Miss Silver Comes To Stay

Patricia Wentworth

Miss Silver Comes To Stay

Miss Silver – #15, 1949

CHAPTER 1

Mary Stuart wrote, “My end is in my begi

Just where does the story begin-twenty-five years before when two young girls went to a dance and met the same young man? A fair girl who was Catherine Lee, and a dark girl who was Henrietta Cray-Catherine and Rietta, distant cousins, schoolfellows, and bosom friends, eighteen years of age, and James Theodulph Lessiter just turned twenty-one. Perhaps it begins there, or perhaps still farther back when three generations of Lessiters took whatever they wanted from the world and paid out of a steadily dwindling capital till in the end there wasn’t much for the last of them except an impoverished estate, a shabby old house, and an inherited conviction that the world was his oyster.

The story might begin there, or a little later when what James Lessiter wanted most out of all the world was Rietta Cray. He told her so in the orchard of Melling House under a May moon when she was nineteen and he was twenty-two. She told Catherine, and Catherine condoled. “You know, darling, there really isn’t any money at all, and Aunt Mildred will be furious.“ On the strength of long association and distant kinship, Mrs. Lessiter was Aunt Mildred to both the girls. None of which would have made either of them anything but a most unwelcome daughter-in-law, and what little money there was remained quite firmly in Mildred Lessiter’s hands. James couldn’t lay a finger on it. He went out into the world to make his fortune with large expectations and a conquering air. At twenty-three Catherine had married Edward Welby and was gone from Melling, and Rietta was settling down to nurse an invalid mother and bring up her sister’s boy, Carr Robertson, because Margaret and her husband were in India. Margaret died there, and after a decent interval Major Robertson married again. He sent money for Carr’s education, but he did not come home, and by and by he practically ceased to write. He died when Carr was fifteen. Perhaps the story begins there with Carr’s grudge against a world which would have got along very well without him. Or perhaps it begins with Catherine Welby’s return as a childless widow. Mildred Lessiter was still alive. Catherine went to see her, cried a good deal, and was offered the Gate House at a nominal rent. ”Really quite sweet, you know, Rietta- those dear little crinkly roses all over it. And being in the grounds of Melling House-well, it’s rather nice, don’t you think? And Aunt Mildred says Alexander can keep up the garden for me whilst he’s doing all the rest. It’s too, too sweet of her, and I shall be able to live on practically nothing at all, which is just as well, because that’s about as much as I shall have when everything is settled. It’s a very great shock to me Edward’s affairs being in such a state, and you know, when you’ve been accustomed to having everything it isn’t at all easy to come down to thinking about every halfpe

Rietta gave her an odd fleeting smile.

“I don’t know, Cathy, but then, you see, I’ve never had-” she paused deliberately, and then added, “everything.”

It was fifteen years after this that Miss Silver came down to visit her old friend Mrs. Voycey.

CHAPTER 2

As the train came to a standstill in Lenton station, Miss Maud Silver closed a capacious handbag upon her knitting and the purse from which she had just extracted her railway ticket, and descending a rather inconveniently high step, stood looking about her for a porter and for Mrs. Voycey. The question of whether she would recognize her after a lapse of years which might very easily have obliterated any likeness to the girl whom she remembered was naturally in the forefront of her mind. Cissy Christopher had become Cecilia Voycey, and the friends who had started as schoolgirls were elderly women.

Miss Silver did not consider that she herself had changed very much. Looking pensively that very morning at a photograph taken when she was leaving school to enter upon her first engagement as a governess, she reflected that even after all this time it was not at all a bad likeness. There was now some grey in her hair, but a good deal of its original mousy brown persisted, and probably would persist to the end. She still did it in just the same way, with an Alexandra fringe very firmly controlled under a net. Her neat features had not altered. Her pale, smooth skin had become older without losing its pallor or its smoothness. As for her clothes, they were not the same, but they were in the same ma

Looking along the platform, Miss Silver shook her head and dismissed the vision, for there, advancing to meet her, was a massive figure in thick checked tweeds and a rather battered hat on the back of her head. Not Cissy Christopher, who had been dead and gone for many a year, but quite undoubtedly Cecilia Voycey, flushed, bustling, hearty, and full of the kindest welcome.

Before she knew what was going to happen Miss Silver was being kissed.

“Maud! I’d have known you anywhere! Well, of course we’re both a few years older-we won’t say how many. Not that I mind. I always say being elderly is the best part of one’s life. You’ve got over all the tiresome things like being in love, and wondering what’s going to happen to you-you’ve made your friends, and you’ve made your life, and you go along very pleasantly. Hawkins-here!” She reached out sideways and grabbed a passing porter by the arm. “This lady has got some luggage. Tell him what it is, Maud, and he’ll bring it out to the car.”

As they drove away from the station yard in the small car which appeared to be a very tight fit for its owner, Mrs. Voycey was loud in her pleasure at this eagerly awaited reunion.

“I’ve been counting the days-just like we used to when it was getting on for the end of term. Fu