Memento Mori

TEN

‘Is that Mr Godfrey Colston?’ said the man on the telephone.

‘Yes, speaking.’

‘Remember you must die,’ said the man.

‘Dame Lettie is not here,’ he said, being flustered. ‘Who is that speaking?’

‘The message is for you, Mr Colston.’

‘Who is speaking?’

The man had hung up.

Though Godfrey was still tall, he had seemed to shrink during the winter to an extent that an actual tape-measure would perhaps not confirm. His bones were larger than ever; that is to say, they remained the same size as they had been throughout his adult life, but the ligaments between them had gradually shrunk, as they do with advancing age, so that the bones appeared huge-grown. This process had, in Godfrey, increased rapidly in the months between the autumn of Mrs Pettigrew’s joining his household and the March morning when he received the telephone call.

He put down the receiver and walked with short steps into the library. Mrs Pettigrew followed him. She herself was looking healthier and not much older.

‘Who was that on the phone, Godfrey?’ she said.

‘A man… I can’t understand. It should have been for Lettie but he definitely said it was for me. I thought the message —’

‘What did he say?’

‘That thing he says to Lettie. But he said, “Mr Colston, it’s for you, Mr Colston.” I don’t understand…’

‘Look here,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, ‘let’s pull ourselves together, shall we?’

‘Have you got the key of the sideboard on you?’

‘I have,’ said Mabel Pettigrew. ‘Want a drink?’

‘I feel I need a little —’

‘I’ll bring one in to you. Sit down.’

‘A stiff one.’

‘Sit down. There’s a boy.’

She came back, spritely in her black dress and the new white-streaked lock of hair among the very black, sweeping from her brow. Her hair had been cut shorter. She had painted her nails pink and wore two large rings which gave an appearance of opulent ancient majesty to the long wrinkled hand which held Godfrey’s glass of brandy and soda.

‘Thanks,’ said Godfrey, taking the glass. ‘Many thanks.’ He sat back and drank his brandy, looking at her from time to time as if to see what she was going to do and say.

She sat opposite him. She said nothing till he had finished. Then she said, ‘Now, look.’

She said, ‘Now, look. This is all imagination.’

He muttered something about being in charge of his faculties.

‘In that case,’ she said — ‘in that case, have you seen your lawyer yet?’

He muttered something about next week.

‘You have an appointment with him,’ she said, ‘this afternoon.’

‘This afternoon? Who — how …?’

‘I’ve made an appointment for you to see him at three this afternoon.’

‘Not this afternoon,’ said Godfrey. ‘Don’t feel up to it. Draughty office. Next week.’

‘You can take a taxi if you don’t feel up to driving. It’s no distance.’

‘Next week,’ he shouted, for the brandy had restored him. However, the effects wore off. At lunch Charmian said,

‘Is there anything the matter, Godfrey?’

The telephone rang. Godfrey looked up, startled. He said to Mrs Pettigrew, ‘Don’t answer.’

Mrs Pettigrew merely said, ‘I wonder if Mrs Anthony has heard it? I bet she hasn’t.’

Mrs Anthony’s hearing was beginning to fail, and she had obviously not heard the telephone.

Mrs Pettigrew strode out into the hall and lifted the receiver. She came back presently and addressed Charmian.

‘For you,’ she said. ‘The photographer wants to come tomorrow at four.’

‘Very well,’ said Charmian.

‘I shan’t be here, you know, tomorrow afternoon.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Charmian. ‘He does not wish to photograph you. Say that four o’clock will be splendid.’

While Mrs Pettigrew went to give the message, Godfrey said, ‘Another reporter?’

‘No, a photographer.’

‘I don’t like the idea of all these strangers coming to the house. I had a nasty experience this morning. Put him off.’ He rose from his seat and shouted through the door, ‘I say, Mrs Pettigrew, we don’t want him coming here. Put him off, will you?’

‘Too late,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, resuming her place.

Mrs Anthony looked around the door.

‘Was you wanting something?’

‘We did hope,’ said Mrs Pettigrew very loudly, ‘to have our meal without interruptions. However, I have answered the telephone.’

‘Very good of you, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Anthony, and disappeared. Godfrey was still protesting about the photographer. ‘We’ll have to put him off. Too many strangers.’

Charmian said, ‘I shall not be here long, Godfrey.’

‘Come, come,’ said Mrs Pettigrew. ‘You may well last another ten years.

‘Quite,’ said Charmian, ‘and so I have decided to go away to the nursing home in Surrey, after all. I understand the arrangements there are almost perfect. One has every privacy. Oh, how one comes to appreciate privacy.’

Mrs Pettigrew lit a cigarette and slowly blew the smoke in Charmian’s face.

‘No one’s interfering with your privacy,’ Godfrey muttered. ‘And freedom,’ said Charmian. ‘I shall have freedom at the nursing home to entertain whom I please. Photographers, strangers —’

‘There is no need,’ said Godfrey desperately, ‘for you to go away to a home now that you are so much improved.’

Mrs Pettigrew blew more smoke in Charmian’s direction.

‘Besides,’ he said, glancing at Mrs Pettigrew, ‘we can’t afford it.’

Charmian was silent, as one who need not reply. Indeed, her books were bringing in money, and her small capital at least was safe from Mrs Pettigrew. The revival of her novels during the past winter had sharpened her brain. Her memory had improved, and her physical health was better than it had been for years in spite of that attack of bronchitis in January, when a day and a night nurse had been in attendance for a week. However, she still had to move slowly and was prone to kidney trouble.

She looked at Godfrey who was wolfing his rice pudding without, she was sure, noticing what he was eating, and she wondered what was on his mind. She wondered what new torment Mrs Pettigrew was practising upon him. She wondered how much of his past life Mrs Pettigrew had discovered, and why he felt it necessary to hush it up at all such costs. She wondered where her own duty to Godfrey lay —where does one’s duty as a wife reach its limits? She longed to be away in the nursing home in Surrey, and was surprised at this longing of hers, since all her life she had suffered from apprehensions of being in the power of strangers, and Godfrey had always seemed better than the devil she did not know.

‘To move from your home at the age of eighty-seven,’ Godfrey was saying in an almost pleading voice, ‘might kill you. There is no need.’

Mrs Pettigrew, having pressed the bell in vain, said, ‘Oh, Mrs Anthony is quite deaf. She must get an Aid,’ and went to tell Mrs Anthony to fetch her tea and Charmian’s milk.

When she had gone, Godfrey said, ‘I had an unpleasant experience this morning.’

Charmian took refuge in a vague expression. She was terrified lest Godfrey was about to make some embarrassing confession concerning Mrs Pettigrew.

‘Are you listening, Charmian?’ said Godfrey.

‘Yes, oh yes. Anything you like.’

‘There was a telephone call from Lettie’s man.’

‘Poor Lettie. I wonder he isn’t tired of tormenting her.’

‘The call was for me. He said, “The message is for you, Mr Colston.” I am not imagining anything, mind you. I heard it with my ears.’

‘Really? What message?’

‘You know what message,’ he said.

‘Well, I should treat it as it deserves to be treated.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Neither more nor less,’ said Charmian.

‘I’d like to know who the fellow is. I’d like to know why the police haven’t got him. It’s preposterous, when we pay our rates and taxes, to be threatened like that by a stranger.’

‘What did he threaten to do?’ said Charmian. ‘I thought he merely always said —’

‘It’s upsetting,’ said Godfrey. ‘One might easily take a stroke in consequence. If it occurs again I shall write to The Times.’

‘Why not consult Mrs Pettigrew?’ said Charmian. ‘She is a tower of strength.’

Then she felt suddenly sorry for him, huddled among his bones. She left him and climbed the stairs slowly, clinging to the banister, to take her afternoon rest. She considered whether she could bring herself to leave Godfrey in his plight with Mrs Pettigrew. After all, she herself might have been in an awkward situation, if she had not taken care, long before her old age, to destroy all possibly embarrassing documents. She smiled as she looked at her little bureau with its secretive appearance, in which Mrs Pettigrew had found no secret, although Charmian knew she had penetrated behind those locks. But Godfrey, after all, was not a clever man.

In the end Godfrey submitted, and agreed to keep the appointment with his lawyer. Mrs Pettigrew would not absolutely have refused to let him put it off for another day, had she not been frightened by his report of the telephone call. Obviously, his mind was going funny. She had not looked for this. He had better see the lawyer before anyone could say he had been talked into anything.

He got out the car and drove off. About ten minutes later Mrs Pettigrew got a taxi at the end of the street and followed him. She wanted just to make sure he was at the lawyer’s, and she merely intended to drive past the offices to satisfy herself that Godfrey’s car was outside.

His car was not outside. She made the driver take her round Sloane Square. There was still no sign of Godfrey’s car. She got out and went into a café opposite the offices and sat where she could see him arrive. But by quarter to four there was still no sign of his car. It occurred to her that his memory had escaped him while on his way to the lawyer. He had sometimes remarked that his oculist and his chiropodist were in Chelsea. Perhaps he had gone, by mistake, to have his eyes tested or his feet done. She had trusted his faculties; he had always seemed all right until this morning; but after his silly talk this morning about that phone call anything could happen. It was to be remembered he was nearly eighty-eight.

Or was he cunning? Could the phone call have come from the lawyer, perhaps to confirm the appointment, and Godfrey have cancelled it? After all, how could he have suddenly gone crazy like his sister without showing preliminary signs? Possibly he had decided to feign feebleness of mind merely to evade his obligations.

Mrs Pettigrew paid for her coffee, resumed her brown squirrel coat, and set off along the King’s Road. She saw no sign of his car outside the chiropodist. Anyway, he had probably gone home. She glanced up a side turning and thought she saw Godfrey’s car in the blue half-light parked outside a bombed building. Yes indeed, on investigation, it proved to be Godfrey’s Vauxhall.

Mrs Pettigrew looked expertly around her. The houses opposite the bombed building were all occupied and afforded no concealment. The bombed building itself seemed to demand investigation. She walked up the dusty steps on which strangely there stood a collection of grimy milk bottles. The broken door was partly open. She creaked it further open and looked inside. She could see right through, over the decayed brick and plaster, to the windows at the back of the house. She heard a noise as of rustling paper — or could it be rats? She stepped back and stood once more outside the door considering whether and how long she could bear to stand in that desolate doorway and see, without being seen, from which direction Godfrey should return to his car.

Charmian woke at four and sensed the emptiness of the house. Mrs Anthony now went home at two in the afternoons. Both Godfrey and Mrs Pettigrew must be out. Charmian lay listening, to confirm her feeling of being alone in the house. She heard no sound. She rose slowly, tidied herself and, groping for one after another banister rail, descended the stairs. She had reached the first half-landing when the telephone rang. She did not hurry, but it was still ringing when she reached it.

‘Is that Mrs Colston?’

‘Yes, speaking.’

‘Charmian Piper — that’s right, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Are you a reporter?’

‘Remember,’ he said, ‘you must die.’

‘Oh, as to that,’ she said, ‘for the past thirty years and more I have thought of it from time to time. My memory is failing in certain respects. I am gone eighty-six. But somehow I do not forget my death, whenever that will be.’

‘Delighted to hear it,’ he said. ‘Good-bye for now.

‘Good-bye,’ she said. ‘What paper do you represent?’

But he had rung off.

Charmian made her way to the library and cautiously built up the fire which had burnt low. The effort of stooping tired her and she sat for a moment in the big chair. After a while it was tea-time. She thought, for a space, about tea. Then she made her way to the kitchen where the tray had been set by Mrs Anthony in readiness for Mrs Pettigrew to make the tea. But Mrs Pettigrew had gone out. Charmian felt overwhelmed suddenly with trepidation and pleasure. Could she make tea herself? Yes, she would try. The kettle was heavy as she held it under the tap. It was heavier still when it was half-filled with water. It rocked in her hand and her skinny, large-freckled wrist ached and wobbled with the strain. At last she had lifted the kettle safely on to the gas-ring. She had seen Mrs Anthony use the automatic lighter. She tried it but could not make it work. Matches. She looked everywhere for matches but could not find any. She went back to the library and took from a jar one of Godfrey’s home-made tapers. She stooped dangerously and lit the taper at the fire. Then, cautiously, she bore the little quivering flame to the kitchen, holding it in one shaking hand, and holding that hand with her other hand to keep it as steady as possible. At last the gas was lit under the kettle. Charmian put the teapot on the stove to warm. She then sat down in Mrs Anthony’s chair to wait for the kettle to boil. She felt strong and fearless.

When the kettle had boiled she spooned tea into the pot and knew that the difficult part had come. She lifted the kettle a little and tilted its spout over the teapot. She stood as far back as she could. In went the hot water, and though it splashed quite a bit on the stove, she did not get any over her dress or her feet. She bore the teapot to the tray. It wafted to and fro, but she managed to place it down gently after all.

She looked at the hot-water jug. Should she bother with hot water? She had done so well up to now, it would be a pity to make any mistake and have an accident. But she felt strong and fearless. A pot of tea without the hot-water jug beside it was nonsense. She filled the jug, this time splashing her foot a little, but not enough to burn.

When all was set on the tray she was tempted to have her tea in the kitchen there in Mrs Anthony’s chair.

But she thought of her bright fire in the library. She looked at the tray. Plainly she could never carry it. She would take in the tea-things one by one, even if it took half-an-hour.

She did this, resting only once between her journeys. First the teapot, which she placed on the library hearth. Then the hot-water jug. These were the dangerous objects. Cup and saucer; another cup and saucer in case Godfrey or Mrs Pettigrew should return and want tea; the buttered scones; jam; two plates, two knives, and two spoons. Another journey for the plate of Garibaldi biscuits which Charmian loved to dip in her tea. She could well remember, as she looked at them, the fuss about Garibaldi in her childhood, and her father’s eloquent letters to The Times which were read aloud after morning prayers. Three of the Garibaldi biscuits slid off the plate and broke on the floor in the hall. She proceeded with the plate, laid it on a table, and then returned to pick up the broken biscuits, even the crumbs. It would be a pity if anyone said she had been careless. Still, she felt fearless that afternoon. Last of all she went to fetch the tray itself, with its pretty cloth. She stopped to mop up the water she had spilt by the stove. When she had brought everything into the room she closed the door, placed the tray on a low table by her chair and arranged her tea-things neatly upon it. The performance had taken twenty minutes. She dozed with gratitude in her chair for five more minutes, then carefully poured out her tea, splashing very little into the saucer. Even that little she eventually poured back into the cup. All was as usual, save that she was blissfully alone, and the tea was not altogether hot. She started to enjoy her tea.

Mrs Pettigrew stood under the chipped stucco of the porch and looked at her watch. She could not see the dial in the gloom. She walked down the steps and consulted her watch under a lamp-post. It was twenty to five. She turned to resume her station in the bombed porch. She had mounted two steps when, from nowhere, a policeman appeared.

‘Anything you wanted, Madam?’

‘Oh, I’m waiting for a friend.’

He went up the steps and pushing open the creaking door flashed his torch all over the interior, as if expecting her friend to be there. He gave her a curious look and walked away.

Mrs Pettigrew thought, ‘It’s too bad, it really is, me being put in a predicament like this, standing in the cold, questioned by policemen; and I’m nearly seventy-four.’ Something rustled on the ground behind the door. She looked; she could see nothing. But then she felt something, like the stroke of a hand over her instep. She shuffled backwards, and catching the last glimpse of a rat slithering through the railings down the area, screamed.

The policeman crossed over the street towards her, having apparently been watching her from some doorway on the other side.

‘Anything wrong?’ he said.

‘A rat,’ she said, ‘ran across my feet.’

‘I shouldn’t stand here, Madam, please.’

‘I’m waiting for my friend. Go away.

‘What’s your name, Madam?’

She thought he said, ‘What’s your game?’ and it occurred to her, too, that she probably looked years younger than she thought. ‘You can have three guesses,’ she replied pertly.

‘I must ask you to move along, Madam. Where do you live?’

‘Suppose you mind your own business?’

‘Got anyone to look after you?’ he said; and she realized he had not much under-estimated her years, but probably suspected she was dotty.

‘I’m waiting for my friend,’ she said.

The policeman stood uncertainly before her, considering her face, and possibly what to do about her. There was a slight stir behind the door. Mrs Pettigrew jumped nervously. ‘Oh, is that a rat?’

Just then a car door slammed behind the policeman’s bulk.

‘That’s my friend,’ she said, trying to slip past him. ‘Let me pass, please.’

The policeman turned to scrutinize the car. Godfrey was already driving off.

‘Godfrey! Godfrey!’ she called. But he was away.

‘Your friend didn’t stop long,’ he observed.

‘I’ve missed him through you talking to me.

She started off down the steps.

‘Think you’ll get home all right?’ The policeman seemed relieved to see her moving off.

She did not reply but got a taxi at King’s Road, thinking how hard used she was.

Godfrey, on her arrival, was expostulating with Charmian. ‘I say you couldn’t have made the tea and brought it in here. How could you? Mrs Pettigrew brought in your tea. Now think. You’ve been dreaming.’

Charmian turned to Mrs Pettigrew. ‘You have been out all afternoon, haven’t you, Mrs Pettigrew?’

‘Mabel,’ said Mrs Pettigrew.

‘Haven’t you, Mabel? I made my tea myself and brought it in. Godfrey won’t believe me, he’s absurd.’

‘I brought in your tea,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, ‘before I went out for an airing. I must say I feel the need of it these days since Mrs Anthony started leaving early.’

‘You see what I mean?’ said Godfrey to Charmian.

Charmian was silent.

‘A whole long story,’ said Godfrey, ‘about getting up and making your own tea. I knew it was impossible.’

Charmian said, ‘I am getting feeble in mind as well as body, Godfrey. I shall go to the nursing home in Surrey. I am quite decided.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, ‘that would be the best.’

‘There’s no need, my dear, for you to go into a home,’ said Godfrey. ‘No one is suggesting it. All I was saying —’I’m going to bed, Godfrey.’

‘Oh, dear, a supper tray,’ said Mrs Pettigrew.

‘I don’t want supper, thank you,’ said Charmian. ‘I enjoyed my tea.’

Mrs Pettigrew moved towards Charmian as if to take her arm.

‘I can manage quite well, thank you.

‘Come now, don’t get into a tantrum. You must get your beauty sleep for the photographer tomorrow,’ said Mrs Pettigrew.

Charmian made her slow way out of the room and upstairs.

‘See the lawyer?’ said Mrs Pettigrew.

‘It’s damn cold,’ said Godfrey.

‘You saw the solicitor?’

