We talked as women do who haven’t met for years and she took me back to her Club for tea. She didn’t seem to notice I was wearing last year’s reach-me-down and did my own hair.
“Do you ever hear anything of Cynthia Maxwell?” I asked presently.
“Good old Madame Clementine!” murmured Agatha. “Wake up, Anne. You must remember Madame Clementine.”
I hadn’t thought of her for years, but now I remembered her and her prophecy for Cynthia — a lot of money and marriage ending in violent death. I shivered.
“Did any of it come true?”
“The money did. She was left a fortune from a most unexpected source. As for the other — well.” She shrugged narrow elegant shoulders. “She has too much sense to test it.”
“You mean, she’s not married? That lovely girl. She... she didn’t lose her looks, did she?”
“Oh, no. If possible, she’s lovelier than ever. She comes to me for her clothes. It would almost pay me to dress her for nothing.”
“And yet she didn’t marry?” It seemed to me tragic.
“Being beautiful doesn’t help you much if you’re dead,” retorted Agatha. “And everything else Madame prophesied has come true. In Cynthia’s shoes I wouldn’t have married either. And you can stop looking sorry for her, Anne. She has a wonderful time. Her country house is a show-place; she has a flat in town and the sort of car that must be seen to be believed — she’s gone all mechanical-minded, if you can believe it. She knows everyone...”
But I was thinking — no Barry, no twins, no nine-year-old Simon — and my heart bled for Cynthia.
In the strange way things happen in life I was to hear of Cynthia again within the month and this time, to cap all, it was the announcement of her engagement and forthcoming marriage to a man named Raymond Martin. On impulse I wrote to congratulate her, and to my delighted amazement she not only remembered who I was, but invited me to come to London and meet her fiancé. I cancelled a W.I. meeting and a whist drive and came up on an excursion ticket.
Cynthia’s flat was like something in the movies, and Cynthia herself was so radiantly beautiful she almost bowled me over. She looked at least ten years younger than I did, though we were the same age.
“Anne, darling, you haven’t changed a scrap! You always looked as though life had just handed you the world on a plate. Tell me, do you remember Madame Clementine?”
I said Agatha had reminded me of her a few weeks before. She looked surprised.
“But until then you had forgotten? How could you, Anne? I never did. She actually stopped me getting married more than once, but now I’m so grateful because it means I’m free for Raymond.”
We talked for a bit and then Raymond came in, and I had a second shock. Because he must have been five years younger than Cynthia looked, and was as unforgettable in his way as she in hers. Only — I didn’t like his way. Perhaps living for nearly twenty years with an honest man has prejudiced me against charm, Raymond’s kind at all events. For in him, you see, charm wasn’t simply an incidental — it was a profession. It was his bread-and-butter, it kept working hours. When there was nothing to be gained by it he switched it off, as you switch off a light when you leave a room; and just as a flick of your finger makes everything dark, so, when his charm was turned off, there was nothing but darkness left. Naturally, Cynthia didn’t see that, but then, for her, the light never went out.
“He’s only marrying her for her money,” I told Barry when I got back. “What can we do about it?”
“Nothing,” said Barry sensibly. “She’s a grown woman and she must be allowed to make a mess of her life if she chooses. And it may not be a mess.”
I shrank from telling him about Madame Clementine. He’d have thought I was going out of my mind.
“If she chooses to invest — oh, speculate, if you like — in a husband instead of stocks and shares, it’s her funeral,” he insisted.
Which was precisely what I feared it was going to be.
I wrote to Agatha, but she was in New York and by the time she got back it was too late. The marriage had taken place, and bride and bridegroom had flown to Italy for their honeymoon. Barry would say I was morbid but it wouldn’t have surprised me to hear that somehow Cynthia had vanished from the plane en route.
But she sent me postcards from Rome and Naples — Deliriously happy — and when they came back they settled in her house in Devonshire. She even invited me to stay, but one of the twins had measles, so I had to refuse and the chance didn’t come again.
They’d been married about six months, when I got an agitated letter from Agatha.
For pity’s sake make some excuse and go down to Cynthia. I’d go myself if I could get away. Apparently the whole village is humming with gossip. Raymond’s got a woman in the next village and spends half his time going over there. I happen to know Cynthia’s made a will in his favor, and — as usual — the wife’s always the last to know.
And then in big sprawling letters: Remember Madame Clementine!
Barry said it was ridiculous, but I felt the same as Agatha. I wrote to Cynthia that I’d had ’flu and the doctors wanted me to get away and would she like to revive her original invitation, and I got a letter by return mail, saying I was to come immediately and stay as long as I could.
Raymond met me at the station, driving a magnificent green Broad-bent.
“Cynthia’s wedding present,” he told me. “Isn’t she a beauty?”
He patted the side of the hood as if it were the flanks of a mare.
“Do you drive, Anne? I can call you Anne, can’t I?”
“I wouldn’t dare drive that,” I told him frankly, remembering our ancient Morris.
His hand touched mine for an instant. “To tell you the truth, she scares me, too,” he acknowledged. “It’s a comfort to remember that Broadbents are foolproof. Speaking for myself, I drive by guess and by God.” He did, too; I had ample proof of that in the next twenty minutes.
“Cynthia doesn’t trust me a yard,” he went on comfortably, as the car dashed along at what seemed to me a reckless pace. “She won’t come out with me unless we’re just driving on the flat. There’s a place near here called Dead Man’s Hill.” He chuckled. “I’ll take you there one day, if you’ll come. The authorities have put up a skull-and-cross-bones on the hairpin bend. If you lost control of the car there for even 30 seconds you’d have had it. I suppose,” he wound up meditatively, “that skull grinning at you would be the last thing you’d see before you plunged into eternity.”
I felt my scalp prickle. I was sure then how and where it would happen, that violent death foreseen by Madame so many years ago.
“Why take the car down that hill?” I murmured, and he laughed.
“Oh, it’s quite a favorite trip of mine,” he said.
He didn’t have to tell me why he went that way so often. Agatha had done that in her letter. I wondered if Cynthia had any inkling of the truth. Even before we reached the house I’d have given anything to be back in the shabby rectory with Barry and the children.
I had expected Cynthia to look haggard and wan, but, on the contrary, she looked wonderful. She sparkled like the sea when the sun’s on it. But I couldn’t understand how it was she couldn’t see through Raymond’s veneer of charm to the falsity that lay just under the surface.
I remember Agatha’s The wife’s always the last to know.
I must admit Raymond played up wonderfully. He was as attentive to Cynthia as if they were still honey-mooners, and the perfect host to me. But nothing dulled my conviction that he was only marking time.