The Terror. Martin Edwards

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       CHAPTER V

      IT was a beautiful spring morning. There was a tang in the air which melted in the yellow sunlight.

      Mr Goodman had not gone to the city that morning, though it was his day, for he made a practice of attending at his office for two or three days every month. Mrs Elvery, that garrulous woman, was engaged in putting the final touches to her complexion; and Veronica, her gawkish daughter, was struggling, by the aid of a dictionary, with a recalcitrant poem—for she wooed the gentler muse in her own gentler moments.

      Mr Goodman sat on a sofa, dozing over his newspaper. No sound broke the silence but the scratching of Veronica’s pen and the ticking of the big grandfather’s clock.

      This vaulted chamber, which was the lounge of Monkshall, had changed very little since the days when it was the anteroom to a veritable refectory. The columns that monkish hands had chiselled had crumbled a little, but their chiselled piety, hidden now behind the oak panelling, was almost as legible as on the day the holy men had written them.

      Through the open French window there was a view of the broad, green park, with its clumps of trees and its little heap of ruins that had once been the Mecca of the antiquarian.

      Mr Goodman did not hear the excited chattering of the birds, but Miss Veronica, in that irritable frame of mind which a young poet can so readily reach, turned her head once or twice in mute protest.

      ‘Mr Goodman,’ she said softly.

      There was no answer, and she repeated his name impatiently.

      ‘Mr Goodman!’

      ‘Eh?’ He looked up, startled.

      ‘What rhymes with “supercilious”?’ asked Veronica sweetly.

      Mr Goodman considered, stroking chin reflectively.

      ‘Bilious?’ he suggested.

      Miss Elvery gave a despairing cluck.

      ‘That won’t do at all. It’s such an ugly word.’

      ‘And such an ugly feeling,’ shuddered Mr Goodman. Then: ‘What are you writing?’ he asked.

      She confessed to her task.

      ‘Good heavens!’ he said despairingly. ‘Fancy writing poetry at this time in the morning! It’s almost like drinking before lunch. Who is it about?’

      She favoured him with an arch smile. ‘You’ll think I’m an awful cat if I tell you.’ And, as he reached out to take her manuscript: ‘Oh, I really couldn’t—it’s about somebody you know.’

      Mr Goodman frowned.

      ‘“Supercilious” was the word you used. Who on earth is supercilious?’

      Veronica sniffed—she always sniffed when she was being unpleasant.

      ‘Don’t you think she is—a little bit? After all, her father only keeps a boarding house.’

      ‘Oh, you mean Miss Redmayne?’ asked Goodman quietly. He put down his paper. ‘A very nice girl. A boarding house, eh? Well, I was the first boarder her father ever had, and I’ve never regarded this place as a boarding house.’

      There was a silence, which the girl broke. ‘Mr Goodman, do you mind if I say something?’

      ‘Well, I haven’t objected so far, have I?’ he smiled.

      ‘I suppose I’m naturally romantic,’ she said. ‘I see mystery in almost everything. Even you are mysterious.’ And, when he looked alarmed: ‘Oh, I don’t mean sinister!’

      He was glad she did not.

      ‘But Colonel Redmayne is sinister,’ she said emphatically.

      He considered this.

      ‘He never struck me that way,’ he said slowly.

      ‘But he is,’ she persisted. ‘Why did he buy this place miles from everywhere and turn it into a boarding house?’

      ‘To make money, I suppose.’

      She smiled triumphantly and shook her head.

      ‘But he doesn’t. Mamma says that he must lose an awful lot of money. Monkshall is very beautiful, but it has got an awful reputation. You know that it is haunted, don’t you?’

      He laughed good-naturedly at this. Mr Goodman was an old boarder and had heard this story before.

      ‘I’ve heard things and seen things. Mamma says that there must have been a terrible crime committed here. It is!’ She was more emphatic.

      Mr Goodman thought that her mother let her mind dwell too much on murders and crimes. For the stout and fussy Mrs Elvery wallowed in the latest tragedies which filled the columns of the Sunday newspapers.

      ‘She does love a good murder,’ agreed Veronica. ‘We had to put off our trip to Switzerland last year because of the River Bicycle Mystery. Do you think Colonel Redmayne ever committed a murder?’

      ‘What a perfectly awful thing to say!’ said her shocked audience.

      ‘Why is he so nervous?’ asked Veronica intensely. ‘What is he afraid of? He is always refusing boarders. He refused that nice young man who came yesterday.’

      ‘Well, СКАЧАТЬ