The Hound of Death - Agatha Christie [34]
Mrs Harter, submerged in a sea of words that she did not understand, surrendered.
‘Of course, Charles,’ she murmured, ‘if you really think–’
‘My dear Aunt Mary,’ said Charles enthusiastically. ‘It is the very thing for you, to keep you from moping and all that.’
The lift prescribed by Dr Meynell was installed shortly afterwards and was very nearly the death of Mrs Harter since, like many other old ladies, she had a rooted objection to strange men in the house. She suspected them one and all of having designs on her old silver.
After the lift the wireless set arrived. Mrs Harter was left to contemplate the, to her, repellent object–a large ungainly-looking box, studded with knobs.
It took all Charles’ enthusiasm to reconcile her to it.
Charles was in his element, he turned knobs, discoursing eloquently the while.
Mrs Harter sat in her high-backed chair, patient and polite, with a rooted conviction in her own mind that these new fangled notions were neither more nor less than unmitigated nuisances.
‘Listen, Aunt Mary, we are on to Berlin, isn’t that splendid? Can you hear the fellow?’
‘I can’t hear anything except a good deal of buzzing and clicking,’ said Mrs Harter.
Charles continued to twirl knobs. ‘Brussels,’ he announced with enthusiasm.
‘Is it really?’ said Mrs Harter with no more than a trace of interest.
Charles again turned knobs and an unearthly howl echoed forth into the room.
‘Now we seem to be on to the Dogs’ Home,’ said Mrs Harter, who was an old lady with a certain amount of spirit.
‘Ha, ha!’ said Charles, ‘you will have your joke, won’t you, Aunt Mary? Very good that!’
Mrs Harter could not help smiling at him. She was very fond of Charles. For some years a niece, Miriam Harter, had lived with her. She had intended to make the girl her heiress, but Miriam had not been a success. She was impatient and obviously bored by her aunt’s society. She was always out, ‘gadding about’ as Mrs Harter called it. In the end, she had entangled herself with a young man of whom her aunt thoroughly disapproved. Miriam had been returned to her mother with a curt note much as if she had been goods on approval. She had married the young man in question and Mrs Harter usually sent her a handkerchief case or a table-centre at Christmas.
Having found nieces disappointing, Mrs Harter turned her attention to nephews. Charles, from the first, had been an unqualified success. He was always pleasantly deferential to his aunt, and listened with an appearance of intense interest to the reminiscences of her youth. In this he was a great contrast to Miriam, who had been frankly bored and showed it. Charles was never bored, he was always good-tempered, always gay. He told his aunt many times a day that she was a perfectly marvellous old lady.
Highly satisfied with her new acquisition, Mrs Harter had written to her lawyer with instructions as to the making of a new will. This was sent to her, duly approved by her and signed.
And now even in the matter of the wireless, Charles was soon proved to have won fresh laurels.
Mrs Harter, at first antagonistic, became tolerant and finally fascinated. She enjoyed it very much better when Charles went out. The trouble with Charles was that he could not leave the thing alone. Mrs Harter would be seated in her chair comfortably listening to a symphony concert or a lecture on Lucrezia Borgia or Pond Life, quite happy and at peace with the world. Not so Charles. The harmony would be shattered by discordant shrieks while he enthusiastically attempted to get foreign stations. But on those evenings when Charles was dining out with friends Mrs Harter enjoyed the wireless very much indeed. She would turn on two switches, sit in her high-backed chair and enjoy the programme of the evening.
It was about three months after the wireless had been installed that the first eerie happening occurred. Charles was absent at a bridge party.
The programme for