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Percival Fortescue and his wife occupied a self-contained suite in one wing of the house. Mary tapped on the sitting room door. Mrs. Percival liked you to tap on doors, a fact which always roused Crump’s scorn of her. Her voice said briskly:
“Come in.”
Mary opened the door and murmured:
“Tea is just coming in, Mrs. Percival.”
She was rather surprised to see Jennifer Fortescue with her outdoor clothes on. She was just divesting herself of a long camel-hair coat.
“I didn’t know you’d been out,” said Mary.
Mrs. Percival sounded slightly out of breath.
“Oh, I was just in the garden, that’s all. Just getting a little air. Really, though, it was too cold. I shall be glad to get down to the fire. The central heating here isn’t as good as it might be. Somebody must speak to the gardeners about it, Miss Dove.”
“I’ll do so,” Mary promised.
Jennifer Fortescue dropped her coat on a chair and followed Mary out of the room. She went down the stairs ahead of Mary, who drew back a little to give her precedence. In the hall, rather to Mary’s surprise, she noticed the tray of eatables was still there. She was about to go out to the pantry and call to Gladys when Adele Fortescue appeared in the door of the library, saying in an irritable voice:
“Aren’t we ever going to have anything to eat for tea?”
Quickly Mary picked up the tray and took it into the library, disposing the various things on low tables near the fireplace. She was carrying the empty tray out to the hall again when the front-door bell rang. Setting down the tray, Mary went to the door herself. If this was the prodigal son at last she was rather curious to see him. “How unlike the rest of the Fortescues,” Mary thought, as she opened the door and looked up into the dark lean face and the faint quizzical twist of the mouth. She said quietly:
“Mr. Lancelot Fortescue?”
“Himself.”
Mary peered beyond him.
“Your luggage?”
“I’ve paid off the taxi. This is all I’ve got.”
He picked up a medium-sized zip bag. Some faint feeling of surprise in her mind, Mary said:
“Oh, you did come in a taxi. I thought perhaps you’d walked up. And your wife?”
His face set in a rather grim line, Lance said:
“My wife won’t be coming. At least, not just yet.”
“I see. Come this way, will you, Mr. Fortescue. Everyone is in the library, having tea.”
She took him to the library door and left him there. She thought to herself that Lancelot Fortescue was a very attractive person. A second thought followed the first. Probably a great many other women thought so, too.
III
“Lance!”
Elaine came hurrying forward towards him. She flung her arms round his neck and hugged him with a schoolgirl abandon that Lance found quite surprising.
“Hallo. Here I am.”
He disengaged himself gently.
“This is Jennifer?”
Jennifer Fortescue looked at him with eager curiosity.
“I’m afraid Val’s been detained in town,” she said. “There’s so much to see to, you know. All the arrangements to make and everything. Of course it all comes on Val. He has to see to everything. You can really have no idea what we’re all going through.”
“It must be terrible for you,” said Lance gravely.
He turned to the woman on the sofa, who was sitting with a piece of scone and honey in her hand, quietly appraising him.
“Of course,” cried Jennifer, “you don’t know Adele, do you?”
Lance murmured, “Oh yes, I do,” as he took Adele Fortescue’s hand in his. As he looked down at her, her eyelids fluttered. She set down the scone she was eating with her left hand and just touched the arrangement of her hair. It was a feminine gesture. It marked her recognition of the entry to the room of a personable man. She said in her thick, soft voice:
“Sit down here on the sofa beside me, Lance.” She poured out a cup of tea for him. “I’m so glad you’ve come,” she went on. “We badly need another man in the house.”
Lance said:
“You must let me do everything I can to help.”
“You know—but perhaps you don’t know—we’ve had the police here. They think—they think—” she broke off and cried out passionately: “Oh, it’s awful! Awful!”
“I know.” Lance was grave and sympathetic. “As a matter of fact they met me at London Airport.”
“The police met you?”
“Yes.”
“What did they say?”
“Well,” Lance was deprecating. “They told me what had happened.”
“He was poisoned,” said Adele, “that’s what they think, what they say. Not food poisoning. Real poisoning, by someone. I believe, I really do believe they think it’s one of us.”
Lance gave her a sudden quick smile.
“That’s their pigeon,” he said consolingly. “It’s no good our worrying. What a scrumptious tea! It’s a long time since I’ve seen a good English tea.”
The others fell in with his mood soon enough. Adele said suddenly:
“But your wife—haven’t you got a wife, Lance?”
r /> “I’ve got a wife, yes. She’s in London.”
“But aren’t you—hadn’t you better bring her down here?”
“Plenty of time to make plans,” said Lance. “Pat—oh, Pat’s quite all right where she is.”
Elaine said sharply:
“You don’t mean—you don’t think—”
Lance said quickly:
“What a wonderful-looking chocolate cake. I must have some.”
Cutting himself a slice, he asked:
“Is Aunt Effie alive still?”
“Oh, yes, Lance. She won’t come down and have meals with us or anything, but she’s quite well. Only she’s getting very peculiar.”
“She always was peculiar,” said Lance. “I must go up and see her after tea.”
Jennifer Fortescue murmured:
“At her age one does really feel that she ought to be in some kind of a home. I mean somewhere where she will be properly looked after.”
“Heaven help any old ladies’ home that got Aunt Effie in their midst,” said Lance. He added, “Who’s the demure piece of goods who let me in?”
Adele looked surprised.
“Didn’t Crump let you in? The butler? Oh no, I forgot. It’s his day out today. But surely Gladys—”
Lance gave a description. “Blue eyes, hair parted in the middle, soft voice, butter wouldn’t melt in the mouth. What goes on behind it all, I wouldn’t like to say.”
“That,” said Jennifer, “would be Mary Dove.”
Elaine said:
“She sort of runs things for us.”
“Does she, now?”
Adele said:
“She’s really very useful.”
“Yes,” said Lance thoughtfully, “I should think she might be.”
“But what is so nice is,” said Jennifer, “that she knows her place. She never presumes, if you know what I mean.”
“Clever Mary Dove,” said Lance, and helped himself to another piece of chocolate cake.
Chapter Twelve
I
“So you’ve turned up again like a bad penny,” said Miss Ramsbottom.
