The Case of the Two Pearl Necklaces (Musaicum Vintage Mysteries). Dorothy Fielding
Mills always spoke in a loud voice as though any one, near or far, must be interested in his opinions, his questions, his lightest utterance.
He was a long, thin man with a long, thin face, long, thin lips, long, thin teeth, and a very cynical smile. Well turned out, he always slouched, whether walking or sitting, and whenever possible had a cigarette dangling from his lip.
In age he looked around thirty, but an extremely ripe thirty. His voice was unexpectedly big and booming.
She did not reply. What did she think of them?
"You seen them, Walsh?" Mills called to her cousin, as the latter passed them with his fiance.
They stopped at the question and came towards Kitty. Arthur's blue eyes were twinkling like a mischievous schoolboy's below the sandy eyebrows that seemed to begin indefinitely nowhere and end vaguely nowhere—like his chin.
"Yes, funny show. Clever, and all that..."
"Did you like them?" Mills asked carelessly.
"I dunno. What did you think of them, Vi?"
"Lousy," came the instant answer, as Miss Finch surveyed herself complacently over Arthur's shoulder in a wall-mirror. Afterwards, Kitty thought that the two ropes of pearls around Violet's throat should have been rubies, like drops of blood, so singular and so sinister a part did they play in the tragedy that followed. Violet Finch was handsome, in a heavy way. She had a masterful eye, but she was looking her flamboyant best to-night.
"I didn't care much for them, either," echoed Arthur. And Mills laughed.
Mrs. Finch came up. She had married a man called Gray, a year ago, but she remained Mrs. Finch to every one but the registrar. She was a little woman with deep-set eyes that were far too bright and unwinking. She was very plain, and used no make-up. Her dress was expensive enough, but carelessly put on. Her hands were restless, always fingering things on herself or on anything near her. She looked as though possessed of boundless determination and driving power.
"I thought them positively frightening," she said, joining in the talk, "actually sinister. I shouldn't like to be jerked about by a string, would you, Artie?" She laughed at her own words, and Mrs. Finch-Gray was more than plain, she was an ugly woman when she laughed. Her sharp chin poked forward, her mouth looked loose and frog-like.
Kitty was claimed for the dance and moved away. Arthur shook his head vaguely. "Depends," he said cautiously.
"On what Vi thinks?" Mills asked with studied carelessness.
Mrs. Finch—as people continued to call her—gave him a sharply warning look that suggested anger. Mills was her business partner.
"Naturally, any man's guided by what his fiance thinks," she said smoothly.
"Guided like the marionettes?" Mills flashed back at her with a suggestion of snapping his fingers at her vexation, as he strode forward to a woman in purple and silver and eagerly asked her to let him take her in to supper. This was Mrs. Yerkes, and Mills hoped very much to marry Mrs. Yerkes.
Arthur wrinkled his forehead and looked after him, then at Mrs. Finch.
"You two always sound to me as though you were sparring," he murmured. "Well, Vi, I must let that tiresome Lady Brygitte trample about on my toes for another round of the room." He moved away. But Violet, too, stood looking after Mills.
"He's a bit too clever," she said darkly.
"—And so sharp that he'll cut himself one of these days," finished her mother. For the moment the two were alone in a corner.
"You've got Arthur well broken in," Mrs. Finch murmured in a tone of grudging praise—as to a pupil.
Violet tossed her head.
"And we don't need your cracking the whip all the time, either!" she said ungratefully. "You and your marionettes I If it had been any one but Arthur he might have turned nasty!"
"And that's the thanks I get, is it?" Mrs. Finch demanded in a fierce whisper, as she thrust her face almost into her daughter's.
"I suppose you think you could have brought it off by yourself! It would be just like your conceit! No, no, my fine lady! It's your mother who's put you where you are, and don't you forget it!"
"You don't!" came from Violet, "and a nice fat sum of money you managed to borrow on the strength of my engagement to a rich man. Don't you suppose I know that?"
"And why not?" whispered her mother again. Then she fell silent, a tired look coming over her face. "And not a penny of it that I can stick to—yet," she went on. "These damned debts I They're enough to break down a horse. Debts everywhere, and you spending money like water. Who's to pay for that new car of yours?"
"Oh, I dunno," Violet said indifferently. "What about your new Daimler?"
"I only 'bought' that for this dance!" Mrs. Finch spoke meaningly and both women laughed outright. "I don't want dear Artie to smell a rat, and know just how deeply in the soup we really are, or would be, but for my having handled him just the way I did. The Daimler will be taken back to-morrow. It's all arranged. But I want a private word with you, Vi." Taking a key from her jewelled bag, she led her daughter into an empty card-room which she unlocked, and closed the door, standing against it.
"That sapphire pendant business was silly," she said then. "Luckily I made you find it before things got serious." Her words were light, but her eyes glittered. "By God!" She spoke with a sudden outflaming of fury. "If you think I've climbed up almost into safety to let you wreck me on its threshold, you don't know me even yet, my girl!" Her face was a daunting revelation of what she might be capable. Violet Finch stared at it in real fear. Then the face changed. Her mother hung up the curtains again, as it were, and spoke smoothly. "That aunt of his would be only too glad to ferret out anything against you."
"She can't!" Violet said, chin in air.
"No, I've seen to that," her mother retorted. "But you would have made a fool of yourself over Ronald Mills, if I hadn't stopped you."
"That's past," Violet said sullenly, picking up a paper from the table beside her.
"To go back, now, to the pendant," Mrs. Finch continued. "If I ever catch you trying games of that kind again before you're safely married to Arthur, you'll be sorry for yourself!" Again that look of latent ferocity swept up for a second, glowed like a red danger signal, and then dropped out of sight.
"Oh, all right!" Violet said sullenly. And then in a tone of intense surprise: "But what's my name doing here, on this paper?"
Mrs. Finch would have snatched it from her, but in physical strength Violet was her mother's superior.
"Why, it's something to do with my death!" She stared blankly at the paper in her hands.
"Oh, that!" Mrs. Finch said casually. "You knew, months ago, that I was going to sell the Reversion to the thousand your father left you a life interest in, which I bought from you last year. Well, I'm selling it to Gray." She and Violet always referred to her present husband by his surname. "For I must scrape every possible farthing together just now. What are you fussing about?"
"I'm not fussing—I'm asking." Violet laid the paper down again as she spoke. "What a funny thing to be doing to-night!"
"My affairs come up for hearing in the Bankruptcy Court to-morrow," her mother replied with really amazing indifference. "And I want to get rid of all I can to Gray first." She did not add that that was precisely why she had married again. Violet knew as much. So did Henry Gray.
"Well, it's not likely to do Gray much good," Violet laughed. After all, she was too well satisfied to-night to be vexed for long. "I feel as though I should live for another century." And before going back to the ballroom she paused to adjust the pearls afresh.
"They're to be mine," her mother said with a covetous look at their lustre.
"No, they're to be heirlooms," Arthur says.
"That's why he doesn't give them outright