Latter End

CHAPTER 12

It was a couple of days later that Antony Latter rang Julia up at her flat.

“Can I come round and see you?”

“If you don’t mind an awful mess. I’ve brought a lot of my things up from Latter End-books chiefly-and I’m unpacking them. They’re all over the floor.” When he walked in twenty minutes later he discovered this to be an understatement. They were not only all over the floor, but stacked on every chair and piled in sliding strata upon the table and the couch which was Julia’s bed. Julia herself in the red smock, which appeared to have been washed since he saw it last but which was rapidly acquiring a good deal of dust, looked up at him with a frown.

“It’s grim-isn’t it? I don’t know what happens to books when you get them out-there always seem to be about ten times as many of them. I’ve got a man coming to put up some shelves all round the window there, and I don’t know how I’m going to eat or sleep until he’s done it. I thought perhaps a big pile on each side of the door.”

“All right, we’ll each do one. No, I’ll bring you the books, and you can build the stacks. Your clothes won’t hurt, and mine will.”

She said, “Your precious trouser knees! All right.”

They began to build. After a minute or two he said,

“Well-how’s everything?” To which Julia replied,

“Hellish!”

He raised an eyebrow.

“In what particular way?”

She thumped a heavy book down on to the stack and said,

“In every way you can possibly think of! Lois swears someone’s trying to poison her. Jimmy has been practically tearing his hair out, Ellie’s worrying herself into an illness, and Minnie looks as if she was having one. I don’t know how I’ve stuck it out. I wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for Ellie, but I can’t leave her down there alone. I had to come up on business, so I brought these wretched books, but I shall go down again tomorrow. I suppose you couldn’t come too?”

“I could, darling-but you make it sound almost too alluring.”

He found her eyes fixed on him with an appeal which it was difficult to resist.

“ Antony, do come! It’s quite awful-it really is. I don’t think I can tackle it alone, and I think it ought to be tackled. I’ve got an idea-”

“What sort of idea?”

She hesitated.

“This poison business-it’s beastly, and it might be serious. Lois has had about five of these attacks. They’re not serious in themselves-she’s just sick, and then she’s all right again. Well, either she’s playing a trick on us, or somebody’s playing a trick on her. She won’t see a doctor, and she swears someone’s trying to poison her.” She gave a short scornful laugh. “Poisoners aren’t as inefficient as all that. No-she’s doing it herself, or someone else is doing it to frighten-or punish her.”

Antony shook his head.

“She isn’t doing it herself-you can wash that right out.”

“Yes, I think so. Too unbecoming. Well then, it’s somebody else. Who?”

“I don’t know. You said you had an idea. Are you going to tell me what it is?”

“Yes-I must. I’ve got a horrible feeling that it might be Manny.”

He looked first startled, and then relieved. “Manny?”

“Who else is there? Ellie-Minnie-me-you-Jimmy? You see? But Manny-well, I’m not so sure. She was frightfully angry about Mrs. Marsh going to the institute. She said-and it’s perfectly true-that Gladys Marsh wouldn’t have dared if Lois hadn’t backed her up. She’s seething about Hodson’s cottage, too, and about Lois not wanting to have Ronnie at Latter End, and-oh, heaps of things. Poor Minnie is the last straw. Manny knows she’s going, and of course she knows that Lois is at the bottom of it. And she’s got a nice bottle of ipecac sitting in the corner of the kitchen cupboard, with every opportunity of putting a teaspoonful in here and there when Lois has anything that the rest of us don’t.”

“Darling, what a lurid imagination you’ve got!”

She shook her head.

“I wish I had. I mean, I wish I didn’t think it was true, but-well, I’m practically sure. And-it isn’t safe, Antony.”

He said soberly, “There’s no proof. What are you going to do about it?”

He was sitting on the arm of a book-laden chair. She frowned up at him.

“I don’t know-tackle her, I suppose.”

His mouth drew awry.

“And what will you do if she bursts into tears on your shoulder and owns up?”

Julia turned a shade paler.

“I suppose I should have to tell Jimmy, and get him to pension her.”

He murmured, “Pensions for old age poisoners-Darling, I must say you’ve got a nerve! But suppose she denies it- where do we go from there?”

