Chapter Text
Edith had obviously been waiting on the steps. 'Here you are at last, Jane!' she exclaimed as she ran out to meet the fly. 'I'm so sorry we couldn't come to meet you. Of all the times for the wretched gig to have gone in for repair! I could shake George! And was your dean's wife fearfully tedious?'
Jane smiled and let the driver help her down. 'Dear Edith!' She looked around her. 'So this is your moated grange. Except it isn't moated.'
'Only if the Teme floods,' Edith replied, laughing. 'You're not seeing it at its best, I'm afraid. It was lovely here in June.'
Today a half-hearted mist loitered. To Jane, used to the honey coloured stone of the Fens and the sunshine of Florence, the house looked grey and forbidding, its stone stark in the damp air. Still, a couple of bright shrubs went some way to mitigate the effect, and a few late roses clung defiantly to the trellis that extended around the side of the house.
Do come, Edith had written. I miss you dreadfully, and I don't see why the Martins should have you all to themselves. There's me and Mother, Uncle Leonard, my brother George, and a cousin from Australia. I fear we can't offer you much in the way of amusement out here in the Marches, so all I can do is throw myself on your mercy and trust that you'll have pity and visit -
- your devoted Edith
Now Edith's smile was bright, her step light, and to anyone who was not Jane Marple she must have appeared as free from care as a butterfly. But Jane had known her too long – at school, and since – to be hookwinked.
'What's the matter, Edith?' she asked as they went through the front door into a long, dimly-lit, hall.
'The matter? Nothing's the matter,' Edith said. 'Let me show you upstairs so you can wash your hands. Roberts will bring your things up. No,' she continued, as they proceeded down the length of the hall and turned back on themselves to mount the handsome mahogany staircase, 'it's you I'm worried about, after that dreadful young man... Hatton?'
'Hutton,' Jane responded, rather curtly. She had no wish to recall Oswald Hutton to her memory. Why must Edith prattle so? It was not at all like her.
'We might have put you here, if Kenneth wasn't staying,' Edith said, indicating a door on the left at the top of the stairs, 'but you're much better next to me, and not having the whole household crashing past you at the break of day. We keep what they call country hours here, you see.'
'I suppose we are in the country,' Jane said mildly.
The landing turned back on itself, and Edith led her along it. 'Now, this is Mother's room; then there's mine (it used to be Father's dressing room, though he never used it) and this is yours. I'll leave you to settle in; and tea is in the drawing room – the middle door in the hall – in twenty minutes.' Impulsively, she bent and kissed Jane on the cheek. 'You can't imagine how lovely it is to have you here.'
She left Jane to refresh herself in peace, but reappeared at the door well before the twenty minutes had elapsed. 'Have you everything you need?' she asked anxiously.
'Yes, everything,' Jane said, 'I'm quite all right.'
'Good,' Edith said, twisting her hands, and seemingly having nothing else to say.
Jane thought again that this was not like her carefree friend. By now they would normally have been deep into stories and news of mutual friends. She ventured, 'You said that your uncle was here, as well as your brother and cousin? Is the cousin the child of your uncle?'
'Oh, no – Uncle Leonard is a bachelor. Cousin Kenneth is the son of Aunt Alice, who married a man from Brighton, would you believe, and went out to Australia before George and I were born.'
'And is he your mother's brother?'
'No – Father's.' Edith picked up a framed photograph from the chest-of-drawers and showed it to Jane. 'Here,' she said; 'this is the three of them, the three partners in Wilson and Blake, you know. Father and Uncle Leonard and Uncle Curran – he wasn't really an uncle, but he was my godfather – is in the middle.'
Jane looked at the picture with interest. The resemblance between the two brothers was obvious. In life, Curran Blake must have been a striking man, with dark hair and brows, and three inches on either of the Wilsons. In the photograph, he stood with one hand on the shoulder of a slight, fair-haired woman, who sat on a low armchair with a baby in her arms.
'That was thirty years ago,' Edith said. 'Now Uncle Leonard is the only one left.' She shook herself. 'Come, let's go down to tea.'