“It’s strange that the police don’t seem to have discovered yet who the—about her death,” said Arnold seizing the chance to turn the conversation as far as possible from its embarrassing beginning.
“Strange? It’s dreadful!” replied Betty. “Sometimes I wake in the night and think about it until I feel I shall go mad. One murder in a family is bad enough, but two...! It makes you wonder whether it’s finished with yet. Most bad things go in three, don’t they? And I’m so afraid for Stan or even the baby. If I wasn’t quite sure that Stanton isn’t in the least like his father, I should suspect some homicidal tendency in the family. But though he gets into a bit of a temper when I spend too much money on a hat, he’s really got the sweetest disposition. He simply wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Arnold, knowing her to be biased, murmured some non- committal reply.
Betty regarded him gravely for a moment, then put an impulsive hand on his arm.
“You’ll think it dreadful of me,” she said, “but I can’t help saying this: I do wish you weren’t going to marry my sister-in-law. You’re far too nice, and you really don’t know her as Stan and I do. I shouldn’t be in the least surprised to hear that she did all the proposing, and you found yourself engaged to her before you knew what she was getting at. There!” she exclaimed. “I can see by your face that I’m right. I thought it the first time she told me about it.”
She cut short Arnold’s weak attempts at denial.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she went on. “I shan’t say a word about it. But she’ll never make you happy. You’re not her sort. She’s as much like her father as two peas are in a pod, and if Stan has all the good nature, she has all the bad.” She gazed earnestly at him. “Take my advice, Arnold, and get out of it somehow. Go away from here— just disappear—anything—only don’t let her spoil your life. I really do know what I’m talking about—”
“Well! And what are you talking about?”
They both swung round. To his startled dismay, Arnold saw Leda smiling at him.
“Vampires,” said Betty calmly. “But I can’t make Arnold believe in them.”
CHAPTER 32
Betty Hardstaffe cut across Leda’s long-winded description of her latest cleverness in outwitting the local bore at the Woman’s Comforts for the Troops knitting party, and said casually, but clearly, “By the way, I’ve invited Charity Fuller to dinner tomorrow night.”
They were sitting alone in the dining-room with their inevitable knitting.
“—and you should have seen Mrs. Tyson’s face when I said it, but, as everyone said to me afterwards, she really asked for it. ‘My dear Mrs. Tyson’, I said—You’ve what?”
Betty looked up.
“I presume that the last part of that sentence is meant for me,” she remarked. “I said that I’ve—”
I heard what you said,” Leda interrupted, “and if it’s your idea of a joke, Betty, I can only say that it’s in exceedingly bad taste.”
Betty smiled.
“Bogey-bogey!” she jeered. “It certainly isn’t a joke. I saw her in the village this afternoon and asked her. Stan rang up to ask if it was okay for him to bring a friend for the week-end, so I said of course it was.”
“You said!” exclaimed Leda.
“Yes. Why not? You didn’t happen to be in at the time so I couldn’t ask you what you thought about it, and when I saw Miss Fuller a little while afterwards, I asked her to come, too. After all, nothing is more deadly than an odd number at dinner, and it will cheer us up to have a little company. This house is full of ghosts!”
She glanced round the room into which the evening shadows were already stretching their fingers, and shivered.
“If you had a clear conscience you wouldn’t see ghosts,” declared Leda. “I never do.”
Betty flushed.
“What do you mean by that?” she demanded.
“Keep your perm on,” laughed Leda. “I don’t mean anything. It isn’t my way to hint at things. I always say straight out what I have to say, as you should know by now. And I’m telling you that you have no right to ask people here without asking me first. When Stan comes, I shall tell him the same.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, Leda,” said Betty. “What a fuss you make about two extra people! Why, at home, Stan brings back any of his friends he likes and I’m always having to open a tin of something for them.”
Leda strode across to the silver cigarette box on the side-board, and swore at finding it empty.
