Endless Night by Agatha Christie

door.

Seven
    W hen I got home there was a telegram waiting for me—it had been sent from Antibes.
    Meet me tomorrow four-thirty usual place.
    Ellie was different. I saw it at once. We met as always in Regent’s Park and at first we were a bit strange and awkward with each other. I had something I was going to say to her and I was in a bit of a state as to how to put it. I suppose any man is when he comes to the point of proposing marriage.
    And she was strange about something too. Perhaps she was considering the nicest and kindest way of saying No to me. But somehow I didn’t think that. My whole belief in life was based on the fact that Ellie loved me. But there was a new independence about her, a new confidence in herself which I could hardly feel was simply because she was a year older. One more birthday can’t make that difference to a girl. She and her family had been in theSouth of France and she told me a little about it. And then rather awkwardly she said:
    â€œI—I saw that house there, the one you told me about. The one that architect friend of yours had built.”
    â€œWhat—Santonix?”
    â€œYes. We went there to lunch one day.”
    â€œHow did you do that? Does your stepmother know the man who lives there?”
    â€œDmitri Constantine? Well—not exactly but she met him and—well—Greta fixed it up for us to go there as a matter of fact.”
    â€œGreta again,” I said, allowing the usual exasperation to come into my voice.
    â€œI told you,” she said, “Greta is very good at arranging things.”
    â€œOh all right. So she arranged that you and your stepmother—”
    â€œAnd Uncle Frank,” said Ellie.
    â€œQuite a family party,” I said, “and Greta too, I suppose.”
    â€œWell, no, Greta didn’t come because, well—” Ellie hesitated, “—Cora, my stepmother, doesn’t treat Greta exactly like that.”
    â€œShe’s not one of the family, she’s a poor relation, is she?” I said. “Just the au pair girl, in fact. Greta must resent being treated that way sometimes.”
    â€œShe’s not an au pair girl, she’s a kind of companion to me.”
    â€œA chaperone,” I said, “a cicerone, a duenna, a governess. There are lots of words.”
    â€œOh do be quiet,” said Ellie, “I want to tell you. I know now what you mean about your friend Santonix. It’s a wonderful house. It’s—it’s quite different. I can see that if he built a house for us it would be a wonderful house.”
    She had used the word quite unconsciously. Us, she had said. She had gone to the Riviera and had made Greta arrange things so as to see the house I had described, because she wanted to visualize more clearly the house that we would, in the dream world we’d built ourselves, have built for us by Rudolf Santonix.
    â€œI’m glad you felt like that about it,” I said.
    She said: “What have you been doing?”
    â€œJust my dull job,” I said, “and I’ve been to a race meeting and I put some money on an outsider. Thirty to one. I put every penny I had on it and it won by a length. Who says my luck isn’t in?”
    â€œI’m glad you won,” said Ellie, but she said it without excitement, because putting all you had in the world on an outsider and the outsider winning didn’t mean anything to Ellie’s world. Not the kind of thing it meant in mine.
    â€œAnd I went to see my mother,” I added.
    â€œYou’ve never spoken much of your mother.”
    â€œWhy should I?” I said.
    â€œAren’t you fond of her?”
    I considered. “I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes I don’t think I am. After all, one grows up and—outgrows parents. Mothers and fathers.”
    â€œI think you do care about her,” said Ellie. “You wouldn’t be so uncertain when you