Patricia Wentworth: Miss Silver Comes To Stay

Whatever else the long years had changed, Cecilia Voycey still had Cissy Christopher’s rattling tongue. Miss Silver gave her slight prim cough.

“It is rather difficult to say-a combination of circumstances-I believe I was guided. My scholastic experience has been extremely valuable.”

“You must tell me all about everything!” said Mrs. Voycey with enthusiasm.

She had at this point to draw in very close to the side of the lane in order to avoid two young people standing under the opposite hedge. Miss Silver, observing them with interest, saw a girl in scarlet and a tall young man in grey flannel slacks and a loose tweed jacket. The girl was excessively pretty-really quite unnecessarily so. A singular figure for a country lane on an autumn day, with her flaring clothes, her pale gold hair, her careful complexion. The young man had a dark, tormented look.

Mrs. Voycey waved a hand out of the window, squeezed past them, and explained.

“Carr Robertson. He’s down here on a visit to his aunt, Rietta Cray who brought him up. The girl’s staying there too. He brought her-just like that, you know, without a with your leave or by your leave-at least that’s what Catherine Welby says and she always seems to know all Rietta’s affairs. Manners of the present day! I wonder what my father would have said if one of my brothers had just walked in and said, ‘This is Fancy Bell.’ ”

“Fancy?”

“That’s what he calls her-I believe her name is Frances. And I suppose we shall hear that they are engaged-or married!” She gave a hearty laugh. “Or perhaps not-you never can tell, can you? You’d have thought once bitten, twice shy. Carr’s been married already-another of these flighty blonde girls. She ran off with someone, and died. It’s only about two years ago, and you’d have thought it would have made him more careful.”

“She is very pretty,” said Miss Silver mildly.

Mrs. Voycey snorted in the manner for which she had so often been reproved at school.

“Men haven’t a particle of sense,” she declared.

They came out of the lane upon a typically rural scene-a village green complete with pond and ducks; the church with its old graveyard; the Vicarage; the village inn with its swinging sign depicting a wheatsheaf whose original gold was now almost indistinguishable from a faded background; the entrance pillars and lodge of a big house; a row of cottages, their gardens still bright with sunflower, phlox, and michaelmas daisy.

“I’m just on the other side of the Green,” said Mrs. Voycey. She took a hand off the wheel to point. “That’s the Vicarage next the church-much too big for Mr. Ainger. He’s a bachelor, but his sister keeps house for him. I don’t like her-I never did-though I don’t say she doesn’t make herself useful in the village, because she does. He’d like to marry Rietta Cray, but she won’t have him-I don’t know why, because he’s a very charming person. Anyhow, that’s Rietta’s house, the little white one with the hedge. Her father was our doctor-very much respected. And the drive going up between those pillars takes you to Melling House. It belongs to the Lessiters, but old Mrs. Lessiter died a few years ago, and the son hasn’t been near the place for more than twenty years, not even to his mother’s funeral, because it was in the war and I believe he was out of England. He was engaged to Rietta, you know, but it didn’t come off-no money, though he’s made a lot since-just one of those boy and girl affairs. But neither of them has married anyone else, and now we’re all quite terribly interested because he has just come back. After all these years! Not of course that anything is likely to come of it, but in a village you might as well be dead as not take an interest in your neighbours.”

At this point Miss Silver was understood to say that people were always interesting.

Mrs. Voycey slowed down to avoid a dog.

“Shoosh, Rover-you can’t scratch in the middle of the road!” She turned back to Miss Silver. “Somebody’s bound to run over him some day, but I hope it won’t be me.” She pointed again. “Catherine Welby lives in the lodge of Melling House-there, just inside the pillars. They call it the Gate House, but it’s really just a rather better sort of lodge. She is some sort of connection of the Lessiters-very convenient for her, because she gets the house for practically nothing, and all the fruit and vegetables she wants into the bargain. So I hope James Lessiter won’t turn her out, for I’m sure I don’t know what she would do if he did.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Her means are narrow?”

Mrs. Voycey nodded with emphasis.

“Practically non-existent, I should say, though you’d never think so to look at her. I’ll ask her to tea, and you’ll see for yourself. She’s still very pretty, though I always preferred Rietta’s looks myself. They’re the same age, forty-three, but no one makes anything of that nowadays. Creams, powders, washes, lipstick, and permanent waving-really, as long as you keep your figure there’s no need to look any age at all. Catherine might be no more than thirty. Of course if you put on weight like I have you’re out of it, and anyhow I don’t suppose I could have been bothered-fiddle-faddles aren’t in my line. Ah now-here we are!”

As she spoke she turned in at the miniature drive of a miniature villa. Beds of scarlet geranium and bright blue lobelia bloomed on either side of the front door, They were hardly less brilliant than the red brick of the walls. After twenty years’ exposure to the elements Staplehurst Lodge looked as if it had just come from the builder’s hands, with its emerald paint, its shining door-knocker, and its generally spick-and-span appearance. It stood out from the village background like a patch of pink flannelette on some old soft brocade. This, however, was not a simile which would have occurred to Miss Silver, who had no affection for domestic architecture of the early English type-“so dark, so inconvenient, and often so sadly insanitary.” She considered Staplehurst Lodge a very comfortable residence, and was both touched and pleased when her old friend slipped a hand inside her arm, squeezed it affectionately, and said,

“Well, this is my little place, and I hope you’ll have a happy visit here.”

Catherine Welby came out of the Gate House, passed between the pillars which marked the entrance to Melling House, and walked along the footpath to the White Cottage. The grass verges on either side were still green although it was late September. A single glance at them showed what kind of summer it had been, but this afternoon it was fine, and so warm that Catherine was even a little too warm in the pale grey flannel coat and skirt which threw up the fairness of her skin and the bright red gold of her hair. She was, as Mrs. Voycey said, a very pretty woman, her figure still slender and her eyes as deep a blue as they had been when she was eighteen. But over and above her prettiness she had something which is far more uncommon. Whatever she wore appeared to be just right both for herself and for the occasion. Her hair was always in the same becoming waves, never too formal, never untidy.

She went in through a small white gate and up a flagged path, pushed open Miss Cray’s front door, and called,

“Rietta!”

In the sitting-room Rietta Cray gave a quick frown which brought out the likeness to her nephew and called back,

“I’m here. Come in!”

If there was one person she didn’t want to see at this moment it was Catherine Welby. She did not as a matter of fact wish to see anyone at all, but if you live in a village, it’s no good not wanting to see people, because you have to. She was perfectly well aware that James Lessiter’s return had set everyone remembering that they had once been engaged, and wondering how they would feel and look, and what they would say when they met. Twenty years is a long time, but not long enough to let a village forget.