Читать книгу Tragedy at Beechcroft (Musaicum Murder Mysteries) - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 4

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SANTLEY could not get the amazing interview with Mrs. Phillimore out of his mind. It sounded incredible, but how much did he really know of her son-in-law, Major Moncrieff? How much does any one really know of any one else? After the French buyer had left him, he decided to go and have a talk with his Aunt Julia. When the world grew too complex to Santley, he talked to his aunt and the paths seemed to straighten. He would not tell her of what he had just learnt, but he usually found that, no matter of what they spoke, he came away with clearer eyes, and a simpler outlook.

After Lavinia had refused him, for instance, Santley had had some wild thoughts of—well, wild thoughts. But Aunt Julia had changed them. Subtly she had made him feel that, apart from its spiritual side, life was a fair. You entered booth after booth that caught your fancy, and were amused awhile, or bored awhile, or you yourself took part in the show awhile, but you passed on. That was life—passing on.

When he got to her flat in Battersea, he was told that she was out. Mary—all his aunt's maids were promptly called Mary on entering her service—told him that Miss Santley was in the Park. He went there on the chance of encountering her. It was very gay and bright. Flowers were the despair of Santley. How did they do it? Whence came those shadows, and half-tints and under-tones? All they had was the dull old earth, and out of it they produced colours which he, with all his palette set, could not even copy. Then he caught sight of his aunt. Santley was always amused when he read of ladies of seventy wrapped in shawls and tottering around on sticks. Aunt Julia was seventy-two but he would not care to bet on her not catching him up should he ever try to run away from her, and he was exactly half her age.

Neither handsome nor ugly, she looked what she was, a wise woman. For the rest, she was neatly dressed in some extremely comfortable, time-saving sort of garment which had the effect of a uniform.

She never fussed over him. And with a smile as their only greeting, they now walked on together, talking about a book she had in her hand. She was making, she told him, for a certain seat which she especially liked, because it was so secluded. At one spot she made a sign to him to stand still, and saying that she could see from a place in the hedge whether it was free or not, reconnoitred. There was quite a steep curve to the bench which was some distance off, and Aunt Julia did not care for needless labour.

Santley saw her make a gesture of annoyance. "That's the second time that's happened! And the same man again. Why, it's the same two men! How odd!" And Aunt Julia peered through her hole, while her nephew hunted for a match. He was about to ask her for one, when she held up a peremptory hand for silence. Naturally he joined her at that, and pushing her gently but firmly to one side, looked in his turn through the branches to where the park bench stood. On it were two men. Even as he looked they rose, and separated without a glance at each other. One going to the right, the other to the left as a keeper approached down a centre path.

"What happened?" his aunt asked under her breath, as he stepped back on to the gravel again. "They're gone? Did he hand him some money as he did last time? Exactly a week ago that was."

"My dear aunt, are you Miss Marple by any chance?"

Aunt Julia smiled tolerantly. "Nihil humani—" she began. He made a gesture as though to flee.

"But listen!" she went on. "About a month ago that same man was sitting on that seat when I came here. It, too, was on a Tuesday. And the same man joined him. I waited about, because I like that corner. To my surprise the well-dressed one gave the other, the one who looks like a tramp, five one-pound notes. He counted them into the other's hand, and then left without a glance at the other, for all the world as two strangers would part. But the other jumped up and rushed after him. He had to be fairly shaken off. And very firmly shaken off he was too, nephew. I think he was threatening the other..." she stopped. The very man of whom she was speaking was passing.

The man's teeth were clenched, and through them he seemed to be swearing to himself. He had a wind-blackened, thin face with deep-set eyes just now fastened on his clenched right hand which held some pound notes. Then, still muttering in a tone of half-suppressed fury, he turned down another path. From first to last he had not glanced at either of them.

"I could imagine bloodcurdling oaths which would sound less unpleasant than those low mumbles," Aunt Julia said, after a little pause, as they walked on. Oliver began to talk of the flowers about them.

"What's the matter?" she asked on the instant. "Do you know that man?"

That was just like Aunt Julia.

