Down Under by Patricia Wentworth | eBook

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Down Under

A Benbow Smith Mystery

By Patricia Wentworth

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

CHAPTER 1

Elfreda Moore turned round from the telephone with a despairing gesture.

"Aunt Hortensia, she says she sent them off yesterday morning — she swears she did."

"Then she's not speaking the truth," said Miss Hortensia Carew. "Any time before one o'clock, and they would have been here by the first post."

She spoke in her most decided manner, and she could be very decided. She was small, pretty, with fluffy white hair, eyes of the brightest china blue, and a complexion which was still admired, especially by Miss Hortensia Carew. She had managed her brother and her brother's house for twenty-two years, and now that Rose Anne was to be married, there would never be any question of the reins being taken from her hands. From this point of view the marriage had her approval. But why make such a fuss about it? Girls were married every day, weren't they? One could have been married oneself several times over if one had wanted to.

She put her gold-rimmed pince-nez straight, and frowned at Elfreda, who continued to bleat.

"She swears she sent them. She says they were posted before ten. Isn't it grim?"

The Reverend James Carew looked suddenly over the top of the Times and enquired in an irritated voice,

"What's the matter now? What hasn't been posted? What hasn't arrived? There isn't a minute's peace! I am reading an article about the stratosphere. Remarkably interesting — if I could get a minute's peace!"

"Oh, Uncle James — the bridesmaids' wreaths. The dresses came yesterday — from Madame Frederica's, you know — and she hadn't put in the wreaths, and we rang up at once, and she swore she'd send them by the very next post, and they haven't come."

"Your uncle is not interested in wreaths," said Miss Hortensia acidly.

Elfreda couldn't believe it. You might be old, and an uncle, and a person who read articles on the stratosphere, but it wasn't possible that you should take no interest in the wreaths for your own daughter's bridesmaids. She said protestingly,

"Isn't it grim, Uncle James?"

Mr Carew got to his feet and began to drift towards the door, paper in hand. He had the same regular features as his sister. All the Carews had regular features — it annoyed Elfreda dreadfully that she should have taken after her father's family — but James Carew's eyes were hazy instead of sharp, and his fair skin had gone tired and grey. His sister managed him because he had stopped taking much interest in his own life when Rose Anne's mother died. He had a vague fondness for Elfreda though he considered her noisy. He said quite kindly,

"The wreaths will probably come."

"But the last post's in."

He paused at the door.

"There will be one tomorrow."

"But the wedding's tomorrow — Rose Anne's wedding."

She spoke to an empty doorway. Mr Carew had disappeared.

"Aunt Hortensia — what are we to do?"

Miss Carew was engaged in ticking off names on a long, neat list. Every time she had to look up she lost her place and was obliged to go back to the beginning again. As the list had already been checked at least a dozen times, this did not really matter, but every time it happened she became a little crosser. Weddings always made her cross, and Rose Anne's wedding had already filled the house with people, upset its well ordered routine, and turned two capable, well trained maids into giggling chatterboxes. Goodness knew how long it would take to get settled down again, and she couldn't go away and shut herself up in the study with the Times like James. She looked up with a frown and a jerk of the head.

"Go and tell Rose Anne. It's her business, I suppose."

Elfreda hesitated.

"Oliver's only just come. They're in the garden."

Miss Hortensia coloured sharply.

"Good gracious — isn't he going to have her for the rest of his life? Go and tell her at once! And she must make her own arrangements. I can't do everything."

Elfreda ran out of the room — quickly, because she didn't want to have a row right in the middle of Rose Anne's wedding and she felt one coming on. How Rose Anne had contrived to live all those years with Aunt Hortensia she simply couldn't imagine. Uncle James wasn't too bad, but Aunt Hortensia was a menace.

She opened the garden door and stepped out. It was going to be fine for the wedding all right — bright sun, cold air, a nip of frost tonight perhaps, and a lovely October day tomorrow for Oliver and Rose Anne.

She stood looking down the garden, a plump girl with a lot of fair hair. She had good grey eyes but rather light lashes. Her thick fair eyebrows rose to a peak in the middle and gave her rather a surprised look. She would have been prettier if she had weighed less. She had a soft heart and a sweet tooth. She adored Rose Anne, who was twenty-two to her nineteen. She didn't want to break in on her and Oliver. She stood there hesitating and thinking about the wedding. Mary Leigh, the other bridesmaid, was dark, and they were going to wear stiff dresses of lilac and white shot taffeta with flat wreaths of pink and mauve flowers like highly sophisticated daisies, and they were to carry sprays of Michaelmas daisies and pink chrysanthemums. The wreaths were very becoming. Frederica was a beast. If they didn't come, they might use some of the biggest Michaelmas daisies — pink and mauve ones, just single flowers nipped off and sewn on a narrow strip of net. They must be looked over for earwigs though. Grim to have an earwig in your hair at Rose Anne's wedding.

