Читать книгу Taken At The Flood - Агата Кристи, Agatha Christie, Detection Club The - Страница 11

Aunt Kathie’s parties were always much the same. They had a rather breathless amateurish quality about them characteristic of the hostess. Dr Cloade had an air of holding irritability in check with difficulty. He was invariably courteous to his guests—but they were conscious of his courtesy being an effort.

In appearance Lionel Cloade was not unlike his brother Jeremy. He was spare and grey-haired—but he had not the lawyer’s imperturbability. His manner was brusque and impatient—and his nervous irritability had affronted many of his patients and blinded them to his actual skill and kindliness. His real interests lay in research and his hobby was the use of medicinal herbs throughout history. He had a precise intellect and found it hard to be patient with his wife’s vagaries.

Though Lynn and Rowley always called Mrs Jeremy Cloade ‘Frances,’ Mrs Lionel Cloade was invariably ‘Aunt Kathie.’ They were fond of her but found her rather ridiculous.

This ‘party’, arranged ostensibly to celebrate Lynn’s home-coming, was merely a family affair.

Aunt Kathie greeted her niece affectionately:

‘So nice and brown you look, my dear. Egypt, I suppose. Did you read the book on the Pyramid prophecies I sent you? So interesting. Really explains everything, don’t you think?’

Lynn was saved from replying by the entrance of Mrs Gordon Cloade and her brother David.

‘This is my niece, Lynn Marchmont, Rosaleen.’

Lynn looked at Gordon Cloade’s widow with decorously veiled curiosity.

Yes, she was lovely, this girl who had married old Gordon Cloade for his money. And it was true what Rowley had said, that she had an air of innocence. Black hair, set in loose waves, Irish blue eyes put in with the smutty finger—half-parted lips.

The rest of her was predominantly expensive. Dress, jewels, manicured hands, fur cape. Quite a good figure, but she didn’t, really, know how to wear expensive clothes. Didn’t wear them as Lynn Marchmont could have worn them, given half a chance! (But you never will have a chance, said a voice in her brain.)

‘How do you do,’ said Rosaleen Cloade.

She turned hesitatingly to the man behind her.

She said: ‘This—this is my brother.’

‘How do you do,’ said David Hunter.

He was a thin young man with dark hair and dark eyes. His face was unhappy and defiant and slightly insolent.

Lynn saw at once why all the Cloades disliked him so much. She had met men of that stamp abroad. Men who were reckless and slightly dangerous. Men whom you couldn’t depend upon. Men who made their own laws and flouted the universe. Men who were worth their weight in gold in a push—and who drove their C.O.s to distraction out of the firing line!

Lynn said conversationally to Rosaleen:

‘And how do you like living at Furrowbank?’

‘I think it’s a wonderful house,’ said Rosaleen.

David Hunter gave a faint sneering laugh.

‘Poor old Gordon did himself well,’ he said. ‘No expense spared.’

It was literally the truth. When Gordon had decided to settle down in Warmsley Vale—or rather had decided to spend a small portion of his busy life there, he had chosen to build. He was too much of an individualist to care for a house that was impregnated with other people’s history.

He had employed a young modern architect and given him a free hand. Half Warmsley Vale thought Furrowbank a dreadful house, disliking its white squareness, its built-in furnishing, its sliding doors, and glass tables and chairs. The only part of it they really admired wholeheartedly were the bathrooms.

There had been awe in Rosaleen’s, ‘It’s a wonderful house.’ David’s laugh made her flush.

‘You’re the returned Wren, aren’t you?’ said David to Lynn.

‘Yes.’

His eyes swept over her appraisingly—and for some reason she flushed.

Aunt Katherine appeared again suddenly. She had a trick of seeming to materialize out of space. Perhaps she had caught the trick of it from many of the spiritualistic séances she attended.

‘Supper,’ she said, rather breathlessly, and added, parentheticaly, ‘I think it’s better than calling it dinner. People don’t expect so much. Everything’s very difficult, isn’t it? Mary Lewis tells me she slips the fishman ten shillings every other week. I think that’s immoral.’

Dr Lionel Cloade was giving his irritable nervous laugh as he talked to Frances Cloade. ‘Oh, come, Frances,’ he said. ‘You can’t expect me to believe you really think that—let’s go in.’

