Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018
- Автор: Ловси Питер, Зельцерман Дэйв
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018». Краткое содержание книги:
The dead person was the uncle who suffered from a weak heart and who had dropped down dead at someone’s feet, and I was supposed to mourn him, but I could think only of Jenny. My mother warned me to stay out of the way in my room, but I stole out and flitted about, a skinny pigtailed ghost keeping watch for Jenny’s return. Any minute I expected to catch sight of her coming in the back door, hear the clang of the iron kettle as Philomena, my mother’s cook-housekeeper, a moody woman given to violent likes and dislikes but devoted to Jenny, offered her a cup of tea.
The comings and goings continued on through the afternoon. I recognized Sergeant Monaghan’s voice several times. He had a habit of coughing to clear his throat and then sounding hoarser than ever. Towards evening the doorbell stopped ringing, but Jenny still hadn’t returned. I was in the hall near the coat stand and burrowed just in time into the scratchy folds of a tweed greatcoat as my parents emerged from the sitting room. I stood statue-still and they stopped a few paces from my hiding place, unaware I could hear everything they said.
“My summer has been ruined,” my mother was saying. “Utterly ruined.”
“My dear, it is most unfortunate.” My father tried to console her in his courteous, elderly way and I imagined him patting her arm. “Perhaps,” he added tentatively, “we might consider putting the house up for sale?”
“Good gracious, don’t be absurd!”
I knew my mother when her voice sharpened like that. She said an unhappy fatality had occurred, tragic and shocking, yes, but they had more than exonerated their responsibilities in the matter by offering to shoulder the funeral expenses. Perhaps they might go abroad for the last week of August, fortunately imminent, saying the trip had been planned all along, but selling was absolutely out of the question. Summer holiday houses were becoming the fashion, and this particular stretch of Ireland’s southwest coast was very much sought after. “Where,” she asked my father, “would we ever find another summer house of the same distinction and in such a dominant position overlooking the town? Nowhere!” she answered for him.
In a more satisfied tone, she went on to say it might be wiser to remain at the seaside until the week was out, their departure from Kilcurtan mustn’t seem hasty. They could fly out from Shannon to somewhere on the Continent; Rome, or maybe Paris, several of her friends had already travelled to both places more than once. Or perhaps Vienna; the Austrian capital was becoming fashionable. As for me, it would be better to send me back home to Roscrea first thing in the morning; she would inform the caretaker’s wife of my arrival. But there was no real cause for concern; it was sufficient never to mention Jenny’s name in my presence again. “The child,” she said to my father, “will soon forget she ever had a governess named Jenny. And so will you.”
My father sighed, and I heard the faint brassy pop of a shirt-collar stud coming loose. “Stop that!” my mother snapped, and I imagined her pressing a wrist to her forehead as she told him to fetch her cigarets and a small glass of gin because she had a migraine coming on.
I never saw Jenny again and I was supposed to forget her, but how could I? When, in the winter before she disappeared, my mother led her up to the gloomy Roscrea schoolroom, I couldn’t believe that someone like Jenny was to be my new governess. Except for the darned woollen gloves and shabby clothes, Jenny looked nothing like my previous governesses, and I thought it was some kind of trick. Jenny’s cheeks bloomed with fairy softness. From under an old navy beret her hair descended in gleaming brown waves almost to her shoulders. I was probably glowering with mistrust, but Jenny smiled and held out her hand to me, and the bloom on her cheeks didn’t fade and her smile didn’t wither.
I hesitated, then started to inch away from the scratched schoolroom table and hurtled into Jenny’s arms. I hugged her so tightly I’m sure I almost choked her, but when at last I released my grip, Jenny’s brown eyes were still smiling and her scent of violets remained on my cheek. My mother glared at me for my bad manners, but said nothing as she left the schoolroom. Now it was up to Jenny to do something about my comportment and scholastic education.
From the first day, Jenny allowed me into her tiny bedroom, forbidden territory with my other governesses, and I could have watched for hours while she brushed her wavy brown hair. At night, Jenny went to bed without applying steel hair clips and a hairnet as my mother did, and woke the following morning with the same gleaming waves, which meant they were natural.
My mother was tall, fair-haired, and fair-skinned and much admired for her sophistication and the elegant way she held a cigaret. My father was plump and silver-haired and, because of his courteous manner, considered the perfect gentleman. I was an only child and didn’t resemble either parent in appearance or manner. My starved looks and thistly black pigtails were a trial to my mother and to me, although I pretended I didn’t care. But I knew how similar misfortunes came about. Sometimes mischievous fairies exchanged newborn babies in their cradles, and that was what had happened to me.
But it didn’t matter to Jenny how I looked, and she never pulled my pigtails. Her scent of violets, I discovered, came from a gold-capped flacon which she kept, together with her makeup and treasured keepsakes, in an old cardboard chocolate box with Christmas robins and snowy holly sprigs on the lid. Jenny never minded when I took the box onto my lap to examine each precious item: a rayon handkerchief printed with orange tulips, two lipstick stubs, a Pope John XXIII medal, a cracked pancake compact, a postcard signed by three orphanage nuns who’d taken a pilgrimage to Lourdes, and the gold-capped perfume flacon on which was written Nuits à Paris in violet lettering. Jenny and I pronounced it Newts a Pond and how we giggled over that. Jenny hadn’t known nuit meant night in French, which confirmed she wasn’t a very good governess, but that didn’t matter one jot to me as long as my mother didn’t find out. Instead of poring over schoolbooks, we played Beggar-my-neighbour, Noughts & Crosses, or daubed the pages of old copybooks with the colours from a tin paint box Jenny bought me one day as a present. The instant I heard my mother’s footsteps climbing the narrow wooden stairs up to the schoolroom, I would grab a school-book and start calling Jenny “Miss.”
“The Lord save us from all harm!” Jenny would gasp as soon as my mother had finished her sweeping inspection of the schoolroom and had left. “Sure, hasn’t she eyes in her head that would frighten the wits out of you.”
It was true that there were times my mother stared so intensely the whites of her eyes seemed wild and bloodshot. As the sound of her footsteps receded down the stairs, Jenny, still affrighted, would mumble a Hail Mary, sketch the Sign of the Cross — a hasty circuit of her forehead, breast, and left and right shoulder as though she wished to set a miniature windmill going — and then look relieved as though absolved from some guilty act or sin. I could never imagine what someone as gentle and devout as Jenny could do wrong; she always said her morning and night prayers, paid attention at Mass, and went to Confession once a week. I was the wicked one who sooner or later would end up breaking all the Ten Commandments.
Jenny was an orphan brought up by the Good Shepherd nuns, and had nowhere to go during the summer months, so my mother invited her to spend the holidays with us at Kilcurtan. The agreement was that, on half-pay, Jenny would keep me occupied and “help a little around the house.”
Afterwards, I discovered what that innocuous little phrase meant. It meant that Jenny had to get up at six every morning to sweep and clean and do the laundry, which included starching and ironing my father’s collars and shirts and my mother’s linen dresses. While my parents breakfasted, Jenny cleaned the bedrooms and made the beds, after which it was time to take charge of me and make sure I stayed out of everyone’s way. Everyone’s way included Philomena, the cook-housekeeper, who complained that I had a look in my eye that could turn milk sour.