The Clock Strikes Twelve by Patricia Wentworth

Author:Patricia Wentworth [Wentworth, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453223680
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2011-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Six

MISS SILVER DINED with the family and afterwards sat with them in the crimson and gold drawing room, which she admired very much. A grandly proportioned room—such warm colouring—such rich brocades—such a deep-piled carpet—the crystal chandeliers too, the finest of their kind. She approved Mr. Paradine’s taste, and sincerely regretted his demise. Now, all too probably, these handsome and dignified furnishings would be replaced by chintz or linen.

Dinner had been a particularly trying meal. Since Miss Silver especially desired to see the entire family and Mark had made a point of this, they were all there, but nobody had dressed. The men were in their day clothes, Irene, Lydia and Brenda in coats and skirts, Phyllida in her grey dress, but Miss Paradine had put on a long black gown, plain and high in the neck. Miss Silver, as was her custom, had changed into a two-year-old summer dress—green artificial silk with a distressing pattern of orange dots and dashes, the front adorned by a large cameo brooch depicting an apocryphal Greek gentleman in a helmet. The removal of her hat showed her to possess a good deal of soft mousy hair done up in braids behind and tightly curled into a fringe upon her forehead, both braids and fringe controlled by a hair-net. In addition to the cameo brooch she wore small golden studs in her ears, a gold chain about her neck, and a bar brooch set with seed pearls to loop up the pince-nez which she occasionally required for reading. She still wore the warm ribbed grey stockings which she found so comfortable in winter, but had changed her laced outdoor shoes for a pair of black glacé slippers with beaded toes. Elliot’s conviction that he had encountered her in an Edwardian film became intensified every time he looked at her—only the dress should have been longer—right down to her feet.

He had been placed as far from Phyllida as the table would allow—Grace Paradine had seen to that. She had seen to it too that he had never had five minutes alone with her all day. And she was trying to hoof him out. All right, let her try. He had been dragged in, and now he was going to stay, and Grace Paradine could pull all the strings she liked. It was Mark’s house and not hers, and somehow he didn’t think she’d get Mark to the point of telling him to go.

His preoccupation with this theme kept him silent through the greater part of the meal. Not that he was remarkable in this—Frank Ambrose spoke exactly twice, and Mark could not be said to have spoken at all. The meal was too much yesterday’s party in caricature. Hashed turkey, fried plum pudding, the empty place at the head of the table which nobody cared to take. A detective sitting with them to watch how they looked, spoke, ate, drank, thought. These things were not conducive to conversation. Even Dicky’s flow of talk had dried. Women have more social sense than men.

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