Ice in the Bedroom Read Online Free Page A

getting out of his society, she might have been walking with an elderly uncle. Since entering the High Street she had not spoken except to direct his attention to the statue erected in the Market square to the memory of the late Anthony Briggs, J.P., for many years parliamentary representative for the local division, and if ever in Freddie's jaundiced opinion there was a ghastly statue of a potbellied baggy-trousered Gawd-help-us, this statue was that statue.
    Conversation was still flagging when after leaving Loose Chippings and its Pop behind and passing down a leafy lane they arrived at massive iron gates opening on a vista of shady drive, at the end of which could be seen glimpses of a Tudor mansion bathed in the afternoon sunlight.
    'This is it,' said Sally. 'Nice place, don't you think?'
    'It'll do,' said Freddie, who was still in the grip of dudgeon.
    'It has a moat.'
    'Oh, yes?'
    'And a wonderful park.'
    'Really? La Yorke does herself well. And can afford to, of course. Oofy Prosser tells me she makes a packet with her pen. He's got a lot of money in the firm that publishes her stuff.'
    ‘I know. He was down here seeing Miss Yorke the other day. Have you met him lately?'
    'Oh, yes, he's generally in at the Drones for lunch. His wife had her jewels pinched not long ago.'
    'So I read in the paper. Were they very valuable?'
    'Worth thousands, I should think. They looked that way to me.'
    'You've seen them?'
    'I've been to dinner once or twice with the Oofys, and she had them all on. She glittered like a chandelier.'
    'And they haven't got them back?'
    'No.'
    'Too bad.'
    'It must have upset her.'
     'I suppose so.'
    Sally's heart was aching. All this formality and stiffness, as if they were strangers meeting for the first time and making conversation. Her own fault, of course, but a girl had to be sensible. If she were not, what ensued? She found herself fetching up at the end of that long line stretching from Piccadilly Circus to Hyde Park Corner. On the stage on which Frederick Widgeon strutted, she told herself, there were no female stars, just a mob of extras doing crowd work.
    She forced herself to resume the conversation as they walked up the drive.
    'Where are you living now, Freddie? At the old flat?'
    His face, already dark, darkened still further.
    'No, I couldn't afford it. My uncle stopped my allowance, and I had to move to the suburbs. I'm sharing a house with my cousin George. You remember George?'
    'Dimly.'
    'Beefy chap with red hair. Boxed for Oxford as a heavyweight. He's one of the local cops.'
    'He went into the police?'
    'That's right. Said it was a darned sight better than being cooped up in an office all day, like me.'
    'Like you? You aren't in an office?'
    'I am. A solicitor's. Shortly after we…soon after I last saw you my foul Uncle Rodney bunged me into the firm of Shoesmith, Shoesmith, Shoesmith and Shoesmith of Lincoln's Inn Fields.'
    Sally, firm in her resolve to be sensible, had not planned to betray any human feeling during this painful encounter, but at these words she was unable to repress a cry of pity.
    'Oh, Freddie! Not really?'
    'That's what he did. He placed me in the hands of his solicitor.'
    'But you must hate it.'
    'I loathe it.'
    'What do you do there?'
    'I'm a sort of "Hey, you" or dogsbody like the chap in "Old Man River".'
    'Lift that trunk?'
    'Shift that bale. Exactly. Today, for instance, old Shoesmith gave me some documents to take to Leila Yorke to sign. Why he couldn't just have popped them in the post is a matter between him and his God, if any. Tomorrow I shall probably be running down the street to fetch someone a cup of coffee and the day after that sweeping out the office. I tell you, when I see George coming in off his beat with a face all bright and rosy from a health-giving day in the fresh air, while I'm pale and wan after eight hours in a fuggy office, I envy him and wish I'd had the sense to become a copper.'
    'How do you two manage, living ail alone with