THE STORY OF IVY (Murder Mystery). Marie Belloc Lowndes
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behind you. She is a grey-haired, worn-looking old woman. If you fail to do what I advise you to do, she will play an overwhelming part in your destiny. Indeed it is she who may determine your fate.”
Then she turned, and taking a tiny silver-gilt bell off the mantelpiece she rang it sharply.
The door opened, and the maid pulled aside the heavy curtain. There was no stranger waiting on the landing. Ivy looked so surprised that the woman smiled. “Mrs. Thrawn doesn’t like her clients to cross one another. The lady who has just come in is waiting in the front room.”
As Mrs. Thrawn’s late visitor walked quickly down the Embankment towards the place for which she was bound, she felt more really light-hearted than she had felt for, oh! such a long time. Money coming her way—and a new man in her life? That was all Ivy Lexton really remembered of that curious interview. The warnings Mrs. Thrawn had given her she put down to the soothsayer’s conventional outlook on life.
As for the woman’s advice concerning Roger Gretorex, she ought to have known, being a fortune-teller, that she, Ivy, had already made up her mind to break with her secret lover. She could not, however, break with him today, for two reasons. First, she was going to ask him for a little money, and secondly, he was giving a theatre-party this evening. She, Ivy, her friend Rose Arundell, and Jervis Lexton were to be Gretorex’s guests, and he was taking them on, after the play, to supper at the Savoy. That had been settled days ago.
Rose Arundell? She told herself vexedly that Rose would certainly “chuck.” In fact it was plain that Rose had forgotten all about to-night’s engagement, or she would have mentioned it in her letter. They would be three instead of four. But perhaps, after all, that didn’t really matter, for Jervis was quite fond of Roger.
There was, however, a fly, albeit a small fly, in the ointment. There was no such person, there never had been, or, it seemed to her, could be, in her life, as a worn-looking, grey-haired woman. This fact made her feel a little doubtful, a little anxious, as to the truth of the fortune-teller’s other predictions.
Chapter two
“Why, there’s Mr. Rushworth! Do go over and ask him to join us for coffee.”
Ivy Lexton was smiling at her husband—a delicious, roguish smile. As he smiled back, he told himself with conscious satisfaction that his little wife was far the prettiest woman here to-night.
Her sleekly brushed-back auburn hair, white skin, violet eyes, and slender rounded figure were wont to remind those few of her admirers familiar with the art of Romney of a certain portrait of Nelson’s Emma, spinning.
Ivy’s husband was pleasantly aware that she was not only the prettiest, but also one of the smartest looking, of the women supping at the Savoy to-night. This was the more commendable, from simple Jervis Lexton’s point of view, as they were so hard up—stony-broke, in fact.
He generally did at once anything Ivy asked him to do, but now he waited for a few moments.
“D’you mean that chap we met at the Hamptons? I don’t see him.”
“Don’t be stupid, darling! He’s over in that corner, with two dowdy-looking women, looking bored to death. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to join us for coffee.”
There had come an edge of irritation in her seductive voice. Ivy had a peculiar and very individual intonation, and many a man had found it the most enchanting voice in the world.
At last Lexton rose, just a thought unwillingly. He had been enjoying himself to-night, forgetting the money anxieties which had at last become desperately pressing, while listening to his wife’s gay chatter concerning the well-known people who were also supping at the Savoy this July night.
The young man liked a party of just three friends much better than the big noisy suppers to which he sometimes escorted his wife. In a way it was funny that their host, a grim-looking young doctor named Roger Gretorex, was their friend, for even Lexton realised that, though he and Gretorex were both country-bred, and belonged to the now vanishing old county gentry class, they had nothing else in common.
The host had hardly said a word during the whole evening, either at the theatre, or since they had come on here. So taciturn had he been that Lexton supposed the poor chap was glum because the pretty widow, Mrs. Arundell, whom they were to have brought with them to make a fourth, had fallen out. He knew that Ivy suspected that Gretorex liked Mrs. Arundell quite a little bit. If so, the young man was out of luck, for he was the last sort of chap an attractive widow was likely to fancy.
As he threaded his way between the crowded round tables, there came over Jervis Lexton a queer and very definite feeling of unwillingness to obey his wife. He remembered that he and Ivy had met this man, Miles Rushworth, about three weeks ago at a week-end country house party, and that Ivy had taken quite a fancy to him. But he, Jervis, remembered that he himself had not taken to Rushworth. For one thing, he had thought the man too damn clever and pleased with himself.
Rushworth was, however, an enormously rich man, and Ivy had spent most of the Saturday evening of that long week-end out in the moonlit garden, pacing up and down with him. Late that same night she had told her husband, excitedly, that her new friend had said he thought he could find what Lexton had long been looking for—an easy, well-paid job.
But Ivy’s husband, simple though he might be, had learnt a thing or two since they had joined the ranks of what some call “the new poor.” One was that, though his wife could twist most men round her little finger, it didn’t follow she could make them do much to help him. This time he had been so far wrong that on the Monday morning this chap Rushworth, after motoring them both back to town, when saying good-bye had muttered something to Ivy as to “setting your husband on his feet again.” But this had happened a good three weeks ago, and their new acquaintance had given no further sign of life.
After Lexton had risen from the little round table, the two he had left sitting there kept silence for what seemed, to the woman, a long time. Then suddenly Gretorex exclaimed, in a low tense voice, “How I hate hearing you call that man ‘darling’!”
Ivy Lexton made no answer to that statement. She was picking up the tiny crumbs left by her fairy bread from the side of her plate, and arranging them in a diamond pattern on the tablecloth. But, though she seemed intent on her babyish task, she was angrily, impatiently aware that her companion was gazing at her with unhappy, frowning eyes. His words had cut across her pleasant thoughts—her joyful relief at having seen Miles Rushworth, at knowing that in a few moments he would be here, with her.
“I’m sorry I made this plan about to-night,” she said at last, scarcely moving her lips. “It was stupid of me.”
“It was more than stupid of me to agree to it,” muttered Gretorex savagely. “I’ve never been more wretched in my life than I’ve been to-night!”
She told herself, with a touch of contempt, that what he had just said was not only stupid, but utterly untrue. Why should the presence of her good-humoured, easy-going husband make Roger wretched? But she kept her feeling of irritation in check.
She glanced round at him—it was a pleading, tender glance—and his heart leapt. How wondrous beautiful she was, and—how divinely kind!
And then a curious thing happened to Roger Gretorex. In that softly illumined, flower-scented, luxurious London restaurant, it was as if he saw in a vision the wistful and plain, if intelligent, face of a girl he had known the whole of her short life. Her name was Enid Dent, and she was now twenty-one. Had he not met Ivy Lexton seven months ago, he and Enid Dent would now have been engaged to be married . . . .
So strong was the half-hallucination that he shut his eyes. When he opened them again the vision was gone, and he was hearing the voice which meant more to him than any other voice would ever mean to him in this world murmur gently, “It hasn’t been exactly cheerful for me.”