A Daughter's a Daughter

by Agatha Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott

  ‘Yes,’ said Ann slowly. ‘It’s quite true. I should be bored to death.’

  (I couldn’t sit still now and drift on to old age. I must go out – be amused – things must happen.)

  Sarah put a caressing hand on her mother’s shoulder.

  ‘No doubt about it, darling, what you really like is razzling. You’d be bored to death stuck in a suburb with a mingy little garden and nothin’ to do but wait for Richard to come home on the 6.15, or tell you how he did the fourth hole in three! That’s not your line of country at all.’

  ‘I should have liked it once.’

  (An old walled garden, and a lawn with trees, and a small Queen Anne house of rose-red bricks. And Richard would not have taken up golf, but would have sprayed rose trees and planted bluebells under the trees. Or if he had taken up golf she would have been delighted he had done the fourth in three!)

  Sarah kissed her mother’s cheek affectionately.

  ‘You ought to be very grateful to me, darling,’ she said, ‘for getting you out of it. If it hadn’t been for me you’d have married him.’

  Ann drew away a little. Her eyes, the pupils distended, stared at Sarah.

  ‘If it hadn’t been for you, I should have married him. And now – I don’t want to. He doesn’t mean anything to me at all.’

  She walked to the mantelpiece, running her finger along it, her eyes dark with amazement and pain. She said softly:

  ‘Nothing at all … Nothing … What a very bad joke life is!’

  Sarah wandered over to the bar and poured herself out another drink. She stood there, fidgeting a little, and finally, without turning round, she spoke in a rather would-be detached voice.

  ‘Mother – I suppose I’d better tell you. Larry wants me to marry him.’

  ‘Lawrence Steene?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a pause. Ann said nothing for some time. Then she asked:

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  Sarah turned. She shot a swift appealing glance at Ann, but Ann was not looking at her.

  She said: ‘I don’t know …’

  Her voice held a rather forlorn frightened note, like a child’s. She looked hopefully at Ann, but Ann’s face was hard and remote. Ann said after a moment or two:

  ‘Well, it’s for you to decide.’

  ‘I know.’

  From the table close to her, Sarah picked up Gerry’s letter. She twisted it slowly in her fingers, staring down at it. At last she said with the sharpness almost of a cry:

  ‘I don’t know what to do!’

  ‘I don’t see how I can help you,’ said Ann.

  ‘But what do you think, Mother? Oh, do say something.’

  ‘I’ve already told you that he hasn’t got a good reputation.’

  ‘Oh that! That doesn’t matter. I should be bored to death with a model of all the virtues.’

  ‘He’s rolling in money, of course,’ said Ann. ‘He could give you a very good time. But if you don’t care for him I shouldn’t marry him.’

  ‘I do care for him in a way,’ said Sarah slowly.

  Ann got up, looking at the clock.

  ‘Well, then,’ she said briskly, ‘what’s the difficulty? My goodness, I forgot I was going to the Eliots’. I shall be frightfully late.’

  ‘All the same, I’m not sure –’ Sarah stopped. ‘You see –’

  Ann said: ‘There’s no one else, is there?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Sarah. Again she looked down at Gerry’s letter twisted in her hand.

  Ann said quickly:

  ‘If you’re thinking of Gerry, I should put him right out of your head, Sarah. Gerry’s no good, and the sooner you make up your mind to that, the better.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Sarah slowly.

  ‘I’m quite certain I’m right,’ said Ann briskly. ‘Wash Gerry right out. If you don’t care for Lawrence Steene, don’t marry him. You’re very young still. There’s plenty of time.’

  Sarah walked moodily over to the fireplace.

  ‘I suppose I might as well marry Lawrence … After all, he’s madly attractive. Oh, Mother,’ it was a sudden cry – ‘what shall I do?’

  Ann said angrily:

  ‘Really, Sarah, you behave exactly like a baby of two! How can I decide your life for you? The responsibility rests with you and you only.’

  ‘Oh, I know.’

  ‘Well, then?’ Ann was impatient.

  Sarah said childishly:

  ‘I thought perhaps you could – help me somehow?’