"No," he replied. And again got a look of inquiry.

"I'll tell you, in strict confidence," he said to that.

"I should get it out of you any way," she murmured, quite correctly.

"It was the other man whom I know by sight. He's Major Moncrieff."

She knew the name well enough, and what it had once stood for in her nephew's life. But she did not refer to Lavinia now.

"I'm thinking of painting him," Oliver added.

"How interesting," said his aunt, "you always like to put some sort of a symbol into your pictures. I thought that dim coronet just indicated in one corner of Lord Liverpool's portrait was entrancing. He who had sacrificed everything worth having to get a peerage. And Mr. Ardente's with the porthole and the glimpse of the sea...well, how about a park bench in the corner of Major Moncrieff's picture?"

Both laughed.

"Or a hand rampant with banknotes gule—" he suggested. "Luckily it was he who was giving the notes, not cadging for them. And a charitable action," he said ruminatingly.

"Stuff!" came from Aunt Julia. "You don't call that charity, any more than I do. That was hush-money. The man who passed us was a blackmailer, and not satisfied with what he got."

"Then he wasn't a blackmailer," Oliver pointed out. "They can call the tune, and their wretched victims have to pay up without any chance of bargaining." And again he talked of the trees. They sat down on the next bench they came to, and Aunt Julia gave her reasons for considering French literature vastly overrated. A pause followed. Oliver drew pictures in the gravel and finally said, looking up for the first time since they had sat down:

"If you were asked to spy on someone, would it make any difference if his wife ran the house, and you were in point of absolute fact her guest, not her husband's?"

"Only one thing would influence me," said Aunt Julia firmly, "The reason for my spying. Say you thought the Major was about to cut his wife's throat—then you needn't mind whose house it is."

Santley gazed at her with a dropped jaw.

"Oh, I'm not so melodramatic as to think that that really is the reason," she said promptly, "though evidently I'm not so far out. Is it Mrs. Phillimore who is worried?" she went on.

Oliver made the gesture of drawing a cross between them.

"You're a witch," he said half laughing, half vexed. "Now, how on earth...what do you know? How much?"

"My dear Oliver—" she gave a contemptuous flip of some crumbs to a sparrow, "you were talking about the Moncrieffs...you were drawing an outline of Mrs. Phillimore's profile while I talked to you about Anatole France. Next, you asked me that funny question...I jumped to the obvious conclusion. I'm as often wrong as I'm right," she added modestly.

"It was confidential," he said under his breath. "But when one has a witch for an aunt...Mrs. Phillimore wants me to paint Moncrieff as a long overdue present to her daughter, and she's worried about her daughter. Thinks she isn't as happy as she might be." There was a silence. Aunt Julia rarely volunteered advice.

"Do you remember my once taking you to the studio of a Miss Flavelle Bruton?" Oliver asked next. "Dark-haired girl, very thin, with wonderful eyes and hair worn in plaits around her fine little head? She's quite a celebrity nowadays."

He meant to change the subject by way of her work, but his aunt knitted her brows for a moment and suddenly said: "I remember the afternoon perfectly. It was the only time I ever saw her. I have always wondered why she didn't marry Major Moncrieff?"

"Why did you expect her to? I thought you hadn't set eyes on him before this afternoon on the bench there!"

Oliver was puzzled.

"I didn't see him. I only heard his name. Miss Bruton's telephone bell rang. She answered it, and came back saying, 'It was from Major Moncrieff' to her aunt, who would talk to me about smart people I'd never heard of."

"Favelle Bruton always loathed him, and he seemed to avoid her in the old days," Oliver said. He decided that, for once, his aunt had been speaking inconsequentially. She got up now from the seat, saying that she wanted to show him a piece of Rhodes weaving which she had brought back with her last month. As he took her book from her again, Oliver happened to meet her eye, and in spite of the disparity in years, the utter absence of any likeness between them, he could have sworn that his aunt's eyes were the eyes of La Gioconda.

Now, Oliver had always maintained that those eyes were fixed on the painter in derision, that she was saying to herself: "So you think that, do you! Of all the silly juggins!" But his aunt apparently was only concerned with pointing out to him the effect of a copper beech against a young oak.

