Free To Fear a Painted Devil by Ruth Rendell Page B

laughed, he licked his lips and pushed the cake toward Patrick. ‘Supper,’ he said.
    Greenleaf found himself standing close by Oliver Gage and he turned to him to make some comment on the proceedings, but something in the other man’s expression stopped him. He was staring at the figure on the ladder and his narrow red lips were wet. Greenleaf saw that he was clenching and unclenching his hands.
    ‘Oh, look! What’s happening?’ Suddenly Nancy clutched Greenleaf’s arm and, startled, he looked roofwards.
    Patrick had started violently, arching his back away from the ladder. He shouted something. Then they saw him wince, hunch his shoulders and cover his face with his free arm.
    ‘He’s been stung,’ Greenleaf heard Gage say flatly, ‘and serve him bloody well right.’ He didn’t move but Greenleaf hurried forward to join the others who had gathered at the foot of the ladder. Three wasps were encircling Patrick’s head, wheeling about him and making apparently for his closed eyes. They saw him for a moment, fighting, both arms flailing, his blind face twisted. Then Edward disappeared and the light went out. Now Patrick was just a silhouette against the clear turquoise sky and to Greenleaf he looked like a marionette of crumpled black paper whose convulsivelybeating arms seemed jerked by unseen strings.
    ‘Come down!’ Marvell shouted.
    ‘Oh God!’ Patrick gave a sort of groan and collapsed against the rungs, swaying precariously.
    Someone shouted: ‘He’s going to fall,’ but Patrick didn’t fall. He began to slide down, prone against the ladder, and his shoes caught on each rung as he descended, tap, tap, flap, until he fell into Marvell’s arms.
    ‘Are you all right?’ Marvell and Greenleaf asked together and Marvell shied at the wasp that came spiraling down towards Patrick’s head. ‘They’ve gone. Are you all right?’
    Patrick said nothing but shuddered and put up his hand to cover his cheek. Behind him Greenleaf heard Freda Carnaby whimpering like a puppy, but nobody else made a sound. In the rainbow glimmer they stood silent and peering like a crowd at a bullfight who have seen a hated matador come to grief. The hostility was almost tangible and there was no sound but the steady buzz of the wasps.
    ‘Come along.’ Greenleaf heard his own voice pealing like a bell. ‘Let’s get him into the house.’ But Patrick shook off his arm and blundered into the dining room.
    T hey gathered round him in the lounge, all except Marvell who had gone to the kitchen to make coffee. Patrick crouched in an armchair holding his handkerchief against his face. He had been stung in several places, under the left eye, on the left wrist andforearm and on the right arm in what Greenleaf called the cubital fossa.
    ‘Lucky it wasn’t a good deal worse,’ Edward said peevishly.
    Patrick’s eye was already beginning to swell and close. He scowled at Edward and said rudely:
    ‘Get lost!’
    ‘Please don’t quarrel.’ No one knew how Freda had insinuated herself into her position on the footstool at Patrick’s knees, nor exactly when she had taken his hand. ‘It’s bad enough as it is.’
    ‘Oh, really,’ Tamsin said. ‘Such a fuss! Excuse me, will you? It might be a good idea for my husband to get some air.’
    For the second time that night Denholm Smith-King looked first at his watch, then at his wife. ‘Well, we’ll be getting along. You won’t want us.’
    Marvell had come in with the coffee things but Tamsin didn’t argue. She lifted her cheek impatiently for Joan to kiss.
    ‘Coffee, Nancy? Oliver?’ She by-passed the Carnabys exactly as if they were pieces of furniture. Oliver rejected the cup coldly, sitting on the edge of his chair.
    ‘Perhaps we’d better go too.’ Nancy looked hopelessly from angry face to angry face. ‘Have you got any bi-carb? It’s wonderful for wasp stings. I remember when my sister …’
    ‘Come
along
, Nancy,’ Oliver said. He took Nancy’s arm and pulled