Dead Water

II Miss Emily

“The trouble with my family,” said Miss Emily Pride, speaking in exquisite French and transferring her gaze from Superintendent Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard to some distant object, “is that they go too far.”

Her voice was pitched on the high didactic note she liked to employ for sustained narrative. The sound of it carried Alleyn back through time on a wave of nostalgia. Here he had sat, in this very room that was so much less changed than he or Miss Emily — here, a candidate for the Diplomatic Service, he had pounded away at French irregular verbs and listened to entrancing scandals of the days when Miss Emily’s papa had been chaplain at “our Embassy” in Paris. How old could she be now? Eighty? He pulled himself together and gave her his full attention.

“My sister, Fanny Winterbottom,” Miss Emily announced, “was not free from this fault. I recall an informal entertainment at our Embassy in which she was invited to take part. It was a burlesque. Fanny was grotesquely attired and carried a vegetable bouquet She was not without talent of a farouche sort and made something of a hit. Verb sap—as you shall hear. Inflamed by success, she improvised a short equivocal speech at the end of which she flung her bouquet at H.E. It struck him in the diaphragm and might well have led to an incident.”

Miss Emily recalled her distant gaze and focussed it upon Alleyn. “We are none of us free from this wild strain,” she said, “but in my sister Fanny its manifestations were extreme. I cannot help but think there is a connection.”

“Miss Emily, I don’t quite see what you mean.”

“Then you are duller than your early promise led me to expect. Let me elaborate.” This had always been an ominous threat from Miss Emily. She resumed her narrative style.

“My sister Fanny,” she said, “married. A Mr. George Winterbottom, who was profitably engaged in Trade. So much for him. He died, leaving her a childless widow with a more than respectable fortune. Included in her inheritance was the soi-disant Island, which I mentioned in my letter.”

“Portcarrow?”

“Precisely. You cannot be unaware of recent events on this otherwise characterless promontory.”

“No, indeed.”

“In that case I shall not elaborate. Suffice it to remind you that within the last two years there has arisen, fructified and flourished a cult of which I entirely disapprove and which is the cause of my present concern and of my calling upon your advice.” She paused.

“Anything I can do, of course—” Alleyn said.

“Thank you. Your accent has deteriorated. To continue, Fanny, intemperate as ever, encouraged her tenants in their wart claims. She visited the Island, interviewed the child in question, and, having at the time an infected outbreak on her thumb, plunged it in the spring, whose extreme coldness possibly caused it to burst. It was no doubt ripe to do so, but Fanny darted about talking of miracles. There were other cases of an equally hysterical character. The thing had caught on, and my sister exploited it. The inn was enlarged, the spring was enclosed, advertisements appeared in the papers. A shop was erected on the Island. The residents, I understand, are making money hand over fist.”

“I should imagine so.”

“Very well. My sister Fanny (at the age of eighty-seven) has died. I have inherited her estates. I needed hardly tell you that I refuse to countenance this unseemly charade, still less to profit by it.”

“You propose to sell the place?”

“Certainly not. Do,” said Miss Emily sharply, “pull yourself together, Rodrigue. This is not what I expect of you.”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Emily.”

She waved her hand. “To sell would be to profit by its spurious fame and allow this nonsense full play. No, I intend to restore the Island to its former state. I have instructed my solicitors to acquaint the persons concerned.”

“I see,” said Alleyn. He got up and stood looking down at his old tutoress. How completely Miss Emily had taken on the character of a certain type of elderly Frenchwoman. Her black clothes seemed to disclaim, clear-sightedly, all pretense to allure. Her complexion was grey; her jewelry of jet and gold. She wore a general air of disassociated fustiness. Her composure was absolute. The setting was perfectly consonant with the person: pieces of buhl; formal, upholstered, and therefore dingy, chairs; yellowing photographs, among which his own young, thin face stared back at him, and an unalterable arrangement of dyed pampas plumes in an elaborate vase. For Miss Emily, her room was absolutely comme il faut. Yes, after all, she must be…

“At the age of eighty-three,” she said, with uncanny prescience, “I am not to be moved. If that is in your mind, Rodrigue.”

“I’m much too frightened of you, Miss Emily, to attempt any such task.”

“Ah, no!” she said in English. “Don’t say that! I hope not.”

He kissed her dry little hand as she had taught him to do. “Well,” he said, “tell me more about it. What is your plan?”

