Poison In The Pen by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online Page A

sleep it wouldn’t be anybody’s business. Instead of which, here was this damned party. A fuss on the wedding-day he was prepared for. Weddings were damned uncomfortable things, but he knew what was the proper thing to do and he was prepared to go through with it. It was this thing of having a dinner-party the night before that got him. The bridegroom should be entertaining his bachelor friends, and the bride should be getting her beauty-sleep. Val looked as if she needed it. She was like a ghost in that pale green floating thing. He frowned at Lady Mallett, and discovered her to be saying just that.
    “Valentine looks like a ghost.”
    Since it was his habit to contradict her, he did it now.
    “I can’t think why you should say so!”
    “Can’t you?” She chuckled. “Hating all this, aren’t you? Scilla’s idea of course, and very nice too! What’s all this about Gilbert’s friend having driven them both into a ditch?”
    “You’ve got it wrong! It wasn’t a ditch, it was the hedge into Plowden’s field!”
    “Had they been celebrating?”
    “Not noticeably.”
    “Well, he must be a shocking bad driver! It was he who was driving—not Gilbert? Because if it was Gilbert, I should advise Valentine to break it off! You can’t go marrying a man who drives you into ditches!”
    “I told you it wasn’t a ditch!”
    She gave her rolling laugh.
    “What’s the odds? Here, what’s the matter with Valentine—stage fright? I remember I nearly ran away the day before I married Tim. I must go over and cheer her up. Or is it you who want it more than she does? As I said, you’re hating it all like poison, aren’t you? The fuss and the bother— and Val going off—I don’t suppose you’re feeling too cheerful about that, are you? You’ll miss her in more ways than one, I expect.”
    Her grandmother had been a Repton and she ranked as a cousin. If she didn’t mind what she said, it was astonishing how often other people didn’t mind it either. Her large dark eyes held an unfailing interest in her neighbours’ affairs. She dispensed kindness, interference, and unwanted advice in a prodigal manner. Her massive form, clad in the roughest of tweeds, was to be seen at every local gathering. Her husband’s long purse was at the disposal of every good work. Tonight she was handsomely upholstered in crimson brocade, with an extensive and rather dirty diamond and ruby necklace reposing on a bosom well calculated to sustain it. Large solitaire diamond earrings dazzled on either side of her ruddy cheeks. Her white hair rose above them in an imposing pile. Her small and quite undistinguished-looking husband had made an enormous fortune out of a chain of grocery stores.
    Roger Repton said, “Yes.” It was no good getting annoyed with Nora Mallett. She said what she wanted to say, and no one could stop her. If she wanted to talk about his financial position, she would. She was doing it now.
    “Eleanor did you pretty well in her will, didn’t she! Six hundred a year until Val was eighteen, and another two hundred after that as long as she made her home here! Poor Eleanor—what a mess she made of her life marrying that man Grey! Anyone could see with half an eye that he was after the money. You know, I always thought she had a bit of a soft spot for you. Of course you were first cousins and all that, but nobody thought anything of their marrying in Victorian times—in fact it was quite the thing to do when the estate went in the male line and there were only daughters.”
    “My dear Nora, Eleanor and I were not Victorians.”
    “Much better if you had been—you would almost certainly have married.”
    He said abruptly, “Well, we didn’t, and that’s that!”
    “And more’s the pity. Such a shame for you to come in for the Manor without the money to keep it up properly. Stupid things those old entails. Much better really for Valentine to have come in for the place and have done with it. With the money she