Sparkling Cyanide. Агата Кристи
this fellow, Anthony Browne, you’re going about with? What do you know about him?’
She stared at him.
‘Know about him? Why, he was a friend of Rosemary’s!’
George’s face twitched. He blinked. He said in a dull heavy voice:
‘Yes, of course, so he was.’
Iris cried remorsefully:
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have reminded you.’
George Barton shook his head. He said gently:
‘No, no, I don’t want her forgotten. Never that. After all,’ he spoke awkwardly, his eyes averted, ‘that’s what her name means. Rosemary—remembrance.’ He looked full at her. ‘I don’t want you to forget your sister, Iris.’
She caught her breath.
‘I never shall.’
George went on:
‘But about this young fellow, Anthony Browne. Rosemary may have liked him, but I don’t believe she knew much about him. You know, you’ve got to be careful, Iris. You’re a very rich young woman.’
A kind of burning anger swept over her.
‘Tony—Anthony—has plenty of money himself. Why, he stays at Claridge’s when he’s in London.’
George Barton smiled a little. He murmured:
‘Eminently respectable—as well as costly. All the same, my dear, nobody seems to know much about this fellow.’
‘He’s an American.’
‘Perhaps. If so, it’s odd he isn’t sponsored more by his own Embassy. He doesn’t come much to this house, does he?’
‘No. And I can see why, if you’re so horrid about him!’
George shook his head.
‘Seem to have put my foot in it. Oh well. Only wanted to give you a timely warning. I’ll have a word with Lucilla.’
‘Lucilla!’ said Iris scornfully.
George said anxiously:
‘Is everything all right? I mean, does Lucilla see to it that you get the sort of time you ought to have? Parties—all that sort of thing?’
‘Yes, indeed, she works like a beaver …’
‘Because, if not, you’ve only got to say, you know, child. We could get hold of someone else. Someone younger and more up to date. I want you to enjoy yourself.’
‘I do, George. Oh, George, I do.’
He said rather heavily:
‘Then that’s all right. I’m not much hand at these shows myself—never was. But see to it you get everything you want. There’s no need to stint expense.’
That was George all over—kind, awkward, blundering.
True to his promise, or threat, he ‘had a word’ with Mrs Drake on the subject of Anthony Browne, but as Fate would have it the moment was unpropitious for gaining Lucilla’s full attention.
She had just had a cable from that ne’er-do-well son who was the apple of her eye and who knew, only too well, how to wring the maternal heartstrings to his own financial advantage.
‘Can you send me two hundred pounds. Desperate. Life or death. Victor.’
‘Victor is so honourable. He knows how straitened my circumstances are and he’d never apply to me except in the last resource. He never has. I’m always so afraid he’ll shoot himself.’
‘Not he,’ said George Barton unfeelingly.
‘You don’t know him. I’m his mother and naturally I know what my own son is like. I should never forgive myself if I didn’t do what he asked. I could manage by selling out those shares.’
George sighed.
‘Look here, Lucilla. I’ll get full information by cable from one of my correspondents out there. We’ll find out just exactly what sort of a jam Victor’s in. But my advice to you is to let him stew in his own juice. He’ll never make good until you do.’
‘You’re so hard, George. The poor boy has always been unlucky—’
George repressed his opinions on that point. Never any good arguing with women.
He merely said:
‘I’ll get Ruth on to it at once. We should hear by tomorrow.’
Lucilla was partially appeased. The two hundred was eventually cut down to fifty, but that amount Lucilla firmly insisted on sending.
George, Iris knew, provided the amount himself though pretending to Lucilla that he was selling her shares. Iris admired George very much for his generosity and said so. His answer was simple.
‘Way I look at it—always some black sheep in the family. Always someone who’s got to be kept. Someone or other will have to fork out for Victor until he dies.’
‘But it needn’t be you. He’s not your family.’
‘Rosemary’s family’s mine.’
‘You’re a darling, George. But couldn’t I do it? You’re always telling me I’m rolling.’
He grinned at her.
‘Can’t do anything of that kind until you’re twenty-one, young woman. And if you’re wise you won’t do it then. But I’ll give you one tip. When a fellow wires that he’ll end everything unless he gets a couple of hundred by return, you’ll usually find that twenty pounds will be ample … I daresay a tenner would do! You can’t stop a mother coughing up, but you can reduce the amount—remember that. Of course Victor Drake would never do away with himself, not he! These people who threaten suicide never do it.’
Never? Iris thought of Rosemary. Then she pushed the thought away. George wasn’t thinking of Rosemary. He was thinking of an unscrupulous, plausible young man in Rio de Janeiro.
The net gain from Iris’s point of view was that Lucilla’s maternal preoccupations kept her from paying full attention to Iris’s friendship with Anthony Browne.
So—on to the ‘next thing, Madam.’ The change in George! Iris couldn’t put it off any longer. When had that begun? What was the cause of it?
Even now, thinking back, Iris could not put her finger definitely on the moment when it began. Ever since Rosemary’s death George had been abstracted, had had fits of inattention and brooding. He had seemed older, heavier. That was all natural enough. But when exactly had his abstraction become something more than natural?
It was, she thought, after their clash over Anthony Browne, that she had first noticed him staring at her in a bemused, perplexed manner. Then he formed a new habit of coming home early from business and shutting himself up in his study. He didn’t seem to be doing anything there. She had gone in once and found him sitting at his desk staring straight ahead of him. He looked at her when she came in with dull lack-lustre eyes. He behaved like a man who has had a shock, but to her question as to what was the matter, he replied briefly, ‘Nothing.’
As the days went on, he went about with the care-worn look of a man who has some definite worry upon his mind.
Nobody had paid very much attention. Iris certainly hadn’t. Worries were always conveniently ‘Business’.
Then, at odd intervals, and with no seeming reason, he began to ask questions. It was then that she began to put his manner down as definitely ‘queer’.
‘Look here, Iris, did Rosemary ever talk to you much?’
Iris stared at him.
‘Why,