Murder While I Smile Read Free Page A

bloom has faded.” Her voice held a wistful note, which was echoed in her dark eyes.
    The words were designed to elicit pity and, of course, strenuous objection from the gentlemen. Corinne felt she ought to despise her, and was surprised to feel the stirring of pity. It was the way the comtesse spoke, with an air of genuine regret. There was a fragile air of vulnerability in her beauty, like a blossom whose petals have lost their firmness but have not yet begun to wither. How very fleeting were a lady’s youth and beauty! Even she was no longer in the first flush of youth. Twenty-four—a quarter of a century on her next birthday, and what had she accomplished? She had no husband, no children. In her mind the image of Luten rose up to banish these gloomy thoughts.
    “Why, you are still a young girl,” Yarrow said in a kindly way. As he spoke, he clamped his sausage - like fingers on her white arm and squeezed. The comtesse stiffened, then smiled her thanks. “When you are half a century old like myself, then you may be allowed to speak of fading youth.”
    “Exquisite, charming,” Prance breathed. He presented both Lady Chamaude and Lord Yarrow with a copy of the Rondeaux. “Just a few lines I scribbled off in my hours of idleness.” Damme! He had inadvertently used the title of Byron’s first youthful offering.
    “But how charming!” the lady exclaimed. “You must autograph it for me. You English have so many clever poets. I have just been dipping into Lord Byron’s poem.”
    Prance’s jaw clenched in dismay. She rose from her chair abruptly, with an air of escape, and led him to a drop-leaf desk in the corner. Corinne observed Yarrow admiring Lady Chamaude’s sylphlike figure. When he saw Corinne watching him, he gave a shake of his whiskers.
    “Poor lady,” he said. “She has had a rough time of it, in a foreign land. We ought to be a little kind to our French émigrés. Yvonne, that is her name, is quite like a daughter to my good lady and myself.”
    Corinne smiled benignly on this piece of fustian. Yarrow’s sharp eyes held no hint of pity, but a definite gleam of lust.
    Prance dipped his pen into the inkpot and began a flourishing inscription. He noticed Lady Chamaude used a violet color of ink. Charming! No discreet inscription occurred to him. He wanted to write I love you, in sulfur across the sky. The lady was exquisite! The boldest message he dared to inscribe was “To Lady Chamaude from an admirer, Sir Reginald Prance.” He wrote a fine hand, if he did say so himself. Let Lord Byron match that L and C. Would she notice he had humbly not given his own “admirer” a capital?
    Lady Chamaude read the inscription and rewarded him with a Giaconda smile, which he quickly imbued with a hint of invitation. Yarrow had set his copy aside unsigned.
    She sent for wine, and when they were all served, she said, “I expect you want to see the Poussin, Mr. Pattle.”
    “Thankee, I do.”
    She rose again and led Pattle across the room. When Corinne noticed that the picture occupied an ill-lit corner, she felt a spurt of alarm. The lady’s reputation was not all one could wish in a purveyor of artworks, and that was certainly why Coffen had been invited here.
    As if reading her mind, Lady Chamaude said, “We shall bring it to the light. Would you mind removing it, Mr. Pattle? It’s rather heavy.”
    The painting, about two feet wide and eighteen inches high, had an embossed gilt frame. He had some little difficulty removing the picture from the wall and managed to bump a corner of the frame against a couple of tables while transporting it to the light. He noticed he had knocked a dent in the corner of the frame and very likely marred the tables as well. Pity. They all gathered around to study the picture.
    Prance managed to wrench his eyes from the comtesse long enough to study the painting. Its patina, he observed, suggested the proper age, but that could easily be faked. The subject was an old man