England -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Murder -- Fiction; Mystery fiction
This wardrobe, with a number of dress-baskets and other articles, formed
part of the furniture of the bed-sitting-room in Oakley Street that she
was now on the point of leaving, and it had been Philip Esdaile himself
who had suggested, some time ago, that there was plenty of room for
these belongings in his cellar. Nothing had since been said about it;
Philip says that the matter had entirely slipped from his memory; and
Mrs. Cunningham, having no reason to suppose that he had changed his
mind, had as a matter of fact had the wardrobe put on a light cart and
brought round to Lennox Street the day after the aeroplane accident,
that is to say on the Friday afternoon. Philip himself, coming along the
street at that moment, had found the cart at the gate and Monty and Mrs.
Cunningham considering the best way of getting the wardrobe in.
"Ah, so you've got it round; good," he said. "I don't quite know where
you're going to put it, but we'll find somewhere. Let me give you a
hand."
"I thought you said it was to go into the cellar?" said Mrs. Cunningham.
"Eh?" said Philip. "Did I? I believe I did. Well, let's get it in first.
We can settle that afterwards. Has Dadley come?"
So the wardrobe was got into the hall, where it was left for the present
among Philip's corded and labeled painting-gear.
"Has Dadley come?" Philip asked again.
"Yes. He's been waiting for you for ten minutes in the studio," Monty
replied.
"Bon. I don't suppose I shall be more than ten minutes, but don't wait
for tea. I've had a cup as a matter of fact."
"Can't say I think much of old Daddy as a framer----" Monty was
beginning; but Esdaile was already at the studio door, which he closed
carefully behind him.
You may remember the name of old William Dadley. It was he who, when Mr.
Harry Westbury had held forth in the Saloon Bar about the danger to
property from the air, had ventured to suggest that lives too had their
value. His shop was the little one in the King's Road with the alleged
Old Master in the window, one half of it black with ancient grime, the
other pitilessly restored; and, as Monty had said, artists who were in
any hurry to see their pictures back again seldom took their framing to
old Daddy. Unless they went farther afield, they were more likely to
patronize the up-to-date establishment across the road, kept by the two
pushing young men in the Sinn Fein hats and black satin bows and little
side-whiskers and hair bobbed like girls'.
And now for the discussion on picture-framing that took place between
Philip Esdaile and William Dadley, behind the closed studio door.
VI
"Was he drunk?" Esdaile asked. He was walking about, head down,
frowning.
The old man stroked his grizzled beard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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