Give a Corpse a Bad Name Read Online Free Page B

‘Whisky.’
    George gave a little giggle. Shrugging away from the restraining hand, he wandered off to look for more pieces of broken bottle. Leat went on: ‘A bloke was done in on the road here last night—run over. Don’t know who he was and got to find out. Doctor says as his stomach was a-swim in whisky, so—’
    â€˜Oh, I see,’ said the other rapidly. ‘Logical, conscientious—there must be a bottle. And a bottle can’t lie—if it tells you anything, which isn’t at all certain. Still, even if it doesn’t, there must be a bottle.’
    Leat nodded slowly. ‘Only,’ he said, ‘there ain’t.’
    One eyebrow on the dark face raised itself suddenly as if it had been hooked up by a question-mark. Leat shrugged his shoulders and turned once more to his search.
    But no bottle was found. No bottle, that is to say, that was new enough and fragrant enough. Not a sniff of whisky did Cecil Leat or either of the strangers enjoy until nearly ten o’clock that evening, and that was not on the Purbrook road, but in the bar of the Ring of Bells in Chovey. Even then Cecil Leat was out of it.
    It was Major Maxwell who ordered the whisky. Only beer had been drunk by the couple of farmers, the sexton, the auctioneer, the postman and the others who had gathered in the bar. But when Major Maxwell came in, accompanied by Mrs Milne and a young man called Adrian Laws, who was some sort of cousin of the Maxwells, it was Scotch that the major demanded for the three of them. Tensely, explosively, with a thump of his lean fist on the bar, he demanded Scotch.
    Adrian Laws leant over the bar and murmured to George Warren, who stood behind it, that they had been dining at the Place. ‘Cauliflower au gratin, figs, custard, and a double orange juice apiece,’ he added. He was a tall young man with slightly stooping shoulders; his smooth, oval face and spectacles gave him a faint resemblance to a Chinese student at the London School of Economics, only his hair was reddish, a curling, shining, untidily worn crown of copper. Behind the horn-rimmed glasses the eyes were greenish.
    â€˜Ah, reckon you can do with a drink after an evenin’ up to the Place,’ said Tom Warren with a wink. His bar was a low-ceilinged room, papered in a warm and drowsy red, with a fire of logs ablaze on the wide hearth, and with warmly, stickily gleaming varnish on the furniture. On the floor red linoleum, patterned in an imitation of tiles, hid the tiles that were actually below it. King Edward and Queen Alexandra gazed fadedly from above the fireplace. ‘Reckon it makes you feel cold in your innards, the Place these days,’ said Tom, and looking round him, added: ‘I’m all for good food and drink and cheerful surroundings.’
    Softly Major Maxwell remarked to Mrs Milne: ‘Adrian’s told the village so much about the austerities and earnest moralities of my good brother that I believe they’re as much discussed and quite as scandalously enjoyed as the debts and lecheries of the family he bought the place from. I’ll bet there’s not a man in this room who doesn’t know that my sister-in-law chews raw oatmeal for breakfast.’
    She nodded, giving a smile that made little pretence of amusement; in some way, indeed, it only made her face more tired. She had hitched herself on to one of the high stools by the bar, leaning an elbow on the counter’s shiny top. The long skirt of her dull blue satin dress draped its folds about the stool with what, in that place, was a faintly comic graciousness; her fur coat hung open, showing flowers on her breast.
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ she said, drawing her glass towards her with a gesture heavy in its listlessness, ‘Adrian loves a good gossip. He has a nicer name for it, I expect—picking up local colour or something.’ Her voice had an edge to it, as of acute but weary irritation.
    Stuart