Latter End

CHAPTER 32

Julia had a brief, exasperating interview with Mrs. Maniple. If she expected to find her at all cast down she was mistaken. Coming back to her own domain to find “that Gladys Marsh” sitting on her kitchen table, Mrs. Maniple had, to use her own expression, “set her to rights.” For all her impudence, Gladys met her match. She retired with impertinence upon her tongue, it is true, but quite in a hurry. Polly, silent and quaking, was set to scrub vegetables in the scullery, the door into the kitchen being then shut so firmly as to suggest a bang.

Julia was received in an extremely lofty manner which put her back again to somewhere about five years old. “Manny, what’s happened?”

“I’m making a cake, Miss Julia.”

“Manny! I mean in the study. Please tell me.” Mrs. Maniple looked over the top of her head. “There’s nothing to tell that I know about. I went in, and I come out. I told them what you made such a point of their being told, and what good it’s going to do them or anyone else, I don’t know. But there it is-you can’t say I’ve kept anything back. And the stout policeman, he said to stay on the premises in case I was wanted. I could have told him it wasn’t any hardship to me, seeing I’m on them all the time, and have been for more than fifty years if it wasn’t for church of a Sunday, and down into the village, and once in a way into Crampton, but I wouldn’t demean myself. I come out, and if the lunch is spoilt it won’t be my fault. And I’ll thank you to let me have my kitchen to myself, Miss Julia.”

It was some time later that she met Jimmy Latter coming in from the garden.

“They want to see me again,” he said.

“The police?”

He nodded.

A sharp fear pricked Julia. They couldn’t be going to arrest him-or could they? In this nightmare world there were no landmarks. It stretched all round them with no way of escape. Any path might dissolve beneath your foot, any bridge might crumble, any word or any action might precipitate disaster. And all the while they were being watched.

Jimmy was saying in a grey, hopeless tone, “I don’t know what they want me for-they’ve asked me everything already.” He went past her with a dragging step.

It was perhaps because Manny had pushed back the years that Julia found herself running out of the house. If they were going to arrest Jimmy, she couldn’t be there, she couldn’t see it. She had to find Antony. It was all quite unreasoning and instinctive.

When the impulse failed she was horribly ashamed of it. It had taken her almost as far as the rose-garden. She stood still and looked around her. It was a lovely morning, the early mist all gone, the air fresh and delicate with the scent of flowers, and a promise of warmth to come. There was not a cloud in the sky. She saw Antony coming towards her and waited for him. Even in the middle of a nightmare Antony was real.

He came up to her, slipped a hand inside her arm, and said,

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know-I’m frightened. They’ve sent for Jimmy again. I thought-” Her voice died away. She caught his hand in a convulsive clasp. “Do you think-they’re going-to arrest him?”

He said quite coolly, “I shouldn’t think so-not at present. But it isn’t the end of all things if they do. Don’t look like that. I expect they only want to ask him some more questions. There’s that damned will-”

“They had him in there for ages about that as soon as they came this morning.”

He began to walk her up and down. There were big bushes of musk rose on either side of the path, full of their early autumn bloom-pink buds and creamy flowers, and a heavenly smell. It didn’t seem real. But Antony was real.

They walked up and down and talked. She told him about Manny, and he said,

“I wonder if it will make any difference.”

That frightened her, because she had been building on it, and because she and Antony had made Manny do it. They had made Manny go and accuse herself, and if it wasn’t going to be any good, then why had they done it? Everything inside her mind seemed to slip. It gave her a dreadful feeling of giddiness. Words went past her without meaning anything.

When she got hold of herself again Antony was saying in a voice with an edge to it,

“He’s got to rouse up. This will has just about put the lid on everything. When he comes out I’m going to tackle him. You’d better stay and lend a hand. Up to now it’s all been ‘poor old Jimmy,’ and the family hushing themselves up and walking round him like a lot of cats on hot bricks. It’s got to stop. Jimmy’s in a damned dangerous position. The sooner he realizes it and begins to put up a bit of a fight, the better.”

“What can he do?”

“He can stop saying Lois didn’t commit suicide every time he opens his mouth.”

Julia turned to look up at him.

“Does it matter what he says?”

“Of course it does! We’ve all been fools. We ought to have backed up the suicide idea for all we were worth. If they’ve let Manny go, it means they’re not taking her confession very seriously. And why? It seems to me there are two reasons. The first is that she hadn’t any possible opportunity of making sure that Lois got the poisoned cup and she would never have chanced Jimmy getting it. The second is they think Jimmy did it. He’s got to be made to realize where he stands. He’s got to rouse up and come out of all this self-accusation about Lois’ death. At the moment he’s giving such an extraordinarily good imitation of guilt and remorse that if it was anyone but Jimmy, I might be carried away by it myself. Look here, Julia, is it possible that the stuff wasn’t in the coffee? Did Lois have anything at dinner-anything at all- that the rest of you didn’t have?”

