Not to be Taken (20 page)

‘No, no,’ I said hastily. ‘Nothing like that. It’s simply that John was – well, I suppose in a way he was my closest friend. I just thought I’d call to make sure that you were quite all right and had – er – everything you needed.’

Her face cleared instantly. The Cockney accent, which had become more pronounced with her anger, grew less noticeable again.

‘Oh, I see. Nice of you. John told you about us, then? Well, he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t known he could trust you, so I can too.’

She beamed at me. I felt a little mean over the deception, but did not contradict her assumption.

‘Certainly you can trust me.’

She leaned back in her chair and stretched her strong, magnificent body, smiling at me with an easy camaraderie which I liked. In five seconds, it seemed, she had adopted me as an old friend. It struck me that she was a born adopter. Some women are. She had probably adopted John.

‘Let’s talk about him,’ she said. ‘I’ve been fair starved for someone to tell me the news. Poisoned! Well, fancy that. Whoever could have wanted to poison John? Real upset I was when I heard about it. I was ever so fond of John.’

That means, I thought, that you weren’t in love with him. He certainly wasn’t in love with you. That would have allowed you to respect and feel affection for each other in a perfectly calm way, without all those complications which love, that curse of mankind, must inevitably introduce: an ideal relationship.

We talked for a time of John’s death, and I told her so much of its inner history as I judged it good for her to know. Then she began to reminisce about him, and I was content to listen.

The police!’ she exclaimed with great scorn, in answer to some casual remark of mine. ‘Oh yes, they’ve been here. But I didn’t tell them anything. Not likely! I didn’t even tell them I’d been in service at Oswald’s Gable. Let them find it all out for themselves if they want to know.’

‘Indeed? I didn’t know that either.’

‘Oh, didn’t John tell you? Why, that’s how I first knew him. Ever so sorry for him I was, too, with that good-for-nothing wife of his, always pretending to be ill and no more wrong with her than you or me. Oh yes, I saw through her all right. That’s why she gave me my notice. Couldn’t bear anyone to see through her, she couldn’t. Upon my word, I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t poison him after all.’

‘Oh no; that’s quite out of the question… Er – John used to visit you here often?’

‘He usually dropped in when he was in Torminster. Generally of a Thursday, and any other day convenient. He knew he’d always find me in of an afternoon.’

‘Why Thursdays, particularly?’ I asked idly.

‘That was the day I made my caramels,’ smiled the girl, not without pride. ‘Every Thursday morning, regular as clockwork. You wouldn’t believe how John used to like them. I made them specially for him, of course. Used to take away a boxful every week, he did, and if he didn’t come in of a Thursday afternoon I’d post him some, just so as he wouldn’t be without. Regular sweet tooth he had. They’re good, too, though I say it as shouldn’t. Here, I’ve still got some left, though I haven’t had the heart to make any more, not since… Oh well, it’s no good crying, is it? Here, try one.’ While speaking she had jumped up, knocked over a small table, wiped her eyes, blown her nose, extracted a tin box from a drawer and was now offering me the contents.

I took one of the large, sugary lumps with appropriate thanks. It was certainly very good, for those who like such things: and I’ll admit it was a surprise to me to learn that John did.

While I was still engaged in manoeuvring it round my mouth, trying to find a place where it would fit, there was a ring at the bell. Up jumped the lady again, and bounced out to the front door, leaving the door of the room ajar. I could not help reflecting that she must have made a somewhat dynamic parlourmaid.

From where I was sitting I could see her talking at the door to a short, rather pimply young man. The talk was in the nature of an altercation. The young man seemed to want to come in, and Lily would not let him. She dealt with him firmly but very kindly, and from the sulky expression on the young man’s face I gathered that he was used to being dealt with thus and knew that protest was useless. Finally the door was shut upon him, and Lily returned to me.

‘That was Bert,’ she announced cheerfully.

‘Bert?’

‘That’s right. We’re getting married now. I wouldn’t marry him before because it wouldn’t have been fair to John. John needed me more. Bert’s young and he could wait, and so I told him many a time when he was pestering me to give up John.’

‘Did John know about Bert?’ I asked with secret amusement at this curious romance.

‘Oh no. Not likely. It would have spoiled things for him. John was so generous. He’d have wanted me to marry and settle down while I had the chance. It would have made him miserable to know I was keeping Bert off for his sake. Not but what the legacy won’t come in useful now. John always said I ought to use it to get married on, and that’s just what I’m going to do.’

