Untimely Death

CHAPTER VII. Lying Up

I think,” said Eleanor, “that it might be a good plan if you were to go to bed.”

Her husband murmured faintly that perhaps it would. He was far too grateful to her for the superb tact with which she had refrained from asking any questions about his afternoon’s adventures to oppose any suggestion that she might care to make. But in any case he knew that the sooner he was in bed the better. It was not merely that he was extremely tired; he felt, if not ill, at least decidedly out of sorts. The appetite which he had brought home from his expedition had dwindled to nothing at the sight of food, and from certain uneasy qualms he was fairly sure that he was running a temperature. This latter fact, however, he hoped would escape Eleanor’s notice.

Vain hope! No sooner was he in bed than a thermometer was thrust into his mouth. Following the maddening custom of nurses all the world over, Eleanor did not reveal the verdict, but he was not interested in the precise reading. He knew without being told that he was officially an invalid. He knew, further, that he had brought it on himself, and that it served him right. He swallowed meekly the concoction that Eleanor handed him and sank gratefully back on his pillow.

His sleep was restless and disturbed by ugly dreams. Waking in the small hours, he was shocked to realize that they were in all essentials the same grisly nightmares that had troubled him as a schoolboy, with perhaps an added element of horror. If he had not realized it before, he knew now that the sentimental backward journey in time on which he had been engaged had its dangers as well as its attractions. I must be my age in future, he told himself, and on that resolution fell asleep once more.

Whether because his resolution took effect or for some other cause, his sleep this time was peaceful enough. He woke late, his fever gone, but with a body aching as though it had been scientifically belaboured by experts. He accepted without protest the decision that he should spend the day in bed. An immense lassitude of mind possessed him. He was vaguely conscious of there being something that should be done, a decision that ought to be taken, but he drowsily postponed the effort of even seeking to remember what it was.

It was Sunday morning. Eleanor had announced her intention of going to church for morning service. Sunday newspapers came late to this remote spot, but he had brought plenty of books with him, and presently he roused himself sufficiently to glance at them. He picked up successively a historical work which he was very anxious to read, a neglected classic which he had always intended to read and a cheap thriller which he had brought along because Eleanor liked that sort of stuff.

One hour, eight chapters and one hundred and twenty pages later, he was contemplating the predicament of a heroine who owed her perilous state entirely to her pigheaded refusal to inform the proper authorities that in Chapter I she had found a dead body in her dustbin. Pettigrew felt that this was trying his credibility a little too high. At the same time, the young woman’s dilemma seemed in some way faintly familiar… His tired brain shied away from the problem that lay just below the level of consciousness, and by the time that Eleanor returned from church he was slumbering once more.

He made only a pretence of eating lunch, and the tray was hardly out of the room before he was again asleep. Some time later he was jerked wide awake by the ringing of a bell. It took him an appreciable time to realize that it was a telephone, and that the thudding sounds that made his bed shake were the footsteps of Mrs. Gorman scurrying to answer it. It still seemed to him vaguely inappropriate that Sallowcombe should have this, or any other, attribute of modernity. Evidently, the line was not particularly good, for Mrs. Gorman’s part in the conversation was loud enough to penetrate all over the house. Pettigrew could not but hear, though at first he paid little attention to what was being said. He caught the name of “Gilbert” repeated once or twice, and then, “When did it happen?” He was left in no doubt as to what had happened to Gilbert, for Mrs. Gorman’s next words were: “Well, it’s a merciful release, I reckon, after all these years.” The phrase struck Pettigrew as being neither original nor provocative, but it was plainly not to the taste of the other party to the conversation, for Mrs. Gorman’s succeeding observation, spoken very loudly and with an unexpected rasp in her voice, was: “I’ll thank you not to talk to me like that, Louisa. You can keep that sort of language for Jack. If you dare to use it, that is.”

By this time, Pettigrew was unashamedly listening to what promised to be an exciting family row. But it did not develop in the way that might have been expected. “What?” Mrs. Gorman went on, “What did you say?… No, of course not. Jack isn’t with me at this moment, you know that as well as I do… Well, I don’t know, I’m sure… He’s his own master, I suppose… Yes, he’ll be at the funeral, miss, and the girls too. At Minster, of course. Tuesday? Wednesday?… You’ll let me know. Very well.” And she rang off.