Miss Emily reverted to the French language. “In effect, as I have told you, to restore the status quo. Ultimately I shall remove the enclosure, shut the shop and issue a general announcement disclaiming and exposing the entire affair.”

Alleyn said: “I’ve never been able to make up my mind about these matters. The cure of warts by apparently irrational means is too well established to be questioned. And even when you admit the vast number of failures, there is a pretty substantial case to be made out for certain types of faith healing. Or so I understand. I can’t help wondering why you are so fierce about it all, Miss Emily. If you are repelled by the inevitable vulgarities, of course—”

“As, of course, I am. Still more, by the exploitation of the spring as a business concern. But most of all by personal experience of a case that failed: a very dear friend who suffered from a malignancy and who was absolutely — but, I assure you, absolutely—persuaded it would be cured by such means. The utter cruelty of her disillusionment, her incredulity, her agonized disappointment and her death — these made a bitter impression upon me. I would sooner die myself,” Miss Emily said with the utmost vigour, “than profit in the smallest degree from such another tragedy.”

There was a brief silence. “Yes,” Alleyn said. “That does, indeed, explain your attitude.”

“But not my reason for soliciting your help. I must tell you that I have written to Major Barrimore, who is the incumbent of the inn, and informed him of my decision. I have announced my intention of visiting the Island to see that this decision is carried out. And, since she will no doubt wish to provide for herself, I have also written to the proprietress of the shop, a Miss Elspeth Cost. I have given her three months’ notice, unless she choses to maintain the place as a normal establishment and refrain from exploiting the spring or mounting a preposterous anniversary festival which, I am informed, she has put in hand and which has been widely advertised in the press.”

“Major Barrimore and Miss Cost must have been startled by your letters.”

“So much so, perhaps, that they have lost the power of communication. I wrote a week ago. There has been no formal acknowledgment.”

She said this with such a meaning air that he felt he was expected to take it up. “Has there been an informal one?” he ventured,

“Judge for yourself,” said Miss Emily, crisply.

She went to her desk and returned with several sheets of paper which she handed to him.

Alleyn glanced at the first, paused, and then laid them all in a row on an occasional table. There were five…Hell! he thought. This means a go with Miss Emily…They were in the familiar form of newsprint pasted on ruled paper which had been wrenched from an exercise book. The first presented an account of several cures effected by the springs and was headed, with unintentional ambiguity, Pixie Falls Again. It was, he recognized, from the London Sun. Underneath the cutting was an irregular assembled sentence of separated words, all in newsprint:

The second read simply danger keep out; the third, Desecration will be prevented all costs; the fourth, Residents are prepared interference will prove fatal; and the last, in one strip, death of elderly woman with a piecemeal addendum: this could be YOU.

“Well,” Alleyn said, “that’s a pretty collection, I must say. When did they come?”

“One by one, over the last five days. The first must have been posted immediately after the arrival of my letter.”

“Have you kept the envelopes?”

“Yes. The postmark is Portcarrow.”

“May I see them?”

She produced them: five cheap envelopes. The address had been built up from newsprint.

“Will you let me keep these? And the letters?”

“Certainly.”

“Any idea who sent them?” he asked.

“None.”

“Who has your address?”

“The landlord. Major Barrimore.”

“It’s an easy one to assemble from any paper: 37 Forecast Street. Wait a moment, though. This one wasn’t built up piecemeal. It’s all in one. I don’t recognize the type.”

“Possibly a local paper. At the time of my inheritance.”

“Yes. Almost certainly.”

He asked her for a larger envelope and put the collection into it.

“When do you plan to go to Portcarrow?”

“On Monday,” said Miss Emily composedly. “Without fail.”

Alleyn thought for a moment, and then sat down and took her hands in his. “Now, my dear Miss Emily,” he said. “Please do listen to what I’m going to say — in English, if you don’t mind.”

“Naturally, I shall listen carefully, since I have invited your professional opinion. As to speaking in English — very well, if you prefer it. Enfin, en ce moment on ne donne pas une leçon de français.”

“No. One gives, if you’ll forgive me, a lesson in sensible behaviour. Now, I don’t suggest for a minute that these messages mean, literally, what they seem to threaten. Possibly they are simply intended to put you off and if they fail to do that, you may hear no more about it. On the other hand they do suggest that you have an enemy at Portcarrow. If you go there you will invite unpleasant reactions.”