They went into the shabby and rather ugly dining-room. Jeremy and Frances, Lionel and Katherine, Adela, Lynn and Rowley. A family party of Cloades—with two outsiders. For Rosaleen Cloade, though she bore the name, had not become a Cloade as Frances and Katherine had done.

She was the stranger, ill at ease, nervous. And David—David was the outlaw. By necessity, but also by choice. Lynn was thinking these things as she took her place at the table.

There were waves in the air of feeling—a strong electrical current of—what was it? Hate? Could it really be hate?

Something at any rate—destructive.

Lynn thought suddenly, ‘But that’s what’s the matter everywhere. I’ve noticed it ever since I got home. It’s the aftermath war has left. Ill will. Ill feeling. It’s everywhere. On railways and buses and in shops and amongst workers and clerks and even agricultural labourers. And I suppose worse in mines and factories. Ill will. But here it’s more than that. Here it’s particular. It’s meant!’

And she thought, shocked: ‘Do we hate them so much? These strangers who have taken what we think is ours?’

And then—‘No, not yet. We might—but not yet. No, it’s they who hate us.’

It seemed to her so overwhelming a discovery that she sat silent thinking about it and forgetting to talk to David Hunter who was sitting beside her.

Presently he said: ‘Thinking out something?’

His voice was quite pleasant, slightly amused, but she felt conscience-stricken. He might think that she was going out of her way to be ill-mannered.

She said, ‘I’m sorry. I was having thoughts about the state of the world.’

David said coolly, ‘How extremely unoriginal!’

‘Yes, it is rather. We are all so earnest nowadays. And it doesn’t seem to do much good either.’

‘It is usually more practical to wish to do harm. We’ve thought up one or two rather practical gadgets in that line during the last few years—including that pièce de résistance, the Atom Bomb.’

‘That was what I was thinking about—oh, I don’t mean the Atom Bomb. I meant ill will. Definite practical ill will.’

David said calmly:

‘Ill will certainly—but I rather take issue to the word practical. They were more practical about it in the Middle Ages.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Black magic generally. Ill wishing. Wax figures. Spells at the turn of the moon. Killing off your neighbour’s cattle. Killing off your neighbour himself.’

‘You don’t really believe there was such a thing as black magic?’ asked Lynn incredulously.

‘Perhaps not. But at any rate people did try hard. Nowadays, well—’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘With all the ill will in the world you and your family can’t do much about Rosaleen and myself, can you?’

Lynn’s head went back with a jerk. Suddenly she was enjoying herself.

‘It’s a little late in the day for that,’ she said politely.

David Hunter laughed. He, too, sounded as though he were enjoying himself.

‘Meaning we’ve got away with the booty? Yes, we’re sitting pretty all right.’

‘And you get a kick out of it!’

‘Out of having a lot of money? I’ll say we do.’

‘I didn’t mean only the money. I meant out of us.’

‘Out of having scored off you? Well, perhaps. You’d all have been pretty smug and complacent about the old boy’s cash. Looked upon it as practically in your pockets already.’

Lynn said:

‘You must remember that we’d been taught to think so for years. Taught not to save, not to think of the future—encouraged to go ahead with all sorts of schemes and projects.’

(Rowley, she thought, Rowley and the farm.)

‘Only one thing, in fact, that you hadn’t learnt,’ said David pleasantly.

‘What’s that?’

‘That nothing’s safe.’

‘Lynn,’ cried Aunt Katherine, leaning forward from the head of the table, ‘one of Mrs Lester’s controls is a fourth-dynasty priest. He’s told us such wonderful things. You and I, Lynn, must have a long talk. Egypt, I feel, must have affected you psychically.’

Dr Cloade said sharply:

‘Lynn’s had better things to do than play about with all this superstitious tomfoolery.’

‘You are so biased, Lionel,’ said his wife.

Lynn smiled at her aunt—then sat silent with the refrain of the words David had spoken swimming in her brain.

‘Nothing’s safe…’

There were people who lived in such a world—people to whom everything was dangerous. David Hunter was such a person… It was not the world that Lynn had been brought up in—but it was a world that held attractions for her nevertheless.

David said presently in the same low amused voice:

‘Are we still on speaking terms?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Good. And do you still grudge Rosaleen and myself our ill-gotten access to wealth?’

