The Mystery of the Blue Train

CHAPTER 7 Letters

‘Mrs Samuel Harfield presents her compliments to Miss Katherine Grey and wishes to point out that under the circumstances Miss Grey may not be aware—’

Mrs Harfield, having written so far fluently, came to a dead stop, held up by what has proved an insuperable difficulty to many other people—namely, the difficulty of expressing oneself fluently in the third person.

After a minute or two of hesitation, Mrs Harfield tore up the sheet of notepaper and started afresh.

Dear Miss Grey,—Whilst fully appreciating the adequate way you discharged your duties to my Cousin Emma (whose recent death has indeed been a severe blow to us all), I cannot but feel—

Again Mrs Harfield came to a stop. Once more the letter was consigned to the wastepaper-basket. It was not until four false starts had been made that Mrs Harfield at last produced an epistle that satisfied her. It was duly sealed and stamped and addressed to Miss Katherine Grey, Little Crampton, St Mary Mead, Kent, and it lay beside the lady’s plate on the following morning at breakfast-time in company with a more important-looking communication in a long blue envelope.

Katherine Grey opened Mrs Harfield’s letter first. The finished production ran as follows:

Dear Miss Grey,—My husband and I wish to express our thanks to you for your services to my poor cousin, Emma. Her death has been a great blow to us, though we were, of course, aware that her mind has been failing for some time past. I understand that her latter testamentary dispositions have been of a most peculiar character, and they would not hold good, of course, in any court of law. I have no doubt that, with your usual good sense, you have already realized this fact. If these matters can be arranged privately it is always so much better, my husband says. We shall be pleased to recommend you most highly for a similar post, and hope that you will also accept a small present. Believe me, dear Miss Grey, yours cordially.

Mary Anne Harfield.

Katherine Grey read the letter through, smiled a little, and read it a second time. Her face as she laid the letter down after the second reading was distinctly amused. Then she took up the second letter. After one brief perusal she laid it down and stared very straight in front of her. This time she did not smile. Indeed, it would have been hard for anyone watching her to guess what emotions lay behind that quiet, reflective gaze.

Katherine Grey was thirty-three. She came of good family, but her father had lost all his money, and Katherine had had to work for her living from an early age. She had been just twenty-three when she had come to old Mrs Harfield as companion.

It was generally recognized that old Mrs Harfield was ‘difficult.’ Companions came and went with startling rapidity. They arrived full of hope and they usually left in tears. But from the moment Katherine Grey set foot in Little Crampton, ten years ago, perfect peace had reigned. No one knows how these things come about. Snake-charmers, they say, are born, not made. Katherine Grey was born with the power of managing old ladies, dogs, and small boys, and she did it without any apparent sense of strain.

At twenty-three she had been a quiet girl with beautiful eyes. At thirty-three she was a quiet woman, with those same grey eyes, shining steadily out on the world with a kind of happy serenity that nothing could shake. Moreover, she had been born with, and still possessed, a sense of humour.

As she sat at the breakfast-table, staring in front of her, there was a ring at the bell, accompanied by a very energetic rat-a-tat-tat at the knocker. In another minute the little maid-servant opened the door and announced rather breathlessly:

‘Dr Harrison.’

The big, middle-aged doctor came bustling in with the energy and breeziness that had been foreshadowed by his onslaught on the knocker.

‘Good morning, Miss Grey.’

‘Good morning, Dr Harrison.’

‘I dropped in early,’ began the doctor, ‘in case you should have heard from one of those Harfield cousins. Mrs Samuel, she calls herself—a perfectly poisonous person.’

Without a word, Katherine picked up Mrs Harfield’s letter from the table and gave it to him. With a good deal of amusement she watched his perusal of it, the drawing together of the bushy eyebrows, the snorts and grunts of violent disapproval. He dashed it down again on the table.

‘Perfectly monstrous,’ he fumed. ‘Don’t you let it worry you, my dear. They’re talking through their hat. Mrs Harfield’s intellect was as good as yours or mine, and you won’t get anyone to say the contrary. They wouldn’t have a leg to stand upon, and they know it. All that talk of taking it into court is pure bluff. Hence this attempt to get round you in a hole-and-corner way. And look here, my dear, don’t let them get round you with soft soap either. Don’t get fancying it’s your duty to hand over the cash, or any tomfoolery of conscientious scruples.’

