The Salisbury Manuscript

The Drawing Room

Earlier that evening Henry Cathcart had had a visitor. It was Bessie from Venn House. She was wearing a black armband and a doleful face. She carried a letter from Mrs Slater. Henry had of course written a note of condolence to the widow. Now he had a reply on black-lined notepaper, asking him to call on her straightaway. She did not have to say that she was not free to leave her home. A new widow is not at liberty to come and go as she wishes, not without exciting comment.

It was the early evening. Cathcart waited a short while to allow Bessie to get well on the way back to Venn House before setting off there himself. It was the first time he had been to West Walk since the night of the murder. He was admitted by Bessie, who put on a mild show of being surprised to see him. Mrs Slater was sitting in the drawing room. She was dressed in mourning and reading a book. She looked quite composed. She closed the book and put it on the arm of her chair.

‘Mr Cathcart, how good of you to come.’

‘How are you, Mrs Slater?’ he said, noting that she had not called him by his first name.

‘I am — how do they say it? — bearing up.’

‘Bearing up’ was his wife’s expression, he thought. He went to stand opposite her but took care not to come too close. He debated for an instant leaning forward to take her hand, which was covered with a thin black lace glove, and kissing it. But now did not seem the moment. He was conscious of how warm the room was, even warmer than Constance liked her sick room.

‘It must be terrible to have to stay in this house,’ he said. ‘It is my home,’ Amelia said. ‘I feel quite safe with the servants. And there is Eaves.’

‘Eaves?’

‘The gardener.’

‘But forgive me, Mrs Slater, the gardener does not sleep in the house, does he?’

‘Oh no. But he is within call. It is only a shame that Achilles is not still alive. He would have been company for me.’

Cathcart remembered that Achilles was her little pug. It had died some time in the beginning of the year. If he thought it strange she should be regretting the death of her dog rather than her husband, he did not say so. There was no doubt that she looked good, that she looked very good, in mourning clothes.

‘You haven’t seen Walter, have you, Henry?’

‘Walter? Oh, your nephew.’

‘Yes, my nephew.’

For the first time, Cathcart observed marks of pain on the woman’s face. Amelia’s wide, mobile mouth was set in a rigid line. Her forehead, which was partly concealed by the black trimmings to a little hat, was creased as if she were trying to remember something.

‘No, I haven’t seen Walter, not since the night, the terrible night when. . when. .’

‘When it all happened,’ she completed his sentence.

‘Do you think something has happened now?’ he said. ‘To Walter?’

‘I pray not. It is simply that no one has seen him for a day or more. His bedroom has not been slept in.’

‘You have informed the police?’

‘Inspector Foster knows. I believe he has been looking for Walter too.’

‘I expect he’ll turn up soon.’

‘I don’t want him to turn up soon,’ she said, her hands suddenly bunching into fists on the arms of the chair. ‘I want to see him now.’

‘You should not worry,’ said Cathcart. ‘Walter is a fine young man.’

She looked at him and smiled.

‘You are right. I should not worry. Walter is a fine young man.’

Amelia rose from her chair. She moved closer to Henry and said, ‘But, my dear Henry, I think it is you who should worry.’

Cathcart was aware again of the heat of the room. He was so struck by the way she had addressed him — my dear Henry — that he scarcely noticed the rest of her words. Eventually he said, ‘I? Why should I be worried?’

‘Because you left something behind on your last visit here, on the very evening when poor Felix was killed.’

‘What did I leave?’

‘This,’ said Amelia Slater, moving away and reaching for a little reticule lying on a nearby table. ‘I put it here for safekeeping.’ She opened the beaded bag and brought out a pale silk handkerchief, a man’s one.

‘Is that mine?’ said Cathcart.

‘It must be,’ she said, making a show of scrutinising the handkerchief. ‘There are some letters embroidered on it. Ah, here they are. ‘H.G.C.’ I do not know of anyone else with the initials H.G.C. Do you know of anyone else?’

She held up the handkerchief by a single corner.

‘And now I look more carefully, Henry, I see that there are some specks of colour on the handkerchief. They look like specks of blood.’

‘It is blood,’ he said quickly. ‘I remember that I nicked myself while I was shaving that morning. Some of the blood must have got itself on the handkerchief.’