“I am perfectly well aware of that. Obviously. And,” said Miss Emily on a rising note, “if this person imagines that I am to be frightened off—”

“Now, wait a bit. There’s no real need for you to go, is there? The whole thing can be done, and done efficiently, by your solicitors. It would be a — a dignified and reasonable way of settling.”

“Until I have seen for myself what goes on, on the Island, I cannot give explicit instructions.”

“But you can. You can get a report.”

“That,” said Miss Emily, “would not be satisfactory.”

He could have shaken her.

“Have you,” he asked, “shown these things to your solicitors?”

“I have not.”

“I’m sure they would give you the same advice.”

“I should not take it.”

“Suppose this person means to do exactly what the messages threaten — offer violence? It might well be, you know.”

“That is precisely why I have sought your advice. I am aware that I should take steps to protect myself. What are they? I am not,” Miss Emily said, “proficient in the use of small-arms, and I understand that, in any case, one requires a permit. No doubt, in your position, you could obtain one and might possibly be so very kind as to give me a little instruction.”

“I shall not fiddle a small-arms permit for you nor shall I teach you to be quick on the draw. The suggestion is ridiculous.”

“There are, perhaps, other precautions,” she conceded, “such as walking down the centre of the road, remaining indoors after dark and making no assignations at unfrequented rendezvous.”

Alleyn contemplated his old instructress. Was there or was there not a remote twinkle in that dead-pan eye?

“I think,” he said, “you are making a nonsense of me.”

“Who’s being ridiculous, now?” asked Miss Emily tartly.

He stood up. “All right,” he said. “As a police officer it’s my duty to tell you that I think it extremely unwise for you to go to Portcarrow. As a grateful, elderly ex-pupil, I assure you that I shall be extremely fussed about you if you’re obstinate enough to persist in your plan…Dear Miss Emily,” said Alleyn, with a change of tone, “do, for the love of Mike, pipe down and stay where you are.”

“You would have been successful,” she said, “if you had continued in the Corps Diplomatique. I have never comprehended why you elected to change.”

“Obviously, I’ve had no success in this instance.”

“No. I shall go. But I am infinitely obliged to you, Rodrigue.”

“I suppose this must be put down to the wild strain in your blood.”

“Possibly.” Indicating that the audience was concluded, she rose and reverted to French. “You will give my fondest salutations to your wife and son?”

“Thank you. Troy sent all sorts of messages to you.”

“You appear to be a little fatigued. When is your vacation?”

“When I can snatch it. I hope quite soon,” Alleyn said, and was at once alarmed by a look of low cunning in Miss Emily. “Please don’t go,” he begged her.

She placed her hand in the correct position to be kissed. “Au revoir,” she said, “et mille remerciements.”

“Mes hommages, madame,” said Alleyn crossly. With the profoundest misgivings he took his leave of Miss Emily.

It was nine o’clock on a Saturday evening when the London train reached Dunlowman, where one changed for the Portcarrow bus. On alighting, Jenny, was confronted by several posters depicting a fanciful Green Lady, across whose image was superimposed a large notice advertising The Festival of the Spring. She had not recovered from this shock when she received a second one in the person of Patrick Ferrier. There he was, looking much the same after nearly two years, edging his way through the crowd, quite a largish one, that moved towards the barrier.

“Jenny!” he called. “Hi! I’ve come to meet you.”

“But it’s miles and miles!” Jenny cried, delighted to see him.

“A bagatelle. Hold on! Here I come.”

He reached her and seized her suitcases. “This is fun,” he said. “I’m so glad.”

Outside the station a number of people had collected under a sign that read Portcarrow Bus. Jenny watched them as she waited for Patrick to fetch his car. They looked, she thought, a singularly mixed bunch, and yet there was something about them — what was it? — that gave them an exclusive air, as if they belonged to some rather outlandish sect. The bus drew up, and as these people began to climb in, she saw that among them there was a girl wearing a steel brace on her leg. Further along the queue a man with an emaciated face and terrible eyes quietly waited his turn. There was a plain, heavy youth with a bandaged ear, and a woman who laughed repeatedly, it seemed without cause, and drew no response from her companion, an older woman, who kept her hand under the other’s forearm and looked ahead. They filed into the bus, and although there were no other outward signs of the element that united them, Jenny knew what it was.

Patrick drove up in a two-seater. He put her luggage into a boot that was about a quarter of the size of the bonnet, and in a moment they had shot away down the street.

“This is very handsome of you, Patrick,” Jenny said. “And what a car!”