‘No, in fact, he’d been called away on an urgent case. Have to see him some other time. I say I’ll see him tomorrow, Mabel.’

‘Urgent case,’ she said. ‘It was the lawyer you had an appointment with, not the doctor. You’re worse than Charmian.’

‘Yes, yes, Mabel, the lawyer. Don’t let Mrs Anthony hear you.’

‘Mrs Anthony has gone. And, anyway, she’s deaf. Where have you been all afternoon?’

‘Well, I called in,’ he said, ‘at the police.’

‘What?’

‘The police station. Kept me waiting a long time.’

‘Look here, Godfrey, you have no evidence against me, you understand? You need proof. Just you try. What did you tell them? Come on, what did you say?’

‘Can’t remember exact words. Time they did something about it. I said, “My sister has been suffering from this man for over six months,” I said. “Now he has started on me,” I said, “and it’s high time you did something about it,” I said. I said —’

‘Oh, your phone call. Is that all you have to think about? I ask you, Godfrey, is that all …?’

He huddled in his chair. ‘Damn cold,’ he said. ‘Have we got any whisky there?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘we haven’t.’

He silently opened Charmian’s door on his way to bed.

‘Still awake?’ he said in a whisper. ‘Yes,’ she said, waking up.

‘Feeling all right? Want anything?’ ‘Nothing, thank you, Godfrey.’ ‘Don’t go to the nursing home,’ he said in a whisper. ‘Godfrey, I made my own tea this afternoon.’ ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you did. But don’t go —’

‘Godfrey,’ she said. ‘If you will take my advice you will write to Eric. You will make it up with Eric.’

‘Why? What makes you say that?’

But she would not say what made her say this, and he was puzzled by it, for he himself had been thinking of writing to Eric; he was uncertain whether Charmian knew more about him and his plight than he thought, or whether her words represented merely a stray idea.

‘You must promise,’ said Olive Mannering, ‘that this is to be treated as a strictly professional matter.’

‘I promise,’ said Alec Warner.

‘Because,’ said Olive, ‘it’s dangerous stuff, and I got it in strictest confidence. And I wouldn’t tell a soul.’

‘Nor I,’ said Alec.

‘It’s only for purposes of research,’ said Olive.

‘Quite.’

‘How do you make your notes?’ Olive inquired. ‘Because there mustn’t be names mentioned anywhere.’

‘All documents referring to real names are to be destroyed at my death. No one could possibly identify my case-histories.’

‘O.K.,’ said Olive. ‘Well, goodness, he was in a terrible state this afternoon. I was really sorry for him. It’s Mrs Pettigrew, you see.

‘Suspenders and all that lark?’

‘No, oh no. He’s finished with that.’

‘Blackmail.’

‘That’s right. She has apparently discovered a lot about his past life.’

‘The affair with Lisa Brooke.’

‘That and a lot more. Then there was some money scandal at the Colston Breweries which was hushed up at the time. Mrs Pettigrew knows it all. She got at his private papers.

‘Has he been to the police?’

‘No, he’s afraid.’

‘They would protect him. What is he afraid of? Did you ask?’

‘His wife, mostly. He doesn’t want his wife to know. It’s his pride, I think. Of course, I haven’t met her but it sounds to me that she’s always been the religious one, and being famous as an author off and on, she gets all the sympathy for being more sensitive than him.’

Alec Warner wrote in his book.

‘Charmian,’ he remarked, ‘would not be put out by anything she learnt about Godfrey. Now, you say he’s afraid of her knowing?’

‘Yes, he is, really.’

‘Most people,’ he said, ‘would say she was afraid of him. He bullies her.’

‘Well, I’ve only heard his side. He looks pretty bad just now.

‘Did you notice the complexion?’

‘High-coloured. Goodness, he’s lost weight.’

‘Stooping more?’

‘Oh, much more. The stuffing’s knocked out of him. Mrs Pettigrew keeps the whisky locked up.’

Alec made a note. ‘Do him good in the long run,’ he commented. ‘He drank too much for his age. What is he going to do about Mrs Pettigrew?’

‘Well, he pays up. But she keeps demanding more. He hates paying up. And the latest thing, she wants him to make a new will in her favour. He was supposed to be at the lawyer’s today, but he called in on me instead. He thought I might persuade Eric to come and frighten her. He says Eric wouldn’t lose by it. But as you know, Eric feels very bitter about his family, and he’s jealous of his mother, especially since her novels were in print again, and the fact is, Eric is entitled to a certain amount, it’s only a question of time …’

‘Eric,’ said Alec, ‘is not one of us. Go on about Godfrey.’

‘He says he’d like to make it up with Eric. I promised to write to Eric for him, and so I shall, but as I say —’

‘Has Mrs Pettigrew any money of her own?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. You never know with a woman like that, do you? I don’t think she has much, because of something I heard yesterday.’

‘What was that?’

‘Well,’ said Olive, ‘I got the story from Ronald Sidebottome, he called yesterday. I didn’t get it from Godfrey.’

‘What was the story?’ said Alec. ‘You know, Olive, I always pay extra if it entails an extra interview on your part.’

‘O.K.,’ said Olive, ‘keep your hair on. I just wanted you to know this makes another item.’

Alec smiled at her like an uncle.

‘Ronald Sidebottome,’ she said, ‘has finally decided not to contest Lisa Brooke’s will now that Tempest is dead. The case was really Tempest’s idea. He said the whole thing would have been very distasteful. All about Lisa’s marriage with Guy Leet not being consummated. Mrs Pettigrew is awfully angry about the case being withdrawn, because she was working in with the Sidebottomes when Tempest died. And she hasn’t managed to get her hold on Ronald, though she’s been trying hard all winter. Ronald is a very independent type at heart. You don’t know old Ronald. He’s deaf, I admit, but —’

‘I have known Ronald over forty years. How interesting he should strike you as an independent type.’

‘He has a nice way with him on the quiet,’ she said. She had met Ronald Sidebottome while strolling round a picture gallery with her grandfather shortly after Tempest’s death, and had brought the two old men back to supper. ‘But if you’ve known Ronald for forty years, then you don’t want to hear any more from me.

‘My dear, I have known Ronald over forty years but I can’t know him as you do.’

‘He hates Mrs Pettigrew,’ Olive observed with an inward musing smile. ‘She won’t get much of Lisa’s bequest. All she has so far is Lisa’s squirrel coat, that’s all.’

‘Does she think of contesting the will on her own account?’

‘No, she’s been advised her case is too weak. Mrs Brooke paid her adequately all the time; there’s no case. Anyway, I don’t think she has the capital to finance it. She was depending on the Sidebottomes. Of course, under the will, the money goes to her when Guy Leet dies. But he’s telling everyone how fit he feels. So you can be sure Mrs P. is going to get all she can out of poor old Godfrey.’

Alec Warner finished his notes and closed the book. Olive passed him a drink.

‘Poor old Godfrey,’ said Olive. ‘And he was upset by something else, too. He had an anonymous phone call from that man who worries his sister— or at least he thinks he had. It amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?’

Alec Warner opened his notebook again and got his pen from the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘What did the man say?’

‘The same thing. “You are going to die” or something.’

‘Always be exact. Dame Lettie’s man says, “Remember you must die” — was that what Godfrey heard?’

‘I think so,’ she said. ‘This sort of work is very tiring.’

‘I know, my dear. It must be. What time of day did he receive this call?’

‘The morning. That I do know. He told me it was just after the doctor had left Charmian.’

Alec completed his notes and closed his book once more. He said to Olive, ‘Has Guy Leet been informed of the withdrawal of the law-suit?’

‘I don’t know. The decision was only made yesterday afternoon.’

‘Perhaps he does not know yet,’ said Alec. ‘Lisa’s money will make a great difference to a man of Guy’s tastes. He has been feeling the pinch lately.’

‘He can’t have long to live,’ said Olive.

‘Lisa’s money will make his short time pleasanter. I take it this information is not particularly confidential?’

‘No,’ said Olive, ‘only what I told you of Mrs Pettigrew’s hold on Godfrey — that’s confidential.’

Alec Warner went home and wrote a letter to Guy Leet:

Dear Guy — I do not know if I am the first to inform you that neither Ronald Sidebottome nor Mrs Pettigrew are now proceeding with their suit in contest of Lisa’s will.

I offer you my congratulations, and trust you will long enjoy your good fortune.

Forgive me for thus attempting to anticipate an official notification. If I have been successful in being the first to convey this news to you, will you kindly oblige me by taking your pulse and your temperature immediately upon reading this letter, and again one hour afterwards, and again the following morning, and inform me of the same, together with your normal pulse-rate and temperature if you know it?

This will be invaluable for my records. I shall be so much obliged.

Yours, Alec Warner.

P.S. Any additional observations as to your reaction to the good news will of course be much appreciated.

Alec Warner went to post the letter and returned to write up his records. Twice, the telephone rang. The first call was from Godfrey Colston, whose record-card, as it happened, Alec held in his hand.

‘Oh,’ said Godfrey, ‘you’re in.’

‘Yes. Have you been trying to get me?’

‘No,’ said Godfrey. ‘Look here, I want to speak to you. Do you know anyone in the police?’

‘Not well,’ said Alec, ‘since Mortimer retired.’

‘Mortimer’s no good,’ said Godfrey. ‘It’s about these anonymous calls. Mortimer has been looking into them for months. Now the chap has started on me.’

‘I have an hour to spare between nine and ten. Can you come round to the club?’

Alec returned to his notes. The second telephone call came a quarter of an hour later. It was from a man who said, ‘Remember you must die.’

‘Would you mind repeating that?’ said Alec.

The speaker repeated it.

‘Thank you,’ said Alec, and replaced the receiver a fraction before the other had done so.

He got out his own card and made an entry. Then he made a cross-reference to another card which he duly annotated. Finally he wrote a passage in his diary, ending it with the words, ‘Query: mass-hysteria.’

ELEVEN

In the fine new sunshine of April which fell upon her through the window, Emmeline Mortimer adjusted her glasses and smoothed her blouse. She was grateful to be free of her winter jumpers and to wear a blouse and cardigan again.

She decided to sow parsley that morning and perhaps set out the young carnations and the sweet peas. Perhaps Henry would prune the roses. Henry was over the worst, but she must not let him hoe or weed or in any way strain or stoop. She must keep an eye on him without appearing to do so. This evening, when the people had gone he could spray the gooseberries with lime-sulphur in case of mildew and the pears with Bordeaux mixture in case of scab. And the black-currants in case of big bud again. There was so much to be done, and Henry must not overdo it. No, he must not spray the pears for he might overreach and strain himself. The people would certainly exhaust him.

Her hearing was sharp that morning. Henry was moving about briskly upstairs. He was humming. The scent of her hyacinths on the window ledge came in brief irregular waves which she received with a sharp and pleasant pang. She sipped her warm and splendid tea and adjusted the cosy round the pot, keeping it hot for Henry. She touched her glasses into focus and turned to the morning paper.

Henry Mortimer came down in a few moments. His wife turned her head very slightly when he came in and returned to her paper.

He opened the french windows and stood there for a while satisfying his body with the new sun and air and his eyes with his garden. Then he closed the windows and took his place at the table. ‘A bit of hoeing today,’ he said.

She made no immediate objection, for she must bide her time. Not that Henry was touchy or difficult about his angina. It was more a matter of principle and habit; she had always waited her time before opposing any statement of Henry’s.

He gestured with the back of his hand towards the sunny weather. ‘What d’you think of it?’ he said.

She looked up, smiled, and nodded once. Her face was a network of fine wrinkles except where the skin was stretched across her small sharp bones. Her back was straight, her figure neat, and her movements easy. One half of her mind was busy calculating the number of places she would have to set for the people this afternoon. She was four years older than Henry, who had turned seventy at the beginning of February. His first heart attack had followed soon after, and Henry, half-inclined to envisage his doctor as a personification of his illness, had declared himself much improved since the doctor had ceased to pay regular daily visits. He had been allowed up for afternoons, then for whole days. The doctor had bade him not to worry, always to carry his box of tablets, to stick to his diet, and to avoid any exertion. The doctor had told Emmeline to ring him any time if necessary. And then, to Henry’s relief, the doctor had disappeared from the house.

Henry Mortimer, the former Chief Inspector, was long, lean, bald and spritely. At the sides and back of his head his hair grew thick and grey. His eyebrows were thick and black. It would be accurate to say that his nose and lips were thick, his eyes small and his chin receding into his neck. And yet it would be inaccurate to say he was not a handsome man, such being the power of unity when it exists in a face.

He scraped butter sparingly on his toast in deference to the departed doctor, and remarked to his wife, ‘I’ve got these people coming this afternoon.’

She said, ‘There’s another bit about them in the paper today.’ And she held her peace for the meantime about his having to take care not to wear himself out with them; for what was the point of his being retired from the Force if he continued to lay himself out on criminal cases?

He stretched out his hand and she put the paper into it. ‘Hoax Caller Strikes Again,’ he read aloud. Then he read on to himself:

Police are still mystified by continued complaints from a number of elderly people who have been receiving anonymous telephone calls from a male hoax-caller since August last year.

There may be more than one man behind the hoax. Reports on the type of voice vary from ‘very young’, ‘middle-aged’ to ‘elderly’, etc.

The voice invariably warns the victim, ‘You will die tonight.’ The aged victims’ telephones are being tapped by the authorities, and police have requested them to keep the caller in conversation if possible. But this and all other methods of detecting hoax-callers have so far failed, the police admitted yesterday.

It was thought at first that the gang’s activities were confined to the Central London area. But a recent report from former critic Mr Guy Leet, 75, of Stedrost, Surrey, indicates that the net is spreading wider.

Among numerous others previously reported to be recipients of ‘the Call’ are Dame Lettie Colston, O.B.E., 79, pioneer penal reformer, and her sister-in-law Charmian Piper (Mrs Godfrey Colston) the novelist, 85, author of The Seventh Child, etc.

Dame Lettie told reporters yesterday, ‘I am not satisfied that the C.I.D. have taken these incidents seriously enough. I am employing a private agency. I consider it a great pity that flogging has been abolished. This vile creature ought to be taught a lesson.’

Charmian Piper, whose husband Mr Godfrey Colston, 86, former Chairman of Colston Breweries, is also among the victims of the hoax, said yesterday, ‘We are not in the least perturbed by the caller. He is a very civil young man.

A C.I.D. spokesman said everything possible is being done to discover the offender.

Henry Mortimer put down the paper and took the cup his wife was passing him.

‘An extraordinary sort of case,’ she said.

‘Embarrassing for the police,’ he said, ‘poor fellows.’

‘Oh, they’ll get the culprit, won’t they?’

‘I don’t see,’ he said, ‘how they ever can, all evidence considered.’

‘Well, you know the evidence, of course.

‘And considering the evidence,’ he said, ‘in my opinion the offender is Death himself.’

She was not really surprised to hear him say this. She had followed his mind all through its conforming life and late independence, so that nothing he said could surprise her very much. He had lived to see his children cease to take him seriously — his word carried more force in the outside world. Even his older grandchildren, though they loved him, would never now understand his value to others. He knew this; he did not care. Emmeline could never, however, regard Henry as a dear old thing who had taken to developing a philosophy, as other men, on their retirement, might cultivate a hobby. She did not entirely let her children see how she felt, for she liked to please them and seem solid and practical in their eyes. But she trusted Henry, and she could not help doing so.

She let him busy himself in the garden before she sent him indoors to rest. A few more weeks and he would be watching the post for that particular letter from his old friend in the country inviting him to come for a fortnight’s fishing. It seemed miraculous that another spring had begun and that soon Henry would announce, ‘I’ve heard from Harry. The may-fly’s on the river. I’d better be off day after tomorrow.’ Then she would be alone for a while, or perhaps one of the girls would come to stay after Easter and the younger children would roll over and over on the lawn if it was dry enough.

She sowed her parsley, and wondered excitedly what the deputation who were calling to see Henry this afternoon would look like.

The Mortimers’ house at Kingston-on-Thames was not difficult to reach, if one followed Henry’s directions. However, the deputation had found it a difficult place to find. They arrived shaken in nerve and body, half an hour late, in Godfrey’s car and two taxis. In Godfrey’s car, besides Godfrey himself, were Charmian, Dame Lettie and Mrs Pettigrew. The first taxi bore Alec Warner and Dame Lettie’s maid, Gwen. In the second taxi came Janet Sidebottome, that missionary sister of Lisa Brooke; accompanying her were an elderly couple and an aged spinster who were strangers to the rest.

Mrs Pettigrew, spruce and tailor-made, stepped out first. Henry Mortimer came beaming down the path and shook her hand. Godfrey emerged next, and meantime there was a general exit from the two taxis, and a fussy finding and counting of money for the fares.

Charmian, from the back of Godfrey’s car, said, ‘Oh, I have so enjoyed the drive. My first this year. The river is splendid today.’

‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, Godfrey,’ said Dame Lettie who was being helped out. ‘Don’t pull me.’ She had grown stouter and yet more fragile during the past winter. Her sight was failing, and it was obviously difficult for her to find the kerb with her foot. ‘Wait, Godfrey.’

‘We’re late,’ said Godfrey. ‘Charmian, sit still, don’t move till we’ve got Lettie out.’

Mrs Pettigrew took Dame Lettie’s other arm while Henry Mortimer stood holding the door. Lettie yanked her arm away from Mrs Pettigrew, so that her handbag dropped to the pavement and the contents spilled out. The occupants of the taxis rushed to rescue Lettie’s belongings, while Lettie herself drew back into the car and sank with a plump sound into her seat.

Young Gwen, who Dame Lettie had brought as a witness, stood in the gateway and laughed aloud.

Mrs Mortimer came briskly down the path and addressed Gwen. ‘Look lively, young person,’ she said, ‘and help your elders instead of standing there laughing.’

Gwen looked surprised and did not move.

‘Go and pick up your aunt’s belongings,’ said Mrs Mortimer.

Dame Lettie, fearful of losing her maid, called out from the car, ‘I’m not her aunt, Mrs Mortimer. It’s all right, Gwen.’

Mrs Mortimer, who was not normally an irate woman, took Gwen by the shoulders and propelled her over to the little group who were stiffly bending to retrieve the contents of the bag. ‘Let the girl pick them up,’ she said.

Most of the things were, however, by now collected, and while Alec Warner, directed by Henry Mortimer, stooped to fish with his umbrella under the car for Dame Lettie’s spectacle-case, Gwen so far overcame her surprise as to say to Mrs Mortimer, ‘I got nothing to do with you.’

‘All right, Gwen. It’s all right,’ said Dame Lettie from the car.

