Read Duplicate Death for Free Online Page A

tables, so that he and Dan Seaton-Carew should play in different rooms for as long as was possible, she hoped that he might be deterred from giving expression to the jealousy he suffered every time Mr. Seaton-Carew bestowed his favours elsewhere. Mrs. Haddington was even broader-minded than young Mr. Harte, but she had the greatest dislike of shrill-voiced, nail-biting scenes being enacted at her more select parties.
    The intelligence, brought by Beulah, that Miss Spennymoor would, as she herself phrased it, do her best to fit Mrs. Haddington in during the course of the afternoon, brought a slight alleviation of the morning's ills, but this was soon dissipated by an unnerving message from the chef that no lobsters had as yet reached London, and that as none of the fishmongers whom he had personally rung up could give him any assurance that the dilatory crustaceans would arrive in time to appear at the party, he would be glad to know with what alternative delicacy Madame would desire him to fill one hundred patties. Hardly had Mrs. Haddington dealt with this difficulty than her attention was claimed by Thrimby, her extremely supercilious butler. Since she paid him very handsome wages, and always supported him in any quarrel he might have with the other members of the staff, he had been in her service for longer than any of his colleagues, having been engaged when she first moved into the house in Charles Street eighteen months earlier. He was always very polite, for this was something which he owed to himself, but he deeply despised her, and frequently regaled such of the upper servants as he honoured with his patronage with odious comparisons drawn between her and his previous employers. The economies which Mrs. Haddington practised behind the scenes, and, too often, at her servants' expense, never failed to mortify him, for Such Ways, he said, were not what he had been accustomed to. He was in the present instance offended by his mistress's refusal to employ outside labour to assist him in his duties that evening, and had already conveyed by a stiff bow, and perceptibly raised eyebrows, his opinion of those who were content to see at least half their guests waited on by a secretary and parlour-maid. This affront to his dignity made him disinclined to be co-operative, and led him to lay before Mrs. Haddington a number of difficulties and obstructions which, in any other household, he would quietly have overcome. He was also annoyed with Beulah, whom he disliked at the best of times, because she had dumped an armful of foliage in the basin in the cloakroom, left several shallow wooden boxes containing hot-house flowers in the hall, and adjured him not to touch any of them; so he wound up his speech to Mrs. Haddington by asking her, in a voice of patient long-suffering, whether Miss Birtley would finish the flowers before luncheon. He added that if she intended to arrange the bowls in the cloakroom it seemed a pity that he should not have been warned of this earlier, since this apartment had already been swept and garnished, and would now have to be done again.
    This gave Mrs. Haddington an opportunity to say that the flowers ought to have been arranged hours earlier, which made Beulah lose her temper, and retort that so they would have been had she not been sent off on an errand to Fulham. She then stalked off, determined to scatter as many leaves, stalks, and scrapings of bark as possible all over the cloakroom floor, and peace reigned until Cynthia Haddington, no early riser, erupted from her bedroom with a loud and insistent demand that everyone should immediately abandon his or her task to search for her favourite powder-compact, which she had mislaid. This appalling loss seemed likely to embitter her whole life, and at once rendered the house hideous. Her temper, never at its best in the morning, grew steadily worse; and after exasperating everyone by insisting that all the unlikeliest places should be searched,