Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus (37 page)

If he had shown any sign of being at all fond of anyone, it was his rich neighbor, Lord Gerald de Fremney, and since Lord Gerald had everything—good looks, wealth, and a splendid home of his own—the hopeful relatives were sure he would not figure in Mr. Frayne’s will and were consequently relieved to see Lord Gerald when he strode into the room.

Their looks of welcome faded at his opening words.

“I see the vultures are already gathered,” drawled Lord Gerald.

Jeffrey Beardington-Smythe began to bluster. “I say, talk like a gentleman,” he snapped. “I was always fond of the old boy.”

“It seems to me,” said Lord Gerald with irritating good nature, “that you’ve taken a long time to show it.”

The four of Mr. Frayne’s relatives now looked at Lord Gerald de Fremney with dislike. He was a very tall young man with thick fair hair and black eyes; an exotic combination of color that had made more than one feminine heart flutter. He was impeccably dressed in a biscuit-colored suit with a pale-gold waistcoat embroidered with yellow freesias (
That shows the fellow’s a cad
, thought Jeffrey), and had rather studied languid movements—a hangover from his Oxford days—that belied his muscular athletic figure. He spoke in a light, pleasant, rather mocking voice that was usually held to be charming but which struck the ears of his present audience as downright irritating.

Miss Briggs began to sob noisily. “How
can
you, Lord Gerald, when you should know I have always loved Uncle dearly?”

“Rubbish,” said Tansy Bloomington nastily. “I’m the one Uncle has most in common with. We talk man to man.”

“Dear me,” said Lord Gerald, and Tansy rammed another cigarette into her holder as if she dearly wished she were shoving it somewhere else.

“He—he’s quite right, you know,” said Cyril Booth from his position by the fireplace. “I’m only after the old b-boy’s m-money. I h-hate
deceit
, you know. So shuddery. So frightfully, terribly ugh.”

“Ugh? Ugh? What kind of language is that, you poor clown?” snapped Tansy.

Cyril gave her a weary look from a pair of limpid blue eyes and refrained from answering.

“What I really came to tell you,” said Lord Gerald, “is that Mr. Frayne wishes to see you.
All
of you.”

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” howled Jeffrey Beardington-Smythe, heaving his great bulk out of a delicate Chippendale chair.

In a hurried, undignified scramble, the four scrambled for the stairs, each one eager to reach the bedroom door first. Lord Gerald followed at a more leisurely pace.

Mr. Giles Frayne was lying back against the lace pillows of his fourposter bed. His eyes were lusterless and his face was like wax. Cancer had been eating away at him for the past year and he looked as weary of this life as he actually was. His thin cadaverous face looked like a skull and his sparse gray hair was neatly combed across his yellow scalp.

Something flickered in the depths of his eyes as the visitors entered but apart from that the figure in the bed did not move. He waited until Lord Gerald arrived and then he spoke. His voice was dry and rusty and seemed to come from very far away.

“I want to talk to you lot about my will,” said Mr. Frayne.

“Oh,
Unky! Don’t!
” wailed Miss Briggs, bringing her handkerchief once more into play.

“Yes, do, Uncle,” countered Tansy, and turning to Miss Briggs, she said, “Uncle doesn’t care for all that wishy-washy nonsense, Barbara. Let him get to the point.” And with that she blew a ferocious cloud of cigarette smoke around the sickchamber.

“Don’t keep interrupting me,” said Mr. Frayne in a slightly stronger voice. “I haven’t got much time. Glad to see you, Lord Gerald. We ain’t had much in common but you’ve been a good neighbor and the only person I know who appreciates my library. You shall have it.”

“That’s very generous of you,” said Lord Gerald. “There are some fine books in your collection, sir.”

The four relatives heaved an almost audible sigh of relief. That was Lord Gerald de Fremney disposed of. Now to the meat of the matter.

“My house,” quavered Mr. Frayne, “my
beloved
house, Courtney, my town house, and all my money is to go to—” Here he was overcome by a fit of coughing while the four relatives craned eagerly forward.

He recovered and raised one skeletal old hand, holding a handkerchief to his mouth. “All I possess,” he went on, “will go to Miss Ginny Bloggs.”

“MISS GINNY BLOGGS!” screamed four voices in unison.

