Evidence of Things Seen by Elizabeth Daly Read Free Book Online Page B

the cottage—if she could. Then she had a bath in the pool, and a large supper. She went to bed early and slept well.
    Friday was a day of furious preparation, since Maggie had her own ideas about a style of entertainment suitable for the Hunters. Flowers must be everywhere, the blue downstairs bedroom must be arranged as a powder room for Mrs. Hunter, the green bedroom next it adapted to Mr. Hunter’s requirements, if he had any. The turquoise bathroom must be fitted out with all Clara’s best assortment of towels, toilet waters and soap; they were unfortunately pink, and did not match the bathroom; but fortunately they matched one another.
    Clara was sent out early in the car to see whether Miss Radford had flowers. She drove to the farm, blew her horn, and allowed Miss Radford to come to the gate. She had no wish to be escorted to the front door by two dogs, sniffing at her ankles as she had seen them sniff at Mrs. Groby’s.
    â€œI don’t get a minute to grow flowers,” said Miss Radford. “When I need flowers I get them in the field. It’s full of black-eyed Susans now.”
    â€œI’ll just drive in to Avebury then, Miss Radford. There’s a nice-looking nursery there.”
    â€œSeems a pity to buy flowers, with all those ramblers on your porch.”
    â€œThe Hunters are coming to dinner tomorrow, and I thought I’d like a variety—something for the table.”
    â€œSeems a pity. I’m going to get some black-eyed Susans tomorrow, and some ferns—for the cemetery. I might bring you some, if you haven’t time to pick.”
    â€œOr why shouldn’t I get you some, when I get mine? I’d love to give you a bunch for the cemetery, nice big ones, gladiolus perhaps, or stock.” Clara thought: Sunday is the day they put flowers on graves. It’s Mrs. Hickson’s anniversary—at least Monday is, but Miss Radford would decorate the grave on Sunday. She wouldn’t dare to, if… Or would she have to, on account of the neighbors?
    Miss Radford was politely refusing Clara’s proposed gift, on the ground that the other things lasted longer. “I’ll just go up to the woods along your road and take a pail. Ferns there—they last a month in a pail.”
    Clara drove to the nursery in Avebury, and ordered a dazzling assortment, principally of sweet peas, to be cut and delivered the next morning. When she reached the cottage again she hastily collected her sketching things and went down the road to a point below the sycamore, but a melodious honking brought her back around the bend. A magnificent car, low and shiny as a motor launch, stood humming at the foot of the path; Mr. Gilbert Craye sat in it among gadgets like semi-precious stones, the sun glinting on his thick-lensed spectacles.
    He was a study in brown; his checked suit being an almost perfect match in both its tones for his thin, freckled face and his sun-bleached hair. He was always laughing, which perhaps accounted for the deep wrinkles around his eyes and from his nostrils to his chin: certainly they did not come from age—he was barely thirty. He was fragile-looking but wiry, always meticulously groomed, and oddly placative—a man, one would have said, unsure of his welcome.
    It is true that he had had to outlive a certain reputation. A neglected child, a wild boy, he had married ridiculously and very young. There had been disagreeable publicity over his divorce, over the death of his only child, a boy; it had died in infancy, at his house at Stratfield, while he was away somewhere. The divorced wife had made a frightful row. For the last half-dozen years he had lived alone—except for a stream of supposedly unpresentable friends—in his old house at Stratfield, in Florida or on his California ranch; but just of late he was supposed to have quieted down, and people were inviting him to dinner again.
    Gamadge had known his family, called him by