When he had duly admired the piece of linen and had some of her special tea cakes, he said good-bye to her. He was still more occupied with Moncrieff than before. Mrs. Phillimore's startling words in the morning, and now in the afternoon—that odd scene on the bench...Moncrieff parting as though from an absolute stranger and yet, according to his aunt, parting with a man whom he had met several times before, in all probability by appointment. Banknotes...blackmail...it certainly could not be linked with Mrs. Phillimore's certainty that the Major was going mad, with her story of being chased around the room by him only early to-day, but it did not clash with her certainty that there was something wrong at Beechcroft...

Santley always thought of that day as "the Moncrieff day," for, as he and a friend were shown to his table at a restaurant that evening, he saw the young couple seated near them. Lavinia was easily the prettiest woman in the room, he thought, and he thought it without a pang. Lately, her face, to him, had grown very commonplace. But Major Moncrieff seemed to find nothing amiss in it, judging by the eager way he was talking to her, his dark, ugly face almost touching her delicately made-up, beautifully-waved golden head. Santley studied them under cover of becoming lost in the wine list. Mrs. Phillimore must be mistaken. The two looked as happy as any other couple there. Then he noticed the lines of strain around the man's lips. They only showed in certain lights. And, looking for them, he saw marks of strain too in Mrs. Moncrieff's face. Yes, he thought, both of them were, or had been until just now, under a heavy strain. However, late hours can leave very similar marks, and yet...Moncrieff's eyes did not suggest late hours, or if so, then he took some sort of stimulant to account for their almost excessive brightness. They fairly glittered as he laughed at something Lavinia said. A young man joined them with a pleasant, sunburnt, freckled face. It was the young man whom Santley had seen down at Beechcroft dancing attendance on Ann Bladeshaw. It was young Pusey.

He seemed very keen on having a word with them. But Lavinia did not appear overjoyed at seeing him, Santley thought. A cable was handed her and she tore it open. "From Madeleine at last!" she said as she did so, and Santley noticed that Moncrieff stopped the story which he was telling for a moment.

Mrs. Moncrieff gave a little cry. "Oh, what a pity!" Her husband went on calmly with his story to Pusey. It struck Santley as odd that he should not ask what was amiss, for Lavinia sat pushing the cable into her petit point evening bag with a worried frown. But she too, said nothing more. Then, turning, she caught sight of Santley, who was alone at the moment. She signed to him to come to their table. Pulling out a chair, Santley found himself laughing heartily at some of her quips. Lavinia always had the art of quickening the tempo. She excited always, if only to more sparkling talk.

He threw in the suggestion that, since he was coming down next week about the tableaux, it might be possible to arrange some sittings for the long overdue portrait of Moncrieff. Both husband and wife seemed charmed.

Pusey with a light word left them. Santley had a feeling that he was annoyed at his joining the table, or was it at something said by the smiling Moncrieff? Moncrieff's smile showed two magnificent rows of teeth, but it looked rather formidable. Not the face of a man to lightly pay over notes on a park bench...

Mrs. Moncrieff was begging him to come down before the Thursday. Any time after next Tuesday—that was a week from to-day—would suit her and her husband admirably. But Santley explained that he was just off for Brussels, to inspect some tapestry intended for a Belgian church which was being woven there according to one of his designs. He was crossing by air next morning, and would not be back until the Wednesday of next week.

"Brussels!" Lavinia suddenly looked across at her husband, a question in her eyes. Santley, without turning in his seat, could not see if Moncrieff gave an answering glance.

"Ah, well!" Lavinia seemed to bear up, "if you can't come earlier, why, you can't! Perhaps you can stay on? We should be delighted to have you, and what with the rehearsals and flying around to get things together, I'm afraid there won't be much time for sittings until the 'doings' are over. Everything finishes on Saturday, thank Heaven. Harry will have to be on his best behaviour while you're there so as to make a good impression. That's half the battle when you're having your picture painted, isn't it?"

