Murder is Grim - Samuel Rogers

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Or again, perhaps Felix had sent it himself, for the sake of domestic peace, suspecting that Ruby would resent her coming. She wished that either one of these explanations was true; then everything would be cleared up and she would feel free to enjoy this wonderful place; but she was not convinced. She couldn’t believe it of Felix, and not even of Ruby. In spite of her dourness, she looked honest and only too forthright.

      As she strolled toward the farther window, Kate noticed that a pair of feet was protruding from one of the wicker chairs whose back was turned to the house. They were small feet, wearing scarlet sandals with very high heels, and through the straps Kate could see that the toe-nails were painted crimson. Could that be Clotilde, she wondered: it was certainly not June. But then the thickness of the ankles and the flabbiness of the bare calves, daubed with sun tan, made her sure that this was an older woman. It must be Mrs. Gladstone, June’s mother, though one wouldn’t have thought it. A tall glass, empty except for a sprig of mint, stood on the tiles beside her.

      Then as Kate idly watched, an extraordinarily pretty girl in grey flannel slacks appeared on the terrace from somewhere behind the house. She had a small head set on a long neck; she looked as composed, as beautifully made up, as the models in a fashion display; but the most striking thing about her was her hair, which floated down to her shoulders in waves of the glossiest, palest gold that Kate had ever seen. Kate thought regretfully of her own hair, which had had that almost silvery brightness when she was two or three (Mother had kept a lock of it), but which had darkened ever since. She suspected that she would not like this girl: she seemed far too smooth; but she did arouse Kate’s sporting instincts. It would be interesting to see her fiancé.

      ‘Well you owe me five dollars’, Clotilde called to her stepmother (Kate was sure she had identified them both). ‘I beat him 6-4, 6-3.’

      ‘Anyone else but you,’ a throaty voice answered from the chair, ‘wouldn’t feel right about taking the money. It’s quite obvious that if you did beat him it was only because he let you.’

      The first thing that struck Kate about this voice was the fact that, with its drawl, the mannered way it lingered on certain syllables, it assumed the presence of an audience. Since they were betting, Kate felt she would be willing to bet even money that Mrs. Gladstone had once been an actress.

      ‘You ought to know Ralph by this time!’ Clotilde laughed, and her tone seemed exaggeratedly casual, as if she were trying to underline its difference from the older woman’s. ‘He’s not so damn chivalrous as all that.’

      ‘Chivalrous!’ Mrs. Gladstone snorted. ‘Who said anything about chivalry? If he didn’t bother to win, it was because he was bored, poor lamb, and God knows I don’t blame him! You’re not at your best, my dove, on the tennis court.’

      The voices came through the open window as clearly as if they were in the room. Kate did not know what to do: should she cough, or pretend to adjust the blind? But it would be embarrassing to make her presence known now; and as far as Clotilde and Mrs. Gladstone were concerned, she felt they would not care in the least who might hear them.

      Clotilde had walked nearer her stepmother’s chair, and was gazing down at her with a fixed irritating smile.

      ‘Mavis, darling,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid what really worries you is the idea, and I admit there’s something in it, that it’s I who am growing bored with him.’

      ‘And why, pray, should that interest me?’ Mavis sounded like a duchess on the stage of a summer theatre.

      Clotilde lifted her fine eyebrows and drew her lips together in an expression of innocence. ‘Ah, why indeed?’ she asked.

      ‘Darling, do you know what you remind me of?’ Mrs. Gladstone went on after the slightest pause; and Kate was now aware of a rasping note beneath the smoothness of her voice. ‘You make me think of a mosquito, a very charming, slim mosquito – that goes without saying – with lovely gauzy wings, but a mosquito nonetheless. And I’m terribly afraid, you know, that Ralph is beginning to agree with me.’

      Clotilde seemed to be having a very good time. ‘Let’s see what you remind me of’, she said. ‘It’s like that descriptive game, isn’t it, and you have chosen the subject of insects. Of course it’s very hard to think of you in such terms. If you had chosen flowers, say, or nice things to drink, nothing would have been easier. But if I had to describe you as an insect, I think I should be inclined to choose a tick, one of those pretty, plump little ticks you find on dogs.’

      Mrs. Gladstone laughed huskily. ‘I hope not a tick’, she said. ‘They can be quite dangerous, you know.’

      ‘Not unless you let them get under your skin’, Clotilde replied.

      Mrs. Gladstone’s laugh died away in a kind of purring chuckle. ‘I don’t flatter myself that I could ever get under yours’, she said. ‘It’s-shall we say too fine-grained? So you’re perfectly safe.’

      Kate was amused but at the same time slightly revolted by this scrap of conversation; she felt at least that she was beginning to understand what Miss Barstow had meant when she said that June’s family background left much to be desired. Then, the next instant, a young man in white flannels appeared on the terrace, and in her surprise and pleasure this malicious sparring seemed all at once unimportant. He was a solid straight young man, with chestnut hair, a brown skin, and deep-set brown eyes. His features were large; his eyebrows were almost ferociously dark and thick; but the general impression one gathered from his face was that of a somewhat detached and distinctly patient kindness. It was Ralph Green! There could be no doubt of it. What fun that he should be here! She remembered now that Felix had mentioned a Mr. Green, and of course Mavis had referred to ‘Ralph’; but it had not occurred to Kate to put the two names together. She had not seen Ralph for five years and she thought of him always in connection with the summer she had spent in Maine. She had been only fifteen years old and Ralph must have been twenty-one or two; but he had taken her sailing, he had coached her in tennis; he had been kind, even affectionate, never in the least condescending; and Kate during the last month of her stay had been more nearly in love with him than she had ever been with anyone since that faraway summer.

      Of course, to him, she had been just a rather big little girl; he had liked her very much; she could realize that he must sometimes have been amused by her. She would always be grateful to him because she felt that he had given her a standard of comparison by which she could judge the series of younger boys who had begun that very winter to fall in love with her. She could hardly wait now to speak to him. She wondered if he, too, would be surprised; she even wondered if he would remember her. Then like a chill it came over her that Ralph was engaged to marry this awful Clotilde.

      ‘I couldn’t find the last ball’, he said, and there was an edge to his voice, suggesting that even his patience had its limits. ‘I’m not going to waste any more time looking for it.’

      ‘Now really, Ralph!’ Clotilde exclaimed. ‘They were very special ones. It’s almost impossible to get them.’

      Ralph looked at her with a fixed and quite unrevealing smile. ‘You like things that are hard to get, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You like things made to order. I wonder if there’s anything you’d enjoy, if you thought that the average person, the common run-of-the-mill individual, could get it just as easily as you could.’

      Ralph was standing very straight and yet he seemed quite relaxed; he had the surprising light stance and poise that you notice sometimes in even the most dignified and massive dogs. Kate watched him with keen curiosity. He was not so handsome as she remembered him; no actual young man could be that. In fact, she had to confess, he was not handsome at all; and yet it seemed to her that she liked his face more than ever. Its present impatience or irony, or even scorn, seemed only to emphasize what must be its habitual gentleness. You felt that he had learned not to expect too much either from himself or others, but that he was more inclined to be tolerant of others than of himself. Clotilde met his eyes.

      ‘I haven’t given the matter much thought’, she said coolly.

      ‘No, I expect not’, he said. ‘Well,

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