Not to Disturb Read Online Free PDF

her, ‘Aunt to me though you
are, would you marry me outside the Book of Common Prayer?’
    She says, ‘I have my scruples and I’m proud of them.’
    He says, ‘In France an aunt may marry a nephew.’
    â€˜No, Lister, I stand by the Table of Kindred and
Affinity. I don’t want to get heated at this moment, on this night, Lister.
You’re starting me off. The press and the police are coming, and there are only
sixty-four shopping days to Christmas.’
    â€˜I was only suggesting,’ he says. ‘I’m only giving you a
little thought for when all this is over.’
    â€˜It’s going too far. You have to keep your unreasonable
demands within bounds. I’m old-fashioned beyond my years. One thought at a time
is what I like.’
    â€˜Let’s go down,’ says Lister, ‘and see what the servants
are up to.’
    As they come down the staircase voices rebound from the
library. Lister and Eleanor continue silently and, turning into the servants’
hall, Lister stops and looks at the library door. ‘What were they doing anyway,
amongst us, on the crust of this tender earth?’ he says. ‘What were they doing
here?’
    The other servants fall silent. ‘What are they doing here,
anyway in this world?’
    Heloise, pink and white of skin, fresh from her little
sleep, says, ‘Doing their own thing.’
    â€˜They haven’t finished it yet,’ says Clovis. ‘I’m getting
anxious. Listen to their voices.’
    â€˜There must have been some good in them,’ Eleanor says.
‘They couldn’t have been all bad.’
    â€˜Oh, I agree. They did wrong well. And they were good for
a purpose so long as they lasted,’ Lister says. ‘As paper cups are suitable for
occasions, you use them and throw them away. Who brought that fur coat in here?’
He points to a white mink coat draped over a chair.
    â€˜It looks a dream on me,’ Heloise says. ‘It doesn’t meet
at the front, but afterwards it will.’
    â€˜You’d better put it back. Victor Passerat’s been seen in
it,’ Lister says. ‘The police will inquire.’
    Heloise takes away the coat and says, as she goes, ‘I’ll
get it in the end. Somehow I feel I’ll get it in the end.’
    â€˜She might well be right,’ Lister says. ‘Her foresight
runs high at this moment. Who were those people banging at the back door and
ringing at the front?’
    â€˜The girls in the car, demanding what’s happened to their
friend, Passerat,’ Hadrian says. ‘I told them that he was with the Baron and
Baroness and they were not to be disturbed. They said they had an appointment.
One of them’s a masseuse that I haven’t seen before.’
    â€˜And the other?’ says Lister.
    â€˜The other didn’t say. I didn’t ask.’
    â€˜You did right,’ Lister says. ‘They don’t come into the
story.’
    Outside are the sounds of the lake-water lapping on the
jetty and of the mountain-wind in the grandiose trees. The couple in the car are
separated, one in the front, one in the back seat, each lolling under a rug.
They seem to be sleeping but every now and then one of them moves, one of them
speaks, and again their heads bend and the blankets move over their crouched
uneasy shoulders. The lights from the house and from the distant drive touch on
their movements.
    They both start upright as another car, dark and large,
pulls up. A lithe, leather-coated young man sprints out and approaches the
couple. They are scrambling out of their car now.
    â€˜We can’t get in the house,’ says the one from the front
seat. ‘They won’t open the door, even. We’ve been here over three hours, waiting
for our friend.’
    â€˜What friend? What do you want?’ says the lithe young
man, impatiently jangling a bunch of keys. ‘I’m the secretary, Mr Samuel.