“Yes, that’s who. She’s the daughter of a coal merchant up in Lancashire—don’t remember the address but the lawyer’s got it. Never met the girl but her late pa saved my life. I was up Bolton way on business and got into… er… bad company.” A mirthless laugh shook him. “Yes, it was in a low sort of public house, and I got into a fight and this gang of toughs were going to kill me. Well, in steps old Bloggs, hands like hams he had, and he lays about them like Jason. Took me home and looked after me, he did. We corresponded from time to time and he told me all about Ginny. His wife died and then he passed away. Wrote to me before he died and begged me to look after his little girl, but what could I do with a girl on my hands? I’ve been feeling bad about it though and I mean to put it right.”

“Oh, Unky, how could you?” said Miss Briggs, sobbing wildly.

“So,” the old man went on as if she had not spoken, “to that effect I’m providing for you lot.”

A gleam of wild hope appeared in the four faces around his bed only to be extinguished at his next words. In a fainter voice, Mr. Frayne said, “You will be supplied free room and board here at Courtney and a generous allowance each until such time as the girl marries. You are to teach her how to go on in society and prepare her for a Season and introduce her to the right chaps. Lord Gerald, I want you to see that they obey my requests to the letter.”

Lord Gerald gave an impatient nod.

“Well, that’s that,” said Mr. Frayne. “Now take your faces out of here and send Doctor Gillespie up. I want to die in peace.”

The grim relatives assembled once again in the drawing room. Lord Gerald had taken his departure.

There was a silence and then all four burst into speech at once.

“A common little girl to get all that…”

“Money should have come to me. Not even a member of the family. I’ve a good mind to…”

“Good mind to what? If we don’t take care of the little upstart, we won’t get anything at all….”

“By Jove. Well, well, well, well. By Jove.”

The latter was mumbled by Jeffrey Beardington-Smythe, who seemed to be in the worst state of shock. Miss Briggs’s tears had miraculously dried and she was hard-eyed and thin-lipped. Tansy was chain-smoking, erupting little puffs of Turkish tobacco-scented smoke like a thin and angry volcano. Cyril Booth was white and trembling, his delicate features twisting with emotion.

“P-perhaps he’ll change his mind b-before he d-dies,” he said at last.

The others stopped their lamentation and looked at him thoughtfully.

“You’ve got a point there,” said Tansy slowly. “We could all rally ’round and be very sweet to him and persuade him that his house would be better run by a member of the family. Either that or we might be able to have him committed. If we all stuck together, we might be able to prove him mad.”

Jeffrey rang for drinks. He was beginning to feel optimistic again, although he was also beginning to feel the full effects of the recent shock and was sure that his blood pressure was teetering on the danger level.

When the drinks arrived, the four fortified themselves and then drew their chairs together. “How I see it,” said Jeffrey, “is that we should form some plan of action. All together, mind! No one person sneaking up to the old man’s room and trying to get it all for himself—or herself.”

The others nodded in agreement while each of them silently plotted to do just that as soon as they had a chance.

“Right! Any suggestions?” asked Jeffrey. “What about you, Tansy?”

A discreet cough from the doorway made them all jump in their chairs and some of Cyril’s gin and French slopped onto the Aubusson rug. Dr. Gillespie stood in the doorway. He said, “This will come as a terrible shock to you, although we have all been expecting it for some time. Mr. Frayne is dead.”

Four appalled faces stared at him and Dr. Gillespie felt ashamed of his previous convictions that they were only interested in the old man for his money. He bowed his head and tactfully withdrew to leave them alone with their grief.

There was a long silence. Tansy looked around the exquisite room: at the white enameled piano with its large Chinese bowl of azaleas; at the delicate Chippendale furniture, and the delicate Chinese-silk panels on the walls; at the pale sunlight shining in through the long windows where the Brussels-lace curtains floated on the most delicate of summer breezes.

She groaned aloud and then voiced the feelings of the rest.

“Well, it’s all yours now, Miss Ginny Bloggs, and I for one am going to make sure you never enjoy a day of it!”

Three weeks had passed since the funeral of Mr. Giles Frayne and the day of Ginny Bloggs’s arrival at Courtney had dawned.

