Christie, Agatha - The Seven Dials Mystery by Christie Agatha

Author:Christie, Agatha [Christie, Agatha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-06-200674-5
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-01-28T05:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

AFTER DINNER

George was not a believer in modern innovations. The Abbey was innocent of anything so up to date as central heating. Consequently, when the ladies entered the drawing room after dinner, the temperature of the room was woefully inadequate to the needs of modern evening clothes. The fire that burnt in the well-furnished steel grate became as a magnet. The three women huddled round it.

“Brrrrrrrrrr!” said the Countess, a fine, exotic foreign sound.

“The days are drawing in,” said Lady Coote, and drew a flowered atrocity of a scarf closer about her ample shoulders.

“Why on earth doesn’t George have the house properly heated?” said Bundle.

“You English, you never heat your houses,” said the Countess.

She took out her long cigarette holder and began to smoke.

“That grate is old-fashioned,” said Lady Coote. “The heat goes up the chimney instead of into the room.”

“Oh!” said the Countess.

There was a pause. The Countess was so plainly bored by her company that conversation became difficult.

“It’s funny,” said Lady Coote, breaking the silence, “that Mrs. Macatta’s children should have mumps. At least, I don’t mean exactly funny—”

“What,” said the Countess, “are mumps?”

Bundle and Lady Coote started simultaneously to explain. Finally, between them, they managed it.

“I suppose Hungarian children have it?” asked Lady Coote.

“Eh?” said the Countess.

“Hungarian children. They suffer from it?”

“I do not know,” said the Countess. “How should I?”

Lady Coote looked at her in some surprise.

“But I understood that you worked—”

“Oh, that!” The Countess uncrossed her legs, took her cigarette holder from her mouth and began to talk rapidly.

“I will tell you some horrors,” she said. “Horrors that I have seen. Incredible! You would not believe!”

And she was as good as her word. She talked fluently and with a graphic power of description. Incredible scenes of starvation and misery were painted by her for the benefit of her audience. She spoke of Buda Pesth shortly after the war and traced its vicissitudes to the present day. She was dramatic, but she was also, to Bundle’s mind, a little like a gramophone record. You turned her on, and there you were. Presently, just as suddenly, she would stop.

Lady Coote was thrilled to the marrow—that much was clear. She sat with her mouth slightly open and her large, sad, dark eyes fixed on the Countess. Occasionally, she interpolated a comment of her own.

“One of my cousins had three children burned to death. Awful, wasn’t it?”

The Countess paid no attention. She went on and on. And she finally stopped as suddenly as she had begun.

“There!” she said. “I have told you. We have money—but no organization. It is organization we need.”

Lady Coote sighed.

“I’ve heard my husband say that nothing can be done without regular methods. He attributes his own success entirely to that. He declares he would never have got on without them.”

She sighed again. A sudden fleeting vision passed before her eyes of a Sir Oswald who had not got on in the world. A Sir Oswald who retained, in all essentials, the attributes of that cheery young man in the bicycle shop.

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