Julia’s eyes widened. The slanting light from the window behind Antony slid down into them, making them look like peaty water with the sun on it. She said slowly,

“I-don’t-know. I don’t know what there is to be done. It keeps me awake at night. You see, Lois makes everyone hate her, and when you get a lot of people all hating, things happen-horrid sorts of things. It’s like having a lot of electricity about-you don’t know where the lightning is going to strike.”

He said coolly, “Keep the drama for the great works, darling.”

The angry colour ran up into her face.

“You can laugh, but you don’t know what it feels like! I’m not dramatizing, I’m telling you about facts. Lois-well, she’s either got the wind up, or-I don’t know what. You know what it is when a person doesn’t show anything, but you can feel them being all worked up underneath-she’s like that. And Jimmy won’t let her take anything that’s made separately. He wanted her to knock off her beastly Turkish coffee, but she wouldn’t, so now he takes it too, poor darling, and you can see him hating every minute of it. Of course he knows perfectly well that no one will play tricks if he’s taking it.”

“So there have been no more attacks?”

“Not since you left. I say, that sounds rather incriminating, doesn’t it?” Her lips widened in the beginning of a smile, but it never got anywhere. She reached out for a small pile of books, dumped them on the stack, and said in a careful voice, “But it wouldn’t be you, naturally.”

He sat there swinging his foot and watching her.

“Is that intended for a compliment-a kindly tribute to my law-abiding character?”

“No, it isn’t. You’re out of it because-” She bit her lip and stopped suddenly. What an absolute damned fool jealousy made of you. Only when it was goading at you all the time something suddenly gave way and you came out with the very last thing you meant to say.

He looked at her quizzically.

“Gratifying, but inconclusive. I should like to know why you are not considering me as a possible poisoner.”

She spoke then, quite gravely and simply.

“Because you are fond of Lois. You used to be very fond of her.”

He shook his head.

“The answer is in the negative, darling.”

She blazed up suddenly.

“You were in love with her!”

“Quite a different thing, my child.

‘Yesterday’s fires are clean gone out, yesterday’s hearth is cold;

No one can either borrow or buy with last year’s gold.’ ”

Julia felt her heart leap up. He was telling her what she would have given almost anything in the world to be sure about. It leapt up, and it sank down again. Because what else could he say? He wouldn’t tell her or anyone else if he was still in love with Jimmy’s wife. She said in her deepest, gloomiest voice,

“I’ve got to go back there tomorrow, and it’s going to be absolute hell. Lois hasn’t got her new staff coming in for another fortnight, so we’ve all got to hang on till then. Ellie and Minnie are doing the work, so they can’t clear out. As a matter of fact neither of them has anywhere to go. Minnie won’t go to that awful old Miss Grey, I’m thankful to say, and Ellie hasn’t managed to find a room yet-they’re sending Ronnie to Brighton, and it’s packed. I shall have to stand by as long as they are there. I only hope I get through without having a final row with Lois.”

He gave a short dry laugh.

“Feeling optimistic about it?”

She said vehemently, “I mustn’t have one-because of Ellie. I keep telling myself that. You know, Antony, I’m not letting myself really hate her, but I could.”

“You’re putting over a pretty good imitation, darling.”

She looked at him, her eyes sombre, all the light gone out of them, her brows a black straight line.

“I’ve thought about it a lot. You can hate in such a lot of different ways. I think it’s all right to hate with your mind. Because what your mind hates isn’t people-it’s the things which are really hateful-the things everybody ought to hate. That’s all right, but when you begin to hate with your emotions it’s dangerous, because they swing you off your balance and the hating carries you away. You don’t know where it’s going to take you, or what it’s going to make you do. I’m trying very hard only to hate the things that Lois does, but sometimes-I’m afraid.”

Antony got up. She had moved him more deeply than he cared to show. He brought her half a dozen books, and when she had taken them he put both hands on her shoulders and shook her a little.

“You’re a stupid child, but you mean well. Stick to it! It won’t do Ellie any particular good if you pour oil on the troubled embers.”

She laughed, releasing the happiness she always felt when he touched her. Far below the words they used, the current ran between them smooth and strong. She said in a young voice,

“I don’t want to have a row.”