  Ann said: ‘I’ve already told you that there’s no need for you to marry anyone unless you want to.’

  Still with that childish look on her face, Sarah said unexpectedly: ‘But you’d like to get rid of me, wouldn’t you?’

  Ann said sharply:

  ‘Sarah, how can you say such a thing? Of course I don’t want to get rid of you. What an idea!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother. I didn’t really mean that. Only it’s all so different now, isn’t it? I mean we used to have such fun together. But nowadays I always seem to be getting on your nerves.’

  ‘I’m afraid I am rather nervy sometimes,’ said Ann coldly. ‘But after all, you’re rather temperamental yourself, aren’t you, Sarah?’

  ‘Oh, I daresay it’s all my fault,’ Sarah went on reflectively: ‘Most of my friends are married. Pam and Betty and Susan. Joan isn’t but then she’s gone all political.’ She paused again before going on. ‘It would really be rather fun to marry Lawrence. Glorious to have all the clothes and furs and things one wanted.’

  Ann said dryly: ‘I certainly think you’d better marry a man with money, Sarah. Your tastes are decidedly expensive. Your allowance is always overdrawn.’

  ‘I’d hate to be poor,’ said Sarah.

  Ann took a deep breath. She felt insincere and artificial and she didn’t quite know what to say.

  ‘Darling, I don’t really know how to advise you. You see, I do feel that this is so completely your own affair. It would be quite wrong for me to push you into it or to advise you against it. You must make up your mind for yourself. You do see that, Sarah, don’t you?’

  Sarah said quickly:

  ‘Of course, darling – am I being a terrible bore? – I don’t want to worry you. You might just tell me one thing. How do you feel about Lawrence?’

  ‘I really haven’t any feeling about him one way or the other.’

  ‘Sometimes – I feel just a bit – scared of him.’

  ‘Darling,’ Ann was amused, ‘isn’t that rather silly?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is …’

  Slowly Sarah began to tear Gerry’s letter, first in strips, then across and across. She threw the bits into the air and watched them float down like a snowstorm.

  ‘Poor old Gerry,’ she said.

  Then with a swift sideways glance she said:

  ‘You do mind what happens to me, don’t you, Mother?’

  ‘Sarah! Really.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry – going on and on like this. I just feel awfully queer somehow. It’s like being out in a snowstorm and not knowing which is the way home … It’s a frightfully queer feeling. Everything and everyone is different … You’re different, Mother.’

  ‘What absolute nonsense, pet, I really must go now.’

  ‘I suppose you must. Does this party matter?’

  ‘Well, I want particularly to see the new murals Kit Eliot has had done.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Sarah paused and then said: ‘You know, Mother, I really think I may be much keener on Lawrence than I think I am.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ said Ann lightly. ‘But don’t be in a hurry. Good-bye, my sweet – I must fly.’

  The front door shut behind Ann.

  Edith came out of the kitchen and into the sitting-room with a tray to clear away the glasses.

  Sarah had put a record on the gramophone and was listening with a melancholy enjoyment to Paul Robeson singing ‘Some
times I feel like a motherless child’.

  ‘The tunes you like!’ said Edith. ‘Gives me the willies, that does.’

  ‘I think it’s lovely.’

  ‘No accounting for tastes.’ Edith grunted crossly, as she observed: ‘Why can’t people keep their cigarette ash in ashtrays. Flicking it all over the place.’

  ‘It’s good for the carpet.’

  ‘That’s always been said and it’s no truer now than it ever was. And why you’ve got to scatter bits of paper all over the floor when the waste-paper basket’s over by the wall –’

  ‘Sorry, Edith. I didn’t think. I was tearing up my past, and I wanted to make a gesture.’

  ‘Your past, indeed!’ Edith snorted. Then she asked gently as she watched Sarah’s face: ‘Anything wrong, my pretty?’

  ‘Nothing at all. I’m thinking of getting married, Edith.’

  ‘No hurry for that. You wait until Mr Right comes along.’

  ‘I don’t believe it makes any difference who you marry. It’s sure to go wrong anyway.’

