‘Oh, you men!’ cried his wife. ‘Blind as bats. Katherine’s got all the makings of a beauty in her. All she wants is clothes!’
‘Clothes? What’s wrong with her clothes? She always looks very nice.’
Mrs Harrison gave an exasperated sigh, and the doctor rose preparatory to starting on his rounds.
‘You might look in on her, Polly,’ he suggested.
‘I’m going to,’ said Mrs Harrison, promptly.
She made her call about three o’clock.
‘My dear, I’m so glad,’ she said warmly, as she squeezed Katherine’s hand. ‘And everyone in the village will be glad too.’
‘It’s very nice of you to come and tell me,’ said Katherine. ‘I hoped you would come in because I wanted to ask about Johnnie.’
‘Oh! Johnnie. Well–’
Johnnie was Mrs Harrison’s youngest son. In another minute she was off, retailing a long history in which Johnnie’s adenoids and tonsils bulked largely. Katherine listened sympathetically. Habits die hard. Listening had been her portion for ten years now. ‘My dear, I wonder if I ever told you about the naval ball at Portsmouth? When Lord Charles admired my gown?’ And composedly, kindly, Katherine would reply: ‘I rather think you have, Mrs Harfield, but I’ve forgotten about it. Won’t you tell it me again?’ And then the old lady would start off full swing, with numerous corrections, and stops, and remembered details. And half of Katherine’s mind would be listening, saying the right things mechanically when the old lady paused…
Now, with the same curious feeling of duality to which she was accustomed, she listened to Mrs Harrison.
At the end of half an hour, the latter recalled herself suddenly.
‘I’ve been talking about myself all this time,’ she exclaimed. ‘And I came here to talk about you and your plans.’
‘I don’t know that I’ve got any yet.’
‘My dear–you’re not going to stay on here.’
Katherine smiled at the horror in the other’s tone.
‘No; I think I want to travel. I’ve never seen much of the world, you know.’
‘I should think not. It must have been an awful life for you cooped up here all these years.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Katherine. ‘It gave me a lot of freedom.’
She caught the other’s gasp, and reddened a little.
‘It must sound foolish–saying that. Of course, I hadn’t much freedom in the downright physical sense–’
‘I should think not,’ breathed Mrs Harrison, remembering that Katherine had seldom had that useful thing, a ‘day off ’.
‘But in a way, being tied physically gives you lots of scope mentally. You’re always free to think. I’ve had a lovely feeling always of mental freedom.’
Mrs Harrison shook her head.
‘I can’t understand that.’
‘Oh! you would if you’d been in my place. But, all the same, I feel I want a change. I want–well, I want things to happen. Oh! not to me–I don’t mean that. But to be in the midst of things–exciting things–even if I’m only the looker-on. You know, things don’t happen in St Mary Mead.’
‘They don’t indeed,’ said Mrs Harrison, with fervour.
‘I shall go to London first,’ said Katherine. ‘I have to see the solicitors, anyway. After that, I shall go abroad, I think.’
‘Very nice.’
‘But of course, first of all–’
‘Yes?’
‘I must get some clothes.’
‘Exactly what I said to Arthur this morning,’ cried the doctor’s wife. ‘You know, Katherine, you could look possibly positively beautiful if you tried.’
Miss Grey laughed unaffectedly.
‘Oh! I don’t think you could ever make a beauty out of me,’ she said sincerely. ‘But I shall enjoy having some really good clothes. I’m afraid I’m talking about myself an awful lot.’
Mrs Harrison looked at her shrewdly.
‘It must be quite a novel experience for you,’ she said drily.
Katherine went to say goodbye to old Miss Viner before leaving the village. Miss Viner was two years older than Mrs Harfield, and her mind was mainly taken up with her own success in out-living her dead friend.
‘You wouldn’t have thought I’d have outlasted Jane Harfield, would you?’ she demanded triumphantly of Katherine. ‘We were at school together, she and I. And here we are, she taken, and I left. Who would have thought it?’
‘You’ve always eaten brown bread for supper, haven’t you?’ murmured Katherine mechanically.
