Brian.”
The chef reached them and Brian took two sausages, handing Julie one. “What was funny?”
Julie ate the sausage absently as she felt her way through imponderables, trying for exactness. “Frances,” she said slowly, “was doing the, mantelpiece in the living-room when I told her about us. She turned, and her elbow hit the clock and it fell and the glass broke. I was beside the door. There was a broom and a dustpan in the hall. I opened the door. Mouse was standing outside. She looked—queer. Not as if she’d just come downstairs but as if—I know it sounds peculiar—she’d been there for some time. The worst of it was that Rosetta was watching her. She was halfway up the stairs and she ran up the rest of the way and out of sight the moment I opened the door.”
Brian frowned. “You mean that Mouse was listening to you and Frances—deliberately?”
“That was the impression I got but, oh, it’s impossible.”
“Well, let’s hope she didn’t suffer the common fate of eavesdroppers.”
“I don’t know,” Julie said unhappily. “Frances and I were talking about Mouse and Joe Westing earlier, and you know how Frances talks. It doesn’t mean anything, but Mouse isn’t used to it. Frances thought that Mouse and Joe both knew about Sarah’s will and that was why they didn’t marry sooner.”
“Frances is crazy,” Brian said with decision. “Mouse didn’t know. Or Joe Westing either. I was there when the will was read. Mouse expected Sarah to leave her something; she never expected to get the entire estate. She was knocked into a cocked hat.”
Julie gave a little sigh of relief. It had hurt her to think of Mouse as an eavesdropper. She wasn’t small or underhanded or curious. If anything, she was too direct and open and simple. Brian ought to know. He had been in Sarah’s confidence. The son of the man she would have married if she hadn’t sacrificed herself for her father, he was one of her executors. She was very fond of him and if anything had happened to Mouse, if she had died or run off with Bill Conroy, for instance, Brian would have inherited her estate.
“It was that house down there,” she said. “It—there’s something horrible about it—I can’t describe the effect it had on me.”
“You don’t need to, darling, I can see for myself. It seems to cast a spell over you. Forget about it. Don’t you want to hear the news?”
He had a flying license, and now that it was over he told Julie that while he was in Washington he had asked to be allowed to volunteer for active service and that his request had been summarily refused. “They say my carburetor’s more important than my carcass—want me to go on working on it. The devil of it is that I signed a contract last week with the Hamden Syndicate for ten engineering articles to be delivered within a month. I’d try to get out of it, tell them to go fish, only that we need the money, you and I.”
His tone was rueful and Julie’s fingers tightened on the stem of her glass. Was it Frances who had said, “Well, if you’re getting married, Brian will have to buckle down to work.” It was years since his wife had left him, and he had been a bachelor to all intents and purposes for a long while. If marriage was going to be a burden to him…
Brian looked at her with a smile in his eyes. “Go on, say it, get it out of your system. You don’t want an unwilling bridegroom; you won’t marry a man who doesn’t want to marry you.”
They both laughed. But Julie wasn’t altogether reassured. Brian had a disconcerting habit of reading her mind, and he disposed of her reactions rather too cavalierly, perhaps because they weren’t very important to him. If there was anything she hated it was being treated like a child.
He saw the cloud on her brow, dropped his idle tone and said in another voice, “Listen, my darling, with the world in the shape it’s in things are going to be tough, damn tough, for a long while. I don’t care about money for myself. I don’t need it, but I do care about it for you. I want to know that no matter what happens you’ll be all right, safe, provided for.”
Her hand was lying on the cloth. He put his over it. At what Julie read in his face, a lump came in her throat and she wanted to cry with pure happiness.
Afterward it seemed to her that that moment was the last outpost in contentment before the shadow fell. The dark blight of its full eclipse didn’t mature all at once, but the cold wind that preceded its slow remorseless advance began to blow.
They were talking about what they meant to do that evening when Brian was paged.
“Mr. Moore…Mr. Brian Moore…Mr. Moore…”
The singsong call was muted against the hum of a hundred voices and the faint twittering of the caged birds. Julie looked up, surprised. No one but Sam and Frances knew where they were, at least, she thought so, and Brian hadn’t been sure until he called her what time he was going to get back.
Brian was equally surprised at being paged. He said, “Who on earth…?” and signaled. He was wanted on the telephone. He got up with a frown and left the lounge.
He had been gone for some five minutes and Julie was beginning to be restless when Frances arrived. She had said she might stop in. She asked where Brian was and Julie told her. Frances dropped into a chair and threw back her mink coat. “I’m dead,” she declared.
She didn’t look it. She had been tired earlier in the day, and now she was almost brilliantly alive. Her narrow face was tinged with color and the unaccustomed flush on her thin cheeks under her soft gleaming hair gave her an unusual vivacity. She said, “Tea with lemon, waiter,” and lit a cigarette. “Some day I’m going to forget about my figure and eat and drink all I want,” she announced with a sigh. “If it weren’t that Sam hates fat so, I’d break down and do it this minute.”
Julie smiled. She had a shrewd idea that if Frances decided to get fat Sam would take it and like it. Before she had a chance to speak of the missing box that had contained Bill Conroy’s flowers, Sam unexpectedly hove into view. Julie wouldn’t have minded Sam, he was fond of Mouse and would understand her anxiety, but to her astonishment he had Rosetta Westing in tow. He said with a suffering side glance at Frances, “I lost the six-thirty and thought I’d have a drink. Rosetta and I bumped into each other in front of the coffee shop.”
Rosetta laughed her shrill girlish laugh. There was an explosive quality to it and she seemed excited. “I was going to meet a friend, but she didn’t come,” she explained. “I hope—hope you people don’t mind?” Her round pretty face was flushed and her black eyes were very bright.
Mouse had made Rosetta a present of the ensemble she was wearing. Frances had chosen it. Frances raised the jeweled lorgnette that was one of her latest toys and looked at Joe’s young sister critically through lenses of plain glass. There was nothing wrong with her sight. “You shouldn’t have that diamond clip on,” she said judiciously. “It spoils the neckline.” Rosetta wriggled and shifted in her chair. A deeper color dyed her peachy skin as she mumbled something about the clip being Joe’s present.
Julie felt sorry for her. Frances’s passion for excellence was all very well, but she shouldn’t demand too much. There was something else. It might have been the light, it might have been her own humming nerves, but there seemed to be something wrong with all three of them. It wasn’t only Rosetta; both Frances and Sam looked different, not as they usually did, Sam solid and genial, Frances poised and sure of herself in a world that provided her with unlimited amusement and diversion. The word “shaken” slid into Julie’s mind. Were