  ‘Now don’t you talk nonsense, Miss Sarah! What’s all this about anyway?’

  Sarah said wildly:

  ‘I want to get away from here.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with your home, I should like to know?’ demanded Edith.

  ‘I don’t know. Everything seems to have changed. Why has it changed, Edith?’

  Edith said gently:

  ‘You’re growing up, you see?’

  ‘Is that what it is?’

  ‘It might be.’

  Edith went towards the door with her tray of glasses. Then, unexpectedly, she put it down and came back. She patted Sarah’s black head, as she had patted it years ago in the nursery.

  ‘There, there, my pretty, there, there.’

  With a sudden change of mood Sarah sprang up and catching Edith round the waist, began to waltz wildly round the room with her.

  ‘I’m going to be married, Edith. Isn’t it fun? I’m going to marry Mr Steene. He’s rolling in money and he’s madly attractive. Aren’t I a lucky girl?’

  Edith extricated herself, grumbling. ‘First one thing and then another. What’s the matter with you, Miss Sarah?’

  ‘I’m a little mad, I think. You shall come to the wedding, Edith, and I’ll buy you a lovely new dress for it – crimson velvet, if you like.’

  ‘What do you think a wedding is – a Coronation?’

  Sarah put the tray into Edith’s hands and pushed her towards the door.

  ‘Go on, you old darling, and don’t grumble.’

  Edith shook her head doubtfully as she went.

  Sarah walked slowly back into the room. Suddenly she flung herself down into the big chair and cried and cried.

  The gramophone record drew to its close – the deep melancholy voice singing once more –

  Sometimes I feel like a motherless child – a long way from home …

  Book Three

  Chapter One

  1

  Edith moved slowly and stiffly round her kitchen. She had been feeling what she called her ‘rheumatics’ more and more lately, and it did not improve her temper. She still obstinately refused to delegate any of her household tasks.

  A lady referred to by Edith as ‘that Mrs Hopper’, with a sniff, was allowed to come once a week and perform certain activities under Edith’s jealous eye, but any further help was negatived by her with a venom that boded ill for any cleaning woman who dared to attempt it.

  ‘I’ve always managed, haven’t I?’ was Edith’s slogan.

  So she continued to manage with an air of martyrdom and an increasingly sour expression. She had also formed the habit of grumbling under her breath most of the day.

  She was doing so now.

  ‘Bringing the milk at lunch-time – the idea! Milk should be delivered before breakfast, that’s the proper time for it. Impudent young fellows, coming along, whistling in their white coats … Who do they think they are? Look like whipper-snapper dentists to me …’

  The sound of the latch-key in the front door arrested the flow.

  Edith murmured to herself. ‘Now there’ll be ructions!’ and rinsed out a bowl under the tap with a vicious swishing motion.

  Ann’s voice called:

  ‘Edith.’

  Edith removed her hands from the sink and dried them meticulously on the roller towel.

  ‘Edith … Edith …’

  ‘Coming, ma’am.’

  ‘Edith!’

  Edith raised her eyebrows, pulled down the corners of her mouth and went out of the kitchen across the hall into the sitting-room where Ann Prentice was tossing through letters and bills. She turned as Edith entered.

  ‘Did you ring up Dame Laura?’

  ‘Yes, of course I did.’

  Ann said: ‘Did you tell her it was urgent – that I must see her? Did she say she’d come?’

  ‘Said she’d be round right away.’

  ‘Well, why hasn’t she come?’ demanded Ann angrily.

  ‘I only telephoned twenty minutes ago. Just after you went out.’

  ‘It feels like an hour. Why doesn’t she come?’

  Edith said, in a more soothing tone:

  ‘Everything can’t happen right away. It’s no good your upsetting yourself.’

  ‘Did you tell her I was ill?’

  ‘I told her you was in one of your states.’

  Ann said angrily: ‘What do you mean – one of my states? It’s my nerves. They’re all to pieces.’

  ‘That’s right, they are.’

  Ann threw her faithful retainer an angry glance. She walked restlessly over to the window, then to the mantelpiece. Edith stood watching her, her big awkward jointed hands, seamed with work, moving up and down on her apron.

