Sleeping Murder Read Free Page A

and handy. Then they goes and builds a great place near to a mile out of town. Twenty minutes’ walk if you want to get there on a visiting day—or threepence on the bus.” He gestured once more towards the hedge … “It’s a girls’ school now. Moved inten years ago. Changes all the time. People takes a house nowadays and lives in it ten or twelve years and then off they goes. Restless. What’s the good of that? You can’t do any proper planting unless you can look well ahead.”
    Gwenda looked affectionately at the magnolia.
    â€œLike Mrs. Findeyson,” she said.
    â€œAh. She was the proper kind. Come here as a bride, she did. Brought up her children and married them, buried her husband, had her grandchildren down in the summers, and took off in the end when she was nigh on eighty.”
    Foster’s tone held warm approval.
    Gwenda went back into the house smiling a little.
    She interviewed the workmen, and then returned to the drawing room where she sat down at the desk and wrote some letters. Amongst the correspondence that remained to be answered was a letter from some cousins of Giles who lived in London. Anytime she wanted to come to London they begged her to come and stay with them at their house in Chelsea.
    Raymond West was a well-known (rather than popular) novelist and his wife Joan, Gwenda knew, was a painter. It would be fun to go and stay with them, though probably they would think she was a most terrible Philistine. Neither Giles nor I are a bit highbrow, reflected Gwenda.
    A sonorous gong boomed pontifically from the hall. Surrounded by a great deal of carved and tortured black wood, the gong had been one of Giles’s aunt’s prized possessions. Mrs. Cocker herself appeared to derive distinct pleasure from sounding it and always gave full measure. Gwenda put her hands to her ears and got up.
    She walked quickly across the drawing room to the wall by the far window and then brought herself up short with an exclamation of annoyance. It was the third time she’d done that. She always seemed to expect to be able to walk through solid wall into the dining room next door.
    She went back across the room and out into the front hall and then round the angle of the drawing room wall and so along to the dining room. It was a long way round, and it would be annoying in winter, for the front hall was draughty and the only central heating was in the drawing room and dining room and two bedrooms upstairs.
    I don’t see, thought Gwenda to herself as she sat down at the charming Sheration dining table which she had just bought at vast expense in lieu of Aunt Lavender’s massive square mahogany one, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a doorway made through from the drawing room to the dining room. I’ll talk to Mr. Sims about it when he comes this afternoon.
    Mr. Sims was the builder and decorator, a persuasive middle-aged man with a husky voice and a little notebook which he always held at the ready, to jot down any expensive idea that might occur to his patrons.
    Mr. Sims, when consulted, was keenly appreciative.
    â€œSimplest thing in the world, Mrs. Reed—and a great improvement, if I may say so.”
    â€œWould it be very expensive?” Gwenda was by now a little doubtful of Mr. Sims’s assents and enthusiasms. There had been a little unpleasantness over various extras not included in Mr. Sims’s original estimate.
    â€œA mere trifle,” said Mr. Sims, his husky voice indulgent and reassuring. Gwenda looked more doubtful than ever. It was Mr. Sims’s trifles that she had learnt to distrust. His straightforward estimates were studiously moderate.
    â€œI’ll tell you what, Mrs. Reed,” said Mr. Sims coaxingly, “I’ll get Taylor to have a look when he’s finished with the dressing room this afternoon, and then I can give you an exact idea. Depends what the wall’s like.”
    Gwenda assented.