The mystery of the Blue Train
"No; I think I want to travel. I've never seen much of the world, you
know."
"I should think not. It must have been an awful life for you cooped up
here all these years."
"I don't know," said Katherine. "It gave me a lot of freedom."
She caught the other's gasp, and reddened a little.
"It must sound foolish--saying that. Of course, I hadn't much freedom
in the downright physical sense--"
"I should think not," breathed Mrs. Harrison, remembering that
Katherine had seldom had that useful thing--a "day off."
"But, in a way, being tied physically gives you lots of scope mentally.
You're always free to think. I've had a lovely feeling always of mental
freedom."
Mrs. Harrison shook her head.
"I can't understand that."
"Oh! you would if you'd been in my place. But, all the same, I feel
I want a change. I want--well, I want things to happen. Oh! not to
me--I don't mean that. But to be in the midst of things, exciting
things--even if I'm only the looker-on. You know, things don't happen
in St. Mary Mead."
"They don't indeed," said Mrs. Harrison, with fervour.
"I shall go to London first," said Katherine. "I have to see the
solicitors, anyway. After that, I shall go abroad, I think."
"Very nice."
"But, of course, first of all--"
"Yes?"
"I must get some clothes."
"Exactly what I said to Arthur this morning," cried the doctor's wife.
"You know, Katherine, you could look positively beautiful if you tried."
Miss Grey laughed unaffectedly.
"Oh! I don't think you could ever make a beauty out of me," she said
sincerely. "But I shall enjoy having some really good clothes. I'm
afraid I'm talking about myself an awful lot."
Mrs. Harrison looked at her shrewdly.
"It must be quite a novel experience for you," she said drily.
Katherine went to say good-bye to old Miss Viner before leaving the
village. Miss Viner was two years older than Mrs. Harfield, and her
mind was mainly taken with her own success in outliving her dead friend.
"You wouldn't have thought I'd have outlasted Jane Harfield, would
you?" she demanded triumphantly of Katherine. "We were at school
together, she and I. And here we are, she taken, and I left. Who would
have thought it?"
"You've always eaten brown bread for supper, haven't you?" murmured
Katherine mechanically.
"Fancy your remembering that, my dear. Yes; if Jane Harfield had had a
slice of brown bread every evening and taken a little stimulant with
her meals she might be here to-day."
The old lady paused, nodding her head triumphantly, then added in
sudden remembrance:
"And so you've come into a lot of money, I hear? Well, well. Take care
of it. And you're going up to London to have a good time? Don't think
you'll get married, though, my dear, because you won't. You're not the
kind to attract the men. And, besides, you're getting on. How old are
you now?"
"Thirty-three," Katherine told her.
"Well," remarked Miss Viner doubtfully, "that's not so very bad. You've
lost your first freshness, of course."
"I'm afraid so," said Katherine, much entertained.
"But you're a very nice girl," said Miss Viner kindly. "And I'm sure
there's many a man might do worse than take you for a wife instead of
one of these flibbertigibbets running about nowadays showing more of
their legs than the Creator ever intended them to. Good-bye, my dear,
and I hope you'll enjoy yourself, but things are seldom what they seem
in this life."
Heartened by these prophecies, Katherine took her departure. Half the
village came to see her off at the station, including the little maid
of all work, Alice, who brought a stiff wired nosegay and cried openly.
"There ain't a many like her," sobbed Alice when the train had finally
departed. "I'm sure when Charlie went back on me with that girl from
the Dairy, nobody could have been kinder than Miss Grey was, and though
particular about the brasses and the dust, she was always one to notice
when you'd give a thing an extra rub. Cut myself in little pieces for
her, I would, any day. A real lady, that's what I call her."
Such was Katherine's departure from St. Mary Mead.
8. Lady Tamplin Writes a Letter
"Well," said Lady Tamplin, "well."
She laid down the continental _Daily Mail_ and stared out across the
blue waters of the Mediterranean. A branch of golden mimosa, hanging
just above her head, made an effective frame for a very charming
picture. A golden-haired, blue-eyed lady in a very becoming negligee.
That the golden hair owed something to art, as did the pink-and-white
complexion, was undeniable, but the blue of the eyes was Nature's gift,
and at forty-four Lady Tamplin could still rank as a beauty.
Charming as she looked, Lady Tamplin was, for once, not thinking of
herself. That is to say, she was not thinking of her appearance. She
was intent on graver matters.
Lady Tamplin was a well-known figure on the Riviera, and her parties
at the Villa Marguerite were justly celebrated. She was a woman of
considerable experience, and had had four husbands. The first had been
merely an indiscretion, and so was seldom referred to by the lady. He
had had the good sense to die with commendable promptitude, and his
widow thereupon espoused a rich manufacturer of buttons. He too had
departed for another sphere after three years of married life--it was
said after a congenial evening with some boon companions. After him
came Viscount Tamplin, who had placed Rosalie securely on those heights
where she wished to tread. She had retained her title when she married
for a fourth time. This fourth venture had been undertaken for pure
pleasure. Mr. Charles Evans, an extremely good-looking young man of
twenty-seven, with delightful manners, a keen love of sport, and an
appreciation of this world's goods, had no money of his own whatsoever.
Lady Tamplin was very pleased and satisfied with life generally,
but she had occasional faint preoccupations about money. The button
manufacturer had left his widow a considerable fortune, but, as Lady
Tamplin was wont to say, "what with one thing and another--" (one thing
being the depreciation of stocks owing to the War, and the other the
extravagances of the late Lord Tamplin). She was still comfortably
off. But to be merely comfortably off is hardly satisfactory to one of
Rosalie Tamplin's temperament.
So, on this particular January morning, she opened her blue eyes
extremely wide as she read a certain item of news and uttered that
non-committal monosyllable "Well." The only other occupant of the
balcony was her daughter, the Hon. Lenox Tamplin. A daughter such as
Lenox was a sad thorn in Lady Tamplin's side, a girl with no kind
of tact, who actually looked older than her age, and whose peculiar
sardonic form of humour was, to say the least of it, uncomfortable.
"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 fore finger 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 dare say 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 was 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 man-hunter."
"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 negligee, 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 re-reading 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. She put it
in her handbag and started out to keep the appointment she had made
with Mrs. Harfield's lawyers.
The firm was an old-established one in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and
after a few minutes' delay Katherine was shown into the presence of
the senior partner, a kindly, elderly man with shrewd blue eyes and a
fatherly manner.
They discussed Mrs. Harfield's will and various legal matters for some
minutes, then Katherine handed the lawyer Mrs. Samuel's letter.
"I had better show you this, I suppose," she said, "though it is really
rather ridiculous."
He read it with a slight smile.
"Rather a crude attempt, Miss Grey. I need hardly tell you, I suppose,
that these people have no claim of any kind upon the estate, and if
they endeavour to contest the will no court will uphold them."
"I thought as much."
"Human nature is not always very wise. In Mrs. Samuel Harfield's place,
I should have been more inclined to make an appeal to your generosity."
"That is one of the things I wanted to speak to you about. I should
like a certain sum to go to these people."
"There is no obligation."
"I know that."
"And they will not take it in the spirit it is meant. They will