  ‘I can’t stay still a moment,’ Ann complained. ‘I didn’t sleep a wink last night. I feel terrible – terrible …’ She sat down in a chair and put both hands to her temples. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’

  ‘I do,’ said Edith. ‘Too much gadding about. ’Tisn’t natural at your age.’

  ‘Edith!’ cried Ann. ‘You’re very impertinent. You’re getting worse and worse lately. You’ve been with me a long time and I value your services, but if you’re going to presume you’ll have to go.’

  Edith raised her eyes to the ceiling and assumed her martyr’s expression.

  She said: ‘I’m not going. And that’s flat.’

  ‘You’ll go if I give you notice,’ said Ann.

  ‘You’d be more foolish than I think you are if you did a thing like that. I’d get another place easy as winking. Running after me they’d be, at these domestic agencies. But how would you get along? Nothing but daily women as likely as not! Or else a foreigner. Everything cooked in oil and turning your stomach – to say nothing of the smell in the flat. And those foreigners aren’t so good on the telephone – get every name wrong, they would. Or else you’d get a nice clean pleasant-spoken woman, too good to be true, and you’d come back one day to find she’d made off with your furs and your jewellery. Heard of a case in Playne Court opposite only the other day. No, you’re one as has to have things done the proper way – the old way. I cook you nice little meals and I don’t go smashing your pretty things when I wash up, as some of these young hussies do, and what’s more I know your ways. You can’t do without me, and I know it, and I’m not going. Trying you may be, but everyone’s got his cross to bear. It says so in Holy Writ, and you’re mine and I’m a Christian woman.’

  Ann clasped her eyes and rocked to and fro with a moan.

  ‘Oh, my head – my head …’

  Edith’s rigid sourness softened – a tenderness showed in her eyes.

  ‘There, now. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’

  Ann cried pettishly: ‘I don’t want a nice cup of tea. I’d hate a nice cup of tea.’

  Edith sighed and raised her eyes to the ceiling once more.

  ‘Please yourself,’ she said and left the
room.

  Ann reached for the cigarette box, took one out, lit it, puffed at it for a moment or two and then stubbed it out in the ashtray. She got up and started pacing about again.

  After a minute or so she went to the telephone and dialled a number.

  ‘Hullo – hullo – can I speak to Lady Ladscombe – oh, is that you, Marcia darling?’ Her voice assumed an artificially gay note. ‘How are you? … Oh, nothing, really. I just thought I’d ring you up … I don’t know, darling – just felt frightfully blue – you know how one does. Are you doing anything tomorrow for lunch? … Oh, I see … Thursday night? Yes, I’m quite free. That would be lovely. I’ll get hold of Lee or somebody and get up a party. That will be wonderful … I’ll give you a ring in the morning.’

  She rang off. Her momentary animation subsided. Once again she began pacing about. Then, as she heard the door-bell, she stood still, poised in expectancy.

  She heard Edith say:

  ‘She’s waiting for you in the sitting-room,’ and then Laura Whitstable came in. Tall, grim, forbidding, but with the comfortable steadfastness of a rock in the middle of a heaving sea.

  Ann ran towards her, crying out incoherently and with rising hysteria.

  ‘Oh, Laura – Laura – I’m so glad you’ve come …’

  Dame Laura’s eyebrows went up, her eyes were steady and watchful. She laid her hands on Ann’s shoulders and steered her gently to the couch where she sat down beside her, saying as she did so:

  ‘Well, well, what’s all this?’

  Ann still sounded hysterical.

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad to see you. I think I’m going mad.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Dame Laura robustly. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s just my nerves. That’s what frightens me. I can’t sit still. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’

  ‘H’m,’ Laura gave her a searching professional look. ‘You don’t look too well.’

  Secretly she was dismayed by Ann’s appearance. Under the heavy make-up Ann’s face was haggard. She looked years older than when Laura had seen her last, some months ago.

  Ann said fretfully: ‘I’m perfectly well. It’s just – I don’t know what it is. I can’t sleep – not unless I take things. And I’m so irritable and bad-tempered.’