Mrs Mortimer now kept her peace although it was clear she would have liked to say more to Gwen. She had been troubled, in the first place, by the sight of these infirm and agitated people arriving with such difficulty at her door. Where are their children? she had thought, or their nieces and nephews? Why are they left to their own resources like this?

She edged Gwen aside and reached into the car for Dame Lettie’s arm. At the opposite door Henry Mortimer was reaching for Charmian’s. Mrs Mortimer as she assisted Dame Lettie, hoped he would not strain himself, and said to Dame Lettie, ‘I see you have brought the spring weather.’ As Lettie finally came to rest on the pavement Mrs Mortimer looked up to see Alec Warner’s eyes upon her. She thought: That man is studying me for some reason.

Charmian tottered gaily up the path on Henry Mortimer’s arm. He was telling her he had just read, once more, her novel The Gates of Grandella in its fine new edition.

‘It is over fifty years,’ said Charmian, ‘since I read it.’

‘It captures the period,’ said Mortimer. ‘Oh, it brings everything back. I do recommend you to read it again.’

Charmian slid her eyes flirtatiously towards him — that gesture which the young reporters who came to see her found so enchanting —and said, ‘You are too young, Henry, to remember when the book first came out.’

‘No indeed,’ he said, ‘I was already a police constable. And a constable never forgets.’

‘What a charming house,’ said Charmian, and she caught sight of Godfrey waiting inside the hall, and felt she was, as always when people made a fuss of her, making him sick.

The conference did not start for some time. Emmeline Mortimer consulted in low tones with the ladies of the deputation in the hall, whether they would first like to go ‘upstairs’, or, if the stairs were too much for them, there was a place downstairs, straight through the kitchen, turn right. ‘Charmian,’ said Mrs Pettigrew out loud, ‘come and make yourself comfortable. I’ll take you. Come along.’

Henry Mortimer piled the men’s coats and hats neatly on a chest, and, having shown the way upstairs to the male candidates, ushered the rest of the men into the dining-room where, at the long table, bare except for a vase of shining daffodils and, at the top, a thick file of papers, Gwen was already seated, fuming sulkily to herself.

When Godfrey came in he glanced round at the furnishings with an inquiring air.

‘Is this the right room?’ he said.

Alec Warner thought: He is probably looking for signs of a tea-tray. He probably thinks we are not going to get any tea.

‘Yes, I think this is most suitable,’ said Henry, as one taking him into consultation. ‘Don’t you? We can sit round the table and talk things over before tea.’

‘Oh!’ said Godfrey. Alec Warner congratulated himself.

At last they were settled round the table, the three strangers having been introduced as a Miss Lottinville and a Mr and Mrs Jack Rose. Mrs Mortimer withdrew and the door clicked behind her like a signal for the start of business. The sunlight fell mildly upon the table and the people round it, showing up motes of dust in the air, specks of dust on the clothes of those who wore black, the wrinkled cheeks and hands of the aged, and the thick make-up of Gwen.

Charmian, who was enthroned in the most comfortable chair, spoke first, ‘What a charming room.’

‘It gets the afternoon sun,’ Henry said. ‘Is it too much for anyone? Charmian — another cushion.’

The three strangers looked uneasily at each other, simply because they were strangers and not, like the others, known to each other for forty, fifty years it might be.

Godfrey moved his arm to shoot back his sleeve, and said, ‘This telephone man, Mortimer, I must say, it’s a bit thick —’

‘I have a copy of your statement here, Colston,’ said Henry Mortimer, opening his file. ‘I propose to read each one aloud by turn, and you may add any further comments after I have read it. Does that course meet with approval?’

No one seriously disagreed with that course.

Gwen looked out of the window. Janet Sidebottome fiddled with the electric battery of her elaborate hearing-aid. Mrs Pettigrew laid her arm on the table and her chin on her hand and looked intense. Charmian sat with her heart-shaped face composed beneath her new blue hat. Alec Warner looked carefully at the strangers, first at Mrs Rose, then at Mr Rose and then at Miss Lottinville. Mrs Rose had her eyebrows perpetually raised in resignation, furrowing deep lines into her forehead. Mr Rose held his head sideways; he had enormous shoulders; his large mouth drooped downwards at the same degree of curvature as his chin, cheeks and nose. The Roses must be nearly eighty, perhaps more. Miss Lottinville looked small and slight and angry. The left side of her mouth and her right eye kept twitching simultaneously.

Henry Mortimer’s voice was not too official, but it was firm:

‘. . . just after eleven in the morning … on three separate occasions … It sounded like that of a common man. The tone was menacing. The words on each occasion were …’

‘. . . at various times throughout the day … the first occasion was on 12th March. The words were … The tone was strictly factual… He sounded young, like a Teddy-boy …’

‘… first thing in the morning … every week since the end of August last. It was the voice of a cultured, middle-aged man … the tone is sinister in the extreme…

‘It was the voice of a very civil young man …’ This was Charmian’s account. Godfrey broke in. ‘How could he be a civil young man saying a thing like that? Use your head, Charmian.’

‘He was,’ said Charmian, ‘most civil on all three occasions.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Henry, ‘if I could continue …? Then Charmian can add her comments.’

He finished Charmian’s statement. ‘That is correct,’ said Charmian.

‘How could he be civil?’ said Godfrey.

‘Mr Guy Leet,’ Henry announced, taking up the next paper. ‘Oh, Guy isn’t here, of course —’

‘Guy asked me to say,’ said Alec, ‘we could discuss his case as much as we like so long as we don’t discuss his private life up to 1940.

‘Has to get about on two sticks,’ commented Godfrey.

‘Guy’s account,’ said Henry, ‘is substantially the same as the others, with the most interesting exception that he gets Toll calls from London at between six and seven in the evening when the cheap rate is on. In his opinion the offender is a schoolboy.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Dame Lettie. ‘A middle-aged man.’

‘It is simple,’ said Henry, ‘to trace a Toll call from London to the country. And yet the police have not yet traced any caller to Guy Leet at Stedrost.’

‘Quite,’ said Dame Lettie. ‘The police —’However, we will discuss these factors later,’ said Henry. ‘Next Mr Ronald Sidebottome — Oh, Ronald’s not here either. What’s happened to Ronald, Janet?’

‘He was a youth — a Teddy-boy, as I’ve said,’ Janet Sidebottome replied.

‘Ronald,’ roared Godfrey into her ear. ‘Why hasn’t Ronald turned up? He said he was coming.’

‘Oh, Ronald. Well, he was to call for me. I suppose he forgot. It was most annoying. I waited and then I rang him up but he wasn’t at home. I really can’t answer for Ronald these days. He is never at home.’

Alec Warner took out a small diary and scribbled something in pencil.

‘Ronald’s statement,’ said Mortimer, ‘describes the caller as a man well advanced in years with a cracked and rather shaky voice and a suppliant tone.’

‘There must be something wrong with his phone,’ said Dame Lettie. ‘The man’s voice is strong and sinister. A man of middle years.’

You must remember, Henry, that I have had far more experience of the creature than anyone else.’

‘Yes, Lettie, my dear, I admit you have been greatly tried. Now Miss Lottinville, your statement … “At three o’clock in the morning … A foreigner …”‘

Mrs Mortimer put her head round the door. ‘Tea is ready, Henry, when you are. I have laid it in the breakfast room so that —’

‘In five minutes, Emmeline.’

She disappeared and Godfrey looked yearningly after her. ‘Finally Mr Rose,’ said Henry, ‘“I received the call at my business premises at twelve noon on two days running … the man sounded like an official person … late middle age…”’

‘That sounds accurate,’ said Dame Lettie. ‘Only I would describe the voice as sinister.’

‘Did he have a lisp?’ said Godfrey.

‘Mr Rose has not mentioned a lisp in his statement — Had he a lisp, Mr Rose?’ said Henry.

‘No, no. Like an official. My wife says an army man, but I would say a government chap.’

Everyone spoke at once.

‘Oh no,’ said Janet Sidebottome, ‘he was —’

‘A gang,’ said Dame Lettie, ‘there must be a gang.

Miss Lottinville said: ‘I assure you, Chief Inspector, he is a man of the Orient, I should say.’

Henry waited for a while till the noise subsided. He said to Mr Rose, ‘Are you satisfied with your account as I have read it?’

‘A hundred per cent,’ said Mr Rose.

‘Then let’s continue the discussion after tea,’ said Henry.

Miss Lottinville said: ‘You have not read the statement of this lady on my left.’ The lady on her left was Mrs Pettigrew. ‘I haven’t had any of your phone calls,’ she said. ‘I’ve made no statement.’

Alec Warner wondered, from the vehemence of her tone, if she were lying.

Mrs Mortimer sat with her silver teapot poised at a well-spread table.

‘Come and sit by me,’ she said kindly to Gwen, ‘and you can help to pass the cups.

Gwen lit a cigarette and sat down sideways at the place indicated. ‘Have you been afflicted with these phone calls?’ Emmeline Mortimer asked her.

‘Me? No, I get wrong numbers.’

Mrs Pettigrew said confidentially to Mrs Mortimer: ‘I’ve had no trouble myself from any phone calls. Between ourselves, I think it’s all made up. I don’t believe a word of what they say. They’re trying to draw attention to themselves. Like kids.’

‘What a delightful garden,’ said Charmian.

They were assembled once more in the dining-room where a fire sparkled weakly in the sunlight.

Henry Mortimer said: ‘If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.

Dame Lettie said suddenly and sharply, ‘Who is the man, Henry?’

‘My dear Lettie, I can’t help you there.’

She looked so closely at him, he felt almost that she suspected himself.

‘Lettie thinks you are the man,’ said Alec wickedly.

‘I hardly think,’ said Henry, ‘Lettie would attribute to me such energy and application as the culprit evidently possesses.

‘All we want,’ said Godfrey, ‘is to stop him. And to do that we’ve got to find the man.’

‘I consider,’ said Janet Sidebottome, ‘that what Mr Mortimer was saying just now about resigning ourselves to death is most uplifting and consoling. The religious point of view is too easily forgotten these days, and I thank you, Mr Mortimer.’

‘Why, thank you, Janet. Perhaps “resigning ourselves to death” doesn’t quite convey what I mean. But of course, I don’t attempt to express a specifically religious point of view. My observations were merely confined —’

‘You sound most religious to me,’ said Janet.

‘Thank you, Janet.’

‘Poor young man,’ mused Charmian. ‘He may be lonely, and simply wanting to talk to people and so he rings them up.’

‘The police, of course, are hopeless. Really, Henry, it is time there was a question in the House,’ said Lettie warningly.

‘Considering the fairly wide discrepancies in your various reports, ‘said Henry, ‘the police at one stage in their investigations assumed that not one man but a gang was at work. The police have, however, employed every method of detection known to criminology and science, so far without success. Now, one factor is constant in all your reports. The words, “Remember you must die.” It is, you know, an excellent thing to remember this, for it is nothing more than the truth. To remember one’s death is, in short, a way of life.’

‘To come to the point —’ said Godfrey.

‘Godfrey,’ said Charmian, ‘I am sure everyone is fascinated by what Henry is saying.’

‘Most consoling,’ said Janet Sidebottome. ‘Do continue, Mr Mortimer, with your words.’

‘Ah yes,’ said Miss Lottinville who was also enjoying Henry’s philosophizing.

And Mrs Rose, with her longanimous eyes and resignation, nodded her head in sad, wise and ancient assent.

‘Have you considered,’ said Alec Warner, ‘the possibility of mass hysteria?’

‘Making telephones ring?’ said Mr Rose, spreading wide his palms.

‘Absurd!’ said Dame Lettie. ‘We can eliminate mass hysteria.’

‘Oh no,’ said Mortimer. ‘In a case like this we can’t eliminate any possibility. That is just our difficulty.’

‘Tell me,’ Alec asked the Chief Inspector with his piercing look, ‘would you describe yourself as a mystic?’

‘Never having previously been called upon to describe myself, I really couldn’t say.’

‘The question is,’ said Mr Rose, ‘who’s the fellow that’s trying to put the fear of God in us?’

‘And what’s the motive?’ said Godfrey. ‘That’s what I ask.’

‘The question of motive may prove to be different in each case, to judge by the evidence before us,’ said Mortimer. ‘I think we must all realize that the offender is, in each case, whoever we think he is ourselves.’

‘Did you tell them,’ said Emmeline Mortimer when they had gone, ‘what your theory is?’

‘No — oh no, my dear. I treated them to brief philosophical sermons instead. It helped to pass the time.’

‘Did they like your little sermons?’

‘Some of the women did. The young girl seemed less bored than at other times. Lettie objected.’

‘Oh, Lettie.’

‘She said the whole afternoon had been pointless.’

‘How rude. After my lovely tea.’

‘It was a lovely tea. It was my part that was pointless. I’m afraid it had to be.’

‘How I wish,’ said Emmeline, ‘you could have told them outright, “Death is the culprit.” And I should like to have seen their faces.’

‘It’s a personal opinion. One can’t make up one’s mind for others.’

‘Can they make up their own minds, then?’

‘No. I think I’ll go and spray the pears.

‘Now, darling,’ said Mrs Mortimer. ‘You know you’ve done enough for one day. I’m sure it’s been quite enough for me.’

‘The trouble with these people,’ he said, ‘they think that the C.I.D. are God, understanding all mysteries and all knowledge. Whereas we are only policemen.’

He went to read by the fire in the dining-room. Before he sat down he straightened the chairs round the table and put back some of them in their places round the wall. He emptied the ash-trays into the fire. He looked out of the window at the half-light and hoped for a fine summer. He had not mentioned it to Emmeline yet, but this summer he hoped to sail that yacht of his for which, in his retirement, he had sacrificed a car. Already he could feel the bright wet wind about his ears.

The telephone rang. He went out to the hall, answered it. Within a few seconds he put down the receiver. How strange, he thought, that mine is always a woman. Everyone else gets a man on the line to them, but mine is always this woman, gentle-spoken and respectful.

TWELVE

‘I told him straight what I feel,’ said Mrs Pettigrew to Mrs Anthony. ‘I said, “It’s all a lot of rot, Inspector. It started with Dame Lettie Colston, then Godfrey feels he’s got to be in the picture and one sets off the other. To my dying day I’ll swear it’s all make up.” But he didn’t side with me. Why? I’ll tell you why. He’d be put out of Dame Lettie’s will if he agreed it was all her imagination.’

Mrs Pettigrew, though she had in fact, one quiet afternoon, received the anonymous telephone call, had chosen to forget it. She possessed a strong faculty for simply refusing to admit an unpleasant situation, and going quite blank where it was concerned. If, for instance, you had asked her whether, eighteen years before, she had undergone a face-lifting operation, she would have denied it, and believed the denial, and moreover would have supplied gratuitously, as a special joke, a list of people who had ‘really’ had their faces lifted or undergone other rejuvenating operations.

And so Mrs Pettigrew continued to persuade herself she had not heard the anonymous voice on the telephone; it was not a plain ignoring of the incident; she omitted even to keep a mental record of it, but put down the receiver and blacked it out from her life.

‘A lot of imagination all round,’ said Mrs Pettigrew.

‘Ah well,’ said Mrs Anthony, ‘we all got to go some day. But I shouldn’t like to have that chap on the phone to me. I’d give him something to get along with.’

‘There isn’t any chap,’ said Mrs Pettigrew. ‘You hear what I say?’

‘I got my deaf-aid in, and I hear what you say. No need to raise your voice.’

Mrs Pettigrew was overcome by that guilt she felt whenever she had lowered herself to the intimacy of shouting at Mrs Anthony, forgetting to play her cards. By way of recompense she left the kitchen aloofly, and went to find Godfrey.

He was sitting by the fire, maddeningly, opposite Charmian.

‘Please, Godfrey, let us not have all this over again. Ah, it’s you, Mrs Pettigrew,’ said Charmian.

‘She is not Taylor,’ said Godfrey, with automatic irritability.

‘I know it,’ said Charmian.

He looked unhappily at Mrs Pettigrew. There was really no consolation left in the house for a man. He was all the more disturbed by Charmian’s increasing composure. It was not that he wished his wife any harm, but his spirits always seemed to wither in proportion as hers bloomed. He thought, looking at his wife, It is only for a time, this can’t last, she will have a relapse. He felt he was an old man in difficulties. Mrs Pettigrew had made another appointment for his lawyer that afternoon. He did not feel up to keeping it. He supposed he would have to see the lawyer some time, but that long fruitless going to and from Kingston yesterday had left him exhausted. And that madman Mortimer, making a fuss of Charmian — everyone making a fuss of Charmian, as if she were still somebody and not a helpless old invalid — roused within him all those resentments of the long past; so that, having made the mistake of regarding Charmian’s every success as his failure, now, by force of habit, he could never feel really well unless she were ill.

Charmian was saying to him, ‘We did talk over the whole matter quite a lot last night. Let us leave the subject alone. I for one like Henry Mortimer, and I thoroughly enjoyed the drive.’

Mrs Pettigrew, too, was alarmed by this mental recovery of Charmian’s, induced apparently by the revival of those old books. In reality it was also, in part, due to an effortful will to resist Mrs Pettigrew’s bullying. Mrs Pettigrew felt that there might now even be some chance of Charmian’s outliving Godfrey. Charmian should be in a home; and would be, if Godfrey were not weak-minded about it, trying to play on his wife’s sympathy and keep her with him.

Godfrey looked across the fireplace at his ally and enemy, Charmian, and at Mabel Pettigrew, whom he so tremendously feared, sitting between them, and decided to give Mrs Pettigrew the slip again this afternoon and go to see Olive.

Mabel Pettigrew thought: I can read him like a book. She had not read a book for over forty years, could never concentrate on reading, but this nevertheless was her thought; and she decided to accompany him to the solicitor.

After Charmian had gone to lie down after lunch Mrs Pettigrew came in to her.

Charmian opened her eyes. ‘I didn’t hear you knock, Mabel,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Mrs Pettigrew. ‘You didn’t.’

‘Always knock,’ said Charmian.

‘Mrs Anthony,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, ‘is getting too forgetful to manage the cooking. She has left out the salt three days running, as you know. There was a caterpillar cooked in yesterday’s greens. She put all that garlic in the sweetbread casserole — said she thought it was celery, well, I mean to say. She boiled Godfrey’s egg hard this morning, he couldn’t touch it.’

‘Keep an eye on her, Mabel. You have little else to do.’

Mrs Pettigrew’s feelings — those which prompted every action —rose to her throat at this independent attitude which Charmian had been gradually accumulating all winter. Mrs Pettigrew’s breath, as she stood over Charmian’s bed, became short and agitated.

