The Red House Mystery A. A. Milne (most life changing books TXT) 📖

business; we know he’s hiding a secret or two. Even if he doesn’t suspect that we’re on his tracks, he must feel that at any moment we might stumble on something.”

Bill gave a grunt of assent, and they went slowly on again.

“What about tonight?” he said, after a lengthy blow at his pipe.

“Try a piece of grass,” said Antony, offering it to him. Bill pushed it through the mouthpiece, blew again, said, “That’s better,” and returned the pipe to his pocket.

“How are we going to get out without Cayley knowing?”

“Well, that wants thinking over. It’s going to be difficult. I wish we were sleeping at the inn.⁠ ⁠… Is this Miss Norbury, by any chance?”

Bill looked up quickly. They were close to Jallands now, an old thatched farmhouse which, after centuries of sleep, had woken up to a new world, and had forthwith sprouted wings; wings, however, of so discreet a growth that they had not brought with them any obvious change of character, and Jallands even with a bathroom was still Jallands. To the outward view, at any rate. Inside, it was more clearly Mrs. Norbury’s.

“Yes⁠—Angela Norbury,” murmured Bill. “Not bad-looking, is she?”

The girl who stood by the little white gate of Jallands was something more than “not bad-looking,” but in this matter Bill was keeping his superlatives for another. In Bill’s eyes she must be judged, and condemned, by all that distinguished her from Betty Calladine. To Antony, unhampered by these standards of comparison, she seemed, quite simply, beautiful.

“Cayley asked us to bring a letter along,” explained Bill, when the necessary handshakings and introductions were over. “Here you are.”

“You will tell him, won’t you, how dreadfully sorry I am about⁠—about what has happened? It seems so hopeless to say anything; so hopeless even to believe it. If it is true what we’ve heard.”

Bill repeated the outline of events of yesterday.

“Yes.⁠ ⁠… And Mr. Ablett hasn’t been found yet?” She shook her head in distress. “It still seems to have happened to somebody else; somebody we didn’t know at all.” Then, with a sudden grave smile which included both of them, “But you must come and have some tea.”

“It’s awfully decent of you,” said Bill awkwardly, “but we⁠—er⁠—”

“You will, won’t you?” she said to Antony.

“Thank you very much.”

Mrs. Norbury was delighted to see them, as she always was to see any man in her house who came up to the necessary standard of eligibility. When her lifework was completed, and summed up in those beautiful words: “A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between Angela, daughter of the late John Norbury.⁠ ⁠…” then she would utter a grateful Nunc dimittis and depart in peace⁠—to a better world, if Heaven insisted, but preferably to her new son-in-law’s more dignified establishment. For there was no doubt that eligibility meant not only eligibility as a husband.

But it was not as “eligibles” that the visitors from the Red House were received with such eagerness today, and even if her special smile for “possibles” was there, it was instinctive rather than reasoned. All that she wanted at this moment was news⁠—news of Mark. For she was bringing it off at last; and, if the engagement columns of the Morning Post were preceded, as in the case of its obituary columns, by a premonitory bulletin, the announcement of yesterday would have cried triumphantly to the world, or to such part of the world as mattered: “A marriage has very nearly been arranged (by Mrs. Norbury), and will certainly take place, between Angela, only daughter of the late John Norbury, and Mark Ablett of the Red House.” And, coming across it on his way to the sporting page, Bill would have been surprised. For he had thought that, if anybody, it was Cayley.

To the girl it was neither. She was often amused by her mother’s ways; sometimes ashamed of them; sometimes distressed by them. The Mark Ablett affair had seemed to her particularly distressing, for Mark was so obviously in league with her mother against her. Other suitors, upon whom her mother had smiled, had been embarrassed by that championship; Mark appeared to depend on it as much as on his own attractions; great though he thought these to be. They went a-wooing together. It was a pleasure to turn to Cayley, that hopeless ineligible.

But alas! Cayley had misunderstood her. She could not imagine Cayley in love⁠—until she saw it, and tried, too late, to stop it. That was four days ago. She had not seen him since, and now here was this letter. She dreaded opening it. It was a relief to feel that at least she had an excuse for not doing so while her guests were in the house.

Mrs. Norbury recognized at once that Antony was likely to be the more sympathetic listener; and when tea was over, and Bill and Angela had been dispatched to the garden with the promptness and efficiency of the expert, dear Mr. Gillingham found himself on the sofa beside her, listening to many things which were of even greater interest to him than she could possibly have hoped.

“It is terrible, terrible,” she said. “And to suggest that dear Mr. Ablett⁠—”

Antony made suitable noises.

“You’ve seen Mr. Ablett for yourself. A kinder, more warmhearted man⁠—”

Antony explained that he had not seen Mr. Ablett.

“Of course, yes, I was forgetting. But, believe me, Mr. Gillingham, you can trust a woman’s intuition in these matters.”

Antony said that he was sure of this.

“Think of my feelings as a mother.”

Antony was thinking of Miss Norbury’s feelings as a daughter, and wondering if she guessed that her affairs were now being discussed with a stranger. Yet what could he do? What, indeed, did he want to do except listen, in the hope of learning? Mark engaged, or about to be engaged! Had that any bearing on the events of yesterday? What, for instance, would Mrs. Norbury have thought of brother Robert, that family skeleton? Was this another reason for wanting brother Robert out of the way?

“I never liked him, never!”

“Never liked⁠—?” said Antony, bewildered.

“That cousin