Mrs. Oliver remained silent, with a look on her face which women are apt to wear when they are waiting for the first signs of a kettle coming to the boil.
"She did say something once, I remember, and I wonder what she meant by it," said Mrs. Carstairs. "Something about starting a new life-in connection, I think, with St. Teresa. St.
Teresa of Avila." Mrs. Oliver looked slightly startled.
"But how did St. Teresa of Avila come into it?" "Well, I don't know really. I think she must have been reading a Life of her. Anyway, she said that it was wonderful how women get a sort of second wind. That's not quite the term she used, but something like that. You know, when they are forty or fifty or that sort of age and they suddenly want to begin a new life. Teresa of Avila did. She hadn't done anything special up till then except being a nun, then she went out and reformed all the convents, didn't she, and flung her weight about and became a great saint." "Yes, but that doesn't seem quite the same thing." "No, it doesn't," said Mrs. Carstairs. "But women do talk in a very silly way, you know, when they are referring to love affairs when they get on in life. About how it's never too late."
Chapter VII. Back To The Nursery
Mrs. Oliver looked rather doubtfully at the three steps and the front door of a small, rather dilapidated-looking cottage in the side street. Below the windows some bulbs were growing, mainly tulips.
Mrs. Oliver paused, opened the little address book in her hand, verified that she was in the place she thought she was, and rapped gently with the knocker after having tried to press a bell-push of possible electrical significance but which did not seem to yield any satisfactory bell ringing inside, or anything of that kind. Presently, not getting any response, she knocked again. This time there were sounds from inside.
A shuffling sound of feet, some asthmatic breathing and hands apparently trying to manage the opening of the door. With this noise there came a few vague echoes in the letter box.
"Oh, drat it. Drat it. Stuck again, you brute, you." Finally, success met these inward industries, and the door, making a creaky and rather doubtful noise, was slowly pulled open. A very old woman, with a wrinkled face, humped shoulders and a general arthritic appearance, looked at her. Visitor.
Her face was unwelcoming. It held no sign of fear, merely of distaste for those who came and knocked at the home of an Englishwoman's castle. She might have been seventy or eighty, but she was still a valiant defender of her home.
"I dunno what you've come about and I-" she stopped.
"Why," she said, "it's Miss Ariadne. Well, I never now! It's Miss Ariadne." "I think you're wonderful to know me," said Mrs. Oliver.
"How are you, Mrs. Matcham?" "Miss Ariadne! Just think of that now." It was, Mrs. Ariadne Oliver thought, a long time ago since she had been addressed as Miss Ariadne, but the intonation of the voice, cracked with age though it was, rang a familiar note.
"Come in, m'dear," said the old dame; "come in now.
You're lookin' well, you are. I dunno how many years it is since I've seen you. Fifteen at least." It was a good deal more than fifteen, but Mrs. Oliver made no corrections. She came in. Mrs. Matcham was shaking hands, her hands were rather unwilling to obey their owner's orders.
She managed to shut the door and, shuffling her feet and limping, entered a small room which was obviously one that was kept for the reception of any likely or unlikely visitors whom Mrs. Matcham was prepared to admit to her home.
There were large numbers of photographs-some of babies, some of adults. Some in nice leather frames which were slowly drooping but had not quite fallen to pieces yet. One in a silver frame by now rather tarnished, representing a young woman in presentation court dress with feathers rising up on her head. Two naval officers, two military gentlemen, some photographs of naked babies sprawling on rugs. There was a sofa and two chairs. As bidden, Mrs. Oliver sat in a chair.
Mrs. Matcham pressed herself down on the sofa and pulled a cushion into the hollow of her back with some difficulty.
"Well, my dear, fancy seeing you. And you're still writing your pretty stories, are you?" "Yes," said Mrs. Oliver, assenting to this though with a slight doubt as to how far detective stories and stories of crime and general criminal behavior could be called pretty stories. But that, she thought, was very much a habit of Mrs.
Matcham's.
"I'm all alone now," said Mrs. Matcham. "You remember Gracie, my sister? She died last autumn, she did. Cancer it was. They operated, but it was too late." "Oh, dear, I'm so sorry," said Mrs. Oliver.
Conversation proceeded for the next ten minutes on the subject of the demise, one by one, of Mrs. Matcham's last remaining relatives.
"And you're all right, are you? Doing all right? Got a husband now? Oh, now, I remember, he's dead years ago, isn't he? And what brings you here to Little Saltern Minor?" "I just happened to be in the neighborhood," said Mrs.
Oliver, "and as I've got your address in my little address book with me, I thought I'd just drop in and-well, see how you were and everything." "Ah! And talk about old times, perhaps. Always nice when \ you can do that, isn't it?" "Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Oliver, feeling some relief that this particular line had been indicated to her since it was more or less what she had come for. "What a lot of photographs you've got," she said.
"Ah, I have, an' that. D'you know, when I was in that home-silly name it had, Sunset House of Happiness for the Aged, something like that it was called, a year and a quarter I lived there till I couldn't stand it no more, a nasty lot they were, saying you couldn't have any of your own things with you. You know, everything had to belong to the home. I don't say as it wasn't comfortable, but you know, I like me own things around me. My photos and my furniture. And then there was ever so nice a lady, came from a Council, she did, some society or other, and she told me there was another place where they had homes of their own or something and you could take what you liked with you. And there's ever such a nice helper as comes in every day to see if you're all right. Ah, very comfortable I am here. Very comfortable indeed.
I've got all my own things." "Something from everywhere," said Mrs. Oliver, looking round.
"Yes, that table-the brass one-that's Captain Wilson, he sent me that from Singapore or something like that. And that Benares brass, too. That's nice, isn't it? That's a funny thing on the ash tray. That's Egyptian, that is. It's a scarabee, or some name like that. You know. Sounds like some kind of scratching disease, but it isn't. No, it's a sort of beetle and it's made out of some stone. They call it a precious stone. Bright blue. A lazy-a lavis-a lazy lapin or something like that." "Lapis lazuli," said Mrs. Oliver.
"That's right. That's what it is. Very nice, that is. That was my archaeological boy what went digging. He sent me that." "All your lovely past," said Mrs. Oliver.
"Yes, all my boys and girls. Some of them as babies, some of them I had from the month, and the older ones. Some of them when I went to India and that other time when I was in Siam.
Yes. That's Miss Moya in her court dress. Ah, she was a pretty thing. Divorced two husbands, she has. Yes. Trouble with his lordship, the first one, and then she married one of those pop singers and of course that couldn't take very well.
And then she married someone in California. They've got a yacht and go about places, I think. Died two or three years ago and only sixty-two. Pity dying so young, you know," "You've been to a lot of different parts of the world yourself, haven't you?" said Mrs. Oliver. "India, Hong Kong, then Egypt, and South America, wasn't it?" "Ah, yes, I've been about a good deal." "I remember," said Mrs. Oliver, "when I was in India, you were with a service family then, weren't you? A General somebody. Was it-now wait a minute, I can't remember the name-it wasn't General and Lady Ravenscroft, was it?" "No, no, you've got the name wrong. You're thinking of when I was with the Barnabys. That's right. You came to stay with them. Remember? You were doing a tour, you were, and you came and stayed with the Barnabys. You were an old friend of hers. He was a judge." "Ah, yes," said Mrs. Oliver. "It's difficult a bit. One gets names mixed up." "Two nice children they had," said Mrs. Matcham. "Of course they went to school in England. The boy went to Harrow and the girl went to Roedean, I think it was, and so I moved on to another family after that. Ah, things have changed nowadays. Not so many ayahs, even, as there used to be.