startling figure. Unkempt locks of iron-grey fell wispily on her shoulders, a straw hat rather like the hats that horses wear in Italy was crammed down on her head. The coloured print dress she wore fell nearly to her ankles. Out of a weatherbeaten, not-too-clean face, shrewd eyes surveyed them appraisingly.
‘I must apologize for trespassing, Miss Greenshaw,’ said Raymond West, as he advanced towards her, ‘but Mr Horace Bindler who is staying with me –’
Horace bowed and removed his hat.
‘– is most interested in – er – ancient history and – er – fine buildings.’
Raymond West spoke with the ease of a well-known author who knows that he is a celebrity, that he can venture where other people may not.
Miss Greenshaw looked up at the sprawling exuberance behind her.
‘It is a fine house,’ she said appreciatively. ‘My grandfather built it – before my time, of course. He is reported as having said that he wished to astonish the natives.’
‘I’ll say he did that, ma’am,’ said Horace Bindler.
‘Mr Bindler is the well-known literary critic,’ said Raymond West.
Miss Greenshaw had clearly no reverence for literary critics. She remained unimpressed.
‘I consider it,’ said Miss Greenshaw, referring to the house, ‘as a monument to my grandfather’s genius. Silly fools come here, and ask me why I don’t sell it and go and live in a flat. What would I do in a flat? It’s my home and I live in it,’ said Miss Greenshaw. ‘Always have lived here.’ She considered, brooding over the past. ‘There were three of us. Laura married the curate. Papa wouldn’t give her any money, said clergymen ought to be unworldly. She died, having a baby. Baby died too. Nettie ran away with the riding master. Papa cut her out of his will, of course. Handsome fellow, Harry Fletcher, but no good. Don’t think Nettie was happy with him. Anyway, she didn’t live long. They had a son. He writes to me sometimes, but of course he isn’t a Greenshaw. I’m the last of the Greenshaws.’ She drew up her bent shoulders with a certain pride, and readjusted the rakish angle of the straw hat. Then, turning, she said sharply,
‘Yes, Mrs Cresswell, what is it?’
Approaching them from the house was a figure that, seen side by side with Miss Greenshaw, seemed ludicrously dissimilar. Mrs Cresswell had a marvellously dressed head of well-blued hair towering upwards in meticulously arranged curls and rolls. It was as though she had dressed her head to go as a French marquise to a fancy-dress party. The rest of her middle-aged person was dressed in what ought to have been rustling black silk but was actually one of the shinier varieties of black rayon. Although she was not a large woman, she had a well-developed and sumptuous bust. Her voice when she spoke, was unexpectedly deep. She spoke with exquisite diction, only a slight hesitation over words beginning with ‘h’ and the final pronunciation of them with an exaggerated aspirate gave rise to a suspicion that at some remote period in her youth she might have had trouble over dropping her h’s.
‘The fish, madam,’ said Mrs Cresswell, ‘the slice of cod. It has not arrived. I have asked Alfred to go down for it and he refuses to do so.’
Rather unexpectedly, Miss Greenshaw gave a cackle of laughter.
‘Refuses, does he?’
‘Alfred, madam, has been most disobliging.’
Miss Greenshaw raised two earth-stained fingers to her lips, suddenly produced an ear-splitting whistle and at the same time yelled:
‘Alfred. Alfred, come here.’
Round the corner of the house a young man appeared in answer to the summons, carrying a spade in his hand. He had a bold, handsome face and as he drew near he cast an unmistakably malevolent glance towards Mrs Cresswell.
‘You wanted me, miss?’ he said.
‘Yes, Alfred. I hear you’ve refused to go down for the fish. What about it, eh?’
Alfred spoke in a surly voice.
‘I’ll go down for it if you wants it, miss. You’ve only got to say.’
‘I do want it. I want it for my supper.’
‘Right you are, miss. I’ll go right away.’
He threw an insolent glance at Mrs Cresswell, who flushed and murmured below her breath:
‘Really! It’s unsupportable.’
‘Now that I think of it,’ said Miss Greenshaw, ‘a couple of strange visitors are just what we need aren’t they, Mrs Cresswell?’
Mrs Cresswell looked puzzled.
‘I’m sorry, madam –’
‘For you-know-what,’ said Miss Greenshaw, nodding her head. ‘Beneficiary to a will mustn’t witness it. That’s right, isn’t it?’ She appealed to Raymond West.
‘Quite correct,’ said Raymond.
‘I know enough law to know that,’ said Miss Greenshaw. ‘And you two are men of standing.’
She flung down her trowel on her weeding-basket.
‘Would you mind coming up to the library with me?’
‘Delighted,’ said Horace eagerly.
She led the way through french windows and through a vast yellow and gold drawing-room with faded brocade on the walls and dust covers arranged over the furniture, then through a large dim hall, up a staircase and into a room on the first floor.
‘My grandfather’s library,’ she announced.
Horace looked round the room with acute pleasure. It was a room, from his point of view, quite full of monstrosities. The heads of sphinxes appeared on the most unlikely pieces of furniture, there was a colossal bronze representing, he thought, Paul and Virginia, and a vast bronze clock with classical motifs of which he longed to take a photograph.
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