Read Online To Fear a Painted Devil by Ruth Rendell - Free Book Online

Patrick held out to him, but Smith-King was temporarily diverted. He looked quickly about him as if to make sure that most of the others were dancing, and he touched Patrick’s arm nervously.
    ‘Oh, Pat, old man.…’
    ‘Not now, Denholm.’ Patrick’s smile was brief, mechanical, gone in a flash. ‘I don’t care to mix business with pleasure.’
    ‘Later then?’
    Patrick glanced at the ashtray Smith-King was filling with stubs, opened the cigarette box insolently and let the lid fall almost instantly.
    ‘I’m not surprised you’ve got a lump,’ he said, ‘but don’t bore my guests, will you?’
    ‘Funny chap,’ Smith-King said and an uneasy flush seeped across his face. ‘Doesn’t care what he says.’ The red faded as Patrick strolled away. ‘Now about this said lump.…’
    Greenleaf turned towards him and tried to look as if he was listening while keeping his thoughts and half an eye on the other guests.
    Most of them were his patients except the Selbysand the Gavestons who were on Dr. Howard’s private list, but he sized them up now from a psychological rather than a medical standpoint. As he sometimes said to Bernice, he had to know about human nature, it was part of his job.
    The Carnabys now, they weren’t enjoying themselves. They sat apart from the rest in a couple of deck chairs on the lawn and they weren’t talking to each other. Freda had hidden her empty shandy glass under the seat; Carnaby, like a parent clutching his rejected child, sat dourly, holding what looked like a tin in one of Waller’s paper wrappings.
    Beyond them among the currant bushes Marvell was showing Joan and Nancy the ancient glories of the Manor kitchen gardens. Greenleaf knew little about women’s fashions but Nancy’s dress looked out of place to him, ill-fitting (she’ll have to watch her weight, said the medical part of him, or her blood pressure will go soaring up in ten years’ time). It contrasted badly with the expensive scent she wore, whiffs of which he had caught while they were standing together by Tamsin’s birthday table. Why, incidentally, had Gage looked as black thunder when Bernice handed over their own phial of perfume?
    He was dancing with Tamsin now and of the three couples on the floor they were the best matched. Clare and Walter Miller lumbered past him, resolutely foxtrotting out of time. Rather against her will Bernice had been coaxed into the arms of Old Paul Gaveston who, too conscious of the proprieties to hold her close, stared poker-faced over her shoulder, his embracing hand a good two inches from her back. Greenleaf smiled to himself. Gage was without such inhibitions. His smooth dusky cheek was pressedclose to Tamsin’s, his body fused with hers. They hardly moved but swayed slowly, almost indecently, on a square yard of floor. Well, well, thought Greenleaf. The music died away and broke suddenly into a mambo.
    ‘The thing is,’ Smith-King was saying, ‘it’s getting bigger. No getting away from it.’
    ‘I’d better take a look at it.’ Greenleaf said.
    A fourth couple had joined the dancers. Greenleaf felt relieved. Patrick was a difficult fellow at the best of times but he could rise to an occasion. It was nice to see him rescuing the Carnaby girl and dancing with her as if he really wanted to.
    ‘You will?’ Smith-King half-rose. His movement seemed to sketch the shedding of garments.
    ‘Not now,’ Greenleaf said, alarmed. ‘Come down to the surgery.’
    The sun had quite gone now, even the last lingering rays, and dusk was coming to the garden. Tamsin had broken away from Gage and gone to switch on the fairy lights. But for the intervention of his wife who marched on to the patio exclaiming loudly about the gnats, Gage would have followed her.
    ‘How I hate beastly insects,’ Nancy grumbled. ‘You’d think with all this D.D.T. and everything there just wouldn’t be any more mosquitos.’ She glared at Marvell. ‘I feel itchy all over.’
    As if at a signal