Free The Key by Patricia Wentworth Page B

rather as if they were coming away from a funeral. The ceremony being over, you could recognise your friends and converse with them, but in an appropriately subdued manner. Mrs Mottram’s manner could not, unfortunately, be called subdued even by the least candid friend. She was obviously excited, and the bright blue of her dress did nothing to disarm criticism. She rushed, positively rushed – the expression is Miss Doncaster’s – up to Mr Everton and kept him talking on the steps of the hall, her light high-pitched voice making everything she said plainly audible.
    Miss Doncaster’s strictures were what might have been expected. She joined Miss Fell’s party for the short homeward walk, and she had no hesitation in stating that she considered Mrs Mottram’s behaviour brazen.
    ‘Pursuing – positively pursuing Mr Everton! Asking him at the top of her voice whether she had “done it nicely”! Exactly as if she had been taking part in a play instead of discharging a solemn and most unpleasant duty! I really cannot say what I think of her behaviour!’
    Miss Sophy demurred. She was partial to the young. She liked Mrs Mottram, and she had no objection to her flirting with Mr Everton, whom she considered very well able to look after himself. She even liked the bright blue dress, which she thought gay and becoming, though of course not suitable to an inquest. She armed herself for the fracas which always ensued when you disagreed with Lucy Ellen.
    ‘My dear, you really have managed to say a good deal.’
    Miss Doncaster looked down her long, thin nose.
    ‘If I stated my true opinion—’
    Miss Sophy hastened to interrupt.
    ‘My dear, I shouldn’t. And do you know, I like Mrs Mottram. She is always so pleasant.’
    Miss Doncaster snorted.
    ‘She hasn’t the brain of a hen!’
    ‘Perhaps not – but there are such a lot of clever people, and so few pleasant ones.’
    They had arrived at the gate to the village street. Whatever Miss Doncaster might have replied was lost because Miss Sophy turned to put out a hand to Janice whom she had at that moment discovered to be just behind her with Garth.
    ‘Come to tea, my dear,’ she said. ‘I would ask you to lunch, but you know what it is – Florence would give notice. At least she wouldn’t really, because she has been with us for so many years, but she would talk about it, and that is almost as upsetting.’ She turned back again. ‘You may say what you like, Lucy Ellen, but Mrs Mottram was the only one of us to say straight away that she would take in an evacuee, though in the end she never got one.’
    Irritation passed into cold rage. Miss Doncaster paled and stiffened.
    ‘If you imagine, Sophy—’ she began, but Miss Sophy made haste with an olive branch.
    ‘Now, Lucy Ellen, don’t let us quarrel. No one expects you to take in a child, with Mary Anne in the state she is. And I won’t say I didn’t beg Mrs Pratt not to put one in on me, because I did, and everyone knows it. But by the time the village had taken theirs, and Mr Everton and the Rector, there really were, quite providentially, none left over, otherwise it would have been my duty, and I hope I should have done it whether Florence and Mable gave notice or not.’
    Garth and Janice walked side by side. They had hardly spoken. The feeling of having been at a funeral hung over them. They walked in silence as far as the corner. Here the road branched off on one side to the houses which faced the Green, and on the other something not much better than a track led through a straggle of cottages and beyond them to Prior’s End. They stopped and looked at each other.
    ‘You will come to tea?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Look here, come out early and we’ll go for a walk. I want to talk to you – not in Aunt Sophy’s drawing-room. I’ll be at the stile by the Priory field at half-past two. Can you make it?’
    She nodded.
    ‘I’ll ask for the afternoon off.’
    They stood for a moment. There was at once