Murder Underground by Mavis Doriel Hay

Author:Mavis Doriel Hay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, Inc.
Published: 2016-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter XII

Hunt The Pearls!

On Sunday morning Basil delayed his start for Hampstead as long as he dared, hoping for a telephone call from Betty. True, he had told her that he would be setting off early, but, he thought to himself, Betty knows what my “early” is. At last a telephone call from his mother, to ask if he were “all right” and wasn’t he coming soon, made him decide that he could wait no longer.

He arrived at Beverley House, where Beryl Sanders lived with her mother, in an irritable and dissatisfied state, and the sight of Tuppy nosing restlessly round the sitting-room did nothing to soothe him. Quite unreasonably he felt as though the stout terrier were responsible for his own unsatisfactory position.

There was a good deal of talk about “poor Phemia’s things”, and decisions were made as to the disposal of them.

“I’m only thankful Phemia didn’t keep a cat; though it would have been just like her!” declared Mrs. Pongleton ambiguously. “The dog is quite enough; and why in the name of goodness did Phemia give him such a ridiculous name—Tuppy!”

Tuppy pricked his ears hopefully, but neither caresses nor biscuits followed.

“Didn’t you ever hear the reason, Aunt Susan?” cried Beryl. “Aunt Phemia believed that Tuppy was very valuable. I think she had him from someone in settlement of a small debt—and they bamboozled her, I expect. Anyway, she was afraid dog-thieves might be after him, so she called him Tuppence—Tuppy for short—to indicate that he wasn’t worth much and so deceive them. Poor Aunt Phemia!”

“Childish!” snorted Uncle James. “Poor Phemia never was any judge of dogs; she could always have had a good puppy from me for the asking.”

“I am so glad that Euphemia has left her pearls to you, Beryl dear,” Mrs. Pongleton remarked. “They will suit your fair skin. It’s not everyone who can wear pearls successfully—and I never had any to wear.”

“Quite ridiculous of my mother to leave those pearls to Phemia,” proclaimed Mr. Pongleton. “Of course she wouldn’t wear them, and they wouldn’t have suited her if she had done. They’d have looked better on you, my dear,” he suggested to his wife—“though doubtless you’d have been spilling them all over the place.”

“But then Beryl wouldn’t have had them now,” Mrs. Pongleton pointed out, ignoring the last part of her husband’s remarks, as she often found it better to do. “I daresay it’s all for the best—about the pearls, I mean.”

“And do you know,” enquired Mrs. Sanders—“they don’t know where those pearls are, so Mr. Stoggins says!”

Basil eyed his relatives anxiously. If only Betty had hurried up and telephoned to him before this!

“What exactly did Stoggins imply?” asked Mr. Pongleton dryly.

“I don’t suppose he meant that they are missing, did he, Mother?” said Beryl soothingly. She knew that Mrs. Sanders was fond of dramatizing a situation.

“They’re not found, so they must be missing!” Mrs. Sanders declared. “The police turned all her things upside down, you know, looking for wills. They had been told how she hid things all over the place.

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