Polly by M.C. Beaton Read Free Book Online Page A

an unnecessary fuss.”
    “And that’s your last word?”
    “The last word on this subject, I hope,” said Mr. Baines meekly.
    “Then, Bertie Baines, let me tell you this. I am going home to mother. And I am not returning until
that girl
is no longer employed in your office.” She rang the bell. A trim parlormaid appeared. “Maisie, see that my things are packed,” said Mrs. Baines. Maisie bustled off with a crackle of starch and Mrs. Baines looked hopefully at her husband. He hadn’t moved. She went slowly from the room and upstairs to supervise the packing.
    When she descended some time later, he was still sitting as she had left him. Mrs. Baines tried again. “I’m going, Bertie,” she said.
    “Go if you must,” said Mr. Baines, getting to his feet, “but I am not going to do anything that will jeopardize my position with Westerman’s after all these years.”
    His wife’s answer was a monumental sniff of disdain. She swept out in a flurry of taffeta and, some minutes later, Mr. Baines heard the clop-clop of the carriage horses as they bore their infuriated burden off down the street.
    Mr. Baines crouched back down in his chair. He felt immeasurably alone without his wife’s domineering presence. The shadows were lengthening. He had been an utter fool. What was a chap supposed to do on his own? The heavy furniture seemed to be massing for the attack. “You catch him on the left flank,” the table seemed to be saying to a hard, high-backed chair.
    But the little imp who looks after henpecked husbands seemed to whisper in Mr. Baines’s ear, “A chap could take a nice promenade across the Heath on this beautiful evening. A chap could have a pint of mild and sit out over the pond at the Vale of Health pub and watch the ducks. A chap could…”
    With a tremulous feeling of excitement, Mr. Baines hurriedly collected his tall silk hat and his best malacca cane. He pushed open the heavy, gloomy, stained-glass door, walked through the pocket-sized garden and stood for a moment on the pavement outside.
    The gas lamps had been lit along the walk across the Heath and a faint mist had descended turning the lamps into great hazy, magic globes of light.
    He walked across the road and ambled hesitantly along the walk. Above him, somewhere in the trees, a blackbird began to sing. “Past your bedtime,” muttered Mr. Baines to cover the sudden rush of emotion he had felt at the bird’s song. The greenish-blue misty light was turning to black and the lights of the pub were dimly reflected in the pond.
    Above the pub door was a sign to tell all and sundry that the establishment had been licensed by George the Third for singing and dancing.
    Slowly, Mr. Baines raised his cane and tilted his silk hat to a slightly rakish angle. He pushed open the glass doors and went in.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Miss Thistlethwaite’s hostel for businesswomen could hardly be said to be a home away from home. As you pushed open the black, glossy door under the dingy Georgian fanlight, the mingled odors of strong tea, disinfectant, and dry rot rose around you.
    The rooms were very small and barely furnished. An iron bedstead stood against the window that overlooked a sooty garden where no birds sang. There was a marble washstand against one wall and a curtained closet on the other. A minuscule round cane table ornamented the scuffed green linoleum and a hooked rug lay beside the bed.
    In the entrance hall two brass Benaras bowls of pampas grass formed a sort of dusty triumphal arch to a chilly sitting room, where a circle of hard-backed chairs held a perpetual conference.
    All rules and regulations had been stitched in the form of samplers by an elderly relative of Miss Thistlethwaite’s, who had tried to lighten their grim message by embellishing them with neatly stitched herbaceous borders. NO VISITORS IN THE ROOMS AT ALL TIMES. BATHS—TWO PENNIES. NO MALE VISITORS IN THE SITTING ROOM AFTER FIVE P.M …. and so on.
    It was doubtful whether