Death at the Opera Read Free Page A

you, and when they do come, expect the very best of everything! She can have Number Eight at the inclusive, less ten per cent for staying the full six weeks. I couldn’t do more for a permanent.”
    â€œI’m sure she wouldn’t expect more,” said Miss Sooley who was plump, sentimental and inclined towards hysteria when she became excited. “But, Miss Lincallow, there’s something else.”
    â€œI won’t have a child’s cot put in Number Three as well as a double and a single bed, so you can write and say so,” said Miss Lincallow firmly. “They can put the two little girls in Number Nineteen for an extra half-guinea a week, but that’s as far as I’ll accommodate them! You’d think this was a common lodging-house, the things people expect you to do!”
    â€œIt isn’t that. It’s something much more serious,” said Miss Sooley. “It’s that new maid, Susie Cozens.”
    â€œHer with the London manners!” snorted Miss Lincallow. “Too free with the gentlemen! She’ll have to go.”
    â€œIt’s really Mr. Helm’s fault. He encourages her. I found her in his room this morning going through his things.”
    â€œThen she can just go through her own and take herself off,” said the head of the establishment decidedly. “Theft, as likely as not! She came here with no character never having been in a regular situation before. I wouldn’t have taken her, even though it is the height of the season, only I was sorry for her mother—they are almost Bognor people, you know—so I took the girl. But out she goes if she’s a rummager! I can’t have a girl who can’t control her curiosity. People would never put up with it. Give her her wages instead of notice, and send her off.”
    â€œWhat about a character?”
    â€œI’ll write her a character. ‘Honest and industrious’ ought to be enough. She can make up her own reason for leaving us. I’ll write it now, at the same time as I write to my niece. Have you found out whether Number Four intends to stop the extra week? Because I’ve had an application for a sitting-room and three bedrooms which I’d like to take up with. But don’t discourage Number Four. He comes here every year, and no complaints.”
    On the following morning Miss Ferris received a cordially-worded letter from her aunt, offering her a bed-sitting-room with full board and attendance for six weeks at an inclusive charge for the whole period. The money was even more reasonable than Miss Ferris had anticipated, so she sent off a telegram advising her aunt to expect her on the following Monday afternoon, and went to the Public Library to look up a train.
    Sunday passed uneventfully. She went to church three times, including early service, took a short walk between lunch and tea, and retired to bed at half-past nine. She felt contented, and although she had been prepared to feel no particular enthusiasm for her six weeks’ holiday, she found herself now looking forward to a visit to the seaside, and she found also that the warm tone of her aunt’s letter had given her a feeling of cheerfulness and well-being to which, on holidays, she had often been a stranger.
    Her trunk was already packed. She went by taxi to the station, caught her train with a quarter of an hour to spare, and arrived at her aunt’s boarding-house in time for afternoon tea. Her aunt received her very cordially, and showed her her room. It was at the back of the house, but as none of the windows overlooked the sea, for her aunt lived in a road which ran parallel with the esplanade, but was separated from it by a row of larger and more imposing private hotels and boarding-houses, a room at the back was as good, or better than one at the front.
    This her aunt explained to her at some length and with many repetitions, for, like most seaside landladies, she was