An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (5 page)

Miss Leaming, who had been looking out of the French windows to the garden, turned and said with sudden vehemence: “This lust always to know! It’s only prying. If he’d wanted us to know, he’d have told us.”

Sir Ronald said: “I’m not prepared to go on in this uncertainty. My son is dead.
My
son. If I am in some way responsible, I’d prefer to know. If anyone else is responsible, I want to know that too.”

Cordelia looked from one to the other. She asked: “Did he leave a note?”

“He left a note but not an explanation. It was found in his typewriter.”

Quietly Miss Leaming began to speak: “Down the winding cavern we groped our tedious way, till a void boundless as the nether sky appeared beneath us, and we held by the roots of trees and hung over this immensity; but I said: ‘if you please we will commit ourselves to this void and see whether providence is here also.’ ”

The husky, curiously deep voice came to an end. They were silent. Then Sir Ronald said: “You claim to be a detective, Miss Gray. What do you deduce from that?”

“That your son read William Blake. Isn’t it a passage from
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell?”

Sir Ronald and Miss Leaming glanced at each other. Sir Ronald said: “So I am told.”

Cordelia thought that Blake’s gently unemphatic exhortation, devoid of violence or despair, was more appropriate to suicide by drowning or by poison—a ceremonious floating or sinking into oblivion—than to the trauma of hanging. And yet there was the analogy of falling, of launching oneself into the void. But this speculation was indulgent fantasy. He had chosen Blake; he had chosen hanging. Perhaps other and more gentle means were not to hand; perhaps he had acted upon impulse. What was it that the Super always said? “Never theorize in advance of your facts.” She would have to look at the cottage.

Sir Ronald said, with a touch of impatience, “Well, don’t you want the job?”

Cordelia looked at Miss Leaming but the woman did not meet her eyes.

“I want it very much. I was wondering whether you really wanted me to take it.”

“I’m offering it to you. Worry about your own responsibilities, Miss Gray, and I’ll look after mine.”

Cordelia said: “Is there anything else that you can tell me? The ordinary things. Was your son in good health? Did he seem worried about his work or his love affairs? About money?”

“Mark would have inherited a considerable fortune from his maternal grandfather had he reached the age of twenty-five. In the meantime, he received an adequate allowance from me, but from the date of leaving college he transferred the balance back to my own account and instructed his Bank Manager to deal similarly with any future payments. Presumably he lived on his earnings for the last two weeks of his life. The postmortem revealed no illnesses and his tutor testified that his academic work was satisfactory. I, of course, know nothing of his subject. He didn’t confide in me about his love affairs—what young man does to his father? If he had any, I would expect them to be heterosexual.”

Miss Leaming turned from her contemplation of the garden. She held out her hands in a gesture which could have been resignation or despair: “We knew nothing about him, nothing! So why wait until he’s dead and then start finding out?”

“And his friends?” asked Cordelia quietly.

“They rarely visited here but there were two I recognized at the inquest and the funeral: Hugo Tilling from his own college and his sister who is a post-graduate student at New Hall, studying philology. Do you remember her name, Eliza?”

“Sophie. Sophia Tilling. Mark brought her here to dinner once or twice.”

“Could you tell me something about your son’s early life? Where was he educated?”

“He went to a pre-prep school when he was five and to a prep school subsequently. I couldn’t have a child here running unsupervised in and out of the laboratory. Later, at his mother’s wish—she died when Mark was nine months old—he went to a Woodard Foundation. My wife was what I believe is called a High Anglican and wanted the boy educated in that tradition. As far as I know, it had no deleterious effect on him.”

“Was he happy at prep school?”

“I expect he was as happy as most eight-year-olds are, which means that he was miserable most of the time, interposed with periods of animal spirits. Is all this relevant?”

“Anything could be. I have to try to get to know him, you see.”

What was it that the supercilious, sapient, superhuman Super had taught? “Get to know the dead person. Nothing about him is too trivial, too unimportant. Dead men can talk. They can lead directly to their murderer.” Only this time, of course, there wasn’t a murderer.