She went down the narrow path between the apple trees. She knew just where they would be, in the sheltered sunny corner where a bit of old brick wall kept the wind off and you could look across at the dahlias, and the daisies, and the orange heleniums.

But Rose Anne and Oliver Loddon were looking at each other. Rose Anne saw a fair young man with lines of humour about his mouth and a little frown between his eyes, a quick frown which came, and went, and came again. The eyes told very little as a rule. Just now they were telling Rose Anne that he loved her. They were no-coloured eyes and could be secret. She saw this. She saw Oliver who had made love to her the third time they spoke together. And tomorrow he would be her husband.

Oliver saw Rose Anne, lovely and beloved, most gentle, most gracious — a loving heart, a gentle mind, a sweet intelligence — the turn of her head sheer grace, the texture of her skin fine as the rose petal just drifted from the wall. He would have liked to set it against her cheek, rose against rose, but he refrained, because any movement, any word, must break the enchantment of the hour. He looked at her, and wondered whether he could love her more, whether the years which steadied and deepened love would rob him of this quivering delight in her beauty, her perfection — the sun on her chestnut hair and the lovely shades in it, grey-blue eyes, very dark, very deep, the same thick lashes that Elfreda had, but dark instead of light, and in place of surprised fair brows a delicate arch much darker than her hair. He saw these things, and the way she had of smiling without seeming to move her lips, and the little ripple which saved her nose from being merely straight.

Elfreda came round the last apple tree, and thought, "She's lovely. He's awfully in love with her. Lucky them!"

They both moved. Oliver frowned, and then smiled quickly, because he was in a smiling mood, and life was good and he liked Elfreda. "Rose Anne —" Elfreda thought — "she was in a dream — I've waked her — I wish I hadn't. Why couldn't Aunt Hortensia leave them alone?" She said in her pretty, fresh voice,

"I didn't want to come — Aunt Hortensia made me. I do hate her, don't you? But the wreaths haven't come, and she said I was to tell you. And Frederica swears she sent them off before ten yesterday, and of course she couldn't have, or else they've got lost on the way. And don't you think we could do something with Michaelmas daisies instead?"

"I expect we could," said Rose Anne. Her voice was gentle and a little aloof.

Oliver laughed.

"What do you want to do with them?"

He was the first person who had taken the least interest. Elfreda's heart warmed to him.

"Well, I thought we might take some of the big ones, just the single flowers — October Dawn, and Lil Fardell, and Queen Mary — and put them on a strip of net and wind them in and out of our hair, only the snag is that Mary simply can't wear real flowers. She says they just look at her once and die. That's why we were having the wreaths from Frederica."

"Flowers die on flirts, don't they?" said Oliver. "I shall look forward to Mary."

Elfreda giggled.

"Oh, but she isn't. That's the comic part — she couldn't flirt to save her life — doesn't know how to. Do you like flirts?"

"In reason," said Oliver Loddon.

"Rose Anne can't flirt," said Elfreda in a teasing voice.

"She doesn't want you to marry me under false pretences," said Rose Anne.

"Rose Anne doesn't need to flirt," said Oliver. "She just looks, and we fall down flat — at least that's what happened to me."

Rose Anne got up: She was smiling. She didn't say anything. Her lashes came down and hid her eyes. She moved away from them, going down the border, not picking among the flowers, but looking at them and touching one here and there. All at once she looked back over her shoulder and spoke,

"Did anyone ring up — for me?"

CHAPTER 2

Elfreda said, "No."

Rose Anne went on down the border as far as the tall pink dahlias. She stood looking at them for a moment, or looking past them, and then turned and came back again walking slowly, her eyes downcast and just the hint of a smile about her lips. Afterwards, when every word and look were being gathered up and put under the microscope, Elfreda was questioned and cross-questioned as to just what Rose Anne had said, and just how Rose Anne had looked.

"But what did she say, Elfreda? Tell us exactly what she said."

And Elfreda in tears: "She said, 'Was there a call for me?'"

"That is not what you said before." This was Miss Hortensia.

"Well, that's what she meant. She said, 'Did anyone ring up for me?'"

"You should be accurate. It might be very important. Are you sure that that is what she said?"

In the midst of her misery Elfreda was heartened by a flare of rage. She stamped an angry foot.

"Yes, I am sure! She just looked over her shoulder and she said, 'Did anyone ring up for me?'"

"And how did she look?" said Miss Hortensia.

Elfreda choked. They might badger, and harry, and confuse her until she didn't know what anyone had said, but she would never forget how Rose Anne had looked, with the pale bright sun shining on her, and the pink, and lilac, and blue of the Michaelmas daisies, and the very bright pink of the dahlias. She choked and ran out of the room, and presently they brought her back and asked her the same questions all over again, and a lot more besides.

