The Burden - Christie Agatha (читать книги TXT) 📗

Henry said he would prefer sherry.

They sat there talking. Henry's manner was just right, it had that touch of diffidence that is disarming. A charm of manner that was too assured might have aroused antagonism. As it was, he talked easily and gaily, without awkwardness, but deferring to Laura in a pleasant well-bred manner.

"Are you staying in Bellbury?" Laura asked.

"Oh no. I'm staying with my aunt over at Endsmoor."

Endsmoor was well over sixty miles away, the other side of Milchester. Laura felt a little surprised. Henry seemed to see that a certain amount of explanation was required.

"I went off with someone else's tennis-racket yesterday," he said. "Awfully stupid of me. So I thought I'd run over to return it and find my own. I managed to wangle some petrol."

He looked at her blandly.

"Did you find your racket all right?"

"Oh yes," said Henry. "Lucky, wasn't it? I'm afraid I'm awfully vague about things. Over in France, you know, I was always losing my kit."

He blinked disarmingly.

"So as I was over here," he said, "I thought I'd look up Shirley."

Was there, or was there not, some faint sign of embarrassment?

If there was, Laura liked him none the worse for it. Indeed, she preferred that to too much assurance.

This young man was likeable, eminently so. She felt the charm he exuded quite distinctly. What she could not account for was her own definite feeling of hostility.

Possessiveness again, Laura wondered? If Shirley had met Henry the day before, it seemed odd that she should not have mentioned him.

They continued to talk. It was now past seven. Henry was clearly not bound by conventional hours of calling. He was obviously remaining here until he saw Shirley. Laura wondered how much longer Shirley was going to be. She was usually home before this.

Murmuring an excuse to Henry, Laura left the room and went into the study where the telephone was. She rang up the vicarage.

The vicar's wife answered.

"Shirley? Oh yes, Laura, she's here. She's playing clock golf with Robin. I'll get her."

There was a pause, and then Shirley's voice, gay, alive.

"Laura?"

Laura said dryly:

"You've got a follower."

"A follower? Who?"

"His name's Glyn-Edwards. He blew in an hour and a half ago, and he's still here. I don't think he means to leave without seeing you. Both his conversation and mine are wearing rather thin!"

"Glyn-Edwards? I've never heard of him. Oh dear - I suppose I'd better come home and cope. Pity. I'm well on the way to beating Robin's record."

"He was at the tennis yesterday, I gather."

"Not Henry?"

Shirley's voice sounded breathless, slightly incredulous. The note in it surprised Laura.

"It could be Henry," she said dryly. "He's staying with an aunt over at-"

Shirley, breathless, interrupted:

"It is Henry. I'll come at once."

Laura put down the receiver with a slight sense of shock. She went back slowly into the drawing-room.

"Shirley will be back soon," she said, and added that she hoped Henry would stay to supper.

3

Laura leaned back in her chair at the head of the dinner-table and watched the other two. It was still only dusk, not dark, and the windows were uncurtained. The evening light was kind to the two young faces that bent towards each other so easily.

Watching them dispassionately, Laura tried to understand her own mounting feeling of uneasiness. Was it simply that she had taken a dislike to Henry? No, it could hardly be that. She acknowledged Henry's charm, his likeability, his good manners. Since, as yet, she knew nothing about him, she could hardly form a considered judgment. He was perhaps a little too casual, too off-hand, too detached? Yes, that explained it best-detached.

Surely the core of her feeling was rooted in Shirley. She was experiencing the sharp sense of shock which comes when you discover an unknown facet in someone about whom you axe assured you know everything. Laura and Shirley were not unduly demonstrative to each other, but stretching back over the years was the figure of Shirley, pouring out to Laura her hates, her loves, her desires, her frustrations.

But yesterday; when Laura had asked casually: "Anybody exciting? Or just Bellbury?" Shirley had replied non-chalantly: "Oh, mostly Bellbury."

Laura wondered why Shirley hadn't mentioned Henry. She remembered the sudden breathlessness just now in Shirley's voice as she had said, over the telephone "Henry?"

Her mind came back to the conversation going on so close to her.

Henry was just concluding a sentence…

"-if you liked. I'd pick you up in Carswell."

"Oh, I'd love it. I've never been much to race meetings…"

"Marldon's a tin-pot one, but a friend of mine's got a horse running. We might…"

Laura reflected calmly and dispassionately that this was a courtship. Henry's unexplained appearance, the wangled petrol, the inadequate excuse-he was sharply attracted by Shirley. She did not tell herself that this all might come to nothing. She believed, on the contrary, that she saw events casting their shadows before them.

Henry and Shirley would marry. She knew it, she was sure of it. And Henry was a stranger… She would never really know Henry any better than she knew him now.

Would Shirley ever know him?

Chapter Three

1

"I wonder," said Henry, "if you ought to come and meet my aunt."

He looked at Shirley doubtfully.

"I'm afraid," he said, "that it will be an awful bore for you."

They were leaning over the rail of the paddock, gazing unseeingly at the only horse, Number Nineteen, which was being led monotonously round and round.

This was the third race meeting Shirley had attended in Henry's company. Where other young men's ideas ran to the pictures, Henry's seemed to be concerned with sport. It was all on a par with the exciting difference between Henry and other young men.

"I'm sure I shouldn't be bored," said Shirley politely.

"I don't really see how you could help it," said Henry. "She does horoscopes and has queer ideas about the Pyramids."

"Do you know, Henry, I don't even know what your aunt's name is?"

"Don't you?" said Henry, surprised.

"Is it Glyn-Edwards?"

"No. It's Fairborough. Lady Muriel Fairborough. She's not bad really. Doesn't mind how you come and go. And always very decent at stumping up in a crisis."

"That's a very depressed-looking horse," said Shirley, looking at Number Nineteen. She was nerving herself to say something quite different.

"Wretched brute," agreed Henry. "One of Tommy Twisdon's worst. Come down over the first hurdle, I should think."

Two more horses were brought into the ring, and more people arrived to lean over the rails.

"What's this? Third race?" Henry consulted his card. "Are the numbers up yet? Is Number Eighteen running?"

Shirley glanced up at the board behind her.

"Yes."

"We might have a bit on that, if the price is all right."

"You know a lot about horses, don't you, Henry? Were you-were you brought up with horses?"

"My experience has mostly been with bookmakers."

Shirley nerved herself to ask what she had been wanting to ask.

"It's funny, isn't it, how little I really know about you? Have you got a father or mother, or are you an orphan, like me?"

"Oh! My father and mother were killed in the Blitz. They were in the Caf? de Paris."

"Oh! Henry-how awful!"

"Yes, wasn't it?" agreed Henry, without, however, displaying undue emotion. He seemed to feel this himself, for he added: "Of course it's over four years ago now. I was quite fond of them and all that, but one can't go on remembering things, can one?"