Джорджетт Хейер - Duplicate Death

Mrs. Haddington, who had listened in stony silence to these recollections, caught her eye at this point, and gave her what the little dressmaker afterwards described as A Look. Miss Spennymoor, covered in confusion, coughed, said hastily: "But I mustn't run on, must I?" and, in her agitation, stuck a pin into Cynthia's tender flesh. By the time that sensitive damsel had been soothed into sullen quiescence, all thought of Lord Guisborough and his romantically-minded parent had been banished from Miss Spennymoor's mind, and she continued her task in chastened silence.

Miss Spennymoor had scarcely withdrawn to the seclusion of the sewing-room on the second floor when Beulah came into the boudoir, to lay before her employer the sum total of the weekly bills. Mrs. Haddington's eyes narrowed; she said: "I'll check it against the books."

Beulah flushed. "Certainly! I have them here!"

"Trot along, darling!" Mrs. Haddington told her daughter, in quite another voice. "I shouldn't racket about today, if I were you. Why don't you ring up Betty, and see if she'd like to go for a walk in the Park with you, and come back here to luncheon? Wouldn't that be rather nice?"

"No, hellish!" responded Cynthia frankly. "I'm going to lie down! I feel bloody!"

With these elegant words, she walked out of the room neglecting to shut the door behind her.

Mrs. Haddington seated herself at her desk, and held out her hand for the weekly accounts. In silence, Beulah laid a pile of books and bills before her, together with her own epitome.

"Your total appears to be correct," Mrs. Haddington said, after a pause.

"No, is it really?" retorted Beulah. "I quite thought I was getting away with a halfpenny!"

"I advise you not to be impertinent, my good girl. You won't find that it pays in this house!" Mrs. Haddington took out her cheque-book from a drawer, and dipped a pen in the silver inkpot. "There is something else I wish to say to you. I understand that you were dining with Mr.. Harte last night, at Armand's?"

"Well?" Beulah shot at her.

The pen travelled slowly across the cheque-form. "I need hardly ask, I suppose, whether Mr.. Harte is aware of your somewhat unusual history?" said Mrs. Haddington bitingly.

The flush had faded from Beulah's cheeks, leaving them very white. "I don't know what business that is of yours!" she said.

"It is very much my business. Mr.. Harte met you under my roof, and I could not reconcile it with my conscience not to drop a word of timely warning in his ear."

Beulah put out a hand to grip the edge of the mantelshelf. "I see the idea, of course!" she said breathlessly. "Recoiling in disgust from me, Timothy is to fall into your daughter's arms! I'm afraid he won't do it: his taste doesn't run to brainless blondes!" She stopped, and added quickly: "I'm sorry! I oughtn't to have said that!"

Mrs. Haddington blotted the cheque, and turned in her chair to survey Beulah from her heels to her head. "So you actually imagine that you're going to entrap that young man into marriage, do you?" she said. "How very amusing! But something tells me that the Hartes don't go to Holloway for their brides. We shall see!"

Beulah released the mantelshelf, and took a hasty step towards her employer. "Whatever you do, he won't marry Cynthia!" she said.

"Miss Cynthia!" corrected Mrs. Haddington blandly.

"Oh, don't be such a fool! My family is a damned sight better-born than yours, for what that's worth! You're trying to make me lose my temper, but, I warn you, you'd better not! I didn't cut your daughter out with Timothy Harte: he never for one moment thought of her seriously! It can't matter to you if I marry him! There are dozens of men only too anxious to marry her: why can't you let me have just one who prefers me? I'm going to marry him, not because he's well-off, and well-born, and heir to a baronetcy, but because I love him! If you think you can stop me, you were never more mistaken in your life! I'm not a dewy innocent any longer, so don't think it! I've put up with your foul tongue all these months because it suited me to stay in this job, but I won't put up with any interference in my private life! There's very little I won't do, if you goad me to it! If I can't have Timothy, I don't care what becomes of me! So now you know!"

From the doorway Thrimby coughed with extreme deliberation. "I beg your pardon, madam, but I thought Miss Cynthia was here. Lord Guisborough wishes to speak to her on the telephone."

Beulah glared at him, her full lip caught between her teeth. Mrs. Haddington said coolly: "Here is the cheque, Miss Birtley. You will pay the bills tomorrow morning, if you please, before you come to work. Kindly go down to Mrs. Foston and find out from her what shopping has to be done today! Miss Cynthia is resting, Thrimby, I will speak to Lord Guisborough."

Thrimby, recounting this interesting passage later to his colleague, the housekeeper, said impressively: "Mark my words, Mrs. Foston, there's more to that young woman than meets the eye! Well, I've always had my suspicions, right from the start!"

"Well," said Mrs. Foston, who was as goodhumoured as she was stout, "be that as it may, I'm downright sorry for the girl, and that's a fact, Mr.. Thrimby! I've never had any words with her, but, then, Do as you would be done by, is my motto! I shall stay here till the end of the Season, because that's what I promised Mrs. H., but not another moment! Well, it isn't what I've been accustomed to, and that's the truth! Only, in these days, with the best people cutting down their staffs -" She stopped, and sighed. "Well, you know what it is, Mr.. Thrimby!"

"I know," he agreed, echoing her sigh. "Sometimes one wonders what the world is coming to!"

"All this talk about the Workers!" said Mrs. Foston, shaking out a tea-cloth, subjecting it to a minute inspection, and refolding it. "Anyone 'ud think the only people to do a job of work was in factories, or dockyards, or plate-laying! No one bothers about people like you and me, and my brother, who's doing a jobbinggardener's work, because no one can't afford to keep a head-gardener like him, that was always used to have four under him! It makes me tired, Mr.. Thrimby!"

"Ah, well, it's Progress, Mrs. Foston!" said the butler vaguely.

"Yes, and I suppose it's progress that makes any little chit that hasn't had any more training than that canary of mine waltz in here asking as much money as a decent housemaid that's worked her way up from betweenmaid!" said Mrs. Foston tartly. "Something for nothing! That's what people want nowadays. And it's what they get, too, more's the pity! I've no patience with it!"

At this point, Thrimby, well-knowing that his colleague was fairly mounted upon her favourite hobbyhorse, thought it prudent to withdraw, so that Mrs. Foston was left to address the rest of her pithy monologue to the ambient air.

With the exception of Mrs. Foston, who stated that she preferred to say nothing; and of M. Gaston, the chef, who professed a sublime indifference to anything that occurred beyond the confines of the realm over which he reigned, Mrs. Haddington's servants were at one in declaring that murders were not what they had been accustomed to, or could put up with. The head housemaid, recruiting her strength with a cup of Bovril, informed her subordinate, who had brought this sustaining beverage up to her sick-bed, that strangled corpses were not what she would call nice; and the parlourmaid, tendering her notice to her employer, said that Mr.. Seaton-Carew's murder had unsettled her. The kitchenmaid, who was an orphan, said that her auntie didn't want her to stay no longer in a house where there were such unnatural goings-on; and would no doubt have followed the parlourmaid's example had she not been too much frightened of M. Gaston to give notice without his consent. This, since she was the least stupid scullion who had been allotted to him, was withheld, M. Gaston maintaining with Gallic fervour that what took place abovestairs was no concern of his or hers. Margie, a biddable girl, was quite cowed by his eloquence; and the rest of the staff, while deprecating the laxity of M. Gaston's outlook, said that anyone had to remember that he was French.