The Beckoning Lady

The Beckoning Lady Read Free

Book: The Beckoning Lady Read Free
Author: Margery Allingham
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very clear and intelligent hazel eyes and tapping on the grave with her scissors as if William Faraday was actually visible. “He has been living here at The Beckoning Lady with the Cassands for the past twelve years and Minnie Cassands is half an American.”
    The tall thin man with the very smooth yellow-white hair and the blank expression met her gaze with deceptive mildness.
    â€œQuite,” he agreed.
    She was misled into sharpness. “Quite?”
    â€œQuite half. Minnie Cassands’ father was Daniel St. George Straw, who was the second most famous American painter of the Victorian-Edwardian golden age. His great-great-grandmother, so he always said, was Princess Pocahontas, and she was as American as the Eagle.”
    â€œWas she indeed?” Either she was not interested or she did not believe him. Her mind was still on the family. “Yet Mr. Faraday was no relation?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNor of yours either.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI see.” It was evident that she gave up for the time being and she continued her work on the flowers. “Eighty-two and he drank, didn’t he?” she remarked just as Campion was turning away. “What a very happy release for everybody.”
    Before this monstrous epitaph Mr. Campion paused aghast. He was no graveyard man by nature and the
pompes funèbres
had little charm for him, but Uncle William had been Uncle William and he was quite prepared to see him sitting up suddenly among the petals, looking like the mannequin from the cover of
Esquire
and ‘dotting’, as he would have described it, this ministering female with the half-bottle which was doubtless in his shroud.
    Mr. Campion turned back. “Forgive me,” he said with the gentleness of studied attack, “but who
are
you?”
    She was not put out, merely amazed. “Oh dear!” she exclaimed, conveying he
was
a silly man, wasn’t he, “how odd you must have thought me. I’m Pinky.” And then, since he still looked vague, “Mr. Genappe, you know. I’m his secretary, or one of them. I’ve been with him for nineteen years.” The slight bridling movement, the bursting pride and the drop in the voice put him in the picture and explained the ‘wholly more important than thou’ approach. Here was the loyalty of the devotee, the reverence of the acolyte. He realised that the
mystique
must be money and not the man. She could hardly feel that way about poor old Fanny Genappe, who had not that sort of personality. Goodness knows where he was, poor beast. Sitting on his little rock in the Hebrides watching a bird, very probably, both of them bored as sin.
    Francis Genappe was the most unfortunate of the three last multi-millionaires in Europe, for he had inherited not only his family’s money but also their reputation for philanthropy, two attributes which, taken in conjunction, approximated as far as Mr. Campion could see to the dubious honour of being the original butter in the mouthof the dog. As Campion recollected him, he was civilised, over-sensitive and something of a wit, the last person on earth to have to encounter his fellow-men almost solely through the medium of the heartrending hard-luck story. Doubtless the lady with the scissors was part of his armoured plate. She seemed to have the right surface. He said aloud:
    â€œI heard he’d bought the farm on the hill. Potter’s Hall, isn’t it?”
    â€œNot now,” she assured him with a brief kind smile. “Mr. Genappe has so much of the surrounding land that it’s now called the Pontisbright
Park
Estate, to distinguish it from the Earl’s little holding. He’s your brother-in-law, by the way.”
    Mr. Campion knew he was, but forebore to comment. She was still speaking and still snipping.
    â€œLord Pontisbright only owns the Mill and the woodlands, and he lives in South Africa most of the time.” She made it sound a

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