"It's not half so important as the impression I make on him," Santley explained. "What you see on a canvas is not so much what the painter thinks of the sitter, as what the sitter thinks of the artist."

"Is that why most of them look so glum?" Moncrieff asked, in his rather harsh voice, but he had a taking laugh.

"What are you going to put in the background?" Lavinia went on. "I loved the hunting picture you hung on the wall of Lord Marchmont's room in your picture of him. It was such a contrast to his wig and gown, and yet—it explained his eyes."

Santley thought of his aunt's suggestion about a park bench. He said instead: "I should say something swift and dangerous would suit you best. How about a car, a racer?" He spoke to Moncrieff himself.

Just for a second a startled look crossed Moncrieff's face, with its beak-like nose, formidable jaw, large bold black eyes, and wide, broad lips, tightly pressed together most of the time. He said nothing.

"Why not a ray of light?" Lavinia put in hurriedly. "Surely that's the swiftest thing there is."

"And can be extremely dangerous too, when it falls on something you want kept dark," Moncrieff added, with his deep-throated laugh.

Santley was conscious of something below the surface in that sound—of an inner as well as an outer laugh.

"Not so quick as thought," he said now, looking full at the other.

Moncrieff returned the look with the effect of pricking up his ears.

"How would you paint a thought?" he asked with apparently real interest. "What symbol would you use?" His grin, a pleasant grin, said that he had the other beat there.

"A corkscrew,"—began Santley gropingly. He got no further. The word was to be an adjective, but explanations were drowned in the burst of laughter. The talk went on. Santley's friend had drifted out with some relations who had turned up unexpectedly, and Santley, for the moment, remained attached to the Moncrieffs. He was studying the Major. Those eyes of his, for instance, Santley had no idea how he would paint them, paint what, to his mind, lay behind them, except that he must render an impression of a remarkably strong will. In some ways...not all. Whatever this man wanted to do, he would want tremendously...But rather blindly, Santley thought. He doubted if Moncrieff would care for his picture. There was nothing subtle here. Therefore anything subtle would be beyond the man, and Santley's portraits were always illusive, suggestive. On the whole, the artist was disappointed. From Mrs. Phillimore's terrible words, from the strange incident in the park, he had, illogically, expected something very complex, deep...hidden. But Santley caught no glimpse of this. He saw Moncrieff as a fighter born. A man who would be at his best facing overwhelming physical odds...

"About Brussels," Lavinia suddenly broke in, giving Santley an impression of speaking with care. "Do you know it well?"

He explained that he had had to run over a good many times lately, as there was some trouble in carrying out his colours.

"I'm getting quite chummy with the douaniers," he went on. "At first they used to unpack my little bag of coloured wools with tremendous care. Now that they know I'm designing something for one of their own churches, they're awfully obliging. But then Belgians are, when you know them—and they know you. At least the Walloons are."

Lavinia had been listening with most flattering attention. Now she jumped up with a quick cry of greeting to some one who had just entered and was passing near them. It was her mother. Mrs. Phillimore was with some friends, but she hurried across to sit for a moment on a chair which her son-in-law drew out for her with every appearance of solicitude. He began talking to her too, with really noticeable devotion, but she promptly turned a shoulder toward him and spoke to her daughter.

"I've been trying to get you on the 'phone all day, to explain that I shan't be able to return to Beechcroft for weeks and weeks. In fact, to be blunt, dear child, I shall be due for my visit to Scotland to the Mackenzies before the dentist has finished with me."

Sounds of grief and disappointment came from both Moncrieffs. They looked crushed. Genuinely so, any one would say, who had not heard what Mrs. Phillimore had told Santley only that morning.

"But I wondered," Mrs. Phillimore went on, "whether you would let me send an old friend of yours down to stay with you, who needs quiet and rest after an attack of 'flu."

Santley realised that he was watching Mrs. Phillimore going into action, and felt amused.

"Certainly! Charmed, mother!" came from Lavinia.

"We can have her, or him, or them, any time after to-morrow week," the Major said with what sounded like warm hospitality.

