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“I know one thing that will happen at 6:30,” she said dryly. “We’ll have half the village up here, agog with curiosity. I’d better make sure we’ve got some sherry in the house.”
II
“You are worried, aren’t you Lotty?”
Miss Blacklock started. She had been sitting at her writing-table, absentmindedly drawing little fishes on the blotting paper. She looked up into the anxious face of her old friend.
She was not quite sure what to say to Dora Bunner. Bunny, she knew, mustn’t be worried or upset. She was silent for a moment or two, thinking.
She and Dora Bunner had been at school together. Dora then had been a pretty, fair-haired, blue-eyed rather stupid girl. Her being stupid hadn’t mattered, because her gaiety and high spirits and her prettiness had made her an agreeable companion. She ought, her friend thought, to have married some nice Army officer, or a country solicitor. She had so many good qualities—affection, devotion, loyalty. But life had been unkind to Dora Bunner. She had had to earn her living. She had been painstaking but never competent at anything she undertook.
The two friends had lost sight of each other. But six months ago a letter had come to Miss Blacklock, a rambling, pathetic letter. Dora’s health had given way. She was living in one room, trying to subsist on her old age pension. She endeavoured to do needlework, but her fingers were stiff with rheumatism. She mentioned their schooldays—since then life had driven them apart—but could—possibly—her old friend help?
Miss Blacklock had responded impulsively. Poor Dora, poor pretty silly fluffy Dora. She had swooped down upon Dora, had carried her off, had installed her at Little Paddocks with the comforting fiction that “the housework is getting too much for me. I need someone to help me run the house.” It was not for long—the doctor had told her that—but sometimes she found poor old Dora a sad trial. She muddled everything, upset the temperamental foreign “help,” miscounted the laundry, lost bills and letters—and sometimes reduced the competent Miss Blacklock to an agony of exasperation. Poor old muddle-headed Dora, so loyal, so anxious to help, so pleased and proud to think she was of assistance—and, alas, so completely unreliable.
She said sharply:
“Don’t, Dora. You know I asked you—”
“Oh,” Miss Bunner looked guilty. “I know. I forgot. But—but you are, aren’t you?”
“Worried? No. At least,” she added truthfully, “not exactly. You mean about that silly notice in the Gazette?”
“Yes—even if it’s a joke, it seems to me it’s a—a spiteful sort of joke.”
“Spiteful?”
“Yes. It seems to me there’s spite there somewhere. I mean—it’s not a nice kind of joke.”
Miss Blacklock looked at her friend. The mild eyes, the long obstinate mouth, the slightly upturned nose. Poor Dora, so maddening, so muddle-headed, so devoted and such a problem. A dear fussy old idiot and yet, in a queer way, with an instinctive sense of value.
“I think you’re right, Dora,” said Miss Blacklock. “It’s not a nice joke.”
“I don’t like it at all,” said Dora Bunner with unsuspected vigour. “It frightens me.” She added, suddenly: “And it frightens you, Letitia.”
“Nonsense,” said Miss Blacklock with spirit.
“It’s dangerous. I’m sure it is. Like those people who send you bombs done up in parcels.”
“My dear, it’s just some silly idiot trying to be funny.”
“But it isn’t funny.”
It wasn’t really very funny … Miss Blacklock’s face betrayed her thoughts, and Dora cried triumphantly, “You see. You think so, too!”
“But Dora, my dear—”
She broke off. Through the door there surged a tempestuous young woman with a well-developed bosom heaving under a tight jersey. She had on a dirndl skirt of a bright colour and had greasy dark plaits wound round and round her head. Her eyes were dark and flashing.
She said gustily:
“I can speak to you, yes, please, no?”
Miss Blacklock sighed.
“Of course, Mitzi, what is it?”
Sometimes she thought it would be preferable to do the entire work of the house as well as the cooking rather than be bothered with the eternal nerve storms of her refugee “lady help.”
“I tell you at once—it is in order, I hope? I give you my notices and I go—I go at once!”
“For what reason? Has somebody upset you?”