She said: “It would be helpful if Miss Leaming could type out the information you have given to me and add the name of his college and his tutor. And please may I have a note signed by you to authorize me to make enquiries.”

He reached down to a left-hand drawer in the desk, took out a sheet of writing paper and wrote on it; then he passed it to Cordelia. The printed heading read: From Sir Ronald Callender, FRC, Garforth House, Cambridgeshire. Underneath he had written:
The bearer, Miss Cordelia Gray, is authorized to make enquiries on my behalf into the death on 26th May of my son, Mark Callender
. He had signed and dated it.

He asked: “Is there anything else?”

Cordelia said: “You talked about the possibility of someone else being responsible for your son’s death. Do you quarrel with the verdict?”

“The verdict was in accordance with the evidence which is all one can expect of a verdict. A court of law is not constituted to establish the truth. I’m employing you to make an attempt at that. Have you everything you need? I don’t think we can help you with any more information.”

“I should like a photograph.”

They looked at each other nonplussed. He said to Miss Leaming: “A photograph. Have we a photograph, Eliza?”

“There is his passport somewhere but I’m not sure where. I have that photograph I took of him in the garden last summer. It shows him fairly clearly, I think. I’ll get it.” She went out of the room.

Cordelia said: “And I should like to see his room, if I may. I assume that he stayed here during his vacations?”

“Only occasionally, but of course he had a room here. I’ll show it to you.”

The room was on the second floor and at the back. Once inside, Sir Ronald ignored Cordelia. He walked over to the window and gazed out over the lawns as if neither she nor the room held any interest for him. It told Cordelia nothing about the adult Mark. It was simply furnished, a school boy’s sanctum, and looked as if little had been changed in the last ten years. There was a low white cupboard against one wall with the usual row of discarded childhood toys: a teddy bear, his fur scuffed with much cuddling and one beady eye hanging loose; painted wooden trains and trucks; a Noah’s Ark, its deck a-tumble with stiff-legged animals topped by a round-faced Noah and his wife; a boat with limp dejected sail; a miniature darts board. Above the toys were two rows of books. Cordelia went over to examine them. Here was the orthodox library of the middle-class child, the approved classics handed down from generation to generation, the traditional lore of
nanny and mother. Cordelia had come to them late as an adult; they had found no place in her Saturday comic- and television-dominated childhood.

She said: “What about his present books?”

“They’re in boxes in the cellar. He sent them here for storage when he left college and we haven’t had time to unpack them yet. There hardly seems any point in it.”

There was a small round table beside the bed and on it a lamp and a bright round stone intricately holed by the sea, a treasure picked up, perhaps, from some holiday beach. Sir Ronald touched it gently with long tentative fingers then began rolling it under his palm over the surface of the table. Then, apparently without thinking, he dropped it into his pocket. “Well,” he said. “Shall we go down now?”

They were met at the foot of the stairs by Miss Leaming. She looked up at them as slowly they came down side by side. There was such controlled intensity in her regard that Cordelia waited almost with apprehension for her to speak. But she turned away, her shoulders drooping as if with sudden fatigue, and all she said was: “I’ve found the photograph. I should like it back when you’ve finished with it, please. I’ve put it in the envelope with the note. There isn’t a fast train back to London until nine thirty-seven, so perhaps you would care to stay for dinner?”

The dinner party which followed was an interesting but rather odd experience, the meal itself a blend of the formal and casual which Cordelia felt was the result of conscious effort rather than chance. Some effect, she felt, had been aimed at but whether of a dedicated band of co-workers meeting together at the end of a day for a corporate meal, or the ritual imposition of order and ceremony on a diverse company, she wasn’t sure. The party numbered ten: Sir Ronald Callender,
Miss Leaming, Chris Lunn, a visiting American professor, whose unpronounceable name she forgot as soon as Sir Ronald introduced her, and five of the young scientists. All the men, including Lunn, were in dinner jackets, and Miss Leaming wore a long skirt of patchwork satin below a plain sleeveless top. The rich blues, greens and reds gleamed and changed in the candlelight as she moved, and emphasized the pale silver of her hair and the almost colourless skin. Cordelia had been rather nonplussed when her hostess left her in the drawing room and went upstairs to change. She wished that she had something more competitive than the fawn skirt and green top, being at an age to value elegance more highly than youth.

