The Murder at the Vicarage. Агата Кристи
send it round? The state you got into and you telephoned Scotland Yard and made the most frightful fuss.’
There are things one hates being reminded of. I had really been strangely foolish on the occasion in question. I said:
‘If you don’t mind, dear, I want to get on with the C.E.M.S.’
Griselda gave a sigh of intense irritation, ruffled my hair up on end, smoothed it down again, said:
‘You don’t deserve me. You really don’t. I’ll have an affair with the artist. I will—really and truly. And then think of the scandal in the parish.’
‘There’s a good deal already,’ I said mildly.
Griselda laughed, blew me a kiss, and departed through the window.
Griselda is a very irritating woman. On leaving the luncheon table, I had felt myself to be in a good mood for preparing a really forceful address for the Church of England Men’s Society. Now I felt restless and disturbed.
Just when I was really settling down to it, Lettice Protheroe drifted in.
I use the word drifted advisedly. I have read novels in which young people are described as bursting with energy—joie de vivre, the magnificent vitality of youth … Personally, all the young people I come across have the air of amiable wraiths.
Lettice was particularly wraith-like this afternoon. She is a pretty girl, very tall and fair and completely vague. She drifted through the French window, absently pulled off the yellow beret she was wearing and murmured vaguely with a kind of far-away surprise: ‘Oh! it’s you.’
There is a path from Old Hall through the woods which comes out by our garden gate, so that most people coming from there come in at that gate and up to the study window instead of going a long way round by the road and coming to the front door. I was not surprised at Lettice coming in this way, but I did a little resent her attitude.
If you come to a Vicarage, you ought to be prepared to find a Vicar.
She came in and collapsed in a crumpled heap in one of my big armchairs. She plucked aimlessly at her hair, staring at the ceiling.
‘Is Dennis anywhere about?’
‘I haven’t seen him since lunch. I understood he was going to play tennis at your place.’
‘Oh!’ said Lettice. ‘I hope he isn’t. He won’t find anybody there.’
‘He said you asked him.’
‘I believe I did. Only that was Friday. And today’s Tuesday.’
‘It’s Wednesday,’ I said.
‘Oh, how dreadful!’ said Lettice. ‘That means that I’ve forgotten to go to lunch with some people for the third time.’
Fortunately it didn’t seem to worry her much.
‘Is Griselda anywhere about?’
‘I expect you’ll find her in the studio in the garden—sitting to Lawrence Redding.’
‘There’s been quite a shemozzle about him,’ said Lettice. ‘With father, you know. Father’s dreadful.’
‘What was the she—whatever it was about?’ I inquired.
‘About his painting me. Father found out about it. Why shouldn’t I be painted in my bathing dress? If I go on a beach in it, why shouldn’t I be painted in it?’
Lettice paused and then went on.
‘It’s really absurd—father forbidding a young man the house. Of course, Lawrence and I simply shriek about it. I shall come and be done here in your studio.’
‘No, my dear,’ I said. ‘Not if your father forbids it.’
‘Oh! dear,’ said Lettice, sighing. ‘How tiresome everyone is. I feel shattered. Definitely. If only I had some money I’d go away, but without it I can’t. If only father would be decent and die, I should be all right.’
‘You must not say things like that, Lettice.’
‘Well, if he doesn’t want me to want him to die, he shouldn’t be so horrible over money. I don’t wonder mother left him. Do you know, for years I believed she was dead. What sort of a young man did she run away with? Was he nice?’
‘It was before your father came to live here.’
‘I wonder what’s become of her. I expect Anne will have an affair with someone soon. Anne hates me—she’s quite decent to me, but she hates me. She’s getting old and she doesn’t like it. That’s the age you break out, you know.’
I wondered if Lettice was going to spend the entire afternoon in my study.
‘You haven’t seen my gramophone records, have you?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘How tiresome. I know I’ve left them somewhere. And I’ve lost the dog. And my wrist watch is somewhere, only it doesn’t much matter because it won’t go. Oh! dear, I am so sleepy. I can’t think why, because I didn’t get up till eleven. But life’s very shattering, don’t you think? Oh! dear, I must go. I’m going to see Dr Stone’s barrow at three o’clock.’
I glanced at the clock and remarked that it was now five-and-twenty to four.
‘Oh! Is it? How dreadful. I wonder if they’ve waited or if they’ve gone without me. I suppose I’d better go down and do something about it.’
She got up and drifted out again, murmuring over her shoulder:
‘You’ll tell Dennis, won’t you?’
I said ‘Yes’ mechanically, only realizing too late that I had no idea what it was I was to tell Dennis. But I reflected that in all probability it did not matter. I fell to cogitating on the subject of Dr Stone, a well-known archaeologist who had recently come to stay at the Blue Boar, whilst he superintended the excavation of a barrow situated on Colonel Protheroe’s property. There had already been several disputes between him and the Colonel. I was amused at his appointment to take Lettice to see the operations.
It occurred to me that Lettice Protheroe was something of a minx. I wondered how she would get on with the archaeologist’s secretary, Miss Cram. Miss Cram is a healthy young woman of twenty-five, noisy in manner, with a high colour, fine animal spirits and a mouth that always seems to have more than its full share of teeth.
Village opinion is divided as to whether she is no better than she should be, or else a young woman of iron virtue who purposes to become Mrs Stone at an early opportunity. She is in every way a great contrast to Lettice.
I could imagine that the state of things at Old Hall might not be too happy. Colonel Protheroe had married again some five years previously. The second Mrs Protheroe was a remarkably handsome woman in a rather unusual style. I had always guessed that the relations between her and her stepdaughter were not too happy.
I had one more interruption. This time, it was my curate, Hawes. He wanted to know the details of my interview with Protheroe. I told him that the Colonel had deplored his ‘Romish tendencies’ but that the real purpose of his visit had been on quite another matter. At the same time, I entered a protest of my own, and told him plainly that he must conform to my ruling. On the whole, he took my remarks very well.
I felt rather remorseful when he had gone for not liking him better. These irrational likes and dislikes that one takes to people are, I am sure, very unChristian.
With a sigh, I realized that the hands of the clock on my writing-table pointed to a quarter to five, a sign that it was really half-past four, and I made my way to the drawing-room.
Four of my parishioners were assembled there with teacups.