Death of a Huntsman Read Online Free PDF

say that he thought the girl had been pretty emphatic about the party but Edna Whittington laughed, cutting him short, and said:
    â€˜She never gets it right, Henry. Never gets anything right, the silly child, just never gets it right.’
    â€˜Isn’t she here either?’
    â€˜Out to a little birthday party,’ she said. ‘Just a teeny-weeny affair.’
    She poured him a glass of sherry. Her voice was husky. It was nearly twenty-five years since he had seen her before and he remembered, in time, that the voice had always been husky.
    â€˜Well, cheers, Henry,’ she said. ‘Resounding numbers of cheers. Lots of luck.’
    She raised her glass, looking at him with chilled, squinting, remarkably white-blue eyes. Her hair wasbluish too and there were shadows of blue, almost violet, in the powder on her face. Her chest, flattish, was steely and bare, except for a double row of pearls, to the beginnings of the creased pouches of her breasts, and her face had a strange bony prettiness except in the mouth, which twisted upward at one side.
    â€˜Come and sit here on the sofa and tell me all about yourself. Tell me about life. Here, dear man—not there. Just the old Henry—afraid something will bite you.’
    He did not think, he said, as he sat beside her on the settee, that he had anything very much of himself to tell; or of life for that matter.
    â€˜Well, I have,’ she said. ‘Here we’ve been in the neighbourhood six months and not a bleat from you.’
    â€˜I honestly didn’t know you were here.’
    â€˜Then you honestly should have done. It was in all the papers. I mean about the colonel. Didn’t you read about that?’
    He had to confess, with growing wretchedness, that he hadn’t even read in the papers about the colonel, who had dropped down of thrombosis a year before. Nevertheless he was, he said, very sorry. It was a sad thing, that.
    â€˜He’d got awfully fat,’ she said. ‘And of course marrying late and so on. He was a man of forty-five before Valerie was born.’
    He knew that it was not only the colonel but she too who had married very late. He sat thinking of this, sipping his sherry, watching a meagre fire of birch logs smouldering in the round black grate, and she said:
    â€˜Yes, I call it pretty stodgy, Henry. Two miles away and not a single lamb’s peep out of you. The trouble is you live in a stew-pot.’
    â€˜Now here, I say——’
    â€˜Well, don’t you? Up to town with
The Times
in the morning. Down from town with
The Standard
in the evening. If that isn’t stew-potism tell me what is. Doesn’t anything else go on in these parts?’
    â€˜Oh! blow it,’ he said, ‘It isn’t bad as that.’
    â€˜Isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I think it’s absolutely fungoid.’
    He suddenly felt very slightly incensed at this and went on to explain, as calmly as he could, how you sometimes held parties, had people to dinner, went in spring to the point-to-points and, damn it, in winter, hunted quite a lot. He didn’t think you could call that stew-potism, could you?
    â€˜There’s the hunt-ball in a month’s time too,’ he reminded her finally. ‘You can chalk that up for a whale of a time.’
    â€˜I would,’ she said, ‘if anybody had invited me.’
    Before he realized what he was saying, he said:
    â€˜I’ll invite you. Both of you. Delighted.’
    â€˜Oh! the child could never come.’
    â€˜No?’
    He could not think why on earth the girl could never come.
    â€˜She’s a mere infant, Henry. Hardly out of the shell. She never does these things. Besides, I’d never let her.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Oh! Henry, she isn’t fledged. She’s only half-grown.She isn’t fit for that sort of thing. You know what these hunt affairs are too. Wolf-packs. Those gangs are not hunts for