“My dear girl, please don't think I'm trying to back out of it,” he said.
Guy came out into the hall at that moment, so the conversation had to be suspended. Guy was as uneasy as the doctor, and said that he wouldn't mind betting that his mother had talked a lot of ghastly hot air to the reporter.
His mistrust of her was justified. Next morning the Daily Reflector carried a fat, black headline on its front page, a photograph of the Poplars, and another (inset) of Mrs Matthews stepping out of the court-room after the Inquest. When Guy came down to breakfast he found his aunt and sister with no less than four picture papers, indignantly reading extracts aloud to each other.
“ "Murdered Man's Sister in Suburban Poison Drama Refuses to Discuss Mystery Death",” read Stella in an awed voice. “ "We think it wiser to say nothing," says Mrs Zoë Matthews, the graceful fair-haired widow concerned in the mysterious poisoning case at Grinley Heath which is baffling the Scotland Yard experts." Mummy will love that bit Guy, look at the photograph of Mummy! I ask you!”
“Listen to this!” begged Miss Matthews in a trembling voice. “I never heard anything to equal it, never!”
“ "Wearing mourning"—I should like to know what else she would be wearing!—"and with a look of strain in her sad eyes, charming Mrs Zoë Matthews, the widowed sister-in-law of Gregory Matthews, whose death under mysterious circumstances took place at his residence at Grinley Heath a week ago, received me yesterday in her sunny drawing-room." Her drawing-room, indeed! Oh, I've no doubt she told him it belonged to her, but as for it being sunny it never gets a ray of sun all day, as she very well knows!”
Guy, quite pale with dismay, came hurriedly across the room to look over his aunt's shoulder at the offending paragraph. “ "One has to remember that life goes on… irreparable loss as much a mystery to us as to Scotland Yard…" Good God, she can't have said all this muck!”
“Of course she said it!” snapped Miss Matthews. “It's just the sort of rubbish I should expect her to talk. "There was a great bond between my poor brother-in-law and me!"… oh, was there? And not one word about what my feelings are! . . "Calm and self-possessed."… Selfpossessed! Brazen would be nearer the mark! Oh, I've no patience with it!”
Guy rescued the paper, which Miss Matthews seemed to be inclined to rend in pieces, and retired with it to the window. Stella, deep meanwhile in the Morning Star, suddenly gave a gasp, and exclaimed: “Of all the cheek! Aunt Harriet, listen to this! "Mr Matthews' death was a terrible shock to us all,” pretty, blue-eyed Rose Daventry, the twenty-three-year-old housemaid at the Poplars, informed our representative yesterday." There's miles more of it, and even a bit about Rose's young man. Oh, she says they all feel it as a personal loss!”
“What?” shrieked Miss Matthews.