But all this was not yet. This was the moment when Rose Anne was coming towards them and the sun was bright on her, and Oliver's love was bright on her. She walked in this double brightness, and it dazzled Elfreda a little and made her want to cry. She ran back to the house, and was scolded because, after all, nothing had been settled about the wreaths. The scolding took place in the dining-room where Miss Hortensia was putting out the best glass. Right in the middle of it the telephone bell rang. The telephone lived in the schoolroom, which had once been Rose Anne's nursery.

The sound of the bell was most welcome. Elfreda had just been going to lose her temper, and it's no good losing your temper — not with aunts anyway. Thank goodness no one could expect you to stay and be scolded with the telephone ringing its head off. She bounded joyfully out of the room, slammed the schoolroom door behind her, and took up the receiver. It might be news of the wreaths —

A man's voice said, "Is that Miss Carew?"

There were endless questions afterwards as to his voice. Elfreda could only say and stick to it that it was a man's voice. It made no more impression on her than that, because her mind was full of Rose Anne, and the wreaths, and Aunt Hortensia being so disagreeable. The voice might have been young or it might have been middle-aged, it might have been rich or it might have been poor, it might have had ginger eyelashes or a bald patch on the top of its head, or it might have been like Gary Cooper. As far as she was concerned it was just a man's voice, and it said, "Is that Miss Carew?"

"Miss Hortensia Carew, or Miss Rose Anne Carew?" said Elfreda briskly. She wasn't going to drag Rose Anne in from the garden if she could help it.

"Miss Rose Carew —"

Elfreda was quite sure he said Rose and not Rose Anne, because that was how she knew that he couldn't be a friend. Rose Anne always had her two names from everyone who knew her, so a person who said Miss Rose Carew must be a stranger. And that was the first hint of the strangeness that was going to break in upon them — just a man's voice on the telephone asking for Miss Rose Carew.

Elfreda dealt firmly with him.

"She's engaged. What is it? I can take a message."

The voice said, "I'm afraid you can't." And then, "It doesn't matter — I can ring again," and right on the top of that the click of the receiver.

Elfreda hung up at her end. She meant to tell Rose Anne at tea, but there was an influx of cousins up from Devonshire for the wedding, Carews and Leighs — Madeline and Robert Carew, and Mary Leigh, who was the other bridesmaid and Madeline's sister, and Hugo Ross, who wasn't a cousin but was married to Loveday Leigh, who was somewhere between a fourth and fifth cousin of Rose Anne's and a second cousin twice removed of Madeline's and Mary's. They were all staying at the Angel. So was Oliver Loddon, and there was a great deal of talk about how they had all been fitted in, and how pleased and excited the Garstnets were, and how comfortable Mrs Garstnet made you, and how absolutely thrilled she was about the wedding.

"She's a Devonshire woman, you know, and she was Rose Anne's nurse. She married Mr Garstnet when his first wife died about ten years ago." This was Elfreda explaining to Hugo Ross, who said, "It all sounds very j-jolly."

Miss Hortensia stopped in the middle of pouring out a cup of tea for Loveday.

"I was thankful when she left. She had no sense of discipline whatever. She allowed Rose Anne to do anything she liked."

"Now I thought her a very comfortable woman," said James Carew. "I don't think you've given me any sugar, Hortensia."

"It's extremely bad for you, James — Elfreda, pass your uncle the sugar — Mrs Garstnet may have been what you call comfortable, but I can only repeat that I was thankful when she left."

"I cried myself sick though she was only going as far as the Angel," said Rose Anne.

"It's a pity the child is so delicate," said James Carew, stirring his tea. "Poor little Florrie."

Miss Hortensia sniffed.

"Ruined by indulgence! Just exactly what I always complained of here. Florrie wants treating with firmness. She's a naughty spoilt child, and those crying fits of hers are nothing but temper. She should be whipped for them instead of being cossetted and encouraged. No, James, I know you don't agree with me, but that is my opinion, and as for allowing Rose Anne to be at the Garstnets' beck and call every time Florrie has a tantrum, I consider it the height of folly. Anyhow they'll have to do without her after tomorrow, so perhaps they'll try a little discipline for a change."

Rose Anne coloured up. She was very fond of Florrie Garstnet, and it troubled her to think of the little creature crying for her when she was far away. She said in a low voice to Madeline,

"She had some sort of fright. No one knows quite what it was, but it started these crying fits. They send for me because she seems to think she's safe when I'm there — I don't know why. It's dreadful to see a child so frightened, but they hope she'll grow out of it. She is much better."

"She wants a good sound whipping," said Miss Hortensia in her small acid voice. "And as for those two stepsisters of hers, if they had been properly corrected when they were children they wouldn't have grown up the way they have."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Down Under by Patricia Wentworth. Copyright © 1937 J.B. Lippincott Company. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Down Under

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A Benbow Smith Mystery

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