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It really was a very little thing. Just a smear of powder on the front of Miranda’s violet robe, high up towards the shoulder. A little smudge of powder showing up against the purple when the lights came on-just ordinary face-powder with a greenish tinge. Anyone might have a smudge of powder on their dress. But it hadn’t been there when Miranda held both her hands in that exuberant welcome. And it wasn’t there when she plied her with those sandwiches and the savoury cake at tea, or when she laid the black velvet square on the table after it had been cleared and set the ebony stand and the crystal ball upon it. Thomasina was prepared to swear to that, and to seeing Miranda put up her hand to her head when she was pretending to wake from that faked trance. She had looked so ghastly when the lights came on-quite green-and it had all added to the effect. And of course too easy to look green if you have a pad or some cotton wool in your hand with the right powder on it. She remembered exactly how Miranda had brought up her hand in a kind of sweeping movement right across her face, her eyes, her brow. And of course it looked absolutely natural, because it is just what you do when you are sleepy, or have a headache, or when you first wake up. But Miranda was getting that greenish powder on to her face, and a little of it had dropped and marked her dress.
Thomasina’s hot anger had burned down to a steady flame. When you are too angry you can’t think, and she needed to think.
After she had been thinking for some time she felt quite clear in her mind. They wanted her to go. They had taken the very words of her advertisement, “A
Suppose it was really true. There must be some strong reason for the trick that had been played on her. If A
She went on thinking.
CHAPTER XXX
If the Miss Tremletts had been less conversational themselves they might have observed that Thomasina had very little to say for the rest of the evening, but they always had so much to say, and were in such close competition for the opportunity of saying it, that it really was just as well that she had nothing to contribute. Nothing could have suited them better than a guest who sat in attentive silence.
First of all they naturally desired to discuss Miranda’s trance and the enigmatic communication which it had produced. They had not liked A
“And if anything had, why should she wish to communicate with us?” said Miss Elaine.
“Very puzzling indeed,” said Miss Gwyneth. “Because she couldn’t possibly have met you, my dear Ina, and since she said her-‘I don’t want her to know’-the message couldn’t have been intended for Augustus.”
“So that only leaves myself and Gwyneth.”
“And really, as I said, we hardly knew her.”
“But these communications do so often seem to be quite irrelevant. Now I knew a case where a Miss Brown-or was it Jones-I can’t remember which, but she was a niece, or a cousin, or a friend of a Mrs. Hawkins who was at Wyshmere when your aunt was there. She went to a medium in London because a young man she was half engaged to had stopped writing a month or two after going to South America and she was afraid something had happened to him. She told the medium all about it, and she looked in the crystal and said she saw a ship coming into a foreign port-and of course that was quite all right, because he wrote once or twice after he got there. And then she said there was a dark woman, and a kind of a cloud. And right at the end she said she saw a funeral. Well, of course Miss Jones- if it was Jones and not Brown, and I really can’t remember which it was-well, naturally she was very much upset and made up her mind the young man was dead. But he wasn’t, because she heard quite a long time after that he had married a Chilean and they had four children. So you see the crystal was quite right about there being a dark girl, but the only thing the funeral could possibly have referred to was that old Mrs. Pondleby who lived over the way from them did die about three weeks later. But she was well over ninety and had been an invalid for a great many years, so that it wasn’t a surprise to anyone. And, as I said, it just shows-”
She did not explain what it showed, because the moment she stopped to take breath Miss Gwyneth broke in with the story of a young man who was co
“And all he knew was that he had seen a grey horse win the Derby. So he went to a medium who was being a good deal talked about just then, and the first thing she wanted to know was whether there was a grey horse ru
They went on telling stories like this for a couple of hours. Thomasina didn’t mind as long as they kept away from the subject of A