She shook her head.

“The police have been over every mouthful we ate or drank. The coffee was the only chance-the only thing she had that the rest of us didn’t have too. There was no way out there.”

They had reached the corner of the walk where it came out upon the lawn. Jimmy Latter was coming towards them over the grass. He looked ill and desperately forlorn. When he came up to them he said in a halting voice,

“I don’t know why they wanted to see me. It all goes for nothing.”

Antony had dropped Julia’s arm. Standing back, he seemed to loom up over her and Jimmy, very tall and bleak, brows drawn together in a frown. He said sharply,

“What did they ask you?”

“Something about Min giving me some aspirins.”

“When was that?”

“On Tuesday evening. I hadn’t slept-I felt as if I should go mad if I didn’t sleep. But she wouldn’t give me the morphia-she said it was dangerous. I didn’t care whether it was or not-I only wanted to sleep. But she took it away and gave me the aspirins instead. They didn’t make me sleep.”

Julia felt as if she was standing in ice-cold water. Antony said in a new, cutting voice,

“Minnie had morphia in her cupboard? You talked of it, handled it? Both of you? Do the police know this?”

Jimmy lifted vague, unhappy eyes.

“That girl Gladys Marsh was listening at the door. She told them.”

Antony ’s hand came down hard on his shoulder.

“Then you’ll have to rouse up and fight-if you don’t want to hang.”

The cold came up as high as Julia’s heart. She saw Jimmy’s face twitch. A deep flush came up in it, more distressing than the pallor had been. He said something inarticulate.

Antony went on harshly.

“Good God, Jimmy-can’t you see how you stand? It’s one thing after another. You have a serious breach with your wife, and within forty-eight hours she dies of morphia poisoning. Either she committed suicide, or one of three people poisoned her-Ellie-Minnie-you. No one else could have done it without running the risk of your getting the stuff instead. You keep on saying it can’t be suicide and wanting us to say so too. You come in for a lot of money under Lois’ will. And now you tell me the police have got a witness to the fact that you and Minnie were handling a bottle of morphia on Tuesday night. Wake up, man!”

Jimmy Latter seemed to steady himself. He said quite quietly,

“What can I do?”

Antony took his hand away.

“That’s better! Keep it up! You can stop being so sure it wasn’t suicide, to start with.”

“You said it wasn’t yourself-you said she wouldn’t. I’d give my right hand to be sure about that.”

Antony said, “I’ve been a fool-we all have. We’d better stop, especially you. The other thing you can do is to think- really think-about who shared out that coffee on Wednesday night. Julia took in the tray with two cups on it and put it down on the table. Minnie says they were still there when she came through. She says Lois was putting the sugar in. They both went out on to the terrace. Ellie came in next. She says she didn’t notice the cups. You came in and found her there. Then she went out to call Lois and Minnie. Now, Jimmy, think-think hard! Were those two cups still on the tray?”

Jimmy put up a finger and rubbed his nose.

“I don’t know-I don’t remember. I don’t believe I noticed them-I wasn’t thinking of things like coffee cups.”

“Well, there must have been a time when you began to think about them-at least about your own, because you picked it up and drank the coffee. You did, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I drank it. The cup was on the table by my chair.”

“You remember that. Well, how did it get there? And when did it get there?”

Jimmy shook his head.

“I don’t know. It was there and I drank it.”

“Was it there before the others came in from the terrace?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t go and sit down in my chair till after they all came in.”

“What were you doing?”

“I was over by the paper-table turning over the papers.”

“With your back to the room?”

“Yes-I suppose so.”

Antony said in an exasperated voice,

“Don’t you remember anything?”

“I remember that the coffee was on the table by my chair, and that I drank it. I don’t remember anything else.”

“You mean it was there when you eventually went to your chair and sat down?”

“I suppose it was.”

Antony controlled himself.

“You don’t remember?”

“I don’t remember anything, except that I drank the coffee. It’s no good badgering me. I wasn’t thinking about what was going on-I wasn’t noticing. I was trying to think what I was going to do-”

“Do?”

Jimmy nodded.

“About Lois. We couldn’t go on. I had to think-to make up my mind-”

Antony caught him by the arm.

“For God’s sake don’t say that sort of thing to the police!”

“Well, you asked me. That’s what I was thinking about. I didn’t notice anything until I picked up the cup, so it’s no use worrying me about how it got there.” He paused, ran a hand through his hair, and said with a kind of absent-minded irrelevance, “They’re having the inquest tomorrow afternoon-at the Bull.”