Tragedy at Beechcroft (Musaicum Murder Mysteries). Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ I'm not so melodramatic as to think that that really is the reason," she said promptly, "though evidently I'm not so far out. Is it Mrs. Phillimore who is worried?" she went on.

      Oliver made the gesture of drawing a cross between them.

      "You're a witch," he said half laughing, half vexed. "Now, how on earth...what do you know? How much?"

      "My dear Oliver—" she gave a contemptuous flip of some crumbs to a sparrow, "you were talking about the Moncrieffs...you were drawing an outline of Mrs. Phillimore's profile while I talked to you about Anatole France. Next, you asked me that funny question...I jumped to the obvious conclusion. I'm as often wrong as I'm right," she added modestly.

      "It was confidential," he said under his breath. "But when one has a witch for an aunt...Mrs. Phillimore wants me to paint Moncrieff as a long overdue present to her daughter, and she's worried about her daughter. Thinks she isn't as happy as she might be." There was a silence. Aunt Julia rarely volunteered advice.

      "Do you remember my once taking you to the studio of a Miss Flavelle Bruton?" Oliver asked next. "Dark-haired girl, very thin, with wonderful eyes and hair worn in plaits around her fine little head? She's quite a celebrity nowadays."

      He meant to change the subject by way of her work, but his aunt knitted her brows for a moment and suddenly said: "I remember the afternoon perfectly. It was the only time I ever saw her. I have always wondered why she didn't marry Major Moncrieff?"

      "Why did you expect her to? I thought you hadn't set eyes on him before this afternoon on the bench there!"

      Oliver was puzzled.

      "I didn't see him. I only heard his name. Miss Bruton's telephone bell rang. She answered it, and came back saying, 'It was from Major Moncrieff' to her aunt, who would talk to me about smart people I'd never heard of."

      "Favelle Bruton always loathed him, and he seemed to avoid her in the old days," Oliver said. He decided that, for once, his aunt had been speaking inconsequentially. She got up now from the seat, saying that she wanted to show him a piece of Rhodes weaving which she had brought back with her last month. As he took her book from her again, Oliver happened to meet her eye, and in spite of the disparity in years, the utter absence of any likeness between them, he could have sworn that his aunt's eyes were the eyes of La Gioconda.

      Now, Oliver had always maintained that those eyes were fixed on the painter in derision, that she was saying to herself: "So you think that, do you! Of all the silly juggins!" But his aunt apparently was only concerned with pointing out to him the effect of a copper beech against a young oak.

      When he had duly admired the piece of linen and had some of her special tea cakes, he said good-bye to her. He was still more occupied with Moncrieff than before. Mrs. Phillimore's startling words in the morning, and now in the afternoon—that odd scene on the bench...Moncrieff parting as though from an absolute stranger and yet, according to his aunt, parting with a man whom he had met several times before, in all probability by appointment. Banknotes...blackmail...it certainly could not be linked with Mrs. Phillimore's certainty that the Major was going mad, with her story of being chased around the room by him only early to-day, but it did not clash with her certainty that there was something wrong at Beechcroft...

      Santley always thought of that day as "the Moncrieff day," for, as he and a friend were shown to his table at a restaurant that evening, he saw the young couple seated near them. Lavinia was easily the prettiest woman in the room, he thought, and he thought it without a pang. Lately, her face, to him, had grown very commonplace. But Major Moncrieff seemed to find nothing amiss in it, judging by the eager way he was talking to her, his dark, ugly face almost touching her delicately made-up, beautifully-waved golden head. Santley studied them under cover of becoming lost in the wine list. Mrs. Phillimore must be mistaken. The two looked as happy as any other couple there. Then he noticed the lines of strain around the man's lips. They only showed in certain lights. And, looking for them, he saw marks of strain too in Mrs. Moncrieff's face. Yes, he thought, both of them were, or had been until just now, under a heavy strain. However, late hours can leave very similar marks, and yet...Moncrieff's eyes did not suggest late hours, or if so, then he took some sort of stimulant to account for their almost excessive brightness. They fairly glittered as he laughed at something Lavinia said. A young man joined them with a pleasant, sunburnt, freckled face. It was the young man whom Santley had seen down at Beechcroft dancing attendance on Ann Bladeshaw. It was young Pusey.

      He seemed very keen on having a word with them. But Lavinia did not appear overjoyed at seeing him, Santley thought. A cable was handed her and she tore it open. "From Madeleine at last!" she said as she did so, and Santley noticed that Moncrieff stopped the story which he was telling for a moment.

      Mrs. Moncrieff gave a little cry. "Oh, what a pity!" Her husband went on calmly with his story to Pusey. It struck Santley as odd that he should not ask what was amiss, for Lavinia sat pushing the cable into her petit point evening bag with a worried frown. But she too, said nothing more. Then, turning, she caught sight of Santley, who was alone at the moment. She signed to him to come to their table. Pulling out a chair, Santley found himself laughing heartily at some of her quips. Lavinia always had the art of quickening the tempo. She excited always, if only to more sparkling talk.

      He threw in the suggestion that, since he was coming down next week about the tableaux, it might be possible to arrange some sittings for the long overdue portrait of Moncrieff. Both husband and wife seemed charmed.

      Pusey with a light word left them. Santley had a feeling that he was annoyed at his joining the table, or was it at something said by the smiling Moncrieff? Moncrieff's smile showed two magnificent rows of teeth, but it looked rather formidable. Not the face of a man to lightly pay over notes on a park bench...

      Mrs. Moncrieff was begging him to come down before the Thursday. Any time after next Tuesday—that was a week from to-day—would suit her and her husband admirably. But Santley explained that he was just off for Brussels, to inspect some tapestry intended for a Belgian church which was being woven there according to one of his designs. He was crossing by air next morning, and would not be back until the Wednesday of next week.

      "Brussels!" Lavinia suddenly looked across at her husband, a question in her eyes. Santley, without turning in his seat, could not see if Moncrieff gave an answering glance.

      "Ah, well!" Lavinia seemed to bear up, "if you can't come earlier, why, you can't! Perhaps you can stay on? We should be delighted to have you, and what with the rehearsals and flying around to get things together, I'm afraid there won't be much time for sittings until the 'doings' are over. Everything finishes on Saturday, thank Heaven. Harry will have to be on his best behaviour while you're there so as to make a good impression. That's half the battle when you're having your picture painted, isn't it?"

      "It's not half so important as the impression I make on him," Santley explained. "What you see on a canvas is not so much what the painter thinks of the sitter, as what the sitter thinks of the artist."

      "Is that why most of them look so glum?" Moncrieff asked, in his rather harsh voice, but he had a taking laugh.

      "What are you going to put in the background?" Lavinia went on. "I loved the hunting picture you hung on the wall of Lord Marchmont's room in your picture of him. It was such a contrast to his wig and gown, and yet—it explained his eyes."

      Santley thought of his aunt's suggestion about a park bench. He said instead: "I should say something swift and dangerous would suit you best. How about a car, a racer?" He spoke to Moncrieff himself.

      Just for a second a startled look crossed Moncrieff's face, with its beak-like nose, formidable jaw, large bold black eyes, and wide, broad СКАЧАТЬ