Taken At The Flood. Agatha Christie
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She ran downstairs and entered the dining-room. It was not a very good breakfast. Already Lynn was realizing the undue proportion of time and interest taken by the search for food. Except for a rather unreliable woman who came four mornings a week, Mrs Marchmont was alone in the house, struggling with cooking and cleaning. She had been nearly forty when Lynn was born and her health was not good. Also Lynn realized with some dismay how their financial position had changed. The small but adequate fixed income which had kept them going comfortably before the war was now almost halved by taxation. Rates, expenses, wages had all gone up.
‘Oh! brave new world,’ thought Lynn grimly. Her eyes rested lightly on the columns of the daily paper. ‘Ex-W.A.A.F. seeks post where initiative and drive will be appreciated.’ ‘Former W.R.E.N. seeks post where organizing ability and authority are needed.’
Enterprise, initiative, command, those were the commodities offered. But what was wanted? People who could cook and clean, or write decent shorthand. Plodding people who knew a routine and could give good service.
Well, it didn’t affect her. Her way ahead lay clear. Marriage to her cousin Rowley Cloade. They had got engaged seven years ago, just before the outbreak of war. Almost as long as she could remember, she had meant to marry Rowley. His choice of a farming life had been acquiesced in readily by her. A good life—not exciting perhaps, and with plenty of hard work, but they both loved the open air and the care of animals.
Not that their prospects were quite what they had been—Uncle Gordon had always promised…
Mrs Marchmont’s voice broke in plaintively apposite:
‘It’s been the most dreadful blow to us all, Lynn darling, as I wrote you. Gordon had only been in England two days. We hadn’t even seen him. If only he hadn’t stayed in London. If he’d come straight down here.’
‘Yes, if only…’
Far away, Lynn had been shocked and grieved by the news of her uncle’s death, but the true significance of it was only now beginning to come home to her.
For as long as she could remember, her life, all their lives, had been dominated by Gordon Cloade. The rich, childless man had taken all his relatives completely under his wing.
Even Rowley… Rowley and his friend Johnnie Vavasour had started in partnership on the farm. Their capital was small, but they had been full of hope and energy. And Gordon Cloade had approved.
To her he had said more.
‘You can’t get anywhere in farming without capital. But the first thing to find out is whether these boys have really got the will and the energy to make a go of it. If I set them up now, I wouldn’t know that—maybe for years. If they’ve got the right stuff in them, if I’m satisfied that their side of it is all right, well then, Lynn, you needn’t worry. I’ll finance them on the proper scale. So don’t think badly of your prospects, my girl. You’re just the wife Rowley needs. But keep what I’ve told you under your hat.’
Well, she had done that, but Rowley himself had sensed his uncle’s benevolent interest. It was up to him to prove to the old boy that Rowley and Johnnie were a good investment for money.
Yes, they had all depended on Gordon Cloade. Not that any of the family had been spongers or idlers. Jeremy Cloade was senior partner in a firm of solicitors, Lionel Cloade was in practice as a doctor.
But behind the workaday life was the comforting assurance of money in the background. There was never any need to stint or to save. The future was assured. Gordon Cloade, a childless widower, would see to that. He had told them all, more than once, that that was so.
His widowed sister, Adela Marchmont, had stayed on at the White House when she might, perhaps, have moved into a smaller, more labour-saving house. Lynn went to first-class schools. If the war had not come, she would have been able to take any kind of expensive training she had pleased. Cheques from Uncle Gordon flowed in with comfortable regularity to provide little luxuries.
Everything had been so settled, so secure. And then had come Gordon Cloade’s wholly unexpected marriage.
‘Of course, darling,’ Adela went on, ‘we were all flabbergasted. If there was one thing that seemed quite certain, it was that Gordon would never marry again. It wasn’t, you see, as though he hadn’t got plenty of family ties.’
Yes, thought Lynn, plenty of family. Sometimes, possibly, rather too much family?
‘He was so kind always,’ went on Mrs Marchmont. ‘Though perhaps just a weeny bit tyrannical on occasions. He never liked the habit of dining off a polished table. Always insisted on my sticking to the old-fashioned tablecloths. In fact, he sent me the most beautiful Venetian lace ones when he was in Italy.’
‘It certainly paid to fall in with his wishes,’ said Lynn dryly. She added with some curiosity, ‘How did he meet this—second wife? You never told me in your letters.’
‘Oh, my dear, on some boat or plane or other. Coming from South America to New York, I believe. After all those years! And after all those secretaries and typists and housekeepers and everything.’
Lynn smiled. Ever since she could remember, Gordon Cloade’s secretaries, housekeepers and office staff had been subjected to the closest scrutiny and suspicion.
She asked curiously, ‘She’s good-looking, I suppose?’
‘Well, dear,’ said Adela, ‘I think myself she has rather a silly face.’
‘You’re not a man, Mums!’
‘Of course,’ Mrs Marchmont went on, ‘the poor girl was blitzed and had shock from blast and was really frightfully ill and all that, and it’s my opinion she’s never really quite recovered. She’s a mass of nerves, if you know what I mean. And really, sometimes, she looks quite half-witted. I don’t feel she could ever have made much of a companion for poor Gordon.’
Lynn smiled. She doubted whether Gordon Cloade had chosen to marry a woman years younger than himself for her intellectual companionship.
‘And then, dear,’ Mrs Marchmont lowered her voice, ‘I hate to say it, but of course she’s not a lady!’
‘What an expression, Mums! What does that matter nowadays?’
‘It still matters in the country, dear,’ said Adela placidly. ‘I simply mean that she isn’t exactly one of us!’
‘Poor little devil!’
‘Really, Lynn, I don’t know what you mean. We have all been most careful to be kind and polite and to welcome her amongst us for Gordon’s sake.’
‘She’s at Furrowbank, then?’ Lynn asked curiously.
‘Yes, naturally. Where else was there for her to go when she came out of the nursing home? The doctors said she must be out of London. She’s at Furrowbank with her brother.’
‘What’s he like?’ Lynn asked.
‘A dreadful young man!’ Mrs Marchmont paused, and then added with a good deal of intensity: ‘Rude.’
A momentary flicker of sympathy crossed Lynn’s mind. She thought: ‘I bet I’d be rude in his place!’
She asked: ‘What’s his name?’
‘Hunter. David Hunter. Irish, I believe. Of course they are not people one has ever heard of. She was a widow—a Mrs Underhay. One doesn’t wish to be uncharitable, but one can’t help asking oneself—what kind of a widow would be likely to be travelling about from South America in wartime? One can’t help feeling, you know, that she was just looking for a rich husband.’
‘In which case, she didn’t look in vain,’ remarked Lynn.
Mrs Marchmont sighed.
‘It seems