Flowers For the Judge Read Online Free

a quiet meal here for seven-thirty. When he didn’t show up by nine o’clock I got peevish and went out.’
    ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Campion was studying her face. ‘When you say you went out – you didn’t go to look for him?’
    ‘Oh, no, of course not.’ Her cheeks were flaming. ‘I phoned down to Mike and we went off to the Academy to see the revival of “Caligari”.’
    Something made Mr Campion glance at his friend. He caught the man with the visor up and a warning light flashed through his brain.
    Mr Campion was old-fashioned enough to take the marriage contract seriously, but he was also sufficiently sophisticated to know that the nicest people fall in love indiscriminately, and that while under the influence of that preeminently selfish lunacy they may make the most outrageous demands upon their friends with no other excuse than their painful need.
    It suddenly occurred to him that what Gina probably needed most was a reliable and discreet inquiry agent capable of handling divorce, and was on the point of telling her so in the friendliest of fashions when he was saved from the blunder by a remark from Miss Curley.
    ‘Where do you
think
he is, Gina?’ she said baldly. ‘Running round the lovely Mrs Bell?’
    Once again Gina flushed, but she laughed as she spoke:
    ‘No, Curley, I know he’s not. As a matter of fact I phoned this morning and asked her if he was down there. Oh no, if it was only something like that it would be simply my own affair, wouldn’t it? I mean it would be quite unpardonable of me to discuss it like this. No, I can’t think where he is. That’s why I’m telling someone. I mean, I’m all right. I can amuse myself. I can come down on Mike to take me around.’
    She smiled shyly at the other man.
    ‘Of course,’ he said abruptly. ‘You know that. At any time.’
    ‘Oh, my hat!’ reflected Mr Campion, just as Miss Curley had done. ‘A genuine passion. She hasn’t even been told.’
    His interest in the affair promptly revived.
    ‘I say,’ he began diffidently. ‘I don’t want to be inquisitive, but I must ask this. Any row between you and Paul?’
    ‘No.’ Her slanting grey eyes met his squarely. ‘None at all, at the moment. That’s another thing that made me wonder. I saw him for a moment in the office on Thursday afternoon. He’d been lunching with Caldecott and he said then that he’d come here for dinner and we’d talk. No one seems to have seen him after four. He wasn’t in his room when Miss Netley took some letters for him to sign just before five. I know that because she phoned me on Friday morning to ask if she should do them herself, as they ought to go off. John phoned to ask where he was, too. He was offended with Paul for being “so damned off-hand”, as he called it.’
    She paused, a little breathless, and sat up on the couch, the glowing end of a cigarette between her fingers, as she glanced round for an ash-tray.
    Mike rose and came towards her, his cupped hand held out.
    ‘I’ll take it – and chuck it in the fire,’ he said hastily.
    She drew back in surprise. ‘Not like that. It’ll burn you,’ she protested.
    He did not speak, but nodded to her, his whole body expressing urgency and unconscious supplication. It was a ridiculous incident, so trivial, yet curiously disquieting.
    Bewildered and half amused, the girl dropped the burning fragment into the hand and Campion glanced away involuntarily so that he might not see the man’s satisfaction at the pain as he carried the stub over to the fire.
    The return of John Widdowson a moment later restored the trend of general thought. Gina’s faithful charwoman, who had returned to do the tea-things, had met him on the staircase and admitted him with her key. He nodded to Campion and glanced across at Curley.
    ‘That book of clippings on
The Shadow Line
Fellowes sent us, Miss Curley; do you know where it is? It was a rather ornate little red thing, if I remember. What did we do with