Odor of Violets, Baynard Kendrick [best short novels .txt] 📗

hungry,” Norma told her. “Have you and the rest raided the larder completely, or is there anything left for me?”

“Sausage and scrambled eggs in the hot plate,” said Cheli. “Coffee in the Silex, and cornbread and rolls in the warmer.”

“It’s probably far too much.” Norma walked in toward the silver-laden sideboard visible through the open folding doors and added from the adjoining room, “At my age, I have to keep a checkrein on my waistline. Thad has a producer’s eye for bulges in the wrong place. I want to keep that ‘You ought to be on the stage, my dear!’ expression on his face when he looks at me.”

“At your age!” Cheli laughed softly and rustled a page of her manuscript. “The sight of that skin of yours and your figure simply infuriates me. You’re the irritating type that makes aging debutantes sore. You’ll never look more than twenty-two.”

Norma served herself, poured a cup of coffee, and carried her breakfast into the living room, where she settled herself at Cheli’s feet on a bearskin rug. “Christmas compliments!” she told Cheli. “They always crop up around the theater about the twentieth of December, but they’re still good, I suppose. You make me feel ready to buy you a new fur coat or a Buick sedan.”

She sipped her coffee. “Have you seen Gil this morning?”

The blazing fire touched spots of color on the cheeks of the girl in the chair. “He had to go into New York,” said Cheli, reading intently. “He took an early train. Helena and Thaddeus went with him. How come they didn’t take you?”

Norma placed her cup and saucer and plate on the hearth. “Maybe my ears are deceiving me,” she exclaimed lightly. “I knew Gil and Helena were going—but Thad! Big things must be brewing when my late-sleeping husband hauls himself out into the early morning snow.” She tried the sausage and eggs and found them good. “I’m glad he didn’t want me to go. He’s a bear before eleven. I’m afraid the combination of an early train trip with Thad and Helena—” She ended on a vague note, feeling that she might have said too much already.

Pierce, the butler, gray in Thaddeus’s service, came in and said apologetically, “Good morning, madam. I didn’t know you had come down. Mr. Tredwill left a note for you.”

He stepped soft-footed into the hall and returned with the note on a silver tray. Norma smiled. Under Thaddeus’s training, Pierce could have fitted unchanged into any butler’s role in movie or play.

“I’m a bad hostess, Pierce.” She opened the note and read it as the butler cleared her breakfast things away.

“Late sleeping is to be excused on such a day,” said Pierce with his slow, half-quizzical smile. “More coffee, madam?”

Norma shook her head. Thad’s typical note had left her with a glow. “I love you, my dear! You are life to me and all its possessions—yet today I must go! Forgive me if I do not return until tomorrow. You can reach me at the Waldorf-Astoria. Thad.”

Cheli resumed the conversation as Pierce went into the dining room. Sometimes her frankness was disconcerting. “You don’t like Gilbert’s wife, do you?”

“Helena?” Norma gave an embarrassed laugh. “Perhaps it would be nearer the truth if you said she doesn’t like me.”

“I wonder if she likes anyone except herself.” Cheli spread the manuscript over the arm of her chair. “That includes Gil. What nationality is she, Norma? She’s a mystery to me.”

“French, I believe. It’s hard to say. She speaks so many languages fluently. The only thing I know is that Gil met her in Washington at the French Embassy.”

Norma left her place on the rug and picked up a morning paper from the settee. The conversation was becoming difficult. She disliked discussing the members of Thad’s family. Quick to take a hint, Cheli turned to her manuscript again.

The paper was opened to the theatrical page, telling her that Thad had read it over his early morning coffee. She glanced idly at a syndicated column headed, “Rialto Rumors.” For a brief instant the room became unbearably warm. She sat down on the settee and smoothed the paper out over her knees.

“A familiar figure, too long absent from Broadway, was seen at Ronni’s 41 Club,” the column stated. “He was accompanied by an exquisite creature whom your correspondent identified as the daughter of a grand old master of productions. It would be interesting if Paul Gerente resumed his interrupted stage career by marrying into his ex-wife’s family.”

Norma sat quietly for a long time staring into the flames. Finally she said, “I hate to leave you alone here today, but I think I’ll go into Hartford, Cheli.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m up to my ears in work.”

Norma stood up. There was a train to New York from Hartford at three-thirty. She could catch another one back during the evening. It would give her a few hours in New York—all she needed.

“I may have dinner with friends in Hartford,” she said. A cold lump was pressing her throat inside, making it difficult to speak or breathe. If Thad had seen that item—! “He can’t have seen it,” she assured herself silently. “He’d have spoken about it to me.” She dismissed as foolish a quick idea that she might talk with Babs. The girl was too young, too self-centered, to see anything but Paul’s charm—to know what such gossip would do to Thad. There was only one course open. It was dangerous to a point where it might wreck her marriage, but she had to take it. She must talk with Paul Gerente.

CHAPTER II

THE NEW York train was twenty-five minutes late. Norma purchased her ticket with a feeling of apprehension which finally drove her from the warmth of the waiting room to pace the platform upstairs. There, she kept gazing searchingly up the track as though she might hasten the approach of the train through the snow.

The apprehension stayed with her even when she was settled in