Complete Short Stories (29 page)

Mungo brought
the house down. Tom thrust the rose-bowl into his unwilling hands, treated him to the stiffest whisky and soda on which I
have ever clapped eyes, and sent him crookedly upstairs to the bedroom; where Doris was being kept awake, not by the sounds of revelry from the smoke-room, but by the frightful snores of the Bishop next door.

‘What
have
you got there, Mungo?’ she asked crossly.

‘Rose-bowl,’
Mungo mumbled. ‘Tom offered it to the chappy who could best answer Eva’s question about the most thrilling moments in his life. They all told such capital stories that, when it was my turn, I got into a mortal funk. But we had drawn lots from the Bishop’s hat, and this inspired me. I said: “When Doris and I kneel side by side in church giving thanks to Heaven for all the blessings that have been
showered on us.” And they gave me the prize!’

‘How
could
you, Mungo! You know that was a dreadful lie. Oh, now I feel so ashamed! It’s not as though prayers and Church are anything to joke about.’ She enlarged on this aspect of the case for quite a while, and Mungo resignedly hung his head. Whisky always made him melancholy; I can’t say why.

The next morning the party broke up: one and all were
catching the 10.45 express to Town. Doris Montserrat noticed a lot of admiring or curious glances flung in her direction, and conscience pricked. She stood on the hall staircase and made a startling little speech.

‘Gentlemen, I’m afraid that Mungo won that rose-bowl on false pretences last night. He has only done… what he said he did… three times. The first was before we married; I made him.
The second was when we married; he could hardly have avoided it. The third was after we married, and then he fell asleep in the middle…’

‘H
E WAS A
very quiet, very sensitive young gentleman,’ concluded Mrs Tisser, ‘and punctual to the hour with his rent. I am truly sorry that he took the coward’s way out. My own opinion is that the balance of his mind was upset.’

‘Witness is not being questioned for her medical opinion,’ whispered the Coroner’s clerk. ‘She is being asked for facts.’

The Coroner said:
‘Mrs Tisser, you are not being asked for your medical opinion. You are being questioned for facts. The jury wants to hear more about the demeanour of the late Angus Hamilton Tighe on the morning of his death.’

Mrs Tisser stuck to her guns: ‘The young gentleman’s demeanour, your Honour, suggested that the balance of his mind had been upset.’

‘Enlarge on that, please,’ ordered the Coroner, conceding
the point.

‘He behaved very strangely, your Honour. At breakfast he told me, as I set down the tray beside him on the sitting-room table: “Mrs Tisser, I’ve been doing it wrong all my life: I keep my mouth open instead of shut.” Well, that was what I had been praying for weeks that he
would
say, because the poor gentleman snored as a pig grunts. So I said: “Well, Mr Tighe, I’m glad to hear you
make that confession. You ought to get Dr Thome to operate on your nose, so that you’d never do it again.” “Oh, but I enjoy the sensation,” he said, with a wild look in his eye. “It invigorates the whole system. And it’s a cheap pleasure, like sitting in the sun, or combing one’s hair, don’t you agree?”’

We glanced gravely at one another, as Mrs Tisser continued: ‘I told him that I didn’t agree,
and that I’d dearly knock a shilling a week off his rent, if he could break himself of the habit. He laughed in what I can only call a fiendish manner, and I left the room without another word. He had never before made mock of me. Not that I felt vexed exactly. But his demeanour was certainly most alarming.’

‘That took place shortly after 8 a.m., you say, Mrs Tisser? Did you see him again that
morning, before the fatality occurred?’

‘I did, your Honour; about five minutes later. We met on the stairs. He seemed to be in a state of suppressed excitement, and told me that he was
going out to buy an “eternity” and do the job properly at last. “An eternity?” I asked, thinking that perhaps I had misheard. “A rhine, if you like, Mrs Tisser,” he answered, grinning like a devil.’

‘And then?’

‘And then, your Honour, he was away between ten minutes and a quarter of an hour, and at last came rushing upstairs like a whirlwind. Half a minute went by, and then I heard an extraordinary sound: a sort of muffled explosion from the sitting-room. And I saw him dash through the open door, across the corridor, and into the bedroom where he flung himself headlong at the balcony beyond. I screamed,
and hurried downstairs.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Tisser, that will be enough. You need not repeat that part of your evidence; we have inspected the french windows and the shattered woodwork of the balcony which bear out your evidence. One more question. Do you know anything about the dead man’s emotional life?’

