The Mystery of the Blue Train - Agatha Christie [18]
“Darling,” said Lady Tamplin, “just fancy.”
“What is it?”
Lady Tamplin picked up the Daily Mail, handed it to her daughter, and indicated with an agitated forefinger the paragraph of interest.
Lenox read it without any of the signs of agitation shown by her mother. She handed back the paper.
“What about it?” she asked. “It is the sort of thing that is always happening. Cheese-paring old women are always dying in villages and leaving fortunes of millions to their humble companions.”
“Yes, dear, I know,” said her mother, “and I daresay the fortune is not anything like as large as they say it is; newspapers are so inaccurate. But even if you cut it down by half—”
“Well,” said Lenox, “it has not been left to us.”
“Not exactly, dear,” said Lady Tamplin; “but this girl, this Katherine Grey, is actually a cousin of mine. One of the Worcestershire Greys, the Edgeworth lot. My very own cousin! Fancy!”
“Ah-ha,” said Lenox.
“And I was wondering—” said her mother.
“What there is in it for us,” finished Lenox, with that sideways smile that her mother always found difficult to understand.
“Oh, darling,” said Lady Tamplin, on a faint note of reproach.
It was very faint, because Rosalie Tamplin was used to her daughter’s outspokenness and to what she called Lenox’s uncomfortable way of putting things.
“I was wondering,” said Lady Tamplin, again drawing her artistically pencilled brows together, “whether—oh, good morning, Chubby darling: are you going to play tennis? How nice!”
Chubby, thus addressed, smiled kindly at her, remarked perfunctorily, “How topping you look in that peach-coloured thing,” and drifted past them and down the steps.
“The dear thing,” said Lady Tamplin, looking affectionately after her husband. “Let me see, what was I saying? Ah!” She switched her mind back to business once more. “I was wondering—”
“Oh, for God’s sake get on with it. That is the third time you have said that.”
“Well, dear,” said Lady Tamplin, “I was thinking that it would be very nice if I wrote to dear Katherine and suggested that she should pay us a little visit out here. Naturally, she is quite out of touch with Society. It would be nicer for her to be launched by one of her own people. An advantage for her and an advantage for us.”
“How much do you think you would get her to cough up?” asked Lenox.
Her mother looked at her reproachfully and murmured:
“We should have to come to some financial arrangement, of course. What with one thing and another—the War—your poor father—”
“And Chubby now,” said Lenox. “He is an expensive luxury if you like.”
“She was a nice girl as I remember her,” murmured Lady Tamplin, pursuing her own line of thought—“quiet, never wanted to shove herself forward, not a beauty, and never a manhunter.”
“She will leave Chubby alone, then?” said Lenox.
Lady Tamplin looked at her in protest. “Chubby would never—” she began.
“No,” said Lenox, “I don’t believe he would; he knows a jolly sight too well which way his bread is buttered.”
“Darling,” said Lady Tamplin, “you have such a coarse way of putting things.”
“Sorry,” said Lenox.
Lady Tamplin gathered up the Daily Mail and her négligé, a vanity bag, and various odd letters.
“I shall write to dear Katherine at once,” she said, “and remind her of the dear old days at Edgeworth.”
She went into the house, a light of purpose shining in her eyes.
Unlike Mrs. Samuel Harfield, correspondence flowed easily from her pen. She covered four sheets without pause or effort, and on rereading it found no occasion to alter a word.
Katherine received it on the morning of her arrival in London. Whether she read between the lines of it or not is another matter.