‘I’m afraid it hasn’t occurred to me to have scruples,’ said Katherine. ‘All these people are distant relatives of Mrs Harfield’s husband, and they never came near her or took any notice of her in her lifetime.’

‘You’re a sensible woman,’ said the doctor. ‘I know, none better, that you’ve had a hard life of it for the last ten years. You’re fully entitled to enjoy the old lady’s savings, such as they were.’

Katherine smiled thoughtfully.

‘Such as they were,’ she repeated. ‘You’ve no idea of the amount, doctor?’

‘Well—enough to bring in five hundred a year or so, I suppose.’

Katherine nodded.

‘That’s what I thought,’ she said. ‘Now read this.’

She handed him the letter she had taken from the long blue envelope. The doctor read and uttered an exclamation of utter astonishment.

‘Impossible,’ he muttered. ‘Impossible.’

‘She was one of the original shareholders in Mortaulds. Forty years ago she must have had an income of eight or ten thousand a year. She has never, I am sure, spent more than four hundred a year. She was always terribly careful about money. I always believed that she was obliged to be careful about every penny.’

‘And all the time the income has accumulated at compound interest. My dear, you’re going to be a very rich woman.’

Katherine Grey nodded.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I am.’

She spoke in a detached, impersonal tone, as though she were looking at the situation from outside.

‘Well,’ said the doctor, preparing to depart, ‘you have all my congratulations.’ He flicked Mrs Samuel Harfield’s letter with his thumb. ‘Don’t worry about that woman and her odious letter.’

‘It really isn’t an odious letter,’ said Miss Grey tolerantly. ‘Under the circumstances, I think it’s really quite a natural thing to do.’

‘I have the gravest suspicions of you sometimes,’ said the doctor.

‘Why?’

‘The things that you find perfectly natural.’

Katherine Grey laughed.

Doctor Harrison retailed the great news to his wife at lunch-time. She was very excited about it.

‘Fancy old Mrs Harfield—with all that money. I’m glad she left it to Katherine Grey. That girl’s a saint.’

The doctor made a wry face.

‘Saints I always imagined must have been difficult people. Katherine Grey is too human for a saint.’

‘She’s a saint with a sense of humour,’ said the doctor’s wife, twinkling. ‘And, though I don’t suppose you’ve ever noticed the fact, she’s extremely good looking.’

‘Katherine Grey?’ The doctor was honestly surprised. ‘She’s got very nice eyes, I know.’

‘Oh, you men!’ cried his wife. ‘Blind as bats. Katherine’s got all the makings of a beauty in her. All she wants is clothes!’

‘Clothes? What’s wrong with her clothes? She always looks very nice.’

Mrs Harrison gave an exasperated sigh, and the doctor rose preparatory to starting on his rounds.

‘You might look in on her, Polly,’ he suggested.

‘I’m going to,’ said Mrs Harrison, promptly.

She made her call about three o’clock.

‘My dear, I’m so glad,’ she said warmly, as she squeezed Katherine’s hand. ‘And everyone in the village will be glad too.’

‘It’s very nice of you to come and tell me,’ said Katherine. ‘I hoped you would come in because I wanted to ask about Johnnie.’

‘Oh! Johnnie. Well—’

Johnnie was Mrs Harrison’s youngest son. In another minute she was off, retailing a long history in which Johnnie’s adenoids and tonsils bulked largely. Katherine listened sympathetically. Habits die hard. Listening had been her portion for ten years now. ‘My dear, I wonder if I ever told you about the naval ball at Portsmouth? When Lord Charles admired my gown?’ And composedly, kindly, Katherine would reply: ‘I rather think you have, Mrs Harfield, but I’ve forgotten about it. Won’t you tell it me again?’ And then the old lady would start off full swing, with numerous corrections, and stops, and remembered details. And half of Katherine’s mind would be listening, saying the right things mechanically when the old lady paused…

Now, with the same curious feeling of duality to which she was accustomed, she listened to Mrs Harrison.

