“He mustn’t! I don’t care what you say-I’m coming over to see you!”
Georgina was talking on the extension in her sitting-room. She didn’t want Cicely, she didn’t want anyone. She just wanted to be let alone, to tighten the control in which she was holding thought, and will, and action. She heard herself say, “No,” and she heard Cicely say,
“Darling, it’s no good-I’m coming!”
And with that the line was broken and she was left with the receiver dead in her hand.
Only the last sentence was intelligible to the exasperated Maggie, Cicely Hathaway’s determination not to be rebuffed having been expressed quite plainly in English. Maggie would have been at one with Chief Inspector Lamb in his disapproval of lapses into a foreign tongue. What couldn’t be said in your own language was either not worth saying, or else it was something you’d be ashamed for people to understand. The Chief Inspector had never met Maggie Bell, and was never likely to do so, but on this point at least they were two minds with but a single thought.
She hung up the receiver and occupied herself with guessing at what it was that was so secret about what Miss Cicely and Miss Georgina were saying. They were ever such good friends, though there must be a matter of four or five years between them and you’d be put to it to find two that were less alike. Miss Georgina had brought in some things to be altered for her cousin not so long ago. Maggie had admired her very much. Lovely figure she had, and all that pale gold hair, and a real beautiful look about the eyes. Miss Cicely was nothing at all beside her, but the cousin, Mirrie Field, she was a real pretty little thing. Nice ways with her too. She had thanked Mum ever so pretty. “Oh, Mrs. Bell, how beautifully you’ve done it! Nobody would think it hadn’t been made for me, would they?” Ever so nice the things were, but Miss Georgina’s things were always nice and no wonder Miss Mirrie was pleased to have them. What she had on wasn’t at all the thing for anyone that was staying at Field End. Cheap and nasty, that was what Maggie called it, and no good Mum hushing her up either. If there was one thing you did get to know about in the dressmaking line it was the difference between good stuff and bad. Do what you would to a poor material, poor it was going to look and you couldn’t get from it, but a good piece of stuff looked good right through to the end.
Chapter XVII
FRANK ABBOTT drove away from Field End with Sergeant Hubbard and took him to the Ram for lunch. The hospitality of Field End had been offered and politely but firmly refused. The Ram afforded a good plain meal. When it was over he left Hubbard to take a bus into Lenton and went up to Abbottsleigh to see his relations. A word or two with Monica might be useful.
Ruth, the house-parlourmaid, gave him a beaming smile as she opened the door. Lunch was over, she informed him, and they were in the morning-room. After which she ran ahead and announced him as “Mr. Frank.” He came into the charming small room which everyone preferred to the large, stiff drawing-room furnished in the late Lady Evelyn Abbott’s taste and dominated by her portrait. The morning-room, of a more comfortable size, had been done over by Monica and happily delivered from brocade and gilding. The only family portrait it contained was a charming water-colour sketch of Cicely as a child. Frank always came into it with the feeling that he was coming home. He did so now.
But he had hardly taken a single forward step before he was brought up short by the spectacle of Miss Maud Silver very comfortably ensconced in a low armless chair which might have come out of her own flat in Montague Mansions. He stood where he was, heard Monica laugh, and say as she came forward to slip her arm through his and reach up to kiss him,
“Well, Frank, I hoped you would find time to come in. And look who is here!”
He said,
“I am looking. And quite expecting to see her dissolve into thin air! Now how in the world-”
Miss Silver smiled. Her flowered knitting-bag lay on the floor beside her. She wore a dress of dark green wool made after the same fashion as every other dress in which Frank had seen her-longer in the skirt and straighter in the shape than was the fashion, with a little net front its collar supported by slides of whalebone to fill up the V-shaped opening at the neck. Since she was on a social visit she wore an old-fashioned gold chain and her favourite brooch, a rose carved in bog-oak with an Irish pearl at its heart. She held a coffee-cup in her left hand, and without rising from her chair she gave him the other.
“My dear Frank-how pleasant.”
He seated himself. Ruth came in with another cup. He was given coffee. Colonel Abbott, it appeared, had gone over to see the Vicar on business connected with the church accounts.
Frank said, “I mustn’t stay.”
He looked at Monica, as he always did, with pleasure and affection. Cicely had her brown colouring and her sherry-coloured eyes from her mother, but not the charm, the warmth, the agreeable assembly of features, and certainly not her repose. Frank had once told her that she was the most restful woman he had ever met, and she had laughed and said that what she supposed he really meant was that she was lazy. She poured him out a second cup of coffee, exclaimed that he ought to have come to them for lunch, and arrived at the tragedy at Field End.
“The milkman told the maids. It really does seem too dreadful to be true. And only a fortnight ago we were all there dancing! Have you found out anything about it yet? Was it robbery? Stokes says the glass door on to the terrace was open, and that poor Georgina heard it banging and came down and found him. She was so devoted to him. It must have been a terrible shock.”
He said in a non-committal voice,
“I thought it was the other one Mr. Field was so devoted to.”
Monica put down her cup.
“Oh, well, she is a taking little thing. The rippling sort, you know.”
Miss Silver smiled.
“What an expressive word. It reminds me of Lord Tennyson’s charming poem about the brook-
‘I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.’ ”
Frank laughed.
“That’s just what she does! You couldn’t have hit her off better. Go on-isn’t there some more of it?” Miss Silver obliged with another verse.
“ ‘I slip, I slide, I gleam, I glance
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.’ ”
Frank picked up the last word and repeated it.
“Shallows-that’s just where you do get ripples, isn’t it?”
Monica Abbott looked distressed.
“That’s too bad. I didn’t mean anything of that sort, and you know it. And Miss Silver was only quoting what Lord Tennyson said about a brook. Mirrie is a dear pretty little thing, and very fond of her uncle too. I don’t think she had ever had much of anything until she came to Field End, and it seemed as if she couldn’t do enough to show how grateful she was.”
He blew her a kiss.
“Calm down, darling. I agree with every word you say. I was just wondering how deep it all went. Alfred’s fault for putting in the word ‘shallows’! Now you can tell me- how do she and Georgina get on?”
Monica said warmly, “ Georgina is the kindest girl in the world.” And with that there were footsteps in the hall and Cicely Hathaway came running into the room. She said, “Mummy!” in a protesting childish voice, and then she saw Frank and turned on him.
“Oh, you’re here! Well, I’m glad-” But she didn’t sound anything except angry.
“Cicely darling, you haven’t seen Miss Silver.”
The colour was high under Cicely’s brown skin, the sherry-coloured eyes were blazing. She swung round, holding out both her hands.
“No, I haven’t, have I? I’m frightfully rude, but I’m much too furious to be polite to anyone. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?” She bent, kissed Miss Silver rapidly on the cheek, a mere snatch of a kiss, and straightened up to storm at Frank again.