‘Tut,’ said Amelia Slater. ‘And you, one of the leading citizens of the town and one of the most prosperous too, could not afford to provide yourself with a fresh handker-chief for the day ahead?’

‘I meant to, I expect,’ he said. ‘ But I probably just stuffed it in my pocket and forgot about it.’

‘Ah well,’ she said, continuing to watch the handker-chief sway gently a foot from her face. It was as if she was conducting a hypnotic experiment on herself. ‘No doubt you have had a lot on your mind, Henry.’

Was he supposed to cross the few feet separating them and retrieve the handkerchief? Cathcart was reminded of a child playing a game. Suddenly he’d had enough. Something about the situation — whether it was the heat of the room or Amelia’s high-handed treatment of him or something less specific — reminded him of his wife Constance. He made to snatch at the handkerchief but at the last instant Amelia let it fall from her fingers so that it appeared she had surrendered it. He stuffed it into his coat pocket.

‘I must have dropped it,’ he said.

‘Ah, but where?’

‘Outside Venn House somewhere. In the porch.’

‘No, Henry. It was found inside, quite close to the door of Felix’s room. Bessie saw it but was too frightened to pick it up. She told me instead. So I picked it up — and now I have dropped it again — into your hand.’

‘Amelia. . Mrs Slater. . I am not sure what you are saying.’

‘I am saying nothing, Henry. I am too busy thinking of the death of poor Felix and of how I require another mourning outfit.’

‘What you are wearing now looks — looks fine to me. Sober and dignified and in the fashion, if I may say so.’

‘No, no,’ said Amelia, making an up-and-down motion with her hands from the top of her black-bonneted head to the tips of her black shoes, ‘no, no, all of this I am wearing is — how do they say it? — ‘cobbled together’. Yes, cobbled together.’

‘Then you would like to come to my shop and select something more à la mode?’ he said.

‘I should like nothing better than to visit your delightful shop, Henry. But, as you know, a widow is barely allowed to move a step outside her own room after the death of her spouse. She is as good as walled up like a bad person in a fairy story. As if she were the one guilty of his death! So, no, I cannot visit your shop. But I would be grateful, more grateful than I can show you at the moment, if you could send some of your people here to Venn House to see to my needs. No, do not send your people but come yourself.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘It would be my pleasure.’

Now, despite the heat of the drawing room, Henry Cathcart felt cold. Cold and angry. Amelia put out her black-gloved right hand as a sign that he might kiss it, also that their interview was over. He kissed her hand, but automatically, without thought.

She said, ‘What does it stand for, the G?’

It took him a moment to understand what she was talking about then he said, ‘George. It stands for George. Good evening, Mrs Slater.’

Walking back to his house, his leg causing him trouble, Henry Cathcart felt, paradoxically, not the damp chills of a November evening but a renewed warmth, the result of a temper which was turning from cold to heat. He was angry not so much with Amelia Slater — though some resentment in that quarter would surely be justified, he considered — as with himself. Angry in general for having allowed himself to be led so far astray, so very far, by the wife who was now a widow. Angry in particular that he had dropped the monogrammed, blood-speckled handkerchief which Bessie the maid had found. The handkerchief placed him inside Venn House on the evening of Felix Slater’s murder. Not much evidence by itself perhaps, although the blood speckles might have been awkward to explain away, but Cathcart was reluctant it should come to the attention of Inspector Foster. He had a high respect for Foster. No, the handkerchief now tucked into his coat pocket was not much evidence by itself, but it provided sufficient pressure for him to fall in straightaway with Amelia Slater’s request that he should provide her with fresh mourning outfits.

Yet, even as he turned these matters over in his head, he thought again of how fine she looked in mourning, how very fine.

Then he wondered whether he should get rid of the handkerchief or whether it was safe to have it laundered at home. If he got rid of it, he would have to burn or bury it. Otherwise the monogrammed initials were too revealing. If he did get rid of it, who was to say that it had ever existed, or rather who could say that it had been found, blood-speckled, near the site of a murder? But there were two people who might testify to that, he reflected. There was Amelia Slater and Bessie the housemaid. Mustn’t forget the housemaid.