The Crozier Pharaohs

12

Information From Crozier Lodge

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I had better telephone Bryony and say that you want to see the sisters,’ said Laura. ‘ How shall I put it?’

‘Put it that we would like them to dine with us here tonight.’

‘What about Susan? She usually has supper with them. Is she invited, too?’

‘Certainly. Tell them half-past six for a seven o’clock dinner. If they accept, reserve a table for four or five. I have doubts whether Susan will accept.’

‘Clothes, I suppose,’ said Laura. ‘People are so sensitive about appearing in public looking different from everybody else, but surely she’s got a summer frock or something.’

Susan turned down the invitation. She did not like hotel food, Bryony reported. Laura offered to pick up the sisters and convey them to the hotel, but Bryony pointed out that they had their own car and that if Laura picked them up she would also feel compelled to drive them home later.

‘Sorry about Susan,’ said Laura, politely but insincerely, when she met them in the hotel vestibule. She had not taken much of a liking to the blunt-featured kennel-maid.

Dame Beatrice was more truthful than Laura had been. ‘You will be able to talk more freely in Susan’s absence,’ she said. Bryony looked enquiringly at her and then asked whether the invitation had strings to it, a question which appeared to shock her sister, but which Dame Beatrice answered with equanimity. ‘Certainly,’ she said, ‘but I hope you will enjoy your dinner none the less. The cooking here is excellent and the service good.’

‘Since you are going to pump us, you are right in thinking that Susan’s presence might have been embarrassing,’ said-Morpeth. ‘She is not going back to her cottage tonight. She seems unusually nervous since she knew about the murder in the valley. She will barricade herself in our house with two of the hounds to keep her company and hope that we shall not be home too late.’

‘Then,’ said Laura impulsively and, this time, sincerely, ‘I do wish she had come with you. It must be rotten to feel scared.’

‘Yes,’ agreed the tender-hearted Morpeth, ‘we ought not to leave her too long alone in the house. Don’t forget about the prowler and — ’

‘But we haven’t seen or heard him lately, ’ said Bryony, ‘and Susan will be quite all right with Osiris and Amon in the house.’

‘What has to be said can be begun at the dinner-table and finished over coffee in the lounge,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘It should not take long.’

‘I am all apprehension,’ said Morpeth.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said her stronger-minded sister. ‘What could Dame Beatrice have to talk about that should make you apprehensive?’

By nine o’clock the session was over, the questions had been asked and answered and the sisters were on their way home. So adroitly and tactfully had Dame Beatrice steered the conversation that not even Bryony realised how much had been revealed of life at Crozier Lodge before Dr Rant’s death, Dr Mortlake’s departure and the arrival of Susan.

That it had not been a happy household Dame Beatrice already knew, but there were details which, so far, had remained undisclosed. One of these was that, soon after he had taken the post of assistant to Dr Rant — it was never called a partnership — Mortlake had proposed marriage to Bryony.

Whether Bryony had ever thought of marriage up to that point she did not disclose, but apparently she had turned down the young doctor’s offer with some firmness.

Dr Mortlake had received the dismissal of his proposal gracefully, but with a veiled indication that he had not given up hope and that the offer would be renewed later. This, however, stated Bryony, had not come about, for shortly afterwards Mrs Rant became very ill, so that during what everybody foresaw would be a terminal disorder, anything in the nature of lovemaking seemed to Bryony to be completely out of place and she had indicated this to Mortlake in ways which could not be misinterpreted.

After the death of his wife, Dr Rant had begun the course of alcoholism and drugs which led to his own death. More and more work depended upon Mortlake, especially after the death of Mrs Subbock, when the villagers refused to be attended by Rant — although the holidaymakers made no distinction between the two doctors except for those who came year after year and got to hear the rumours that Dr Rant was ‘past it’.

‘Of course, the end was inevitable, I suppose,’ said Bryony, ‘when he began prescribing drugs for himself and did not give up but, if possible, increased his consumption of alcohol. He had become more and more tyrannical and unreasonable, and suffered from periods of morbid introspection.’

‘Do you happen to know when your father made his will?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘Oh, yes. He made a fresh will as soon as our mother’s funeral was over. Everything had been left to her, you see. He was beastly to her, as he was to us, but he knew what was the right thing to do. Unluckily she died before he did, otherwise the three of us could have settled down to quite a happy, peaceful life, because there was no shortage of money, thanks to the rich old lady in Stafford.’

Bryony referred to the time when the Rant family had lived in the Midlands. The old lady, it seemed, had suffered from chronic bronchitis and often spoke of moving further south. Dr Rant was in constant attendance on her and persuaded her that to move from the comfortable, warm home she had always known and try to settle down among people she did not know and to have another doctor prescribe and care for her would not be to her advantage.

She died rather suddenly, and it was then discovered that she had left all her money to Rant. There were mutterings of undue influence among the members of charitable institutions which had hoped to benefit, but there were no relatives to contest the provisions of the will, neither could the charities prove that they had been promised anything.

However, ugly rumours began to circulate and, although nobody dared say so openly, it began to seep about that the old lady had shuffled off this mortal coil remarkably soon after the will had been signed and witnessed. The witnesses, two of the old lady’s servants, were responsible for this undercover but dangerous hint and Dr Rant, at that time an able physician although even then a selfish husband and an unsympathetic father, had been forced to leave a rapidly declining practice and bury himself morosely in Abbots Crozier.

