British Murder Mysteries – 10 Novels in One Volume. Charles Norris Williamson
except Corn Plasters; and she felt bound to mention that the mousetrap was open, the cheese waiting to be nibbled.
"Do you think she'd have me?" I asked—"the quaint creature, her ladyship?"
"Only too likely that she would," said Lady Kilmarny. "But remember, the worst is, she doesn't know she's a quaint creature. She is quite happy about herself, offensively happy, and would consider you the 'creature.' A truly awful person, my dear. A man in this hotel—the little thing you saw me talking to this morning, knows all about them both. I think they began in Peckham or somewhere. They would, you know, and call it 'S.W.' She was a chemist's daughter, and he was the humble assistant, long before the Pill materialized, so she refused him, and married a dashing doctor. But unfortunately he dashed into the bankruptcy court, and afterward she probably nagged him to death. Anyway he died—but not till long after Sam Turner had taken pity on some irrelevant widow, as his early love was denied him. The widow had a boy, to whom the stepfather was good—(really a very decent person according to his lights!) and kept on making pills and millions, until last year he lost his first wife and got a knighthood. The old love was a widow by this time, taking in lodgers in some neighbourhood where you do take lodgers, and Sir Samuel found and gathered her like a late rose. Naturally she puts on all the airs in the world, and diamonds in the morning. She'll treat you like the dirt under her feet, because that's her conception of her part—and yours. But I'll introduce you to her if you like."
After a little reflection, I did like; but as it seemed to me that there'd better not be two airs in the family, I said that I'd put on none at all, and make no pretensions.
"She's the kind that doesn't know a lady or gentleman without a label," my kind friend warned me. "You must be prepared for that."
"I'll be prepared for anything," I assured her. But when it came to the test, I wasn't quite.
Lady Kilmarny wrote a line to Lady Turnour, and asked if she might bring a maid to be interviewed—a young woman whom she could recommend. The note was sent down to the bride (who of course had the best suite in the hotel, on the first floor) and presently an answer came—saying that Her Ladyship would be pleased to receive Lady Kilmarny and the person in question.
Suddenly I felt that I must go alone. "Please leave me to my fate," I said. "I should be too self-conscious if you were with me. Probably I should laugh in her face, or do something dreadful."
"Very well," Lady Kilmarny agreed. "Perhaps you're right. Say that I sent you, and that, though you've never been with me, friends of mine know all about you. You might tell her that you were to have travelled with the Princess Boriskoff. That will impress her. She would kiss the boot of a Princess. Afterward, come up and tell me how you got on with 'Her Ladyship.'"
I was stupid to be nervous, and told myself so; but as I knocked at the door of the suite reserved for Millionaires and other Royalties, my heart was giving little ineffective jumps in my breast, like—as my old nurse used to say—"a frog with three legs."
"Come in!" called a voice with sharp, jagged edges.
I opened the door. In a private drawing-room as different as the personality of one woman from another, sat Lady Turnour. She faced me as I entered, so I had a good look at her, before casting down my eyes and composing my countenance to the self-abnegating meekness which I conceived fitting to a femme de chambre comme il faut.
She was enthroned on a sofa. One could hardly say less, there was so much of her, and it was all arranged as perfectly as if she were about to be photographed. No normal woman, merely sitting down, with no other object than to be comfortable, would curve the tail of her gown round in front of her like a sickle; or have just the point of one shoe daintily poised on a footstool; or the sofa-cushions at exactly the right angle behind her head to make a background; or the finger with all her best rings on it, keeping the place in an English illustrated journal.
I dared not believe that she had posed for me. It must have been for Lady Kilmarny; and that I alone should see the picture was a bad beginning.
She is of the age when a woman can still tell people that she is forty, hoping they will exclaim politely, "Impossible!"
It is not enough for her to be a Ladyship and a millionairess. She will be a beauty as well, or at all costs she will be looked at. To that end are her eyebrows and lashes black as jet, her undulated hair crimson, her lips a brighter shade of the same colour, and her skin of magnolia pallor, like the heroines of the novels which are sure to be her favourites. Once, she must have been handsome, a hollyhock queen of a kitchen-garden kingdom; but she would be far more attractive now if only she had "abdicated," as nice middle-aged women say in France.
Her dress was the very latest dream of a neurotic Parisian modiste, and would have been seductive on a slender girl. On her—well, at least she would have her wish in it—she would not pass unnoticed!
She looked surprised at sight of me, and I saw she didn't realize that I was the expected candidate.
"Lady Kilmarny couldn't come," I began to explain, "and—"
"Oh!" she cut me short. "So you are the young person she is recommending as a maid."
I corrected Miss Paget when she called me a "young woman," but times have changed since then, and in future I must humbly consent to be a young person, or even a creature.
For a minute I forgot, and almost sat down. It would have been the end of me if I had! Luckily I remembered What I was, and stood before my mistress, trying to look like Patience on a monument with butter in her mouth which mustn't be allowed to melt.
"What is your name?" began the catechism (and the word was "nime," according to Lady Turnour).
"N or M," nearly slipped out of my mouth, but I put Satan with all his mischief behind me, and answered that I was Lys d'Angely.
"Oh, the surname doesn't matter. As you're a French girl, I shall call you by your first name. It's always done."
(The first time in history, I'd swear, that a d'Angely was ever told his name didn't matter!)
"You seem to speak English very well for a French woman?" (This almost with suspicion.)
"My mother was American."
"How extraordinary!"
(This was apparently a tache. Evidently lady's-maids are expected not to have American mothers!)
"Let me hear your French accent."
I let her hear it.
"H'm! It seems well enough. Paris?"
"Paris, madame."
"Don't call me 'madame.' Any common person is madame. You should say 'your ladyship'."
I said it.
"And I want you should speak to me in the third person, like the French servants are supposed to do in good houses."
"If mad—if your ladyship wishes."
(Thank heaven for a sense of humour! My one wild desire was to laugh. Without that blessing, I should have yearned to slap her.)
"What references have you got from your last situation?"
"I have never been in service before—my lady."
"My word! That's bad. However, you're on the spot, and Lady Kilmarny recommends you. The poor Princess was going to try you, it seems. I should think she wouldn't have given much for a maid without any experience."
"I was to have had two thousand francs a year as the Princess's com—if the Princess was satisfied."
"Preposterous! I don't believe a word of it. Why, what can you do? Can you dress hair? Can you make a blouse?"
"I did my mother's hair, and sometimes my cousin's."
"Your mother! Your cousin! I'm talking of a lidy."
My sense of humour did