Murder is Grim. Samuel Rogers
she had the sense that she was watching some kind of game and that the side she was cheering had just won a point. A moment later she could hear him opening the front door and running upstairs. She had almost gone out into the hall to waylay him; but then she thought it would be more fun to surprise him at dinner, and she would have hated to do anything that might have seemed like thrusting herself on his attention before he noticed her.
A faint noise made her look around, and she saw a large dark man in a Palm Beach suit, with a rose in his buttonhole – a man whom she thought she had seen somewhere before – coming toward her across the watery expanse of carpet.
‘Were the girls out there putting on one of their little shows?’ he asked in a deep voice with a slightly sardonic intonation.
Kate blushed. She felt like a child caught in a preserve closet. ‘Well, I don’t know’, she said. ‘They were talking and I’m afraid I couldn’t help —’
The man grinned, and his teeth looked younger and more vigorous than the rest of his face. ‘Of course you couldn’t and why should you? I only hope they kept the script clean.’
He held out an enormous hairy hand, and as she took it she realized why he seemed familiar: in spite of the pouches beneath his eyes, the sag of his jowls, his nearly bald head, he reminded her of June. He had the same oblong face with its heavy chin and small rounded nose, the same swarthiness of skin, the same dark glance; and yet his face, at any rate when he spoke, had a kind of concentration, of liveliness, in spite of its air of fatigue, which June’s had always lacked. He was an ugly man, but she could imagine that he might be interesting, even attractive.
‘I’m sorry I kept you waiting’, he went on. ‘All the more so, now that I’ve seen you. The fact is I was napping in my underwear, and I didn’t feel I knew you quite well enough to appear as I was. June told me you were beautiful, but I knew she had a crush on you – in a perfectly nice way, of course – so I made considerable allowance. But my word!’ – He looked her up and down with embarrassingly direct admiration beneath his bantering air. ‘It was really an understatement.’
Once more she saw his lopsided grin. ‘You may give quite a jolt to Clotilde,’ he went on, ‘and poor old Mavis will be sick; but what a treat for Ralph and Jo, not to speak of my aged self! And I mustn’t forget Felix. Felix was quite a lady’s man in his prime, the rascal. Don’t let that respectful manner fool you. I bet Felix was licking his lips!’
Kate felt that Mr. Gladstone spoke as if she were a choice morsel to be served up at dinner. She suspected that he was trying to tease her and determined to show no sign that she noticed it.
‘I’m looking forward to seeing June again’, she said. ‘She must have changed a good deal in the last four years.’
Mr. Gladstone sent her a sharp glance. ‘The more, the better, eh?’
If she hadn’t prepared herself against confusion, Kate might have blushed. ‘I didn’t mean that at all,’ she said, ‘and I think you talk horridly for a father. I noticed it in your letter too.’
He looked at her quizzically and as she met his gaze she had the feeling that he liked her all the more for her sharp retort.
‘I know my appearance suggests one of the larger anthropoid apes,’ he said after an instant, ‘but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a father’s heart. But wait a minute —’
He walked past her over to the window that opened on to the terrace. ‘You see, the theatre had reversed itself’, he explained. ‘We had become the stage in here, and Mavis and Clotilde had become the audience.’ He raised the blind and closed the casement window. ‘That’s better,’ he said, ‘and now please sit down. I don’t know why I didn’t suggest it before. Let’s say it was because I was dazzled.’
Kate sat down in one of the big leather chairs near the fireplace; it gave her the same feeling of super-comfort that the seat in the car had done. Mr. Gladstone seated himself in an even larger chair on the other side of the hearth, leaned back and crossed one ankle over his knee.
‘Seriously, Miss Archer, I’m damn glad you’re here’, he said. ‘But I’m not going to call you that. Katherine? Kate? Kate’s what they call you, isn’t it?’
‘Most of my friends call me Kate’, she admitted.
‘Swell! Anyhow: to be frank, I feel just a little bit guilty about June, as I told you in my letter. Of course she’s not much more decorative than I am, though I will say she has improved during the last year, and I suspect you can give her some damn good advice. You know, her clothes, her hair, and things like that. I think she’s really a nice kid. Between ourselves, I think she’s worth two of Clotilde. I confess I have a weakness for Clotilde, but I know damn well it’s mostly because she’s such a knockout to look at. Clotilde knows what she wants and she’ll get it, regardless. It may be my fault for spoiling her, but her mother was very much the same type. When I was a young man I was a lousy judge of women, at least the ones I married. But to go back to poor June. I hope you will stay here for a month anyway; and if you can give her a little self-confidence and brighten her up a bit, you’ll have done your good deed for the year. We’re a pretty free and easy bunch out here, as you’re probably discovering, but I think you’ll live through it. If you can stand me, you ought to be able to take the rest of us, and you seem to be doing pretty well so far.’
A scurrying in the hall made Kate turn her head in time to see Bobbie dash into the room, slide back on her haunches for a moment in the midst of her rush, to look around her, and then make for Kate’s ankles with a series of little grunts and barks. Kate put down her hands to protect her stockings, and Bobbie, after a few growling charges, wheeled on her hind legs, her front paws waving, her ears swirling about her face like the curls of a ballerina, and dashed straight across the room for another arm-chair. Kate thought she was going to fling herself against it, but in the nick of time, without slackening her speed, she flattened herself out and half slid, half scrambled under the border of pleated chintz that touched the floor. Then almost at once her head appeared peeking from under the edge, her chin pressed close against the carpet, while her eyes gleamed up at Kate as if to challenge her to try to drag her out of this refuge.
‘Bobbie, come here! Bobbie, where are you?’
It was June’s voice, and the next instant she stepped into the room and came toward Kate with a smile that showed her large strong teeth. At the same time Bobbie’s head ducked under the chair, and then she scrambled out, holding in her mouth a very dirty doll made of string, which she brought over and dropped at Kate’s feet. But Kate had hardly time to notice her now, because she was so curious to see what June would be like as a ‘young girl’.
June shook her hand vigorously, leaned toward her as if to kiss her, and then straightened up as if she did not quite dare.
‘Kate!’ she exclaimed in her rather deep voice, which had always been the most attractive thing about her. ‘It’s the same old Katey! I was so afraid you might have changed. I was so afraid you might seem all grown-up and fancy, but you don’t look any different.’
It was not quite the same old June, Kate realized at once. Not only was she about a foot taller, several inches taller than Kate now, but she was far less stolid-looking. She still moved with awkward abruptness; her face was still too heavy, but it had a kind of intensity of expression, a liveliness at this minute of greeting, which suggested her father more than ever. Her complexion, too, dark and slightly oily, was at any rate much better than it had been. At present she was wearing too much lipstick of too pink a shade; her black hair fluffed in unbecoming wisps about her cheeks; and Kate who liked nothing better than fixing things over according to her own very particular taste, looked forward, as her father had suggested, to starting in at once on the reconstruction of her appearance. June, with a little tact and care, might be smart-looking, even distinguished. Kate was sure Mr. Gladstone had been right when he said she was worth two of Clotilde.
‘It’s great fun to be seeing you again’, Kate said. ‘It doesn’t seem as if it could be four years since we were together, except that you certainly