"Oh, just looking at the magnolia!" answered Miss Allison. "What do you think of it?"
"Swell!" said Mr. Harte, somewhat unexpectedly.
"If you start that American film talk here you'll get thrown out on your ear," Jim warned him.
"Sez you!" replied Mr. Harte indulgently. "I say, Miss Allison, do you know what I think?"
"No, what?"
"Well, it's suddenly occurred to me that I shouldn't be at all surprised if somebody got murdered here tonight."
Miss Allison was slightly taken aback, but Jim, accustomed to the morbid processes of his relative's mind, said promptly: "Nor should I. What's more, I know who'll be the corpse."
"Ha ha!" said Timothy. "Very funny!"
"But why should anyone be murdered?" inquired Miss Allison.
"Oh, I don't know!" replied Timothy vaguely. "'Cept that it's absolutely the right sort of layout for a murder."
"Idiot!" said Jim.
"Of course, I know there won't be one really, but all the same, it 'ud be jolly good fun if there was," said Mr. Harte wistfully.
Chapter Two
When she went back into the drawing room Miss Allison was more able to understand why the notion of murder had occurred to young Mr. Harte. A certain atmosphere of drama seemed to have spread over the room. To this the Clement Kanes were largely contributing, Clement by gazing hungrily at his wife whenever opportunity offered, Rosemary by looking stormier than ever and casting into the pool of conversation remarks calculated to convince the company that her marriage was on the verge of shipwreck. These were met by a high-nosed stare from Agatha Mansell and several downright snubs from old Mrs. Kane; but Betty Pemble, who found Rosemary "interesting", soon moved across to a chair by her side and began to talk to her. The interchange was curious and unsatisfactory, for Rosemary, who despised as suburban any woman who not only lived upon amicable terms with her husband but presented him with two healthy children into the bargain, looked upon Betty with contempt, while Betty massacred Rosemary's narrated spiritual reactions by capping them with similar ones of her own.
"I feel stifled in Portlaw," announced Rosemary in unencouraging response to an encomium bestowed by Mrs. Pemble on the invigorating properties of the air. "It's as though I couldn't breathe."
"I know exactly what you mean," agreed Betty. "I felt the same when we were living in a flat in town. It was simply tiny—literally you couldn't move in it—and I used to say to Clive that I felt absolutely cooped up."
"I don't think actual space matters so much as room for one's Essential Ego to expand," said Rosemary a trifle loftily.
"Yes, I do utterly agree with you there," replied Betty. "Atmosphere means a most frightful lot to me too. I mean, I'm awfully sensitive to beauty—and, funnily enough, both my children are, too, even Peter, who's only three and a half. I mean, if a picture is out of the straight, I simply can't rest until I've put it right. It seems to kind of hurt me."
"I'm afraid," said Rosemary, with a faint, superior smile, "that I shouldn't even notice a crooked picture."
"Yes, I'm frightfully absentminded too. I seem to go into a sort of dream, and I forget simply everything. I often think that's where my Jennifer gets it from—it's quite extraordinary the way that child daydreams! I mean, everybody says so, it isn't only just me. The children absolutely love coming down to stay with Granny and Grandpa by the sea. They simply live on the sands. Of course it's just coming home to me, and Clive feels exactly the same, really far more so than with his own people. It's quite a joke in the family!"
Rosemary looked fairly disgusted by this sample of the humour prevalent in the Mansell household and said in a voice of suppressed passion: "How odd that you should be glad to come here while I would give my soul to get away! The sameness! . . . Doesn't it get on your nerves? But perhaps you don't suffer from your nerves as I do."
It was not to be expected that Betty Pemble would allow so insulting a suggestion to pass unchallenged, and she replied warmly that, as a matter of fact, she was One Mass of Nerves. "I simply never talk about myself, because I think people who tell you about their ailments are absolutely awful; but actually I'm not frightfully strong. I get the most terrible nervous headaches for one thing. I mean, I could scream with the pain often and often. I think it's from being terribly highly strung. Both my children are exactly like me too. Frightfully sensitive and easily upset. They kind of feel things inside, the same way that I do, and bottle it up."
Her mother, who happened to overhear this remark, said robustly: "Nonsense! You spoil them, my dear child; that's all the trouble."
Mrs. Pemble turned quite pink at this and at once joined issue with her parent, declaring that Agatha just didn't understand, and that everyone said she managed her children better than anyone else. As Mrs. Mansell appeared to be unconvinced by this universal testimonial, Betty at once appealed to Clive to support her, interrupting him in the middle of a discussion with Jim Kane on the probable outcome of the Surrey vs. Gloucester Match. By the time Mrs. Mansell's stricture had been repeated to him, and various incidents illustrative of Betty's skill in handling her progeny recalled to his mind, Joe Mansell, Mrs. Kane and Clement had all become involved in the discussion, Joe advancing as his contribution to it that he liked to see kids enjoying themselves; Clement, with a meaning glance at his wife, deploring his own lack of children; and Mrs. Kane stating that in her young days children never had any nerves at all.
This was an observation calculated to rouse the ire of the most good-tempered mother, and when it was promptly seconded by Mrs. Mansell, Betty Pemble, reinforcing her own arguments by the pronouncements of a host of sages somewhat vaguely referred to by her under the general title of People, set about the formidable task of convincing two stalwarts of the Victorian age that they did not understand children's little minds.
While this battle raged, Rosemary relapsed into brooding silence, Jim Kane seized the opportunity to engage Miss Allison in conversation, and Joe Mansell moved across the room to where Silas was sitting and suggested that they might have a word together.
Silas Kane said: "Why, certainly, Joe!" in his slow, courteous way and got up out of his chair. "We shall be quite private in my study."
Joe Mansell followed his host to this apartment, a severe room looking out onto the shrubbery at the side of the house, and remarked that having Betty and the children staying at the Cedars brought quite a lot of life into the place.
"Ah!" said Silas. "And are they with you for long?"
"Oh, about a month, I expect. Betty likes the children to have a thorough change, you know. Not but what they tell me it's very healthy at Golders Greenvery. Still, it's not like the sea. Between ourselves, it's a fortunate thing that we're able to have them, for things aren't too good on the Stock Exchange at the moment. The wife and I suspect Clive's finding things a bit tight—just a bit tight."
"Ah, I dare say!" said Silas, sorrowfully surveying a post-war world. "The times are very unsettled."
"Yes," agreed Joe. "No stability, wherever you look. But that's not what I want to talk to you about." He tipped the long ash of his cigar into the empty grate and cleared his throat. "I don't know whether you've thought any more about Roberts' proposition?"
An inflexible expression came into Silas' chilly grey eyes. He fixed them on his partner's face and replied: "No. I am of the opinion that this is not the moment to be launching out into speculative ventures."
"I think myself there are excellent prospects. Expansion, Silas! One's got to move with the times, and there's no doubt—in my opinion not the slightest doubt—that if we decide to push our nets in Australia it will not be many years before we shall be amply repaid for the initial capital outlay."