Read Online Out Of The Past by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online Page B

he’d want to keep quiet. In fact Hosy might have wanted to see Felipy, but Felipy mightn’t have been so keen on seeing Hosy. People don’t always want to meet their relations.”
    “They do not—and with reason.”
    Lamb frowned.
    “Well, that was a week ago. I told him how many people disappear every year, and that about three quarters of them turned up again.”
    Frank cocked an eyebrow.
    “I can’t make out why you were seeing him at all, sir.”
    Lamb jerked open a drawer, looked for something that hadn’t ever been there, and shut it again with some force.
    “Oh, he came along with an introduction. You know the sort of thing—Sir Somebody Something in the South American business line who wants to oblige Signor Somebody Else who doesn’t mind putting in a word for Hosy who is some kind of an agent of his. As I say, I told him his brother would probably turn up, and no call to think anything had happened to him. He waved his hands a lot and talked nineteen to the dozen about his brother being murdered, and went away.”
    “Is that all, sir?”
    “No, it isn’t. I shouldn’t be talking to you about it if it was. He’s been here again. This time he says he’s found his brother.”
    Frank began to say something and stopped.
    “Picked up out of the river.”
    “Dead?”
    “Quite a time. We’d passed on Felipy’s description, and he was sent for to identify the body. He says it’s his brother all right, and he swears he’s been murdered. The post mortem shows a blow on the back of the head. Well, it might have been accidental, or it mightn’t. You can go down and look into it.”
    CHAPTER 9
    Going in through the Annings’ front door at ten o’clock that night, Alan Field encountered Darsie coming out of her office. He smiled and said,
    “Punctual to the moment, you see.”
    The smile met with no response. She said, “Thank you. Goodnight,” and turned back into the little room. She went across to the bookcase and appeared to be selecting a novel.
    Alan’s smile deepened as he followed her, closing the door behind him.
    “Don’t I get a few kind words?”
    She turned round, her face quite blank.
    “I haven’t got anything to say to you, and you know it. You are only here because—”
    He broke in with a laugh.
    “Because I pointed out that it would make a good deal of talk if you turned me away. The house isn’t full, and it would certainly give Esther and all the rest of them up at Cliff Edge something to think about if you refused a nice eligible boarder like me!”
    “That is why you are here. It is the only reason. I have nothing to say to you. Goodnight.”
    She walked past him, turned the key in the front door lock, shot the bolt, and went on up the wide, easy stair without looking back. It gave him a good deal of amusement to reflect that he had made her take him in, and that she was hating every minute of it. How stupid women were. All this time gone by, and she couldn’t even pretend she didn’t care!
    He slept soundly, and woke with pleasant anticipations. Esther would pay up, and so would Adela when it came to the pinch—he had no real doubt about it. And there was Pippa—he was going to enjoy dealing with Pippa. She didn’t like him much, and she had never been at pains to hide it. She was going to pay for that.
    By ten o’clock he was asking the late Octavius Hardwick’s elderly butler for Mrs. Field and being informed that she was in the morning-room. It was the place to which she had taken him yesterday, and gloomier than ever. The mist which would presently melt into heat had not yet cleared. It hung before the windows.
    Esther looked up from a small writing-table of the same black wood as the hideous overmantel. She did not refuse his affectionate kiss, but she did not respond to it. Her eyelids were pink and swollen.
    He took her hand and put it to his lips.
    “My dear, you’ve been crying.”
    “Yes—”
    “I haven’t been very happy myself. You looked