‘I suppose,’ said Molly in a demure voice, ‘you are Mr Wren?’
The young man stopped short, clutched his hair in both hands and tugged at it.
‘But how frightful—I never put first things first. Yes, I’m Christopher Wren—now, don’t laugh. My parents were a romantic couple. They hoped I’d be an architect. So they thought it a splendid idea to christen me Christopher—halfway home, as it were.’
‘And are you an architect?’ asked Molly, unable to help smiling.
‘Yes, I am,’ said Mr Wren triumphantly. ‘At least I’m nearly one. I’m not fully qualified yet. But it’s really a remarkable example of wishful thinking coming off for once. Mind you, actually the name will be a handicap. I shall never be the Christopher Wren. However, Chris Wren’s Pre-Fab Nests may achieve fame.’
Giles came down the stairs again, and Molly said, ‘I’ll show you your room now, Mr Wren.’
When she came down a few minutes later, Giles said, ‘Well, did he like the pretty oak furniture?’
‘He was very anxious to have a four-poster, so I gave him the rose room instead.’
Giles grunted and murmured something that ended, ‘. . . young twerp.’
‘Now, look here, Giles,’ Molly assumed a severe demeanor. ‘This isn’t a house party of guests we’re entertaining. This is business. Whether you like Christopher Wren or not—’
‘I don’t,’ Giles interjected.
‘—has nothing whatever to do with it. He’s paying seven guineas a week, and that’s all that matters.’
‘If he pays it, yes.’
‘He’s agreed to pay it. We’ve got his letter.’
‘Did you transfer that suitcase of his to the rose room?’
‘He carried it, of course.’
‘Very gallant. But it wouldn’t have strained you. There’s certainly no question of stones wrapped up in newspaper. It’s so light that there seems to me there’s probably nothing in it.’
‘Ssh, here he comes,’ said Molly warningly.
Christopher Wren was conducted to the library which looked, Molly thought, very nice, indeed, with its big chairs and its log fire. Dinner, she told him, would be in half an hour’s time. In reply to a question, she explained that there were no other guests at the moment. In that case, Christopher said, how would it be if he came into the kitchen and helped?
‘I can cook you an omelette if you like,’ he said engagingly.
The subsequent proceedings took place in the kitchen, and Christopher helped with the washing up.
Somehow, Molly felt, it was not quite the right start for a conventional guesthouse—and Giles had not liked it at all. Oh, well, thought Molly, as she fell asleep, tomorrow when the others came it would be different.
The morning came with dark skies and snow. Giles looked grave, and Molly’s heart fell. The weather was going to make everything very difficult.
Mrs Boyle arrived in the local taxi with chains on the wheels, and the driver brought pessimistic reports of the state of the road.
‘Drifts afore nightfall,’ he prophesied.
Mrs Boyle herself did not lighten the prevailing gloom. She was a large, forbidding-looking woman with a resonant voice and a masterful manner. Her natural aggressiveness had been heightened by a war career of persistent and militant usefulness.
‘If I had not believed this was a running concern, I should never have come,’ she said. ‘I naturally thought it was a well-established guesthouse, properly run on scientific lines.’
‘There is no obligation for you to remain if you are not satisfied, Mrs Boyle,’ said Giles.
‘No, indeed, and I shall not think of doing so.’
‘Perhaps, Mrs Boyle,’ said Giles, ‘you would like to ring up for a taxi. The roads are not yet blocked. If there has been any misapprehension it would, perhaps, be better if you went elsewhere.’ He added, ‘We have had so many applications for rooms that we shall be able to fill your place quite easily—indeed, in future we are charging a higher rate for our rooms.’
Mrs Boyle threw him a sharp glance. ‘I am certainly not going to leave before I have tried what the place is like. Perhaps you would let me have a rather large bath towel, Mrs Davis. I am not accustomed to drying myself on a pocket handkerchief.’
Giles grinned at Molly behind Mrs Boyle’s retreating back.
‘Darling, you were wonderful,’ said Molly. ‘The way you stood up to her.’
‘Bullies soon climb down when they get their own medicine,’ said Giles.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Molly. ‘I wonder how she’ll get on with Christopher Wren.’
‘She won’t,’ said Giles.
And, indeed, that very afternoon, Mrs Boyle remarked to Molly, ‘That’s a very peculiar young man,’ with distinct disfavour in her voice.
The baker arrived looking like an Arctic explorer and delivered the bread with the warning that his next call, due in two days’ time, might not materialize.
‘Holdups everywhere,’ he announced. ‘Got plenty of stores in, I hope?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Molly. ‘We’ve got lots of tins. I’d better take extra flour, though.’
She thought vaguely that there was something the Irish made called soda bread. If the worst came to the worst she could probably make that.
The baker had also brought the papers, and she spread them out on the hall table. Foreign affairs had receded in importance. The weather and the murder of Mrs Lyon occupied the front page.
She was staring at the blurred reproduction of the dead woman’s features when Christopher Wren’s voice behind her said, ‘Rather a sordid murder, don’t you think? Such a drab-looking woman and such a drab street. One can’t feel, can one, that there is any story behind it?’
‘I’ve no doubt,’ said Mrs Boyle with a snort, ‘that the creature got no more than she deserved.’
‘Oh.’ Mr Wren turned to her with engaging eagerness. ‘So you think it’s definitely a sex crime, do you?’
‘I suggested nothing of the kind, Mr Wren.’
‘But she was strangled, wasn’t she? I wonder—’ he held out his long white hands—‘what it would feel like to strangle anyone.’
‘Really, Mr Wren!’
Christopher moved nearer to her, lowering his voice. ‘Have you considered, Mrs Boyle, just what
