Give Up the Body Read Online Free PDF Page A

was very short legged and long trunked, giving him an odd appearance from the rear. I followed him, fascinated by the sight he presented. But I forgot my amusement when he opened a door and ushered me into the Delhart idea of a rough and ready living room.
    It was as nice, in its way, as the hall. The walls were of knotty pine and decorated with electric lights made to look like kerosene lamps. They were of burnished copper. Assorted hunting trophies hung above the two fireplaces and thick bearskins were scattered on the floor.
    The room’s occupants weren’t appreciating the decoration at all. Even I, entering cold and practically a stranger, could see that. There were four of them, two seated and two standing by a portable bar near French doors at the far side. The one thing they seemed to have in common was silence. None of them was Carson Delhart.
    I looked inquiringly at Hilton. “Isn’t Mr. Delhart here?”
    “He’ll be in shortly,” Hilton said in his precise voice. He drew me toward the long, low, and luxurious couch. “Have you met …”
    I admitted I knew Mr. Willow and was introduced to his wife. Mrs. Edna Willow reminded me of a butter tub. She was brown-haired with the hair in little sausage curls that popped out all over her head. She was so sweetly smiling I distrusted her on sight. She didn’t burble, she didn’t say anything. She just smiled like an overdose of saccharin. Titus Willow added his beam to hers. He was still pink and pudgy and done neatly in flannels this evening.
    At least, I thought, I seem to be a ray of sunshine. I bounced after Hilton who had me delicately by the arm and was steering me across a dangerous stretch of hardwood floor toward the couple by the bar.
    Daisy Willow was watching Arthur Frew nurse a drink. They both agreed to meet me. Daisy much more gracefully. She smiled as her parents had, too sweetly. Frew has a steady, glum look as if it were a habit. He was about my age, a few years older than Daisy, a thin, pale boy with what looked like a perpetual droop to his underlip. He sucked at his highball and grunted at me.
    Daisy was in yellow slacks that set off her almost black hair. She was small, but well padded in the correct places. She gave promise of her mother’s bulk in another twenty years and I decided I preferred to look at her under water. She had a rather cute face, on the pert side, and when she looked at me she blushed all over again.
    “Oh, you’re the reporter!”
    “More or less,” I admitted.
    “I’ve always wanted to meet a newspaper woman.”
    As if her father hadn’t seen to it that she was surrounded by them—on their way to interviewing Titus, of course. “But not like you did this afternoon,” I said.
    Daisy blushed again. “Oh, it wasn’t that—I mean it didn’t look like—it—”
    “Nuts,” said Arthur Frew. He went back to his drink.
    There was a moment’s silence. I glanced back toward the divan. Both the Willows were sitting glumly, Titus staring at the floor and his wife idly pushing a knitting needle in and out of a ball of pink yarn. She looked up and saw me watching and put on her smile until I turned my head away.
    Smile or no smile, I could feel the full weight of the tension in the room. The silence was of the kind that begins as an uncomfortable lapse in conversation and grows into something embarrassing. Only, instead of being embarrassing, I felt this silence was malevolent. It was a heavy, alive thing, like shrouds enveloping each of us separately. I felt like shivering. I wanted to say something, or have someone else say something. Anything.
    I turned toward Daisy Willow, hunting for a conversational opening. She was looking at Arthur Frew. And in her large, dark eyes was worry. I had seen it before, overseas. It was the worry of fear. The child was frightened. Of young Frew or for him. I couldn’t know. But despite the blank “company” look on her face there was no masking her eyes.
    I turned away from her.