Read Online In Pale Battalions by Robert Goddard - Free Book Online Page B

around the furnishings of the room—left intact for our visit, I surmised—letting my mind recall the fire that had blazed in the now bare grate on the night of Olivia’s engagement party. I could almost hear the deafening tones of the jazz they’d been playing on the gramophone, could almost taste the champagne I’d been forced to drink.
    “Do you mean to tell me,” Tony was saying, “that my wife—
    Lady Powerstock’s granddaughter—”
    “The phrasing of the will refers to the doubts surrounding your wife’s parentage, Mr. Galloway. That is why I thought we might leave it unread.”
    My eyes stung again, as they had that night, as if once more the room was full of cigarette smoke, as if once more I could see Olivia watching me, watching her future husband . . . I rose from the sofa, determined to break the spell of Meongate for ever.
    “I’m grateful for your tactful handling of the matter, Mr.
    Mayhew.”
    Tony looked at me in astonishment. “Leonora!”
    “I’ve no intention of contesting the will, Tony. Walter is welcome to everything. Has he signified his intentions for the house, Mr. Mayhew?”
    “The contents are to be auctioned. As for the house itself, I believe Mr. Payne intends to refurbish and modernize it. He has spo

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    ken of opening some form of country club, of turning the grounds into a golf course.”
    “I’m sure it’ll be a great success.”
    “There is one thing, however.” Mayhew cleared his throat. “To describe Mr. Payne as sole beneficiary was a slight exaggeration on my part. There was a minor bequest to you.”
    “Why didn’t you say so before?” snapped Tony.
    “I do beg your pardon. It is extremely minor. Are you quite well, Mrs. Galloway?” Mayhew had noticed me shiver and shot a piercing glance in my direction.
    “It’s rather cold in here, that’s all.” I drew up the collar of my coat, but not to ward off the chill. I had shivered at the thought of what bequest Olivia could have devised for me. Suddenly, for the first time in years, I thought of the bloodstained book she’d taken from me the night of Payne’s death. Had she destroyed it, as I’d hoped? And how much did Mayhew know? What had he gleaned from Olivia through the long years of their professional association?
    There was no way of telling from his blank, pinched, expressionless face.
    A silence fell, as if he were judging whether I would ever summon the resolution to ask him what gift Olivia had left me. Nor did I. It was Tony who spoke. “Damn it all, man, what is the bequest?”
    “Lady Powerstock expressed the wish that Mrs. Galloway should have something by which to remember her former guardian.
    It takes the form of . . . two paintings.”
    “Paintings?” I spoke more from relief than surprise.
    “Yes. I have them here.” He crossed to the far corner of the room, where a large rectangular shape stood against the wall, covered with a dustsheet. “I gather they have no commercial value.
    They were painted by Lady Powerstock’s first husband, a Mr.
    Bartholomew. His work, I fear, is not in vogue.”
    Tony walked across, tugged the dustsheet aside and levered the two paintings apart to examine them. There was no need for me to see them, however. I knew which paintings they were, where they had previously hung and whose face we might find staring out of them.
    “Were these typical of Bartholomew’s work?” Tony asked.
    “I cannot say,” Mayhew replied. “I am not a connoisseur.”
     
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R O B E R T G O D D A R D
    “I don’t want them,” I heard myself say. “They can be auctioned with everything else.”
    “If you’re certain.”
    “I am.” As Olivia must have been that I would not keep them. It was her parting gesture—defiant, distasteful, detestable.
    Tony replaced the dustsheet and turned back to me. “Hold on, darling. Never look a gift horse—”
    “My mind’s made up.”
    Something in my expression must have told Tony I