‘Fancy your remembering that, my dear. Yes; if Jane Harfield had had a slice of brown bread every evening and taken a little stimulant with her meals she might be here today.’
The old lady paused, nodding her head triumphantly; then added in sudden remembrance:
‘And so you’ve come into a lot of money, I hear? Well, well. Take care of it. And you’re going up to London to have a good time? Don’t think you’ll get married, though, my dear, because you won’t. You’re not the kind to attract the men. And, besides, you’re getting on. How old are you now?’
‘Thirty-three,’ Katherine told her.
‘Well,’ remarked Miss Viner doubtfully, ‘that’s not so very bad. You’ve lost your first freshness, of course.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Katherine, much entertained.
‘But you’re a very nice girl,’ said Miss Viner kindly. ‘And I’m sure there’s many a man might do worse than take you for a wife instead of one of these flibbertigibbets running about nowadays showing more of their legs than the Creator ever intended them to. Goodbye, my dear, and I hope you’ll enjoy yourself, but things are seldom what they seem in this life.’
Heartened by these prophecies, Katherine took her departure. Half the village came to see her off at the station, including the little maid of all work, Alice, who brought a stiff wired nosegay and cried openly.
‘There ain’t a many like her,’ sobbed Alice when the train had finally departed. ‘I’m sure when Charlie went back on me with that girl from the dairy, nobody could have been kinder than Miss Grey was, and though particular about the brasses and the dust, she was always one to notice when you’d give a thing an extra rub. Cut myself in little pieces for her, I would, any day. A real lady, that’s what I call her.’
Such was Katherine’s departure from St Mary Mead.
Chapter 8
Lady Tamplin Writes a Letter
‘Well,’ said Lady Tamplin, ‘well.’
She laid down the continental Daily Mail and stared out across the blue waters of the Mediterranean. A branch of golden mimosa, hanging just above her head, made an effective frame for a very charming picture. A golden-haired, blue-eyed lady in a very becoming négligé. That the golden hair owed something to art, as did the pink-and-white complexion, was undeniable, but the blue of the eyes was Nature’s gift, and at forty-four Lady Tamplin could still rank as a beauty.
Charming as she looked, Lady Tamplin was, for once, not thinking of herself. That is to say, she was not thinking of her appearance. She was intent on graver matters.
Lady Tamplin was a well-known figure on the Riviera, and her parties at the Villa Marguerite were justly celebrated. She was a woman of considerable experience, and had had four husbands. The first had been merely an indiscretion, and so was seldom referred to by the lady. He had had the good sense to die with commendable promptitude, and his widow there-upon espoused a rich manufacturer of buttons. He too had departed for another sphere after three years of married life–it was said after a congenial evening with some boon companions. After him came Viscount Tamplin, who had placed Rosalie securely on those heights where she wished to tread. She retained her title when she married for a fourth time. This fourth venture had been undertaken for pure pleasure. Mr Charles Evans, an extremely good-looking young man of twenty-seven, with delightful manners, a keen love of sport, and an appreciation of this world’s goods, had no money of his own whatsoever.
Lady Tamplin was very pleased and satisfied with life generally, but she had occasional faint preoccupations about money. The button manufacturer had left his widow a considerable fortune, but, as Lady Tamplin was wont to say, ‘what with one thing and another–’ (one thing being the depreciation of stocks owing to the War, and the other the extravagances of the late Lord Tamplin). She was still comfortably off. But to be merely comfortably off was hardly satisfactory to one of Rosalie Tamplin’s temperament.
So, on this particular January morning, she opened her blue eyes extremely wide as she read a certain item of news and uttered that non-committal monosyllable ‘Well.’ The only other occupant of the balcony was her daughter, the Hon. Lenox Tamplin. A daughter such as Lenox was a sad thorn in Lady Tamplin’s side, a girl with no kind of tact, who actually looked older than her age, and whose peculiar sardonic form of humour was, to say the least of it, uncomfortable.
‘Darling,’ said Lady Tamplin, ‘just fancy.’
‘What is it?’
Lady Tamplin picked up the Daily Mail, handed it to her daughter, and indicated with an agitated forefinger the paragraph of interest.