“Perhaps you’ve got more tins stored away than I have,” she said. “Personally I consider it unpatriotic to hoard, and it’s as much as I can do to make our rations go round as it is. In any case, I won’t have that—that woman in my house.”
“I think she’s a nice little thing,” replied Betty, speaking with the assured dignity of a young matron about a spinster as young as herself. “It isn’t as if she’d never been here before. I’m sure all that gossip about her and your father was exaggerated.”
“I refuse to discuss that with you,” said Leda. “I’ve told you that I won’t have her in the house, so you’ll have to go and tell her so. I don’t suppose she’s on the ’phone.”
“Being one of the lower-social animals!” murmured Betty. What a snob you are, Leda. Anyway, I shall do nothing of the kind. You seem to forget that this house is only half yours. You can’t prevent Stan from bringing friends here if he wants to, and you can’t prevent me inviting anyone into his half of the house. You’re not afraid of her making eyes at Arnold, are you?”
Leda flushed angrily.
“Certainly not. He wouldn’t take any notice of her if she did. You really do have some surprisingly—well, I can only say, common ideas sometimes, Betty.”
“What can you expect from a grocer’s daughter?” asked Betty, beginning to enjoy herself. “Oh, I know that Pa owns a whole chain of high-class stores now, and has a town house and all that, but you can’t deny that he started by wearing a white apron and selling candles in his father’s shop.”
“Need we go into that?” asked Leda.
“I don’t see why not,” returned Betty. “I know you think that Stan married beneath him, but after all, your father was only a village school-master, and I never could see that that was anything to write home about. As for Arnold not noticing Charity Fuller, it would take a better man than him to avert his eyes when she pulls her skirt just a teeny-weeny bit above her knees, and looks meltingly at him. She’ll pinch him from underneath your supercilious nose while you’re sniffing at her. Red heads are notorious for doing that. I daresay you’re wise to try and keep her out of his way. Once a man of Arnold’s age starts looking twice at a pretty girl, he gets into trouble. I’d better write her a note putting her off!”
“No, you can’t do that: it will look very rude,” said Leda hurriedly. “I don’t worry about her in that way at all, I can assure her. If Arnold met some woman he liked better than me, he would tell me so, and I should be sensible enough to understand. I’m not a child, and I daresay I know one or two things that even you have never experienced!”
She smiled suddenly.
“I’m sorry I sounded annoyed about dinner tomorrow,” she said. “But it is a bit difficult to arrange meals at a minute’s notice these days, and Cook gets upset. It isn’t that I object to Charity Fuller personally, it’s just that whenever she comes here to dine—”
She paused.
“Well?” prompted Betty.
“Things happen,” replied Leda.
CHAPTER 33
Some time later, Arnold was to wonder whether the solution of the Hardstaffe murders would ever have come to light if it had not been for Betty’s sudden impulse to invite Charity Fuller to dine.
But that time was not to come for several weeks yet, and he had no premonition of it as he dressed for dinner that night.
He arrived downstairs a few minutes before Charity arrived, and it was with an unaccountable feeling of pleasure that he greeted her again.
She wore the same filmy black gown in which she had been dressed on her previous visit. It was, indeed, her only evening-gown, for in every other house in the district—even, it was said, up at the Castle—it was considered out of place to wear anything more elaborate than an afternoon frock even for dinner.
This was war-time, and you could not deal effectively with incendiary bombs, or stand by with a First Aid Party, in a gown which swirled around your ankles. There was, in fact, little scope at all for femininity in Total War, which for the time being, and possibly for all time, had destroyed the slogan that Woman’s Place is in the Home.
Arnold thought it strange that Leda, who had always derided her father’s insistence on dressing formally for dinner, should now be equally insistent on the habit although it could no longer concern him.
But tonight he was grateful for it, for the black dress fitted closely to Charity’s lovely figure, framed her into the prettiest picture he had seen for some time.
