Patricia Wentworth
Ladies’ Bane
Miss Silver – #22, 1952
CHAPTER 1
Looking back, Ione Muir was to wonder what would have happened if she had chosen any other day to go up to town. With all the days of the week to choose from, she had picked a Tuesday, and that particular Tuesday. Suppose she had chosen some other day. Suppose she had gone a week earlier or a week later. Suppose she had not gone at all. Just how much difference would it have made? Would she have met Jim Severn in some other way? Would it all have been the same in the end? Or would it have been different-perhaps dreadfully different? Did certain people, certain events, certain crimes, produce as it were a vortex into which you must inevitably have been drawn? Or did it all just turn on the choice of a day or a train? She was never to be quite sure.
She took the 9.45 to town. Any other train, and she would not have run into Fenella Caldecott as she emerged from the Knightsbridge Tube.
“Ione! I haven’t seen you since-when was it-Celia’s wedding? What a lovely bride she made! Fortunately one didn’t have to look at the bridegroom-one never does at a wedding-but Celia was going to have to live with him, and honestly, I don’t know how she could! One oughtn’t to say things like that, but it’s only to you, and I’m sure I hope they are very happy indeed. Curious how some girls just seem to disappear after they are married. Cornwall, wasn’t it? Too remote! And that reminds me-what about Allegra? She’s another of the vanished ones. Why on earth do girls marry the sort of people who carry them off to the ends of the earth?” She bent a long, slim neck to glance at her wristwatch and gave a faint scream. “Darling, I’m going to be late for my fitting! And André just crosses you off if you’re even half a minute behind your time, though he doesn’t mind how many hours he keeps you waiting himself!” She waved a hand, called over her shoulder, “Meet me for lunch at the club,” and was gone.
Ione watched her go. Fenella hadn’t changed in the least, and she probably never would. Even at school she had possessed a long, slim elegance which triumphed over such garments as a gym tunic and the quite hideous St. Griselda uniform. Now, clothed by the great André, she was a most decorative creature. Not really her friend, but Allegra’s. She had not said she would meet Fenella for lunch, but she supposed that she would. What really decided her was that there hadn’t been time to ask whether she had heard from Allegra. They had been such very close friends.
She went about her shopping with rather an abstracted mind. Allegra had always been a bad correspondent. Anyone may be a bad correspondent without there being anything wrong. It is when people are busy and happy that they don’t bother to write. If there is anything wrong you hear. Or do you? Perhaps Fenella had heard-
Taking one o’clock as the starting-point, she had to wait three-quarters of an hour for Fenella at the club, and then she had to hear all about the fitting, and why Fenella had left Mirabelle whom she had always previously declared to be the only really imaginative dressmaker on this side of the Channel.
“But, darling, a complete devil! You won’t believe it, but she sent me to the Crayshaw wedding in an absolute duplicate of Pippa Casabianca’s going-away dress! In Paris, you know, and a whole month before! I might never have known, only Yvonne de Crassac sent me the photographs! Well, that really was the end! And I’m terribly lucky to get in with André, because he has a waiting-list about a mile long!”
There was a good deal more of this before Ione had a chance to mention Allegra.
“Have I heard from her lately? Darling, we don’t correspond! The old school tie rather fades out after a year or two, don’t you think? But I did like your charming brother-in-law-quite sinfully goodlooking, as Elizabeth Tremayne said! ï said no one ever looked at the bridegroom, but when Allegra was married we all did! Funny how those very handsome men don’t seem to care so much about looks in a girl, and you know, I did think that dead white was a mistake for Allegra. So cold, if you know what I mean!”
There was no unkindness in Fenella. Dress was her one real interest in life, and she took it seriously. When her mind turned to Allegra Muir’s wedding she could not only pass over the two-year gap and visualize every detail, but she could no more help re-dressing and re-grouping the bride and her attendants than she could stop the even flow of her breath. And the worst of it was that she was right. Nothing could have been less becoming to Allegra than all that icy white which had made her look pinched and grey, like something lost in a snowstorm. Ione was ruefully aware that she hadn’t looked any too good in it herself. And that awful lumpy girl Margot-could anything have been worse! She laughed and said,
“It’s the last time I’m going to be a bridesmaid anyhow. You have to when it’s your sister, but never again! The idea of herding a lot of girls together and putting them into something which is bound to be the last thing on earth that most of them ought to wear-well, it’s simply barbaric!”
Fenella did not laugh-she hardly ever did. She said earnestly,
“You’re too right, darling. Let me see-there was you-and Elizabeth Tremayne-and the Miller twins with all that red hair-and that frightful lumpy schoolgirl-what was her name?”
“Margot Trent. She’s a relation of Geoffrey’s, and he is her guardian. We had to have her. She looked terrible.”
Fenella shook her head sadly.
“Schoolgirls always do in white. They’re either much too fat like this Margot girl, or else they’ve got sharp red elbows and bones sticking out all over them. She still lives with them, doesn’t she? I don’t know how Allegra could! Has she fined down at all?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’ve seen her, haven’t you?”
“Well, not very lately.”
“But you’ve seen Allegra. I’m simply counting on your giving me all her news. You must have seen Allegra!” Ione felt that her colour was rising. She said,
“Well, I was in America.”
“ America! What on earth were you doing there?”
“We have relations in New Jersey. I went to visit them, and stayed on longer than I meant to. As a matter of fact, I tumbled into a job.”
Fenella had a remembering look.
“Yes-now don’t tell me! I did hear about it-it was Sylvia Scott! She sent me an American magazine with a picture of you doing one of those monologues you used to be dragged in for at school concerts. It said you were having quite a success.”
Ione laughed.
“They seemed to like them. A friend of my cousins got me to do one or two at a big party, and then other people asked me, and in the end I had a very good professional offer, so I thought I had better take it and bring some dollars home.”
“Well, I don’t know how you do it!” Fenella’s attention wavered. She came back to Allegra. “What is her house like? Are they able to get any staff?”
“I expect so-I don’t know.”
“You haven’t been there? Ione!”
“I had to go and look after my old cousin who was ill.”
“Do you mean to say you haven’t seen Allegra since the wedding?”
“No, of course not. I saw her when she came back from her honeymoon.”
“You’ve never been to stay with her?”
“I couldn’t leave Cousin Eleanor.”
Fenella shook her head.
“It’s quite fatal to go and look after an old lady. They never die, and you never get away.”
Ione laughed.
“I’m going to stay with Allegra next week,” she said.
In her mind something said insistently, “If they don’t put you off again.”
CHAPTER 2