Читать книгу Death on the Riviera - Ernest Elmore - Страница 18

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“My dear, dear boy!” boomed Nesta, grasping Bill’s hands and shaking them frantically. “As if I wouldn’t have known you!” She stepped back and viewed him with unblushing curiosity. “You’ve certainly broadened out since those gay days at Larkhill. Don’t get enough exercise, of course. And where’s your moustache? You used to have a moustache. One of those bristly little army affairs. So virile.” Again the searching, slightly roguish contemplation. “You know, I always liked you, Bill. Not very subtle but no damn nonsense about you. Now come and meet the others. We’re a rag-and-bobtail collection but I think we’ll amuse you.”

She led him through into the lounge and announced breezily:

“Hi! Everybody. This is Bill!”

He saw Kitty at once, and his heart missed a beat. She was sitting on the arm of a settee, lovely and desirable as ever, with a cocktail glass in her hand and a small nervous smile playing about her lips. With the imperious gesture of a headmistress about to present a fourth-former to a visiting governor, Nesta beckoned her forward.

“And this is Kitty—Kitty Linden. She’s down here on a visit.” Adding with a baleful glance: “Just a short visit, eh, darling?”

Kitty, never quite sure how to take these devastating digs, smiled bleakly at Nesta and granted Bill a distant nod; then turned with sudden animation to Tony Shenton, who’d drifted up behind her. Bill was swift to notice how she slipped her arm through his—a familiar, possessive gesture that left no doubt in his mind as to the relationship between them. So there had been another man in the set-up—just as he’d always suspected. He wondered who the devil the fellow was and where Kitty had first met him. An outsized rotter by the look of him. Bill’s jaw grew taut. He realized with a sudden stab of despair that this man’s presence was just another knot in an already tangled situation.

Barely conscious of what he was saying, he was introduced to Dilys, Miss Pilligrew and Latour. Then Nesta grabbed Tony by the necktie and jerked him forward like a recalcitrant horse. For the first time the two men found themselves face to face. And at that moment Bill suffered a shock. There was absolutely no question about it—somewhere, sometime, he’d met this smooth-faced bounder before!