The Girl in Blue Read Online Free Page B

you?’
    ‘Because
she’s utterly wrong for him. Do you remember that second breach of promise case
of yours?’
    A quick
blink of Crispin’s mild eyes showed that that unfortunate episode of the days
when he had been a well-heeled young man about town was still green in his
memory.
    ‘Why
bring that up, Bill?’ he asked reproachfully. He liked the dead past to bury
its dead.
    ‘Vera
Upshaw reminds me of the girl who soaked you so much on that occasion. The same
type. Lovely as an angel, but as hard as nails and sedulously on the make. All
she wants is Jerry’s money, or rather the money she’s found out he’s going to
get some day.’
    ‘How do
you know?’
    ‘She
said so. She told him definitely that she wasn’t going to marry him till I
coughed up his capital. Which is why I’m not coughing it up.
    This
evidence that his brother was not lightly to be parted from cash in his
possession lowered Crispin’s spirits, which at one time had tended to rise, and
he sat chewing his moustache.
    Willoughby
took advantage of this lull in the conversation to abandon the topic of G. G.
F. West and his amours.
    ‘But
let’s talk of something else,’ he said, ‘beginning with what brings you up here
like this, when it’s unheard of for you to come to London. Is it business?’
    ‘No,
not exactly business, Bill.’
    ‘Income
tax?’
    ‘No,
not income tax.’
    ‘Something
wrong at Mellingham? Trouble with the lodgers?’
    ‘I wish
you would not call them lodgers.’
    They
lodge, don’t they?’
    ‘Yes,
curse them.’
    ‘Well,
then. By the way, you aren’t full up, are you?’
    ‘No.
Two of them left last week. Said they found it too quiet.’
    Then
that’s all right, because I’m sending you an addition to the menagerie. An
American woman called Clayborne. Bernadette Clayborne, commonly known as
Barney. She’s the sister of Homer Pyle, a New York lawyer I’ve occasionally
worked with. Homer brought her over a couple of days ago, and they’ve been
staying with me. He wants a quiet retreat for her in the country, and he made a
point of it being a good way from London. Mellingham ought just to suit her.’
    So
bitterly had Crispin spoken of the two paying guests who had defected, thus
depriving him of much-needed rent, that one would have supposed that he would
have received this announcement with joyous enthusiasm. Instead, he was plainly
stunned, and expressed his dismay with a batlike squeak.
    ‘But I
don’t want women at Mellingham!’
    ‘Of
course you do. Home isn’t home without the feminine touch.’
    ‘She’ll
expect breakfast in bed.’
    ‘Not
Barney Clayborne. She’s the kind of woman who goes for a five-mile walk before
breakfast to get up an appetite. How well do you know your Chaucer?’
    ‘My
what?’
    The
father of English poetry.’
    ‘Oh,
that Chaucer?’
    That’s
the one. Have you studied him lately? I ask because, if so, she will remind you
of the Wife of Bath. You know the sort of thing — bright, breezy and full of
beans.’
    ‘My
God! Hearty?’
    ‘Yes, I
suppose you would call her hearty.’
    ‘I won’t
have her near Mellingham!’
    Think
well, Crips.’
    ‘I won’t!’
    ‘Your
mind is made up?’
    ‘Yes,
it is. You don’t understand, Bill. You’re a big, beefy chap, and you don’t know
what it is to have sensitive nerves. A hearty woman would drive me insane.’
    ‘Well,
it’s a pity, for she would have been paying double your usual rates. Homer is
loaded with money, and he’s got to get his sister settled before he leaves for
Brussels. He’s a member of P.E.N. and he has to attend the conference they’re
having there, so I was able to make the terms stiff.’
    For a
moment or two Crispin sat plunged in thought. Then he said, ‘Oh’, and the
monosyllable indicated clearly that his iron front had crumbled beneath the
impact of second thoughts. He said All right, the woman could come, but there
was no elation in his voice, and he went on to put into words his