The Key

Mrs Mottram gazed at him in a soulful ma

‘Oh, no.’

‘Then you should.’

‘Should I?’

‘Certainly you should. Look, I will write you out a diet-sheet, and you shall keep to it. After a fortnight you shall tell me whether you are still getting no eggs.’

They moved off together. Garth took a cup of tea and a cakestand to Miss Doncaster, who helped herself to a nasturtium sandwich and said she disapproved of tea-parties in wartime. He sat down beside her and prepared to make himself agreeable.

‘I’m so sorry to hear that Miss Mary A

Miss Lucy Ellen helped herself to another sandwich.

‘She has every attention,’ she said. ‘If you ask me, I think I am the one to be pitied. If I go up and down stairs once I go up and down half a dozen times in an hour. We have turned the front bedroom into a sitting-room, and she is wheeled in there from her room. She can see everyone who is passing, and we have a great many visitors – too many, if you ask me – tracking up and down the stairs and bringing a lot of dirt into the house. Well, with only one maid, I’m the one that has to clear it up. I’m sure I never sit down. Are you here for long? I shouldn’t have thought you could be spared from your duties. If you ask me, I should say that everyone was getting too much leave. There’s Frederick Bush – his son was home for seven days last week.’

‘And now it’s me. I know – we ought to be working day and night with wet towels round our heads. We really do sometimes.’

‘I don’t believe it. Things would get done if you did. If you ask me, there’s too much idling and sloppy talk.’

They weren’t getting anywhere. He had been dragged away from Miss Mary A

‘You say your sister sees a lot of people. I suppose she knew Mr Harsch?’

Miss Doncaster sniffed.

‘If you could call it knowing. He was wrapped up in his experiments. I always said he’d blow himself up some day.’

Garth permitted himself a faint tinge of malice.

‘But he didn’t, did he?’

Miss Doncaster eyed him with the dislike which her features were so well qualified to express. She had the long, sharp nose and reddish eyes of a ferret, and the thi

‘I can’t say I see much difference between being blown up and being shot,’ she said tartly.

Garth went on trying to find out whether Miss Mary A

‘I expect you find Sophy very much aged,’ was her next remark.

Garth was astonished at his own anger. Some of it seemed to come back with him out of that past in which he had been a frightened little boy and Aunt Sophy one of the bulwarks of his world. He said with careful politeness, ‘Do you know, I don’t think she’s changed a bit for as long as I can remember.’

The ferret nose twitched and sniffed.

‘Not very observant, are you? Breaking up – that’s what Sophy is.’

After which she passed rapidly by way of the rector’s Extreme Views to the incompetence of Dr Edwards – ‘His own wife being a complete invalid is hardly a recommendation’; the decline of ma

At this point Miss Sophy saved his life by calling him over to be introduced to Dr Edwards. Out of the tail of his eye he saw Janice handing Marie biscuits to Miss Doncaster and being pi

When the tea-party broke up he walked home with her.

‘I’d forgotten what a terror she was,’ he said. ‘What do you suppose she’s saying about us?’

Janice, having been warned against attributing serious intentions to idle young men whose only idea was to amuse themselves, had a pretty fair idea. She blushed slightly and becomingly, and said, ‘I am a village maiden whose head is being turned, and you are a gay deceiver.’

There was something about the way she said it that tickled him – a delicately dry inflection, a faint, demure sparkle. He burst out laughing and said, ‘She didn’t warn you!’

‘She did.’

He went on laughing.

‘She’s a museum piece, you know.’

Rather to his surprise, Janice flared up.

‘Then I wish someone would lock her up in a museum.’ Her foot tapped the ground and she faced round upon him. ‘It’s all very well for you, to laugh! You don’t happen to live here – I do!’ Then, before he could speak, ‘Did you find out anything about Tuesday? You were talking to her for simply ages.’

‘You mean she was talking to me. And I didn’t find out a thing. What about you?’

Janice looked doubtful.

‘I didn’t like to ask questions, because they might have been the same as yours, and once she thought we were up to anything everyone in Bourne would know it too. But I did find out one person who was there on Tuesday evening, only-’

‘Who was it?’

‘Bush.’

‘Frederick Bush?

She nodded.

‘He came in to move some shelves out of the attic and put them up in the sitting-room – you know he does all that sort of odd job. Miss Mary A

Garth said, ‘Gosh!’