Free Thomas Godfrey (Ed) by Murder for Christmas Page B

it—something useful about this young
Desmond Lee-Wortley.”
    Poirot paused a moment to admire the
ingenuity of Mr. Jesmond and the ease with which he had made use of Lady
Morecombe to further his own purposes.
    “He has not, I understand, a very
good reputation, this young man?” he began delicately.
    “No, indeed, he hasn’t! A very bad
reputation! But that’s no help so far as Sarah is concerned. It’s never any
good, is it, telling young girls that men have a bad reputation? It—it just
spurs them on!”
    “You are so very right,” said
Poirot.
    “In my young day,” went on Mrs.
Lacey. “(Oh dear, that’s a very long time ago!) We used to be warned, you know,
against certain young men, and of course it did heighten one’s
interest in them, and if one could possibly manage to dance with them, or to be
alone with them in a dark conservatory—” she laughed. “That’s why I wouldn’t
let Horace do any of the things he wanted to do.”
    “Tell me,” said Poirot, “exactly
what it is that troubles you?”
    “Our son was killed in the war,” said
Mrs. Lacey. “My daughter-in-law died when Sarah was born so that she has always
been with us, and we’ve brought her up. Perhaps we’ve brought her up unwisely—I
don’t know. But we thought we ought always to leave her as free as possible.”
    “That is desirable, I think,” said
Poirot. “One cannot go against the spirit of the times.”
    “No,” said Mrs. Lacey, “that’s just
what I felt about it. And, of course, girls nowadays do do these sort of things.”
    Poirot looked at her inquiringly.
    “I think the way one expresses it,” said
Mrs. Lacey, “is that Sarah has got in with what they call the coffee-bar set.
She won’t go to dances or come out properly or be a deb or anything of that
kind. Instead she has two rather unpleasant rooms in Chelsea down by the river
and wears these funny clothes that they like to wear, and black stockings or
bright green ones. Very thick stockings. (So prickly, I always think!) And she
goes about without washing or combing her hair.”
    “Ca, c’est tout à fait
naturelle,” said
Poirot. “It is the fashion of the moment. They grow out of it.”
    “Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Lacey. “I
wouldn’t worry about that sort of thing. But you see she’s taken up with this Desmond
Lee-Wortley and he really has a very unsavoury
reputation. He lives more or less on well-to-do girls. They seem to go quite
mad about him. He very nearly married the Hope girl, but her people got her
made a ward in court or something. And of course that’s what Horace wants to
do. He says he must do it for her protection. But I don’t think it’s really a
good idea, M. Poirot. I mean, they’ll just run away together and go to Scotland
or Ireland or the Argentine or somewhere and either get married or else live
together without getting married. And although it may be contempt of court and
all that—well, it isn’t really an answer, is it, in the end? Especially if a
baby’s coming. One has to give in then, and let them get married. And then,
nearly always, it seems to me, after a year or two there’s a divorce. And then
the girl comes home and usually after a year or two she marries someone so nice
he’s almost dull and settles down. But it’s particularly sad, it seems to me,
if there is a child, because it’s not the same thing, being brought up by a
stepfather, however nice. No, I think it’s much better if we did as we did in
my young days. I mean the first young man one fell in love with was always someone undesirable. I remember I had a horrible passion for a young man
called—now what was his name now?—how strange it is, I can’t remember his
Christian name at all! Tibbitt, that was his surname. Young Tibbitt. Of course,
my father more or less forbade him the house, but he used to get asked to the
same dances, and we used to dance together. And sometimes we’d escape and sit
out together and occasionally