Taken At The Flood. Агата Кристи
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opposed to her mother seeking relief from her anxieties by asking Gordon’s widow for a loan.
However another letter from the bank manager that morning had driven Mrs Marchmont into positive action. She could delay no longer. Lynn had gone out early, and Mrs Marchmont had caught sight of David Hunter walking along the footpath—so the coast was clear. She particularly wanted to get Rosaleen alone, without David, rightly judging that Rosaleen alone would be a far easier proposition.
Nevertheless she felt dreadfully nervous as she waited in the sunny drawing-room, though she felt slightly better when Rosaleen came in with what Mrs Marchmont always thought of as her ‘half-witted look’ more than usually marked.
‘I wonder,’ thought Adela to herself, ‘if the blast did it or if she was always like that?’
Rosaleen stammered.
‘Oh, g-g-ood morning. Is there anything? Do sit down.’
‘Such a lovely morning,’ said Mrs Marchmont brightly. ‘All my early tulips are out. Are yours?’
The girl stared at her vacantly.
‘I don’t know.’
What was one to do, thought Adela, with someone who didn’t talk gardening or dogs—those standbys of rural conversation?
Aloud she said, unable to help the tinge of acidity that crept into her tone:
‘Of course you have so many gardeners—they attend to all that.’
‘I believe we’re shorthanded. Old Mullard wants two more men, he says. But there seems a terrible shortage still of labour.’
The words came out with a kind of glib parrot-like delivery—rather like a child who repeats what it has heard a grown-up person say.
Yes, she was like a child. Was that, Adela wondered, her charm? Was that what had attracted that hard-headed shrewd business man, Gordon Cloade, and blinded him to her stupidity and her lack of breeding? After all, it couldn’t only be looks. Plenty of good-looking women had angled unsuccessfully to attract him.
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