Free Death in a White Tie by Ngaio Marsh

ball. Has your mother come this way?”
    “She’s in the supper-room,” said Bridget without looking at him, and he realized that of course she had heard Donald’s side of their quarrel. He said:
    “Thank you, Bridgie, I’ll find her.” He saw Miss Harris was looking a little like a lost child so he said: “Wonder if you’d be very nice and give me a dance later on? Would you?”
    Miss Harris turned scarlet and said she would be very pleased thank you, Lord — Lord Gospell.
    “Got it wrong,” thought Lord Robert. “Poor things, they don’t get much fun. Wonder what
they
think of it all. Not much, you may depend upon it.”
    He found Lady Carrados in the supper-room. He took her to a corner table, made her drink champagne and tried to persuade her to eat.
    “I know what you’re all like,” he told her. “Nothing all day in your tummies and then get through the night on your nerves. I remember mama used to have the vapours whenever she gave a big party. She always came round in time to receive the guests.”
    He chattered away, eating a good deal himself and getting over his own unaccountable fit of depression in his effort to help Lady Carrados. He looked round and saw that the supper-room was inhabited by only a few chaperones and their partners. Poor Davidson was still in Lucy Lorrimer’s toils. Withers and Mrs Halcut-Hackett were tucked away in a corner. She was talking to him earnestly and apparently with great emphasis. He glowered at the table and laughed unpleasantly.
    “Lor’!” thought Lord Robert, “she’s giving him his marching orders. Now why’s that? Afraid of the General or of — what? Of the blackmailer? I wonder if Withers is the subject of those letters. I wonder if Dimitri has seen her with him some time. I’ll swear it was Dimitri’s hand. But what does he know about Evelyn? The least likely woman in the world to have a guilty secret. And, damme, there is the fellow as large as you please, running the whole show.”
    Dimitri had come into the supper-room. He gave a professional look round, spoke to one of his waiters, came across to Lady Carrados and bowed tentatively and then went out again.
    “Dimitri is a great blessing to all of us,” said Lady Carrados. She said it so simply that he knew at once that if Dimitri was blackmailing her she had no idea of it. He was hunting in his mind for something to reply when Bridget came into the supper-room.
    She was carrying her mother’s bag.
    Everything seemed to happen at the same moment. Bridget calling gaily: “Really, Donna darling, you’re
hopeless
. There was your bag, simply preggy with banknotes, lying on the writing-table in the green boudoir. And I
bet
you didn’t know where you’d left it.” Then Bridget, seeing her mother’s face and crying out: “Darling, what’s the matter?” Lord Robert himself getting up and interposing his bulk between Lady Carrados and the other tables. Lady Carrados half-laughing, half-crying and reaching out frantically for the bag. Himself saying: “Run away, Bridget, I’ll look after your mother.” And Lady Carrados, in a whisper: “I’m all right. Run upstairs, darling, and get my smelling-salts.”
    Somehow they persuaded Bridget to go. The next thing that happened was Sir Daniel Davidson, who stood over Evelyn Carrados like an elegant dragon.
    “You’re all right,” he said. “Lord Robert, see if you can open that window.”
    Lord Robert succeeded in opening the window. A damp hand seemed to be laid on his face. He caught sight of street lamps blurred by impalpable mist.
    Davidson held Lady Carrados’s wrist in his long fingers and looked at her with a sort of compassionate exasperation.
    “You women,” he said. “You impossible women.”
    “I’m all right. I simply felt giddy.”
    “You ought to lie down. You’ll faint and make an exhibition of yourself.”
    “No I won’t. Has anybody —?”
    “Nobody’s noticed anything. Will you go up to your room for half an