Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh Read Free Book Online

annuity, didn’t we?”
    â€œI’m not thinking of that, Mr. Henry.”
    â€œNo. No, I don’t suppose you are. I was, though.” Nanny put on a pair of thick-lens spectacles and advanced upon Henry.
    â€œYou put your tongue out,” she ordered.
    â€˜Why on earth?”
    â€œDo as you’re told, Mr. Henry.”
    Henry put out his tongue.
    â€œI thought so. Come to me before you go to bed this evening. You’re bilious.”
    â€œWhat utter rot.”
    â€œYou’ve always shown your liver in your spirits.”
    â€œNanny!”
    â€œTalking a lot of rubbish about matters that are beyond your understanding. His other lordship will soon send certain people about their business.”
    â€œMeaning us?”
    â€œStuff and nonsense. You know what I mean. Miss Robin, you’d better take a glass of milk with your lunch. You’re overexcited.”
    â€œYes, Nanny,” said Roberta.
    Nanny returned to her game of patience.
    â€œThe audience is over,” said Henry.
    â€œI’d better unpack,” said Roberta.
    â€œLeave out your pressings,” said Nanny. “I’ll do ’em.”
    â€œThank you, Nanny,” said Roberta and went to her room.
    Now she was alone. The floor beneath her feet seemed unstable as though the sea, after five weeks’ domination, were not easily to be forgotten. It was strange to feel this physical reminder of an experience already so remote. Roberta unpacked. The clothes that she had bought in New Zealand no longer pleased her but she was too much preoccupied by the affairs of the Lampreys to be much concerned with her own. During the last four years, Roberta had passed through adolescence to womanhood. The emotional phases proper to those years had been interrupted by tragedy. Two months ago, when the languors and propulsions of adolescence had not yet quite abated, Roberta’s parents had been killed, and a kind of frost had closed about her emotions so that at first, though she felt the pain of her loss, it was with her reason rather than with her heart. Later, when the thaw came, she found that something unexpected had happened to her. Her affections, which had been easily and lightly bestowed, had crystallized, and she found herself indifferent to the greater number of her friends. With this discovery came another: that in four years her heart was still with an incredible family now half the world away. Her thoughts returned to Deepacres and she wanted the Lampreys. More than anyone else in the world she wanted them. They might be scatter-brained, unstable, reprehensible, but they suited Roberta and she supposed she suited them. When her father’s sister wrote to suggest that Roberta should come to England and live with her, Roberta was glad to go because, by the same mail, came a letter from Lady Charles Lamprey that awoke all her old love for the family. When it became certain that she would see them again she grew apprehensive lest they should find her an awkward carry-over from their colonial days, but as soon as she saw Henry and Frid on the wharf she had felt safer, and now, as she put the last of her un-smart garments in a drawer that already contained several pieces of a toy railway, she was visited by the odd idea that it was she who had grown so much older and that the young Lampreys had merely grown taller.
    â€œOtherwise,” thought Roberta, “they haven’t changed a bit.”
    The door opened and Lady Charles came in. She was now dressed. Her grey hair shone in a mass of small curls, her thin face was delicately powdered, and she looked and smelt delightful.
    â€œHow’s old Robin Grey?” she asked.
    â€œVery happy.”
    Lady Charles turned on the electric heater, drew up a chair, sat in it, folded her short skirt back over her knees and lit a cigarette. Roberta recognized, with a warm sense of familiarity, the signs of an impending gossip.
    â€œI hope you