There succeeded a full half minute of dead silence, before Pettigrew heard Mrs. Gorman’s footsteps moving away from the entrance hall where the telephone was situated. Pettigrew pictured her standing quietly there, turning over in her mind the significance of what she had just heard. To judge from the tone of her voice, the question of Jack’s whereabouts had caused her a good deal more concern than Gilbert’s death. It was tantalizing to find oneself on the fringe of a domestic drama, with no obvious means of penetrating any nearer to its centre. He would have liked to discuss it with Eleanor, but at his express desire, she had taken herself off on to the moor for the afternoon, rather than waste the fine weather with him indoors. Now his watch told him that it was nearly time for tea, and he realized with pleasure that he was looking forward to it with something approaching hunger. He heard the front door of the house open and close again and a little later Mr. Joliffe’s deep, slow voice. Evidently his daughter came to meet him in the hall, for her voice mingled with his. The voices moved in the direction of Mr. Joliffe’s sitting-room and the door shut with a bang. Half an hour later he was still waiting for his tea in a mood of starved exasperation. It was all very well for Mrs. Gorman to discuss with her father the news of Gilbert’s death, but she had no business to allow such personal matters to come before her duty to her guests. People had no sense of obligation nowadays…

The door of the sitting-room must have opened, for he suddenly heard a babel of words. Mrs. Gorman and her father were both talking at once, and talking in no very friendly spirit, to judge from the tone of their voices. Of what they said, Pettigrew could distinguish one word only, which was repeated by both speakers with considerable emphasis. It was the name, “Jack”. Once more, he observed, it was the live Jack rather than the deceased Gilbert who seemed to be the centre of concern. Then he heard the sitting-room door close again, and Mrs. Gorman’s footsteps making their way across the hall and along the passage that led to the kitchen. He thought, too, that he could distinguish something very much like a sob.

The tea was brought after what in the circumstances Pettigrew could not but feel was a commendably short interval. It was a tea worth waiting for, in the true Exmoor tradition, with farmhouse scones, heather honey in the comb and clotted cream. It was brought, not by Mrs. Gorman but by Doreen, breathing heavily and biting her underlip as she manoeuvred the tray into position, with Beryl, her younger sister, in giggling attendance.

“Mum says she’s sorry she can’t bring the tea herself, but she’s a bit upset this afternoon,” said Doreen gravely.

“I’m sorry,” said Pettigrew, politely.

“Uncle Gilbert’s dead!” exclaimed Beryl from the door, in a tone that was more like a shout of triumph than anything else.

“You be quiet, Beryl!” Doreen commanded. “It’s quite true what she says,” she informed Pettigrew. “But he wasn’t a real uncle, only a sort of cousin.”

“I see,” said Pettigrew. “I’m sorry.”

“There isn’t nothing to be sorry about,” remarked Doreen coldly. “Uncle Gilbert’s been ill for ages and ages. And now he’s dead we shall get all his money, Mummy says.”

“And we shall all go away and live with Daddy and leave the ’lectric light on as much as we like,” chanted Beryl. “All day if we want to. And I shall have a bicycle and a-”

“That’s enough!” Doreen drove her sister from the room, and turned back to Pettigrew. “You’ll have to excuse Beryl,” she said. “Mum’s always on at her about gossiping to strangers, but she’s that young, she will do it. And Mum says if there’s anything else you require will you knock on the floor and I’ll come up.”

Pettigrew required nothing else except some further information to satisfy his curiosity about the Gorman family, and this was denied him. Doreen had gone some way to clear up the question of Gilbert’s identity, and he knew from Eleanor that Jack was identical with the Daddy who was expected to allow his daughters to leave the electric light on-a sidelight on Jack’s character which he had not expected. But this still left a number of questions unanswered. Pettigrew postponed their consideration until he had disposed of his tea. Eating clotted cream and honey in bed may be among the highest of human pleasures, but it demands from its votaries undivided attention if it is to be accomplished without disaster to the bed-clothes. The tray removed (by a subdued and silent Mrs. Gorman), he pondered at length the various problems raised by the evidence, and amused himself by fabricating a number of theories to account for them. Then Eleanor came in, and with her assistance the theories became progressively more and more fantastic. It was merely idle curiosity on his part. The affairs of the Gormans and their congeners could be of no conceivable interest to him. But it served to pass the time-served, too, as an excuse for shelving once more the question which, at the back of his mind, he knew would have to be faced sooner or later. He slept badly again that night.