Patricia Wentworth - Beggar’s Choice

“I’m dancing this with Giles,” she said, and I took her across the room to where Heron was waiting for her. We did not speak a single word.

I’m afraid Fay must have found me a dull partner.

As soon as I got hold of myself I went over what Isobel had said about my uncle. It seemed to me that it fitted in with Anna’s story. It seemed to me that if Anna knew that Uncle John was wanting to get into touch with me, she might very easily get the wind up and be afraid of my finding out what she’d been up to-that is, if she’d really been messing about with his banking account. And if she was afraid of my finding her out, it would be just like her to try and muzzle me in advance.

The sort of half guess which I had made when she was talking to me looked a good deal more likely now. If I was right, it wouldn’t be the first time Anna had played that trick. I remembered her stopping her nurse’s mouth that way when she couldn’t have been much more than seven. She had thrown a ball through one of the drawing-room windows, and she got nurse to promise she wouldn’t tell Uncle John if she told her something. I don’t know what Nanny thought she was going to tell her, but she promised, and she kept her promise; though I can remember her crying bitterly because I was punished, first for the window (it was my ball) and secondly for telling a lie and saying I hadn’t been near the place. Those are the sort of things that have made me love Anna.

I had her name in my mind, when I looked across Fay’s shoulder and saw her not a yard away. I don’t know what Fay had been saying, but she must have said it more than once, because when I did hear her she sounded really peeved.

“Car, are you deaf? I want to stop-my brooch has come undone.”

I had to stop, because the brooch fell and rolled almost under Anna’s feet. She was sitting alone at a table; but I could see she hadn’t been alone long, for there were two glasses, and a chair pushed back. I retrieved the brooch and got up with it in my hand, and just as I was giving it to Fay, I saw Bobby Markham coming along with his brother. They came up to Anna, and Bobby said,

“May I introduce my brother Arbuthnot?”

Anna wasn’t too effusive-and I don’t wonder. Arbuthnot Markham isn’t exactly a human ray of sunshine. Bobby’s a fat-headed-looking sort of chump; but there’s something about Arbuthnot that makes me want to go home. He’d look better if he was bald like Bobby-his hair’s too black and shiny.

I heard him say, “I took the liberty of asking my brother to introduce me.” Then he asked her for a dance, and Fay and I finished ours.

I went and talked to Miss Willy after that. I was afraid she’d want to dance-and it’s just like dancing with a steam-engine. But she said she wanted to talk to me, and then I wondered whether it wouldn’t have been better to risk being crushed. She’s a most overpowering person, and I don’t know how Isobel stands living with her. If it weren’t for Isobel, she’d have come some awful smash long ago.

I’ve never met any one with so much exuberant enthusiasm going to waste.

She began at once to talk about my uncle, and about Anna. She hadn’t any of Isobel’s hesitation. She called Anna quite a number of things that made me feel better, and she was wildly indignant on my uncle’s behalf.

And then she broke off to tell me all about a row she’d had with old Monk, and from that she got on to another row with the Vicar-I think the one with Monk had something to do with Anna, but not the one with the Vicar-and in the middle of the second row she suddenly switched back on to Uncle John and said I must come down and be reconciled to him. Now I happen to know that Miss Willy hasn’t had a good word to say for me ever since the smash. I don’t blame her, because it was on Isobel’s account; but I wondered why she should be all over me now. Then it came down on me like a cartload of bricks. If Isobel was going to marry Heron, I didn’t matter any more-Miss Willy could let her naturally kind instincts rip, have me to stay, reconcile me to Uncle John, and annoy Anna, all at one blow. I discovered that she had heard Anna allude to her as a blatant old maid. That clinched it-I was convinced that she regarded me as a convenient retort.

I seem to have written reams about last night, but I’m nearly through. I want to get it all down, and then go over it and see what I can make of it. There are just two more things to get down. I think one of them’s important.

Fay said she’d go home in a taxi, and I went out to get one. When I was coming back, I saw Anna come down the steps with Arbuthnot Markham. There wasn’t room for my taxi to draw up, so I nipped out and cut across behind the car Anna was getting into. There was rather a jam and a crowd on the pavement, and I didn’t particularly want her to see me, so I stood and waited for her to get in and shut the door. She got in, and then she leaned out of the window, and she said to Arbuthnot Markham, “He mustn’t go to the Tarrants-he mustn’t.”

He said something I didn’t catch.

Anna’s got a carrying voice. She said,

“You must stop him somehow.”

And then he stepped back, and she drew in her head, and the car went on.

Well, she must have meant me. And there isn’t anything strange in her not wanting me to go and stay with the Tarrants, because she naturally isn’t keen on my being anywhere within ten miles of Uncle John. But why tell Arbuthnot about it? I’d seen him introduced to her about half an hour before, and it struck me as pretty good going.

I got Fay, and we drove home. I wished I had walked, because she began to play up like she does sometimes. I shouldn’t want to flirt with Fay if there wasn’t another woman on earth-and she might have the common intelligence to know that I wouldn’t want to flirt with Peter’s wife. She doesn’t mean anything, of course, but it’s jolly bad form, and she riled me till I told her so straight out. In a way I’m fond of her, like you are of a second or third cousin, and it annoys me to see her making an ass of herself.

It began with my saying she ought to drop this silly Miss Everitt business and call herself Mrs. Lymington. I said it wasn’t fair. It isn’t. It worries me to hear Corinna talking about Peter as if she were engaged to him. Of course I didn’t mention Corinna-I just said it wasn’t fair. And the silly goose made eyes at me and said,

“Because some one might fall in love with me? Is that what you mean?”

It wasn’t in the least what I meant, but I let it go at that, and I supposed it encouraged her.

“If I hadn’t been married to Peter-” she stopped there and put her head against my arm.

I said, “You are married to Peter.”

“And if I weren’t,” she said-“if I’d been free all the time-would you have fallen in love with me?”

I said, “No, I shouldn’t,” and I said it pretty sharply.

“If I were free now-”

I took her by the shoulder and put her back in her own corner of the car.

“Drop it, Fay!” I said. “You don’t mean anything, and you know it, and I know it, so why the devil do you do it? If you ask me, it’s the rottenest of rotten bad form.”

She flared out at me.

“I didn’t ask you! I’m not asking you anything! I hate you!”

“Don’t be an ass, Fay,” I said.

Then she began to cry and said I was a brute.

September 2lst-I’ve just been reading over what I wrote yesterday. The two points that matter are:

Who is employing me?

and

Why?

There are a lot of subsidiary ones. The most important of these seem to be:

1. Anna’s connection with the affair.

2. Bobby Markham.

3. Fay.

I don’t know what to think about Anna. If I hadn’t lost my temper, I might have got something out of her. That’s the worst of a temper-it always lets you down. I don’t think she’s the big noise in this affair.-I think she butted in. If I thought the money came from her, I’d chuck the whole show.