Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 4: A Surfeit of Lampreys, Death and the Dancing Footman, Colour Scheme. Ngaio Marsh

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      Roberta liked her room which was in 26. As Lady Charles had told her it was really the entrance hall but a heavy curtain had been hung across it making a passage, through which the others would have to go to reach the real passage and their bedrooms. Frid showed her the rest of 26 which was all bedrooms with Nanny Burnaby living in the ex-kitchen where she could make the cups of Ovaltine that she still forced the Lampreys to drink before they went to bed. Nanny was sitting by the electric stove which she had converted into a sort of bureau. Her hair had turned much greyer. Her face was netted over with lines as if, thought Roberta, each good or ill deed of the young Lampreys had left its sign on that one face alone. She had been playing patience and received Roberta exactly as if four days instead of four years had gone by since their last meeting.

      ‘Nanny,’ said Frid, ‘things are gloomy. We’re up the spout again and there’s liable to be a bum at any moment.’

      ‘Some folk will do anything,’ said Nanny darkly.

      ‘Well, I know, but I suppose they rather want their money.’

      ‘Well, his lordship had better pay them and be done with it.’

      ‘I’m afraid we haven’t got any money at the moment, Nan.’

      ‘Nonsense,’ said Nanny.

      She looked at Roberta and said, ‘You don’t grow much, Miss Robin.’

      ‘No, Nanny. I rather think I’ve finished. I’m twenty now, you know.’

      ‘Same age as Miss Frid and look how she’s shot up. You need nourishing.’

      ‘Nan,’ said Frid. ‘Uncle Gabriel’s coming tomorrow.’

      ‘Hm’m,’ said Nanny.

      ‘We hope he’ll pull us out of the soup.’

      ‘So he ought to with his own flesh and blood in need.’

      Henry looked in at the door. By the singular scowl Nanny gave him, Roberta saw that he was still the favourite.

      ‘Hallo, Mrs Burnaby,’ he said. ‘Have you heard the news? We’re in the soup.’

      ‘It’s not the first time, Mr Henry, and it won’t be the last. His lordship’s brother will have to attend to it.’

      Henry looked fixedly at his old nurse. ‘If he doesn’t,’ he said, ‘I think we’ll really go bust.’

      Nanny’s hands, big-jointed with rheumatism, made a quick involuntary movement.

      ‘You’ll be all right, Nan,’ added Henry. ‘We fixed you up with an annuity, didn’t we?’

      ‘I’m not thinking of that, Mr Henry.’

      ‘No. No, I don’t suppose you are. I was, though.’

      Nanny put on a pair of thick-lens spectacles and advanced upon Henry.

      ‘You put your tongue out,’ she ordered.

      ‘Why on earth?’

      ‘Do as you’re told, Mr Henry.’

      Henry put out his tongue.

      ‘I thought so. Come to me before you go to bed this evening. You’re bilious.’

      ‘What utter rot.’

      ‘You’ve always shown your liver in your spirits.’

      ‘Nanny!’

      ‘Talking a lot of rubbish about matters that are beyond your understanding. His other lordship will soon send certain people about their business.’

      ‘Meaning us?’

      ‘Stuff and nonsense. You know what I mean. Miss Robin, you’d better take a glass of milk with your lunch. You’re over-excited.’

      ‘Yes, Nanny,’ said Roberta.

      Nanny returned to her game of patience.

      ‘The audience is over,’ said Henry.

      ‘I’d better unpack,’ said Roberta.

      ‘Leave out your pressings,’ said Nanny. ‘I’ll do ’em.’

      ‘Thank you, Nanny,’ said Roberta and went to her room.

      Now she was alone. The floor beneath her feet seemed unstable as though the sea, after five weeks’ domination, was not easily to be forgotten. It was strange to feel this physical reminder of an experience already so remote. Roberta unpacked. The clothes that she had bought in New Zealand no longer pleased her but she was too much preoccupied by the affairs of the Lampreys to be much concerned with her own. During the last four years Roberta had passed through adolescence into womanhood. The emotional phases proper to those years had been interrupted by tragedy. Two months ago when the languors and propulsions of adolescence had not yet quite abated, Roberta’s parents had been killed, and a kind of frost had closed about her emotions so that at first, though she felt the pain of her loss, it was with her reason rather than with her heart. Later, when the thaw came, she found that something unexpected had happened to her. Her affections, which had been easily and lightly bestowed, had crystallized, and she found herself indifferent to the greater number of her friends. With this discovery came another; that in four years her heart was still with an incredible family now half the world away. Her thought returned to Deepacres and she wanted the Lampreys. More than any one else in the world she wanted them. They might be scatter-brained, unstable, reprehensible, but they suited Roberta and she supposed she suited them. When her father’s sister wrote to suggest that Roberta should come to England and live with her, Roberta was glad to go because, by the same mail, came a letter from Lady Charles Lamprey that awoke all her old love for the family. When it became certain that she would see them again she grew apprehensive lest they should find her an awkward carryover from their colonial days, but as soon as she saw Henry and Frid on the wharf she had felt safer, and now, as she put the last of her un-smart garments in a drawer that already contained several pieces of a toy railway, she was visited by the odd idea that it was she who had grown so much older and that the young Lampreys had merely grown taller.

      ‘Otherwise,’ thought Roberta, ‘they haven’t changed a bit.’

      The door opened and Lady Charles came in. She was now dressed. Her grey hair shone in a mass of small curls, her thin face was delicately powdered, and she looked and smelt delightful.

      ‘How’s old Robin Grey?’ she asked.

      ‘Very happy.’

      Lady Charles turned on the electric heater, drew up a chair, sat in it, folded her short skirt back over her knees and lit a cigarette. Roberta recognized, with a warm sense of familiarity, the signs of an impending gossip.

      ‘I hope you won’t be too uncomfortable, darling,’ said Lady Charles.

      ‘I’m in Heaven, Charlot, darling.’

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