Uneasy Terms by Peter Cheyney

Author:Peter Cheyney [Cheyney, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2021-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

It was ten o’clock next morning when Callaghan awoke. He lay in bed, his hands folded behind his head, looking at the ceiling.

He reached for a cigarette and lighter; began to smoke; to blow smoke rings and watch them sail across the room.

It seemed to him that the original quarrel at the dinner-table at Dark Spinney had developed into a series of events which might lead anywhere, and end – unless a lot of care was taken – in the Central Criminal Court. With Callaghan Investigations tailing along as accessories ‘before and after’. He grinned a little ruefully. You liked the look of a woman; the way she walked; spoke and behaved generally, and you took a chance. Every chance you took meant, usually, that you had to take half a dozen more. Life was like that.

His mind switched to Corinne. An interesting personality, thought Callaghan. A girl who was beautiful; had most things that young women wanted, but who was unpopular with her own family; a girl who, as Patricia had said, seemed to like no one. He wondered why Corinne should be so bitter. What was the reason for her peculiar attitude towards life?

Possibly, he thought, Corinne was a little too experienced. She was a young woman who was fond of affaires; sometimes, as Viola had said, with people who were not particularly nice. An unhappy, dissatisfied person, Corinne. One who was, perhaps, trying to get everything in too much of a hurry. And one who, if things went wrong, and she did not get her way, might be very nasty.

He smiled a little cynically as he thought of the situation that existed between Viola and Corinne. It seemed to him that by and large Viola had not had a very good deal. Talked into doing something which she did not want to do – not to divulge the fact that she had married, she had placed herself in a position where she was open to blackmail. The humorous part of that aspect, if it could be called humorous, thought Callaghan, was that Corinne – the girl who had been kept from her inheritance by Viola, no matter with what good motives, had been the person whom the blackmailer had contacted – the person used as the go-between.

Callaghan began to wonder again about Corinne. Was she as black as she was painted? Patricia had said that Corinne disliked everyone. Therefore she disliked Viola. If this was so she was in an excellent position to vent any spite she felt against her sister. She had only to divulge to the trustees the story of her sister’s marriage and the fat would be in the fire. Viola would be dispossessed and in a very odd position. Perhaps, thought Callaghan, Corinne wasn’t so bad after all.

He got out of bed. He was wearing the top half of a pair of ash-grey silk pyjamas dotted with black fleur-de-lys. He began to walk up and down the bedroom, admiring the morning sun which came through the open window and illuminated the drab carpet.

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