The Bridesmaid Read Free Page A

seems a shame she can’t stay there for ever. You’ll just have to take her with you when you move.”
    “Yes.”
    “I expect you’ll have another nice garden wherever it is.”
    Arnham didn’t say anything. There was a chance, Philip thought, for he knew his mother, that Christine would say a formal farewell to Flora. It would be like her. He wouldn’t have been surprised to hear her say good-bye and bid Flora be a good girl. Her silence gratified him, the dignified way she preceded Arnham back into the house. He understood. There was no need to say good-bye to someone you would soon be living with for the rest of your life. Had anyone else seen or was he alone in noticing that the little table in the dining room had been stripped of cloth, silver, glass, and pink carnation? That was why Arnham had come back into the house, to clear this table. Much was made plain to Philip. Christine had been expected on her own.
    His mother and sisters seemed not to understand that any social solecism had been committed. Cheryl sprawled on his settee, her legs apart and sticking out on the rug. She was obliged to sit like that, of course, because her jeans were too tight and her heels too high to permit of bending her knees and setting the soles of her feet on the floor. Fee had lit a cigarette without asking Arnham if he minded. As she looked round for an ashtray, conspicuously absent among all the variety of ornaments—little cups and saucers, china animals, miniature vases—and while she waited for Arnham to come back with one from the kitchen, the inch of ash fell off the end of her cigarette onto the yellow carpet.
    Arnham didn’t say anything. Fee began talking of the missing girl. She was sure the man who had been helping police with their enquiries must be this Martin Hunt, the one the papers and television said had phoned on the day of her disappearance. It was what they always said, the terminology always used, when they meant they had caught a murderer but couldn’t yet prove he had done it. If the papers said any more—gave the man’s name, for instance, or said he was suspected of murder—they might risk a libel action. Or be breaking the law.
    “I bet the police grilled him unmercifully. I expect they beat him up. All sorts of things go on we don’t suspect, don’t they? They wanted a confession from him because they’re too thick often to actually get evidence like detectives in books do. I don’t suppose they believed he’d only been out with her four times. And it’s hard for them because they haven’t got a body. They don’t even know for certain she’s been murdered. That’s why they have to get a confession. They have to extort a confession.”
    “We have the most restrained and civilised police in the world,” Arnham said stiffly.
    Instead of denying this, Fee smiled a little and lifted her shoulders. “They take it for granted when a person gets murdered it’s her husband, if she’s got one, or her boy friend. Don’t you think that’s awful?”
    “Why do we have to think about it?” Cheryl asked. “I don’t know why we have to talk about it. Who cares about those revolting things, anyway?”
    Fee took no notice. “Personally, I think it was the person who phoned in answer to her advertisement. It was some mad person who phoned and enticed her to their house and killed her. I expect the police think it was Martin Hunt putting on a false voice.”
    Philip thought he could see disgust and perhaps boredom on Arnham’s face, but perhaps this was only a projection of his own feelings. He risked Fee’s telling him he was changing the subject and said quickly, “I was admiring that picture,” he began, pointing to the rather strange landscape over the fireplace. “Is it a Samuel Palmer?”
    Of course he meant a “print.” Anyone would have known he meant that, but Arnham, looking incredulous, said, “I shouldn’t think so for one moment if Samuel Palmer is who I think he is. My