Free The Listening Eye by Patricia Wentworth Page B

10
    MEREFIELDS lay in the spring sunshine with a sprinkle of daffodils in its shrubberies and a broad band of many coloured hyacinths where the drive spread into a wide sweep and half a dozen grey stone steps went up to the front door. The hyacinths looked across the gravel at the house, and from every room which faced that way you could look back at the hyacinths. Lucius Bellingdon pointed them out to Miss Silver with pride.
    “Gardeners like cutting holes in the grass and putting in skimped-up mats of flowers. Donald was a bit obstinate when I said I wanted hyacinths all the way along opposite the house, and that sweet-smelling stuff my mother used to call cherry pie to come along after them.”
    Miss Silver smiled.
    “But you got your way.”
    He nodded.
    “Smell nice, don’t they—but a bit heavy if you have them in the house. Well now, come along in and meet everyone. Lunch is at one and I’m ready for it, so I hope you are too.”
    They encountered Miss Bray in the hall. Bellingdon had expanded his original account of her on the way down.
    “Ellen is what she was christened, but don’t say I told you. She thinks Elaine sounds better. Personally I think it’s silly, but what’s the odds so long as it makes her happy? There’s no reason why it should but it seems to, and I ought to be used to it by now.”
    She came towards them in a grey woollen dress with a dreary-looking black scarf trailing down below the waist on either side and a jet chain looped two or three times about her neck, which was long and thin. She had fair hair with a good deal of grey in it worn gathered into a loose untidy knot quite insufficiently controlled by an unusual number of hairpins. A further attempt to confine it with a piece of black velvet ribbon could not really be said to be successful. She peered at Miss Silver as if she were shortsighted, but her manner was perfectly amiable as she said,
    “Oh, how do you do? I am afraid it is a great rush for you coming down here like this. Lucius did tell me your name, but I am afraid I have forgotten it. Names are so very difficult, don’t you think? And so often they are very misleading. Now I find I so rarely think of my friends by their names. I always feel that there is something much more personal—something that cannot really be put into words—something which I have heard compared to the scent of a flower—”
    Lucius Bellingdon said briskly,
    “This is Miss Silver, Elaine, and I expect she would like to go to her room before lunch.”
    Miss Bray talked all the way up the beautiful staircase with its shallow steps and along a panelled corridor to a room which, she informed Miss Silver, was opposite to her own. It had a good view of the hyacinths and was most comfortably furnished with bright chintzes, a moss-green carpet, and what she was very pleased to see, a small electric fire. Previous experiences in the country had left her under no illusions as to the icy temperatures to which many habitual residents had apparently become enured. Her warmest clothing invariably accompanied her on a country visit, but it would be more comfortable not to require it. There was not only this convenient fire, but the sight of a radiator and the genial warmth of the temperature informed her that the house was centrally heated.
    Miss Bray was assiduous in her attentions.
    “The bathroom is next door. I cannot tell you how relieved I was when Lucius rang up and said that he had induced you to come down. Even in two days the letters and appeals have piled up in the most trying way. Poor Mr. Garratt is still far from well. I cannot think what can have brought on such a shocking attack. The begging letters are the worst, but Lucius does not think it right to tear them up unread. He tells me you are particularly well adapted to deal with them. It is work which I could not possibly undertake— it would upset me too much. I am afraid I am foolishly sensitive to anything sordid. The seamy side of