‘If you mean, did he ever try to bring a young woman home, he certainly did not, your Honour.
He was a most exemplary young man in that respect; his medical studies seem to have been “both parent, child and wife” to him, as the saying goes. The only thing I recall…’

‘Yes, Mrs Tisser?’

‘One night he confided to me his love for a lady whom he had never met; someone who had taken complete possession of his heart. I thought at first that it must be a film actress, but he said that he didn’t
even know what she looked like, and he couldn’t understand a word of what she said, either. It was then I first began to question his sanity. Well, about a week ago, as I was doing his room, I noticed a crumpled letter lying half-charred in the grate. My eye caught the first line: “O my wonderful Yma.” But I was too honourable to read any further, and I hardly like to mention it even now. She
seems to have been his dream-lady: because once he came back from a visit to London, and his eyes were shining as he said: “Oh, I am so happy, Mrs Tisser.” I asked: “On account of the lady you mentioned?” and he answered: “I spent the whole afternoon with her, Mrs Tisser.” “So you’ve met her at last?” I said. “I mean in spirit,” he told me.’

More evidence was called as to the late Angus Hamilton
Tighe’s state of health, but it proved to be inconclusive. We could not even decide that he had been overworking, or had financial difficulties, or was being blackmailed. Dr Thorne had never treated him for anything more than a twisted ankle. He possessed no close friends among his fellow medical students, and no relatives nearer than Canada. So we retired.

Since it seemed unlikely that Mrs Tisser
had pushed him over the balcony, we naturally wanted to spare the feelings of the Tighe family in Alberta, by adding ‘while of unsound mind’ to the obvious verdict of ‘suicide’.

Only one juryman, Mr Pink, a retired chemist, dissented. He called for
silence, and then spoke in grave, authoritative tones. ‘I think, ladies and gentlemen, that we can improve on that verdict. To begin with, I cannot
regard it as a symptom of insanity in myself that I too admire, nay adore, the celebrated Peruvian singer Yma Sumac, though I have never seen her, nor do I know one word of Spanish. Her voice, surely the most wonderful in the world, compasses five full octaves and is true as a bell in every register. Poor young Tighe! I own a rare set of Yma’s early recordings which would doubtless have given him
infinite pleasure, had I been aware that he shared my view of her genius.

‘But I have another observation to make of even greater importance: it is that when we inspected the corpse I noticed a discoloured right nostril.’

We gaped at him as he went on: ‘Which did not figure in the post-mortem report and was, in my view, caused by a “sternutatory”, not an “eternity”; or by an “errhine”, not “a
rhine”. In non-technical language, by tobacco snuff. If the Coroner permits us, we will send a policeman to visit the only tobacconist in this town who sells that old-fashioned commodity – Hackett of Cold Harbour Cottages. The officer will almost certainly find that the late Tighe visited Hackett at about 8.15 a.m. The fatal sternutatory is probably contained in the pencil-box on his desk. Moreover,
I noticed a familiar medical work on elementary physiology lying on the breakfast table. Look up “sternutation” in the Index, turn to the relevant page, and you will find, I think, a sentence to this general effect:

‘I remember well the impression that this passage made on me years ago, while I was studying for my pharmaceutical degree. I said to myself, in the very words of the deceased: “I have been doing it wrong all my life; I keep my mouth open, instead
of shut.” The next time that I felt a sneeze coming on, I duly compressed my lips and, hey presto! found myself hurtling across the room like a stone from a catapult; but fortunately did not make for the french windows. In fact, I knocked myself out on the corner of the mantelpiece. Let me therefore record my opinion that the late Angus Hamilton Tighe died a martyr to scientific experiment and was
no more suicidal than I am.’

So we brought in ‘Death by Misadventure’, after all, with a rider against experimental use of sternutatories; which, I fear, didn’t mean a thing to the general public.

T
HE POTTERIES WERE
by this time a distant smudge on the horizon behind us and the map showed us close to the Welsh border. Jenny drove.

