Out Of The Past by Patricia Wentworth

The heat, the lights, the voices, Maisie Trevor’s voice and her interminable stories! She stood up.
    “Will you forgive me if I go off to bed? I was stupid to be out in the glare for so long. It has brought my headache on again.”
    Carmona was all solicitude.
    “Can I get you anything?”
    Adela looked vague.
    “I don’t think so. I have some very good tablets. I’m just not sure—where I put them. Perhaps if you—will come up with me—”
    Her face was stripped of life and colour. Difficult to recognize the assured Lady Castleton. As they went out of the door, Carmona slipped an arm about her, and had the impression that it was welcome.
    The tablets were in a drawer of the old-fashioned mirror. Yellow curtains, a shiny yellow eiderdown, and Adela sitting on the side of the bed and saying,
    “Somewhere on the dressing-table, I think. Yes, that’s the bottle. I don’t take them once in a blue moon, but when I do it means at least eight hours of good deep sleep—and I feel I need it tonight. Perhaps you would give me a glass of water from the washstand.”
    She tipped two of the tablets into her hand, lifted it to her lips, drank the water Carmona brought, and thanked her.
    “Would you be very kind and just look in on your way to bed? Once I’m off nothing wakes me, but it would be nice to know that you would just look in. I haven’t had a head like this since—oh, I can’t remember!”
    Carmona saw her into bed and went down to the others.
    The longest evening ends. This had not been so long as counted in time, but there are other factors. Endurance is one of them. Just how much strain can anyone endure? The Victorian drawing-room with its garlanded carpet, its gold and white overmantel, its china cabinets, and its brocaded chairs, held more than one who might have been asking that question.
    Perhaps no one was sorry when the evening drew to an end. Goodnights were said, and the women went up the stairs, their murmur of conversation dying away as they receded. Doors closed. Carmona, left to the last, crossed over to Adela Castleton’s room and turned the handle gently. Two windows open to the cooler north, and a breeze coming in— the vague outline of the bed. At first no sound, but as she took a step forward and then stood to listen, the regular rise and fall of Adela’s breathing. She waited until she could be quite sure of it, and then went out and closed the door again.
    Downstairs James poured drinks, and presently went to latch the windows. He stood for a moment at the long glass door of the terrace. There was a cool air coming in from the sea. The water was dark and the sky luminous. The old figureheads stood up black and strange. He said,
    “It seems a shame to shut out the air, but Beeston would certainly expect us all to be murdered in our beds if we didn’t.”
    “Your uncle had him a long time?”
    “Oh, ages. I used to be sent down by myself, you know. There was a deadly feud between my aunt Mildred Wotherspoon and the Hardwicks. I don’t know what it was about, and it had been going on for so long that I don’t suppose they even knew themselves by then, but they wouldn’t meet. I used to be sent down with a label sewed inside my pocket from the time I was about seven, and the Beestons looked after me. Uncle Octavius used to pat me on the head and tip me— half a crown to start with, rising to a fiver at twentyone, where it stopped dead. He used to mutter, ‘Poor Henry’s boy,’ and go away, to our mutual relief. It was Beeston who provided the statutory bucket and spade and showed me the best places for prawns. And Mrs. Beeston let me have a glass bowl with sea anemones in it, and bring in seaweed, and shrimps and winkles and any old thing.”
    Colonel Trevor finished his drink and set down the glass.
    “You’re not thinking of staying on here, are you?”
    James turned from the window.
    “Oh, no, it can’t be done. This kind of house just isn’t possible any more.”
    They