Read Online The Brading Collection by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online

mind if that’s what you want.’ So she did.” She threw up her head with a jerk. “Lord—I’d have died of it in a week! But she’s Sid’s daughter, not mine—she likes it well enough. Only trouble she’s got is there’s no boy—just a couple of girls at boarding school.” She smoothed all the expression out of face and voice. “ ‘Yes, Grandmama—no, Grandmama.’ ” Her hands came together with a smacking clap, her shoulders rose in a shrug. “No blood in ’em, only nice pretty manners—poor Sid to the life, with a good shiny coat of Minstrell varnish! Well, as I’ve said more times than I can count, what’s the odds so long as you’re happy?”
    The sitting might be considered to be going well. But which of all these fleeting expressions, these vigorous sudden changes of countenance, was Stacy going to lure to the ivory. She made a dozen sketches on paper, looked at them in despair, and made a dozen more. Myra was vastly pleased with them.
    “Ugly old devil, aren’t I? Hit me off to the life, these do. You just go on and you’ll see it’ll come, and it’ll be a smasher. And now you go off and amuse yourself for the rest of the day.”
    Before this advice could be taken Stacy was called to the telephone. She felt a little surprised, for she could not imagine who could have tracked her here—so unless it was Charles—
    It wasn’t Charles. The sort of voice that suggests hornrimmed glasses and an intellectual brow enquired,
    “Is that Miss Mainwaring?”
    Stacy knew it at once. As a matter of fact a large portion of the English-speaking public would have known it, since it was in the habit of making announcements to them over the air, not on the most important occasions, but in what may perhaps be described as the donkey-work section.
    “Tony! How on earth did you know I was here?”
    Mr. Anthony Colesfoot sighed and said,
    “Elementary, my dear Watson. You said you were going to Burdon. Enquiries gave me the number. The number said you had come to Warne House. So here we are.”
    “Where are you?”
    “I have an aunt who lives at Ledstow. I’ve got three days off and I’m staying with her. I suggest that you dine with me tonight. There is, I believe, a place in Ledlington where the food doesn’t exactly poison you.” He spoke in a gentle, drawling manner and broke off to cough. “I beg your pardon, as they say on the air. I keep on doing it, which is really why I’m here. What about my calling for you at seven? I’ll rake up a conveyance.”
    Stacy hesitated.
    “Well, it’s very nice of you, Tony. Look here, I’m going out in the afternoon, and I don’t know when I shall get back, and I shall have to dress. I think you’d better make it half past.”
    “Say the quarter.”
    “All right.”
    She was just turning away, when the bell rang again. It was probably for someone else, but with just the chance that Tony might still be on the line she picked up the receiver and heard Lilias Grey say,
    “Can I speak to—Miss Mainwaring?”
    There was just the little significant pause before the name. With an inward feeling of having stepped back a pace Stacy said in what she could hear was a really horrid telephone voice,
    “Speaking.”
    There was an involuntary “Oh!” And then, “It’s Lilias Grey.”
    “How do you do, Lilias?”
    “Oh, how do you do?”
    Lilias was fluting, a sure sign that she was nervous. Her voice became higher and sweeter with every sentence.
    “My dear, I didn’t have a word with you last night. It wasn’t possible at dinner, and then you disappeared. But I do so want to see you, and to show you what we have been doing to Saltings.”
    The “We” was a little barbed arrow that drew blood. Stacy found an arrow too.
    “Yes—Charles was telling me.”
    “Yes? So nice we can all be friends, and such a relief, isn’t it? It does simplify everything, don’t you think? So much more civilized. That is why I felt I could ring up like this. I do want