The Burden. Агата Кристи

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СКАЧАТЬ the church and walked home.

      On the terrace was the baby’s pram. Laura came up to it and stood beside it, looking down on the sleeping infant.

      As she looked, the fair downy head stirred, the eyelids opened, the blue eyes looked up at Laura with a wide unfocused stare.

      ‘You’re going to Heaven soon,’ Laura told her sister. ‘It’s lovely in Heaven,’ she added coaxingly. ‘All golden and precious stones.’

      ‘And harps,’ she added, after a minute. ‘And lots of angels with real feathery wings. It’s much nicer than here.’

      She thought of something else.

      ‘You’ll see Charles,’ she said. ‘Think of that! You’ll see Charles.’

      Angela Franklin came out of the drawing-room window.

      ‘Hallo, Laura,’ she said. ‘Are you talking to baby?’

      She bent over the pram. ‘Hallo, my sweetie. Was it awake, then?’

      Arthur Franklin, following his wife out on to the terrace, said:

      ‘Why do women have to talk such nonsense to babies? Eh, Laura? Don’t you think it’s odd?’

      ‘I don’t think it’s nonsense,’ said Laura.

      ‘Don’t you? What do you think it is, then?’ He smiled at her teasingly.

      ‘I think it’s love,’ said Laura.

      He was a little taken aback.

      Laura, he thought, was an odd kid. Difficult to know what went on behind that straight, unemotional gaze.

      ‘I must get a piece of netting, muslin or something,’ said Angela. ‘To put over the pram when it’s out here. I’m always so afraid of a cat jumping up and lying on her face and suffocating her. We’ve got too many cats about the place.’

      ‘Bah,’ said her husband. ‘That’s one of those old wives’ tales. I don’t believe a cat has ever suffocated a baby.’

      ‘Oh, they have, Arthur. You read about it quite often in the paper.’

      ‘That’s no guarantee of truth.’

      ‘Anyway, I shall get some netting, and I must tell Nannie to look out of the window from time to time and see that she’s all right. Oh dear, I wish our own nanny hadn’t had to go to her dying sister. This new young nanny—I don’t really feel happy about her.’

      ‘Why not? She seems a nice enough girl. Devoted to baby and good references and all that.’

      ‘Oh yes, I know. She seems all right. But there’s something … There’s that gap of a year and a half in her references.’

      ‘She went home to nurse her mother.’

      ‘That’s what they always say! And it’s the sort of thing you can’t check. It might have been for some reason she doesn’t want us to know about.’

      ‘Got into trouble, you mean?’

      Angela threw him a warning glance, indicating Laura.

      ‘Do be careful, Arthur. No, I don’t mean that. I mean—’

      ‘What do you mean, darling?’

      ‘I don’t really know,’ said Angela slowly. ‘It’s just sometimes when I’m talking to her I feel that there’s something she’s anxious we shouldn’t find out.’

      ‘Wanted by the police?’

      ‘Arthur! That’s a very silly joke.’

      Laura walked gently away. She was an intelligent child and she perceived quite plainly that they, her father and mother, would like to talk about Nannie unhampered by her presence. She herself was not interested in the new nanny; a pale, dark-haired, soft-spoken girl, who showed herself kindly to Laura, though plainly quite uninterested by her.

      Laura was thinking of the Lady with the Blue Cloak.

      ‘Come on, Josephine,’ said Laura crossly.

      Josephine, late Jehoshaphat, though not actively resisting, was displaying all the signs of passive resistance. Disturbed in a delicious sleep against the side of the greenhouse, she had been half dragged, half carried by Laura, out of the kitchen-garden and round the house to the terrace.

      ‘There!’ Laura plopped Josephine down. A few feet away, the baby’s pram stood on the gravel.

      Laura walked slowly away across the lawn. As she reached the big lime tree, she turned her head.

      Josephine, her tail lashing from time to time, in indignant memory, began to wash her stomach, sticking out what seemed a disproportionately long hind leg. That part of her toilet completed, she yawned and looked round her at her surroundings. Then she began half-heartedly to wash behind the ears, thought better of it, yawned again, and finally got up and walked slowly and meditatively away, and round the corner of the house.

      Laura followed her, picked her up determinedly, and lugged her back again. Josephine gave Laura a look and sat there lashing her tail. As soon as Laura had got back to the tree, Josephine once more got up, yawned, stretched, and walked off. Laura brought her back again, remonstrating as she did so.

      ‘It’s sunny here, Josephine. It’s nice!’

      Nothing could be clearer than that Josephine disagreed with this statement. She was now in a very bad temper indeed, lashing her tail, and flattening back her ears.

      ‘Hallo, young Laura.’

      Laura started and turned. Mr Baldock stood behind her. She had not heard or noticed his slow progress across the lawn. Josephine, profiting by Laura’s momentary inattention, darted to a tree and ran up it, pausing on a branch to look down on them with an air of malicious satisfaction.

      ‘That’s where cats have the advantage over human beings,’ said Mr Baldock. ‘When they want to get away from people they can climb a tree. The nearest we can get to that is to shut ourselves in the lavatory.’

      Laura looked slightly shocked. Lavatories came into the category of things which Nannie (the late Nannie) had said ‘little ladies don’t talk about’.

      ‘But one has to come out,’ said Mr Baldock, ‘if for no other reason than because other people want to come in. Now that cat of yours will probably stay up that tree for a couple of hours.’

      Immediately Josephine demonstrated the general unpredictability of cats by coming down with a rush, crossing towards them, and proceeding to rub herself to and fro against Mr Baldock’s trousers, purring loudly.

      ‘Here,’ she seemed to say, ‘is exactly what I have been waiting for.’

      ‘Hallo, Baldy.’ Angela came out of the window. ‘Are you paying your respects to the latest arrival? Oh dear, these cats. Laura dear, do take Josephine away. Put her in the СКАЧАТЬ