Читать книгу Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse - Faith Sullivan - Страница 27

chapter seventeenchapter seventeen

AFTER SEEING NELL OUT, Cora wheeled herself from room to room, pausing several times to beat her fists on the arms of the chair.

“Lizzie, I’m going to the park. Can you help me?” Once Cora had been positioned in the sunshine, she told the girl, “Take Laurence down to the hotel and buy yourselves tea and doughnuts. Don’t hurry.”

For an hour Cora sat, by turns agitated and mournful. God forgive me, she prayed. I meant no harm.

Walking home from Cora’s, Nell met Anna Braun leaving Lundeen’s, a store money bag in hand. “Running an errand to the bank,” Anna said.

“I’ll walk with you as far as the post office,” Nell told her. “You’ve heard that Elvira’s going to Chicago.”

“Yes.”

“You and she see each other outside the store, don’t you? Is anything troubling her?”

Anna shot her a speculative glance. “I don’t see much of her outside the store. Lately, she keeps to herself.”

“Lately?”

“Since Christmas, I’d say.”

“You don’t go to the dances at the Harvester Arms?”

Anna shook her head. “I haven’t been to a dance in two years.”

“I must be mistaken. I thought the two of you went together.”

“Must have been someone else.”

A week later, Cora Lundeen removed five hundred dollars from an evening bag in the bottom drawer of her dressing table, slipped the money into an envelope without an accompanying note, and mailed it.