Read Online Dead or Alive by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online Page B

under the light. It had been moved so that it might stand there. Its surface was broken by a small rectangular card, white against the warm polished brown.
    Meg came slowly to the table and looked down at it. The card lay there right in the middle, an ordinary calling card. It had neatly printed across it in the conventional manner:
    Mr Robin O’Hara .

VIII
    â€œIt sounds to me like a pack of nonsense!” said Garratt. He glared resentfully at Bill Coverdale and went on cramming tobacco into his pipe.
    Bill leaned against the mantelpiece and waited. It wasn’t the slightest use arguing with Garratt, but when he had told you what a damned fool you were he would as a rule give you a fair innings. He waited therefore quite amiably until the pipe was alight.
    Garratt tossed the match in the direction of the fireplace and missed it.
    â€œA pack of twaddle-bosh!” he said rudely. “First you say you wouldn’t recognize the woman you saw with O’Hara, and then you come here and tell me you’ve recognized her.”
    Bill nodded.
    â€œI recognized her all right.”
    â€œThen why did you tell me you wouldn’t be able to?”
    â€œI never said I wouldn’t know her. And when I saw this Delorne girl at the Luxe last night I recognized her at once—that is to say I recognized her lipstick.”
    â€œYou recognized her what?”
    â€œLipstick,” said Bill. “You know—the stuff girls put on their mouths.”
    He got a baleful glance.
    â€œHow do you mean you recognized it? Every woman in London plasters herself with the stuff!”
    â€œOh—you’ve noticed that? Then perhaps you’ve noticed that the stuff isn’t all the same colour. This particular brand wasn’t. It was pink, a sort of flannelette pink, and the minute I saw it I knew that I’d seen it before. And I knew when—and where.”
    â€œWell?”
    â€œThe night before I sailed last year—that’s when. And just beyond Robin O’Hara in a taxi—that’s where.”
    Garratt pulled at his pipe.
    â€œYou’re sure?”
    â€œYes, I am.”
    â€œYou can’t be!”
    Bill picked up the spent match and dropped it amongst the wood and coal of the unlighted fire.
    â€œWell, there’s some corroborative evidence—”
    â€œWhy didn’t you say so?” snapped Garratt.
    Bill laughed a little.
    â€œJust waiting for you to say your piece,” he said.
    â€œWell, what is it? I suppose you know I’ve got a job to get on with. What’s your evidence? Trot it out!”
    â€œWell, Meg O’Hara obviously recognized the girl—saw her, and didn’t want to see her—dropped her handkerchief and turned away to pick it up just as we were passing Miss Delorne. Then when I pressed her she said she knew who she was. She gave me her name—Della Delorne—and when I went on pressing her she told me she’d seen her with Robin O’Hara.” He hesitated, and then went on with some change of voice. “It’s no good trying to keep things back in an affair of this kind, so you’d better know that she was going to sue for a divorce. O’Hara was a rotten husband. He was a cruel devil, you know, and she’d have been well quit of him. I gathered that Della Delorne would have been the co-respondent.”
    Garratt blew out another cloud of smoke. He looked through it sharply at Bill Coverdale and said,
    â€œHow much did you know of this when you—recognized her?”
    â€œI didn’t know any of it.”
    â€œSure of that?”
    â€œOh, quite sure.”
    â€œAnd after you recognized this girl’s lipstick Mrs O’Hara gave you to understand that she was going to have cited her as co-respondent—if O’Hara hadn’t disappeared?”
    â€œThat’s what it amounted to.”
    â€œAll right,” said Garratt, “we’ll get on to her.