why exactly did she come to me?’ he said to himself. ‘And what, I wonder, has been going on in’—he looked down at the card on his desk—‘Warmsley Vale?’
It was exactly five days later that he saw a small paragraph in an evening paper—it referred to the death of a man called Enoch Arden—at Warmsley Vale, a small old-world village about three miles from the popular Warmsley Heath Golf Course.
Hercule Poirot said to himself again:
‘I wonder what has been going on in Warmsley Vale…’
Warmsley Heath consists of a golf course, two hotels, some very expensive modern villas giving on to the golf course, a row of what were, before the war, luxury shops, and a railway station.
Emerging from the railway station, a main road roars its way to London on your left—to your right a small path across a field is signposted Footpath to Warmsley Vale.
Warmsley Vale, tucked away amongst wooded hills, is as unlike Warmsley Heath as well can be. It is in essence a microscopic old-fashioned market town now degenerated into a village. It has a main street of Georgian houses, several pubs, a few unfashionable shops and a general air of being a hundred and fifty instead of twenty-eight miles from London.
Its occupants one and all unite in despising the mushroom growth of Warmsley Heath.
On the outskirts are some charming houses with pleasant old-world gardens. It was to one of these houses, the White House, that Lynn Marchmont returned in the early spring of 1946 when she was demobbed from the Wrens.
On her third morning she looked out of her bedroom window, across the untidy lawn to the elms in the meadow beyond, and sniffed the air happily. It was a gentle grey morning with a smell of soft wet earth. The kind of smell that she had been missing for the past two years and a half.
Wonderful to be home again, wonderful to be here in her own little bedroom which she had thought of so often and so nostalgically whilst she had been overseas. Wonderful to be out of uniform, to be able to get into a tweed skirt and a jumper—even if the moths had been rather too industrious during the war years!
It was good to be out of the Wrens and a free woman again, although she had really enjoyed her overseas service very much. The work had been reasonably interesting, there had been parties, plenty of fun, but there had also been the irksomeness of routine and the feeling of being herded together with her companions which had sometimes made her feel desperately anxious to escape.
It was then, during the long scorching summer out East, that she had thought so longingly of Warmsley Vale and the shabby cool pleasant house, and of dear Mums.
Lynn both loved her mother and was irritated by her. Far away from home, she had loved her still and had forgotten the irritation, or remembered it only with an additional homesick pang. Darling Mums, so completely maddening! What she would not have given to have heard Mums enunciate one cliché in her sweet complaining voice. Oh, to be at home again and never, never to have to leave home again!
And now here she was, out of the Service, free, and back at the White House. She had been back three days. And already a curious dissatisfied restlessness was creeping over her. It was all the same—almost too much all the same—the house and Mums and Rowley and the farm and the family. The thing that was different and that ought not to be different was herself…
‘Darling…’ Mrs Marchmont’s thin cry came up the stairs. ‘Shall I bring my girl a nice tray in bed?’
Lynn called out sharply:
‘Of course not. I’m coming down.’
‘And why,’ she thought, ‘has Mums got to say “my girl”. It’s so silly!’
She ran downstairs and entered the dining-room. It was not a very good breakfast. Already Lynn was realizing the undue proportion of time and interest taken by the search for food. Except for a rather unreliable woman who came four mornings a week, Mrs Marchmont was alone in the house, struggling with cooking and cleaning. She had been nearly forty when Lynn was born and her health was not good. Also Lynn realized with some dismay how their financial position had changed. The small but adequate fixed income which had kept them going comfortably before the war was now almost halved by taxation. Rates, expenses, wages had all gone up.
‘Oh! brave new world,’ thought Lynn grimly. Her eyes rested lightly on the columns of the daily paper. ‘Ex-W.A.A.F. seeks post where initiative and drive will be appreciated.’ ‘Former W.R.E.N. seeks post where organizing ability and authority are needed.’
Enterprise, initiative, command, those were the commodities offered. But what was wanted? People who could cook and clean, or write decent shorthand. Plodding people who knew a routine and could give good service.
Well, it didn’t affect her. Her way ahead lay clear. Marriage to her cousin Rowley Cloade. They had got engaged seven years ago, just before the outbreak of war. Almost as long as she could remember, she had meant to marry Rowley. His choice of a farming life had been acquiesced in readily by her. A good life—not exciting perhaps, and with plenty of hard work, but they both loved the open air and the care of animals.
Not that their prospects were quite what they had been—Uncle Gordon had always promised…
Mrs Marchmont’s voice broke in plaintively apposite:
‘It’s been the most dreadful blow to us all, Lynn darling, as I wrote you. Gordon had only been in England two days. We hadn’t even seen him. If only he hadn’t stayed in London. If he’d come straight down here.’
‘Yes, if only…’
Far away, Lynn had been shocked and grieved by the news of her uncle’s death, but the true significance of it was only now beginning to come home to her.
For as long as she could remember, her life, all their lives, had been dominated by Gordon Cloade. The rich, childless man had taken all his relatives completely under his wing.
Even Rowley… Rowley and his friend Johnnie Vavasour had started in partnership on the farm. Their capital was small, but they had been full of hope and energy. And Gordon Cloade had approved.
To her he had said more.
‘You can’t get anywhere in farming without capital. But the first thing to find out is whether these boys have really got the will and the energy to make a go of it. If I set them up now, I wouldn’t know that—maybe for years. If they’ve got the right stuff in them, if I’m satisfied that their side of it is all right, well then, Lynn, you needn’t worry. I’ll finance them on the proper scale. So don’t think badly of your prospects, my girl. You’re just the wife Rowley needs. But keep what I’ve told you under your hat.’
Well, she had done that, but Rowley himself had sensed his uncle’s benevolent interest. It was up to him to prove to the old boy that Rowley and Johnnie were a good investment for money.
Yes, they had all depended on