"Why not till then?" asked Mrs. Phillimore with a sharp ring in her voice.

"The drains have gone wrong," Lavinia said promptly. "Didn't I tell you this morning? Ah, you rushed off before I could. Yes, it'll be to-morrow week before everything's in order again. But who is the old friend?"

"You know her quite well. She adores you...oh, here she is!"

Mrs. Phillimore would make a good stage-manageress, Santley thought, as she sprang up with every appearance of pleased surprise as a tall, slender young woman came in with a group of young people. Yes, it was Flavelle Bruton, but Mrs. Phillimore was right, she had changed, Santley thought, looking at her—changed enormously. A certain dreamy, hesitating something that used to envelop her was gone. This face was both hard and cold. She had painted her skin, which he remembered as a warm ivory, to a dead matt white, her mouth to a pillar-box scarlet. She had plucked her thick eyebrows to slender half-moons, and put purple shadows under those strange eyes of hers. Even the way her hair grew on her forehead seemed to have been altered. But there was no denying that the effect was striking. In the old days, few people in that smart gathering would have given her one glance. Now people looked many times. She was beautifully dressed, Santley thought, in something black that gleamed with gold threads as she moved. It was swathed tightly around her lovely thin figure, leaving her shoulders and all of her back quite bare, Her hair, in two thick dark plaits, was still wound tightly around her small head, but over some sort of gold tissue which shone between the braids. A great splash of jewelled flowers was on one shoulder. Another at one hip.

Santley as a rule refused to paint the faces of young women. He would not have refused to paint Flavelle Bruton as she stood there smiling at Lavinia, a blue light, like the light shining on a wave, in her eyes. He remembered that blue glint in her eyes when she looked at any one of whom she was fond, and how green they could seem when they looked at any one whom she disliked. Even in the old days, when she had been a plain young woman, he had thought, now and then, that a man might do strange things for the sake of Flavelle Bruton's eyes. The old days...it had been Lavinia then who had seemed to him much the more subtle of the two. He would not say so now. That white, painted face, with the heart-shaped painted mouth, and the half-moon brows were very difficult to read. It had lived, this face. His aunt would say that it had entered the booth called sorrow in life's fair, or was the booth called suffering?

Lavinia was greeting her with effusiveness. A horrid word.

"You 'phoned to me to say you were in London? My dearest thing, I never got the message! You wrote? But I haven't opened any letters for ages—we've had the most awful times with the drains—nothing but builders' estimates and sizes of pipes...darling, how delightful it will be..."

"It's all settled," Mrs. Phillimore said gaily, "you're to go down, Tuesday week, if you can manage it."

Lavinia joined in. The three women laughed and talked on, making, it must be admitted, quite a stir around them.

And to think this was quiet Flavelle Bruton, with her look of self-effacement, her manner that had always suggested diffidence, self-distrust. Well, Santley thought, success changes all of us. The curious thing about the change in Flavelle to him was, that he would not have said that happiness had had anything to do with the alteration. Quite the other way.

He made some idle remark to Moncrieff beside him. The Major did not reply. Glancing at him Santley saw that he was standing rigid, his eyes on the floor and had evidently not heard. Santley repeated the sentence. Still no reply from Moncrieff; still quite obviously, he had not heard what was said.

Santley decided that it was high time to go, but Lavinia was chattering too fast for him to get in a word. "Oh, it's a beast of a house," she was saying. "It's only the fag-end of a lease. You mustn't mind a spot or two of discomfort. You can have all the quiet you want, after Saturday, that I can promise you."

Somehow it did not sound alluring, Santley thought. But Flavelle only smiled, and said, in her voice that used to be so low and soft and was now so firm and decisive, that she was used to discomfort, that she would gladly come down for a week-end, and with that, and some more light chatter, Mrs. Phillimore and she passed on to their friends.