Nor was he the only person thus affected.
Stanton Hardstaffe who, until that evening, had seemed little more than a stuffed shirt to Arnold, became imbued with a sudden animation which showed him to be a genial dinner-companion and something of a wit, as he leaned sideways and breathed on Charity’s shoulder.
Yes, Charity certainly did something to a man, but whether she was aware of it or not, was a thing about which no woman knew and no man cared.
As the meal went on, and Stanton’s jokes became slightly daring, the other two women fell silent, and Arnold, seated between them, grew uneasy. He wondered whether Betty was already regretting her invitation to Charity, wondered also, what impulse had prompted her to give it.
For Stanton had brought no friend with him, and they were five at dinner, with Leda seated in upright disapproval at the opposite end of the table to her brother.
When Stanton had arrived earlier in the evening, she had greeted him coldly as usual, offering a reluctant cheek to his equally reluctant lips. Then she had asked where his friend was.
Before he could reply, Betty had sailed into the conversation.
“Captain Homes had to put Stan off at the last minute—some Service duty, you know. Such a bore, because it completely ruins our numbers for dinner; and you’ve had all the trouble of getting a bedroom ready. I’m awfully sorry, but there it is!”
“But—well, it sounds funny to me,” remarked Leda. “Of course I know he used to be Regular Army and got the M.C. in the last war, but he’s only in the Home Guard now, isn’t he? I don’t see what duty could possibly crop up to keep him away like this.”
“You’d be surprised,” replied Stanton. “I know the Home Guard has become the lowest form of military life since the Observer Corps became Royal, but, strange to relate, we do have rules and we do have to obey them. Homes is a corporal like me, in spite of his retired rank, and he does what he’s ordered to do. You wouldn’t understand that though, would you, sister?”
“Of course I understand,” said Leda irritably. “You forget that I’m entitled to wear three uniforms myself, if you include The Girl Guides. And please don’t call me ‘Sister’ as if I were something out of a hospital ward.”
“Or a nunnery,” suggested Betty spitefully.
But that had been some hours ago, and now, instead of being at loggerheads with each other, Leda and her sister-in-law seemed to be united in their disapproval of Charity.
Of this, Charity herself had no knowledge, for Stanton held her attention persistently, while, when she looked up-, Arnold was ready to return smiles and badinage from the side of the table opposite to her, and Leda and Betty were constantly jerking up from their chairs to collect plates or pass food around.
Frieda was still in the house and was now the only maid, since Briggs had left to carry out Mr. Ernest Bevin’s admonition to Go To It. But Leda, mindful of her behaviour when Charity had dined before at the house, had ordered her to come no nearer to the dining-room than the dumb-waiter outside the door, and to remain equally dumb.
Arnold felt greatly relieved at Leda’s decision to keep her out of sight, for one never knew what the girl might do or say. He had given up his study of her as a character, for although he had originally intended to put her into his hook, he had since decided that such a passionate creature could have no place in the world of unreality which housed the scintillating figure of Noel Delare. Besides, he doubted whether anyone would believe that such a person as the little Jewess could really exist in England, even during a war, which, proverbially makes strange bedfellows.
Not that ‘bedfellow’ was a word to use in connection with Frieda.
Never attractive, she had lately deteriorated in many ways. Although always clean in her person—for this was a matter of religion to her—she had grown careless about her dress and general appearance. Dirty collars and cuffs had been ripped off her once neat frocks and not replaced, her hair was unbrushed and tangled; her shoes were down at heel.
No. “Bedfellow” was certainly not the word to use. It had come unbidden into his mind for no reason that he could see. Unless—
He glanced up, and saw Charity smiling at him. His gaze lingered over the smooth, white skin above the heartshaped neckline of her low cut gown.
Unless—
The ladies rose, and he and Stanton raced for the door. Both reached for the knob at the same time, then stood side by side at the opened door, looking rather foolish.
