Antony blew another cloud of smoke.
‘A very nice womanly occupation, darling.’
His glance travelled to the hands which lay in the lap of Julia’s old red smock. An ink-smudge not quite washed out made a blue shadow on the right forefinger. The nails, most beautifully shaped, were innocent of stain or varnish. The hands were innocent of rings. They were as nature had made them, and nature had made them well. They were not small, and they were not white, but they were very beautiful hands.
Antony said ‘No!’ with great suddenness and explosive force.
‘No what?’
‘I forgot about your hands. Let all the women with hideous magenta nails go and be scullions — it would do ’em good! You’ve got the second — no, the third — most beautiful hands in Europe. The other two are on statues. And if you don’t take care of them, you’ll find yourself in the special hell reserved for people who destroy works of art.’
Julia said what she had never thought of saying.
‘What a pity my face doesn’t match.’ The words just came out of her mouth and left her feeling as if she had opened a door and let something escape.
Antony shook his head.
‘You’d find it very inconvenient, darling — you’d probably get mobbed in the streets. Leave classic perfection to the museums. You wouldn’t be comfortable on a cold white pedestal. Let’s get back to business. When did you say you were going down to Latter End?’
‘I didn’t say. I haven’t made up my mind.’
‘What about going down with me on Friday?’
She was silent for a moment. Her cigarette ash dropped. She brushed it away with an impatient gesture and said,
‘I suppose I could. I haven’t broken it to Lois yet.’
‘Will it need breaking?’
She nodded.
‘Yes, it will. I don’t generally stay there.’ She was saying more than she meant to. ‘As a matter of fact I haven’t stayed there since Jimmy married her. We don’t — she paused — ‘love each other very much.’
‘You surprise me.’
He got a smouldering glance. She leaned forward and flung what was left of her cigarette into the fireplace, holding it like a dart and putting an extraordinary energy into the action.
‘Do I? Very well then, you can have it straight! I hate her like poison!’
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1948 by Patricia Wentworth
cover design by Jason Gabbert
978-1-4532-2371-0
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
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