Agatha Christie - Taken At The Flood

She looked up and saw Rowley watching her…

Aunt Kathie’s parties were always much the same. They had a rather breathless amateurish quality about them characteristic of the hostess. Dr Cloade had an air of holding irritability in check with difficulty. He was invariably courteous to his guests—but they were conscious of his courtesy being an effort.

In appearance Lionel Cloade was not unlike his brother Jeremy. He was spare and grey-haired—but he had not the lawyer’s imperturbability. His manner was brusque and impatient—and his nervous irritability had affronted many of his patients and blinded them to his actual skill and kindliness. His real interests lay in research and his hobby was the use of medicinal herbs throughout history. He had a precise intellect and found it hard to be patient with his wife’s vagaries.

Though Lynn and Rowley always called Mrs Jeremy Cloade ‘Frances,’ Mrs Lionel Cloade was invariably ‘Aunt Kathie.’ They were fond of her but found her rather ridiculous.

This ‘party’, arranged ostensibly to celebrate Lynn’s home-coming, was merely a family affair.

Aunt Kathie greeted her niece affectionately:

‘So nice and brown you look, my dear. Egypt, I suppose. Did you read the book on the Pyramid prophecies I sent you? So interesting. Really explains everything, don’t you think?’

Lynn was saved from replying by the entrance of Mrs Gordon Cloade and her brother David.

‘This is my niece, Lynn Marchmont, Rosaleen.’

Lynn looked at Gordon Cloade’s widow with decorously veiled curiosity.

Yes, she was lovely, this girl who had married old Gordon Cloade for his money. And it was true what Rowley had said, that she had an air of innocence. Black hair, set in loose waves, Irish blue eyes put in with the smutty finger—half-parted lips.

The rest of her was predominantly expensive. Dress, jewels, manicured hands, fur cape. Quite a good figure, but she didn’t, really, know how to wear expensive clothes. Didn’t wear them as Lynn Marchmont could have worn them, given half a chance! (But you never will have a chance, said a voice in her brain.)

‘How do you do,’ said Rosaleen Cloade.

She turned hesitatingly to the man behind her.

She said: ‘This—this is my brother.’

‘How do you do,’ said David Hunter.

He was a thin young man with dark hair and dark eyes. His face was unhappy and defiant and slightly insolent.

Lynn saw at once why all the Cloades disliked him so much. She had met men of that stamp abroad. Men who were reckless and slightly dangerous. Men whom you couldn’t depend upon. Men who made their own laws and flouted the universe. Men who were worth their weight in gold in a push—and who drove their C.O.s to distraction out of the firing line!

Lynn said conversationally to Rosaleen:

‘And how do you like living at Furrowbank?’

‘I think it’s a wonderful house,’ said Rosaleen.

David Hunter gave a faint sneering laugh.

‘Poor old Gordon did himself well,’ he said. ‘No expense spared.’

It was literally the truth. When Gordon had decided to settle down in Warmsley Vale—or rather had decided to spend a small portion of his busy life there, he had chosen to build. He was too much of an individualist to care for a house that was impregnated with other people’s history.

He had employed a young modern architect and given him a free hand. Half Warmsley Vale thought Furrowbank a dreadful house, disliking its white squareness, its built-in furnishing, its sliding doors, and glass tables and chairs. The only part of it they really admired wholeheartedly were the bathrooms.

There had been awe in Rosaleen’s, ‘It’s a wonderful house.’ David’s laugh made her flush.

‘You’re the returned Wren, aren’t you?’ said David to Lynn.

‘Yes.’

His eyes swept over her appraisingly—and for some reason she flushed.

Aunt Katherine appeared again suddenly. She had a trick of seeming to materialize out of space. Perhaps she had caught the trick of it from many of the spiritualistic séances she attended.

‘Supper,’ she said, rather breathlessly, and added, parentheticaly, ‘I think it’s better than calling it dinner. People don’t expect so much. Everything’s very difficult, isn’t it? Mary Lewis tells me she slips the fishman ten shillings every other week. I think that’s immoral.’

Dr Lionel Cloade was giving his irritable nervous laugh as he talked to Frances Cloade. ‘Oh, come, Frances,’ he said. ‘You can’t expect me to believe you really think that —let’s go in.’

They went into the shabby and rather ugly dining-room. Jeremy and Frances, Lionel and Katherine, Adela, Lynn and Rowley. A family party of Cloades—with two outsiders. For Rosaleen Cloade, though she bore the name, had not become a Cloade as Frances and Katherine had done.

She was the stranger, ill at ease, nervous. And David—David was the outlaw. By necessity, but also by choice. Lynn was thinking these things as she took her place at the table.

There were waves in the air of feeling—a strong electrical current of—what was it? Hate? Could it really be hate ?

Something at any rate— destructive .

Lynn thought suddenly, ‘But that’s what’s the matter everywhere. I’ve noticed it ever since I got home. It’s the aftermath war has left. Ill will. Ill feeling. It’s everywhere. On railways and buses and in shops and amongst workers and clerks and even agricultural labourers. And I suppose worse in mines and factories. Ill will. But here it’s more than that. Here it’s particular. It’s meant !’

And she thought, shocked: ‘ Do we hate them so much? These strangers who have taken what we think is ours?’

And then—‘No, not yet. We might—but not yet. No, it’s they who hate us .’

It seemed to her so overwhelming a discovery that she sat silent thinking about it and forgetting to talk to David Hunter who was sitting beside her.

Presently he said: ‘Thinking out something?’

His voice was quite pleasant, slightly amused, but she felt conscience-stricken. He might think that she was going out of her way to be ill-mannered.

She said, ‘I’m sorry. I was having thoughts about the state of the world.’

David said coolly, ‘How extremely unoriginal!’

‘Yes, it is rather. We are all so earnest nowadays. And it doesn’t seem to do much good either.’

‘It is usually more practical to wish to do harm. We’ve thought up one or two rather practical gadgets in that line during the last few years—including that pièce de résistance , the Atom Bomb.’

‘That was what I was thinking about—oh, I don’t mean the Atom Bomb. I meant ill will. Definite practical ill will.’

David said calmly:

‘Ill will certainly—but I rather take issue to the word practical. They were more practical about it in the Middle Ages.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Black magic generally. Ill wishing. Wax figures. Spells at the turn of the moon. Killing off your neighbour’s cattle. Killing off your neighbour himself.’

‘You don’t really believe there was such a thing as black magic?’ asked Lynn incredulously.

‘Perhaps not. But at any rate people did try hard. Nowadays, well—’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘With all the ill will in the world you and your family can’t do much about Rosaleen and myself, can you?’

Lynn’s head went back with a jerk. Suddenly she was enjoying herself.

‘It’s a little late in the day for that,’ she said politely.

David Hunter laughed. He, too, sounded as though he were enjoying himself.