Grey Mask by Patricia Wentworth

Grey Mask by Patricia Wentworth

Author:Patricia Wentworth [Wentworth, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-2362-8
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2011-03-24T16:00:00+00:00


Twenty-seven

‘MARGARET, WHY DO you look like that?’

‘There’s nothing in it—the envelope’s empty.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Look for yourself.’

Greta held the envelope up to the light, turned it over, shook it. There was nothing inside.

‘What a funny thing! It is Papa’s writing, you know—and his initials, and—look here! Something’s been rubbed out! Look—under the E.S.! Can’t you see the paper’s all rubbed?’

She pressed against Margaret, pushing the envelope into her hand, pointing with a plump pink finger. Under the initials E. S. the paper was roughened as if it had been scraped—very carefully and lightly scraped.

Margaret held it close under the light. Something had certainly been erased—initials? As she turned the paper, a faint marking just showed here and there. Two letters had been written and then erased. Of the first initial she could make nothing. The second—no, there was nothing to be made of that either. No one could make anything of those faint marks. Why should she think that the second letter was a B?

She went over to the walnut bureau and unlocked one of the drawers. And then, as she stood there with her back to Greta, she had a moment of sudden, vivid memory. The endorsement on the envelope caught her eye, and instantly that flash of memory followed. She was a child of five or six pushing open the door of a room. The open door showed the sun streaming in from a long window. The light fell across her mother’s white dress. The picture was quite extraordinarily clear—Esther Langton in a white muslin dress that swept the ground and was edged with little gathered frills; she had a black velvet ribbon at her waist, and a bunch of clove carnations where the muslin fichu crossed her breast; she was bare-headed; the sun shone on her black hair. There was another woman in the room, little and plump in a lilac dress. They did not see Margaret. She pushed the door, and she heard her mother say, ‘It was marriage by declaration’. She did not know what the word meant, but she liked the sound of it. She said it to herself like a song, accenting it very much: ‘Declaration—declaration.’ The child’s pleasure in the rhythm came back sharply. Then her mother said, ‘Lesbia—the child!’ and they saw her.

There was no more of the picture than that. It did not come back to her in words, but as a single momentary impression. It came, and went again even as she put the envelope into the drawer and locked it away.

The bell rang, and she turned to find Greta’s attention distracted.

‘I expect it’s Archie. He said he’d come round. I was just thinking he wasn’t coming, and wishing he would—only I shan’t tell him that.’

Margaret went to the door. On an impulse she shut the sitting-room door behind her and took half a step on to the landing to meet Archie Millar.

‘Archie, you have read all sorts of books. I’m being teased by something I don’t know the meaning of—you know how bothering it is.



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