They left a sudden silence behind them. Santley used it to say good-bye, and went on to a place where some very good ballet dances were being given. He enjoyed the show, the strange rhythmic poses, the gorgeous garments. Rising to leave, he almost collided with Flavelle Bruton in the doorway. She was with a tall young man who instantly arrested Santley's attention. He was good-looking in what is called in books an aristocratic fashion, which has nothing to do with birth and yet has a definite meaning. His eyes met Santley's and the artist felt the power in them—power of personality, of will, of many other things. Then Flavelle turned and said a few words in Spanish to him. The man bowed, and went back into the room.

Santley apologised for having almost stepped on her.

She was quite friendly. And quite chilly. Then she glanced towards the young man who had come in with her.

"That's Don Plutarco. The name means nothing to you, of course," she said lightly. "He's the idol of Spain at the moment. A bull fighter born in Heaven, they say. At any rate, he's the leading espada. He wants to stay on and see more of this dancing. I'm tired. I'm off to bed."

"May I take you home? And if so, where?" he asked.

"I'm going back to my old studio," she said unexpectedly. "I've a fancy to sleep there to-night. Off King's Road, you know. The smelly end."

"Do you still keep it on?" he asked, as she gave more precise directions to a taxi which he called.

"I had it on a seven years' lease...I sub-let it. Make quite threepence a month profit on it!" she said lightly, but she leaned her little head back with a weary gesture. "You know those old legends about a monk caught up into Heaven for what he thought was a moment, but on his return finds was years and years, and that meanwhile an angel has taken his place on earth?" she said suddenly.

Santley said he had read many versions of it. "Why?"

"I was wondering whether the angel, when he got back to Heaven, found that he ought to've stayed on earth," Flavelle said. "It seems such a mistake—coming back to anything."

"What about your studio?" he asked, making as though to stop the driver.

She only gave a little empty laugh and told him to let the man carry on. They were at the studio almost immediately. She had the key in an envelope, or rather the two keys, and a moment later Santley stepped into a room which made him take an involuntary step backwards. He had seen it before, but not like this. It had then been painted a thick, dead white, with black squares in the ceiling inside which were lightly coloured flower motifs. The whole had had a Tudor effect. But now! Each wall was painted a different colour, and each colour was sharp and vivid. A green wall, a geranium red wall, a buttercup yellow wall, and a deep purple wall. The floor was painted black. The ceiling a vivid cornflower blue, as were the few hangings. The chairs were painted the same rich hue. At the height of a dado, an enormous dragon in gold ran around the four walls, his tail meeting his huge mouth. The studio was large and the effect overpowering.

"My God!" murmured Santley under his breath. He supposed that this was the effort of the latest tenant.

Flavelle laughed, a snap of a laugh. "Does rather hit you below the belt, doesn't it, but I enjoyed doing it before I let it. And the man who had the studio until last month rather liked it. He's going to keep it on—says it helps to drown the street noises."

Santley was surprised. The new Flavelle was quite capable of painting this room, but the old Flavelle? The meek little grey mouse?

There was another room opening out of this which the late occupier had kept as it was—whitewashed. It held a small firing oven, for pottery had been Flavelle's chief work before she left England and took to mosaics in earnest.

"My modelling tools," she laid a hand on a handsome old carved box of Arabian work on the table. Idly Santley fingered the contents while she moved about. Santley saw in a moment that the box had a secret bottom. He was fond of old furniture, and there is not an old box worthy the name which has not some hiding-place. It amused him to find this one. Perhaps Flavelle knew nothing of it. It was a simple matter of lifting up two compartment divisions and out popped a drawer below which was not visible to the eye in the network of carvings.

Flavelle had drifted into the bedroom. He expected to find the space empty, but a dusty little modelled figure in clay lay inside it. He picked it up. His mouth, which he had opened to call to her, shut with just such a snap as the drawer had given when it jumped out in answer to his tug. The figure was a tiny model of Moncrieff, and it was stuck through and through with a pin driven in where the heart would be and coming out in the back. Santley stared hard, then he dropped it hurriedly back and shut in the drawer. He strolled out into the studio and met the violence of the colours, the fierce eyes of the gold dragon again.

