Annie Haynes - Inspector Stoddart's Murder Mysteries (4 Intriguing Golden Age Thrillers)

Sir Felix laughed. "Perhaps your knowledge is not accurate. That will be all right, Hilary. You are not to bother your little head about such things."

"But can we afford it really?" Hilary questioned.

Sir Felix looked the other way. "Of course we can. It will be quite easily arranged."

"And out of our own money?" Hilary persisted.

"Well—er—most of it," Skrine answered. "And you must remember Fee is my godson, Hilary, as well as my ward. It is my business to arrange these matters."

"No," Hilary said firmly, "we can't allow that, Sir Felix. But you know we do not really care for Rose Cottage, either of us. If we gave that up and Fee went into the nursing home, and then abroad which Dr. Blathwayte seems to think would be the best thing for him, we might store the furniture and I could look out for some work. I believe I should be quite a decent secretary. I can type and I have learned shorthand too, though I haven't much speed at present. That would come with practice."

"Perhaps!" Sir Felix said with an enigmatic smile. "How would you like to be my secretary, Hilary? I pay well, but Miss Houlton scornfully declined the post when I offered it to her. I hope you will be kinder."

Hilary flushed.

"Oh, I don't think I should like that at all Sir Felix. I think it is always better not to work for friends."

"Do you? I should have thought quite the opposite," Sir Felix said, coming nearer. "But it is not as a secretary I want you, you know, Hilary. Come to the Manor as my wife. You will be able to do what you like for Fee and—"

Hilary tilted her small chin upwards scornfully.

"I am not to be bought, Sir Felix—or bribed."

Sir Felix frowned heavily for a moment. His blue eyes were like steel. So had he looked on the rare occasions when he had lost a big case at the Law Courts.

"Nor would I buy you—or bribe you, Hilary," he said at last. "My wife must come to me willingly or not at all. But some day—"

"Never. I shall never alter my mind," Hilary interrupted him passionately. "Sir Felix, I love Basil Wilton. I must ask you—"

"So much wasted loyalty!" the lawyer said beneath his breath. "I believe Basil Wilton to be constitutionally incapable of being faithful to any woman, Hilary. And he—"

Hilary stamped her foot. "I will not hear another word, Sir Felix. If only Dad were here he would tell you—"

A curious change passed over the lawyer's face, his blue eyes grew misty.

"If he could speak to you, what do you think he would say, Hilary?"

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"Ready for church, Hilary? No? Well, hurry up, then, or we shall be late."

Miss Lavinia was pulling on her gloves as she came into the sitting-room at the private hotel.

"I don't feel like going to church this morning, Aunt Lavinia," Hilary returned lazily.

She was sitting beside Fee's couch at the window, watching the passers-by in the street.

"Well, whether you feel like it or not, you are coming," Miss Lavinia retorted brusquely. "You don't intend to have me go to church by myself, I presume?"

Hilary looked disinclined to move.

"If I come with you, Fee will be all alone. And I never knew you were fond of going to church, Aunt Lavinia."

"I dare say you didn't. But then you don't know everything about me," her aunt replied. "I was a most regular church-goer when I was young. And now, with all the bother about this deposited prayer-book, I think it my duty and the duty of all Church people, to go and enter their protest."

"Aunt Lavinia," interrupted Fee, "why do they call it the deposited prayer-book?"

"Oh, ask me another, child!" the spinster retorted. "Because they have stuck it down somewhere or other, I suppose. But I don't pretend to understand the ways of the modern parson. Long may their blessed book remain deposited. That is all I have to say."

"Don't you like it?" questioned Fee with interest.

"Like it!" Miss Lavinia uttered scornfully. "When I go to church I like to hear the words I have always heard and that my father and mother and their fathers and mothers heard before me. I don't want to hear the service mumbled and jumbled by a lot of popinjays got up to look like mediaeval saints, which they are not—anything but, most of them, from what I hear. Bowdlerizing the marriage service too! As if the present-day young woman with her bare back, tearing off to immoral plays and reading indecent books, couldn't stand a few home-truths when she got married. But I have found a quiet little church I like and I am going to it, and so are you, Hilary. The parson behaves like a reasonable man. So make haste and get your hat on."

Hilary was still smiling when she obeyed. Miss Priestley was as good as a tonic to her.

But Hilary's mourning was by no means satisfactory to Miss Lavinia. She sniffed audibly as she looked at her niece. Hilary's black frock was lightened by a collar of tucked valenciennes, and her silk stockings and suede shoes were of the palest shade of grey. She wore a pale grey chiffon scarf too, and her small black hat had a large chou of grey velvet ribbon at one side. Grey, also, were the gloves she was wearing.

But though every line in Miss Lavinia's countenance was expressive of disapproval, she made no remark upon her niece's get-up as she turned to the door.

"Well, good-bye, Fee," she said as she motioned to Hilary to precede her. "We shall not be long and soon you will be coming out with us."

"Aunt Lavinia," Hilary said reproachfully as they went downstairs, "what is the good of saying things like that to Fee? Even if Dr. Blathwayte's treatment were able to effect a cure, which I cannot help doubting, I don't think we could possibly afford it. I can't see a chance of it."

"My good girl, if you used your common sense, Blathwayte's expenses would soon be paid," Miss Lavinia remarked shortly. "But we will not discuss that now. We must get on as fast as we can to St. Alphege's or we shall be late."

Somewhat to Hilary's surprise, in the lounge her aunt told the porter to summon a taxi.

"False economy to walk to church, especially if there is any prospect of rain," Miss Lavinia remarked as they got in.

There did not appear to be any prospect of rain, so far as Hilary could see, but she made no comment.

She thought St. Alphege's a dull, bare-looking edifice, and marvelled at her aunt's taste in churches, as they were marshalled into a narrow, straight-backed seat. The service strictly followed the lines Miss Lavinia had indicated. The organ was badly played, the choir sang out of tune, the parson had a dull voice and read with a lisp. Hilary was not surprised the congregation was small almost to vanishing point. In the lessons her attention wandered and she gave herself up to blissful day-dreams of a future to be spent with Basil Wilton.

From it she was abruptly roused by the parson's voice when he had regained his reading desk after the second lesson.

"I publish the banns of marriage between James Williams, widower, of the parish of Brentfell in the county of Durham, and Mary Sophia Freeman, spinster, of this parish. This is for the second time of asking. Also between Basil Godfrey Wilton, bachelor, and Iris Mary Houlton, spinster, both of this parish. This is for the third time of asking. If any of you know any just cause or impediment why these persons may not severally be joined in holy matrimony ye are now to declare it."

The dull, old church seemed to rock with Hilary. For a moment everything went dark before her eyes, then she rallied her pride to her aid and rose, her head erect, with the rest of the congregation. But of the remainder of the service and of the laboured, stuttering sermon she heard nothing, though she looked as usual, save that her colour was a little higher.