Lenox read it without any of the signs of agitation shown by her mother. She handed back the paper.
‘What about it?’ she asked. ‘It is the sort of thing that is always happening. Cheese-paring old women are always dying in villages and leaving fortunes of millions to their humble companions.’
‘Yes, dear, I know,’ said her mother, ‘and I dare say the fortune is not anything like as large as they say it is; newspapers are so inaccurate. But even if you cut it down by half–’
‘Well,’ said Lenox, ‘it has not been left to us.’
‘Not exactly, dear,’ said Lady Tamplin; ‘but this girl, this Katherine Grey, is actually a cousin of mine. One of the Worcestershire Greys, the Edgeworth lot. My very own cousin! Fancy!’
‘Ah-ha,’ said Lenox.
‘And I was wondering–’ said her mother.
‘What there is in it for us,’ finished Lenox, with that sideways smile that her mother always found difficult to understand.
‘Oh, darling,’ said Lady Tamplin, on a faint note of reproach.
It was very faint, because Rosalie Tamplin was used to her daughter’s outspokenness and to what she called Lenox’s uncomfortable way of putting things.
‘I was wondering,’ said Lady Tamplin, again drawing her artistically pencilled brows together, ‘whether–oh, good morning, Chubby darling: are you going to play tennis? How nice!’
Chubby, thus addressed, smiled kindly at her, remarked perfunctorily, ‘How topping you look in that peach-coloured thing,’ and drifted past them and down the steps.
‘The dear thing,’ said Lady Tamplin, looking affectionately after her husband. ‘Let me see, what was I saying? Ah!’ She switched her mind back to business once more. ‘I was wondering–’
‘Oh, for God’s sake get on with it. That is the third time you have said that.’
‘Well, dear,’ said Lady Tamplin, ‘I was thinking that it would be very nice if I wrote to dear Katherine and suggested that she should pay us a little visit out here. Naturally, she is quite out of touch with Society. It would be nicer for her to be launched by one of her own people. An advantage for her and an advantage for us.’
‘How much do you think you would get her to cough up?’ asked Lenox.
Her mother looked at her reproachfully and murmured:
‘We should have to come to some financial arrangement, of course. What with one thing and another–the War–your poor father–’
‘And Chubby now,’ said Lenox. ‘He is an expensive luxury if you like.’
‘She was a nice girl as I remember her,’ murmured Lady Tamplin, pursuing her own line of thought–‘quiet, never wanted to shove herself forward, not a beauty, and never a man-hunter.’
‘She will leave Chubby alone, then?’ said Lenox.
Lady Tamplin looked at her in protest. ‘Chubby would never–’ she began.
‘No,’ said Lenox, ‘I don’t believe he would; he knows a jolly sight too well which way his bread is buttered.’
‘Darling,’ said Lady Tamplin, ‘you have such a coarse way of putting things.’
‘Sorry,’ said Lenox.
Lady Tamplin gathered up the Daily Mail and her négligé, a vanity bag, and various odd letters.
‘I shall write to dear Katherine at once,’ she said, ‘and remind her of the dear old days at Edgeworth.’
She went into the house, a light of purpose shining in her eyes.
Unlike Mrs Samuel Harfield, correspondence flowed easily from her pen. She covered four sheets without pause or effort, and on re-reading it found no occasion to alter a word.
Katherine received it on the morning of her arrival in London. Whether she read between the lines of it or not is another matter. She put it in her handbag and started out to keep the appointment she had made with Mrs Harfield’s lawyers.
The firm was an old-established one in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and after a few minutes’ delay Katherine was shown into the presence of the senior partner, a kindly, elderly man with shrewd blue eyes and a fatherly manner.
They discussed Mrs Harfield’s will and various legal matters for some twenty minutes, then Katherine handed the lawyer Mrs Samuel’s letter.
‘I had better show you this, I suppose,’ she said, ‘though it is really rather ridiculous.’
He read it with a slight smile.
‘Rather a crude attempt, Miss Grey. I need hardly tell you, I suppose, that these people have no claim of any kind upon the estate, and if they endeavour to contest the will no court will uphold them.’
‘I thought as much.’
