Choice of Evils Read Free Page B

paused, then went on hesitantly. ‘It's probably absurd, but I can't get rid of a feeling that he dislikes me. Yet he pressed me to come down to do this show tonight, and then to come and spend the weekend with him, and he's never been anything but pleasant and friendly to me. So it's probably some feeling in myself that's worrying me. Jealousy, for instance. I've done well enough in my way, but it can't compare with what's happened to him. And because I don't like the idea that I'm capable of such cheap jealousy, I've transferred the feeling on to him.’
    'Sounds complicated,’ Andrew observed.
    ‘Yet you know what I mean.’
    ‘I suppose I do, but I've never noticed any undue signs of jealousy in your character. I'll wait and see what I make of him myself.’
    ‘Yes, of course.’ Peter had slowed the car down outside a gate in a high stone wall. The gate was open and he turned the car in at it. ‘I admire him, you know, and I want to be liked by him, but I've got this queer feeling … Perhaps the fact is that I'm a little afraid of him.’
    He drove along a drive under two tall rows of chestnuts,splendidly copper-coloured like the beeches on the cliff. Andrew saw a house ahead of them, not as large as the approach to it had led him to expect, a building of only two storeys, with small windows in its stone walls and a small porch jutting out over an oaken front door. Lawns spread out to right and left of the house, with what looked like stables joined on to one end of it, and a summerhouse among some holly bushes a little way off from it on the other. There were lights in all the ground-floor windows. As the car stopped in front of the entrance the door opened.
    A light was on inside and the figure that stood in the doorway was only a dark shape against it: a man, tall, very erect and slimly built, but with wide shoulders and a striking air of dignity. That was Andrew's first impression of Simon Amory. He waited in the doorway while Peter leapt out of the car and hurried round it to open the door beside Andrew and as he did so Amory came forward, holding out his hand.
    ‘Professor Basnett?’ he said. ‘I'm so glad that you could come. Peter, there's no need to put the car in the garage. We'll be wanting it presently. Come in. Professor, and meet your fellow victims, the people who've been persuaded to come with us and listen to a few of us talking a great deal too much about ourselves.’
    Andrew did not really see much of the other man's face until they were in the lighted hall. It was a long, narrow hall, with a steep staircase, carpeted in dark crimson, rising out of it to the floor above. The ceiling was low and dark with heavy beams. Andrew guessed that the house dated probably from the seventeenth century. The walls were white and decorated with a few flower prints. The only furniture was a bow-fronted walnut chest that had a telephone on it and a silver bowl filled with sprays of bronze leaves. At the far end of the hall was a glass door which presumably opened into the garden.
    Looking at his host, Andrew saw a man of about forty-five, with a sharp-featured face, high cheekbones and hollow cheeks, a long, sharp nose and a pointed chin, a taut nervous face that wore an oddly tight-lipped smile and had bright, observant eyes. His hair was dark and curly and still plentiful. His skin was tanned to a healthy brown.
    He opened one of the doors in the narrow hall and ushered Andrew in ahead of him. Andrew's first impression was that the room was full of people, but that, he realized in a moment, was merely the result of the low, dark ceiling and the great fireplace that occupied most of one wall. A fire of logs was alight in it. But he noticed that there were also a couple of discreetly placed radiators. It would be a very comfortable room in winter. The number of people waiting there was actually only three, a short, bald man of about fifty, a slim woman of perhaps thirty-five, and a square, heavily built,