Read Online Death and the Dancing Footman by Ngaio Marsh - Free Book Online Page B

parchment. The lips held their enforced travesty of a smile but they trembled and the large eyes were blurred by tears.
    “Sandra, my dear, what is it?” cried Hersey.
    “I can’t stay here. I want you to help me. I’ve got to get away from this house.”
    “Sandra! But why?” Hersey knelt by Mrs. Compline. “You’re not thinking of the gossip about Nick and the Pirate, blast her eyes?”
    “What gossip? I don’t know what you mean. What about Nicholas?”
    “It doesn’t matter. Nothing. Tell me what’s happened.” Hersey took Mrs. Compline’s hands between her own and, feeling them writhe together in her grasp, was visited by an idea that the distress which Mrs. Compline’s face was incapable of expressing had flowed into these struggling hands. “What happened?” Hersey repeated.
    “Hersey, that man, Jonathan’s new friend, I can’t meet him again.”
    “Aubrey Mandrake?”
    “No, no. The other.”
    “Dr. Hart?”
    “I can’t meet him.”
    “But why?”
    “Don’t look at me. I know it’s foolish of me, Hersey, but I can’t tell you if you look at me. Please go on dressing and let me tell you.”
    Hersey returned to the dressing-table and presently Mrs. Compline began to speak. The thin exhausted voice, now well-controlled, lent no colour to the story of despoiled beauty. It trailed dispassionately through her husband’s infidelities, her own despair, her journey to Vienna, and her return. And Hersey, while she listened, absently made up her own face, took off her net, and arranged her hair. When it was over she turned towards Mrs. Compline but came no nearer to her.
    “But can you be sure?” she said.
    “It was his voice. When I heard of him first, practising in Great Chipping, I wondered. I said so to Deacon, my maid. She was with me that time in Vienna.”
    “It was over twenty years ago, Sandra. And his name—”
    “He must have changed it when he became naturalized.”
    “Does he look at all as he did then?”
    “No. He has changed very much.”
    “Then—”
    “I am not positive, but I am almost positive. I can’t face it, Hersey, can I?”
    “I think you can,” said Hersey, “and I think you will.”
    Jonathan stood in front of a blazing fire in the drawing-room. Brocaded curtains hung motionless before the windows, the room glowed with reflected light and, but for the cheerful hiss and crackle of burning logs, was silent. The night outside was silent, too, but every now and then Jonathan heard a momentary sighing as if the very person of the north wind explored the outer walls of Highfold. Presently one of the shutters knocked softly at its frame and then the brocaded curtains stirred a little, and Jonathan looked up expectantly. A door at the far end of the room opened and Hersey Amblington came in.
    “Hersey, how magnificent! You have dressed to please me, I believe. I have a passion for dull green and furs. Charming of you, my dear.”
    “You won’t think me so charming when you hear what I’ve got to say,” Hersey rejoined. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Jo.”
    “What an alarming phrase that is,” said Jonathan. “Will you have a drink?”
    “No, thank you. Sandra Compline has been threatening to go home.”
    “Indeed? That’s vexing. I hope you dissuaded her?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “Splendid. I’m so grateful. It would have quite spoiled my party.”
    “I told her not to give you the satisfaction of knowing you had scored.”
    “Now that really
is
unfair,” cried Jonathan.
    “No, it’s not. Look here, did you know about Sandra and your whey-faced boy-friend?”
    “Mandrake?”
    “Now, Jo, none of that nonsense. Sandra confides in her maid, and she tells me the maid is bosom friends with your Mrs. Pouting. You’ve listened to servants’ gossip, Jo. You’ve heard that Sandra thought this Hart man might be the Dr. Hartz who made that appalling mess of her face.”
    “I only wondered. It would be an intriguing coincidence.”
    “I’m