Free Endless Night by Agatha Christie Page A

should be the first to know.” She sighed. “Oh well, we’ve had a lovely time up to now.”
    “What will they say or do?” I asked.
    “Make a fuss, I expect,” said Ellie, in her placid way. “It doesn’t matter if they do and they’ll have sense enough to know that. We’ll have to have a meeting, I expect. We could go to New York. Would you like that?” She looked at me inquiringly.
    “No,” I said, “I shouldn’t like it in the least.”
    “Then they’ll come to London probably, or some of them will. I don’t know if you’d like that any better.”
    “I shouldn’t like any of it. I want to be with you and see our house going up brick by brick as soon as Santonix gets there.”
    “So we can,” said Ellie. “After all, meetings with the family won’t take long. Possibly just one big splendid row would do. Get it over in one. Either we fly over there or they fly over here.”
    “I thought you said your stepmother was at Salzburg.”
    “Oh, I just said that. It sounded odd to say I didn’t know where she was. Yes,” said Ellie with a sigh, “we’ll go home and meet them all. Mike, I hope you won’t mind too much.”
    “Mind what—your family?”
    “Yes. You won’t mind if they’re nasty to you.”
    “I suppose it’s the price I have to pay for marrying you,” I said. “I’ll bear it.”
    “There’s your mother,” said Ellie thoughtfully.
    “For heaven’s sake, Ellie, you’re not going to try and arrange a meeting between your stepmother in her frills and her furbelows and my mother from her back street. What do you think they’d have to say to each other?”
    “If Cora was my own mother they might have quite a lot to say to each other,” said Ellie. “I wish you wouldn’t be so obsessed with class distinctions, Mike!”
    “Me!” I said incredulously. “What’s your American phrase—I come from the wrong side of the tracks, don’t I?”
    “You don’t want to write it on a placard and put it on yourself.”
    “I don’t know the right clothes to wear,” I said bitterly. “I don’t know the right way to talk about things and I don’t know anything really about pictures or art or music. I’m only just learning who to tip and how much to give.”
    “Don’t you think, Mike, that that makes it all much more exciting for you? I think so.”
    “Anyway,” I said, “you’re not to drag my mother into your family party.”
    “I wasn’t proposing to drag anyone into anything, but I think, Mike, I ought to go and see your mother when we go back to England.”
    “No,” I said explosively.
    She looked at me rather startled.
    “Why not, Mike, though? I mean, apart from anything else, I mean it’s just very rude not to. Have you told her you’re married?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Why not?”
    I didn’t answer.
    “Wouldn’t the simplest way be to tell her you’re married and take me to see her when we get back to England?”
    “No,” I said again. It was not so explosive this time but it was still fairly well underlined.
    “You don’t want me to meet her,” said Ellie, slowly.
    I didn’t of course. I suppose it was obvious enough but the last thing I could do was to explain. I didn’t see how I could explain.
    “It wouldn’t be the right thing to do,” I said slowly. “You must see that. I’m sure it would lead to trouble.”
    “You think she wouldn’t like me?”
    “Nobody could help liking you, but it wouldn’t be—oh I don’t know how to put it. But she might be upset and confused. After all, well, I mean I’ve married out of my station. That’s the old-fashioned term. She wouldn’t like that. ”
    Ellie shook her head slowly.
    “Does anybody really think like that nowadays?”
    “Of course they do. They do in your country too.”
    “Yes,” she said, “in a way that’s true but—if anyone makes good there—”
    “You mean if a man makes a lot of money.”
    “Well, not only money.”
    “Yes,” I said, “it’s money. If a man