MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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sad to hear a good woman, for Joan is really a good woman, say such cruel, unkind things.”
“It’s odd, too, for no one can show more real understanding sympathy when one’s in trouble,” answered Lady Flora in a low voice. She was remembering a time of frightful sorrow in her own life, when Joan Rodney had been one of the few friends whose presence had not jarred on her.
“Ah, well! She’s devoted to you. Also, you’re an angel, Flora, so there’s no great merit in being kind to you. What Joan Rodney can’t forgive in another woman is youth, happiness——”
“And, I suppose, beauty,” interjected Lady Flora. “Yet to me there is something so disarming, so pathetic, about Mrs. Lexton.”
“Then Joan has such a poor opinion of human nature,” went on Mrs. Hampton in a vexed tone. “You heard with what delight she quoted that horrid little bit of doggerel. Still, quite between ourselves, Flora, I must admit that, in a sense, she is more right than she knows about Ivy Lexton.”
Lady Flora looked dismayed. “In what way, Mary?”
“Ivy is very fond of money, or rather of spending it. In fact she is idiotically extravagant. She is dancing mad, and belongs to the two most expensive night clubs in town. It’s her fault that they’ve frittered away a lot of Jervis Lexton’s capital. Also, there’s a side to her, for all her pretty manners, that isn’t pretty at all.”
“How d’you mean?” and the other looked puzzled.
Mrs. Hampton hesitated. Then she smiled a little ruefully. “My maid told me that when Ivy arrived she was quite rude to Annie—you know, my nice old housemaid?—because there was no bottle of scent on her dressing-table! There was one, it seems, last time she was here. It had been left by some visitor—I don’t undertake to provide such luxuries.”
“That doesn’t sound very nice, certainly,” Lady Flora looked naïvely surprised.
“Then, if I’m to be really honest, my dear, there’s no doubt that one reason why Joan Rodney has taken such a ferocious dislike to Ivy Lexton is owing to the fact that I stupidly told Ivy this morning of Joan’s marvellous bit of luck—I mean of that big legacy from the American cousin. I’m afraid that’s why Ivy, who behaved all yesterday as if Joan hardly existed, began at once to make up to her! But pretty ways are very much lost on our Joan.”
She began to laugh. She really couldn’t help it, remembering the way her friend had received the younger woman’s overtures of friendship.
Lady Flora looked disturbed, for she was one of those rare human beings to whom it is a pain to think ill of anybody.
“After all, Joan’s money is of no good to anyone but herself, Mary? I don’t see why you should suppose poor little Mrs. Lexton made up to her because of that legacy.”
The other looked at her fixedly.
“Ivy Lexton has a good deal in common with the heroine of Jack’s favourite drawing-room story.”
“What story?” asked Lady Flora. Her host’s rather sly sense of humour had never appealed to her, though they were quite good friends.
“The story of the lady who said to her husband, ‘Oh, do let’s go and see them; they’re so rich!’ to be met with the answer, ‘My dear, I would if it was catching!’”
Lady Flora looked a little puzzled. “He was quite right. Money is not catching, though I suppose most people wish it were.”
“A great many people are convinced that it is, Flora, and our little Ivy is among them. I’m sure she feels that if she rubs herself up against it close enough, a little will certainly come off. And I’m not sure, in her case, that she’s not right!”
But Lady Flora could be obstinate in her mild way.
“I like Mrs. Lexton,” she said gently. “I’m going to call on her when we’re all in town again. She’s promised to take me to a nice quiet night club. I’ve always longed to see one. I want my sister-in-law, I mean Jenny, to know her. Jenny loves young people. She gives amusing little dances——”
“I think you’ll make a mistake if you introduce Ivy to the Duchess.”
“I don’t see why, my dear? After all, Mary, your little friend has been very sweet to me, and that though she knows I’m really poor.”
The other woman gave a quick look at her friend. Sometimes she thought Flora Desmond too good, too simple, even for human nature’s daily food.
Chapter one
The July sun shone slantwise into the ugly, almost sordid-looking bedroom where Ivy Lexton, still only half dressed, had just begun making up her lovely face in front of a tarnished, dust-powdered toilet-glass.
It was nine o’clock in the morning; an hour ago she had had her cup of tea and—mindful of her figure—the hard biscuit which was the only thing she allowed herself by way of breakfast. Her husband, hopelessly idle, easy-natured, well-bred Jervis Lexton, was still fast asleep in the little back bedroom his wife called his dressing-room, but which was their box-room and general “glory-hole.”
Everything that had been of any real value there had gradually disappeared in the last few weeks, for Ivy and Jervis Lexton, to use their own rueful expression, were indeed stony-broke.
Yet they had started their married life, six years before, with a capital of sixty-eight thousand pounds. Now they were almost penniless. Indeed, what Ivy called to herself with greater truth than was usual “her little all,” that is, a pound note, and twelve shillings and sixpence in silver, lay on the stained, discoloured mahogany dressing-table before which she was now standing.
How amazed would her still large circle of friends and acquaintances have been had they learnt how desperate and how hopeless was her own and her husband’s financial position. Yesterday she had even tried to sell two charming frocks brought back for her by a good-natured friend from Paris. But she had only been offered a few shillings for the two, so she had brought them home again.
And now, as her eyes fell on the pound note and tiny heap of silver, they filled with angry tears. How she loathed these sordid, hateful lodgings! What a terrible, even a terrifying thing, it was to have fallen so low as to have to live here, in two shabby, ill-kept bedrooms, where there wasn’t even a hanging cupboard for her pretty clothes, and where the drawers of the painted deal chest of drawers would neither shut nor open.
The Lextons had come there for two reasons. One, a stupid reason, because their landlady was the widow of a man who had been employed as a lad in the stables of Jervis Lexton’s father. A better reason was that, owing to there being no bathroom in the house, the rooms were amazingly, fantastically cheap. The Lextons had already been camping here, as Ivy’s husband put it, for some months, but they rarely gave any of their friends their address. Jervis still belonged to a famous club to which some of his rich men acquaintances would have given much to belong; and Ivy had a guinea subscription to a small bridge club from which her letters were forwarded each day.
There came a knock at the bedroom door. It was a funny, fumbling knock, and she knew it for that of the landlady’s little boy.
Flinging a pale pink lace-trimmed wrapper round her, “Come in,” she called out sharply.
The child came in, holding in his grubby hand two letters.
She took them from him, and quickly glanced at the envelopes. The one, inscribed in a firm masculine handwriting to her present, Pimlico, address, she put down on the dressing-table unopened. She knew, or thought she knew, so well what it contained.
There had been a time, not so very long ago, when Ivy Lexton’s beautiful eyes would have shone at the sight of that handwriting. A time when she would