Free Au Reservoir by Guy Fraser-Sampson Page A

in her hands and looked mournful.
    ‘And of course,’ Georgie went on, ‘the more Elizabeth made fun of her, the more Lucia rose to the bait. Finally Elizabeth came across Noël’s last letter, which made it quite clear that they didn’t know each other at all, and being Elizabeth tried to show it around to everyone.’
    ‘Oh, no!’ Olga gasped.
    ‘Yes! But fortunately the first person to whom she tried to show it was Mr Wyse and he looked at the letter, then looked puzzled, and then asked Elizabeth why she was inviting him to read a letter which was clearly addressed to someone else.’
    ‘Bravo, Mr Wyse!’ breathed Olga.
    ‘Bravo, indeed,’ Georgie concurred.
    ‘And what on earth did she say?’ Olga asked.
    ‘Well, of course she was taken completely aback. She had never expected that response. She thought everyone would just read it straight off, and then tell her how clever she had been to expose poor Lucia.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘And apparently Elizabeth got jolly flustered and said that she had found it lying around and that Lucia must have dropped it, and that of course she was just taking it back to her. So Mr Wyse said he could save her the trouble, folded it up, put it in his pocket and brought it round to Lucia – with a bow, naturally.’
    ‘Phew!’ said Olga in relief. ‘So nobody else read it?’
    ‘Well, I’m sure she must have shown it to the Major,’ Georgie mused doubtfully, ‘and Mr Wyse may well have read at least some of it accidentally, but of course his discretion can be relied upon absolutely.’
    ‘So can mine,’ said Irene with another meaningful glance at her glass, which seemed unaccountably to have emptied itself during Georgie’s explanation.
    As they wandered disconsolately back towards Mallards and lunch, Olga and Georgie turned over in their minds everything they had heard that morning.
    ‘It’s really quite uncanny,’ Olga remarked, ‘how Elizabeth Mapp-Flint guesses at the truth so consistently.’
    ‘Indeed it is,’ Georgie agreed, ‘but fortunately she then exaggerates it so much that nobody will believe her. Just look at what happened this time. If she’d just stuck to that silly business with the trains people might have realised there really might be something to it, but by embellishing it with ridiculous episodes about a quarrel and a split with Lucia she lost her audience.’
    ‘Poor woman,’ said Olga. ‘How very unhappy she must be to make up such wicked stories.’
    ‘Oh, she’s just bitter and twisted inside. Really, after all these years of being bested by Lucia you’d think that she would just give up and accept it, but if anything she’s getting worse.’
    ‘I thought you said a week or two back that she’d been rather quiet since the war,’ Olga pointed out.
    ‘Well, yes, actually she had, now you come to mention it. That’s what makes this latest outburst so remarkable, I suppose. It’s almost as though she’s gone back entirely to her old ways.’
    ‘Without wishing to be unduly morbid,’ reflected Olga, ‘I suppose it’s always possible that she’s gathering herself for one last effort.’
    Georgie looked blank.
    ‘Oh, come on, you dear old thing,’ Olga said gently. ‘We’re all of us now at that age when you have to come to terms with the fact that you really are going to die one day, and that it may be sooner than one would like.’
    ‘
Memento mori
,’ Georgie intoned gravely. ‘Yes, I know what you mean. How quickly the years seem to pass now. They did even during that dreadful war when we had bombs dropping on us and everything.’
    They walked on a few steps in silence.
    ‘But do you really think that’s what behind this … this latest bout of vituperation from Mapp?’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know really,’ Olga said, trying to shake off the rather chill thoughts that had suddenly come crowding in upon her. ‘Perhaps it says more about my own feelings than hers. I really must stop drinking gin before lunch; it