Cue For Murder by Helen McCloy

Author:Helen McCloy [McCloy, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471912412
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2019-08-30T22:00:00+00:00

II

They were in the lower hall now. Daylight streamed through a lunette fanlight thinly veiled in white muslin. The mulatto produced their hats and opened the door for them.

“A charming house,” mused Leonard as they went down the steps. “It always reminds me of Becky Sharpe’s little slice of house in Mayfair. You remember the cramped little stairway, and how all the great personages of the day crowded into it? To me there is always something fascinating about a little house—particularly when it’s a town house, luxurious and complete to the last detail, but all on the smallest possible scale. And there must be a pretty woman nestling inside like a jewel in a plush-lined box.”

“Doubtless it is charming,” agreed Basil. “But not precisely the home of a beer and hamburger mentality.”

Leonard’s sudden, harsh laughter sounded loud in Beekman Place, quiet and shady as a courtyard with the two big apartment buildings and the double row of small houses enclosing it almost entirely on four sides. “You mustn’t let Wanda’s inverted boasting confuse you!”

“Inverted boasting?”

“That’s what it is. Didn’t you notice how she got in all her points in the very act of deprecating them? Sable, not mink; two homes and a villa in Florida; a huge household staff; etc. She couldn’t have told you more if she’d been bragging about those things instead of deploring them, now could she? You see, luxury is the breath of life to Wanda. Years ago, as a child, she was starved of comforts and even necessities, and she’s always trying to get the chill of that early poverty out of her bones. When she first came to New York, green and raw from a factory town, she used to admire quite openly everything that glittered. She would go to the most elaborate trouble to drag the conversation around to mention of some well known person she had met. If you gave her an orchid or an opera ticket she would tell everyone she knew all about it. Her snobbery was so transparent it was innocent and childlike. I thought it rather attractive for that reason. But others did not agree with me. She was well and truly snubbed. After a year or so she developed the formula you heard today as protective coloring, to wit: a cruel fate has imposed a life of luxury and ostentation upon her, but she remains a simple soul at heart who longs for nothing so much as hard work and obscurity. Since the modern mind is as prudish about snobbery as the Victorians were about sex, this blatantly phony, pseudo-democracy of Wanda’s has made a big hit with everybody. She is no longer snubbed by the rich and famous, for she tells them to their faces that she loathes their riches and despises their fame; and they are impressed by her righteous scorn for them as they would be impressed by nothing else. As for the poor and obscure—well, you can imagine how they eat it up.

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