THE ABBEY COURT MURDER (Murder Mystery Classic) by Annie Haynes

Author:Annie Haynes [Haynes, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788075831798
Publisher: Musaicum Books
Published: 2017-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter XVIII

Table of Contents

"How awfully good of you to come!" Lady Palmer went forward with outstretched hands. "I hardly dared to expect you, and yet there was no one else I could appeal to, and I stood so sorely in need of help. What is a poor little woman like me to do with all the lawyers against one?"

Sir Anthony Carew took her hands in some embarrassment. "Ah, well, you know, Sybil, that anything I can do to help you—"

"You are always more than kind," Lady Palmer said gratefully as she sank into one of the big easy chairs by the window, and motioned him to the other.

She had left the Wiltons rather suddenly in the end, summoned up to town to a conference with her lawyers, and, since interviews seemed inevitable, she had decided to take a suite of rooms at the Imperial Hotel for a week or two until matters were more settled. An urgent appeal from her for personal help had coincided with a growing restlessness on Sir Anthony's part, and he had hurried up to town for a week-end, on the pretext of giving her counsel.

As he sat there, however, his thoughts were not with Lady Palmer, and the thousand and one airs and graces she was assuming for his benefit, they were back at Heron's Carew with Judith.

He could not but be aware that, as far as anything she had yet related, there seemed but scant need for Sybil to have summoned him to London, but she spoke as if an interview with her lawyer were imperative.

He had been there perhaps half an hour when the door of the outer room sprang open, and voices became audible outside. Lady Palmer sprang to her feet.

"I told them that I was not at home, that I could not see anyone. Oh"—after listening a moment—"I had quite forgotten. It is Charlotte. She did speak of coming in, and I did not stop her, for I knew it would be such a pleasure to her to see you again. And, really, she has such a head for business—so unlike poor little me."

Surely never two sisters were more unlike, Mrs. Dawson was tall, sinuous-looking, with a complexion so dark as to suggest a mixture of foreign blood, and curious light eyes that contrasted oddly with her black hair and swarthy skin.

She came into the room now with her graceful languid air, and to Sir Anthony's annoyance he saw that she was followed by another visitor, a middle-aged woman with a pleasant rosy face, which somehow gave him a strange sense of familiarity.

Mrs. Dawson kissed her sister affectionately. "I have only a few minutes to spare, Sybil, for I am on my way to a meeting at the St. Clery Nertells'. Mrs. Rankin is going with me, so I brought her in. You remember her, don't you? But who is this?" gazing at Sir Anthony with wide-open eyes. "Not—surely not—Anthony Carew?"

"Am I so much altered?" Carew asked, smiling in spite of himself.

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