Wales reminded us both of David, who had done his battle training in this region. So presently I said, knowing that this must be Jenny’s line of thought too: ‘They would have given him the award posthumously, of course, if the ground he
won had been held. Not that it would have meant much to anyone, except the Regimental historian. Anyhow, the Japs infiltrated, the Indian battalions on the flanks rectified their line (as the saying is), and the Regiment had to fight its way back. It’s a rule that a reverse cancels all citations.’

‘An R.A.F. man who was giving the Brigade air-support – I met him last year in Trans-Jordania –
says the attack was suicidal and criminal.’

‘It wasn’t the C.-in-C.’s fault. He had orders from London to secure a tactical success in that area before the monsoon broke. And felt awful about it.’

‘How do you know that, Father?’

‘Warell wrote to me as soon as the War ended and brought up the subject himself. His G.H.Q. was a thousand miles away, and though, when he’d seen the plan of attack
submitted, he felt strongly tempted to fly up and run the show in person, a C.-in-C. couldn’t very well take over from a brigade commander. It just wasn’t done. Or so he said in his letter. I’ve kept it for you.’

‘According to my R.A.F. man, everyone was hopping mad at having to assault a scientifically entrenched position without proper artillery support – and just before the rain bogged everything
down for the season. That sense of victimization must have been what sent David berserk. As you know, he was a confirmed pacifist, and had nothing against the Japs.’

We kept silent for a mile or two. Then I said: ‘One thing that he did has always puzzled me. At Oxford, when he was four years old, we were driving up the High and a great pack of black-coated, dog-collared parsons debouched from
Queen’s College and swarmed across the street, making for Oriel. An Ecclesiastical Congress was on. David shouted excitedly: “Kill them! Kill them!” Did he hate the colour of their clothes, do
you think? Or was he simply anticlerical?’

‘Neither,’ Jenny answered. ‘I should say that it was the
unnaturalness
of the sight. Probably he always thought of clergymen in the singular, as I do. The vicar
on the altar steps: singular. Like the mother beside the cradle: singular. Or the headmistress in her study: singular. Each aloof, self-sufficient, all-powerful and, in fact, singular. Don’t all Mothers’ Meetings, Ecclesiastical Congresses, and Headmistresses’ or Headmasters’ Conferences seem terribly artificial and awkward and dismal to you – I mean because of the loss of singularity? Whereas soldiers
or sailors, or undergraduates, or schoolchildren, who go naturally into the plural…’

‘Clergymen do behave very awkwardly in a bunch, I agree, and David may have wanted to put them out of their misery by a sudden massacre. He had a kind heart.’

‘Also,’ said Jenny, ‘Mothers’ Meetings and Headmistresses’ Conferences go with seed-cake. When David was twelve and I was thirteen and we got invited
to parties, he used to wander round and inspect the food supply as soon as we arrived. If it passed muster, we stayed. Otherwise he’d nudge me and whisper: “Seed-cake, Jenny.” And then we always sneaked out. He hated seed-cake. Seed-cake’s impersonal, and David was a real person.’

Green Welsh hills and wild-eyed Welsh sheep and the syllable
Llan
appearing on every second fingerpost. Hereabouts
David had commanded his platoon in aggressive tactical schemes; perhaps had sten-gunned the imaginary garrison of that farmhouse at the top of the slope. It was a splendid eighteenth-century building with a broad whitewashed front, generous windows and an irregular slate roof yellow with lichen; also a large midden, cocks and hens of an old-fashioned, handsome, uneconomical breed, black cows, and
bracken litter at the entrance to the byres. A sign read: TEAS.

As we rounded a sharp corner we came on a glossy charabanc, which had just disgorged its load of excursionists by the farmhouse gate. They were all earnest, black-coated, dog-collared clergymen, and seemed profoundly ill at ease. Forty or fifty at least, and – this is a true story, not a joke, for neither Jenny nor I felt prepared
for a joke – every one of them had a slice of impersonal seed-cake in his hand, out of which he had taken a single thoughtful bite.

I had a vision of a serious apple-cheeked little boy, sitting between Jenny and me and shaking his fist in a fury.

‘Kill them, kill them!’ I shouted involuntarily; but Jenny, scared as she was, had the presence of mind to swerve and drive on.