Ellis Peters - George Felse 06 - Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

passion and if he held some unusual and controversial opinions on it, the discussion during the week-end would be all the livelier.
    Professor Penrose, who was seventy-five, bursting with energy, and just beginning to take full advantage of the privileges of age, notably its irresponsibility and licence, grinned happily, fluffed up his clown’s-tufts of grey hair with eager fingers, and licked his lips in anticipation. He couldn’t wait to get his carnivorous teeth into all the sacred cows of the cult.
    Then they trooped in to dinner in the neo-Gothic vaulted hall, still hung with Cothercott tapestries and lit by great torches (electric now) jutting from the gold and scarlet walls. Audrey Arundale, dazzlingly fair in her plain black dress, sat beside her husband, looked beautiful, kept a careful watch on the conversation, and said and did all the right things at all the right moments. That is what the wives of the Edward Arundales are for, though they may also, incidentally, be loved helplessly and utterly, as Audrey was loved.
    She was fifteen years his junior, and looked even younger. He had never grown tired of looking at her, never lost the power to feel again the knife-thrust of astonishment, anguish and delight that possession of her beauty gave him. He still hated to leave her even for a day.
    “I wish you were coming with me,” he said impulsively in her ear. The young people were getting into their stride, you could gauge the potential success of a course by the crescendo of noise at their first meal together. He smiled at her quickly and reassuringly. “No, I know you can’t, of course. I wouldn’t take you away from this, I know how much you’re going to enjoy it.”
    “It’s just that I really began it,” she said apologetically. Her voice had something of the quality of her eyes, hesitant and faintly anxious, as though even after twenty years of backing him up loyally, first as the revered head of Bannerets and now here, she was still in doubt of her own powers, and still constantly braced to please. “I’ve really got to see it through, after getting Professor Penrose and all those others into it, haven’t I?”
    “Of course, my dear, I know. But I shall miss you. Never mind,” he said, letting his hand rest for a moment on hers, “let’s enjoy this first concert together, anyhow. It looks as if you’re going to have a success on your hands, by all the signs.”
    The noise by then was almost deafening but there were those who observed that Lucien Galt wasn’t contributing much to it, and neither was Liri Palmer.
     
    “To-morrow,” said Professor Penrose, rubbing his hands, “will be time enough to begin haggling about all the usual questions, such as definition and standards, what’s permissible and what isn’t, who has it right and who has it wrong. To-night we’re going to enjoy ourselves. We have here with us a number of recognised artists in the field, whose judgement of their material
ought
to command respect. Let’s ask them, not to tell us, but to show us. We’ll get them to sing their favourites, songs they take as beyond question or reproach. And then we’ll examine the results together, and see what we find.”
    “Now you got me scared,” said Peter Crewe plaintively, and got a mild laugh from under Dickie Meurice’s nose; but his time was coming.
    “Mr. Crewe, you are probably the safest person around here. We shall see! Don’t let me cast any shadows. I’m retiring into the audience as of now.” The professor, a born chameleon, was taking on colouring, from his American artist without even realising it. “Here and now I hand over this session to an expert at putting people through hoops. Mr. Meurice, take over.”
    Mr. Meurice rose like a trout to a fly, and took over gleefully. The professor retired to a quiet corner beside the warden and his wife, and sat on the small of his back, legs crossed, looking at his specimens between his skidding glasses and his shaggy