“Isn’t she pleasant?”

“New, I imagine.”

“Yes. To celebrate. I’m eating my dinners, after all, Jenny. Do you remember?”

“Of course. I do congratulate you.”

“You may not be so polite when you see how it’s been achieved, however. Your wildest fantasies could scarcely match the present reality of the Island.”

“I did see the English papers in Paris, and your letters were fairly explicit.”

“Nevertheless you’re in for a shock, I promise you.”

“I expect I can take it.”

“Actually, I rather wondered if we ought to ask you.”

“It was sweet of your mama, and I’m delighted to come. Patrick, it’s wonderful to be back in England! When I saw the Battersea power station, I cried. For sheer pleasure.”

“You’ll probably roar like a bull when you see Portcarrow — and not for pleasure, either. You haven’t lost your susceptibility for places, I see.…By the way,” Patrick said after a pause, “you’ve arrived for a crisis.”

“What sort of crisis?”

“In the person of an old, old angry lady called Miss Emily Pride, who has inherited the Island from her sister (Winterbottom, deceased). She shares your views about exploiting the spring. You ought to get on like houses on fire.”

“What’s she going to do?”

“Shut up shop, unless the combined efforts of interested parties can steer her off. Everybody’s in a frightful taking-on about it. She arrives on Monday, breathing restoration and fury.”

“Like a wicked fairy godmother?”

“Very like. Probably flourishing a black umbrella and emitting sparks. She’s flying into a pretty solid wall of opposition. Of course,” Patrick said abruptly, “the whole thing has been fantastic. For some reason the initial story caught on. It was the silly season and the papers, as you may remember, played it up. Wally’s warts became big news. That led to the first lot of casual visitors. Mrs. Winterbottom’s men of business began to make interested noises, and the gold rush, to coin a phrase, set in. Since then it’s never looked back.”

They had passed through the suburbs of Dunlowman and were driving along a road that ran out towards the coast.

“It was nice getting your occasional letters,” Patrick said, presently. “Operative word, ‘occasional.’ ”

“And yours.”

“I’m glad you haven’t succumbed to the urge for black satin and menacing jewelry that seems to overtake so many girls who get jobs in France. But there’s a change, all the same.”

“You’re not going to suggest I’ve got a phony foreign accent?”

“No, indeed. You’ve got no accent at all.”

“And that, no doubt, makes the change. I expect having to speak French has cured it.”

“You must converse with Miss Pride. She is — or was, before she succeeded to the Winterbottom riches — a terrifically high-powered coach for chaps entering the Foreign Service. She’s got a network of little spokes all round her mouth from making those exacting noises that are required by the language.”

“You’ve seen her, then?”

“Once. She visited with her sister about a year ago, and left in a rage.”

“I suppose,” Jenny said after a pause, “this is really very serious, this crisis?”

“It’s hell,” he rejoined with surprising violence.

Jenny asked about Wally Trehern and was told that he had become a menace. “He doesn’t know where he is but he knows he’s the star-turn,” Patrick said. “People make little pilgrimages to his cottage, which has been tarted up in a sort of Peggotty-style kitsch. Seaweed round the door almost, and a boat in a bottle. Mrs. Trehern keeps herself to herself and the gin bottle, but Trehern is a new man. He exudes a kind of honest-tar sanctity, and sells Wally to the pilgrims.”

“You appall me.”

“I thought you’d better know the worst. What’s more, there’s a Second Anniversary Festival next Saturday, organized by Miss Cost. A choral processional to the spring, and Wally, dressed up like a wee fisher lad, reciting doggerel — if he can remember it, poor little devil.”

“Don’t!” Jenny exclaimed. “Not true!”

“True, I’m afraid.”

“But Patrick — about the cures? The people that come? What happens?”

Patrick waited for a moment. He then said, in a voice that held no overtones of irony: “I suppose, you know, it’s what always happens in these cases. Failure after failure, until one thinks the whole thing is an infamous racket and is bitterly ashamed of having any part of it. And then, for no apparent reason, one — perhaps two — perhaps a few more people do exactly what the others have done but go away without their warts or their migraine or their asthma or their chronic diarrhea. Their gratitude and sheer exuberance! You can’t think what it’s like, Jenny. So then, of course, one diddles oneself — or is it diddling? — into imagining these cases wipe out all the others, and all the ballyhoo, and my fees, and this car, and Miss Cost’s Gifte Shoppe. She really has called it that, you know. She sold her former establishment, and set up another on the Island. She sells tiny plastic models of the Green Lady and pamphlets she’s written herself, as well as handwoven jerkins and other novelties that I haven’t the face to enumerate. Are you sorry you came?”

