Ellis Peters - George Felse 12 - City Of Gold and Shadows by Ellis Peters Page B

and broader than its length from brow to chin, like the bright, intelligent countenance of a young cat, innocent, assured and inquisitive. Her eyes were so wide-set and widely-opened that they consumed half her face in a dazzling pool of greenish-blue radiance. Her nose was neat, small and short, and her mouth full-lipped and firmly formed above a tapered but resolute chin. She had a cloud of short hair curving in clinging waves about her head, the colour of barley silk, and under the feathery fringe her forehead bulged childishly, with room in it for a notable brain, the one thing about her that was not suavely curved and ivory-smooth.
    The details sounded like a collection of attractive oddities. The sum total was a quite arresting beauty. And the most jolting fact about her emerged only by implication. In a nylon jersey house-gown of peacock pattern and iridescent colouring, which clung like a silk glove, she could not possibly be anyone but Mrs Paviour, that same Lesley who walked when the fit took her, last thing at night, and had been home twenty minutes when Charlotte rang the door-bell. Ergo, the wife of this elderly Don Quixote, Great-Uncle Alan’s colleague and contemporary, who must be well into his sixties at the very least, and slightly arid and passé even at that. How old was the girl in the doorway? Not a day over twenty-five, Charlotte reckoned—hardly two years senior to herself. Perhaps even less. What an extraordinary mis-match! And not just because of the tale of years involved. The old man was a cracked leather bottle trying to contain quicksilver. She
could not
feel anything for him! It made no sense. And yet she had not the look of a woman cramped or dissatisfied. She glowed with ease and wellbeing.
    At sight of her Gus, stiffening into startled consciousness between his supporters, set foot of his own volition on the last step, and his soiled eyebrows soared into his muddy hair, in reflection of the apparition before him. Very faintly but quite clearly he said: ‘Good God!’ and seemed to have no breath left for anything more explicit.
    The moment of charmed stillness collapsed—or more properly exploded—into motion and exclamation. The girl in the Chinese house-coat narrowed her eyes upon the central figure in the tableau before her, and the supple lines of her face sharpened into crystal, and lost their smiling gaiety.
    ‘My God!’ she said, in the softest of dismayed voices. ‘What’s been happening, Steve?’ And she went on briskly, springing into instant and efficient comprehension: ‘Well, come on, bring him in to the fire, quickly! I’ll get brandy.’
    She turned in a swirl of nylon jersey, and flung wide the door to the study, where the subsiding glow of the fire still burned. Her movements, as she receded rapidly along the passage beyond, were silent and violent, a force of nature in action. Only gradually did it emerge that she was rather a miniature whirlwind, perhaps an inch shorter even than Charlotte, but so slender that she escaped looking like a pocket edition. When she came back, with a tray in her hands, they had installed their patient by the fire in a deep chair, and peeled the soggy, wet jacket from him. They were five people in one small room, and hardly a word was said between them until Gus Hambro had a large brandy under his belt, and was visibly returning into circulation. His still dazed eyes followed his astonishing hostess around, measuring, weighing and wondering, in forgetfulness of his own predicament. He said nothing at all, as yet, but very eloquently. Charlotte hung back in a corner of the room, and let them encircle him with their attentions. So far he had not even registered her presence, and she was in no particular hurry to enlighten him.
    ‘He should have a doctor,’ said Paviour anxiously, standing over him with the empty brandy glass.
    ‘I don’t want a doctor,’ protested the patient, weakly but decidedly. ‘What could he do for me that