“Yes, I am upset,” said Mitzi dramatically. “I do not wish to die! Already in Europe I escape. My family they all die—they are all killed—my mother, my little brother, my so sweet little niece—all, all they are killed. But me I run away—I hide. I get to England. I work. I do work that never—never would I do in my own country—I—”
“I know all that,” said Miss Blacklock crisply. It was, indeed, a constant refrain on Mitzi’s lips. “But why do you want to leave now?”
“Because again they come to kill me!”
“Who do?”
“My enemies. The Nazis! Or perhaps this time it is the Bolsheviks. They find out I am here. They come to kill me. I have read it—yes—it is in the newspaper!”
“Oh, you mean in the Gazette?”
“Here, it is written here.” Mitzi produced the Gazette from where she had been holding it behind her back. “See—here it says a murder. At Little Paddocks. That is here, is it not? This evening at 6:30. Ah! I do not wait to be murdered—no.”
“But why should this apply to you? It’s—we think it is a joke.”
“A joke? It is not a joke to murder someone.”
“No, of course not. But my dear child, if anyone wanted to murder you, they wouldn’t advertise the fact in the paper, would they?”
“You do not think they would?” Mitzi seemed a little shaken. “You think, perhaps, they do not mean to murder anyone at all? Perhaps it is you they mean to murder, Miss Blacklock.”
“I certainly can’t believe anyone wants to murder me,” said Miss Blacklock lightly. “And really, Mitzi, I don’t see why anyone should want to murder you. After all, why should they?”
“Because they are bad peoples … Very bad peoples. I tell you, my mother, my little brother, my so sweet niece….”
“Yes, yes.” Miss Blacklock stemmed the flow, adroitly. “But I cannot really believe anyone wants to murder you, Mitzi. Of course, if you want to go off like this at a moment’s notice, I can’t possibly stop you. But I think you will be very silly if you do.”
She added firmly, as Mitzi looked doubtful:
“We’ll have that beef the butcher sent stewed for lunch. It looks very tough.”
“I make you a goulash, a special goulash.”
“If you prefer to call it that, certainly. And perhaps you could use up that rather hard bit of cheese in making some cheese straws. I think some people may come in this evening for drinks.”
“This evening? What do you mean, this evening?”
“At half past six.”
“But that is the time in the paper? Who should come then? Why should they come?”
“They’re coming to the funeral,” said Miss Blacklock with a twinkle. “That’ll do now, Mitzi. I’m busy. Shut the door after you,” she added firmly.
> “And that’s settled her for the moment,” she said as the door closed behind a puzzled-looking Mitzi.
“You are so efficient, Letty,” said Miss Bunner admiringly.
Three
AT 6:30 P.M.
I
“Well, here we are, all set,” said Miss Blacklock. She looked round the double drawing room with an appraising eye. The rose-patterned chintzes—the two bowls of bronze chrysanthemums, the small vase of violets and the silver cigarette box on a table by the wall, the tray of drinks on the centre table.
Little Paddocks was a medium-sized house built in the early Victorian style. It had a long shallow veranda and green shuttered windows. The long, narrow drawing room which lost a good deal of light owing to the veranda roof had originally had double doors at one end leading into a small room with a bay window. A former generation had removed the double doors and replaced them with portieres of velvet. Miss Blacklock had dispensed with the portieres so that the two rooms had become definitely one. There was a fireplace each end, but neither fire was lit although a gentle warmth pervaded the room.
“You’ve had the central heating lit,” said Patrick.
Miss Blacklock nodded.
“It’s been so misty and damp lately. The whole house felt clammy. I got Evans to light it before he went.”
“The precious precious coke?” said Patrick mockingly.
“As you say, the precious coke. But otherwise there would have been the even more precious coal. You know the Fuel Office won’t even let us have the little bit that’s due to us each week—not unless we can say definitely that we haven’t got any other means of cooking.”
“I suppose there was once heaps of coke and coal for everybody?” said Julia with the interest of one hearing about an unknown country.
“Yes, and cheap, too.”
“And anyone could go and buy as much as they wanted, without filling in anything, and there wasn’t any shortage? There was lots of it there?”
