By the Pricking of My Thumbs - Agatha Christie [5]
‘You seem in fine form, Aunt Ada,’ said Mr Beresford. ‘Fighting fit, I should say.’
‘I can take your measure all right. What d’you mean by saying that you’re my nephew? What did you say your name was? Thomas?’
‘Yes. Thomas or Tommy.’
‘Never heard of you,’ said Aunt Ada. ‘I only had one nephew and he was called William. Killed in the last war. Good thing, too. He’d have gone to the bad if he’d lived. I’m tired,’ said Aunt Ada, leaning back on her pillows and turning her head towards Miss Packard. ‘Take ’em away. You shouldn’t let strangers in to see me.’
‘I thought a nice little visit might cheer you up,’ said Miss Packard unperturbed.
Aunt Ada uttered a deep bass sound of ribald mirth.
‘All right,’ said Tuppence cheerfully. ‘We’ll go away again. I’ll leave the roses. You might change your mind about them. Come on, Tommy,’ said Tuppence. She turned towards the door.
‘Well, goodbye, Aunt Ada. I’m sorry you don’t remember me.’
Aunt Ada was silent until Tuppence had gone out of the door with Miss Packard and Tommy followed her.
‘Come back, you, said Aunt Ada, raising her voice. ‘I know you perfectly. You’re Thomas. Red-haired you used to be. Carrots, that’s the colour your hair was. Come back. I’ll talk to you. I don’t want the woman. No good her pretending she’s your wife. I know better. Shouldn’t bring that type of woman in here. Come and sit down here in this chair and tell me about your dear mother. You go away,’ added Aunt Ada as a kind of postscript, waving her hand towards Tuppence who was hesitating in the doorway.
Tuppence retired immediately.
‘Quite in one of her moods today,’ said Miss Packard, unruffled, as they went down the stairs. ‘Sometimes, you know,’ she added, ‘she can be quite pleasant. You would hardly believe it.’
Tommy sat down in the chair indicated to him by Aunt Ada and remarked mildly that he couldn’t tell her much about his mother as she had been dead now for nearly forty years. Aunt Ada was unperturbed by this statement.
‘Fancy,’ she said, ‘is it as long as that? Well, time does pass quickly.’ She looked him over in a considering manner. ‘Why don’t you get married?’ she said. ‘Get some nice capable woman to look after you. You’re getting on, you know. Save you taking up with all these loose women and bringing them round and speaking as though they were your wife.’
‘I can see,’ said Tommy, ‘that I shall have to get Tuppence to bring her marriage lines along next time we come to see you.’
‘Made an honest woman of her, have you?’ said Aunt Ada.
‘We’ve been married over thirty years,’ said Tommy, ‘and we’ve got a son and a daughter, and they’re both married too.’
‘The trouble is,’ said Aunt Ada, shifting her ground with dexterity, ‘that nobody tells me anything. If you’d kept me properly up to date–’
Tommy did not argue the point. Tuppence had once laid upon him a serious injunction. ‘If anybody over the age of sixty-five finds fault with you,’ she said, ‘never argue. Never try to say you’re right. Apologize at once and say it was all your fault and you’re very sorry and you’ll never do it again.’
It occurred to Tommy at this moment with some force that that would certainly be the line to take with Aunt Ada, and indeed always had been.
‘I’m very sorry, Aunt Ada,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid, you know, one does tend to get forgetful as time goes on. It’s not everyone,’ he continued unblushingly, ‘who has your wonderful memory for the past.’
Aunt Ada smirked. There was no other word for it. ‘You have something there,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry if I received you rather roughly, but I don’t care for being imposed upon. You never know in this place. They let in anyone to see you. Anyone at all. If I accepted everyone for what they said they were, they might be intending to rob and murder me in my bed.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s very likely,’ said Tommy.
‘You never know,’ said Aunt Ada. ‘The things you read in the paper. And the things people come and tell you. Not that I believe everything I’m told. But I keep a sharp look-out. Would you believe it, they brought a strange man in