Read Online A Christmas Guest by Anne Perry - Free Book Online Page A

Bedelia assured her. “You say you were a friend of Maude’s, even on so short an acquaintance. How could you not be welcome?”
    â€œOf course,” Agnes agreed again, echoing Bedelia. “You said Maude spoke to you a great deal? We saw her so little, perhaps it would not be too distressing if we were to ask you what she told you of her … travels?” She looked hastily at Bedelia. “That is … if it is seemly to discuss! I do not wish to embarrass you in any way at all.”
    What on earth was Agnes imagining? Orgies around the campfire?
    â€œPerhaps … another time,” Arthur said shakily, his voice hoarse. “If indeed it does snow, you may be here with us long enough to …” He trailed off.
    â€œQuite,” Bedelia agreed, without looking at him.
    Zachary apologized. “We are all overwrought,” he explained. “This is so unexpected. We hardly know how to … believe it.”
    â€œWe had no idea at all that she was ill,” Randolph spoke for the first time since Grandmama had come into the room. “She seemed so … so very alive … indestructible.”
    â€œYou no more than met her, my dear,” Bedelia said coolly.
    Grandmama turned to her in surprise.
    â€œMaude left before my son was born,” Bedelia explained, as if an intrusive question had been asked. “I think you do not really understand what an … an extraordinary woman she was.” Her use of the word
extraordinary
covered a multitude of possibilities, most of them unpleasant.
    Grandmama did not reply. She must detect! The room was stiff with emotion. Grief, envy, anger, above all fear. Did she detect the odor of scandal? For heaven’s sake, she was not achieving much! She had no proof that it had been murder, only a certainty in her own suspicious mind.
    â€œNo,” she said softly. “Of course I didn’t know how extraordinary she was. I spoke with her and listened to her memories and feelings, so very intense, a woman of remarkable observation and understanding. But as you say, it was only a short time. I have no right to speak as if I knew her as you must have, who grew up with her.” She let the irony of the forty-year gap hang in the air. “I imagine when she was abroad she wrote wonderful letters?”
    There was an uncomfortable silence, eloquent in itself. So Maude had not written to them in the passionate and lyrical way she had spoken at St. Mary. Or she had, and for some reason they chose to ignore it.
    She plowed on, determined to stir up something that might be of meaning. “She had traveled as very few people, men or women, can have done. A collection of her letters would be of interest to many who do not have such opportunities. Or such remarkable courage. It would be a fitting monument to her, do you not think?”
    Agnes drew in her breath with a gasp, and looked at Bedelia. She seemed helpless to answer without her approval. A lifetime habit forged in childhood? Perhaps forged was the right word, it seemed to fetter her like iron. It made Grandmama furious, with Agnes and with herself. It was a coward’s way, and she knew cowardice intimately, as one knows one’s own face in the glass.
    Clara turned to her husband, then her mother-in-law, expecting some response.
    But it was Arthur who answered.
    â€œYes, it would,” he agreed.
    â€œArthur!” Bedelia said crisply. “I am sure Mrs. Ellison means well, but she really has no idea of the extent or the nature of Maude’s … travels, or the unsuitability of making them public.”
    â€œHave you?” Arthur asked, his dark brows raised.
    â€œI beg your pardon?” Bedelia said coolly.
    â€œHave you any idea of Maude’s travels?” he repeated. “I asked you if she wrote, and you said that she didn’t.” He did not accuse her of lying, but the