Lord Gerald wished he could wash his hands of the whole thing. But he
had
promised to keep an eye on Ginny and she was in for quite a dreadful welcome. A large house party had been planned for her arrival, full of the most terrifying members of society, all of whom seemed determined to put the coal merchant’s daughter in her place.

All had been outraged at the idea of a member of the lower-middle classes inheriting Courtney. Lord Gerald had visited the Frayne mansion two days before to find it alive with comments such as:

“Bound to smell of the shop.”

“No breeding, mark my words.”

“Probably got a common accent.”

“How can we socialize with someone who could be one’s scullery maid?”

And so on.

Lord Gerald had been asked to invite guests of his own and had grimly chosen the type of men and women he admired most. He detested what he termed “old-fashioned girls”—the kind interested only in getting married and having babies. He liked his men friends to be cultured and witty and his women friends to have careers and
do
things. He liked women to wear long, lean lines instead of the depressingly fashionable laces and frills.

He liked them to have well-kept hair and well-kept short nails and to state their views with the forthrightness of men. He abhorred flirting. Romance was a tinsel invention of sentimental poets. Lord Gerald believed firmly in the marriage of true minds. He was by no means a virgin, having experienced several interesting affairs in his early twenties. But now from the height of his thirty-three years he could smile indulgently at the follies of youth. The urgings of the human body were a depressing hangover from prehistoric days and could be easily subdued by either hard work or a cold bath. He had been celibate for four years and had, he reflected, enjoyed every minute of it.

The trouble with Lord Gerald was that he had never had to seek female admiration. His combination of good looks, a title, and a great fortune were enough to secure him the attention of every woman when he walked into a room. He felt more comfortable with his court of hard-bitten, chain-smoking, intelligent women who, he felt sure, admired him for his mind alone. Surprisingly enough he had no liking for Tansy. She was too avaricious for his taste. Too blatantly grasping.

The more he thought of Ginny Bloggs, the more he found he was looking forward to meeting her. A girl from her class of society would have experienced something of the rougher side of life and would surely be no pampered doll. His women friends at least were not snobs. Weren’t they always talking about the equality of birth and opportunity?

He glanced at the clock. Miss Ginny Bloggs was due to arrive at any minute. The least he could do was to be there to meet her.

The house party moved about the lawns and rooms of Courtney, waiting for the imminent arrival of Miss Bloggs. There was something predatory about them, thought Lord Gerald. He turned with relief to his friend, Miss Alicia Benson, enjoying her appearance, her neat straw hat, hard, clever face, and the masculine lines of her Paquin suit, which, instead of being ridiculously hobbled, had a sensible skirt that allowed Miss Benson to move as freely as a man—which she did.

Tansy was, as usual, dressed in something angular and nasty, and Miss Barbara Briggs had erupted in an avalanche of old lace that fell in cascades from her massive bosom to her tiny swollen feet. Her wide voile hat was so embellished with fruit and flowers and feathers that it looked as if Miss Briggs might sink slowly into the lawn under its weight.

A long straight avenue of limes stretched in an unbroken line from the entrance of the house past the ornamental lake to the lodge and the gates beyond.

Lord Gerald found Jeffrey at his elbow. “Who has gone to the station to meet Miss Bloggs?” he asked.

Jeffrey turned an unlovely color of puce and mumbled something about “the gel makin’ her own way, what.”

“Do you mean,” said Lord Gerald, appalled, “that
no one
—not one of you—has gone to London to meet the girl off the train?”

“Well, why didn’t
you
, hen?” said Jeffrey with an irritating bray of laughter. “Got you there, laddie!”

Lord Gerald turned away in disgust.

Just then a stillness fell over the crowd. The croquet players stopped playing croquet, the gossipers stopped gossiping, and the walkers stopped walking. A carriage was coming up the drive at a great pace, pulled by four prime horses.

It swept up to the front of the house in tremendous style and a liveried footman jumped down from the box and opened the carriage door.

Miss Ginny Bloggs stepped down.

She turned vaguely and stared in silence for one whole minute at the open-mouthed crowd. An elderly gentleman got out and shook her hand.

“You’ve been so very kind to me,” said Miss Bloggs in a pleasant, well-modulated voice. “So
very
kind of you to escort me home. I really didn’t know what to do when I found there was no one to meet me. It must have been a mistake, of course.”