Hole and Corner Read Free Page A

all the way to the end of the street, where she scrambled breathless upon a bus. She was in far too great a hurry to notice that the nearer of Miss Maltby’s doors was ajar.
    Through the crack Miss Maltby watched her go, her little sharp eyes intent behind scant sandy lashes, her long pale nose quivering slightly at the tip, her thin lips folded in and very tightly compressed. She was a tall, bony woman with a forward stoop and a faint habitual cough which was a constant source of annoyance to Jasper Wrenn, who contended that she could control it if she wanted to and only coughed because she liked the sound of her own voice. It was certainly true that she had made no sound all the time she stood spying through the crack. Not a stitch of Shirley’s needle, not a frown of Jasper Wrenn’s, not a word of their nonsensical talk had escaped her. She now saw Jasper bang his door, and opined that he had plunged again into inky meditation.
    She waited five minutes, then opened her door a little wider, and came furtively out upon the landing, an odd figure in a long old-fashioned dress of black cashmere with a tucked silk front, and a sagging coat of faded purple wool. Long, long ago, when Miss Maltby was young, she may have believed, or someone may have told her, that violet and purple shades were flattering to her hair and to a skin which was now colourless but had perhaps once been fair. The hair must certainly have been bright in those far off days. Even now, brushed thinly back and screwed into a scanty knob, gold gleamed unexpectedly here and there from the prevailing sandy grey.
    She looked down over the stairs, and then turned her head sharply as if she expected to find someone behind her.
    There was no one there. There might have been no one but herself in all the house. Mr and Mrs Monk who had the drawing-room floor were out all day. They had an antique shop. Miss Pym who had the dining-room and the bedroom behind it was a buyer at Madeline’s. At the moment she was in Paris choosing spring models, Mrs Camber in the basement was taking what she described as a bit of a set down, Mabel, the cheerful Salvationist help, was washing up to the hearty strains of Pull for the Shore, Sailor, pull for the Shore . To all intents and purposes Miss Maltby had the house to herself. She listened nevertheless for three or four minutes, her head poked forward, the skin straining over her cheek-bones.
    At last she drew back, turned round, and went noiselessly upstairs to the top floor. Here she stopped and listened again. Only the higher notes of Mabel’s cheerful soprano reached her now, as faint and thin as a bat’s cry. Miss Maltby nodded approvingly. Then she opened the door of Shirley’s room and went in.

CHAPTER THREE
    Shirley would have gone on the top of the bus if it hadn’t been foggy. As it was, she squeezed in between a lady with a string shopping-bag whose clothes flowed and billowed over the most astonishingly ample contours and a little man with a billycock hat on the top of his head and longish hair which smelt of moth-ball. At least that is where the smell seemed to be coming from. Perhaps he had just got his hat out of cold storage, or perhaps he really was afraid of getting moth in his hair. It was the sort of hair that looked as if it might get moth in it rather easily. Shirley looked at it, and at the large lady’s profusely patterned scarf, and at the contents of her shopping-bag alternately disclosed and hidden by the meshes of coffee-coloured string, all with the deepest interest. She was often dull when she was indoors by herself, and she was continuously bored with Mrs Huddleston, but the streets, the buses, the trains, and the shops were a lively and perpetual source of interest.
    She looked out on the fog, and the shop windows, and a poster which said, “American Millionaire Dead.” It seemed funny to think of anyone having millions. She looked at the people opposite, and