Suspicious Circumstances Read Online Free PDF Page A

Delight Schmidt. ‘Just people — if reporters are people.’
    Mother beckoned me over. ‘Delight, this is my precious Nickie. Nickie dear, you’ll adore Delight. She’s a divine girl. I found her at MGM in the property department, putting sequins on the behinds of horses. Now She’s come to live with us. She’s heaven. So amusing. Not a bit like that boring Bernice.’
    My heart sank. So this wasn’t just another secretary’s secretary from the Agency. This terrible know-it-all redhead was one of Mother’s crushes. Mother was okay on men, but with the exception of Pam, quite disastrous on females.
    Mother was nuzzling her arm around the redhead’s waist. ‘You see, Nickie? You see how divine she is?’ She patted Delight’s arm. ‘Darling, you must be particularly sweet to poor Nickie. He’s feeling the teensiest bit blue. Some tiny little escapade in Paris.’
    ‘Mother!’ I broke in, seething with indignation and embarrassment.
    But Mother merely drew the two of us even closer together with an awful knowing look.
    ‘Darling children, I’ve simply got to dash to poor Ronnie, but you two young things amuse yourselves. Play tennis or something. It’s absurd for secretaries to be working all the time.’
    She looped her arm in mine and dragged me out with her on to the porticoed front steps. Gino was already in the Mercedes. It was borrowed too. People with cars felt about Mother the way people with houses did. It belonged to an actor who was working in London.
    ‘It'’ bliss having you home- sheer bliss.’ Mother kissed me tenderly. ‘Darling, you don't really want to go back to Paris, do you?’
    ‘But, Mother…’
    ‘Now, darling, I know it seems like the end of the world, but you’ll be surprised how differently you’ll feel in a minute. We’ll find something wonderful and amusing for you to do here. That lovely Dancing and Fencing Academy again, perhaps. Meanwhile, be a dear sweet boy and go and play with Delight. Such a sad life. An orphan. So brave.’
    She got into the car then and waved while Gino drove off.
    I went back, fulminating, into the hall. The brave orphan, twirling the telephone extension cord, smiled a high voltage smile.
    ‘Tennis anyone?’ she said.
    ‘Is Pam back yet?’ I asked.
    ‘No, she isn't.’
    ‘Where’s Uncle Hans?’
    ‘Down by the pool.’
    That was my escape gimmick. I turned away but she put a hand on my arm. ‘Aren't you going to amuse yourself with
    me the way your mother told you to?’
    I glowered.
    ‘Oh, I know,’ she said. ‘The tiny little escapade. But after all the tiny little escapades in Paris and I’m here and although I hate to be the one to have to point this out to you, it’s dreadfully misguided of you not to investigate me. I’m vastly amusing, a wonderful restorative. You'd be staggered at the things I can do.’
    She made a few enormously sexy South American dance steps.
    ‘See? That, for example. But that’s only the beginning. I can feed goldfish with a frenzy second to none. I can put sequins on the behinds of horses. But your mother already told you that. I can…’ She paused and the lashes — they weren’t as long as Mother’s but they were long — lowered over the green eyes. ‘What else can I do? Oh, yes, I can a tale unfold whose lightest word, I venture to state, is going to harrow up your soul.’
    As I looked at her, part of me — only a miniscule, shameful part — began having the old familiar ‘red-head’ sensation, but that merely redoubled my fury. At all costs I was going to ignore this stooge of Mother’s with the iciest of dignity.
    ‘Well?’ she queried. ‘Don’t just stand there. Don’t you want your soul harrowed up? I don’t go around harrowing up just any boy’s soul, I’ll have you know. This is something very special for you because I adore your mother and because I’m prepared to adore you almost like a sister and, frankly, because if I don’t unfold my tale to someone other than