Patricia Wentworth - Beggar’s Choice

“Isn’t it Clarissa?”

“No-Corinna-Corinna Lee.”

“What does it matter?”

The rest of dinner was rather a strain. Isobel had her back to me, but it was very difficult not to watch her. I didn’t want Fay to notice that, but I’m afraid she did. I hoped she’d go on thinking I was looking at Corinna. I don’t know what we talked about, but I must have kept my end up pretty well, because Fay seemed quite pleased.

After dinner we danced. The tables are all round the edge of the room, and there is an open space in the middle. The first time we passed Miss Willy’s table they were talking, Miss Willy loud enough for two, and no one looked at us except Bobby Markham, and he looked and looked away like you do when you’ve seen some one you don’t want to see. I went on doing the step Fay was teaching me, and wondering about Bobby. I wondered if he was my employer. It went a good deal against the grain to think he might be.

We went on dancing. Isobel never looked round. The man that I thought might be Giles Heron was on one side of her, and the elderly man who had come with Cousin Abby on the other. Heron was bending towards her and talking most of the time. He looked a good chap, solid and capable. About the third time we came round, Corinna saw me and waved her hand. She was between Bobby Markham and the young man she had come in with, a red-haired lad with a cheeky grin. They seemed to be getting on like a house on fire.

Just after we’d passed, the music stopped, and so did Fay. We were by Delphine’s table. Fay turned round to speak to her, and the minute she saw that, Corinna jumped up and came across to me with her hand out.

“If this isn’t just lovely!” she said; and then, “Are you going to dance with me?”

“You’ve got your party and I’ve got mine,” I said. I should have liked to dance with her very much.

“Come and join us,” said Corinna. She made a dart at Fay, who was just turning back. “It’s Miss Everitt, isn’t it? How do you do? I was just saying, won’t you both come and join our party?”

I was hoping Fay wouldn’t snub the child too hard, when, to my surprise, she said in a hesitating way,

“That’s very kind of you.”

“It will be very kind of you,” said Corinna prettily. “It’s my party, and I think Car knows Miss Tarrant and her niece-You do, Car, don’t you?”

I said “Yes.” I wondered if Isobel knew that Corinna was bringing me into her party. I wondered if I ought to refuse.

“And the others are my cousin Abby Palliser, and Mr. Heron, and Mr. Markham, and Jim O’Hara-a sort of cousin of mine too-and Mr. John Brown, who is a friend of Poppa’s.”

She introduced us all and pressed coffee and chocolates on us, and I found myself sitting opposite Isobel, and presently dancing with her. It seemed quite natural, just as in a dream the strangest things seem natural. From the moment I had seen her I seemed to myself to have crossed the line between the everyday world and the secret place where one keeps one’s dreams. I felt as if anything might happen-as if I could say anything to her just as one does in a dream. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I spoke at all for some time.

Isobel talked about Corinna. She said she had made a complete conquest of Uncle John and was going down to stay at Linwood next week.

“She actually got him to say he would come to her party to-night. What do you think of that?”

“Is he coming? I don’t want to meet him, Isobel.”

“I wish you could meet him. But he’s not coming-Anna got Dr. Monk to forbid it. I believe it would have done him good; but she’s anxious about him. She gave up coming herself, which was good of her. I think she’s really devoted to him. Car, don’t!”

I hadn’t said anything. I didn’t believe Anna was devoted to Uncle John, but I didn’t say so.

Isobel went on looking at me reproachfully.

“Car-” she began.

“Don’t waste time,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about Anna and Uncle John, and I won’t talk about Anna and Uncle John.”

The dimple at the corner of her mouth came out in just the old way.

“I don’t really want to talk about them either-I want to talk about you.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, what do you want to talk about?”

There was only one thing that I really wanted to talk about, and I knew I mustn’t. I oughtn’t to have asked her to dance. I ought to keep away from her.

She smiled her lovely smile and said,

“We’ll talk about you to start with. What are you doing? Have you got a job?”

“Not properly-I’m on appro’.”

“Car-what do you mean?”

“I’m being tried out. At this very moment the secret eye of my employer is probably boring into my back. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, or when I’m to do it-I’m on appro’.”

“How desperately mysterious! Tell me all about it from beginning to end.”

“I can’t my dear.” I oughtn’t to call her that, but it slipped out.

She didn’t say anything for about a minute. I saw her color rise, and I wondered if I had vexed her, but when she looked up her eyes were very kind. It would be easier if she weren’t so heavenly kind to me.

“Car dear, you look better,” she said.

“I’m in the pink.”

We passed Corinna with Bobby Markham.

Corinna said, “Dance the next one with me,” and looked back smiling.

“That’s a nice child,” said Isobel.

“Who-Bobby Markham? He’s a bit fat for my taste.”

She laughed.

“Don’t be silly!”

I was wondering again if the secret eye of my employer was in Bobby Markham’s head. I did hope not.

“Where did you come across him?” I asked.

“He’s Aunt Willy’s latest-he practically lives with us. I think he’s dined with us every night for a fortnight. He’s been staying at the George.”

“Every night?” I said.

“Yes. Awful-isn’t it?”

I began to sit up and take notice.

“He didn’t dine with you on the sixteenth?”

“The sixteenth? Yes, he did.”

“Not Monday, the sixteenth?”

“Why? How mysterious!”

I was making a calculation. If Markham had spent the evening with the Tarrants, could he have been in the hut at Linwood Edge by eleven? I should think it would have been just about eleven when I got there. My watch went west long ago, but I’m pretty good at reckoning time, and it couldn’t have been much more than eleven-perhaps it wasn’t as much. I wondered when he had said good-night. I thought I would make sure.

“Did he just bolt his food and dash off?” I asked.

“No, of course he didn’t. You don’t get as fat as that on bolting. He stayed till eleven-he always does, and then he makes a joke about his beauty sleep, and Aunt Willy’s beauty sleep. It’s a frightfully complicated joke, and he finishes up by saying, ‘I don’t need any. I’m so beautiful already, you see.’ And then he presses our hands in a long, long, lingering clasp, and by that time it’s nearly twenty past.”

I sat up a good bit more. This looked like an absolutely cast-iron alibi for Bobby-and if it wasn’t Bobby I met in the hut, who was it?

“Isobel-are you sure?” I said.

“Quite.”

“Quite sure he was with you all the evening of the sixteenth-Monday the sixteenth?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Why, Car?”

“Because I thought I saw him somewhere else on Monday night,” I said.

We went round the room in silence. Bobby Markham had broken into our dream, but it began to flow back upon me. I didn’t want to talk; I just wanted to go deeper and deeper into the dream with Isobel and never come back any more. She gives me a kind of quiet, happy feeling which I have never had with any one else. Every now and then something like a knife jabs into me, and I know that I oughtn’t to be there, and that it can’t go on, and that she ought to marry somebody else. That hurts like hell. And then all of a sudden it stops hurting, and I only feel that I’m with her and that nothing else matters. She makes all the beautiful things in the world seem natural.