‘Sit down, Mabel. You are out of breath,’ said Charmian.

Mrs Pettigrew sat down. Charmian watched her, trying to sort out in her mind this new complaint about Mrs Anthony, and what it could signify, apart from its plain meaning. Her thoughts drifted once more, for reassurance, to the nursing home in Surrey, in the same way that, as she knew, Jean Taylor’s thoughts would, in the past, rest on her savings in the bank when from time to time her life with the Colstons had become too oppressive.

Mrs Pettigrew’s breathing was worse. She had been suddenly caught in a gust of resentment which had been stirring within her since Charmian’s partial recovery. She felt a sense of great injustice at the evident power Charmian exerted over Godfrey — so strong that she did not seem conscious of it. It was a spell of her personality so mighty that, for fear of his miserable infidelities in Spain and Belgium with Lisa Brooke coming to Charmian’s knowledge, he had been, so far, docile before all the threats and deprivations of the past winter. Mabel Pettigrew had only needed to indicate that she was in possession of the full correspondence between Lisa Brooke and Godfrey, dated 1902, 1903, and 1904, and his one immediate idea had been:

Charmian must not know. Tell Eric, tell everyone. But keep it from Charmian.

Mrs Pettigrew was aware that in this he was not displaying any special consideration for Charmian’s feelings. That might have been endurable. The real reason was beyond her grasp, yet undeniably present. It was real enough to render Godfrey limp in her hands. What he seemed to fear was some superiority in Charmian and the loss of his pride before her. And, though Mabel Pettigrew indeed was doing better out of Godfrey than she had hoped, she sat in Charmian’s bedroom and overwhelmingly resented the inexplicableness of Charmian’s power.

‘You seem to have a mild touch of asthma,’ Charmian remarked. ‘Better keep as still and quiet as possible and presently I will get Godfrey to ring the doctor.’

Mrs Pettigrew was thinking of that business scandal at Colston Breweries which had been hushed up at the time, the documents of which she now had in her keeping. Now, if Godfrey had been really frightened about her possible disclosure of these documents she would have understood him. But all he worried about was those letters between himself and Lisa Brooke. Charmian must not know. His pride before Charmian, Charmian, an old wreck like Charmian.

Charmian stretched her hand towards the bell-push by her bed. ‘Godfrey will ring for the doctor,’ she said.

‘No, no, I’m better now,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, gradually controlling her breath, for she had the self-discipline of a nun where business was concerned. ‘It was just a little turn. Mrs Anthony is such a worry.’

Charmian leaned back on her pillow and moved her hand wearily over her heart-shaped face. ‘Have you had asthma before, Mabel?’

‘It is not asthma. It’s just a little chest trouble.’ Mrs Pettigrew’s face was less alarmingly red. She breathed slowly and deeply after her ordeal, and lit a cigarette.

‘You have great courage, Mabel,’ Charmian observed, ‘if only you would employ it to the proper ends. I envy your courage. I sometimes feel helpless without my friends around me. Very few of my friends come to see me now. It isn’t their fault. Godfrey did not seem to want them after my stroke. When my friends were around me every day, what courage I had!’

‘You would be better off in the home,’ said Mabel Pettigrew. ‘You know you would. Lots of company, your friends might even come and visit you sometimes.’

‘It’s true I would prefer to be in the nursing home. However,’ said Charmian, ‘Godfrey needs me here.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Mrs Pettigrew.

Charmian wondered, once more, which of Godfrey’s secrets the woman could have got hold of. The Colston Brewery affair? Or merely one or more of his numerous infidelities? Of course, one was always obliged to appear to know nothing where a man like Godfrey was concerned. His pride. It had been the only way to live reasonably with him. For a moment, she was tempted to go to Godfrey and say, ‘There is nothing you can tell me about your past life which would move me in the slightest. I know most of your supposed secrets, and what I do not know would still not surprise me.’

But she did not possess the courage to do this. He might — he would certainly — turn on her. He would never forgive her for having played this game, for over fifty years, of knowing nothing while at the same time knowing everything, as one might be ‘not at home’ while actually in the house. What new tyranny might he not exert to punish her knowledge?

And the simple idea of facing each other with such a statement between them was terrible. This should have been done years ago. And yet, it should not have been done. There was altogether too much candour in married life; it was an indelicate modern idea, and frequently led to upsets in a household, if not divorce …

And she, too, had her pride to consider. Her mind munched over the humiliations she had received from Godfrey. Never had she won a little praise or recognition but she had paid for it by some bitter, petty, disruptive action of Godfrey’s.

But I could sacrifice my pride, she thought, in order to release him. It is a matter of courage. The most I can do is to stay on here at home with him. She envied Mrs Pettigrew her courage.

Mrs Pettigrew rose and came to stand by her bed.

‘You’re more of a hindrance to Godfrey here than you would be in a nursing home. It’s ridiculous to say he needs you.’

‘I shall not go,’ said Charmian. ‘Now I think I must have my nap. What is the time?’

‘I came,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, ‘to tell you about Mrs Anthony. She can’t do the cooking any more, we shall all have stomach trouble. I will have to take over the meals. And besides, this cold supper she leaves for us at night is not satisfactory. It doesn’t agree with me, going to bed on a cold supper. I will have to take over the cooking.’

‘That is very good of you,’ murmured Charmian, calculating meanwhile what was behind all this, since, with Mrs Pettigrew, something always seemed to be behind her statements.

‘Otherwise,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, ‘one of us might be poisoned.’

‘Well, really!’ said Charmian.

‘Poisoned,’ said Mrs Pettigrew. ‘Poison is so easy. Think it over.’

She left the room.

Charmian was frightened, and at the same time a long-latent faculty stirred in her mind to assess the cheap melodrama of Mrs Pettigrew’s words. But Charmian’s fear predominated in the end, and, as she lay fearfully in her bed, she knew she would not put it past Mrs Pettigrew to poison her once she took control of the food. A poisoning was not easy to accomplish, but still Mrs Pettigrew might know of undetectable methods. Charmian thought on and on, and frightened herself more and more. Another woman, she thought, would be able to go to her husband and say ‘Our housekeeper is threatening to poison me’ — or to insist on an investigation by her friends, her son, the doctor. But Godfrey was craven, Eric was hostile, the doctor would attempt to soothe her down, assuming she had started to entertain those wild suspicions of the aged.

Then it is settled, Charmian thought. This is the point where my long, long duty to Godfrey comes to an end. I shall go to the nursing home.

The decision gave her a sense of latitude and relief. In the nursing home she could be a real person again, as she had been yesterday with Henry Mortimer, instead of a frightened invalid. She needed respect and attention. Perhaps she would have visitors. There, she could invite those whom she was prevented from seeing here at home through Godfrey’s rudeness. The nursing home was not far from Stedrost. Perhaps Guy Leet would be driven over to see her. Guy Leet was amusing.

She heard the front door slam and then the slam of the car door. Mrs Pettigrew’s footsteps followed immediately, clicking towards the front door. Charmian heard her open the door and call, ‘Godfrey, I’m coming with you. Wait.’ But the car had already started and Godfrey was gone. Mrs Pettigrew slammed the door shut once more and went to her room. A few minutes later she had descended the stairs and left the house.

Mrs Pettigrew had informed Godfrey of her intention to accompany him to his solicitor. When she found he had once more given her the slip she felt pretty sure he had no intention of keeping his appointment with the lawyer. Within a few moments she had put on her hat and coat and marched up the road to find a taxi.

First of all she went to the bombed building off the King’s Road. There, sure enough, was Godfrey’s car. There was, however, no sign of Godfrey. She ordered the taxi to drive round the block in a hope that she would catch Godfrey before he reached his destination, wherever that might be.

Godfrey, meanwhile, was on his way to Olive’s flat, about seven minutes’ walk for him at his fastest pace. He turned into Tite Street, stooping his head still more than his natural stoop, against a sudden shower of rain. He hoped Olive would have tea ready. He hoped Olive would not have any other visitors today, obliging him to inquire, in that foolish way, for the address of her grandfather. Olive would be in a listening mood, she was a good consoling listener. She would probably have heard from Eric. Godfrey wondered what she had heard from Eric. Olive had promised to write and tell Eric, in strictest confidence, about his difficulties with Mrs Pettigrew. She had promised to appeal to Eric. Eric would no doubt be only too glad to be on good terms with his parents again. Eric had been a disappointment, but now was his chance to prove himself. Eric would put everything right, and no doubt Olive had heard from Eric.

He reached the area gate and pushed it open. There was an unusual amount of litter down in the area. The dust-bin was crammed full; old shoes, handbags, and belts were sticking out beneath the lid. On the area pavement were scattered newspapers, tins, rusty kitchen utensils, empty bottles of numerous shapes, and a battered lampshade. Godfrey thought: Olive must be having a spring-clean, turning out all her things. Very wasteful and untidy. Always complaining of being hard up; no wonder.

No one answered his ring. He walked over to the barred window of Olive’s front room and it was then he noticed the curtains had gone. He peered in. The room was quite bare. Must he not have come to the wrong house? He walked up the steps and looked carefully at the number. He walked down the steps again and peered once more into the empty room. Olive had definitely departed. And on realizing this his first thought was to leave the vicinity of the house as quickly as possible. There was something mysterious about this. Godfrey could not stand anything mysterious. Olive might be involved in some scandal. She had said nothing, when he had seen her last week, about moving from her flat. As he walked away down Tite Street he feared more and more some swift, sudden scandal, and his one desire was to forget all knowledge of Olive.

He cut along the King’s Road, bought an afternoon paper, and turned up the side street where his car was waiting. Before he reached it a taxi drew up beside him. Mrs Pettigrew got out.

‘Oh, there you are,’ she said.

He stood with the newspaper hanging from his hand while she paid the taxi, bewildered by guilt. This guilt was the main sensation Mrs Pettigrew touched off in him. No thought, word or deed of his life had roused in him any feeling resembling the guilt he experienced as he stood waiting for Mrs Pettigrew to pay the taxi and turn to ask him, ‘Where have you been?’

‘Buying the paper,’ said Godfrey.

‘Did you have to park your car here in order to walk down the road to buy the paper?’

‘Wanted a walk,’ said Godfrey. ‘Bit stiff.’

‘You’ll be late for your appointment. Hurry up. I told you to wait for me. Why did you go off without me?’

‘I forgot,’ said Godfrey as he climbed into the car, ‘that you wanted to come. I was in a hurry to get to the lawyer’s.’ She went round to the other side of the car and got in.

‘You might have opened the door for me,’ she said.

Godfrey did not at first understand what she meant, for he had long since started to use his advanced years as an excuse to omit the mannerly conformities of his younger days, and he was now automatically rude in his gestures as if by long-earned right. He sensed some new frightful upheaval of his habits behind her words, as he drove off fitfully towards Sloane Square.

She lifted the paper and glanced at the front page.

‘Ronald,’ she said. ‘Here’s Ronald Sidebottome in the paper. His photo; he’s got married. No, don’t look. Watch where you’re going, we’ll have an accident. Mind out — there’s the red light.’

They were jerked forward roughly as Godfrey braked for the red light.

‘Oh, do be careful,’ she said, ‘and a little more considerate.’ He looked down at her lap where the paper was lying. Ronald’s flabby face beamed up at him. He stood with Olive simpering on his arm, under the headline, ‘Widower, 79, weds girl, 24’.

‘Olive Mannering!’ Godfrey let out.

‘Oh, you know her?’

‘Granddaughter of my friend the poet,’ Godfrey said.

‘The lights, Godfrey,’ said Mrs Pettigrew in a tired tone.

He shot the car forward.

‘“Wealthy ex-stockbroker …”‘ Mrs Pettigrew read out. ‘She knows what she’s doing, all right. “Miss Mannering … film extra and B.B.C. actress … now given up her flat in Tite Street, Chelsea …”‘ The jig-saw began to piece itself together in Mrs Pettigrew’s mind.

As heart is said to speak unto heart, Mrs Pettigrew looked at Olive’s photograph and understood where Godfrey had been wont to go on those afternoons when he had parked his car outside the bombed building.

‘Of course, Godfrey, this will be a blow to you,’ she said.

He thought: God, she knows everything. He went up to his solicitor’s offices like a lamb, while Mrs Pettigrew waited in the car below. He did not even attempt to circumvent her wishes, as he had half-hoped to do when finally forced to the alteration of his will. He did not now even think of the idea he had previously dabbled with, of confiding the facts to his lawyer. Mabel Pettigrew knew everything. She could tell Charmian everything. He instructed a new will to be drawn up leaving the minimum required by law to his son, and the bulk to Mrs Pettigrew, and even most of Charmian’s share, should she outlive him, in trust for Mrs Pettigrew.

‘Now,’ said the solicitor. ‘This might take some time to prepare, of course.’

‘It must be done right away,’ said Godfrey.

‘Would you not like some time, Mr Colston, to think it over? Mrs Pettigrew is your housekeeper?’

‘It must be done right away,’ said Godfrey. ‘No delay, if you please.’

‘Disgusting,’ said Godfrey later that evening to Charmian. ‘A man going on eighty marrying a girl of twenty-four. Absolutely disgusting. And he’s deaf as a post.’

‘Godfrey,’ she said, ‘I am going to the nursing home on Sunday morning. I have made arrangements with the doctor and the bank. Universal Aunts are coming tomorrow to pack my things. Janet Sidebottome will accompany me. I do not wish to put you out, Godfrey. It might distress you to take me yourself. I am afraid I simply can’t stand these anonymous telephone calls any longer. They will bring me speedily to my grave. I must be protected from the sight of the telephone. I have spoken to Lettie, and she approves my decision. Mrs Pettigrew thinks, too, it will be the best course — don’t you, Mabel? Everyone is agreed. I must say, I feel most sad. However, it had to be eventually. You yourself have often said —’

‘But you don’t mind the telephone calls!’ he shouted. ‘You don’t care about them at all.’

‘Oh yes, I do, I do. I can’t put up with them any longer.’

‘She does mind them,’ said Mrs Pettigrew.

‘But you don’t need to answer the phone,’ he shouted.

‘Oh but every time the telephone rings I feel it must be him.’ Charmian gave a little shudder.

‘She feels so bad about the telephone,’ said Mrs Pettigrew.

He knew he could not refute their words.

THIRTEEN

‘What surprised me, I must confess,’ Alec Warner said to Miss Taylor, ‘was that, for a moment or two, I felt positively jealous. Olive, of course, was a friendly type of girl, and most conscientious in giving me all the information she could gather. I shall miss her. But the curious thing was this pang, this envy of Ronald, my first reaction to the news. Not that Olive, at any time, would have been my type.’

‘Did you make a note of your reaction?’

‘Oh, I made a note.’

‘I bet he did,’ thought Miss Taylor.

‘Oh, I made a note. I always record these surprise deviations from my High Churchmanship.’

His ‘High Churchmanship’ was a figure of speech he had adopted from Jean Taylor when, at some buoyant time past, she had applied it to him, merely on account of the two occasions when he had darkened the doors of a church, to observe, with awe and curiosity, a vicar of his acquaintance conducting the service of evensong all by himself in the empty building — Alec’s awe and curiosity being directed exclusively towards the human specimen with his prayer book and splendid persistence in vital habits.

‘Granny Green has gone,’ said Miss Taylor.

‘Ah yes, I noticed a stranger occupying her bed. Now what was Granny Green?’

‘Arterio-sclerosis. It affected her heart in the end.’

‘Yes, well, it is said we are all as old as our arteries. Did she make a good death?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You were asleep at the time,’ he said.

‘No, I was awake. There was a certain amount of fuss.’

‘She didn’t have a peaceful end?’

‘No, not peaceful for us.’

‘I always like to know,’ he said, ‘whether a death is a good one or bad one. Do keep a look-out.’

For a moment she utterly hated him. ‘A good death,’ she said, ‘doesn’t reside in the dignity of bearing but in the disposition of the soul.’

Suddenly he hated her. ‘Prove it,’ he said.

‘Disprove it,’ she said wearily.

‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘I’ve forgotten to ask how you are keeping. How are you keeping, Jean?’

‘A little stronger, but the cataract is a trouble.’

‘Charmian is gone to the nursing home in Surrey at last. Would you not like to join her there?’

‘Godfrey is left alone with Mrs Pettigrew, then.’

‘You would like to be with Charmian, surely.’

‘No,’ she said.

He looked round the ward and up to the noisy end. There the senile cases were grouped round the television and so were less noisy than usual, but still emitting, from time to time, a variety of dental and guttural sounds and sometimes a whole, well-intentioned speech. Those who were mobile would occasionally leave their chairs and wander up the ward, waving or talking to the bedridden. One tall patient poured herself a beaker of water and began to raise it to her lips, but forgetting the purpose before the act was accomplished, poured the water into another jug; then she turned the beaker upside down on her head so that a little water, left in the beaker, splashed over her forehead. She seemed pleased with this feat. On the whole, the geriatrics were keen on putting objects on their heads.

‘Interesting,’ said Alec. ‘The interesting thing is, senility is somewhat different from insanity. The actions of these people, for instance, differ in many particulars from those of the aged people whom I visit at St Aubrey’s Home in Folkestone. There, some of the patients have been mad most of their lives. In some ways they are more coherent, much more methodical than those who merely turn strange in their old age. The really mad old people have had more practice in irrational behaviour, of course. But all this,’ said Alec, ‘cannot be of much interest to you. Unless one is interested in gerontology, I cannot see that their company, day and night, can be pleasant to you.

‘Perhaps I’m a gerontologist at heart. They are harmless. I don’t mind them, now. Alec, I am thinking of poor Godfrey Colston. What can have possessed Charmian to go away just when her health was improving?’

‘The anonymous telephone calls were worrying her, she said.’

‘Oh no. Mrs Pettigrew must have forced her to go. And Mrs Pettigrew,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘will most certainly make Godfrey’s remaining years a misery.’

He reached for his hat. ‘Think over,’ he said, ‘the idea of joining Charmian in the nursing home. It would so please me if you would.’

‘Now Alec, I can’t leave my old friends. Miss Valvona, Miss Duncan —’

‘And this?’ He nodded towards the senile group.

‘That is our memento mori. Like your telephone calls.’

‘Good-bye then, Jean.’

‘Oh Alec, I wish you wouldn’t leave just yet. I have something important to say, if you will just sit still for a moment and let me get my thoughts in order.’

He sat still. She leaned back on her pillow, removed her glasses, and dabbed lightly with her handkerchief at one eye which was inflamed. She replaced her glasses.

