The Invisible Host: a Golden Age Mystery by Gwen Bristow

Author:Gwen Bristow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2022-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Yes,” she answered. “I am quite done. Now I suppose you want to justify yourself, and maybe explain why you think I’d like to kill you. Go ahead. I’d rather like to hear it.”

For several seconds the room was silent. The hostility between Jean and Peter had taken almost visible proportions; it was as though it stood between them, ugly, vast and threatening, a thing that had begun between Jean and Peter but which now none of the others in the room could escape.

Then Peter, who had continued bending on Jean that look of infatuated disgust, began to speak.

“Five years ago,” he said, “when you played in stock here in New Orleans, you were the same conceited little creature that you are now. But you had talent. Anybody with an infantile knowledge of the theater could have diagnosed your affliction—talent buried under a mountain of self-conscious complacency. I had no personal grudge against you, which you of course won’t believe, since you seem incapable of attributing to me any motives higher than those that might in reversed circumstances have inspired you. But you revolted me. I said so. Over and over I put into printed English words what you needed to make yourself into an actress. But your colossal self-assurance wouldn’t let you take criticism. You resented it, and you exaggerated your imbecile mannerisms to prove you didn’t need it. When I heard you had gotten fired I clapped myself on the back. ‘If she pounds the pavements long enough,’ I said, ‘she may get tired admiring herself and give her intelligence a chance to see the light.’ And that’s what happened. Heaven put you into the hands of a good director. You were so glad to get a job that you did anything he told you. You made good. If you’ll sit through one of your box-office hits and watch yourself with a critical eye you’ll see that you have been made to take every hint I ever gave you. But you won’t see it. You are still so conceited that you will only say to yourself, ‘There’s Jean Trent! Beautiful, talented Jean Trent! Look at what I’m doing! Look at the miracle of me!’

“The only proof I can offer you that I didn’t try to ruin your career so as to make you sell Chetwood is that I didn’t open a legal contest until after you were making enough money to engage a capable lawyer. However—” he shrugged and turned away from her. “However, after your address to the assembly to-night I can’t help wondering if the full price of Chetwood might not prove more tempting to you than half of it. Well—how can man die better than by feeling the slim, scented fingers of a beautiful woman around his throat?”

He walked away from her and sat down. Again there was silence, one of those bleak dark silences more terrible than any words. Sylvia spoke abruptly.

“If each of us persists in behaving as though the others had conspired to murder him there’s very little use in discussing anything.

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