Free False Scent by Ngaio Marsh Page B

Richard was beside her, not looking at her, his arm scarcely touching hers, but
there
, to her great content. Pinky and Bertie talked with peculiar energy, making a friendly fuss over Anelida but conveying, nevertheless, a singular effect of nervous tension.
    Presently Richard said, “Here’s somebody else who would like to meet you, Anelida.” She looked up at a brick-coloured Guardee face and a pair of surprised blue eyes. “Colonel Warrender,” Richard said.
    After his bumpy fashion, Warrender made conversation. “Everybody always shouts at these things, isn’t it? Haven’t got up to pitch yet but will, of course. You’re on the stage, isn’t it?”
    “Just.”
    “Jolly good! What d’you think of Dicky’s plays?”
    Anelida wasn’t yet accustomed to hearing Richard called Dicky or to being asked that sort of question in that sort of way.
    She said, “Well — immensely successful, of course.”
    “Oh!” he said. “Successful! Awfully successful! ’Course. And I like ’em, you know. I’m his typical audience — want something gay and ’musing, with a good part for Mary. Not up to intellectual drama. Point is, though, is
he
satisfied? What d’you think? Wasting himself or not? What?”
    Anelida was greatly taken aback and much exercised in her mind. Did this elderly soldier know Richard very intimately or did all Richard’s friends plunge on first acquaintance into analyses of each other’s inward lives for the benefit of perfect strangers? And did Warrender know about
Husbandry in Heaven
?
    Again she had the feeling of being closely watched.
    She said, “I hope he’ll give us a serious play one of these days and I shouldn’t have thought he’ll be really satisfied until he does.”
    “Ah!” Warrender exclaimed, as if she’d made a dynamic observation. “There you are! Jolly good! Keep him up to it. Will you?”
    “I!” Anelida cried in a hurry. She was about to protest that she was in no position to keep Richard up to anything, when it occurred to her, surprisingly, that Warrender might consider any such disclaimer an affectation.
    “But does he need ‘keeping up’?” she asked.
    “Oh Lord, yes!” he said. “What with one thing and another. You must know all about that.”
    Anelida reminded herself she had only drunk half a dry Martini, so she couldn’t possibly be under the influence of alcohol. Neither, she would have thought, was Colonel Warrender. Neither, apparently, was Miss Bellamy or Charles Templeton or Miss Kate Cavendish or Mr. Bertie Saracen. Nor, it would seem, was Mr. Timon Gantry to whom, suddenly, she was being introduced by Richard.
    “Timmy,” Richard was saying. “Here is Anelida Lee.”
    To Anelida it was like meeting a legend.
    “Good evening,” the so-often mimicked voice was saying. “What is there for us to talk about? I know. You shall tell me precisely why you make that ‘throw-it-over-your-shoulder’ gesture in your final speech and whether it is your own invention or a bit of producer’s whimsy.”
    “Is it wrong?” Anelida demanded. She then executed the mime that is know in her profession as a double-take. Her throat went dry, her eyes started and she crammed the knuckle of her gloved hand between her separated teeth. “You haven’t
seen
me!” she cried.
    “But I have. With Dicky Dakers.”
    “Oh my God!” whispered Anelida, and this was not an expression she was in the habit of using.
    “Look out. You’ll spill your drink. Shall we remove a little from this barnyard cacophony? The conservatory seems at the moment to be unoccupied.”
    Anelida disposed of her drink by distractedly swallowing it. “Come along,” Gantry said. He took her by the elbow and piloted her towards the conservatory. Richard, as if by sleight-of-hand, had disappeared. Octavius was lost to her.
    “Good evening, Bunny. Good evening, my dear Paul. Good evening, Tony,” Gantry said with the omniscience of M. de Charlus. Celebrated faces responded to these