And then, one foot poised, Bess Sedgwick stopped dead, with a suddenness that surprised Miss Marple and made her own forward step falter. Bess Sedgwick was staring over Miss Marple’s shoulder with such concentration that the old lady turned her own head.
The commissionaire had just pushed open the two swing doors of the entrance and was holding them to let two women pass through into the lounge. One of them was a fussy looking middle-aged lady wearing a rather unfortunate flowered violet hat, the other was a tall, simply but smartly dressed, girl of perhaps seventeen or eighteen with long straight flaxen hair.
Bess Sedgwick pulled herself together, wheeled round abruptly and re-entered the lift. As Miss Marple followed her in, she turned to her and apologized.
‘I’m so sorry. I nearly ran into you.’ She had a warm friendly voice. ‘I just remembered I’d forgotten something—which sounds nonsense but isn’t really.’
‘Second floor?’ said the operator. Miss Marple smiled and nodded in acknowledgment of the apology, got out and walked slowly along to her room, pleasurably turning over sundry little unimportant problems in her mind as was so often her custom.
For instance what Lady Sedgwick had said wasn’t true. She had only just gone up to her room, and it must have been then that she ‘remembered she had forgotten something’ (if there had been any truth in that statement at all) and had come down to find it. Or had she perhaps come down to meet someone or look for someone? But if so, what she had seen as the lift door opened had startled and upset her, and she had immediately swung into the lift again and gone up so as not to meet whoever it was she had seen.
It must have been the two newcomers. The middle-aged woman and the girl. Mother and daughter? No, Miss Marple thought, not mother and daughter.
Even at Bertram’s, thought Miss Marple, happily, interesting things could happen …
‘Er—is Colonel Luscombe—?’
The woman in the violet hat was at the desk. Miss Gorringe smiled in a welcoming manner and a page, who had been standing at the ready, was immediately dispatched but had no need to fulfil his errand, as Colonel Luscombe himself entered the lounge at that moment and came quickly across to the desk.
‘How do you do, Mrs Carpenter.’ He shook hands politely, then turned to the girl. ‘My dear Elvira.’ He took both her hands affectionately in his. ‘Well, well, this is nice. Splendid—splendid. Come and let’s sit down.’ He led them to chairs, established them. ‘Well, well,’ he repeated, ‘this is nice.’
The effort he made was somewhat palpable as was his lack of ease. He could hardly go on saying how nice this was. The two ladies were not very helpful. Elvira smiled very sweetly. Mrs Carpenter gave a meaningless little laugh, and smoothed her gloves.
‘A good journey, eh?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ said Elvira.
‘No fog. Nothing like that?’
‘Oh no.’
‘Our flight was five minutes ahead of time,’ said Mrs Carpenter.
‘Yes, yes. Good, very good.’ He took a pull upon himself. ‘I hope this place will be all right for you?’
‘Oh, I’m sure it’s very nice,’ said Mrs Carpenter warmly, glancing round her. ‘Very comfortable.’
‘Rather old-fashioned, I’m afraid,’ said the Colonel apologetically. ‘Rather a lot of old fogies. No—er—dancing, anything like that.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ agreed Elvira.
She glanced round in an expressionless manner. It certainly seemed impossible to connect Bertram’s with dancing.
‘Lot of old fogies here, I’m afraid,’ said Colonel Luscombe, repeating himself. ‘Ought, perhaps, to have taken you somewhere more modern. Not very well up in these things, you see.’
‘This is very nice,’ said Elvira politely.
‘It’s only for a couple of nights,’ went on Colonel Luscombe. ‘I thought we’d go to a show this evening. A musical—’ he said the word rather doubtfully, as though not sure he was using the right term. ‘Let Down Your Hair Girls. I hope that will be all right?’
‘How delightful,’ exclaimed Mrs Carpenter. ‘That will be a treat, won’t it, Elvira?’
‘Lovely,’ said Elvira, tonelessly.
‘And then supper afterwards? At the Savoy?’
Fresh exclamations from Mrs Carpenter. Colonel Luscombe, stealing a glance at Elvira, cheered up a little. He thought that Elvira was pleased, though quite determined to express nothing more than polite approval in front of Mrs Carpenter. ‘And I don’t blame her,’ he said to himself.
He said to Mrs Carpenter:
‘Perhaps you’d like to see your rooms—see they’re all right and all that—’
‘Oh, I’m sure they will be.’
‘Well, if there’s anything you don’t like about them, we’ll make them change it. They know me here very well.’
Miss Gorringe, in charge at the desk, was pleasantly welcoming. Nos 28 and 29 on the second floor with an adjoining bathroom.
‘I’ll go up and get things unpacked,’ said Mrs Carpenter. ‘Perhaps, Elvira, you and Colonel Luscombe would like to have a little gossip.’
Tact, thought Colonel Luscombe. A bit obvious, perhaps, but anyway it would get rid of her for a bit. Though what he was going to gossip about to Elvira, he really didn’t know. A very nice-mannered girl, but he wasn’t used to girls. His wife had died in childbirth and the baby, a boy, had been brought up by his wife’s family whilst an elder sister had come to keep house for him. His son had married and gone to live in Kenya, and his grandchildren were eleven, five and two and a half and had been entertained on their last visit by football and space science talk, electric trains, and a ride on his foot. Easy! But young girls!
He asked Elvira if she would like a drink. He was about to propose a bitter lemon, ginger ale, or orangeade, but Elvira forestalled him.
‘Thank you. I should like a gin and vermouth.’
Colonel Luscombe looked at her rather doubtfully. He supposed girls of—what was she? sixteen? seventeen?—did drink gin and vermouth. But he reassured himself that Elvira knew, so to speak, correct Greenwich social time. He ordered a gin and vermouth and a dry sherry.
He cleared his throat and asked:
‘How was Italy?’
‘Very nice, thank you.’
‘And that place you were at, the Contessa what’s-her-name? Not too grim?’
‘She is rather strict. But I didn’t let that worry me.’
He looked at her, not quite sure whether the reply was not slightly ambiguous.
He said, stammering a little, but with a more natural manner than he had been able to manage before:
‘I’m afraid we don’t know each other as well as we ought to, seeing I’m your guardian as well as your godfather. Difficult for me, you know—difficult for a man who’s an old buffer like me—to know what a girl wants—at least—I mean to know what a girl ought to have. Schools and then after school—what they used to call finishing in my day. But now, I suppose it’s all more serious. Careers eh? Jobs? All that? We’ll have to have a talk about all that sometime. Anything in particular you