‘I shall have to think,’ she said. ‘It involves a question of dates. I have them in my memory but I shall have to think for a few minutes. While you are waiting you may care to speak to the new patient in Granny Green’s bed. Her name is Mrs Bean. She is ninety-nine and will be a hundred in September.’

He went to speak to Mrs Bean, tiny among the pillows, her small toothless mouth open like an ‘O’, her skin stretched thin and white over her bones, her huge eye-sockets and eyes in a fixed infant-like stare, and her sparse white hair short and straggling over her brow. Her head nodded faintly and continuously. If she had not been in a female ward, Alec thought, one might not have been sure whether she was a very old man or a woman. She reminded him of one of his mental patients at Folkestone, an old man who, since 1918, had believed he was God. Alec spoke to Mrs Bean and received a civil and coherent answer which came, as it seemed, from a primitive reed instrument in her breast-bone, so thin and high did she breathe, in and out, when answering him.

He stepped over to Miss Valvona, paid his respects, and heard from her his horoscope for the day. He nodded to Mrs Reewes-Duncan, and waved to various other occupants of the ward familiar to him. One of the geriatric set came and shook hands with him and said she was going to the bank, and, having departed from the ward, was escorted back by a nurse who said to her, ‘Now you’ve been to the bank.’

Alec carefully watched the patient’s happy progress back to the geriatric end, reflected on the frequency with which the senile babble about the bank, and returned to Jean Taylor who said:

‘You must inform Godfrey Colston that Charmian was unfaithful to him repeatedly from the year after her marriage. That is starting in the summer of 1902 when Charmian had a villa on Lake Geneva, and throughout that year, when Charmian used often to visit the man at his flat in Hyde Park Gate. And this went on throughout 1903 and 1904 and also, I recall, when Charmian was up in Perthshire in the autumn — Godfrey could not leave London at the time. There were also occasions at Biarritz and Torquay. Have you got that, Alec? Her lover was Guy Leet. She continued to see him at his flat in Hyde Park Gate through most of 1905 — up to September. Listen carefully, Alec, you are to give Godfrey Colston all the facts. Guy Leet. So she gave him up in the September of 1907, I well remember, I was with them in the Dolomites, and Charmian became ill then. You must remember Guy is ten years younger than Charmian. Then in 1926 the affair began again, and it went on for about eighteen months. That was about the time I met you, Alec. Guy wanted her to leave Godfrey, and I know she thought of doing so quite often. But then she knew Guy had so many other women — Lisa Brooke, of course, and so on. Charmian couldn’t really trust Guy. Charmian missed him, he did so amuse her. After that she entered the Church. Now I want you to give these facts to Godfrey. He has never suspected Charmian, she managed everything so well. Have you got a pencil on you, Alec? Better write it down. First occasion, 1902 —’You know, Jean,’ he said, ‘this might be serious for poor Godfrey and Charmian. I mean, I can’t think you really want to betray Charmian after all these years.

‘I don’t want to,’ she said, ‘but I will, Alec.’

‘Godfrey probably knows already,’ he said.

‘The only people who know about this are Charmian, Guy, and myself. Lisa Brooke knew, and in fact she blackmailed Charmian quite cruelly. That was when Charmian had her nervous breakdown. And in fact the main reason Guy married Lisa was to keep her quiet, and save Charmian from the threat of scandal. It was never a proper marriage, but, however, as I say, Guy did marry Lisa for Charmian’s sake. I will say that for him. Of course, Guy Leet did have charm.’

‘He still has charm,’ said Alec.

‘Has he? Well, I don’t doubt it. Now, Alec, write this down, will you?’

‘Jean, you would regret it.’

‘Alec, if you won’t give Godfrey this information I shall have to ask Dame Lettie to do so. She would make the matter far more unpleasant for Charmian. I see it is necessary that Godfrey Colston should stop being morally afraid of Charmian — at least it is worth trying. I think, if he knows of Charmian’s infidelity, he won’t fear any disclosures about his. Let him go and gloat over Charmian. Let him —’

‘Charmian will be shocked. She trusts you.’ He put the case for the opposition, but she knew he was stirred and excited by her suggestion. He had never, in the past, hesitated to make mischief if it served his curiosity: now he could serve her ends.

‘There is a time for loyalty and a time when loyalty comes to an end. Charmian should know that by now,’ she said.

He looked at her curiously as if to find in her face something that he had previously overlooked, some latent jealousy.

‘The more religious people are, the more perplexing I find them. And I think Charmian would be hurt by your action.

‘Charmian herself is a religious woman.

‘No, only a woman with a religion.’ He had always found it odd that Miss Taylor, having entered the Church only to please Charmian, should have become the more addicted of the two.

He made notes of the information Miss Taylor gave to him. ‘Make it clear,’ she said, ‘that this is a message from me. If my hands were in use I would write to him myself. Tell him from me he has nothing to fear from Mrs Pettigrew. Poor old man.’

‘Were you ever jealous of Charmian?’ he said.

‘Of course I was,’ she said, ‘from time to time.’

Alec was wondering as he wrote down the details of Charmian’s love-affair, if Godfrey Colston would be agreeable to taking his pulse and temperature before and after the telling. On the whole, he thought not. Guy Leet had been obliging in this respect, but then Guy was a sport. Still, one might try.

‘You know, Taylor,’ said Dame Lettie, ‘I do not feel I can continue to visit you. These creatures are too disturbing, and now that I am not getting my proper sleep my nerves are not up to these decrepit women here. One wonders, really, what is the purpose of keeping them alive at the country’s expense.

‘For my part,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘I would be glad to be let die in peace. But the doctors would be horrified to hear me say it. They are so proud of their new drugs and new methods of treatment — there is always something new. I sometimes fear, at the present rate of discovery, I shall never die.’

Dame Lettie considered this statement, uncertain whether it was frivolous or not. She shifted bulkily in her chair and considered the statement with a frown and a downward droop of her facial folds.

Miss Taylor supplied obligingly: ‘Of course the principle of keeping people alive is always a good one.’

Dame Lettie glanced along the ward at the geriatrics who were, at that moment, fairly docile. One old lady sat up in her cot singing a song or something; a few were being visited by relatives who spoke little but for the most part simply sat out the visiting time with their feeble forebears, occasionally breaking the silence with some piece of family news, spoken loudly into the half-comprehending faces, and accepting with blank calm the response, whether this were a cluck or a crow, or something more substantial. The rest of the geriatric patients were grouped at the television corner, watching and commenting. Really, there was nothing one could complain of in them.

But Lettie had been, in any case, jittery beyond the usual when she arrived. She had not answered Miss Taylor’s greeting, but had scraped the bedside chair closer to Miss Taylor and started talking immediately.

‘Taylor, we all went to see Mortimer. It was utterly futile —’

‘Oh, yes, Mr Warner told me yesterday —’

‘Quite useless. Mortimer is not to be trusted. The police are, of course, shielding him. He must have accomplices — one of them is apparently a young man, another a middle-aged man with a lisp, and then there is a foreigner, and also —’

‘Chief Inspector Mortimer,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘always used to seem to me rather sane.’

‘Sane, of course he’s sane. I am not saying he isn’t sane. I made the great mistake, Taylor, of letting him know I had remembered him in my will. He always appeared to be so helpful on the committees, so considerate. But I see now, he has been a schemer. He did not expect me to live so long, and he is using these methods to frighten me to death. Of course I have now taken him out of my will, and I took steps to make this fact known to him, hoping his persecution would then Cease. But now, in his rage, he has intensified his efforts. The others who receive the anonymous Calls are merely being used as a blind, a Cover, you see, Taylor, a blind. And Eric, I believe, is working in with him. I have written to Eric, but have received no reply, which alone is suspicious. I am their main objective and victim. Now, a further development. A few weeks ago, you remember I arranged to have my telephone disconnected.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Taylor, closing her eyes to rest them.

‘Well, shortly after that, as I was going to bed, I could swear I heard a noise at my bedroom window. As you know, my window looks out on the…’

Dame Lettie had, in the past few weeks, got into the habit of searching the house every night before going to bed. One could not be too careful. She searched the house from top to bottom, behind sofas, in cupboards, under beds. And even then there were creaks and unaccountable noises springing up all over the place. This nightly search of the house and the garden took three-quarters of an hour, by the end of which Dame Lettie was in no condition to deal with her maid’s hysterics. After a week of this routine Gwen had declared the house to be haunted and Dame Lettie to be a maniac, and had left.

Thus, Dame Lettie was not in the mood for the geriatrics when she visited Miss Taylor in the Maud Long Ward.

‘I suppose,’ ventured Miss Taylor, ‘you have informed the police of your suspicions. If someone is trying to get into the house, surely the police —’

‘The police,’ Dame Lettie explained with long-tried emphasis, ‘are shielding Mortimer and his accomplices. The police always stick together. Eric is in with them. They are all in it together.’

‘Perhaps a little rest in a country nursing home would do you good. All this must be very exhausting.’

‘Not me,’ said Dame Lettie. ‘Oh no, Taylor, no nursing home for me while I have my faculties and am able to get about on my feet. I am looking for another maid. An older woman. They are so difficult to come by, they all want their television.’ She looked over to the senile patients gathered round their television receiver. ‘Such an expense to the Country. An abominable invention.’

‘Really, in cases like theirs, it is an entirely suitable invention. It does hold their attention.’

‘Taylor, I cannot come here again. It is too distressing.’

‘Go away for a holiday, Dame Lettie. Forget about the house and the phone calls.’

‘Even the private detective whom I employed is in league with Mortimer. Mortimer is behind it all. Eric is…’

Miss Taylor dabbed her sore eye under her glasses. She wanted to close her eyes, and longed for the bell to ring which marked the end of the visiting hour.

‘Mortimer … Mortimer … Eric,’ Dame Lettie was going on. Miss Taylor felt reckless.

‘In my belief,’ she said, ‘the author of the anonymous telephone calls is Death himself, as you might say. I don’t see, Dame Lettie, what you can do about it. If you don’t remember Death, Death reminds you to do so. And if you can’t cope with the facts the next best thing is to go away for a holiday.’

‘You have taken leave of your senses, Taylor,’ said Dame Lettie, ‘and I can do no more for you.’ She stopped at the outer office and, demanding to speak to the ward sister, registered her opinion that Miss Taylor was off her head and should be watched.

When Gwen had left Dame Lettie’s employment she quite understandably told her boy friend all about the nightly goings-on, how the mad Dame would go round the house, poking into all the cupboards and corners, and the garden, poking into the shrubberies with an electric torch, no wonder her eyesight was failing.

‘And she wouldn’t let me tell the police,’ said Gwen. ‘She doesn’t trust the police. No wonder, they’d have laughed at her. Oh, but it gave me the creeps because when you’re looking for noises, you keep hearing them all over the house and you think you see shapes in the darkness, and half the time it was herself I bumped into in the garden. Oh, but that house is just about haunted. I couldn’t stand it a minute longer.’

Gwen’s boy friend thought it a good story and recounted it at his work which was in a builder’s yard.

‘My girl was in with an old girl, some dame or countess or other up Hampstead way … went round the place every night … kept hearing burglars … wouldn’t get the police … My girl walked out on her a week past, too much of it …’

‘There’s some cranky ones going about,’ commented one of his friends, ‘I’ll tell you. I remember during the war when I was batman to a colonel, he …’

So it was that a labourer, new to the yard, picked up Gwen’s story —a youth who would not have considered himself a criminal type, but who knew a window cleaner who would give two or perhaps three pounds an item for likely information. But you had to have an address.

‘Where’d you say this countess was living?’ he said to Gwen’s boy. ‘I know all up Hampstead and round the Heath.’

Gwen’s boy said, ‘Oh, this is a posh part, Hackleton Rise. My girl says the old woman’ll be carted off looney in the end. She’s one of them, did you see in the papers? — about the phone-call hoax. She’s cut off her phone now …

The young labourer took his information to the window cleaner, who did not pay him immediately. ‘I got to check the address with my contact.

The window cleaner himself never actually touched a job like this, but there was money in information. In a few days’ time his contact expressed himself satisfied, and paid over ten pounds, remarking that the old girl in question wasn’t a countess after all. The window cleaner duly paid a small share to the young labourer remarking that the information was a bit faulty, and that he’d better not be leaky with his mouth the next few days.

So it came about that Dame Lettie’s house and nocturnal searchings fell under scrutiny.

On the day of her last visit to Miss Taylor she returned to Hampstead by taxi shortly after five. She called in at the employment agency to see if they had found her a woman yet, a middle-aged woman, clean with good references, to live in. No, they had found no one yet, Dame Lettie, but they were keeping their eyes open. She walked the rest of the way home.

Gloomily she made a pot of tea and drank a cup standing in the kitchen. She then puffed her way into her study and started writing a letter to Eric. Her fountain-pen ran out of ink. She refilled it and continued,

. . . I am thinking only of your poor mother put away in a home, & your poor old father who has done so much for you, and who is rapidly failing in health, when I demand that at least you should write and explain your silence. There has been bitterness between your parents and yourself, I know. But the time is come, surely, in their declining years, for you to make what amends you can. Your father was telling me only the other day, that, for his part, he is willing to let bygones be bygones. In fact, he asked me to write to you in this vein.

She stopped and looked out of the window. An unfamiliar car had pulled up at the house opposite. Someone visiting the Dillingers, apparently, not knowing the Dillingers were away. She began to feel chilly and got up to draw the curtain. A man was sitting waiting in the car. As she drew the curtains, he drove off. She returned to her desk and continued,

Do not suppose I am not aware of your activities in London and your attempts to frighten me. Do not suppose I am in the least alarmed.

She scored these last sentences through with her pen. That was not what she had meant to write. She had, at first, thought of writing in this manner, but her second thoughts, she now recalled, had decided her to write something more in the nature of an appeal. One had to employ cunning with a man like Eric. She took a fresh sheet and began again, stopping once to look over her shoulder at a potential noise.

I am thinking only of your poor mother put away in a home, & your poor old father, enfeebled and rapidly failing in health, when I…

She finished the letter, addressed and sealed it, and called Gwen to catch the six o’clock post. Then she remembered Gwen had left.

Dame Lettie laid the letter helplessly on the hall table and pulled herself together so far as to think of supper and to switch on the news.

She prepared her supper of steamed fish, ate it and washed up. She listened to the wireless till half-past nine. Then she turned it off and went into the hall where she stood for about five minutes, listening. Eventually, various sounds took place, coming successively from the kitchen quarters, the dining-room on her right, and upstairs.

She spent the next forty-five minutes in a thorough search of the house and the garden, front and back. Then she locked and bolted the front door and the back door. She locked every room and took away the keys. Finally she climbed slowly up to bed, stopping every few steps to regain her breath and to listen. Certainly, there was somebody on the roof.

She locked her bedroom door behind her and tilted a chair under the door-knob. Certainly, there was someone down there in the garden. She must get in touch with the Member tomorrow. He had not replied to her previous letter which she had posted on Monday, or was it Tuesday? Well, there had been time for a reply. Corruption in the police force was a serious matter. There would have to be a question in the House. One was entitled to one’s protection. She put her hand out to feel the heavy walking-stick securely propped by her bed. She fell asleep at last. She woke suddenly with the noise in her ears, and after all, was amazed by the reality of this.

She switched on the light. It was five past two. A man was standing over by her dressing-table, the drawers of which were open and disarranged. He had turned round to face her. Her bedroom door was open. There was a light in the passage and she heard someone else padding along it. She screamed, grabbed her stick, and was attempting to rise from her bed when a man’s voice from the passage outside said, ‘That’s enough, let’s go.’ The man by the dressing-table hesitated nervily for a moment, then swiftly he was by Lettie’s side. She opened wide her mouth and her yellow and brown eyes. He wrenched the stick from the old woman’s hand and, with the blunt end of it, battered her to death. It was her eighty-first year.

FOURTEEN

Four days passed before the milkman reported an accumulation of four pints of milk on Dame Lettie’s doorstep, and the police entered her house to find the body, half in, half out of her bed.

Meanwhile Godfrey did not wonder, even vaguely, why he had not heard from Lettie. Now that her telephone was disconnected he seldom heard from her. In any case, he had other things to think about that morning. Alec Warner had been to see him with that extraordinary, disturbing, impudent, yet life-giving message from Taylor. He had, of course, ordered Warner out of the house. Alec had seemed to expect this and had departed with easy promptitude to Godfrey’s ‘Get out’, like an actor who had rehearsed the part. He had, however, left a slip of paper behind him, bearing a series of dates and place-names. Godfrey examined the document and felt unaccountably healthier than he had been for some months. He went out and bought himself a whisky and soda while he decided what to do. And, over his drink, he despised Guy Leet yet liked the thought of him, since he was associated with his new sense of well-being. He had another whisky, and chuckled to himself to think of Guy bent double over his two sticks. An ugly fellow; always had been, the little rotter.

Guy Leet sat in his room at the Old Stable, Stedrost, Surrey, laboriously writing his memoirs which were being published by instalments in a magazine. The laboriousness of the task resided in the physical, not the mental effort. His fingers worked slowly, clutched round the large barrel of his fountain-pen. His fingers were good for perhaps another year — if you could call these twisted, knobble-knuckled members good. He glanced reproachfully at them from time to time — perhaps good for another year, depending on the severity of the intervening winter. How primitive, Guy thought, life becomes in old age, when one may be surrounded by familiar comforts and yet more vulnerable to the action of nature than any young explorer at the Pole. And how simply the physical laws assert themselves, frustrating all one’s purposes. Guy suffered from an internal disorder of the knee-joints which caused one leg to collapse across the other whenever he put his weight on it. But although he frequently remarked, ‘The law of gravity, the beast,’ he was actually quite cheerful most of the time. He also suffered from a muscular rheumatism of the neck which caused his head to be perpetually thrust forward and askew. However, he adapted his eyesight and body as best he could to these defects, looking at everything sideways and getting about with the aid of his servant and his car, or on two sticks. He had in his service a pious, soft-spoken, tip-toeing unmarried middle-aged Irishman for whom Guy felt much affection, and whom he called Tony to his face and Creeping Jesus behind his back.

Tony came in with his morning coffee and the mail, which always arrived late. Tony placed two letters beside the paperknife. He placed the coffee before Guy. He stroked the fronts of his trousers, wriggled and beamed. He was doing a Perpetual Novena for Guy’s conversion, even though Guy had told him, ‘The more you pray for me, Tony, the more I’m a hardened sinner. Or would be, if I had half a chance.’

He opened the larger envelope. Proofs of the latest instalment of his memoirs. ‘Here, Tony,’ he said, ‘check these proofs.’

‘Ah, ye know I can’t read without me glasses.’

