She gave a girlish little giggle.
‘I suspect flattery,’ she said. ‘You just behave yourself. Are you surprised to find that I am not under arrest?’
‘But you didn’t kill Gloria Mundy, did you?’ The words slipped out involuntarily, but I could not recall them. However, she received them with great good humour.
‘I thought of it,’ she said, ‘but I decided she wasn’t worth a life sentence — not that it would have lasted very long in my case. I give myself about another five years of life, that’s all. The law is very unjust in certain respects. They would have awarded me thirty years, I suppose, but I should have slipped out of their hands in five, whereas a boy of twenty, even with a remission for good conduct, would not have got away with that, would he? Did they show you the body?’
‘Yes, Anthony and I both saw it.’
‘I read about the inquest in the papers. They said that nothing but the hair was recognisable. Is that so?’
‘Well, yes. Still, it made identification a very simple matter.’
‘That hair was a wig, of course. It was two-coloured to create an effect.’
‘It was not a wig.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Naming no names, I know a man who used to wash her hair for her.’
‘She bore Anthony a child. Did you know that?’
‘Dear Madame Eglantine, you are romancing.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it is quite true. I know. I listen behind doors, you see.’
‘You are a disgraceful old party, then.’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘listening behind doors is an art.’
‘No, it isn’t. You mean a craft. That’s where the word ’crafty‘ comes from. Originally it was used to describe people who listened behind doors.’
‘You are making that up. Anyhow, it is an art, and one not unlike your own. You invent stories and so do I. I invent them for when the door opens suddenly and I am caught out. Well, what have you been doing with yourself since I saw you last? Nothing very creditable, I’ll be bound.’
‘You tell me about Gloria’s baby and then I’ll tell you all about my wicked deeds. What did you get hold of when you listened behind doors?’
‘You first,’ she said; so I described the two Cornish hotels and added a couple of stories straight out of Rabelais concerning my doings in each. She laughed and laughed.
‘I must tell the nurses,’ she said. ‘It will keep them happy for weeks.’
‘I expect they’ve heard better ones from the young doctors,’ I said. ‘Now it’s your turn.’
‘Why haven’t you married, personable young man?’
‘No money to get married on at the time, and now I’ve let the chance go by.’
‘Nonsense. I prophesy that you will meet her again before long. Are you any good at picking up stitches?’
‘No, nor threads. Come on, play fair.’
‘Oh, yes, you want to know what I heard. First, that girl did not turn up out of the blue.’
‘She didn’t?’
‘No. Anthony Wotton asked her to come.’
‘You’ve got the story wrong.’
‘I never get stories wrong.’ I thought of Rubens and the portrait in the old house and said nothing. Encouraged or else irritated by my silence, she went on, ‘She came to blackmail him on the strength of the baby.’
I said sternly, ‘You really must not tell these awful whoppers, Madame Eglantine.’
‘Chaucer spelt it with an “e” and a “y”, whereas my misguided parents preferred Shakespeare’s rendering. What kind of flower is eglantine? Did your teachers tell you that?’
‘Eglantine is the old word for the sweetbrier. That’s why Oberon connected it with musk roses, I suppose,’ I told her.
‘I must remember to spell it Shakespeare’s way in my will. I shall leave you a competence. I am a very wealthy woman. Write both spellings down for me. Underline the one and run a light stroke neatly through the other.’
I took up the writing-pad which was on her bedside locker and printed in my best capitals EGLENTYNE and EGLANTINE.
‘Which is to be underlined and which is to have a line drawn through it?’ I asked.
‘Don’t ask stupid questions!’ she snapped at me. I drew a faint line through the first name and underlined more thickly the other. I deduced that she was getting tired, so I rose to go. She was having none of that, and ordered me to sit down again. She drew the writing-pad towards her and smiled.
‘I shall never get out of here alive, you know,’ she said. ‘They are witches and they meet at Hetty Pegler’s Tump.’
‘I’ve been there,’ I said, anxious to avoid the discussion of the
