Patricia Wentworth - Wicked Uncle

The Dress had a compelling effect. She said “Oh!” and her colour rose. Justin remarked that she had better try it on, and she retired to do so.

When she came out in it there were of course no doubts. It was It. It had that magic touch so impossible to describe. It moulded, and it flowed. It was dead plain. By some subtle art the unrelieved black made her hair look richer than gold. It brightened her eyes, it brightened her skin.

Justin said in rather an odd tone,

“That’s the ticket. Go and take it off, or there won’t be time to have any lunch.”

When the dress had been packed up and a vast sum paid for it, they took it away with them.

Justin had found a new place for lunch, their table pleasantly retired in a shallow recess. It being now possible to converse, he looked at her very directly and said,

“What’s the matter?”

He was a good deal concerned when she turned very pale and said with a shake in her voice,

“I nearly got arrested for shoplifting.”

Concern became something more as she poured it all out.

“If it hadn’t been for Miss Silver, they would have arrested me. It’s given me the most frightful sort of giddy feeling-like thinking you’re on quite an ordinary path, and all of a sudden your foot goes down and there isn’t anything there. I expect you’ve done it in dreams-I have, often. But it’s never happened when I was awake-not till this morning.”

When the waiter had come and gone he made her tell it all over again.

“Had you ever seen any of those people before?”

“No. Miss Silver wanted to know about that. We went and had coffee together after they had apologized. She’s a marvel. She knows everyone at Scotland Yard, so of course they had to listen to her. She simply flattened that awful manager.”

The memory cheered her a good deal. “But, Justin, she said was there anyone who would like to get me into trouble, or get me out of the way, and of course I said no. Because it couldn’t-it simply couldn’t have anything to do with the Wicked Uncle-could it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there was a photograph of him all crumpled up in Marty’s toy-cupboard.”

“Dorinda!”

She nodded.

“Well, there was. It was the twin of the one Aunt Mary had- Charles Rowbecker & Son, Norwood. And I put it on Mrs. Oakley’s writing-table, and I didn’t say anything to her, and she didn’t say anything to me. Justin-it couldn’t be that!”

He looked handsome and remote. A dreadful feeling that perhaps she was boring him came over her. She said in a hurry,

“We needn’t go on talking about it.”

Still handsome but not so remote, he frowned and told her not to be silly.

“But, Justin, you looked bored.”

“That’s just my unfortunate face. The brain was getting to work. Look here, Dorinda-why did you go to that shop at all?”

“I had some things to do for Mrs. Oakley.”

“My good child, you’re not going to tell me that Martin Oakley’s wife shops at the De Luxe Stores! Modes for the Million, and a Brighter and Better Bourgeoisie!”

Dorinda giggled.

“Not for herself, she doesn’t. But someone told her they’d got luminous paint, so she told me to go there and see. Because Marty’s got his old nurse back and she isn’t a bit pleased because he’s been allowed to chip all the stuff off the night-nursery clock and she can’t see what time it is when she wakes up in the dark. So I was to go there and see if I could get some.”

“Who knew that you were going there?”

“Well, Mrs. Oakley-and Nurse-and Doris, who is the girl who does the nurseries-and-well, I should think practically everyone else in the house, because Marty kept telling everyone I was going to buy him some shiny paint because he had been a very naughty boy and had scraped it off the clock. And every time he said it Nurse came in with how difficult it was to get, but she did hear they had some at the De Luxe Stores. But I don’t know who told her.”

Justin’s frown deepened.

“If that was a frame-up, it was arranged by someone who knew you were going to the damned shop. Are you sure you had never seen anyone in that crowd before?”

Dorinda shook her head.

“Oh, no, I hadn’t.”

“Well, it doesn’t sound as if it could have been a case of having to get rid of the stuff because the thief was under suspicion. She would never have risked speaking to the assistant if it had been like that. Look here, I don’t like it. I think you’d better clear out of this job. You can ring Mrs. Oakley up and say that an acute family crisis has arisen, and that you have been called to your Aunt Jemima’s death-bed.”

“Justin, I couldn’t. Even if she didn’t know-and she does- that I haven’t got an aunt in the world, I couldn’t possibly. I’ve just spent twenty pounds of her money on a dress, and I’ve got to work it out.”

Justin looked angrier than she had ever seen him.

“You can take the damned thing back!”

“They wouldn’t give me the money,” said Dorinda with conviction. “They’d just say they would put it to Modom’s credit, and that wouldn’t be any use at all, because Mrs. Oakley wouldn’t shop there for herself-she told me so. She said they had very nice inexpensive little frocks for girls, but of course she had to pay a great deal more for her own things. So you see, I can’t possibly.”

Justin leaned across the table.

“Dorinda-let me lend you the twenty pounds.”

Gratitude made Dorinda’s eyes look exactly like peat-water with the sun on it.

“I think that’s absolutely noble of you. But of course I can’t let you.”

“You must.”

“Darling, I can’t. Aunt Mary would get right up and haunt me. It was one of her very strictest things-never let a man speak to you unless he’s introduced, never let a man pay your debts, never let a man lend you money. And when you’ve had that sort of thing soaked into you for as long as you can remember, you just can’t-not even if you try.”

“Relations are quite different,” said Justin.

Dorinda shook her head.

“Not when they’re men. Aunt Mary had a special thing about cousins. She said they were insidious.”

Justin burst out laughing, which relieved the emotional strain. Just why there should have been a strain, he wasn’t clear. He had felt angrier than he could remember to have done for quite a long time, and when Dorinda began to be obstinate, an urge out of a neolithic past had suggested to him how pleasant it would be to knock her over the head and drag her to a cave by the hair. The suggestion did not, of course, arrive in words, but this was what it amounted to.

The laughter carried it away, but Dorinda’s obstinacy remained. She wanted to keep her job, she wanted to keep her twenty-pound dress, she didn’t want to go back to the Heather Club, and she was thrilled through and through because of Justin being really angry and really interested. It wasn’t Aunt Mary who had told her that a man only scolds a woman when he is fond of her. It was Judith Crane, the girl who had annoyed the old ladies at the Heather Club by having so many baths and going out with so many young men. One way and another Dorinda had learned quite a lot from Judith Crane. Aunt Mary’s foundation-laying had been very solid and sound but the lighter touches had been wanting, and having suffered from a Wicked Uncle had, perhaps naturally, given her a poor view of men. They had to be, but the less you had to do with them the better for your peace of mind.

With all this at the back of her thought, Dorinda continued to glow with gratitude and to say no to the twenty pounds. She also ate a very good lunch and recurred at intervals to the subject of Miss Maud Silver.