‘That’s a euphemism, Tony.’ For Tony’s reading capacity was not too good, though he managed when necessary by following each word with his finger.

‘Indeed, sir, ‘tis a pity.’ Tony disappeared.

Guy opened the other letter and gave a smile which might have appeared sinister to one who did not realize that this was only another consequence of his neck being twisted. The letter was from Alec Warner.

Dear Guy,

I’m afraid I sent Percy Mannering the last instalment of your memoirs. He would have seen it in any case. I’m afraid he is a trifle upset about your further reference to Dowson.

Mannering in replying to thank me for sending him the article, tells me he is coming down to see you, no doubt to talk things over. I hope he will not prove too difficult and that you will make all allowances.

Now, dear fellow, you will, I know, assist me by taking the old fellow’s pulse and temperature as soon as it can conveniently be done after he has discussed the article with you. Preferably, of course, during the discussion, but this may prove difficult. Any further observations as to his colour, speech (clarity of, etc.) and general bearing during the little discussion will be most welcome, as you know.

Mannering will be with you tomorrow, i.e. the day on which you will, I expect, receive this letter — at about 3.40 p.m. I have supplied him with train times and all necessary directions.

My dear Fellow,

I am, most gratefully,

Alec Warner

Guy put the letter back into its envelope. He telephoned to the nursing home where Charmian was now resident and asked if he might call and see her that afternoon, and was informed, after the nurse had been to make inquiries, that he might. He then told Tony to have the car ready at three-fifteen.

He had intended to see Charmian, in any case. And today was warm and bright, though clouds came over at intervals. He held no resentment against Alec Warner. The chap was a born mischief-maker; but he didn’t know it, that was the saving grace. He was sorry poor Percy would have to undergo the journey for nothing that afternoon.

When he left at a quarter past three he left a message on the door of his Old Stable, ‘Away for a few days’. Quite improbable, it sounded, but Percy would have to take it or leave it.

“Tis a lie,’ commented Tony, sliding into the car to drive his master off.

Charmian liked her new room. It was large and furnished with bright old-fashioned chintzes. It reminded her of her headmistress’s room at school in those times when the days were always, somehow, sunny, and everyone seemed to love each other. She had been quite eighteen years of age before she had realized that everyone did not love each other; this was a fact which she had always found it difficult to convey to others. ‘But surely, Charmian, you must have come across spitefulness and hatred before you were eighteen?’

‘Only in retrospect,’ she would reply, ‘did I discern discord in people’s actions. At the time, all seemed harmony. Everyone loved each other.’

Some said she was colouring the past with the rosy glow of nostalgia. But she plainly remembered her shock when, at the age of eighteen, she became conscious of evil — a trifling occasion; her sister had said something detrimental about her — but it was only then that Charmian discovered the reality of words like ‘sin’ and ‘calumny’ which she had known, as words, for as long as she could remember.

The window of her room looked out on a lawn in the centre of which stood a great elm. She could sit at her window and watch the other patients walking in the grounds, and they might have been the girls at her old school sauntering at their recreation period, and she with her headmistress taking tea by the window.

‘Everything,’ she said to Guy some time after he had made his difficult way across the room, ‘has an innocent air in this place. I feel almost free from Original Sin.’

‘How dull for you, dear,’ said Guy.

‘It’s an illusion, of course.’

A young nurse brought in tea and placed it between them. Guy winked at her. The nurse winked back, and left them.

‘Behave yourself, Guy.’

‘And how,’ he said, ‘did you leave Godfrey?’

‘Oh, he was most depressed. These anonymous telephone calls worry him.’ She gestured towards her white telephone receiver. The civil young man had vaguely assumed in her mind the shape of a telephone receiver. At home he had been black; here he was white. ‘Does he worry you, Guy?’

‘Me? No. I don’t mind a bit of fun.’

‘They worry Godfrey. It is surprising how variously people react to the same thing.’

‘Personally,’ said Guy, ‘I tell the young fellow to go to hell.’

‘Well, he vexes Godfrey. And then we have an unsuitable housekeeper. She also worries him. Godfrey has a lot of worries.

You would see a change in him, Guy. He is failing.’

‘Doesn’t like this revival of your books?’

‘Guy, I don’t like talking against Godfrey, you know. But, between ourselves, he is rather jealous. At his age, one would have thought he had no more room for these feelings, somehow. But there it is. He was so rude, Guy, to a young critic who came to see me.

‘Fellow has never understood you,’ said Guy. ‘But still I perceive you have a slight sense of guilt concerning him.’

‘Guilt? Oh no, Guy. As I was saying, I feel unusually innocent in this place.’

‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘a sense of guilt takes a self-righteous turn. I see no cause for you to feel either in the right or in the wrong where Godfrey’s concerned.’

‘I have regular visits from a priest,’ she said, ‘and if I want moral advice, Guy, I shall consult him.’

‘Oh quite, quite.’ Guy placed his gnarled hand on her lap; he was afraid he was forgetting how to handle women.

‘And then,’ said Charmian, ‘you know he has estranged Eric. It is really Godfrey’s fault, Guy. I do not like to say these things, and of course Eric was a disappointment, but I can’t help feeling Godfrey’s attitude —’

‘Eric,’ said Guy, ‘is a man of fifty-five.’

‘Fifty-seven,’ said Charmian, ‘next month.’

‘Fifty-seven,’ said Guy. ‘And he has had time to acquire a sense of responsibility.’

‘That,’ sighed Charmian, ‘Eric has never possessed. But I did think at one time he might have been a painter. I never had much hope of his writing, but his paintings — he did seem to have talent. At least, to me . But Godfrey was so mean about money, and Godfrey —’

‘If I remember,’ said Guy, ‘it was not until Eric was past forty-five that Godfrey refused to give him any more money.

‘And then Lettie,’ said Charmian, ‘has been so cruel about her wills. Always promising Eric the earth, and then retracting her promises. I don’t know why she doesn’t do something for Eric while she is still alive.’

‘Do you think,’ said Guy, ‘that money would make Eric any less spiteful?’

‘Well, no,’ said Charmian, ‘I don’t. I have been sending Eric sums of money for some years, secretly, through Mrs Anthony who is our daily woman. But he is still spiteful. Of course he disapproves of my books.’

‘They are beautiful books,’ said Guy.

‘Eric doesn’t approve the style. I’m afraid Godfrey has never handled Eric tactfully, that is the trouble.’

‘Beautiful,’ said Guy. ‘I have just been re-reading The Seventh Child. I love particularly that scene at the end with Edna in her mackintosh standing at the cliff’s edge on that Hebridean coast being drenched by the spray, and her hair blown about her face. And then turning to find Karl by her side. One thing about your lovers, Charmian, they never required any preliminary discussions. They simply looked at each other and knew.’

‘That,’ said Charmian, ‘is one of the things Eric cannot stand.’

‘Eric is a realist. He has no period-sense, no charity.’

‘Oh my dear Guy, do you think these new young men read my books from charity?’

‘Not from indulgence and kindness. But charity elevates the mind and governs the inward eye. If a valuable work of art is rediscovered after it has gone out of fashion, that is due to some charity in the discoverer, I believe. But I say, without a period-sense as well, no one can appreciate your books.’

‘Eric has no charity,’ she said.

‘Well, perhaps it is just that he is middle-aged. The really young are so much pleasanter,’ said Guy.

She was not listening. ‘He is like Godfrey in so many ways,’ she said. ‘I can’t help remembering how much I had to shut my eyes to in Godfrey. Lipstick on his handkerchiefs —’

‘Stop feeling guilty about Godfrey,’ Guy said. He had expected a livelier meeting with Charmian. He had never known Charmian to complain so much. He wished he had not inquired after Godfrey in the first place. Her words depressed him. They were like spilt sugar; however much you swept it up some grains would keep grinding under your feet.

‘About your novels,’ he said. ‘The plots are so well-laid. For instance in The Seventh Child, although of course one feels that Edna will never marry Gridsworthy, you have this tension between Anthony Garland and Colonel Yeoville, and until of course their relationships to Gabrielle are revealed, there is every likelihood that Edna will marry one or the other. And yet, of course, all along one is aware of a kind of secret life within Edna, especially at that moment when she is alone in the garden at Neuflette, and then comes unexpectedly upon Karl and Gabrielle. And then one feels sure she will marry Gridsworthy after all, merely for his kindness. And really, right up to the last page one does not know Karl’s true feelings. Or rather, one knows them — but does he know them? I must admit, although I remembered the story well, I felt the same enormous sense of relief, when I read it again the other day, that Edna did not throw herself over the cliff. The suspense, the plot alone, quite apart from the prose, are superb.’

‘And yet,’ said Charmian, smiling up at the sky through the window, ‘when I was half-way through writing a novel I always got into a muddle and didn’t know where it was leading me.’

Guy thought: She is going to say — dear Charmian — she is going to say ‘The characters seemed to take on a life of their own.

‘The characters,’ said Charmian, ‘seemed to take control of my pen after a while. But at first I always got into a tangle. I used to say to myself,

Oh what a tangled web we weave

When first we practise to deceive!

Because,’ she said, ‘the art of fiction is very like the practice of deception.’

‘And in life,’ he said, ‘is the practice of deception in life an art too?’

‘In life,’ she said, ‘everything is different. Everything is in the Providence of God. When I think of my own life … Godfrey …

Guy wished he had not introduced the question of life, but had continued discussing her novels. Charmian was upset about Godfrey, that was plain.

‘Godfrey has not been to visit me yet. He is to come next week. If he is able. But he is failing. You see, Guy, he is his own worst enemy. He…’

How banal and boring, Guy thought, do the most interesting people become when they are touched by a little bit of guilt.

He left at five. Charmian watched him from the window being helped into his car. She was vexed with herself for going on so much about Godfrey. Guy had never been interested in her domestic affairs. He was such an amusing companion. The room, with its chintzes, felt empty.

Guy waved out of his car window, a stiff, difficult wave. It was only then that Charmian noticed the other car which had drawn up while Guy had been helped into his seat. Charmian peered down; it looked like Godfrey’s car. It was, and Godfrey was climbing out, in his jerky way. She supposed he had come on an impulse to escape Mrs Pettigrew. If only he could go to live in a quiet private hotel. But as he walked across the path, she noticed he looked astonishingly bright and healthy. She felt rather tired.

Guy Leet considered, as he was driven home, whether in fact he was enjoying that sense of calm and freedom that is supposed to accompany old age or whether he was not. Yesterday he had been an old, serene man. Today he felt younger and less peaceful. How could one know at any particular moment what one’s old age finally amounted to? On the whole, he thought, he must be undergoing the experience of calm and freedom, although it was not like anything he would have anticipated. He was, perhaps, comparatively untroubled and detached, mainly because he became so easily exhausted. He was amazed at Charmian’s apparent energy — and she ten years his senior. He supposed he must be a dear old thing. He was fortunate in possessing all his material needs, and now that Lisa’s will was being proved, he might possibly spend the winter in a really warm climate. And he had earned Lisa’s money. And he bore no grudge against Charmian for her ingratitude. Not many men would have married Lisa simply to keep her quiet for Charmian’s sake. Not many would have endured the secrecy of such a marriage, a mere legal bond necessary to Lisa’s full sensual enjoyment of her many perversions. ‘I ‘ye got to be married,’ she would say in that hoarse voice, ‘my dear, I don’t want the man near me, but I’ve got to know that I’m married or I can’t enjoy myself.’

Foolishly, they had exchanged letters on the subject, which might have upset his claim on Lisa’s money. He did not think Tempest’s suit would have succeeded, but it would have been unpleasant. But that eventuality had come to nothing. He would get Lisa’s money; he had earned it. He had given satisfaction to Lisa and safety to Charmian.

He doubted if Charmian ever thought with gratitude of his action. Still, he adored Charmian. She had been wonderful, even when he had met her a year ago at a time when her mind was failing. Now that she was so greatly improved, what a pity she had this Godfrey trouble on her mind. However, he adored Charmian for what she had been and what she still really was. And he had earned Lisa’s money. Trinidad might be delightful next winter. Or Barbados. He must write for some information.

When they drew up at the Old Stable Percy Mannering appeared out of the back garden and approached the car waving a magazine in the direction of the front door where Guy’s message was pinned up.

‘Away for a few days,’ shouted Percy.

‘I have just returned,’ said Guy. ‘Tony will give me a hand, and then we will go indoors for a drink. Meanwhile let us not alarm the lilies of the field.’

‘Away for a few days,’ shouted Percy, ‘my foot.’

Tony trotted round the car and took Guy by the arms. ‘I’ve been waiting,’ shouted Percy, ‘for you. Guy, as he was helped to his feet, was trying to recall what exactly he had written about Ernest Dowson in the latest published instalment of his memoirs which so enraged Percy. Guy was not a moment inside the door before he found out, for Percy then started to inform him.

‘You quote from the poem about Cynara, ‘“I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.”

‘You then comment, “Yes, that was always Dowson’s way, even to the point of dying in the arms of another man’s wife — his best friend!” — That’s what you wrote, is it not?’

‘It must be,’ said Guy, sinking into his chair, ‘if you say so.’

‘And yet you know as well as I do,’ shouted Percy, ‘that Sherard rescued Dowson from a pub and took him home to be nursed and fed. And Dowson did indeed die in Mrs Sherard’s arms, you utter snake; she was sustaining and comforting him in a sudden last spasm of his consumption. You know that as well as I do. And yet you write as if Dowson and she —’

‘I am but a hardened old critic,’ said Guy.

Percy banged his fist on the table. ‘Critic — You’re an unutterable rat.’

‘A hardened old journalist,’ said Guy.

‘A steaming scorpion. Where is your charity?’

‘I know nothing of charity,’ said Guy. ‘I have never heard of the steaming properties of the scorpion. I never cared for Dowson’s verse.’

‘You’re a blackguard — you’ve slandered his person. This has nothing to do with verse.’

‘What I wrote is the sort of thing, in my opinion, that might have happened,’ said Guy. ‘It is as near enough my meaning.’

‘A cheap jibe,’ yelled Percy. ‘Anything for a cheap joke, you’d say anything —’

‘It was quite cheap, I admit,’ said Guy. ‘I am underpaid for these essays of mine.’

Percy grabbed one of Guy’s sticks which were propped beside his chair. Guy grabbed the other stick and, calling out for Tony, looked up with his schoolboy face obliquely at Percy.

‘You will write a retraction,’ said Percy Mannering with his wolf-like look, ‘or I’ll knock your mean little brains out.’

Guy aimed weakly with his stick at Percy’s stick, and almost succeeded in knocking it out of the old man’s quivering hand. Percy adjusted his stick, got it in both hands and with it knocked Guy’s stick to the floor, just as Tony came in with a tray and a rattle of glasses.

‘Jesus, Mary,’ said Tony and put down the tray.

‘Tony, will you kindly recover my walking stick from Mr Mannering.’

Percy Mannering stood fiercely displaying his two greenish teeth and gripping the stick ready to strike, it seemed, anyone.

Tony slithered cautiously round the room until Guy’s desk was between him and Percy. He lowered his head, rolled up his eyes, and glared at them from beneath his sandy eyebrows like a bull about to charge, except that he did not really look like a bull. ‘Take care what ye do,’ he said to them both.

Percy removed one of his hands from the shaking stick and took up the offensive journal. He fluttered this at Tony.

‘Your master,’ he declared, ‘has uttered a damnable lie about a dead friend of mine.’

“Tis within the realm of possibility,’ said Tony, clutching the edge of the desk.

‘If you will lay a piece of writing paper on the desk, Tony,’ said Guy, ‘Mr Mannering wishes to write a letter of protest to the editor of the magazine which he holds in his hand.’

The poet grinned wildly. The telephone, which was on a side table beside Guy’s chair, mercifully rang out.

‘Come and answer the phone,’ said Guy to Tony.

But Tony was looking at Percy Mannering who still clung to the stick.

The telephone rang on.

‘If ye will lift the instrument I’ll lay out the paper as requested,’ said Tony, ‘for a man can do but one thing at a time.’ He opened a drawer and extracted a sheet of paper.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ Guy was saying. ‘Well, now, sonny, I’m busy at the moment. I have a poet friend here with me and we are just about to have a drink.’

Guy heard the clear boyish voice continue: ‘Is it Mr Percy Mannering who’s with you?’

‘That’s right,’ said Guy.

‘I’d like to talk to him.’

‘For you,’ said Guy, offering the receiver to Percy.

‘Me. Who wants me, what?’

‘For you,’ said Guy, ‘a youngster of school age I should think.’

Percy bawled suspiciously into the telephone, ‘Hallo, who’s there?’

‘Remember you must die,’ said a man’s voice, not at all that of a young person.

‘This is Mannering here. Percy Mannering.’

‘That’s correct,’ said the voice, and rang off.

Percy looked round the room with a bewildered air. ‘That’s the chap they’re talking about,’ he said.

‘Drinks, Tony,’ said Guy.

‘That’s the man,’ roared Percy, his eyes gleaming as with some inner greed.

‘Nice youngster, really. I suppose he’s been over-working at his exams. The cops will get him, of course.’

‘That wasn’t a youngster,’ said Percy, lifting his drink and draining it off, ‘it was a strong mature voice, very noble, like W. B. Yeats.’

‘Fill Mr Mannering’s glass, Tony,’ said Guy. ‘Mr Mannering will be staying for dinner.’

Percy took his drink, laid down the stick, and sank into a chair.

‘What an experience!’ he said.

‘Intimations of immortality,’ commented Guy.

Percy looked at Guy and pointed to the telephone. ‘Are you behind this?’

‘No,’ Guy said.

‘No.’ The old man drained his glass, looked at the clock and rose from his chair. ‘I’ll miss my train,’ he said.

‘Stop the night,’ said Guy. ‘Do stay.’

Percy walked uncertainly about the room. He picked up the magazine, and said,

‘Look here —’

‘There is a sheet of paper laid out for you to write your protest to the editor,’ Guy said.

‘Yes,’ said the old man. ‘I’ll do that tomorrow.’

‘There is a passage in Childe Harold,’ said Guy, ‘I would like to discuss with you. It —’

‘No one,’ stated Percy, ‘in the past fifty years has understood Childe Harold. You have to begin with the last two cantos, man. That is the SECRET of the poem. The episodes —’

Tony put his head round the door. ‘Did ye call me?’

‘No, but while you’re here, Mr Mannering will be stopping the night.’

Percy stayed the night and wrote his letter of protest to the editor next morning. He stayed for three weeks during which time he wrote a Shakespearean sonnet entitled ‘Memento Mori’, the final couplet of the first version being,

Out of the deep resounds the hollow cry,

Remember — oh, remember you must die!

