THE STORY OF IVY (Murder Mystery). Marie Belloc Lowndes
Читать онлайн книгу.
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 have torn that envelope open at once, so that her senses could absorb with delight the ardent protestations of love written on the large plain sheet of paper that envelope contained.
But she no longer felt “like that” towards her daily correspondent, Roger Gretorex. Also she was going to see him this morning in the hope, nay, the certainty, that he would help to tide over this horrid moment of difficulty, by giving her whatever money he could put his hands on.
Gretorex was of a very different stamp from the men who had up to now fallen in love with her. He worshipped her with all his heart and soul, while yet conscious that he was now doing what, before he had been tempted, he would have unhesitatingly condemned in another man. As to that, and other matters of less moment, he was what Ivy Lexton felt to be ludicrously old-fashioned, and she had soon become weary of him, and satiated with the jealous devotion he lavished on her.
Also, Roger Gretorex was poor; not poor as Ivy’s husband had become, largely through his own fault and hers, but through that of his father, a great Sussex squire, who had gambled and muddled away his only son’s inheritance. That was why Gretorex was a doctor, and not what the woman he loved would have liked him to be, an idle young man of means.
The other envelope was addressed in a woman’s flowing hand, and it had been sent on from Ivy’s bridge club.
The writer of the many sheets this thick, cream-laid envelope contained was named Rose Arundell. She was a well-to-do, generous, rather foolish young widow, who had taken a great fancy to lovely Mrs. Jervis Lexton. Mrs. Arundell had been, nay, was, a most useful friend, and a look of dismay shadowed Ivy Lexton’s face as she read on and on, till she reached the end of the long letter.
Wednesday afternoon.
Ivy, darling, I have the most astounding news to tell you!
I’ll begin at the beginning. Besides, I can’t help thinking—for I know you’re rather worried just now, poor dear—that it may be of help to you. D’you remember my telling you last time we met at that tiresome fête where we couldn’t see each other for a moment alone, that I’d had a wonderful adventure? That I’d been to a fortune-teller? Her name is Mrs. Thrawn. She lives at No. 1 Ranelagh Reach on the Embankment. Her fee is a pound—and I feel inclined to send her a thousand pounds when I think of what she has done for me!
I don’t mind telling you now that I was on the point of taking that silly boy, Ronny. No one knows but myself how horribly lonely I’ve been. Well, I thought I’d go and see this Mrs. Thrawn and hear what she’d got to say; for, after all, I didn’t love Ronny, and I always had a dreadful suspicion it was my money he liked, rather than me.
Well, my dear, I went off trembling. But I can’t tell you how wonderful she was! She described Ronny and warned me against him. Then she said that an extraordinary change was coming over my life, and that if I would only be patient and wait, everything I had most longed for would come to pass. She was most awfully kind—really kind. She said that if I was sensible and did what she said—I mean refuse Ronny—I should take a long journey very soon to a place that she, Mrs. Thrawn, knew well and loved; and that I should be very, very happy there. That place was India, as I knew, for the woman who first told me about Mrs. Thrawn said she was the widow of a missionary!
And then, oh, Ivy, what do you think happened? I wonder if you remember all I told you about the soldier who was my first love? The man whom my mother would not let me marry and who did so splendidly in the war? He’s home on leave from India, where he has a splendid appointment. We ran across one another in the street, and I asked him to come and see me. You can guess the rest!
His leave is up by the end of next week. We shall be married very quietly on Thursday, and sail for India on Friday.
I’m in a whirl, as you can imagine. I’d love to have you at my wedding, darling, for you really are my dearest friend. But he doesn’t want anyone there who didn’t know us both in the old days, before the war. He hasn’t a bean, but, thank God, I’ve plenty for us both!
Your devoted Rose.
Ivy Lexton put the long letter she had just read down on the dressing-table. Then she took up the other, still unopened, envelope, and stuffed it into her bag. After all she could read the letter it contained in the omnibus, on her way to see Roger Gretorex. He had taken over for a friend a slum practice in Westminster, and he lived in what Ivy called a horrid little street named Ferry Place.
She turned again towards the looking-glass, and began once more making up her face at the point where she had been interrupted. She was so used to the process that she worked quickly, mechanically, though taking a great deal