They did not linger over the port, and when they joined the ladies, it was obvious that Stanton was again intent on monopolising Charity. Arnold felt unreasonably annoyed at this, until he remembered, with a new sense of shock, that everyone believed him to be Leda’s fiancé.
Once settled round the breakfast-room fire with their coffee, however, their conversation became general, and after a scurry to find unsalvaged paper and blunt pencils, they finally settled down to a series of Parlour Games after the pattern of those brought back into fashion by the B.B.C. Arnold and Charity, having read more books in five years than the others had read in their lives, entered into a friendly rivalry which brought them into pleasant sympathy with each other.
When Charity said she had had a lovely evening but it must be getting late and she really must go, they discovered that it was pouring rain, and they all agreed that some one must drive her home.
“There’s nothing I’d like better,” said Stanton with obvious sincerity, “but I’m afraid it can’t be done. I haven’t got an ounce of petrol to spare. I really ought not to have driven over this week-end, but the trains are so crowded and so slow, and it’s a wretched journey with so many stops, to say nothing of having no First Class passengers. With this new cut in the basic petrol ration I’ve only got enough petrol to get me home and I daren’t risk an extra mile or two.”
“If I could be of any use—” began Arnold, but Leda interrupted him.
“You’d be only too pleased, dear, of course,” she said, playing ostentatiously with the solitaire diamond ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. “You see,” she explained, turning to Charity, “he’s taking me over to the one remaining dog show this month, and we shall only just do the double journey on his petrol ration. In the old days it would sound too mean for words to say this, but we’ve all got to Do Our Bit now, haven’t we? I know that dogs sound rather a luxury these days but this show’s rather an important one for Cherub.” She picked up one of the many dogs which were lying on chairs and carpet, and held it near her face so that it could lick her mouth. “If ze ’ickle girlie wins a Savings Certificate for her Mummy, den Mummy can sell her wee bitchie for lots of doodledums!”
She kissed the Sealyham’s wiry head, smacked it behind, and deposited it roughly on a chair, where it curled round and began to attend noisily to its toilet.
“Oh, please don’t worry about me,” said Charity. “There’s no need really. I’m used to the rain, and I can easily walk.”
“My dear girl, you can’t go out in this,” said Sta
nton. “It’s raining cats and dogs. You’ll have to wait a bit. Let’s have another game.”
“Oh, but I can’t.” Charity sounded upset. “I really must go. It’s past eleven, and if I’m not in by twelve, I shall be locked out.” She perceived their astonishment, and went on. “She’ll think I’m in bed, you see—the old woman I lodge with. She’s as deaf as a post, and once she’s in bed, I shall never be able to rouse her. She won’t think of me being out after twelve. I never am. I really shall have to go.”
Betty glanced at Charity’s little gold, high-heeled slippers.
“In those shoes? You can’t!” she exclaimed. “And both mine and Leda’s are sizes too large for you.” She looked suddenly at Leda, and to Arnold it seemed as if she had asked a silent question, for Leda gave a quick nod. “What about that bedroom you got ready for Captain Homes?” she asked aloud. “Wouldn’t that be the best solution? Miss Fuller doesn’t have to go to school tomorrow, and we could send Frieda to fetch her shoes and a skirt or something. Anyway it will all be much easier in the morning.”
“But I...” protested Charity.
“Of course you must stay,” said Leda cheerfully. “It’s no trouble. The bed’s made up, and you’ll even find a hot-water bottle in it. We were expecting a friend who didn’t come.”
“It’s awfully kind of you,” replied Charity, “but—”
“That’s settled then,” said Leda in tones with which Arnold had grown only too familiar.
If Leda said anything was settled, then settled it was.
“I can lend you anything you want for the night,” said Betty. “Which bedroom is it, Leda?”
“Father’s,” she replied. “You’ll like it, Miss Fuller.”
CHAPTER 34
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