Джорджетт Хейер - Duplicate Death

This gave Mrs. Haddington an opportunity to say that the flowers ought to have been arranged hours earlier, which made Beulah lose her temper, and retort that so they would have been had she not been sent off on an errand to Fulham. She then stalked off, determined to scatter as many leaves, stalks, and scrapings of bark as possible all over the cloakroom floor, and peace reigned until Cynthia Haddington, no early riser, erupted from her bedroom with a loud and insistent demand that everyone should immediately abandon his or her task to search for her favourite powder-compact, which she had mislaid. This appalling loss seemed likely to embitter her whole life, and at once rendered the house hideous. Her temper, never at its best in the morning, grew steadily worse; and after exasperating everyone by insisting that all the unlikeliest places should be searched, reiterating passionately that she knew she had had it when she went to bed the previous evening, she nearly provoked a domestic crisis by asserting her belief that someone had stolen the compact.

Mrs. Haddington, who had not till then accorded the disaster more than a perfunctory interest, rather hastily intervened, telling her daughter not to talk nonsense, and reminding her that she had at least four other compacts at her disposal.

"But this was my favourite one!" Cynthia said. "I can't bear it if it's lost! It's the round one, covered with petitpoint, with -"

"Yes, darling," interrupted Mrs. Haddington, with careful restraint. "We all know what it looks like. It's the one Dan gave you for Christmas, isn't it? I expect it'll turn up. Just don't fuss!"

But this advice fell on deaf ears. Cynthia went on drifting from room to room, leaving chaos in her wake, and maintaining a maddening flow of complaints and conjectures, until she was forced temporarily to abandon her search by the realisation that since it was now one o'clock, at which hour she was pledged to join a luncheon-party at Claridge's, she would obviously be rather late unless she left the house at once.

Mrs. Haddington had also a luncheon-engagement, but found time, before departing to keep it, to condemn Miss Birtley's arrangement of the flowers, characterising the bowls as messy.

"Well, I know they aren't good," said Beulah, sighing. "It's a bit difficult, with so little choice, and carnations will flop so!"

"Anyone with a grain of sense," said Mrs. Haddington, "would have used tangled wire to hold them. It seems to me I have to think of everything! They must all be done again - and do please use your intelligence!"

"I haven't any, so would you also think what kind of wire, and where I can find it?" snapped Beulah.

Mrs. Haddington's eyes narrowed. "My good girl, if you speak to me like that you will have considerable cause to regret it," she said. "Ask Thrimby for some picture-wire, and if he has none you have plenty of time to go out and buy some!"

She then walked away; and Beulah, knowing that Thrimby would derive a subtle pleasure from disclaiming all knowledge of the presence of picture-wire in the house, once more sallied forth on an uninspiring errand.

The rearrangement of the flowers, accompanied as it was by a good deal of walking up and downstairs with the various bowls and vases, left Miss Birtley feeling decidedly limp; nor was the tangling of rather thick and ropy picture-wire unattended by difficulties. A guilty suspicion crossed her mind that picture-wire was not really what was wanted, but by dint of much labour and ingenuity she did succeed in using it to some advantage. The bowls were replaced, the floor of the cloakroom once more swept, the spare wire neatly coiled, and left on the shelf against a future need; and Beulah was just wondering whether she dared snatch half an hour's respite, when the front-door bell rang, and, a few minutes later, Thrimby came to inform her that the dressmaker had arrived, and would like to know what she could be getting on with until the return of Miss Cynthia from her luncheon-party.

Well aware that her employer would acidly resent any idleness on Miss Spennymoor's part while she was under her roof, Beulah climbed the stairs again, this time to Cynthia's bedroom. This apartment, which was at the back of the house, on the second floor, was a triumph of the decorator's art, and might well have been called a Symphony in Satin. Satin, of a ravishing shade of peach, covered the window, all the chairs, the kidney-shaped dressing-table, and had even been used for the padded head and foot boards of the bed. Several rather grubby dolls were propped up in dejected attitudes on various pieces of furniture, one being used to cover the pinkenamel telephone by the bed. The room was in its usual state of disorder, the combined efforts of one personal maid and two housemaids being insufficient to keep pace with Cynthia's habit of having discarded clothing on the floor, and littering the dressing-table with powder, haircombings, and dirty face-tissues. According this uninviting table no more than one disgusted glance, Beulah pulled open a drawer in a large chest, and extracted from it a tangle of stockings. It was safe to assume that they all stood in need of repair, so she bundled them under her arm, and mounted yet another flight of stairs to a small room set apart for Miss Spennymoor's visits. This boasted a chair, a table, a sewing-machine, an electric iron, two ironing-boards, and an antiquated gas-stove which made up in fumes and hissing what it lacked in heating-power.

Miss Spennymoor, who was known to her many patronesses as "a little woman who comes to me', was a small and spare spinster, who eked out a precarious livelihood by trotting cheerfully all over London to sew in other people's houses. She called herself a dressmaker, but this was a slight misnomer, only the most unexacting customers employing her in this role. She was an excellent needle-woman, but, as she herself was the first to acknowledge, an indifferent cutter. But her mending was faultless, and not merely could she alter garments to fit their wearers: she would never have dreamed of telling her clients that the task set her would take at least three weeks to perform. Above all - and this was a virtue much extolled by her patronesses - she charged very little for her services. "For," as she frequently pointed out, "I generally get my dinner, which has to be taken into account, and is a great saving. Of course, sometimes I'm unlucky, some of my ladies not having what I should call a proper meal midday, but one has to take the rough with the smooth, dear, and often there's a cup of tea in the morning, which I must say I do appreciate, not that it is a thing I would ever expect, if you understand me."

Miss Spennymoor's life might have been thought to have been as drab as it was lonely, but she would have been greatly surprised at such a mistaken judgment. Not only were the lives of her clients a constant source of interest to her, but her own life had not been without its romance. As a much younger woman, she had been a theatrical dresser, and although she had never risen in this profession above the dressing-room inhabited by the ladies of the chorus, this period in her career was one which she looked back upon with pride and pleasure, and her album, with its faded portraits of forgotten beauties, was a solace that never failed her.

She received the stockings from Beulah with her usual cheerfulness, for she would have thought it quite as shocking as Mrs. Haddington that she should be idle. "Well, it wouldn't be right, would it?" she said. "For she pays me for my time, and it's only to be expected I should be working while I'm here. It was lucky you caught me this morning, Miss Birtley, for I was just about to pop on my things and go to one of my ladies that lives in Hampstead. Oh, dear, what a nasty hole in the toe of this lovely stocking! More like a potato than a hole: it does seem a shame, and quite new, I should say. I never think a darned stocking is the same, do you, dear? I'll lay it by until my regular day next week, for I daresay Miss Cynthia will come in, and I wouldn't like to leave it with the needle stuck in it, as I should have to, because it wouldn't hardly be reasonable to expect Miss Cynthia to wait. Very much surprised she would be if I was to suggest such a thing, which, of course, I shouldn't dream of doing, not for a moment! I'll just be getting on with this little hole in the heel. Is it a big job Mrs. Haddington wants me to do for Miss Cynthia?"