She had been shown to Miss Leaming’s bedroom to wash and had been intrigued by the elegance and simplicity of the furniture and the contrasting opulence of the adjacent bathroom. Studying her tired face in the mirror and wielding her lipstick, she had wished she had some eyeshadow with her. On impulse, and with a sense of guilt, she had pulled open a dressing-table drawer. It was filled with a variety of make-up: old lipsticks in colours long out of date; half-used bottles of foundation cream; eye pencils; moisturizing creams; half-used bottles of scent. She had rummaged, and eventually found a stick of eyeshadow which, in view of the wasteful muddle of discarded items in the drawer, she had had little compunction in using. The effect had been bizarre but striking. She could not compete with Miss Leaming but at least she looked five years older. The disorder in the drawer had surprised her and she had had to resist the temptation to see if the wardrobe and the other drawers were in a similar state of disarray. How inconsistent and how interesting human beings were! She thought it astonishing that such a fastidious and competent woman should be content to live with such a mess.

The dining room was at the front of the house. Miss Leaming placed Cordelia between herself and Lunn, a seating which held little prospect of pleasurable conversation. The rest of the party sat where they wished. The contrast between simplicity and elegance showed in the table arrangements. There was no artificial light and three silver branched candlesticks were placed at regular intervals down the table. Between them were set four wine carafes made of thick green glass with curved lips, such as Cordelia had often seen in cheap Italian restaurants. The place mats were of plain cork, but the forks and spoons were antique silver. The flowers were set in low bowls, not skilfully arranged but looking as if they were casualties of a garden storm, blooms which had snapped off in the wind and which someone had thought it kind to place in water.

The young men looked incongruous in their dinner jackets, not ill at ease since they enjoyed the essential self-esteem of the clever and successful, but as if they had picked up the suits second-hand or at a fancy dress costumier and were participating in a charade. Cordelia was surprised at their youth; she guessed that only one was over thirty. Three were untidy, fast-talking, restless young men with loud, emphatic voices who took no notice of Cordelia after the first introduction. The other two were quieter and one, a tall black-haired boy with strong irregular features, smiled at her across the table and looked as if he would like to have sat within speaking distance.

The meal was brought in by an Italian manservant and his wife who left the cooked dishes on hot plates on a side table. The food was plentiful and the smell almost intolerably appetizing to Cordelia, who hadn’t realized until then just how hungry she was. There was a dish heaped high with glistening rice, a large casserole of veal in a rich mushroom sauce, a bowl of spinach. Beside it on the cold table was a large ham, a
sirloin of beef and an interesting assortment of salads and fruit. The company served themselves, carrying their plates back to the table with whatever combination of food, hot or cold, they fancied. The young scientists piled their plates high and Cordelia followed their example.

She took little interest in the conversation except to notice that it was predominantly about science and that Lunn, although he spoke less than the others, spoke as their equal. He should, she thought, have looked ridiculous in his rather tight dinner jacket but, surprisingly, he looked the most at ease, the second most powerful personality in the room. Cordelia tried to analyse why this was so, but was defeated. He ate slowly, with finicky attention to the arrangement of the food on his plate, and from time to time, smiled secretly into his wine.

At the other end of the table Sir Ronald was peeling an apple and talking to his guest, his head inclined. The green rind slid thinly over his long fingers and curved down towards his plate. Cordelia glanced at Miss Leaming. She was staring at Sir Ronald with such unwavering and speculative concern that Cordelia uncomfortably felt that every eye present must be irresistibly drawn to that pale disdainful mask. Then, Miss Leaming seemed to become aware of her glance. She relaxed and turned to Cordelia: “When we were travelling here together you were reading Hardy. Do you enjoy him?”

“Very much. But I enjoy Jane Austen more.”

“Then you must try to find an opportunity of visiting the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. They have a letter written by Jane Austen. I think you’ll find it interesting.”