‘Yes,’ said Lynn with spirit.

‘Splendid. What are you going to do about it?’

‘Buy some wax and practise black magic!’

He laughed.

‘Oh, no, you won’t do that. You aren’t one of those who rely on old outmoded methods. Your methods will be modern and probably very efficient. But you won’t win.’

‘What makes you think there is going to be a fight? Haven’t we all accepted the inevitable?’

‘You all behave beautifully. It is very amusing.’

‘Why,’ said Lynn, in a low tone, ‘do you hate us?’

Something flickered in those dark unfathomable eyes.

‘I couldn’t possibly make you understand.’

‘I think you could,’ said Lynn.

David was silent for a moment or two, then he asked in a light conversational tone:

‘Why are you going to marry Rowley Cloade? He’s an oaf.’

She said sharply:

‘You know nothing about it—or about him. You couldn’t begin to know!’

Without any air of changing the conversation David asked:

‘What do you think of Rosaleen?’

‘She’s very lovely.’

‘What else?’

‘She doesn’t seem to be enjoying herself.’

‘Quite right,’ said David, ‘Rosaleen’s rather stupid. She’s scared. She always has been rather scared. She drifts into things and then doesn’t know what it’s all about. Shall I tell you about Rosaleen?’

‘If you like,’ said Lynn politely.

‘I do like. She started by being stage-struck and drifted on to the stage. She wasn’t any good, of course. She got into a third-rate touring company that was going out to South Africa. She liked the sound of South Africa. The company got stranded in Cape Town. Then she drifted into marriage with a Government official from Nigeria. She didn’t like Nigeria—and I don’t think she liked her husband much. If he’d been a hearty sort of fellow who drank and beat her, it would have been all right. But he was rather an intellectual man who kept a large library in the wilds and who liked to talk metaphysics. So she drifted back to Cape Town again. The fellow behaved very well and gave her an adequate allowance. He might have given her a divorce, but again he might not for he was a Catholic; but anyway he rather fortunately died of fever, and Rosaleen got a small pension. Then the war started and she drifted on to a boat for South America. She didn’t like South America very much, so she drifted on to another boat and there she met Gordon Cloade and told him all about her sad life. So they got married in New York and lived happily for a fortnight, and a little later he was killed by a bomb and she was left a large house, a lot of expensive jewellery, and an immense income.’

‘It’s nice that the story has such a happy ending,’ said Lynn.

‘Yes,’ said David Hunter. ‘Possessing no intellect at all, Rosaleen has always been a lucky girl—which is just as well. Gordon Cloade was a strong old man. He was sixty-two. He might easily have lived for twenty years. He might have lived even longer. That wouldn’t have been much fun for Rosaleen, would it? She was twenty-four when she married him. She’s only twenty-six now.’

‘She looks even younger,’ said Lynn.

David looked across the table. Rosaleen Cloade was crumbling her bread. She looked like a nervous child.

‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘She does. Complete absence of thought, I suppose.’

‘Poor thing,’ said Lynn suddenly.

David frowned.

‘Why the pity?’ he said sharply. ‘I’ll look after Rosaleen.’

‘I expect you will.’

He scowled.

‘Any one who tries to do down Rosaleen has got me to deal with! And I know a good many ways of making war—some of them not strictly orthodox.’

‘Am I going to hear your life history now?’ asked Lynn coldly.

‘A very abridged edition.’ He smiled. ‘When the war broke out I saw no reason why I should fight for England. I’m Irish. But like all the Irish, I like fighting. The Commandos had an irresistible fascination for me. I had some fun but unfortunately I got knocked out with a bad leg wound. Then I went to Canada and did a job of training fellows there. I was at a loose end when I got Rosaleen’s wire from New York saying she was getting married! She didn’t actually announce that there would be pickings, but I’m quite sharp at reading between the lines. I flew there, tacked myself on to the happy pair and came back with them to London. And now’—he smiled insolently at her—‘Home is the sailor, home from the sea. That’s you! And the Hunter home from the Hill. What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ said Lynn.

She got up with the others. As they went into the drawing-room, Rowley said to her: ‘You seemed to be getting on quite well with David Hunter. What were you talking about?’

‘Nothing particular,’ said Lynn.