Free The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey Page B

so dry that even Nevil caught the flavour of it.
    â€œDon’t you like her?” he asked, pausing to look at his cousin in surprised disbelief.
    Robert had ceased for the moment to be kind, lazy, tolerant Robert Blair; he was just a tired man who hadn’t yet had his dinner and was suffering from the memory of a frustration and a snubbing.
    â€œAs far as I am concerned,” he said, “Marion Sharpe is just a skinny woman of forty who lives with a rude old mother in an ugly old house, and needs legal advice on occasion like anyone else.”
    But even as the words came out he wanted to stop them, as if they were a betrayal of a friend.
    â€œNo, probably she isn’t your cup of tea,” Nevil said tolerantly. “You have always preferred them a little stupid, and blond, haven’t you?” This was said without malice, as one stating a dullish fact.
    â€œI can’t imagine why you should think that.”
    â€œAll the women you nearly married were that type.”
    â€œI have never ‘nearly married’ anyone,” Robert said stiffly.
    â€œThat’s what you think. You’ll never know how nearly Molly Manders landed you.”
    â€œMolly Manders?” Aunt Lin said, coming in flushed from her cooking and bearing the tray with the sherry. “Such a silly girl. Imagined that you used a baking-board for pancakes. And was always looking at herself in that little pocket mirror of hers.”
    â€œAunt Lin saved you that time, didn’t you, Aunt Lin?”
    â€œI don’t know what you are talking about, Nevil dear. Do stop prancing about the hearthrug, and put a log on the fire. Did you like your French film, dear?”
    â€œI didn’t go. I had tea at The Franchise instead.” He shot a glance at Robert, having learned by now that there was more in Robert’s reaction than met the eye.
    â€œWith those strange people? What did you talk about?”
    â€œMountains—Maupassant—hens—”
    â€œHens , dear?”
    â€œYes; the concentrated evil of a hen’s face in a closeup.”
    Aunt Lin looked vague. She turned to Robert, as to terra firma.
    â€œHad I better call, dear, if you are going to know them? Or ask the vicar’s wife to call?”
    â€œI don’t think I would commit the vicar’s wife to anything so irrevocable,” Robert said, dryly.
    She looked doubtful for a moment, but household cares obliterated the question in her mind. “Don’t dawdle too long over your sherry or what I have in the oven will be spoiled. Thank goodness, Christina will be down again tomorrow. At least I hope so; I have never known her salvation take more than two days. And I don’t really think that I will call on those Franchise people, dear, if it is all the same to you. Apart from being strangers and very odd, they quite frankly terrify me.”
    Yes; that was a sample of the reaction he might expect where the Sharpes were concerned. Ben Carley had gone out of his waytoday to let him know that, if there was police trouble at The Franchise, he wouldn’t be able to count on an unprejudiced jury. He must take measures for the protection of the Sharpes. When he saw them on Friday he would suggest a private investigation by a paid agent. The police were overworked—had been overworked for a decade and more—and there was just a chance that one man working at his leisure on one trail might be more successful than the orthodox and official investigation had been.

Chapter 6
    B ut by Friday morning it was too late to take measures for the safety of The Franchise.
    Robert had reckoned with the diligence of the police; he had reckoned with the slow spread of whispers; but he had reckoned without the Ack-Emma .
    The Ack-Emma was the latest representative of the tabloid newspaper to enter British journalism from the West. It was run on the principle that two thousand pounds for damages is a cheap price to pay for