At the end of half an hour, the latter recalled herself suddenly.

‘I’ve been talking about myself all this time,’ she exclaimed. ‘And I came here to talk about you and your plans.’

‘I don’t know that I’ve got any yet.’

‘My dear—you’re not going to stay on here.’

Katherine smiled at the horror in the other’s tone.

‘No; I think I want to travel. I’ve never seen much of the world, you know.’

‘I should think not. It must have been an awful life for you cooped up here all these years.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Katherine. ‘It gave me a lot of freedom.’

She caught the other’s gasp, and reddened a little.

‘It must sound foolish—saying that. Of course, I hadn’t much freedom in the downright physical sense—’

‘I should think not,’ breathed Mrs Harrison, remembering that Katherine had seldom had that useful thing, a ‘day off’.

‘But in a way, being tied physically gives you lots of scope mentally. You’re always free to think. I’ve had a lovely feeling always of mental freedom.’

Mrs Harrison shook her head.

‘I can’t understand that.’

‘Oh! you would if you’d been in my place. But, all the same, I feel I want a change. I want—well, I want things to happen. Oh! not to me—I don’t mean that. But to be in the midst of things—exciting things—even if I’m only the looker-on. You know, things don’t happen in St Mary Mead.’

‘They don’t indeed,’ said Mrs Harrison, with fervour.

‘I shall go to London first,’ said Katherine. ‘I have to see the solicitors, anyway. After that, I shall go abroad, I think.’

‘Very nice.’

‘But of course, first of all—’

‘Yes?’

‘I must get some clothes.’

‘Exactly what I said to Arthur this morning,’ cried the doctor’s wife. ‘You know, Katherine, you could look possibly positively beautiful if you tried.’

Miss Grey laughed unaffectedly.

‘Oh! I don’t think you could ever make a beauty out of me,’ she said sincerely. ‘But I shall enjoy having some really good clothes. I’m afraid I’m talking about myself an awful lot.’

Mrs Harrison looked at her shrewdly.

‘It must be quite a novel experience for you,’ she said drily.

Katherine went to say goodbye to old Miss Viner before leaving the village. Miss Viner was two years older than Mrs Harfield, and her mind was mainly taken up with her own success in outliving her dead friend.

‘You wouldn’t have thought I’d have outlasted Jane Harfield, would you?’ she demanded triumphantly of Katherine. ‘We were at school together, she and I. And here we are, she taken, and I left. Who would have thought it?’

‘You’ve always eaten brown bread for supper, haven’t you?’ murmured Katherine mechanically.

‘Fancy your remembering that, my dear. Yes; if Jane Harfield had had a slice of brown bread every evening and taken a little stimulant with her meals she might be here today.’

The old lady paused, nodding her head triumphantly; then added in sudden remembrance:

‘And so you’ve come into a lot of money, I hear? Well, well. Take care of it. And you’re going up to London to have a good time? Don’t think you’ll get married, though, my dear, because you won’t. You’re not the kind to attract the men. And, besides, you’re getting on. How old are you now?’

‘Thirty-three,’ Katherine told her.

‘Well,’ remarked Miss Viner doubtfully, ‘that’s not so very bad. You’ve lost your first freshness, of course.’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Katherine, much entertained.

‘But you’re a very nice girl,’ said Miss Viner kindly. ‘And I’m sure there’s many a man might do worse than take you for a wife instead of one of these flibbertigibbets running about nowadays showing more of their legs than the Creator ever intended them to. Goodbye, my dear, and I hope you’ll enjoy yourself, but things are seldom what they seem in this life.’

Heartened by these prophecies, Katherine took her departure. Half the village came to see her off at the station, including the little maid of all work, Alice, who brought a stiff wired nosegay and cried openly.

‘There ain’t a many like her,’ sobbed Alice when the train had finally departed. ‘I’m sure when Charlie went back on me with that girl from the dairy, nobody could have been kinder than Miss Grey was, and though particular about the brasses and the dust, she was always one to notice when you’d give a thing an extra rub. Cut myself in little pieces for her, I would, any day. A real lady, that’s what I call her.’

Such was Katherine’s departure from St Mary Mead.