broke off. She wanted it so dreadfully—so dreadfully.
She felt instinctively that the butler understood. He did not look at her, as he said in a detached impersonal way:
‘I happen to be aware, madam, that the owner requires above all, suitable tenants. The rent is of no importance to him. He wants the house to be tenanted by someone who will really care for and appreciate it.’
‘I should appreciate it,’ said Mrs St Vincent in a low voice.
She turned to go.
‘Thank you for showing me over,’ she said courteously.
‘Not at all, madam.’
He stood in the doorway, very correct and upright as she walked away down the street. She thought to herself: ‘He knows. He’s sorry for me. He’s one of the old lot too. He’d like me to have it—not a labour member, or a button manufacturer! We’re dying out, our sort, but we hang together.’
In the end she decided not to go back to the agents. What was the good? She could afford the rent—but there were servants to be considered. There would have to be servants in a house like that.
The next morning a letter lay by her plate. It was from the house-agents. It offered her the tenancy of 7 Cheviot Place for six months at two guineas a week, and went on: ‘You have, I presume, taken into consideration the fact that the servants are remaining at the landlord’s expense? It is really a unique offer.’
It was. So startled was she by it, that she read the letter out. A fire of questions followed and she described her visit of yesterday.
‘Secretive little Mums!’ cried Barbara. ‘Is it really so lovely?’
Rupert cleared his throat, and began a judicial cross-questioning.
‘There’s something behind all this. It’s fishy if you ask me. Decidedly fishy.’
‘So’s my egg,’ said Barbara wrinkling her nose. ‘Ugh! Why should there be something behind it? That’s just like you, Rupert, always making mysteries out of nothing. It’s those dreadful detective stories you’re always reading.’
‘The rent’s a joke,’ said Rupert. ‘In the city,’ he added importantly, ‘one gets wise to all sorts of queer things. I tell you, there’s something very fishy about this business.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Barbara. ‘House belongs to a man with lots of money, he’s fond of it, and he wants it lived in by decent people whilst he’s away. Something of that kind. Money’s probably no object to him.’
‘What did you say the address was?’ asked Rupert of his mother.
‘Seven Cheviot Place.’
‘Whew!’ He pushed back his chair. ‘I say, this is exciting. That’s the house Lord Listerdale disappeared from.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Mrs St Vincent doubtfully.
‘Positive. He’s got a lot of other houses all over London, but this is the one he lived in. He walked out of it one evening saying he was going to his club, and nobody ever saw him again. Supposed to have done a bunk to East Africa or somewhere like that, but nobody knows why. Depend upon it, he was murdered in that house. You say there’s a lot of panelling?’
‘Ye-es,’ said Mrs St Vincent faintly: ‘but—’
Rupert gave her no time. He went on with immense enthusiasm.
‘Panelling! There you are. Sure to be a secret recess somewhere. Body’s been stuffed in there and has been there ever since. Perhaps it was embalmed first.’
‘Rupert, dear, don’t talk nonsense,’ said his mother.
‘Don’t be a double-dyed idiot,’ said Barbara. ‘You’ve been taking that peroxide blonde to the pictures too much.’
Rupert rose with dignity—such dignity as his lanky and awkward age allowed, and delivered a final ultimatum.
‘You take that house, Mums. I’ll ferret out the mystery. You see if I don’t.’
Rupert departed hurriedly, in fear of being late at the office.
The eyes of the two women met.
‘Could we, Mother?’ murmured Barbara tremulously. ‘Oh! if we could.’
‘The servants,’ said Mrs St Vincent pathetically, ‘would eat, you know. I mean, of course, one would want them to—but that’s the drawback. One can so easily—just do without things—when it’s only oneself.’
She looked piteously at Barbara, and the girl nodded.
‘We must think it over,’ said the mother.
But in reality her mind was made up. She had seen the sparkle in the girl’s eyes. She thought to herself: ‘Jim Masterton must see her in proper surroundings. This is a chance—a wonderful chance. I must take it.’
She sat down and wrote to the agents accepting their offer.
‘Quentin, where did the lilies come from? I really can’t buy expensive flowers.’
‘They were sent up from King’s Cheviot, madam. It has always been the custom here.’
The butler withdrew. Mrs St Vincent heaved a sigh of relief. What would she do without Quentin? He made everything so easy. She thought to herself, ‘It’s too good to last. I shall wake up soon, I know I shall, and find it’s been all a dream. I’m so happy here—two months already, and it’s passed like a flash.’
Life indeed had been astonishingly pleasant. Quentin, the butler, had displayed himself the autocrat of 7 Cheviot Place. ‘If you will leave everything to me, madam,’ he had said respectfully. ‘You will find it the best way.’
Each week, he brought her the housekeeping books, their totals astonishingly low. There were only two other servants, a cook and a housemaid. They were pleasant in manner, and efficient in their duties, but it was Quentin who ran the house. Game and poultry appeared on the table sometimes, causing Mrs St Vincent solicitude. Quentin reassured her. Sent up from Lord Listerdale’s country seat, King’s Cheviot, or from his Yorkshire moor. ‘It has always been the custom, madam.’
Privately Mrs St Vincent doubted whether the absent Lord Listerdale would agree with those words. She was inclined to suspect Quentin of usurping his master’s authority. It was clear that he had taken a fancy to them, and that in his eyes nothing was too good for them.
Her curiosity aroused by Rupert’s declaration, Mrs St Vincent had made a tentative reference to Lord Listerdale when she next interviewed the house-agent. The white-haired old gentleman had responded immediately.
Yes, Lord Listerdale was in East Africa, had been there for the last eighteen months.
‘Our client is rather an eccentric man,’ he had said, smiling broadly. ‘He left London in a most unconventional manner, as you may perhaps remember? Not a word to anyone. The newspapers got hold of it. There were actually inquiries on foot at Scotland Yard. Luckily news was received from Lord Listerdale himself from East Africa. He invested his cousin, Colonel Carfax, with power of attorney. It is the latter who conducts all Lord Listerdale’s affairs. Yes, rather eccentric, I fear. He has always been a great traveller in the wilds—it is quite on the cards that he may not return for years to England, though he is getting on in years.’
‘Surely he is not so very old,’ said Mrs St Vincent, with a sudden memory of a bluff, bearded face, rather like an Elizabethan sailor, which she had once noticed in an illustrated magazine.
‘Middle-aged,’ said the white-haired gentleman. ‘Fifty-three, according to Debrett.’
This conversation Mrs St Vincent had retailed to Rupert with the intention of rebuking that young gentleman.
Rupert,