Read Online The Chinese Shawl by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online

The high dominant features, the proud carriage of the head, sat better on the woman in her fifties than they had ever done on the girl. She had the same fine, white skin and springing dark hair as Tanis and Laura herself, but there were deep lines about the eyes and mouth—lines of pride and suffering—and the hair was frosted. It framed her face in waves, beautifully arranged.
    With skin and hair the resemblance ended. The features were of a bolder type, the face narrower, the line of cheek and jaw a harder one, and the eyes under their beautifully modelled brows a very deep brown, instead of Tanis’s green darkening to grey, and Laura’s grey brightening into green.
    “How do you do, Laura?”
    The voice was the voice of the telephone, grave, and deep, and rather cold. Something in Laura admired its dignity, its restraint.
    There was a polite enquiry for Theresa Ferrers, and then Tanis was introducing her to Lucy Adams.
    Laura saw a plump woman of middle height and middle age. Cousin Sophy’s remark sprang unbidden to her mind— “Lucy always was a very stupid woman.” For stupid was just what Cousin Lucy looked. She had a flat, well cushioned face of no particular colour, small blinking grey eyes, and a very palpable auburn front. She wore grey, of all colours the least becoming. A gold-rimmed pince-nez hovered uncertainly on her nose. It was attached to the right-hand side of her bodice by a fine gold chain and a gold bar brooch. Her noticeably thick ankles were encased in grey woollen stockings, and her feet in rubbed black glacé shoes with ribbon bows. She shook hands frigidly with Laura and turned at once to Tanis, her voice gushing and her manner exuberant.
    “But where are the others? I am simply longing to see them. Fetch them in, and—oh, yes, I will just ring the bell—for I’m sure they must all be simply dying for their tea. The car wasn’t open, was it? Oh, no, of course not—in January. Even Carey wouldn’t do that, though I remember his bringing you down on a very cold autumn day with everything open, and I told him he ought to be more careful—and so he ought.” She turned towards Laura with a jerky movement. “Do you know Carey Desborough—but of course you came down in his car, didn’t you?”
    Laura said, “I met him last night,” and thought how strange that sounded.
    Tanis took her up to her room after that. They took the right-hand turn of the stair and came by way of a short gallery to a corridor with doors on either side.
    “Aunt Agnes is at the end there, on the left. Her room is over the drawing-room. Her maid, Perry, has the dressing-room, and Aunt Lucy the room beyond. I’m opposite Aunt Agnes, next to the octagon tower. It is the only bit of the old house. That’s the door, at the end of the passage. It’s very convenient for Aunt Agnes, because, owing to the octagon shape and the very thick walls, they’ve been able to fit in a lift between my bathroom and the tower. It just takes her chair, and there are doors through to my sitting-room and the drawing-room on the ground floor. She can manage it all herself, which is what she likes to do with everything. Here you are—I hope you will be comfortable. Petra is just beyond you. There’s a bathroom between the two rooms—you won’t mind sharing it with her, will you? Aunt Agnes has put in bathrooms wherever she can, but it doesn’t quite run to one for every room. Miss Silver is over on the other side of the house, and so are Carey and the Maxwells. She’s a girl friend of Aunt Lucy’s. They were at school together. She started life as a governess—and does she look like one! Just wait till you see her! I believe she’s a detective or something now. Completely useless, I should think, but not a bad old thing. You’ll see her at tea. Her name is Maud! Can you find your way down all right?”
    Laura said she could. As a matter of fact only a mentally defective person could have failed to do so. She was very glad