The Five Bells and Bladebone Read Online Free PDF Page B

still.
    Diane Demorney had been married and divorced four times by the time she was thirty-five. Then there had been a five-year hiatus, when she settled for love affairs, but that too had begun to pall. Theo Wrenn Browne was amusing and acerbic to the point of viciousness, qualities that Diane Demorney had in abundance. It might be pleasant to marry someone who was like oneself, if not quite as clever. Unfortunately, he had little money. Not that Diane needed money, she had plenty. But she believed in excess. If one Mercedes coupe was sufficient to meet one’s needs, then why not have two? Consequently, Melrose Plant was odds-on favorite, for he had enough money to buy three without turning a foil of his checkbook. And then there were the titles. She thought it rather reckless of him to abandon them like so many babies (which would not have been reckless at all), but she imagined he could get them back. The Countess of Caverness suited her.
    The correct name was almost as important as the correct ensemble. Only her mother (wherever she was) knew that she was not Diane Demorney of Belgravia, Capri, and the Hamptons. She was actually Dotty Trump of Stoke-on-Trent, two names that made her sit up and pour herself a double martini. Especially when she remembered that Melrose Plant had commented on the character in the Sayers book and said the names were an odd coincidence and gone back to reading one of those wretched books by his friend, Polly-Something. The one with the remarkable amethyst eyes. Amethyst and emerald-green. Between the two of them they could beam all the traffic on the M-1 safely through a blizzard. She pushed the two sets of eyes from her mind and absently stroked her showy, copper-eyed, flour-white cat. The cat promptly gouged her hand and she slapped him on the rump.
    Her thoughts trailing like long skirts over the grounds of Ardry End once again, she frowned. The trouble with Melrose Plant was his tiresome generosity and humility.When her query about his expected guest brought her no information, she had tried the ploy of telling him that she knew who it was, favoring him with one of her most seductive smiles. He had also smiled (though not seductively) and said, Fine, then I needn’t tell you.
    Diane thumped the velvet pillow in her lap. She also had no use for that triumvirate that met every day in the Little Shop of Bores. Marshall Trueblood, Plant, and Vivian Rivington. The in-crowd of Long Piddleton. That Melrose Plant might be fonder of Vivian Rivington, or she of him, than was necessary, Diane put out of her mind. Vivian was, she supposed, pretty in a well-bred way; however, no woman had ever been able to compete with Diane.
    She turned the cloisonné cigarette lighter over and over in her hand, leaned her head back on the velvet sofa, and allowed part of her mind to drift to the music of Beethoven. It did not compel all of her mind to listen, any more than the music of Mozart or Bach. But she had forced herself to digest medium-sized portions of one famous and one nearly unknown name in music, art, and literature. She learned enough about the famous one to keep her head above water; about the less-known she knew everything. She also delved into one small chapter of other fields — history, antiques, the habitats of tropical birds. It was astonishing what only an hour in the library could do. To know everything about a minor poet about whom no one else knew anything soon established one as an intellectual giant. It was all really so simple. She had widened her scope to take in other fields that often came up in social intercourse — cocktail parties, theater evenings, Coronations. Diane knew the value of Time. Why go to Trinity College to study over the Book of Kells — when everyone knew a little about that — when one could pop round to the British Museum and take in one page of the Book of Dimma, which no one seemed ever to have heard of, except experts. Diane merely smiled and smoked