Free Taken at the Flood by Agatha Christie Page B

House.
    II
    â€œCan’t you give it back, Mums?”
    â€œReally, Lynn darling! I went straight to the bank with it. And then I paid Arthurs and Bodgham and Knebworth. Knebworth was getting quite abusive. Oh, my dear, the relief! I haven’t been able to sleep for nights and nights. Really, Rosaleen was most understanding and nice about it.”
    Lynn said bitterly:
    â€œAnd I suppose you’ll go to her again and again now.”
    â€œI hope it won’t be necessary, dear. I shall try to be very economical, you know that. But of course everything is so expensive nowadays. And it gets worse and worse.”
    â€œYes, and we shall get worse and worse. Going on cadging.”
    Adela flushed.
    â€œI don’t think that’s a nice way of putting it, Lynn. As I explained to Rosaleen, we had always depended on Gordon.”
    â€œWe shouldn’t have. That’s what’s wrong, we shouldn’t have,” Lynn added, “He’s right to despise us.”
    â€œWho despises us?”
    â€œThat odious David Hunter.”
    â€œReally,” said Mrs. Marchmont with dignity, “I don’t see that it can matter in the least what David Hunter thinks. Fortunately he wasn’t at Furrowbank this morning—otherwise I dare say he would have influenced that girl. She’s completely under his thumb, of course.”
    Lynn shifted from one foot to the other.
    â€œWhat did you mean, Mums, when you said—that first morning I was home—‘If he is her brother?’”
    â€œOh, that. ” Mrs. Marchmont looked slightly embarrassed. “Well, there’s been a certain amount of gossip, you know.”
    Lynn merely waited inquiringly. Mrs. Marchmont coughed.
    â€œThat type of young woman—the adventuress type (of course poor Gordon was completely taken in)—they’ve usually got a—well, a young man of their own in the background. Suppose she says to Gordon she’s got a brother—wires to him in Canada or wherever he was. This man turns up. How is Gordon to know whether he’s her brother or not? Poor Gordon, absolutely infatuated no doubt, and believing everything she said. And so her ‘brother’ comes with them to England—poor Gordon quite unsuspecting.”
    Lynn said fiercely:
    â€œI don’t believe it. I don’t believe it!”
    Mrs. Marchmont raised her eyebrows.
    â€œReally, my dear—”
    â€œHe’s not like that. And she—she isn’t either. She’s a fool perhaps, but she’s sweet—yes, she’s really sweet. It’s just people’s foul minds. I don’t believe it, I tell you.”
    Mrs. Marchmont said with dignity:
    â€œThere’s really no need to shout. ”

Eight
    I
    I t was a week later that the 5:20 train drew into Warmsley Heath Station and a tall bronzed man with a knapsack got out.
    On the opposite platform a cluster of golfers were waiting for the up train. The tall bearded man with the knapsack gave up his ticket and passed out of the station. He stood uncertainly for a minute or two—then he saw the signpost: Footpath to Warmsley Vale —and directed his steps that way with brisk determination.
    II
    At Long Willows Rowley Cloade had just finished making himself a cup of tea when a shadow falling across the kitchen table made him look up.
    If for just a moment he thought the girl standing just inside the door was Lynn, his disappointment turned to surprise when he saw it was Rosaleen Cloade.
    She was wearing a frock of some peasant material in bright broad stripes of orange and green—the artificial simplicity of which had run into more money than Rowley could ever have imagined possible.
    Up to now he had always seen her dressed in expensive and somewhat towny clothes which she wore with an artificial air—much, he had thought, as a mannequin might display dresses that did not belong to her but to the firm who employed her.
    This