Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver Comes To Stay

When Elizabeth took her upstairs before she left, Fancy stood in front of the fine Queen Anne mirror and said,

“This is an old house, isn’t it?”

She could see Elizabeth reflected in the mirror-too tall, too thin, but something elegant about her, something that fitted in with the house and the furniture.

Elizabeth said, “Yes, it’s very old-seventeenth century. The bathroom used to be a powder-cabinet. All horribly inconvenient of course, but quite good for business.”

Fancy took out her powder-puff and began to touch up a flawless complexion.

“I like new things,” she said. “I don’t know why people bother about old ones. I’d like to have a silver bed, and a suite of that grey furniture, and everything else blue.”

Elizabeth smiled.

“It would be just right for you, wouldn’t it?”

Fancy pursed up her mouth and applied lipstick with an expert touch. She said, “M-” Then, without turning round,

“You’ve known Carr a long time, haven’t you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Do you think he’d be difficult to live with? I mean, he gets these moods, doesn’t he? Did he always use to get them?”

She could see in the glass that Elizabeth had moved. She couldn’t see her face any longer. Her voice came a little slower.

“I haven’t seen him for a long time. He’s been away, you know.”

“Did you know the girl he married?”

“I saw her once. She was very pretty.”

“I’m like her, aren’t I? I didn’t exactly know her, but- - ”

“You are a little like her.”

“Same type.”

“Yes.”

Fancy put away her powder-puff and lipstick, pulled at the zipper of her scarlet bag. She said in an odd tone,

“I suppose that’s why-” She turned abruptly. “A girl wouldn’t want to be just a stand-in for somebody else-would she?”

“No.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t want to be jealous about her, or anything like that. I knew a girl that married a widower, and she wouldn’t set foot in the house till he’d cleared out all the pictures of his first wife, and I didn’t think that was right, not with her children there. I told Mum about it, and she said, ‘A man that would forget his first wife would forget you-don’t you make any mistake about that.’ That’s what Mum said, and I wouldn’t be like that, but I wouldn’t want to marry a man if I was going to be the photograph, if you see what I mean.”

“I see exactly what you mean.”

Fancy heaved a sigh.

“He’s ever so goodlooking, isn’t he? But when it comes to living with someone-well, it might be a case of handsome is as handsome does. I mean, you’ve got to think before you go into anything, don’t you?” She gave a little quick laugh. “I don’t know what you’ll think of me, talking like this. You’re sort of easy to talk to, I don’t know why. Well, I suppose we’d better be going.”

On the way home she said,

“She isn’t a bit like I thought she was going to be. She’s sort of nice.”

Carr’s mouth twisted.

“Yes-she’s sort of nice.”

He said it as if he was laughing at her, but there wasn’t anything to laugh at. Carr was funny that way. You did your best to brighten him up and make a joke or two, and you might as well have done it to a brick wall. And then all of a sudden he’d laugh when there wasn’t anything to laugh at. However, so long as he did laugh-

She pursued the theme of Elizabeth Moore.

“Pity she hasn’t got married, isn’t it? I’d hate not to be married by the time I was twenty-five.”

He laughed outright this time-and what was there funny about that?

“Well, my sweet, you’ve got quite a long way to go, haven’t you? What is it-another five years?”

“Six. And I don’t know what there is to laugh about! A girl oughtn’t to leave it too late-Mum says so. She says you get set in your ways, and it’s no good when you’re married, because the man’ll want things his way. I don’t mean to say she’d think he ought to be given in to all along the line, but where there are two, it stands to reason there’s got to be a bit of give and take, and when the children come along- well, there’s a good deal more giving than taking, if you know what I mean. That’s what Mum says, and she brought up six of us, so she ought to know.”

Carr had stopped laughing. He had never felt less in love with Fancy, and he had never liked her half so well. He said,

“Your mother’s a very sensible woman-I’d like to meet her. And I shouldn’t wonder if you didn’t make someone quite a good wife some day, my sweet.”

“But not you?”

She didn’t know what took the words off the tip of her tongue, but there they were-she’d said them right out. And he was looking at her with a funny little smile in his eyes and saying,

“No, I don’t think so.”

Her lovely rose tints deepened. The big blue eyes looked honestly back at him.

“I know what you mean. We both thought perhaps it would do, but it won’t. I knew that as soon as I saw you with that Elizabeth girl. You’ve been fond of her-haven’t you?”

His look went bleak.

“A long time ago.”

“I’d say you’d been very fond of her-I’d say you were pretty fond of her still. You seem to sort of fit in together, if you know what I mean. Were you engaged?”

He used the same words again.

“A long time ago.”

They walked on in silence. Fancy thought, “We can’t go the best part of two and a half miles and never talk. I should scream, and he’d think I’d gone batty. It’s so quiet in these country lanes-you can pretty well hear yourself think.” She spoke to break the silence.

“She’s fond of you too-I could tell that.”

He was frowning, but he wasn’t angry, because he put his hand on her shoulder and patted it.

“You can always start a marriage agency, if you don’t get off yourself. And now we’ll stop talking about me, and you can tell me all about Mum and the other five of you.”

Catherine Welby looked round at her sitting-room and thought how pretty it was. Some of the things were shabby, but they were all good, because they had come from Melling House. The little Queen Anne writing-table would fetch a couple of hundred pounds any time she liked to ask for it.

Like the Persian rugs it had been a present from Mrs. Lessiter-or so nearly a present that no one was likely to dispute it. Mrs. Mayhew would remember hearing Mrs. Lessiter say, “I’m letting Mrs. Welby have those rugs and the little desk out of the Blue Room.” She had added, “They might as well be used.” But there would be no need for Mrs. Mayhew to remember that, nor would she do so unless encouraged, and it wasn’t Catherine Welby who would encourage her. Nearly all the furniture in the Gate House had come to her on the same slightly debatable tenure. She meant to make no bones about it with James Lessiter. It was, in fact, one of the reasons why she was now expecting him to coffee. The contents of the Gate House were to be exhibited to him in the guise of his mother’s gifts.

She looked round her with gratitude and appreciation. Aunt Mildred had certainly meant her to have the things. Why, the curtains had been cut down from an old put-away pair dating from goodness knows when-faded, but what a heavenly brocade, with its dim rose background and formal wreaths just touched with blue and green. There had been enough of it to cover chairs and sofa, and the cushions repeated the colouring of the wreaths.

Catherine dressed to the room. A mirror over the high mantelshelf reflected her dull blue house-gown, her pretty hair, the turn of her head. All at once she heard the step she was waiting for. She went out into the narrow space at the stair foot and threw open the front door.