“Oh, well, I can ring her up if you want me to. Ellen will say it makes it more of a party, but I suppose you don’t mind about that.”
Lucius Bellingdon said, “Not a bit.”
She was not prepared for his following her into the study and standing there looking out of the window with his back to her whilst she telephoned. Her voice came through to Sally without any more than its usual lack of expression.
“Is that you?… Moira Herne speaking. Look here, Wilfrid is coming down for the week-end, and another man. I expect you know him, because he seems to live in the same place as you do-David Moray. He is an artist. Probably too uncivilized, but Lucy has just bought one of his pictures, and he has asked him down, so I thought we had better make it a four, and then we could dance, or play something and it won’t be too unutterably mouldy.”
If it had been just Moira and Wilfrid, Sally would have found an excuse, but David was another matter. Moira had her own way with attractive men. It was an odd way, but it appeared to get results. They became mesmerized and fell into vicious circles like moths about a lamp. Saily was unable to bear the thought of David as a moth. She mightn’t be able to prevent the mesmerizing process, but at least she wouldn’t be about thirty-five miles away enjoying the pleasures of the imagination. Sally’s imagination could do wicked things when it really got going, and she didn’t feel like giving it its head. Better be there on the spot and see for herself than have to listen to its insidious whisperings in Porlock Square. It was always possible that David might take against Moira. By all the rules he should. There was his Scottish common sense, and the detached and critical manner in which he regarded the female sex. He was wary, he was intolerant, and he thought well of his own judgment. He was, in fact, an odiously cocksure young man who wanted taking down quite a number of pegs. Only how could she bear to see anyone doing it? Especially Moira. The answer was that she couldn’t. And that, illogically, was the reason why nothing would stop her from going to Merefields.
Chapter 12
MISS SILVER was able to make considerable progress with the pale blue baby shawl intended for a young friend and former client, Dorinda Leigh, now expecting her third child. Miss Bray, who was engaged in the domestic work of darning pillow-cases, bore her company and was most helpful and informative in her conversation. To many this perpetual trickle of talk might have seemed dull, but not to Miss Silver. She had a very genuine interest in the lives and the problems of other people, and when occupied upon a case nothing that she could learn about those concerned in it could be dismissed as trivial or worthless. As her needles moved rhythmically above the pale blue cloud in her lap and Miss Bray jerked at her linen thread, a picture of the Bellingdon household began to take shape.
“Of course he is a very clever man and he has been very successful, but I’m not sure that it didn’t all come too suddenly for Lily. She wasn’t ever what you would call strong, and when he began to go over to America on his business she fretted a lot-she was that kind, you know. There was some patent he had got for one of those new materials they keep making out of such very odd things. I really can’t remember whether it was seaweed, or milk, or wood pulp, but he made a lot of money out of it and he had to go over to America about the patents. I remember his telling Lily they were going to be rich, and she cried about it afterwards and said she would rather have her husband.”
Miss Silver had been turning the shawl. She looked up brightly.
“It was not possible for her to accompany him?”
Miss Bray shook her head in a mournful manner.
“Oh, no-she didn’t like travelling. Not at all! And there is such a lot of travelling in a big place like the United States! He used to say she would get used to it, but I told him he hadn’t the right to expect her to go. He didn’t like my saying it of course, but if I didn’t stand up for Lily, who was going to, I should like to know!”
“So she stayed at home?”
“And moped,” said Miss Bray, digging into a darn in a haphazard way which Miss Silver found distressing. She was using far too thick a needle. The mended place would be sadly conspicuous. Miss Bray gazed at it disapprovingly, but it was evident that it was really Mr. Bellingdon who was being disapproved of. “Men are all the same,” she continued. “He was free enough with the money, but you can’t live on money, can you? What she wanted was company. That’s why I came to live with them. And of course it’s been very comfortable and all, but a big house is a lot of trouble, and I sometimes think-” Her voice trailed away.
Miss Silver wondered what she had been going to say. Whatever it was, it didn’t get said. There was an interlude during which the shortcomings of the Hiltons were deplored.
“She may be a very good cook, and I don’t say she isn’t, but I am sure she is terribly extravagant. And I don’t say that Hilton doesn’t know his work, because he does, but I do say that Lucius ought to look into the accounts! I would be willing to do it myself though I am sure figures always make my head ache and it’s so difficult to get them to come out right, don’t you think so-but when I suggested it Lucius was really quite rude! I may be too sensitive-perhaps I am-but I think it’s better than going round hurting people’s feelings. But do you know what he said-and it wasn’t only the words, but his voice and the way he looked at me. ‘You let the Hiltons alone!’ he said. ‘And you let the accounts alone, and I’ll let you alone!’ And then he laughed and patted my shoulder and said, ‘You wouldn’t be a bit of good at either, and we’ll all be a lot more comfortable if you’ll leave well alone.’ ”
Miss Silver smiled.
“That sounds to me very much like the way in which a man talks to someone he is fond of-in fact very much like a brother. They do not think about being polite, they just feel that things like accounts are not really a woman’s department. And if you do not feel very much at home with figures, I should think you would be grateful to be spared having to deal with them.”
Something about Miss Silver’s smile and the tone of her voice as she said this gave Miss Bray a pleasant sense of being sheltered from the rougher blasts of domestic life. She preened herself and admitted that she had always found arithmetic troublesome. They glided imperceptibly to other subjects and presently arrived at the question of the weekend party.
“Moira is really not at all domestic,” Miss Bray lamented. “One does not expect a man to consider what sheets are at the wash-towels of course, and pillow-cases too. Not that the linen-cupboard is not well stocked, though we could certainly do with more sheets and I have been waiting for an opportunity of speaking to Lucius on the subject, but the laundry only delivers once a fortnight and rather irregularly at that-and the house so full-I’m sure every bed was occupied last week-end! So if Moira stopped to think, but of course she doesn’t-” Miss Bray surveyed her completed darn and shook her head. “The linen gets no rest,” she said.
Miss Silver pulled on her pale blue ball.
“Mrs. Herne invites a good many people?”
Miss Bray threw up her hands.
“They just come in and out, and I’m sure I don’t know whether they are coming or going, or which of them are going to stay the night! Why, only last week-end just as I’d got all the rooms nicely arranged and the beds aired-and that’s a thing I don’t feel Mrs. Hilton sees to as she should, and you can’t really trust the girls-Where was I? Oh, about the beds! You see, there are the five rooms in regular use, because that poor Mr. Hughes was sleeping in the house until he was murdered.”