Uncoffin'd Clay by Gladys Mitchell

Author:Gladys Mitchell [Mitchell, Gladys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Uncoffin'd Clay: Mrs. Bradley
Published: 2013-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

EFFIE WINTERS

Even after Lord Maumbury’s dinner party—a dull affair with uninspired food and the kind of wine which the vintners tactfully describe as “suitable for everyday drinking”—there was no suggestion or even veiled hint from Innes and Mary that I should take myself back to London. Rather was it assumed by all three of the others, herself ironically included, that I had become escort, errand-boy and general dogsbody to Dame Beatrice.

While we had been dining out she had been on three errands. I let her have a further and fuller account of what had been said at the station, and she told us of how she had spent her evening.

Hallicks had telephoned soon after we left and said that if she was ready to go to the hospital he would come along immediately and pick her up. This had been done and he had remained outside the private room in which Hamid had been accommodated while she went to the bedside to talk to the boy.

“I told Hamid,” she said to us, “that I had been in touch with his college.

“‘And they told you that I had not shown up to begin the new term,’ he said. ‘What of it? I am tired of college life. I have no interest in obtaining qualifications. I do not need them. My father will keep me and give me money—a great deal of money—while he is alive, and a great deal more will come to me when he dies. It is the custom in our family for all the sons to share the father’s wealth. It is not as in England, where the eldest son takes all.’

“‘Well, not quite all,’ I said, ‘but yours seems the better custom.’ I then asked him what he had been doing on the Sunday night and all day on the Monday and Tuesday of last week, and that I wondered how he had come to walk into the man-trap. He had received me politely enough, although I detected hostility behind the very smooth façade, and when I entered the room it had been to find a sulkily handsome boy being fussed over by two nurses and enjoying it, but at these questions about his movements his demeanour changed. He raised himself as much as he could and his lips curled back to show his teeth. He said: ‘I do not answer women’s questions. Please go away.’

“There was no point in my staying. The last thing I intended was to upset him. Besides, I had got the reaction I wanted.”

“I shouldn’t have thought you got anything at all,” said Mary.

“Oh, yes, she did,” said Innes. “We’ve sometimes had the same sort of reaction in court. As soon as you approach delicate ground the prisoner—perhaps I should say the defendant—soon lets you know it, usually by maintaining a truculent silence which, of course, speaks louder than words.”

“So young Hamid spent Sunday night, all day Monday, and until after dark (we think) on Tuesday of last week in a place or in a manner he wasn’t willing to discuss,” said Mary.

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