‘I was fifteen when we moved south,’ said Bryony, ‘and Morpeth was twelve. We were overjoyed at first to live in the country and so near the sea. We went to boarding school and loved it. Some of the girls were not so keen and found the rules, especially those relating to being out-of-bounds, irksome and frustrating, but for us it was heaven after living with father and being toads under the harrow. I was heartbroken when he took me away to be a drudge at home. I was eighteen then. Morpeth stayed on for a couple of years, then she was also taken away from school and we had to resign ourselves to the fact that there was no chance for either of us to go to college or train for anything except to be father’s slaves and watch mother’s health getting worse and worse.’

It came out that Bryony, as the driver of the car, was sent regularly to the chemist’s on behalf of her father. His prescriptions were made up by an elderly pharmacist in Castercombe who had died shortly after the demise of Dr Rant himself.

‘I used to go by way of the road through the valley,’ said Bryony, ‘until it was blocked for weeks by a big fall of rock. After that, I had to drive down to Abbots Bay and take the coast road and come back the same way. I much preferred it, but, of course, it took a great deal longer and father used to be very impatient with me. In the end, Dr Mortlake heard him reproaching me in his usual hurtful manner — and, after that, Dr Mortlake took the prescriptions and told me to go out and enjoy myself. He would hand me the medicine (that’s what father always called it) when he returned. He drives much faster and more confidently than I do, so he was able to cut down on the time and this mollified father, so we all benefited.’

‘Didn’t you ever think of leaving home?’ asked Laura.

‘With what? We had no money of our own while father was alive and we weren’t trained for anything. Besides, there was mother. Even after her death, we were still helpless. If Dr Mortlake had been in a position to buy his own practice, I would have been tempted to accept his offer of marriage, but he was not in such a position. Besides, I knew he would never agree to have Morpeth to live with us, and I certainly would not have been willing to leave her on her own to cope with father.’

‘I never liked Dr Mortlake,’ said Morpeth, ‘after I knew he wanted to take Bryony away from me. All the same, I sometimes wonder whether we ought not to be very grateful to him.’

‘In what way?’ Laura enquired.

‘Oh, after mother’s death he did far more work for the practice than father did. Also, when he was with us — at meals, and so on, you know — father kept his temper in check where we were concerned and that was a very good thing.’

‘A very interesting and informative evening, I thought,’ said Dame Beatrice, when the sisters had returned to Crozier Lodge. ‘What impression did it make on you?’

‘I think Morpeth’s gratitude to Dr Mortlake may rest upon something more than that his presence at meal-times kept Dr Rant in check to some extent. What a life those two women seem to have had of it, don’t they? I’m certain, if I had been Bryony, I would have left home, money or no money, job or no job, especially after the mother died.’

Dame Beatrice nodded, but not in agreement. ‘Bryony might have taken the risk of breaking away and trying a taste of freedom, but not with Morpeth acting as her Old Man of the Sea. It is clear that they have no intention of ever separating,’ she said. ‘There are several more questions I must ask the sisters, but they can wait until tomorrow.’

Dame Beatrice rang Crozier Lodge at half-past three the following afternoon, guessing that although Susan and one of the Rants might be out exercising hounds, it was unlikely that the Lodge would be untenanted. Morpeth answered the call.

‘Do come to tea,’ she said. ‘The others will be back by half-past four and I’ve baked some lovely scones and there will be home-made strawberry jam and clotted cream.’

After tea, Dame Beatrice and Laura were introduced to the hounds. The bitches, including Sekhmet, who was never in purdah, were loose in the garden and responded politely and, in Sekhmet’s case, enthusiastically to the visitors, but these were able to view the dogs only through the meshes of the strong wire fence which surrounded the stable yard. Dame Beatrice did not put her questions until she and Laura were about to take their leave. The two sisters accompanied them to the double gates outside which they had left the car, but Susan remained in the house, as Dame Beatrice had supposed that she would do, as the visitors were not, strictly speaking, her guests.

‘I suppose,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘that if either of you needed medical attention, you would call in Dr Mortlake.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Morpeth. ‘He almost counts as a brother, you see. We should have the man from Axehead, but it hasn’t been necessary since father died.’

‘I can see that your father would have been unlikely to avail himself of his partner’s services, particularly as Dr Mortlake can hardly have approved of certain aspects — ’

‘You mean the booze,’ said Bryony, with a short laugh. ‘Even less did he approve of the drugs or that father made up his own prescriptions for them.’

‘He knew what the prescriptions were, of course?’

‘I don’t know, but he was kind enough to relieve me of the job of presenting them at the chemist’s in Castercombe, so I think he was sure to have known something about what father had ordered,’ Bryony said. ‘I used to have to wait, quite often, before the bottle was ready to be handed over. It was a nuisance I was very glad to get rid of.’

‘Did you see the chemist make up the prescriptions?’ asked Dame Beatrice.’

‘No, he used to do that in his back room, with the help of his chemist’s boy, whom I never met. Apparently, he was an intelligent lad and took a great interest, Dr Mortlake told us, in the prescriptions, so the chemist, who was getting old, taught him quite a lot, although, of course, he had no proper training or qualifications. It’s my belief, all the same, that he was trusted, in the end, to make up some of the medicines. Of course, nobody was supposed to know that, but rumours do get around.’

‘But they weren’t true,’ said Morpeth. ‘The old chemist would never have dared. You can’t have an unqualified person making up prescriptions. You might kill somebody.’

‘I was only repeating what I had heard. Anyway, the old chemist has gone and Dr Mortlake said the young man had gone, too. Perhaps he went abroad and practised his skills there. It’s a pity to let talents go to waste.’