Ellis Peters - George Felse 10 - The Knocker On Death's Door Read Online Free PDF Page B

take Robert away for a bit—don’t you think?—and let you get down to it in earnest with Mother. You won’t mind, will you? We won’t stay away long. But I’m betting on it that once you’ve broken the ice she’ll be eating out of your hand.” He rolled the car to a halt before the crumbling porch, and turned and gave her a slightly strained smile. “After all, that’s the way you affected
me
, isn’t it?”
    “Straight in at the deep end!” mused Dinah. He was evidently more disturbed by the whole thing than she had guessed. “All right, kill or cure. Maybe we’ll end up in Canada, after all.”
    The door opened ponderously but silently on a long, flagged hall, none too adequately lit, that stretched clean through the house and ended at a broad Gothic window. Dinah’s alert eye noted worn mats, bare panelling, a vast oaken staircase, the stone newels of what must be the steps down to the cellar, just to the left of the terminal window, and a narrow little lobby bearing away to the right, and ending in a garden door. The coats that hung in the lobby were so old and so frequently dry-cleaned that they had outlived all their original quality and cut, and most of their colour. Even if there had been nothing else to betray their age, the length of the nearest, a woman’s classic camel coat, would have been enough. Mrs. Macsen-Martel was tall, but even on her this skirt would practically reach the ankle. Everything had been good in its day; and for everything within sight its day was long over.
    Someone had heard them come. A door on the right, beyond the stairs, opened, and Robert came out to greet them.
    It was the first time Dinah had had the opportunity to study him at such close quarters, and she gazed at him with candid interest, looking for some resemblance to Hugh. The long, lightweight bones were the same, the hollowed cheeks, even the deep setting of the eyes, but in place of Hugh’s vivid colouring and mobility, this one was neutral-tinted and hesitant, almost deprecating, of movement. A profound, almost a fastidious reserve dominated everything in his face, the brown eyes that were at such pains to avoid staring at her, the long, level mouth that opened stiffly to welcome her.
    “Miss Cressett, I’m so glad you could come. Let me take your coat.” But he moved too slowly, and Hugh had already taken it. “Do come in, my mother’s looking forward to meeting you.” She was surprised but thankful that he didn’t say: “We’ve heard so much about you from Hugh.” Maybe he was leaving that for the old lady. Someone was certainly due to say it before the evening was over.
    Hugh took her possessively by the elbow, and steered her into the drawing-room. Large, lofty, chilly, with a vast fireplace and a very modest fire in the distant wall, and a few good but threadbare rugs deployed artfully to make the maximum impression of comfort where there was little that was comfortable. A great deal of splendid but sombre furniture—there was money there, at any rate, if they cared to realise it—and one superb, high-backed, erect chair placed near the fire and facing the door, with the old woman enthroned in it. A tableau especially for Dinah’s benefit; she had to walk approximately twenty-five feet across the bare centre of the room to reach her hostess, with the faded, lofty-lidded eyes watching and appraising her every step of the way. All those exposed inches of smooth, slim thigh in honey-beige tights, the short, almost boyish cap of dark-brown hair, and greenish eye-shadow, the fashionable chunky shoes that Dave called her football boots… But if I’d worn a crinoline, she thought, watching the old woman’s face every bit as narrowly as her own face was being watched, I should still have come as a shock.
    Hugh did the only thing he could do to break the tension, and did it beautifully. He dropped Dinah’s elbow and swooped ahead of her, shearing through the invisible cord that linked the two