Nightmare in Pink Read Online Free PDF Page B

Island, and an apartment in town and a smallish place at Hobe Sound. They are quiet, gentle, careful, dull people, and like I said, very good at games. Tennis and sailing and such. Charlie works very hard, they say, tending the money, making it grow and giving it away properly. It's strange we should mention a fling before, because I hear Charlie is having himself one."
    "Hmmm?"
    "At the time of life when you can most expect it from a man who marries young, McGee. He had some kind of a breakdown a year ago. One of those anxiety things. Now he and Joanna are separated, but no one has said anything about divorce. He has his own apartment in town now. And he has created a drunken fuss in a few public places, bless him, after years of restraint. And I did hear something strange about the menage he's set up for himself."
    Her eyes clouded. "Let me think. When a woman forgets gossip, McGee, she is nearing the end of her road. What was it? Oh! I heard he is living with his lawyer and his secretary. Now there is a lurid arrangement for you!" She shook her head. "How could I have forgotten, dear boy? It might be handy though. He would be right there to prepare releases, wouldn't he? The lawyer is Baynard Mulligan. I've met him. Quite amusing and attractive, really. A rather nice Virginia family, but I understand they lost their money when he was small. Let me see now. He married Elena Garrett when he was thirty and she was no more than nineteen. But it didn't work out at all. It lasted four years, I think. They say she became alcoholic. Now she's married to some little teacher person over at Princeton, and has become very earnest and happy and she's having child after child. Baynard didn't remarry. Let me see what else I know about Charlie Armister."
    "You are fantastic, Connie, and I am grateful, but for the last five minutes I've heard your guests arriving."
    "McGee, darling, the bar is in a perfectly obvious place, and this is a hideously boring batch, actually the sort of party I'd have the Armisters at, if they were together and in the city. I get all the dead ones together and let them amuse each other. It's better than inflicting them in little dabs on my lively friends. I'll go out there when I'm ready. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Charlie Armister is his sister-in-law. Joanna's elder sister. Give me a moment and I can tell you the exact name. Teresa Howlan Gernhardt… ah… Delancy Drummond. Terry she is called. Very international, and she's a charming earthy bawd, and has a marvelous figure for her age. She must be forty-six. She's usually in Rome or Athens, but I've heard she's here now, probably to hold her sister's hand. It's remarkable two girls could be so unlike. McGee, darling, I do suppose you are brassy enough to go ask Terry about Charlie, and she's probably annoyed enough to tell you. Where would she be? Mmmm. Either at the Plaza or at the Armister apartment. Try them both, dear. But don't get the wrong apartment. The old one, the one where she'd be, is the one on East Seventy-ninth. I think Charlie's hideout is further down. Now, I think I must go join my guests, much as I dread it. And you must come back and tell me the scandalous reason why you should be interested in Charlie Armister. I won't tell a soul."
    "The hell with Charlie. I'm interested in that secretary."
    We stood up. I bent and kissed her soft wrinkled cheek.
    "Slip out swiftly, my dear, before any of these old battlewagons can clutch you and start honking at you. And phone me again soon."
    I went out, smiling. The old elevator was rattling up the shaft so I took the stairs down. Constance Trimble Thatcher has her own kind of wisdom. There had been one morning when I had thought she had lost her mind. That was the morning Joanie had appeared at my gangplank looking pallid and jumpy and sacrificial in her resort wear. With trembling hand she had thrust a note at me. I saw her chin shaking as I looked at her after reading it. It was in