“I don’t think so. And your mother? What does she think?”

“Who knows?” Patrick said, simply. “She has a gift for detachment, my mama.”

“And Dr. Mayne?”

“Why he?” Patrick said sharply, and then: “Sorry. Why not? Bob Mayne’s nursing home is now quite large, and invariably full.”

Feeling she had blundered, Jenny said: “And the Rector? How on earth has he reacted?”

“With doctrinal legerdemain. No official recognition on the one hand. Proper acknowledgments in the right quarter on the other. Jolly sensible of him, in my view.”

Presently they swept up the downs that lay behind the coastline, turned into a steep lane and were, suddenly, on the cliffs above Portcarrow.

The first thing that Jenny noticed was a red neon sign glaring up through the dusk: Boy-and-Lobster. The tide was almost full, and the sign was shiftingly reflected in dark water. Next, she saw that a string of coloured lights connected the Island with the village, and that the village itself must now extend along the foreshore for some distance. Lamps and windows, following the convolutions of bay and headland, suggested a necklace that had been carelessly thrown down on some night-blue material. She supposed that in a way the effect must be called pretty. There were several cars parked along the cliffs, with people in them making love or merely staring out to sea. A large, prefabricated multiple garage had been built at the roadside. There was also a café.

“There you have it,” Patrick said. “We may as well take the plunge.”

They did so literally, down a precipitous and narrow descent. That at least had not changed, nor at first sight had the village itself. There was the old post office shop, and, farther along, the Portcarrow Arms with a new coat of paint. “This is now referred to as the Old Part,” said Patrick. “Elsewhere there’s a rash of boarding establishments and a multiple store. Trehern, by the way, is Ye Ancient Ferryman. I’ll put you down with your suitcases at the jetty, dig him out of the pub and park the car. O.K.?”

There was nobody about down by the jetty. The incoming tide slapped quietly against wet pylons and whispered and dragged along the foreshore. The dank smell of it was pleasant and familiar. Jenny looked across the narrow gap to the Island. There was a lamp, now, at the Island’s landing, and a group of men stood by it. Their voices sounded clear and tranquil. She saw that the coloured lights were strung on metal poles mounted in concrete, round whose bases seawater eddied and slopped, only just covering the causeway.

Patrick returned, and with him Trehern — who was effusive in salutations and wore a peaked cap with boy-and-lobster on it.

“There’s a motor launch,” Patrick said, pointing to it, “for the peak hours. But we’ll row over, shall we?” He led the way down the jetty to where a smart dinghy was tied up. She was called, inevitably, The Pixie.

“There were lots of people in the bus,” said Jenny.

“I expect so,” he rejoined, helping her into the dinghy. “For the Festival, you know.”

“Ar, the por souls!” Trehern ejaculated. “May the Heavenly Powers bring them release from afflictions!”

“Cast off,” said Patrick.

The gurgle of water and rhythmic clunk of oars in their rowlocks carried Jenny back to the days when she and Patrick used to visit their little bay.

“It’s a warm, still night, isn’t it?” she said.

“Isn’t it?” Patrick agreed. He was beside her in the stern. He slipped his arm round her. “Do you know,” he said in her ear, “it’s extraordinarily pleasant to see you again?”

Jenny could smell the Harris tweed of his coat. She glanced at him. He was staring straight ahead. It was very dark, but she fancied he was smiling.

She felt that she must ask Trehern about Wally, and did so.

“He be pretty clever, Miss, thank you. You’ll see a powerful change in our little lad, no doubt, him having been the innocent means of joy and thanksgiving to them as seeked for it.”

Jenny could find nothing better to say than: “Yes, indeed.”

“Not that he be puffed up by his exclusive state, however,” Trehern added. “Meek as a mouse but all glorious within. That’s our Wally.”

Patrick gave Jenny a violent squeeze.

They pulled into the Island’s landing jetty and went ashore. Trehern begged Jenny to visit her late pupil at the cottage, and wished them an unctious “Good night.”

Jenny looked about her. Within the sphere of light cast by the wharf lamp appeared a shopwindow which had been injected into a pre-existing cottage front. It was crowded with small, indistinguishable objects. “Yes,” Patrick said. “That’s Miss Cost. Don’t dwell on it.”

