The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie [4]
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I see what you mean, MacDonald. N–no–William had better get on with the lower border.’
‘That’s what I thocht meself, m’lady.’
‘Yes,’ said Lady Coote. ‘Yes, certainly.’
‘I thocht you’d agree, m’lady,’ said MacDonald.
‘Oh, certainly,’ said Lady Coote again.
MacDonald touched his hat and moved away.
Lady Coote sighed unhappily and looked after him. Jimmy Thesiger, replete with kidneys and bacon, stepped out on to the terrace beside her, and sighed in quite a different manner.
‘Topping morning, eh?’ he remarked.
‘Is it?’ said Lady Coote absently. ‘Oh, yes, I suppose it is. I hadn’t noticed.’
‘Where are the others? Punting on the lake?’
‘I expect so. I mean, I shouldn’t wonder if they were.’
Lady Coote turned and plunged abruptly into the house again. Tredwell was just examining the coffee pot.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Lady Coote. ‘Isn’t Mr–Mr–’
‘Wade, m’lady?’
‘Yes, Mr Wade. Isn’t he down yet?’
‘No, m’lady.’
‘It’s very late.’
‘Yes, m’lady.’
‘Oh, dear. I suppose he will come down sometime, Tredwell?’
‘Oh, undoubtedly, m’lady. It was eleven-thirty yesterday morning when Mr Wade came down, m’lady.’
Lady Coote glanced at the clock. It was now twenty minutes to twelve. A wave of human sympathy rushed over her.
‘It’s very hard luck on you, Tredwell. Having to clear and then get lunch on the table by one o’clock.’
‘I am accustomed to the ways of young gentlemen, m’lady.’
The reproof was dignified, but unmistakable. So might a prince of the Church reprove a Turk or an infidel who had unwittingly committed a solecism in all good faith.
Lady Coote blushed for the second time that morning. But a welcome interruption occurred. The door opened and a serious, spectacled young man put his head in.
‘Oh, there you are, Lady Coote. Sir Oswald was asking for you.’
‘Oh, I’ll go to him at once, Mr Bateman.’
Lady Coote hurried out.
Rupert Bateman, who was Sir Oswald’s private secretary, went out the other way, through the window where Jimmy Thesiger was still lounging amiably.
‘’Morning, Pongo,’ said Jimmy. ‘I suppose I shall have to go and make myself agreeable to those blasted girls. You coming?’
Bateman shook his head and hurried along the terrace and in at the library window. Jimmy grinned pleasantly at his retreating back. He and Bateman had been at school together, when Bateman had been a serious, spectacled boy, and had been nicknamed Pongo for no earthly reason whatever.
Pongo, Jimmy reflected, was very much the same sort of ass now that he had been then. The words ‘Life is real, life is earnest’ might have been written specially for him.
Jimmy yawned and strolled slowly down to the lake. The girls were there, three of them–just the usual sort of girls, two with dark shingled heads and one with a fair shingled head. The one that giggled most was (he thought) called Helen–and there was another called Nancy–and the third one was, for some reason, addressed as Socks. With them were his two friends, Bill Eversleigh and Ronny Devereux, who were employed in a purely ornamental capacity at the Foreign Office.
‘Hallo,’ said Nancy (or possibly Helen). ‘It’s Jimmy. Where’s what’s his name?’
‘You don’t mean to say,’ said Bill Eversleigh, ‘that Gerry Wade’s not up yet? Something ought to be done about it.’
‘If he’s not careful,’ said Ronny Devereux, ‘he’ll miss his breakfast altogether one day–find it’s lunch or tea instead when he rolls down.’
‘It’s a shame,’ said the girl called Socks. ‘Because it worries Lady Coote so. She gets more and more like a hen that wants to lay an egg and can’t. It’s too bad.’
‘Let’s pull him out of bed,’ suggested Bill. ‘Come on, Jimmy.’
‘Oh! let’s be more subtle than that,’ said the girl called Socks. Subtle was a word of which she was rather fond. She used it a great deal.
‘I’m not subtle,’ said Jimmy. ‘I don’t know how.’
‘Let’s get together and do something about it tomorrow morning,’ suggested Ronny vaguely. ‘You know, get him up at seven. Stagger the household. Tredwell loses his false whiskers and drops the tea