An Awkward Lie Read Online Free Page B

way–’
    ‘That would put the corpse roughly in a category, I agree. What they call a drop-out, or the like. Incidentally, your son says the fellow’s clothes suggested reasonable prosperity.’ Pride hesitated. ‘Do you know? I gather Bobby won’t say much about the girl. She was blonde and a lady. He doesn’t go much beyond that.’
    ‘Gentlemen prefer blondes.’
    ‘Just what do you mean by that?’
    ‘Not a great deal, perhaps.’ Appleby hesitated. The affair of the body in the bunker was, in an important sense, very much Bobby’s own affair. He mustn’t be nudged by his father unless he asked to be nudged. He mustn’t even be too much talked about, even to a family friend like Tommy Pride. On the other hand, something patent about Bobby that Pride or Pride’s men simply hadn’t noticed might just as well be named now. ‘Only,’ Appleby said, ‘that the boy seems to have been rather struck by the girl.’
    Pride drained his whisky, and shook his head as Appleby’s hand went hospitably out to the decanter. He gave a moment to examining the empty fireplace, and a couple more to finding and lighting a cigarette. It was clear that the admirable man felt this whole damnable piece of jiggery-pokery to have its delicate side.
    ‘Easy on the eyes, and all that?’ he asked. ‘Clean-cut girl? I’m sure your boy would have good taste where a filly’s concerned. But you don’t think he’s sitting tight on something because of having taken a fancy to her? Chivalry – that sort of thing?’
    Appleby’s amusement at this string of questions didn’t prevent his taking a moment or two to reflect in his turn.
    ‘It’s hard to say, Tommy. Perhaps it depends on how your chap Howard – for whom I’ve a high regard – has been viewing the girls. Is it as an accomplice of the villains, supposing there to have been a crime – or of the jokers, on the weird theory that Bobby was being taken in by a piece of macabre fun? Or does he suppose the girl to have been a victim, just as Bobby was?’
    ‘I think Howard supposes the girl to have been – well, not on Bobby’s side. And it’s difficult, you know, to view it in any other way. After all, she had cleared out – along with the body, and the chaps in the car, granting that they had anything to do with the affair. Otherwise, why didn’t she stay put, or run for the club-house, or just give a shout? A good loud halloo would have carried that far, I’d say.’ Yet again, Pride hesitated. ‘I know that Bobby behaved perfectly correctly to my people. But I rather wish he was still here now. You and I could have had another quiet word with the boy, eh? As it is, the brute fact seems to be that he vanished from Dream early this afternoon.’
    ‘Am I to understand that Howard asked him to remain for the time being at Dream?’
    ‘Nothing of the kind.’ Colonel Pride had hastily shaken his head. ‘Boy has been perfectly correct, as I say.’
    ‘My dear Tommy, we’d better get this clear. If Bobby formed a notion as to what was in Howard’s head – the notion that he had been taken in by a gruesome and pointless practical joke – then the boy had a perfect right to take certain measure of offence. Or call it umbrage, if you prefer the word.’
    ‘I quite see–’
    ‘And please consider this.’ For the first time, Appleby’s voice had gone a shade grim. ‘He’s still very young. And – whether for good or ill – he’s been given fair ground for considering himself quite other than a fool–’
    ‘My dear fellow!’ The Chief Constable’s discomfort was now acute. ‘Absolutely brilliant, of course. We all know it. There never was a Raven who was all bone above the neck.’ Pride positively floundered – glimpsing, perhaps, a certain lack of the felicitous in thus instantly directing his thought to the Raven side of the house. ‘I quite see what you mean.’
    ‘I don’t know that you do.’ For the moment, Appleby’s astringency didn’t