Free The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake

here.
    After that had been fixed up, I watchd the tennis for a bit. George’s partner in the garage, Harrison Carfax, was playing with Violet against George and Mrs Carfax. The latter is a big, dark-haired, gipsyish, come-hither sort of woman. I got the impression that she might be one of the reasons for George’s return of good humour, I distinctly saw his fingers delaying on hers once when he handed her the tennis balls to serve, and she gave him one or two sultry looks all right. One can scarcely wonder; her husband’s a dreary, dried-up little nondescript if ever I saw one.
    Lena came and sat down beside me – we were rather apart from the rest. She looks amazingly attractive in tennis dress; it suits her supple movements, and she manages to put on a sort of synthetic but appealing schoolgirlishness to match it.
    ‘You’re looking very sweet,’ I said.
    ‘Go and tell that to the Carfax woman,’ she said, but I could see she was pleased.
    ‘Oh, I’ll leave George to do that.’
    ‘George? Don’t be so absurd.’ She was almost snappish about it. Then she recovered herself and said, ‘I’ve hardly seen you since we’ve been here. You’ve been going about with a faraway look in your eyes, as though you’d lost your memory or got indigestion or something.’
    ‘That’s my artistic temperament coming out.’
    ‘Well, you might snap out of it and give a girl a kiss now and then. At least.’ She leant over and whispered in my ear. ‘There’s no need to wait till we get back to London, Pussy, you know.’
    Nobody can say I’m not a single-minded murderer. I’d so concentrated on fixing things up with George that I’d forgotten about my attachment to Lena. I tried to explain to her why I was staying on here. I was afraid she would start to get temperamental – the fact that we were in full view of a dozen people would have stimulated rather than suppressed her. But, oddly enough, Lena took it quite quietly. Too quietly, in fact – I might have suspected something – there was a humorous, challenging lift at the corners of her mouth when I moved away to play a set of tennis, and halfway through it I noticed her deep in conversation with Violet. As we came off the court, I heard her saying to George (and obviously I was meant to hear it), ‘George darling, how would you like your glamorous sister-in-law to stay on for a bit? We’ve finished making that film, so I thought I’d dig myself in here for a few weeks more of the simple country life. OK by you, chief?’
    ‘This is all very sudden,’ he said, giving her one of his calculating, slave market looks. ‘I suppose, if Vi doesn’t mind, we can put up with you. Why the change of heart?’
    ‘Well, you see, I think I should pine away without my Pussy. But don’t tell anyone.’
    ‘Pussy?’
    ‘Mr Felix Lane. Felix the Cat. Pussy.
Compris?
’
    George gave a very loud, embarrassed, stupid laugh. ‘Well I’m damned. Pussy! It does hit him off rather well. The way he pats the ball over the net. But really, Lena –’ He’d no idea I was listening. Perhaps it’s just as well he didn’t see my face then. I’ll not forget that crack of his. But Lena – what does she think she’s up to? Can it be possible that she thinks she’s going to play me off against George? Or have I been making a damnable, inexcusable mistake about the girl all along?

5 August
    LESSONS WITH PHIL in the morning, as usual. He’s quite a bright youngster – heaven knows where he gets his brains from – but he wasn’t in his best form this morning. From certain indications – his own wandering attention and a rather red-eyed look about Violet who passed me quickly as I came in – I guessed there must have been a dust-up in the Rattery household. In the middle of a Latin unseen Phil suddenly asked me if I was married. ‘No. Why?’ I said. I felt oddly ashamed, lying to Phil, though I lie like a trooper to the rest of the family without turning a