It was not until they had climbed the steps, which had been widened and re-graded, and came face-to-face with the Boy-and-Lobster, that the full extent of the alterations could be seen. The old pub had been smartened but not altered. At either end of it, however, there now projected large two-storied wings which completely dwarfed the original structure. There was a new and important entrance, and a “lounge” into which undrawn curtains admitted a view of quite an assemblage of guests, some reading, others playing cards or writing letters. In the background was a ping-pong table and, beyond that, a bar.

Patrick said, “There you have it.”

They were about to turn away when someone came out of the main entrance and moved uncertainly towards them. He was dressed in a sort of Victorian smock over long trousers, and there was a jellybag cap on his head. He had grown much taller. Jenny didn’t recognize him at first, but as he shambled into a patch of light she saw his face.

“Costume,” Patrick said, “by Maison Cost.”

“Wally!” she cried. “It’s Wally.”

He gave her a sly look and knuckled his forehead. “Evening, evening,” he said. His voice was still unbroken. He held out his hands. “I’m Wally,” he said. “Look. All gone.”

“Wally, do you remember me? Miss Williams? Do you?”

His mouth widened in a grin. “No,” he said.

“Your teacher.”

“One lady give me five bob, she done. One lady done.”

“You mustn’t ask for tips,” Patrick said.

Wally laughed. “I never,” he said, and looked at Jenny. “You come and see me. At Wally’s place.”

“Are you at school, still?”

“At school. I’m in the Fustivell.” He showed her his hands again, gave one of his old squawks and suddenly ran off.

“Never mind,” Patrick said. “Come along. Never mind, Jenny.”

He took her in by the old door, now marked private, and here everything was familiar. “The visitors don’t use this,” he said. “There’s an office and reception desk in the new building. You’re en famille, Jenny. We’ve put you in my room. I hope you don’t mind.”

“But what about you?”

“I’m all right. There’s an emergency bolt-hole.”

“Jenny!” said Mrs. Barrimore, coming into the little hall. “How lovely!”

She was much more smartly dressed than she used to be, and looked, Jenny thought, very beautiful. They kissed warmly. “I’m so glad,” Mrs. Barrimore said. “I’m so very glad.”

Her hand trembled on Jenny’s arm and, inexplicably, there was a blur of tears in her eyes. Jenny was astounded.

“Patrick will show you where you are, and there’s supper in the old dining-room. I–I’m busy at the moment. There’s a sort of meeting. Patrick will explain,” she said hurriedly. “I hope I shan’t be long. You can’t think how pleased we are, can she, Patrick?”

“She hasn’t an inkling,” he said. “I forgot about the emergency meeting, Jenny. It’s to discuss strategy and Miss Pride. How’s it going, Mama?”

“I don’t know. Not very well. I don’t know.”

She hesitated, winding her fingers together in the old way. Patrick gave her a kiss. “Don’t give it a thought,” he said. “What is it they say in Jenny’s antipodes—‘She’ll be right’? She’ll be right, Mama, never you fear.”

But when his mother had left them, Jenny thought for a moment he looked very troubled.

In the old bar-parlour Major Barrimore, with Miss Pride’s letter in his hand and his double Scotch on the chimneypiece, stood on the hearthrug and surveyed his meeting. It consisted of the Rector, Dr. Mayne, Miss Cost and Mr. Ives Nankivell, who was the newly created Mayor of Portcarrow, and also its leading butcher. He was an undersized man with a look of perpetual astonishment.

“No,” Major Barrimore was saying, “apart from yourselves I haven’t told anyone. Fewer people know about it, the better. Hope you all agree.”

“From the tone of her letter,” Dr. Mayne said, “the whole village’ll know by this time next week.”

“Wicked!” Miss Cost cried out in a trembling voice. “That’s what she must be. A wicked woman. Or mad,” she added, as an afterthought. “Both, I expect.”

The men received this uneasily.

“How, may I inquire, Major, did you frame your reply?” the Mayor asked.

“Took a few days to decide,” said Major Barrimore, “and sent a wire: accommodation reserved will be glad to discuss matter outlined in your letter.”

“Very proper.”

“Thing is, as I said when I told you about it: we ought to arrive at some sort of agreement among ourselves. She gives your names as the people she wants to see. Well, we’ve all had a week to think it over. What’s our line going to be? Better be consistent, hadn’t we?”