‘Human nature is not always very wise. In Mrs Samuel Harfield’s place, I should have been more inclined to make an appeal to your generosity.’
‘That is one of the things I want to speak to you about. I should like a certain sum to go to these people.’
‘There is no obligation.’
‘I know that.’
‘And they will not take it in the spirit it is meant. They will probably regard it as an attempt to pay them off, though they will not refuse it on that account.’
‘I can see that, and it can’t be helped.’
‘I should advise you, Miss Grey, to put that idea out of your mind.’
Katherine shook her head. ‘You are quite right, I know, but I should like it done all the same.’
‘They will grab at the money and abuse you all the more afterwards.’
‘Well,’ said Katherine, ‘let them if they like. We all have our own ways of enjoying ourselves. They were, after all, Mrs Harfield’s only relatives, and though they despised her as a poor relation and paid no attention to her when she was alive, it seems to me unfair that they should be cut off with nothing.’
She carried her point, though the lawyer was still unwilling, and she presently went out into the streets of London with a comfortable assurance that she could spend money freely and make what plans she liked for the future. Her first action was to visit the establishment of a famous dressmaker.
A slim, elderly Frenchwoman, rather like a dreaming duchess, received her, and Katherine spoke with a certain naïveté.
‘I want, if I may, to put myself in your hands. I have been very poor all my life and know nothing about clothes, but now I have come into some money and want to look really well dressed.’
The Frenchwoman was charmed. She had an artist’s temperament, which had been soured earlier in the morning by a visit from an Argentine meat queen, who had insisted on having those models least suited to her flamboyant type of beauty. She scrutinized Katherine with keen, clever eyes. ‘Yes–yes, it will be a pleasure. Mademoiselle has a very good figure; for her the simple lines will be best. She is also très anglaise. Some people it would offend them if I said that, but Mademoiselle no. Une belle Anglaise, there is no style more delightful.’
The deme
anour of a dreaming duchess was suddenly put off. She screamed out directions to various mannequins. ‘Clothilde, Virginie, quickly, my little ones, the little tailleur gris clair and the robe de soirée “soupir d’automne”. Marcelle, my child, the little mimosa suit of crêpe de chine.’
It was a charming morning. Marcelle, Clothilde, Virginie, bored and scornful, passed slowly round, squirming and wriggling in the time-honoured fashion of mannequins. The Duchess stood by Katherine and made entries in a small notebook.
‘An excellent choice, Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle has great goût. Yes, indeed. Mademoiselle cannot do better than those little suits if she is going to the Riviera, as I suppose, this winter.’
‘Let me see that evening dress once more,’ said Katherine–‘the pinky mauve one.’
Virginie appeared, circling slowly.
‘That is the prettiest of all,’ said Katherine, as she surveyed the exquisite draperies of mauve and grey and blue. ‘What do you call it?’
‘Soupir d’automne; yes, yes, that is truly the dress of Mademoiselle.’
What was there in these words that came back to Katherine with a faint feeling of sadness after she had left the dressmaking establishment?
‘“Soupir d’automne; that is truly the dress of Mademoiselle.”’ Autumn, yes, it was autumn for her. She who had never known spring or summer, and would never know them now. Something she had lost never could be given to her again. These years of servitude in St Mary Mead–and all the while life passing by.
‘I am an idiot,’ said Katherine. ‘I am an idiot. What do I want? Why, I was more contented a month ago than I am now.’
She drew out from her handbag the letter she had received that morning from Lady Tamplin. Katherine was no fool. She understood the nuances of that letter as well as anybody and the reason of Lady Tamplin’s sudden show of affection towards a long-forgotten cousin was not lost upon her. It was for profit and not for pleasure that Lady Tamplin was so anxious for the company of her dear cousin. Well, why not? There would be profit on both sides.
‘I will go,’ said Katherine.
She was walking down Piccadilly at the moment, and turned into Cook’s to clinch the matter then and there. She had to wait for a few minutes. The man with whom the clerk was engaged was also going to the Riviera. Everyone, she felt, was going. Well, for the first time in her life, she, too, would be doing what ‘everybody’ did.
The Mystery of the Blue Train Page 5