Flavelle was standing by the cornflower blue table with its glossy black top, rattling her scarlet painted nails on it in a tattoo. Santley used to like the girl. He was not at all sure that he would like this woman. Yet he had to acknowledge, as he said good-bye to her, that if the years had taken much away—and they had, he thought—they had also given with a free hand. He felt in her, what he had felt so oddly when his eyes met those of the Spaniard at the ballet dances—a sense of power, of poise, of character.

Driving back to his own rooms, he found, however, that it was not Flavelle Bruton who held his thoughts, but Moncrieff, the subject of his next canvas.

The telephone rang as he closed his own front door behind him. "Yes. Santley speaking," he said into it.

"At last!" came in Goodenough's voice. "I've been trying every half-hour to ring you up. Look here, can I drop in for a word with you? You're off to-morrow morning, aren't you?"

"Yes. Come round by all means."

Santley took but little sleep as a rule. But Goodenough did not stop long. He looked very disturbed as he came in.

"I had a talk with Mrs. Phillimore this afternoon," he began. "She said that she had spoken to you. She wants me to get Ann away from Beechcroft. Wouldn't give any reason, any reason which was a reason...Then about half an hour ago she rang up and said she could now tell me what was wrong at Beechcroft, it was the drains! Now what do you suppose she meant by that? All she said this afternoon was that she thought Ann should not stay down there. I tried to get Ann on the 'phone, of course, but couldn't. She had taken the children for a picnic. What's it all about?"

"The drains, I was told," Santley said firmly, and to that he stuck.

He had no intention of spreading tales about the young couple. As for Mrs. Phillimore's real fear, it was far too ghastly to speak of without some personal experience to back it up. But if she were right and the Major really was not always in his right mind, then it stood to reason that Ann Bladeshaw and the children too, ought not to be down there.

"I should get her away, I think," he said now. "Drains are dangerous things to be wrong in an old house. Did Mrs. Phillimore say anything about the twins?"

"Not a word. It's all extraordinary. So sudden! So vague! Precious disturbing!" and Goodenough looked genuinely disturbed. "I had an idea, when she spoke to me, that she was hinting at trouble between Lavinia and Moncrieff, but apparently I was wrong?" He looked at Santley, who shook his head as though he knew nothing of such an idea.

Goodenough, a year ago, had been very attentive to Lavinia. So much so that people had talked about it. But Lavinia, as Santley knew, was devoted to her husband. He would never forget the tone of her voice when she had told him that his own feeling for her was hopeless, that she was going to marry Harry Moncrieff. And he had seen only this evening that she had not changed...His last sight of her had been as she turned to Moncrieff again, with a look of almost infatuated devotion in her eyes. Mrs. Phillimore had said she was hypnotised. It was self-hypnosis in that case. Goodenough had transferred his affections, if they had ever been bestowed on Lavinia, to Ann Bladeshaw as soon as he met the gay, cheerful girl, and Lavinia very much encouraged the friendship between the two.

"I haven't any authority with Ann," Goodenough now said, "nor do I understand what Mrs. Phillimore is driving at...if the twins can stay there, why can't Ann? Just when I'm going down for a week-end. I'm dashed if I grasp the old lady's game..."

Goodenough looked vexed. And no wonder, Santley thought, it did sound inconsiderate...and incomprehensible...

"She spoke of having a talk to Ayres about the kids being there at all," Goodenough went on frowningly.

Ayres was Moncrieff's partner in some patents which the Major was putting on the market, and he was also co-trustee with Moncrieff for the twins.

"I rang him up just now, and he says he can't think what Mrs. Phillimore's getting at. That he knows of nothing wrong. He's going down there for these tableaux too. He ought to know...It's all uncommonly funny, if you ask me!"

Santley had not asked Goodenough, and did not want Goodenough to ask him any more questions. He suggested that as they were both going down to Beechcroft next week—

"I'm not going if Ann's not there!" Goodenough said to that.

"They're counting on you," Santley tried to soothe him down, and finally, after fuming a bit more and lighting cigarettes and flinging them half smoked into the hearth, Goodenough decided to have a talk with Ayres next morning, and get him to use his influence to have the twins and their governess stay where they were, at least until after the coming week.