“But can we be consistent?” the Rector asked. “I think you all know my views. I’ve never attempted to disguise them. In the pulpit or anywhere else.”

“But you don’t,” said Miss Cost, who alone had heard the Rector from the pulpit, “you don’t deny the truth of the cures, now do you?”

“No,” he said. “I thank God for them, but I deplore the — excessive publicity.”

“Naow, naow, naow,” said the Mayor excitedly. “Didn’t we ought to take a wider view? Didn’t we ought to think of the community as a whole? In my opinion, sir, the remarkable properties of our spring has brought nothing but good to Portcarrow — nothing but good. And didn’t the public at large ought to be made aware of the benefits we offer? I say it did and it ought which is what it has and should continue to be.”

“Jolly good, Mr. Mayor,” said Barrimore. “Hear, hear!”

“Hear!” said Miss Cost.

“Would she sell?” Dr. Mayne asked suddenly.

“I don’t think she would, Bob.”

“Ah well, naow,” said the Mayor, “naow! Suppose — and mind, gentlemen, I speak unofficially. Private — But, suppose she would. There might be a possibility that the borough itself would be interested. As a spec—” He caught himself up and looked sideways at the Rector. “As a civic duty. Or maybe a select group of right-minded residents…”

Dr. Mayne said drily: “They’d find themselves competing in pretty hot company, I fancy, if the Island came on the open market.”

“Which it won’t,” said Major Barrimore. “If I’m any judge. She’s hell-bent on wrecking the whole show.”

Mr. Nankivell allowed himself a speculative grin. “Happen she don’t know the value, however,” he insinuated.

“Perhaps she’s concerned with other values,” the Rector murmured.

At this point Mrs. Barrimore returned.

“Don’t move,” she said and sat down in a chair near the door. “I don’t know if I’m still…?”

Mr. Nankivell embarked on a gallantry but Barrimore cut across it. “You’d better listen, Margaret,” he said, with a restless glance at his wife. “After all, she may talk to you.”

“Surely, surely!” the Mayor exclaimed. “The ladies understand each other in a fashion that’s above the heads of us mere chaps, bean’t it, Miss Cost?”

Miss Cost said: “I’m sure I don’t know,” and looked very fixedly at Mrs. Barrimore.

“We don’t seem to be getting anywhere,” Dr. Mayne observed.

The Mayor cleared his throat. “This bean’t what you’d call a formal committee,” he began, “but if it was, and if I was in occupation of the chair, I’d move we took the temper of the meeting.”

“Very good,” Barrimore said. “Excellent suggestion. I propose His Worship be elected chairman. Those in favour?” The others muttered a disjointed assent, and the Mayor expanded. He suggested that what they really had to discover was how each of them proposed to respond to Miss Pride’s onslaught. He invited them to speak in turn — beginning with the Rector, who repeated that they all knew his views and that he would abide by them.

“Does that mean,” Major Barrimore demanded, “that if she says she’s going to issue a public repudiation of the spring, remove the enclosure and stop the Festival, you’d come down on her side?”

“I shouldn’t try to dissuade her.”

The Mayor made an explosive sound and turned on him. “If you’ll pardon my frankness, Mr. Carstairs,” he began, “I’d be obliged if you’d tell the company what you reckon would have happened to your Church Restoration Fund if Portcarrow hadn’t benefited by the spring to the extent it has done. Where’d you’ve got the money to repair your tower? You wouldn’t’ve got it, no, nor anything like it.”

Mr. Carstairs’s normally sallow face reddened painfully. “No,” he said, “I don’t suppose we should.”

“Hah!” said Miss Cost. “There you are!”

“I’m a Methodist, myself,” said the Mayor in triumph.

“Quite so,” Mr. Carstairs agreed.

“Put it this way. Will you egg the woman on, sir, in her foolish notions? Will you do that?”

“No. It’s a matter of her own conscience.”

The Mayor, Major Barrimore and Miss Cost all began to expostulate. Dr. Mayne said with repressed impatience, “I really don’t think there’s any future in pressing the point.”

“Nor do I,” said Mrs. Barrimore unexpectedly.

Miss Cost, acidly smiling, looked from her to Dr. Mayne and then, fixedly, at Major Barrimore.

“Very good, Doctor,” Mr. Nankivell said. “What about yourself, then?”

