The Beckoning Lady by Margery Allingham

which had grown up with Minnie, but she had strung along with them and, when Jake Bernadine’s first wife had given up in despair, had married and mothered him, enjoyed his strange pictures, and had children by him. Just before the arrival of the twins they had borrowed the cottage on The Beckoning Lady estate for a summer holiday and, since the landlord of their Putney studio had taken that opportunity to distrain upon their goods, had not yet gone away again.
    It was some years since Campion had set eyes on her and he saw with interest that she had become a type in the interim, stocky and cheerful and quite happy in the exhausted fashion of the times.
    She was wearing a bright blue dress of coloured sheeting, embroidered across the shoulders with huge hand-worked flowers, a black sateen peasant apron, and rope-soled shoes, while her head was wrapped in a dinner napkin, cunningly creased as long ago in good houses they used to serve bread.
    â€œHullo,” she said, “why aren’t you working?”
    â€œI suppose people really do say things like that.” Mr. Campion sat down on the bed, since there was no chair.
    â€œGet up, don’t make a mess, be careful, look out.” She shooed him away as she spread the dress on the counterpane, and he looked at it dubiously. It was a minute print, grey on white, and seemed to be very plain.
    â€œMinnie’s, for the party. I made it. We hunted everywhere for the material and found it at last at the village shop. It must have been there in one of the stock drawers for seventy years. Ninepence a yard and we starched it. Isn’t it nice?”
    â€œVery,”he agreed and hunted for a word. “Restrained.”
    She screwed up her eyes and stood looking at it. “Oh not bad, it will look odd, you know, and rather good.” She pulled a seam out carefully and stood back. “Jake is painting mine,” she remarked. “I sized a piece of calicoand ran it up, and he’s doing his damnedest. I must get back before he decides it’s too good to wear and cuts the skirt up to frame. Isn’t it fun but isn’t it exhausting! My feet . . . . . .”
    Mr. Campion looked dismayed. “You make me feel elderly,” he said. “Is it still worth it?”
    â€œOh yes,” she assured him, her round face packed with earnestness. “It’s our only chance of seeing anyone at all. It’s
killing
while it lasts and the clearing up takes months, but at least one’s alive for a few hours. You don’t know what it’s like down here in the winter, sweetie. Not a sound. Not a voice. Only you and the radio. I exist from one of Tonker’s parties to the next.”
    The conversation threatened to become emotional.
    â€œI haven’t seen Minnie yet,” he said, hastily. “I wanted to phone and someone in the kitchen sent me up here. I’m in her bedroom, I suppose?”
    â€œYou are. The telephone’s here, you see. It’s the only one. There’s a bell in the front hall and when it rings you have to run like stink before the caller gives up. Perfectly insane but there you are! Have you seen the rooms I’ve redecorated for Minnie?”
    She took his sleeve to hurry him and he found himself dragged first into Minnie’s old bedroom and then into the smaller one beside it, where there had been a transformation. His first impression on revisiting the old house had been that it was shabby in the pleasant way in which old homes crumble, but in the two bedrooms now so proudly displayed a start had been made. They were a little arty in their sprigged chintz petticoats, even a little dated, but they looked comfortable and the beds were plump and new, and there was running water.
    Emma looked round her and sighed. “Oh lovely,” she said earnestly.
    â€œPleasant,” he agreed. “Who sleeps here?”
    â€œJust exactly who you’d think!” said