Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart Read Free Book Online Page A

when they were killed. In an air accident, like Philippe's. I suppose Madame de Valmy told you I'd been at an orphanage in England?"
    "Indeed, yes. She wrote that she'd heard of you through a friend of hers, a Lady Benchley, who comes up every year to Évian, and Lady Benchley thought very highly of you, very highly."
    "That was very nice of her. Lady Benchley was one of the Governors at the orphanage for the last three years I was there. Then when I left to be assistant at a boys' school it turned out she had a son there. She came up to me on Visitors' Day and talked to me, and when I told her I hated the place she asked me if I'd ever considered a private job abroad, because this friend of hers-Madame de Valmy-was looking for a governess for her nephew and had asked her if she knew of anyone from the Home. When I heard the job was in France I jumped at it. I- I'd always fancied living in France, somehow. I went straight up to London next day and saw her. Lady Benchley had promised to telephone about me, and-well, I got the job." I didn't add that Madame must have taken Lady Benchley's recommendation to be worth a good deal more than it actually was. Lady Benchley was a kindly scatterbrain who spent a good deal of her time acting as a sort of private labour-exchange between her friends and the Constance Butcher Home, and I doubt if she had ever known very much about me. And I had certainly got the impression that Madame de Valmy had been so anxious to find a suitable young woman for the post during her short stay in London that she hadn't perhaps probed as far back into my history as she might have done. Not, of course, that it mattered.
    I smiled at Mrs. Seddon, who was still eyeing me with that faintly puzzled look. Then all at once she smiled back, and nodded, so that the gold chain on her bosom glittered and swung. "Well," she said, "well," and though she didn't actually add "You'll do," the implication was there. She opened the door. "And now I really will have to be going. Berthe'll be up soon with some tea for you; she's the girl that looks after these rooms and you'll find she's a good girl, though a bit what you might call flighty. I expect you'll make yourself understood to her all right, and Master Philip'll help."
    "I expect I shall," I said. "Where is Master Philip, Mrs. Seddon?"
    "He's probably in the nursery," said Mrs. Seddon, her hand on the door. "But Madam particularly said you weren't to bother with him tonight. You were to have a cup of tea-which I may say
is
tea, though it took near thirty years to teach them how to make it-and settle yourself in before dinner and you'll be seeing Master Philip tomorrow. But not to bother yourself tonight."
    "Very well," I said. "Thank you, Mrs. Seddon. I shall look forward to that tea."
    The door shut behind her. I could hear the soft plod of her steps along the corridor.
    I stood where I was, looking at the door, and absently smoothing the folds of a petticoat between my hands.
    I was thinking two things. First that I was not supposed to have heard Mrs. Seddon mentioning the lift in her conversation with Madame de Valmy, and that if I was going to make mistakes as easily as that I had better confess quickly before any real damage was done.
    The second thing was Mrs. Seddon's parting admonition: "not to bother with him tonight" Had that really been Héloïse de Valmy's phrase?
"Not to bother with him."
And he was "probably" in the nursery… I laid the petticoat gently in a drawer, then turned and walked out of my pretty bedroom, across the roses-and-ivory sitting-room, towards the schoolroom door. There I hesitated a moment, listening. I could hear nothing.
    I tapped gently on the door and then turned the gilded handle. It opened smoothly.
    I pushed it wide and walked in.

CHAPTER 4
    0 my prophetic soul!
    My uncle!
    Shakespeare:
Hamlet.
     
    My first thought was that he was not an attractive little boy.
    He was small for his age, with a thin little neck supporting a