Wicked Uncle by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online

should she be asked to step round to the manager’s office? She didn’t want to see him, and she could think of no possible reason why he should want to sec her.
    They arrived at a door of marvellously polished wood, so bright that you could see your face in it, and the next moment Dorinda was walking into a very grand office with a large and quite bald-headed man sitting at a table and looking coldly at her through horn-rimmed glasses, while a voice from behind her said,
    “Shoplifting, sir.”
    A wave of indignant scarlet rushed right up to the roots of Dorinda’s hair. You may have the sweetest temper in the world, but to be called a thief by a perfectly strange shopwalker is just pure dynamite. The temper went sky-high, and Dorinda stamped her foot and said, “How dare you!”
    The manager appeared to be completely unimpressed. He said in what Dorinda considered a very offensive voice, “Will you hand the things over, or will you be searched?” The voice over the top of Dorinda’s head said, “I expect they’ll be in the pockets of her coat.” At this moment Miss Silver walked into the room without knocking—a dowdy little woman who looked as if she might have been somebody’s governess during the early years of the century. She wore a serviceable black cloth coat which had only done two winters, and a little yellow fur tippet of uncertain ancestry. Her hat, which had been new in the autumn, was of the kind which looks the same age for about ten years and then falls to pieces. It was made of black felt with a purple velvet starfish in front and a niggle of black and purple ribbon running all round the crown. Under the hat Miss Silver’s neatly coiled mousy hair preserved the early Edwardian fashion. An Alexandra fringe in a net cage surmounted her neat elderly features and the small greyish hazel eyes which, according to Detective Sergeant Abbott of Scotland Yard, always saw a little more than there was to see.
    The manager’s horn-rimmed glasses were turned upon her in a petrifying stare.
    Miss Silver showed no sign of being petrified. With a slight introductory cough she advanced to the edge of the table.
    “Good-morning.”
    “Madam, this is my private office.”
    Miss Silver inclined her head with so much dignity that an awful doubt entered the managerial mind. Dowdiness did not always imply poverty or a lowly status. Sometimes the very wealthy or the very celebrated affected it. There was a dowager duchess of dreadfully formidable character—
    Miss Silver was saying, “If you will allow me—”
    He stopped trying to place her and in quite a polite tone enquired her business.
    Miss Silver coughed again, graciously this time. No words had passed, but there had been an apology. She accepted it. In the days, now happily left behind, when she had been a governess, she had maintained a firm but gentle discipline among her pupils. The habit persisted. The authority was in her voice as she said,
    “My name is Maud Silver. I was completing the purchase of some pink wool, when I happened to witness the incident which has, I think, resulted in this lady being requested to come to your office.”
    “Indeed, madam?”
    Dorinda turned her eyes upon the little woman in black. They burned with indignation. Her colour burned too. She said in a young, clear voice,
    “You couldn’t possibly have seen anything—there wasn’t anything to see!”
    Miss Silver met the indignant gaze with a steady one.
    “If you will put your hands in your pockets you will, I think, see reason to change your mind.”
    Without an instant’s hesitation Dorinda drove both hands into the pockets of her tweed coat. They were deep and capacious. They should have been empty. They were not empty. The fact struck her a blow which was as hard as it was unexpected. She felt as if she had missed a step and come down in the dark. Her eyes widened, her colour rose brightly. Her hands came up out of the pockets with a scatteration of stockings,