They retraced their steps along the corridor. Gwenda murmured conscientiously, “Six, no, seven bedrooms, counting the little one and the attic.” The boards creaked faintly under her feet. Already she felt that it was she and not Mrs. Hengrave who lived here! Mrs.
Hengrave was an interloper–a woman who did up rooms in mustard-cum-biscuit colour and liked a frieze of wistaria in her drawing-room. Gwenda glanced down at the typewritten paper in her hand on which the details of the property and the price asked were given.
In the course of a few days Gwenda had become fairly conversant with house values.
The sum asked was not large — of course the house needed a certain amount of modernisation — but even then…. And she noted the words “Open to offer”. Mrs.
Hengrave must be very anxious to go to Kent and live near “her people”.
They were starting down the stairs when quite suddenly Gwenda felt a wave of irrational terror sweep over her. It was a sickening sensation, and it passed almost as quickly as it came. Yet it left behind it a new idea.
“The house isn’t–haunted, is it?” demanded Gwenda.
Mrs. Hengrave, a step below, and having just got to the moment in her narrative when Major Hengrave was sinking fast, looked up in an affronted manner.
“Not that I am aware of, Mrs. Reed.
Why–has anyone–been saying something of the kind?” “You’ve never felt or seen anything yourself? Nobody’s died here?59 Rather an unfortunate question, she thought, a split second of a moment too late, because presumably Major Hengrave — “My husband died in the St. Monica’s Nursing Home,” said Mrs. Hengrave stiffly.
“Oh, of course. You told me so.” Mrs. Hengrave continued in the same rather glacial manner: “In a house which was presumably built about a hundred years ago, there would normally be deaths during that period. Miss Elworthy from whom my dear husband acquired this house seven years ago, was in excellent health, and indeed planning to go abroad and do missionary work, and she did not mention any recent demises in her family.” Gwenda hastened to soothe the melancholy Mrs. Hengrave down. They were now once more in the drawing-room. It was a peaceful and charming room, with exactly the kind of atmosphere that Gwenda coveted. Her momentary panic just now seemed quite incomprehensible. What had come over her? There was nothing wrong with the house.
Asking Mrs. Hengrave if she could take a look at the garden, she went out through the french windows on to the terrace.
There should be steps here, thought Gwenda, going down to the lawn.
But instead there was a vast uprising of forsythia which at this particular place seemed to have got above itself and effectually shut out all view of the sea.
Gwenda nodded to herself. She would alter all that.
Following Mrs. Hengrave, she went along the terrace and down some steps at the far side on to the lawn. She noted that the rockery was neglected and overgrown, and that most of the flowering shrubs needed pruning.
Mrs. Hengrave murmured apologetically that the garden had been rather neglected.
Only able to afford a man twice a week. And quite often he never turned up.
They inspected the small but adequate kitchen garden and returned to the house.
Gwenda explained that she had other houses to see, and that though she liked Hillside (what a commonplace name!) very much, she could not decide immediately.
Mrs. Hengrave parted from her with a somewhat wistful look and a last long lingering sniff.
Gwenda returned to the agents, made a firm offer subject to surveyor’s report and spent the rest of the morning walking round Dillmouth. It was a charming and old-fashioned little seaside town. At the far, “modern” end, there were a couple of newlooking hotels and some raw-looldng bungalows, but the geographical formation of c the coast with the hills behind had saved Dillmouth from undue expansion.
After lunch Gwenda received a telephone call from the agents saying that Mrs.
Hengrave accepted her offer. With a mischievous smile on her lips Gwenda made her way to the post office and despatched a cable to Giles.