The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [18]
Shortly after eight, Annie took over at the cash register. Ingrid flashed a grateful look and wormed her way toward the back. Annie hoped there were some hors d’oeuvres left. The chiles rellenos and curried shrimp mold had disappeared early, but, when she’d last checked, the oysters wrapped in bacon, spinach balls, and baked clams were in good supply. Max’s secretary, Barb, was overseeing the buffet. (Annie had wanted to provide succulent tidbits appropriate to a tea at Claridge’s. The resulting bleat of dismay from across the Atlantic had threatened to sever Anglo-American relations permanently. “Neow, neow, neow. Nevah. One does not partake of banana scones in the evening in a cocktail atmosphere!” Annie had reluctantly relinquished that dream, but a tea worthy of the Royal Enclosure at Ascot was scheduled for Sunday afternoon’s garden fête.)
Occasionally Annie could hear Barb’s loud, cheerful voice as she discovered another Georgette Heyer fan. “Footsteps in the Dark,” Max’s secretary confided, “that’s my favorite. I always wanted to live in a house like that! Oooooh!”
It was that kind of party, a sustained, cheerful roar, with enough distinguishable comments to make clear the nature of the revelers:
“I’ve never seen a classier deception than in The ABC Murders.”
“You haven’t read ‘Mr. Eastwood’s Adventure’? Oh, you must. It has the most delicious description of writer’s block.”
“Don’t you just love the opening vignettes in Cat Among the Pigeons?”
“Her villages were based on Torquay and St. Mary Church in her native Devon. I always tell my students that her domestic realism is right on a par with Dickens’s Bleak House.”
“I’ve read every one of her plays. Even Akhnaton. Her husband thought it was her most beautiful and profound play.”
“Don’t you admire her use of color in Appointment with Death? She captures not only geography through shades of rose but the emotions of the family.”
“Poirot may have been a foreigner, but at heart he was the quintessential Edwardian gentleman.”
“Poirot never had a twin brother. That was an invention from first to last.”
“She enjoyed books by Elizabeth Daly, Michael Gilbert, Margaret Millar, Patricia Highsmith, Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, and Muriel Spark.”
At twenty to nine, her first moment of quiet at the cash desk, Annie took a deep breath. She resisted the impulse to punch the computer for a total on the evening’s sales, then looked up into the unsmiling face of Neil Bledsoe.
It was a moment she would long remember, the smoldering violence in his coal-black eyes, the sullen droop of his mouth, the aura of physical strength barely leashed, the emanation of swaggering maleness. His crisp white linen suit underscored the raven black of his hair and the ruddiness of his face. He was freshly shaven, but already black stubble showed on his cheeks. The scratch from the injury in the Palmetto House drive was barely visible. More than ever, he had the saturnine appeal of a buccaneer. He saw and correctly interpreted the flicker in her eyes. He gave her a long, measuring, bold look, an inviting, knowledgeable, sensual look.
It was as insulting and invasive as a too-intimate touch. And, horrid to realize, as titillating.
Annie felt like a captive paraded for an emperor’s pleasure. She met Bledsoe’s gaze squarely—and angrily.
The tall elderly woman a step behind him hesitated, a hand lifted in mute appeal.
Bledsoe grunted. “Make up your mind, sister.”
“I beg your pardon.” Annie’s tone was sheathed in ice. She was proud of her self-control.
“That’s the trouble with girls like you. You want it, then you don’t. Girls who tease can get themselves in a shitload of trouble.”
Annie opened her mouth to attack. The general import of his sentence was infuriating enough, but the denigrating use of girls in lieu of women was the clincher. And there was such a thing as too much self-control….
“Listen, buddy—” she began.