Jumping Jenny Read Online Free PDF Page A

slowly, “there’s no mystery about Ena.”
    “And yet,” Roger hazarded, “quite a number of people in this room cordially detest her.”
    “I can quite believe it,” Mrs. Lefroy smiled. “She’s really rather a dangerous woman.”
    “How can such a totally unimportant person be dangerous?” Roger asked, following the young woman in question round the room with his eyes. “And yet you’re the second person within the last half-hour whom I’ve heard call her that. I suppose I ought not to ask you what she’s been doing to Dr. Mitchell, and yet I wish I could.”
    “Oh, I’ll tell you that. She’s been spreading a ridiculous lie about his wife.”
    “Why?”
    Mrs. Lefroy shrugged her shoulders. “She seems to enjoy doing that sort of thing.”
    “Which sort of thing? Lying for lying’s sake, or doing an inoffensive person a bad turn?”
    “Neither, exactly. I think it’s really an opportunity to make herself appear important. That’s her idée fixe. She must be the centre of things, the wonder of all beholders. Philip Chalmers—Ronald’s great friend, you know—says she’s a pronounced ego-maniac. No doubt that’s as good a term for her as any.”
    “Williamson has a better one. He just says simply that she’s mad.”
    Mrs. Lefroy laughed. “In a way, I suppose, she is. Anyhow, is that all you wanted to know?”
    “Not quite. What’s your own private trouble with her? Don’t tell me, of course,” Roger added kindly, “if you don’t want to.”
    “I shouldn’t dream of it. But I really don’t mind, as it seems to worry you so much. I don’t trust her, that’s all.”
    “Don’t trust her?”
    “Ronald’s been rather indiscreet in calling us engaged,” Mrs. Lefroy explained. “It’s all right, of course, in the family and so on, or should be, but, as I told you, I haven’t got my absolute yet. Well, David warned Ronald this afternoon that Ena’s been hinting that she could make trouble with the King’s Proctor if she wanted to.”
    Roger whistled.
    “Why should she want to?”
    Mrs. Lefroy looked a little uncomfortable. “Oh, there are reasons, no doubt, from her point of view.”
    “Reasons for making trouble?”
    “Reasons why she might be sorry to see Ronald marry again.”
    “Oh! Yes, I see.”
    It did not need very much perspicacity on Roger’s part to guess something of what those reasons might be. Ronald and Margot Stratton had had no children. David and Ena had a small boy. As Roger knew, the boy was Ronald’s godson. Ronald, who had a flair for business as well as for writing detective-stories, had made his money, not inherited it. It seemed likely that, as things had been, he might have made his godson his heir, with perhaps a life-interest for David. If he married again, another heir might present itself. It was decidedly in Ena Stratton’s interests that her brother-in-law should not marry again.
    “Yes, I see,” Roger repeated. “Quite like a plot for one of Ronald’s own detective-stories, isn’t it?”
    By Mrs. Lefroy’s smile he knew that his guess had been right. “So Ronald says himself. He looks on it as a joke,” she added, “but it might be quite serious. An unscrupulous woman would do things that an equally unscrupulous man might boggle at.”
    “Yes that’s quite true. Is she unscrupulous?”
    “Perfectly, I should think,” said Mrs. Lefroy with resignation.
    There was a short silence.
    Then Roger looked puzzled. “I don’t know much about these things, but would it really worry the King’s Proctor to know that you were going to marry Ronald when you’re free? I know the King’s Proctor is very easily worried, but that does seem almost hypersensitive.”
    Mrs. Lefroy looked at the tip of her neat slipper. “Once he begins making special inquiries, who knows what might happen to him?” she said cryptically.
    “Collusion, like a worm i’ the bud, might feed on his damask cheek, as my friend, Lord Peter Wimsey, might say,”