The second version being,

But slowly the reverberating sigh

Sounds in my ear: Remember you must die!

The third being,

And from afar the Voices mingle and cry

O mortal Man, remember you must die!

and there were many other revisions and versions.

Eric Colston and Mrs Pettigrew were waiting for Godfrey’s return.

‘There’s something funny going on in the old man’s mind today,’ Mrs Pettigrew said. ‘I should judge it was something to do with a visit from old Warner this morning. He couldn’t have stayed long. I had just gone across the road for cigarettes and when I got back there was Warner on the doorstep. I asked him if he wanted to see Godfrey. He said, “I’ve seen Godfrey, thanks.” But I’ll find out what it’s all about — you just wait, I’ll find out. Then, when I got indoors Godfrey gave me a really wild grin and then he went out. I was too late to catch him. He didn’t come back to lunch, there’s his fish fingers lying on the table. Oh, I’ll find out.’

‘Has he signed the will yet?’ said Eric.

‘No, the lawyers are taking their time.’

Eric thought: I’ll bet they are taking their time. He had taken the first train to London on receiving that letter from Olive. His first action had been to call on the solicitor. His next was to get in touch with Mrs Pettigrew.

Mrs Pettigrew filled Eric’s glass. She noticed, as she had done earlier in the day, his little hands, and she felt quite frightened.

Eric was a stocky man, rather resembling his mother in appearance except that the feminine features and build looked odd in him. His hips were broad, his head was large. He had Charmian’s wide-spaced eyes, pointed chin and small neat nose. His mouth was large like that of Dame Lettie whose battered body was later that evening to be discovered.

But Mrs Pettigrew told herself, she was experienced with men like Eric. Not that she had ever encountered quite the same details of behaviour in any other man. But she was familiar with the general pattern; she knew he was not normal, for though he greatly desired money he yet seemed willing to sacrifice quantities of it to gain some more intense and sinuous satisfaction. She had in her life before met men prepared to sacrifice the prospect of money in order to gain, for instance, a social ambition.

To that extent she felt she knew her man. She felt it was not surprising that such a man would sacrifice anything for revenge. And yet, could she trust him?

‘I am doing this,’ he had told her, ‘for moral reasons. I believe — I firmly believe, it will do the old man good. Teach him a lesson.’

Oh, but Eric was a mess! She looked at his little hands and the feminine setting of the eyes like Charmian’s and felt perhaps she was foolish to trust him.

Eric was a mess. Olive’s letter had told him his father was being blackmailed by ‘a certain Mrs Pettigrew’ into bequeathing a large portion of his fortune to her. Eric had acted promptly and without a moment’s thought. Even in the train up from Cornwall he had not taken thought but had flirted all the way with delicious ideas — the discomfiture of Godfrey; the undermining of Charmian; the possible sympathetic-bosomed qualities of this Mrs Pettigrew under her possibly tough exterior; the thrill of being able to expose everyone to everyone if it proved expedient to do so; and the thrill of obtaining sufficient immediate cash to enable him to go and tell his Aunt Lettie what he really thought of her.

Not that he knew what he thought of her. He retained in his mind an axiom from his youth: the family had let him down badly. Everyone, even the family, had agreed upon that in the years when Eric was between twenty-two and twenty-eight, and the century was between twenty-three and twenty-nine years old. He had rejected every idea his family had ever held except this one idea, ‘Somehow or other we have let Eric down. How did it happen? Poor Eric, Charmian has mothered him too much. Charmian has not been a mother enough to him. Godfrey has been too occupied, has never taken any notice of the boy. Godfrey has been too lenient, too strict, too mean, has given him too much money.’ The elders had grown out of these sayings when the fashion changed, but by then Eric had taken them for his creed. Lettie bore him off on consoling holidays. He robbed her, and the hotel staff got the blame. She tried to get him interested in prison-visiting. He started smuggling letters and tobacco into Wormwood Scrubs. ‘Poor Eric, he hasn’t had a chance. He should never have been sent to that crank school. How could he ever be expected to pass an exam? I blame Charmian … I blame Lettie … Godfrey has never cared …’ He went to an art school and was caught stealing six tubes of paint. They sent him to a Freudian analyst whom he did not like. They sent him to an Adlerian, and subsequently to an individualist. Meanwhile, there was an incident with a junior porter of a club, in the light of which he was sent to another psychiatrist of sympathetic persuasion. He was so far cured that he got one of the maids into trouble. Charmian was received into the Church.

‘Eric will grow out of this phase,’ said Charmian. ‘My grandfather was wild as a youth.’

But Eric was amazed when his elders eventually stopped blaming themselves for his condition. He thought them hypocritical and callous to go back on their words. He longed for them to start discussing him again in the old vein; but by the time he was thirty-seven they had said quite bitter things to him. He had bought a cottage in Cornwall, where he drank their money. He was in a home for inebriates when the war broke out. He emerged to be called up by the military, but was turned down on account of his psychological history. He loathed Charmian, Godfrey, and Lettie. He loathed his cousin Alan who was doing so well as an engineer and who, as a child, had always been considered dull in comparison with Eric. He married a negress and got divorced six months later, a settlement being made on her by Godfrey. From time to time he wrote to Charmian, Godfrey, and Lettie, to tell them that he loathed them. When, in 1947, Godfrey refused him any more money, he made it up with Lettie and obtained small revenues and larger promises from her. But Lettie, when she saw so little return for her cash by way of his company, reduced her bounty to mere talk about her will. Eric wrote a novel, and got it published on the strength of Charmian’s name. It bore a similarity to Charmian’s writing. ‘Poor Eric,’ said Charmian, ‘has not much originality. But I do think, Godfrey, now that he is really doing some work, we ought to assist him.’ She sent him, over a period of two years, all she possessed. Eric thought her mean, he thought her envious of his novel, and said so. Godfrey refused to write to him. Charmian had confided to Guy Leet, ‘I suspect that Godfrey has a secret horror of another novelist in the family.’ And she added, what was not strictly true, but was a neat conclusion, ‘Of course, Godfrey always wanted Eric to join that dreary firm.’

By the time he was fifty Eric began to display what looked like a mind of his own. That is, instead of sending wild vituperative accusations to his family, he now sent cold reasoned denunciations. He proved, point by point, that they had let him down badly from the time of his first opening his eyes.

‘In his middle-age Eric is becoming so like Godfrey,’ said Charmian, ‘though of course Godfrey does not see it.’

Eric no longer called Charmian’s novels lousy muck. He analysed them piece by piece, he ridiculed the spare parts, he demolished the lot. He had some friends who applauded his efforts.

‘But he takes my work so seriously,’ said Charmian. ‘Nobody ever wrote of it like that.’

Charmian’s health had failed by the mid-fifties. The revival of her novels astonished Eric, for he had by some fractional oversight misjudged an element in the temper of his age. He canvassed his friends and was angered and bewildered to find so many had fallen for the Charmian Piper period-cult.

Charmian’s remittances, smuggled through Mrs Anthony, were received with silence. His second book had secretly appealed to Dame Lettie. It had been described as ‘realistic and brutally frank’, but the energy which he might have put into developing his realistic and brutally frank talents was now dispersed in resentment against Charmian. The revival of her novels finished him off and he found he could no longer write.

Even the reports in the papers that Godfrey, Charmian, and Lettie had been recipients of threatening telephone calls failed to stimulate him.

Throughout the war, and since, he had been mainly living on women of means, the chief of whom had been Lisa Brooke. He had found it hard, after Lisa’s death, to replace her. Everyone was hard up, and Eric put on weight with the worry of it all, which did not help. His difficulties were approaching a climax at the moment he had received Olive’s letter. ‘Your father is being cruelly blackmailed by a certain Mrs Pettigrew, the housekeeper. I think he would be willing to make up the past differences, if there was anything you could do without letting your mother know …

He took the first train up to London, in a state of excitement, and spent the journey visualizing the possibilities before him.

When he arrived at Paddington at a quarter to six he had no idea what he was going to do. He went into the bar and had a drink. At seven he emerged and saw a telephone box. He telephoned to the home of his father’s solicitor, and on the strength of his communication, obtained an interview that evening. He got from the solicitor an assurance that preparations for the new will would be delayed as long as possible. He received some additional advice to which he did not listen.

He went to call on Olive, but found her flat deserted. He stayed the night with some reluctant acquaintances in Notting Hill Gate. At eleven next morning he telephoned to Mrs Pettigrew and met her for lunch in a café in Kensington.

‘I wish you to know, Mrs Pettigrew,’ he said, ‘that I’m with you. The old man deserves a lesson. I take the moral point of view, and I’m quite willing to forgo the money.

‘I’m sure,’ said Mrs Pettigrew at first, ‘I don’t know what you mean, Mr Eric.’ She wiped the corners of her mouth with her handkerchief, pulling her lower lip askew in the process.

‘He would die,’ said Eric, ‘rather than my poor mother got to know about his gross infidelities. And so would I. In fact, Mrs Pettigrew,’ he said with his smile which had long ceased to be winning, ‘you have us both in your hands, my father and I.’

Mrs Pettigrew said, ‘I’ve done a lot for your parents. Your poor mother, before she was taken away, I had to do everything for her. There aren’t many that would have put up with so much. Your mother was inclined to be — well, you know what old people are. I suppose I’m old myself, but —’

‘Not a bit,’ said Eric. ‘You don’t look a day older than sixty.’

‘Well, I felt my years while I had your mother to attend to.’

‘I’m sure you did. She’s impossibly conceited,’ said Eric; ‘impossible.’

‘Quite impossible. And, now, your father —’

‘He’s impossible,’ said Eric, ‘an old brute.’

‘What exactly,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, ‘had you in mind, Mr Eric?’

‘Well, I felt it my duty to stand behind you. And here I am. Money,’ he said, ‘means hardly anything to me.

‘Ah, you can’t go far without money, Mr Eric —’

‘Do call me Eric,’ he said.

‘Eric,’ she said, ‘your best friend’s your pocket.’

‘Well, of course, a little cash at the right time is always useful. At the right time. It’s surprising, really, my father has lived so long after the life he’s led.’

‘Eric, I would never let you go short. I mean, until the time comes.’

‘You can always get ready cash out of him?’

‘Oh yes.’

Eric thought: I bet you can.

‘I think we should see him together,’ said Eric.

She looked at his little hands. Can I trust him? she wondered. The will was not yet signed and sealed.

‘Trust me,’ said Eric. ‘Two heads are better than one.

‘I would like to think it over,’ she said.

‘You would prefer to work alone?’

‘Oh, don’t say that. I mean, this plan of yours is rather sudden, and I feel, after all I’ve done for Godfrey and Charmian, I’m entitled.’

‘Perhaps, after all,’ said Eric, ‘it is my duty to go down to Surrey to see Mother and inform her of her husband’s little indiscretions. Distasteful as that course might be, in fact, it might save a lot of trouble. It would take a load off my father’s mind, and there would then be no need for you to take any further interest in him. It must be a strain on you.

She came back on him sharply: ‘You don’t know the details of your father’s affairs. I do. You have no evidence. I have. Written proof.’

‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘I have evidence. ‘Is it bluff? she wondered.

‘When do you want to come and see him?’ she said.

‘Now,’ he said.

But when they got back, Godfrey was still out. Mrs Anthony had left. Mrs Pettigrew felt quite frightened. And when Eric started roaming about the house, picking up the china ornaments and turning them upside down to look at them, she felt quite vexed. But she held her peace. She felt she knew her man. At least she ought to, with all her experience.

When he sat down, eventually, in Charmian’s old chair, she ruffled his hair, and said, ‘Poor Eric. You’ve had a raw deal from them, haven’t you?’ He leaned his large head against her bosom and felt quite nice.

After tea Mrs Pettigrew had a slight attack of asthma and withdrew to the garden, where she got it under control. On her return she thought she saw Godfrey in the chair where she had left Eric. But it was Eric all right. He was asleep, his head lolling sideways; although in features he most resembled Charmian, he looked remarkably like Godfrey in this pose.

Charmian’s impression of Godfrey’s brightness and health, when she saw him from her window, became more pronounced when he was shown into her room.

‘Cheerful place,’ he said, looking round.

‘Come and sit down, Godfrey. Guy Leet has just gone. I’m afraid I’m rather tired.’

‘Yes, I saw him leaving.’

‘Yes, poor soul. It was kind of him to visit me. He has such difficulty getting about.’

‘So different,’ said Godfrey, leaning back in his chair like a satisfied man, and stretching his legs apart, ‘from the way he got about in the summer of 1902 in the villa on Lake Geneva, up to 1907 at his flat in Hyde Park Gate, in Scotland and Biarritz and Torquay and then in the Dolomites when you were taken ill. Then nineteen years later when he was living in Ebury Street, up to the time of—’

‘I should like a cigarette,’ said Charmian.

‘What?’ said Godfrey.

‘Give me a cigarette, Godfrey, or I shall ring and ask the nurse to fetch one.’

‘Look here, Charmian, you’d better stay off cigarettes. I mean —’I would like to smoke a cigarette before I die. As to Guy Leet— you yourself, Godfrey, have hardly any room to talk. You yourself. Lisa Brooke. Wendy Loos. Eleanor —’The little rotter,’ said Godfrey. ‘Well, just look what he’s come to and only seventy-five. Bent double over two sticks.’

‘Jean Taylor must have talked,’ she said. She stretched out her hand and said, ‘A cigarette, Godfrey.’ He gave her one and lit it.

‘I’m getting rid of Mrs Pettigrew,’ he said. ‘A most domineering bitch. Always upsetting Mrs Anthony.’

Charmian inhaled her cigarette. ‘Any other news?’ she said.

‘Alec Warner,’ he said, ‘is losing control of his faculties. He came to see me this morning and wanted me to take my pulse and temperature. I ordered him out of the house.’

Charmian began to laugh, and could not stop, and eventually had to be put to bed, while Godfrey was taken away and given a soft-boiled egg with thin bread and butter, and sent off home.

At eight o’clock they had finished supper. Mrs Pettigrew said, ‘If he isn’t home by nine I’d better ring the police. He might have had an accident. That car, it isn’t safe. He’s a menace on the road.’

‘I shouldn’t worry,’ said Eric, reflecting that, after all, the new will was not signed.

‘Oh, I always worry about him,’ she said. ‘That’s what I mean when I say that I’m entitled to …’

Godfrey drove more carefully than usual. Having satisfied himself that Warner’s information was accurate he felt that life was worth taking care of. Not that one had doubted Warner’s information. Poor Charmian. At any rate, she had no call, now, to be uppish and righteous. Not that she really had been priggish; but she had always assumed that air of purity which made one feel such a swine. Poor Charmian; it was very catty of Taylor to gossip about her after all these years. Still, Taylor had done a good turn without knowing it …

Here he was at home. A long drive for an old man.

Godfrey came in with his glasses in his hand, rubbing his eyes.

‘Where on earth have you been?’ said Mrs Pettigrew. ‘Eric is here to see you.’

‘Oh, good evening, Eric,’ said Godfrey. ‘Have a drink.’

‘I’ve got one,’ said Eric.

‘I’m keeping quite well, thank you,’ said Godfrey, raising his voice.

‘Oh, really?’ said Eric.

‘Eric wishes to speak to you, Godfrey.’

‘Mrs Pettigrew and I are in this together, Father.’

‘In what?’

‘The question of the new will. And in the meantime, I expect to be remunerated according to the situation.’

‘You’re growing a paunch,’ said Godfrey. ‘I haven’t got a paunch.’

‘Otherwise we shall really have to present Mother with the facts.’

‘Be reasonable, Godfrey,’ said Mrs Pettigrew.

‘Get to hell out of my house, Eric,’ said Godfrey. ‘I give you ten minutes or I call the police.’

‘I think we’re a little tired,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, ‘aren’t we?’

‘And you leave tomorrow morning,’ he said to her.

The door bell rang.

‘Who can that be?’ said Mrs Pettigrew. ‘Did you forget to leave the car lights on, Godfrey?’

Godfrey ignored the bell. ‘You can’t tell Charmian anything,’ he said, ‘that she doesn’t know already.’

‘What did you say?’ said Mrs Pettigrew.

The door bell rang again.

Godfrey left them and went to open it. Two men stood on the doorstep.

‘Mr Colston?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Could we have word with you? It’s the C.I.D.’

‘The car lights are on,’ said Godfrey.

‘It’s about your sister,’ said the senior-looking of the men, ‘Dame Lettie Colston, I’m afraid.’

Next day was Sunday. ‘Hoax Caller Strikes at Last’, declared the headlines. ‘Aged Welfare Worker killed in bed. Jewellery and valuables missing.’

FIFTEEN

‘If you look for one thing,’ said Henry Mortimer to his wife, ‘you frequently find another.’

Mrs Mortimer was opening and closing her mouth like a bird. This was because she was attempting to feed a two-year-old boy with a spoon, and as he opened his mouth to take each spoonful of soft egg, she involuntarily opened hers. This child was her grandson whom she was minding while her daughter was confined with a second child.

Mrs Mortimer wiped the infant’s mouth and pushed a jug of milk out of his reach.

‘Look for one thing and you find another,’ said Henry Mortimer. ‘They found twenty-two different wills amongst Lettie Colston’s papers, dated over the past forty years.

‘Silly woman,’ said Emmeline Mortimer, ‘to change her mind so often.’ She tickled the cheek of her grandson and clucked into his face, and while his mouth was open in laughter she popped in the last spoonful of egg, most of which he spluttered out. ‘I was sorry for poor old Godfrey breaking down at the inquest. He must have been fond of his sister,’ she said.

She gave the child his mug of milk which he clutched in both hands and drank noisily, his eyes bright above the rim, darting here and there.

When the child was settled in a play-pen in the garden Mrs Mortimer said to her husband,

‘What’s that you were saying about poor Lettie Colston’s wills?’

‘The chaps were checking up on her papers in the course of routine, in case they should provide any clue to the murder, and of course they checked up on all her beneficiaries. Quite a list out of twenty-two consecutive wills.’

‘The murderer wasn’t known to her, was he?’

‘No — oh no, this was before they got him. They were checking up, and…’

Dame Lettie’s murderer had been caught within three weeks of her death and was now awaiting trial. In those three weeks, however, her papers had been thoroughly examined, and those of the beneficiaries of her twenty-two wills who were still alive had been quietly traced, checked, and dismissed from suspicion. Only one name had proved a very slight puzzle; Lisa O’Brien of Nottingham, whose name appeared in a bequest dated 1918. The records, however, showed that Lisa Brooke, née Sidebottome, aged 33, had married a man named Matthew O’Brien aged 40 at Nottingham in that year. The C.I.D. did not look much further. Lisa O’Brien in the will must be a woman of advanced years by now, and in fact, it emerged that she was dead; O’Brien himself, if still alive, would be beyond the age of the suspect. The police were no longer interested, and ticked the name O’Brien off their list.

