Death in a White Tie Read Free Page B

things.”
    “I know. What about this ball? I suppose you’re hard at it over that?”
    “I’m handing it all over to my secretary and Dimitri. I hope you’re coming. You’ll get a card.”
    “I shall be delighted, but I wish you’d give it up.”
    “Truly I can’t.”
    “Have you got any particular worry?”
    There was a long pause.
    “Yes,” said Evelyn Carrados, “but I can’t tell you about that.”
    “Ah, well,” said Sir Daniel, shrugging his shoulders. “
Les maladies suspendent nos vertus et nos vices
.”
    She rose and he at once leapt to his feet as if she was royalty.
    “You will get that prescription made up at once,” he said, glaring down at her. “And, if you please, I should like to see you again. I suppose I had better not call?”
    “No, please. I’ll come here.”
    “
C’est entendu.
”
    Lady Carrados left him, wishing vaguely that he was a little less florid and longing devoutly for her bed.
     
    Agatha Troy hunched up her shoulders, pulled her smart new cap over one eye and walked into her one-man show at the Wiltshire Galleries in Bond Street. It always embarrassed her intensely to put in these duty appearances at her own exhibitions. People felt they had to say something to her about her pictures and they never knew what to say and she never knew how to reply. She became gruff with shyness and her incoherence was mistaken for intellectual snobbishness. Like most painters she was singularly inarticulate on the subject of her work. The careful phrases of literary appreciation showered upon her by highbrow critics threw Troy into an agony of embarrassment. She minded less the bland commonplaces of the philistines though for these also she had great difficulty in finding suitable replies.
    She slipped in at the door, winked at the young man who sat at the reception desk and shied away as a large American woman bore down upon him with a white-gloved finger firmly planted on a price in her catalogue.
    Troy hurriedly looked away and in a corner of the crowded room, sitting on a chair that was not big enough for him, she saw a smallish round gentleman whose head was aslant, his eyes closed and his mouth peacefully open. Troy made for him.
    “Bunchy!” she said.
    Lord Robert Gospell opened his eyes very wide and moved his lips like a rabbit.
    “Hullo!” he said. “What a scrimmage, ain’t it? Pretty good.”
    “You were asleep.”
    “May have been having a nap.”
    “That’s a pretty compliment,” said Troy without rancour.
    “I had a good prowl first. Just thought I’d pop in,” explained Lord Robert. “Enjoyed myself.” He balanced his glasses across his nose, flung his head back and with an air of placid approval contemplated a large landscape. Without any of her usual embarrassment Troy looked with him.
    “Pretty good,” repeated Bunchy. “Ain’t it?”
    He had an odd trick of using Victorian colloquialisms; legacies, he would explain, from his distinguished father. “Lor’!” was his favourite ejaculation. He kept up little Victorian politenesses, always leaving cards after a ball and often sending flowers to the hostesses who dined him. His clothes were famous — a rather high, close-buttoned jacket and narrowish trousers by day, a soft wide hat and a cloak in the evening. Troy turned from her picture to her companion. He twinkled through his glasses and pointed a fat finger at the landscape.
    “Nice and clean,” he said. “I like ’em clean. Come and have tea.”
    “I’ve only just arrived,” said Troy, “but I’d love to.”
    “I’ve got the Potters,” said Bunchy. “My sister and her boy. Wait a bit. I’ll fetch ’em.”
    “Mildred and Donald?” asked Troy.
    “Mildred and Donald. They live with me, you know, since poor Potter died. Donald’s just been sent down for some gambling scrape or other. Nice young scamp. No harm in him. Only don’t mention Oxford.”
    “I’ll remember.”
    “He’ll probably save you the trouble by talking