Waters, painted in black, and a sign instructed Enter and Wait.
    Patrick entered.
    In a small room with green walls and a cream ceiling, and an unvarnished board floor, three men sat on chairs ranged round the sides of the room like patients waiting for the doctor. Two looked despondent, the third desperately alert. None was young. Over their heads were ranged a variety of blown-up photographs, none of which showed a face which Patrick was able to recognise.
    A thin girl with frizzed hair and high platform soles sat typing at a desk in the corner.
    ‘She won’t see you without an appointment,’ was the response when Patrick asked for an audience with Leila Waters.
    ‘Please take her this and ask her if she would be good enough to spare me five minutes,’ said Patrick, as he took a card from his wallet and wrote a few words on the back of it.
    The girl looked at him suspiciously.
    ‘I’m not an actor. It’s about something else,’ said Patrick, and felt the atmosphere in the room change as the three waiting men stopped