Henry Mortimer, however, as one acquainted with the murdered woman and her circle, had been approached, and had undertaken to investigate any possible connexion between the murder and the anonymous telephone calls. Not that the police believed these calls had taken place; every possible means of detection had failed, and they had concluded with the support of their psychologists that the old people were suffering from hallucinations.

The public, however, had to be satisfied. Henry Mortimer was placed in charge of this side of the case. The police were able to announce:

The possibility of a connexion between the murder and the anonymous telephone calls which the murdered woman was reported to receive from time to time before her death is being investigated.

Mortimer fulfilled his duties carefully. Like his colleagues, he suspected the murderer to be a chance criminal. Like his colleagues, he knew the anonymous voice would never be traced in flesh and blood. Nevertheless, he examined the police documents, and finally sent in a report which enabled the police to issue a further statement:

The authorities are satisfied that there is no connexion between the murder of Dame Lettie Colston and the anonymous telephone calls of which she had been complaining some months before her death.

Meantime, however, Henry had noticed the details of Lisa O’-Brien, and was interested.

‘You look for one thing and you find another,’ he had said to himself. For he had never before heard of this, marriage of Lisa’s. Her first marriage with rich old Brooke had been dissolved in 1912. Her secret marriage with Guy Leet had recently come to light, when Guy had claimed her fortune. But Matthew O’Brien — Henry did not recall any Matthew O’Brien. He must be quite old now, probably dead.

He had requested the C.I.D. to check further on Matthew O’Brien. And they had found him quite quickly, in a mental home in Folkestone where he had been resident for more than forty years.

‘And so,’ said Mortimer to his wife, ‘you look for one thing and you find another.’

‘Do Janet and Ronald Sidebottome know anything of this husband?’ said Mrs Mortimer.

‘Yes, they remember him quite well. Lisa went touring Canada with him. They didn’t hear from her for a year. When she turned up again she told them he had been killed in an accident.’

‘How long has he been in this mental home?’

‘Since 1919 — a few months after their marriage. Janet is going down to identify him tomorrow.’

‘That will be difficult after all these years.

‘It is only a formality. The man is undoubtedly Matthew O’Brien whom Lisa Brooke married in 1918.’

‘And she said he was dead?’

‘Yes, she did.’

‘Well, what about Guy Leet? Didn’t she marry him? That makes them bigamists, doesn’t it?’

‘I shouldn’t think for a moment Guy knew the man was still alive. Everyone, apparently, believed he was dead.’

‘The police won’t trouble poor Guy about it?’

‘Oh, the police won’t bother him now. Especially at his age.’

‘What a woman,’ said Mrs Mortimer, ‘that Lisa Brooke was. Well, I expect her money — Oh, what will happen to her money, now? Guy Leet is surely —’

‘That’s a question, indeed. Lisa’s fortune belongs to Matthew O’Brien by rights, sane or insane.’

Henry went out into the garden and said to his squealing grandson,

‘What’s all this racket going on?’ He rolled him over and over on the warm stubbly grass. He picked up the child and threw him into the blue sky and caught him again.

‘He’ll throw up his breakfast,’ remarked Emmeline, who stood with her head on one side, and smiled proudly at the child.

‘Up-up-ee,’ demanded the child.

Henry rolled him over and over, left him yelling for more, and went indoors to catch Alec Warner on the telephone before he should go out.

‘You’re interested in the St Aubrey’s Home at Folkestone?’ Henry said.

‘Yes. But only in the older patients. I’ve been visiting them on private research for ten years.

‘Do you know a man there called Matthew O’Brien?’

‘Matt O’Brien, oh yes, a private patient. A dear old chap, nearly eighty. He’s bedridden now. Quite batty, of course, but he always knows me.

‘Were you thinking,’ said Henry, ‘of going down there any time this week?’

‘Well, I only go once a month, as a rule, and I went last week. Is there anything special?’

‘Only,’ said Henry, ‘that Janet Sidebottome has agreed to go down to Folkestone tomorrow to identify Matthew O’Brien. I won’t go into details, but if you would care to accompany her, since you are acquainted with the Home, it would be a kindness to Janet who will probably be distressed. Ronald can’t go with her, he’s in bed with a chill.’

‘What has Janet Sidebottome to do with Matt O’Brien?’

‘Can you go?’ said Henry.

‘Yes,’ said Alec.

‘Then Janet will explain everything. Do you know her number?’

‘Yes,’ said Alec.

‘And one of our men will be there to meet you.’

‘A copper?’ said Alec.

‘A detective,’ said Mortimer. ‘The affair might be of some incidental interest to you.’

‘That’s just what I was thinking,’ said Alec.

Janet said, ‘It is all most distressing. Ronald should have been here to assist me. He met Matthew several times. I can’t think why Ronald should have a chill in this fine weather.’

Alec shouted above the rattle of the taxi.

‘No need to be distressed. I shall do my best to replace Ronald.’

‘Oh, no, don’t distress Ronald,’ she said. ‘I only meant —He gave her a smile. She sadly adjusted her hearing equipment, and said, ‘My hearing is rather poor.

‘You may not be able to recognize Matt O’Brien,’ he articulated. ‘He’s an old man, and the years of insanity may have changed him beyond recognition. They get drugs, you know, and then the drugs have an effect on the appearance. But don’t worry if his features are not familiar to you. I think the authorities already have evidence that he’s Lisa’s husband. They have Lisa’s signature, for instance, from the time of his admission.’

‘I will do my best,’ said Janet. ‘But it is a distressing experience.’

‘He is gentle,’ shouted Alec. ‘He thinks he is God. He has never been violent.’

‘I am distressed about my late sister,’ Janet said. ‘I don’t like to admit it, but I must; Lisa was never straight in her dealings. It is a blessing she was never found out in this business.’

‘It would have been bigamy,’ said Alec.

‘It was bigamy,’ she said. ‘There was no excuse for Lisa, she had every opportunity in life. But it was the same when she was a girl. She caused our dear father a great deal of sorrow. And when Simon Brooke divorced her, there was all that scandal. Scandal was serious in those days.’

‘What did you think of Matt O’Brien at the time?’

‘Well, he was an Irishman, a lawyer. He talked a great deal, but then he was an Irishman, and he was quite charming. And do you know, when Lisa told me he was dead, I could hardly believe it. He had seemed to me so lively. Of course, we did not suspect the truth. It is very distressing.’

‘It will soon be over,’ said Alec. ‘We shall not be with him for long.’ The interview with Matt O’Brien was soon over. The detective met them in the hall and a nurse took them up to Matt’s room where he lay on his pillow among his loose white hair.

‘Hallo, Matt,’ said Alec, ‘I’ve brought two friends of mine to see you.

The detective nodded to the old man and stood back discreetly and formally beside the nurse.

Janet approached his bedside and lifted his limp hand in greeting. He raised his other hand in benediction.

The old man moved his pale eyes towards Alec.

‘It’s you, Alec,’ he said in a blurred voice, as if his tongue were in the way.

‘I was wondering,’ said Alec, ‘if you remember a lady called Lisa at all? Lisa Brooke. Lisa Sidebottome.’

‘Lisa,’ said the old man.

‘You don’t remember Lisa — a red-haired lady?’ said Alec.

‘Lisa,’ said the old man, looking at Janet.

‘No, this isn’t Lisa. This is her sister, Janet. She’s come to see you.

The old man was still looking at Janet.

‘Don’t you remember Lisa? — Well, never mind,’ said Alec.

The old man shook his head. ‘I recollect all creatures,’ he said.

‘Lisa died last year,’ Alec said. ‘I just thought you might know of her.’

‘Lisa,’ said the old man and looked out at the sky through the window. It was a bright afternoon, but he must have seen a night sky full of stars. ‘My stars are shining in the sky,’ he said. ‘Have I taken her to Myself?’

Janet was served with tea downstairs and invited to put her feet up for a while.

She put away her handkerchief. ‘I did not,’ she said, ‘at first find any resemblance. I thought there must be a mistake. But as he turned his head aside to the window, I saw the profile, I recognized his features quite plainly. Yes, I am sure he is the same Matthew O’Brien. And his manner, too, when he spoke of the stars…’

Alec declined tea. He took a notebook from his pocket and tore a page from it.

‘Will you excuse me if I scribble a note to a friend? — I have to catch the post.’ He was already scribbling away when Miss Sidebottome gave him leave to do so.

Dear Guy — I believe I shall be the first to give you the following information.

A man named Matthew O’Brien has been discovered, who was already married to Lisa when you married her.

Mortimer will give you the details, which have now been fully established.

As it happened, I have been visiting this man, in the course of research, at St Aubrey’s Home for mental cases, for the past ten years, without suspecting any such association.

I imagine there will be no blame imputed to you. But of course, as your marriage with Lisa was invalid, you will not now benefit from her estate. Lisa’s money, or at least the great bulk of it, will, of course, go to her legal husband — I fancy it will be kept in trust for him as he is mentally incapacitated.

Be a good fellow, and, immediately on reading this letter, take your pulse and temperature, and let me know…

Alec begged an envelope from the receptionist. He slipped in his note, and addressed and stamped it. He slid the letter into the post-box in the hall, and returned to comfort Janet.

Alec felt, when he left Janet Sidebottome’s hotel after escorting her painfully home, that he had had a fruitful though exhausting day.

Reflecting on Matt O’Brien’s frail and sexless flesh and hair on his pillow, and how the old man had looked back and forth between Janet and himself, he was reminded of that near-centenarian, Mrs Bean, who had replaced Granny Green in the Maud Long Ward. So different from each other in features, they yet shared this quality, that one would not know what was their sex from first impressions. He resolved to make a note of this in Matt O’Brien’s case-history.

He felt suddenly tired and stopped a taxi. As it drove him home he ruminated on the question why scientific observation differed from humane observation, and how the same people, observed in these respective senses, actually seemed to be different people. He had to admit that Mrs Bean, for instance, to whom he had not paid close attention, had none the less rewarded him with one of those small points of observation that frequently escaped him when he was deliberately watching his object. However, the method he had evolved was, on the whole, satisfactory.

A fire-engine clanged past. Alec leaned in his corner and closed his eyes. The taxi turned a corner. Alec shifted his position and looked out into the evening. The taxi was purring along the Mall towards St James’s Street.

The driver leaned back and opened the communicating window.

‘A fire somewhere round here,’ he said.

Alec found himself on the pavement outside his block of chambers, in a crowd. There were policemen everywhere, smoke, people, firemen, water, then suddenly a cry from the crowd and everyone looking up as a burst of flame shot from the top of the building.

Alec pushed through to the inner edge of the crowd. A policeman barred his way with a strong casual arm. ‘I live here,’ Alec explained. ‘Let me pass, please.’

‘Can’t go in there,’ said the policeman. ‘Stand back, please.’

‘Get back,’ shouted the crowd.

Alec said, ‘But I live there. My things. Where’s the porter?’

‘The building is on fire, sir,’ said the policeman.

Alec made a rush advance and got past the policeman into the smoke and water at the entrance to the building. Someone hit him on the face. The crowd fell back as a wave of smoke and flame issued from a lower window. Alec stood and looked into the interior while another policeman from the opposite side of the crowd walked over to him.

‘Come back,’ said the policeman, ‘you’re obstructing the firemen.’

‘My papers are up there,’ Alec said.

The policeman took him by the arm and pulled him away. ‘There is a cat,’ Alec said desperately, ‘in my rooms. I can’t let pussy burn. Let me dash up and let her out. I’ll take the risk.’

The policeman did not reply, but continued to propel Alec away from the fire.

‘There’s a dog up there. A beautiful husky from a polar expedition,’ Alec haggled. ‘Top floor, first door.’

‘Sorry, too late, guvnor,’ said one of the firemen. ‘Your dog must have had it by now. The top storey’s burnt out.’

One of the residents among the crowd said, ‘There are no pets in those flats. Pets are not allowed.’

Alec walked away; he went to his club and booked a room for the night.

SIXTEEN

The summer had passed and it was Granny Bean’s birthday for which the ward had been preparing for some days.

There was a huge cake with a hundred candles. Some men from the newspapers came in with their cameras. Others talked a while to Granny Bean, who was propped up in a new blue bed-jacket.

‘Yes,’ Granny Bean answered them in her far-away flute,’ I’ve lived a long time.’

‘Yes,’ said Granny Bean, ‘I’m very happy.’

‘That’s right,’ she agreed, ‘I seen Queen Victoria once as a girl.’

‘What does it feel like to be a hundred, Mrs Bean?’

‘All right,’ she said weakly, nodding her head.

‘You mustn’t tire her,’ Sister Lucy, who had put on her service medal for the occasion, told the news men.

The men took down notes from the sister. ‘Seven children, only one now alive, in Canada. Started life as a seamstress hand at the age of eleven …’

The matron came in at three o’clock and read out the telegram from the Queen. Everyone applauded. Granny Valvona commented, ‘“… on your hundredth birthday”, doesn’t sound quite right. Queen Mary always used to say, “on the occasion of your centenary”.’ But everyone said it came to the same thing.

The matron stood proxy for Granny Bean in blowing out the candles. She was out of breath by the twenty-third. The nurses took turns to blow out the rest.

They were cutting the cake. One of the news men called, ‘Three cheers for Granny Bean.’

The hilarity was dying down and the men had gone by the time the normal visitors started to arrive. Some of the geriatrics were still eating or doing various things with their slice of cake.

Miss Valvona adjusted her glasses and reached for the newspaper.

She read out for the third time that day: ‘“September 21st — today’s birthday. Your year ahead: You can expect an eventful year. Controversial matters may predominate from December to March. People associated with music, transport, and the fashion industry will find the coming year will bring a marked progress.” Now, were you not connected with the fashion industry, Granny Bean? It says here in black and white’

But Mrs Bean had dropped asleep on her pillow after the nurse had given her a warm drink. Her mouth was formed once more into a small ‘O’ through which her breath whistled faintly.

‘Festivities going on?’ said Alec Warner, looking around at the party decorations.

‘Yes, Mrs Bean is a hundred today.’

The deep lines on Alec’s face and brow showed deeper. It was four months since he had lost his entire notes and records in the fire.

Jean Taylor had said, ‘Try to start all over again, Alec. You will find a lot of it will come back to your mind while you work.’

‘I could never trust my memory,’ he had said, ‘as I trusted those notes.’

‘Well, you must start all over again.’

‘I haven’t got it in me,’ he said, ‘to do that at my age. It was an accumulation of years of labour. It was invaluable.’

He had seldom, since then, referred to his loss. He felt, sometimes, he said once, that he was really dead, since his records had ceased to exist.

‘That’s rather a metaphysical idea for you, Alec,’ she said. ‘For in fact you are not dead, but still alive.’

He told her, it was true he frequently went over his vast notebooks in his mind, as through a card index. ‘But never,’ he said, ‘shall I make another note. I read instead. It is in some ways a better thing.’

She caught him looking with an almost cannibal desire at Granny Bean on her hundredth birthday. He sighed and looked away.

‘We all appear to ourselves frustrated in our old age, Alec, because we cling to everything so much. But in reality we are still fulfilling our lives.’

‘A friend of mine fulfilled his yesterday.’

‘Oh, who was that?’

‘Matt O’Brien in Folkestone. He thought he was God. He died in his sleep. He has left a fortune, but never knew about it. Lisa’s money of course. No relatives.’

‘Will Guy Leet —?’

‘No, Guy has no claim. I think Lisa’s estate will now go according to her will to Mrs Pettigrew.’

‘In that case,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘she will, after all, have her reward.’

Mrs Pettigrew had her reward. Lisa’s will was proved in her favour and she inherited all her fortune. After her first stroke Mrs Pettigrew went to live in a hotel at South Kensington. She is still to be seen at eleven in the morning at Harrod’s Bank where she regularly meets some of the other elderly residents to discuss the shortcomings of the hotel management, and to plan various campaigns against the staff. She can still be seen in the evening jostling for a place by the door of the hotel lounge before the dinner gong sounds.

Charmian died one morning in the following spring, at the age of eighty-seven.

Godfrey died the same year as the result of a motor accident, his car having collided with another at a bend in Kensington Church Street. He was not killed outright, but died a few days later of pneumonia which had set in from the shock. It was the couple in the other car who were killed outright.

Guy Leet died at the age of seventy-eight.

Percy Mannering is in an old men’s home, where he is known as ‘The Professor’ and is treated with special respect, having his bed put in an alcove at the far corner of the dormitory — a position reserved for patients who have known better days. His granddaughter, Olive, sometimes visits him. She takes away his poems and letters addressed to editors; she types them out, and dispatches them according to Percy’s directions.

Ronald Sidebottome is allowed up in the afternoons but is not expected to last another winter.

Janet Sidebottome died of a stroke following an increase in blood pressure, at the age of seventy-seven.

Mrs Anthony, now widowed, had a legacy from Charmian, and has gone to live at a seaside town, near her married son. Sometimes, when she hears of old people receiving anonymous telephone calls, she declares it is a good thing, judging by what she has seen, that she herself is hard of hearing.

Chief Inspector Mortimer died suddenly of heart-failure at the age of seventy-three, while boarding his yacht The Dragonfly. Mrs Mortimer spends most of her time looking after her numerous grandchildren.

Eric is getting through the Colston money which came to him on the death of his father.

Alec Warner had a paralytic stroke following a cerebral haemorrhage. For a time he was paralysed on one side and his speech was incoherent. In time he regained the use of his limbs; his speech improved. He went to live permanently in a nursing home and frequently searched through his mind, as through a card-index, for the case-histories of his friends, both dead and dying.

What were they sick, what did they die of?

Lettie Colston, he recited to himself, comminuted fractures of the skull; Godfrey Colston, hypostatic pneumonia; Charmian Colston, uraemia; Jean Taylor, myocardial degeneration; Tempest Sidebottome, carcinoma of the cervix; Ronald Sidebottome, carcinoma of the bronchus; Guy Leet, arteriosclerosis; Henry Mortimer, coronary thrombosis …

Miss Valvona went to her rest. Many of the grannies followed her. Jean Taylor lingered for a time, employing her pain to magnify the Lord, and meditating sometimes confidingly upon Death, the first of the four last things to be ever remembered.

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