Sparkling Cyanide - Agatha Christie [31]
Lucilla Drake had been Hector Marle’s half-sister, the child of an earlier marriage. She had played the little mother to a very much younger brother when his own mother died. Housekeeping for her father, she had stiffened into a pronounced spinsterhood. She was close on forty when she met the Rev Caleb Drake, he himself a man of over fifty. Her married life had been short, a mere two years, then she had been left a widow with an infant son. Motherhood, coming late and unexpectedly, had been the supreme experience of Lucilla Drake’s life. Her son had turned out an anxiety, a source of grief and a constant financial drain—but never a disappointment. Mrs Drake refused to recognize anything in her son Victor except an amiable weakness of character. Victor was too trusting—too easily led astray by bad companions because of his own belief in them. Victor was unlucky. Victor was deceived. Victor was swindled. He was the cat’s-paw of wicked men who exploited his innocence. The pleasant, rather silly sheep’s face hardened into obstinacy when criticism of Victor was to the fore. She knew her own son. He was a dear boy, full of high spirits, and his so-called friends took advantage of him. She knew, none better, how Victor hated having to ask her for money. But when the poor boy was really in such a terrible situation, what else could he do? It wasn’t as though he had anyone but her to go to.
All the same, as she admitted, George’s invitation to come and live in the house and look after Iris, had come as a god-send, at a moment when she really had been in desperate straits of genteel poverty. She had been very happy and comfortable this last year and it was not in human nature to look kindly on the possibility of being superseded by an upstart young woman, all modern efficiency and capability, who in any case, so she persuaded herself, would only be marrying George for his money. Of course that was what she was after! A good home and a rich indulgent husband. You couldn’t tell Aunt Lucilla, at her age, that any young woman really liked working for her living! Girls were the same as they always had been—if they could get a man to keep them in comfort, they much preferred it. This Ruth Lessing was clever, worming her way into a position of confidence, advising George about house furnishing, making herself indispensable—but, thank goodness, there was one person at least who saw what she was up to!
Lucilla Drake nodded her head several times, causing her soft double chins to quiver, raised her eyebrows with an air of superb human sapience, and abandoned the subject for one equally interesting and possibly even more pressing.
‘It’s the blankets I can’t make up my mind about, dear. You see, I can’t get it clearly laid down whether we shan’t be coming down again until next spring or whether George means to run down for weekends. He won’t say.’
‘I suppose he doesn’t really know.’ Iris tried to give her attention to a point that seemed completely unimportant. ‘If it was nice weather it might be fun to come down occasionally. Though I don’t think I want to particularly. Still the house will be here if we do want to come.’
‘Yes, dear, but one wants to know. Because, you see, if we aren’t coming down until next year, then the blankets ought to be put away with moth balls. But if we are coming down, that wouldn’t be necessary, because the blankets would be used—and the smell of moth balls is so unpleasant.’
‘Well, don’t use them.’
‘Yes, but it’s been such a hot summer there are a lot of moths about. Everyone says it’s a bad year for moths. And for wasps, of course. Hawkins told me yesterday he’s taken thirty wasps’ nests this summer—thirty—just