The Man in the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie [7]
Mr Flemming was nervous too. I realized that as we went up the stairs of the tall house in a quiet Kensington square. Mrs Flemming greeted me pleasantly enough. She was a stout, placid woman of the ‘good wife and mother’ type. She took me up to a spotless chintz-hung bedroom, hoped I had everything I wanted, informed me that tea would be ready in about a quarter of an hour, and left me to my own devices.
I heard her voice slightly raised, as she entered the drawing-room below on the first floor.
‘Well, Henry, why on earth–’ I lost the rest, but the acerbity of the tone was evident. And a few minutes later another phrase floated up to me, in an even more acid voice: ‘I agree with you! She is certainly very good-looking.’
It is really a very hard life. Men will not be nice to you if you are not good-looking, and women will not be nice to you if you are.
With a deep sigh I proceeded to do things with my hair. I have nice hair. It is black–a real black, not dark brown–and it grows well back from my forehead and down over the ears. With a ruthless hand I dragged it upwards. As ears, my ears are quite all right, but there is no doubt about it, ears are démodé nowadays. They are quite like the ‘Queen of Spain’s legs’ in Professor Peterson’s young day. When I had finished I looked almost unbelievably like the kind of orphan that walks out in a queue with a little bonnet and red cloak.
I noticed when I went down that Mrs Flemming’s eyes rested on my exposed ears with quite a kindly glance. Mr Flemming seemed puzzled. I had no doubt that he was saying to himself, ‘What has the child done to herself?’
On the whole the rest of the day passed off well. It was settled that I was to start at once to look for something to do.
When I went to bed, I stared earnestly at my face in the glass. Was I really good-looking? Honestly I couldn’t say I thought so! I hadn’t got a straight Grecian nose, or a rosebud mouth, or any of the things you ought to have. It is true that a curate once told me that my eyes were like ‘imprisoned sunshine in a dark, dark wood’–but curates always know so many quotations, and fire them off at random. I’d much prefer to have Irish blue eyes than dark green ones with yellow flecks! Still, green is a good colour for adventuresses.
I wound a black garment tightly round me, leaving my arms and shoulders bare. Then I brushed back my hair and pulled it well down over my ears again. I put a lot of powder on my face, so that the skin seemed even whiter than usual. I fished about until I found some lip-salve, and I put oceans of it on my lips. Then I did under my eyes with burnt cork. Finally I draped a red ribbon over my bare shoulder, stuck a scarlet feather in my hair, and placed a cigarette in one corner of my mouth. The whole effect pleased me very much.
‘Anna the Adventuress,’ I said aloud, nodding at my reflection. ‘Anna the Adventuress. Episode I, “The House in Kensington”!’
Girls are foolish things.
Chapter 3
In the succeeding weeks I was a good deal bored. Mrs Flemming and her friends seemed to me to be supremely uninteresting. They talked for hours of themselves and their children and of the difficulties of getting good milk for the children and of what they say to the dairy when the milk wasn’t good. Then they would go on to the servants, and the difficulties of getting good servants and of what they had said to the woman at the registry office and of what the woman at the registry office had said to them. They never seemed to read the papers or to care about what went on in the world. They disliked travelling–everything was so different to England. The Riviera was all right, of course, because one met all one’s friends there.
I listened and contained myself with difficulty. Most of these women were rich. The whole wide beautiful world was theirs to wander in and they deliberately stayed in dirty dull London and talked about milkmen and servants! I think now, looking back, that I was perhaps a shade