A Man Lay Dead Read Free Page B

may go, Vassily,” said Sir Hubert.
    “Dressing-gong should have gone a long time ago,” said Vassily, and hurried away.
    “Help!” exclaimed Angela, “it’s eight o’clock! Dinner in half an hour! Hurry, everybody.”
    “Are we all in our usual rooms?” asked Mrs. Wilde. “Yes… oh, wait a minute… Mr. Bathgate doesn’t know. Do show him, Arthur. He’s in the little Welsh room and will share your bath, my angel. Don’t be late, will you, or Uncle Hubert’s cook will give notice.”
    “Which Heaven forbid!” said Rankin fervently. “One more… a very little one… and I’m gone.”
    He poured himself out a half portion of Vassily’s cocktail, and without consulting her filled Mrs. Wilde’s glass again.
    “Charles, you’ll make me drunk,” she announced. Why does a certain type of young woman think this remark unfailingly funny? “Don’t wait for me, Arthur. I shall have Angela’s bathroom when she’s out of it.”
    Angela and Sir Hubert had already gone. Doctor Tokareff was half-way upstairs. Arthur Wilde turned his spectacles on Nigel. “Are you coming?”
    “Yes, rather.”
    Nigel followed him up the shallow staircase to a dimly lit landing.
    “This is our room,” explained Wilde, pointing to the first door on the left. “The next little room I use as a dressing-room.” He opened a door further along. “Here you are… the bathroom is between us.”
    Nigel found himself in a charming little oak room furnished austerely with one or two heavy old Welsh pieces. In the left wall was a door.
    “This leads into our joint bathroom,” said Wilde, opening it. “My dressing-room communicates too, you see. You go first with the bath.”
    “What a jolly house it is.”
    “Yes, it is extraordinarily right in every way. One grows very attached to Frantock. I expect you will find that.”
    “Oh,” said the diffident Nigel, “I don’t know… this is my first visit… I may not come again.” Wilde smiled pleasantly. “I’m sure you will. Handesley never asks anybody unless he is sure he will want them again. I must go and help my wife find all the things she thinks her maid has forgotten. Sing out when you’ve finished with the bath.” He went out through the further door of the bathroom and Nigel heard him humming to himself in a thin cheerful tenor.
    Finding that his very battered suitcase had already been unpacked, Nigel lost no time in bathing, shaving, and dressing. He thought of his rather grim little flatlette in Ebury Street, and reflected that it would be pleasant to be able to abandon geysers and gas-rings for a cook who must not be kept waiting, and for constant hot water. In fifteen minutes he was dressed, and as he left the room could hear Wilde still splashing in the bath next door.
    Nigel ran blithely downstairs, hoping that Miss Angela North had also gone down early. A door across the hall to the right of the stairs was standing open. The room beyond being brilliantly lit, he walked in and found himself alone in a big green-panelled salon that meandered away into an L-shaped alcove, beyond which was another smaller room. This proved to be a sort of library and gun-room combined. It smelt delectably of leather bindings, gun oil, and cigars. A bright fire was burning on the open hearth, and the gleaming barrels of Sir Hubert’s sporting armory spoke to Nigel of all the adventures he had longed for and never been able to afford.
    He was gazing enviously at a Manlicher eight when he suddenly became aware of voices in the drawing-room behind him.
    It was Mrs. Wilde who was speaking, and Nigel, horrified, realized that she and her companion had come in after him, had been there for some minutes, and that he had got himself into the odious position of an unwilling eavesdropper, and finally that, distasteful as this was to him, it was too late for him to announce his presence.
    Hideously uncomfortable, and completely at a loss, he stood and perforce heard.
    “… so I say