Dr. Mayne stared distastefully at his own hands and said: “Paradoxically, I find myself in some sort of agreement with the Rector. I, too, haven’t disguised my views. I have an open mind about these cases. I have neither encouraged nor discouraged my patients’ making use of the spring. When there has been apparent benefit I have said nothing to undermine anyone’s faith in its permanency. I am neutral.”

“And from that impregnable position,” Major Barrimore observed, “you’ve added a dozen rooms to your bloody Convalescent Home. Beg pardon, Rector.”

“Keith!”

Major Barrimore turned on his wife. “Well, Margaret?” he demanded. “What’s your objection?”

Miss Cost gave a shrill laugh.

Before Mrs. Barrimore could answer, Dr. Mayne said very coolly: “You’re perfectly right. I have benefited, like all the rest of you. But as far as my practice is concerned, I believe Miss Pride’s activities will make very little difference, in the long run. Either to it, or to the popular appeal of the spring. Sick people who are predisposed to the idea will still think they know better. Or hope they know better,” he added. “Which is, I suppose, much the same thing.”

“That’s all damn’ fine, but it won’t be the same thing to the community at large,” Barrimore angrily pointed out. “Tom, Dick and Harry and their friends and relations, swarming all over the place… The Island, a tripper’s shambles, and the press making a laughingstock of the whole affair.” He emptied his glass.

“And the Festival!” Miss Cost wailed. “The Festival! All our devotion! The response! The disappointment. The humiliation!” She waved her hands. A thought struck her. “And Wally! He has actually memorized! After weeks of patient endeavour, he has memorized his little verses. Only this afternoon. One trivial slip. The choir is utterly committed.”

“I’ll be bound,” said Mr. Nankivell heartily. “A credit to all concerned, and a great source of gratification to the borough if looked at in the proper spirit. We’m all waiting on the Doctor, however,” he added. “Now, Doctor, what is it to be? What’ll you say to the lady?”

“Exactly what I said two minutes ago to you,” Dr. Mayne snapped. “I’ll give my opinion if she wants it. I don’t mind pointing out to her that the thing will probably go on after a fashion, whatever she does.”

“I suppose that’s something,” said the Mayor gloomily. “Though not much, with an elderly female so deadly set on destruction.”

“I,” Miss Cost intervened hotly, “shall not mince my words. I shall tell her — No,” she amended with control, “I shall plead with her. I shall appeal to the nobler side. Let us hope that there is one. Let us hope so.”

“I second that from the chair,” said Mr. Nankivell. “Though with reservations prejudicial to an optimistic view. Major?”

“What’ll I do? I’ll try and reason with her. Give her a straight picture of the incontrovertible cures. If the man of science,” Major Barrimore said with a furious look at Dr. Mayne, “would come off his high horse and back me up, I might get her to listen. As it is—” he passed his palm over his hair and gave a half-smile —“I’ll do what I can with the lady. I want another drink. Anyone join me?”

The Mayor, and, after a little persuasion, Miss Cost joined him. He made towards the old Private Taproom. As he opened the door, he admitted sounds of voices and of people crossing the flagstone to the main entrance.

Patrick looked in. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said to his mother. “The busload’s arrived.”

She got up quickly. “I must go,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

His stepfather said: “Damn! All right.” And to the others: “I won’t be long. Pat, look after the drinks, here, will you? Two double Scotches and a glass of the sweet port.”

He went out, followed by his wife and Patrick, and could be heard welcoming his guests. “Good evening! Good evening to you! Now, come along in. You must be exhausted. Awfully glad to see you—”

His voice faded.

There was a brief silence.

“Yes,” said the Mayor. “Yes. Be-the-way, we didn’t get round to axing the lady’s view, did we — Mrs. Barrimore’s?”

For some reason they all looked extremely uncomfortable.

Miss Cost gave a shrill laugh.

“All right. Got the name? Superintendent A. F. Coombe, Divisional H.Q., wherever it is — at Portcarrow itself, I fancy. Get it off straight away, will you?”

When the letter had gone he looked at his watch. Five minutes past midnight. His desk was cleared and his files closed. I should have written before, he thought. My letter will arrive with Miss Emily.

He was ready to leave, but for some reason dawdled there, too tired, suddenly, to make a move.

After a vague moment or two, he lit his pipe, looked round his room and walked down the long corridor and the stairs, wishing the P.C. on duty at the doors “Goodnight.”

It was his only superstition. By the pricking of my thumbs… As he drove away down the Embankment he thought: Damned if I don’t ring that Super up in the morning: be damned if I don’t.