Endless Night by Agatha Christie

that I might find it difficult to be a poor man married to a rich wife and then he went on to sound her about making a settlement on Greta. She agreed to it eagerly and said she’d been going to ask him that herself. He also suggested that she should make an additional settlement on Cora van Stuyvesant.
    “There is no earthly need that you should do so,” he said. “She has been very well provided for in the matter of alimony from several husbands. And she is as you know paid an income, though not a very big one, from the trust fund left by your grandfather.”
    “But you think I ought to give her more still?”
    “I think there is no legal or moral obligation to do so. What I think is that you will find her far less tiresome and shall I say catty if you do so. I should make it in the form of an increased income, which you could revoke at any time. If you find that she has been spreading malicious rumours about Michael or yourself or your life together, the knowledge that you can do that will keep her tongue free of those more poisonous barbs that she so well knows how to plant.”
    “Cora has always hated me,” said Ellie. “I’ve known that.” She added rather shyly, “You do like Mike, don’t you, Uncle Andrew?”
    “I think he’s an extremely attractive young man,” said Mr. Lippincott. “And I can quite see how you came to marry him.”
    That, I suppose, was as good as I could expect. I wasn’t really his type and I knew it. I eased the door gently to and in a minute or two Ellie came to fetch me.
    We were both standing saying good-bye to Lippincott when there was a knock on the door and a page boy came in with a telegram. Ellie took it and opened it. She gave a little surprised cry of pleasure.
    “It’s Greta,” she said, “she’s arriving in London tonight and she’ll be coming to see us tomorrow. How lovely.” She looked at us both. “Isn’t it?” she said.
    She saw two sour faces and heard two polite voices saying, one: “Yes indeed, my dear,” the other one, “Of course.”

Eleven
     
    I had been out shopping the next morning and I arrived back at the hotel rather later than I had meant. I found Ellie sitting in the central lounge and opposite her was a tall blonde young woman. In fact Greta. Both of them were talking nineteen to the dozen.
    I’m never any hand at describing people but I’ll have a shot at describing Greta. To begin with one couldn’t deny that she was, as Ellie had said, very beautiful and also, as Mr. Lippincott had reluctantly admitted, very handsome. The two things are not exactly the same. If you say a woman is handsome it does not mean that actually you yourself admire her. Mr. Lippincott, I gathered, had not admired Greta. All the same when Greta walked across the lounge into a hotel or in a restaurant, men’s heads turned to look at her. She was a Nordic type of blonde with pure gold-corn-coloured hair. She wore it piled high on her head in the fashion of the time, not falling straight down on each side of her face in the Chelsea tradition. She looked what she was, Swedish or north German. In fact, pin on a pair of wings and she could have gone to a fancy dress ball as a Valkyrie. Her eyes were a bright clear blue and her contours were admirable. Let’s admit it. She was something!
    I came along to where they were sitting and joined them, greeting them both in what I hope was a natural, friendly manner, though I couldn’t help feeling a bit awkward. I’m not always very good at acting a part. Ellie said immediately:
    “At last, Mike, this is Greta.”
    I said I guessed it might be, in a rather facetious, not very happy manner. I said:
    “I’m very glad to meet you at last, Greta.”
    Ellie said:
    “As you know very well, if it hadn’t been for Greta we would never have been able to get married.”
    “All the same we’d have managed it somehow,” I said.
    “Not if the family had come down on us like a ton of coals. They’d have broken it up