‘You knew about the legacy, then?’

‘Oh yes. That was part of the arrangement John made. Very generous, he was, and told me from the beginning he would make provision for me after he was gone. Oh dear: I can’t hardly believe it even now. I miss him ever so.’

‘You’ve still got Bert,’ I ventured to point out.

‘That’s different. Not but what Bert isn’t a nice young chap, and doing well at his job, too. Assistant to Lorder’s, he is – you know, the big chemists in the High Street – and expects to be manager before he’s done. Oh yes, regular ambitious, Bert is, and properly set on getting on. It’s his afternoon off today; that’s why he came round; to take me to the pictures.’

‘You shouldn’t have sent him away, if it was on my account. I have to be off in a few minutes myself.’

‘Not till you’ve had a cup of tea,’ exclaimed Lily, jumping up once more. ‘Besides, I haven’t talked nearly enough about John. Poor old John! And I hadn’t seen him, not for a whole week before he was taken bad. Now you just sit there and look at the paper, and I’ll have tea in a jiffy.’

I sat.

When I finally left, an hour later, I carried away the impression of a singularly honest, good-natured, sincere soul. John had chosen wisely.

So, for that matter, had Bert.

Revelation to a Fruit Farmer

The case was over, the mystery at an end.

‘Accidental death.’ Most disappointing to all the sensation-seekers in the daily press. The newspapers, knowing their public, dropped the thing like an unclean rag: their implied disgust was obvious. The report of the short proceedings which concluded the adjourned inquest was relegated to a very back page.

As a news item they deserved little more. Alec had evidently done his job well. The Coroner, with an air of childlike innocence, called his evidence. The statement made in Mr Waterhouse’s letter had been fully confirmed. A brown bottle, containing the remains of a strong solution of arsenic, had been found where he had written that it was; the bottle had been tested for fingerprints and shown those of Mr Waterhouse alone; the police were satisfied, the Coroner was satisfied, everyone was satisfied. Accidental death.

The Coroner was not absolutely correct. Everyone was not satisfied. It is to be doubted, for instance, whether the insurance company was satisfied; but if not, it could no longer do anything about it. Cyril Waterhouse was definitely dissatisfied; but he too could do nothing. (Nothing had been said to him of the secret issues involved, which were indeed known in Anneypenny to me alone, and I, of course, was bound to secrecy.) He departed with his son, only just managing to restrain, behind thinly compressed lips, his obvious conviction that his sister-in-law was a murderess who had succeeded in bamboozling the law, the police and everyone except himself. I think none of us were sorry to see the last of the man.

Not even Cyril had been able to ignore his brother’s letter to the Coroner; but he had fitted it ingeniously into his theory of Angela’s guilt by supposing that John had written it to shield his wife, after discovering that Angela had poisoned him. According to Harold, this view was also held in amateur criminological circles in London; but it was certainly not current in Anneypenny. Not one of us had ever seriously believed that Angela could be guilty, and most of us were content to accept John’s letter as literal fact; though I, knowing too much, could not be so easily satisfied.

There were others, knowing ones, who opined that John really had committed suicide after all, and his letter was a brilliant and successful effort to cover the fact. These people gave as his motive the discovery of Angela’s infidelity. The fact that Angela and John, though fond enough of each other in a way, were certainly not in love was not allowed to weigh.

On the whole, however, there was singularly little talk, and within a week of the verdict the whole affair had passed more or less into history. Angela, making, exactly as Glen had foretold, a miraculous recovery, rose from her bed and departed unobtrusively for the South of France; and we all took it comfortably for granted that her black-avised lover was to join her there; though in point of fact, as I heard later, he did nothing of the sort, remaining more sensibly in London to work for his finals.

In our own little circle the topic of John’s death became more or less taboo, and even Harold was induced to conform to the decencies in this respect. But one evening, when I happened to be alone with Glen, Frances having run Rona into Torminster to see a film, I raised the subject. I did so deliberately. Glen’s attitude had puzzled me ever since we had heard John’s letter read out in court. I could not make out whether he accepted John’s explanation or not, and I rather wanted to know.

Glen will fence, if allowed, for hours; but he will usually respond to a straight question. When we had our pipes well alight, and no word had been spoken for at least five minutes, I put the straight question to him.

‘Glen,’ I said, ‘do you believe that letter of John’s contained the truth about his death?’

Glen looked at me. ‘Yes,’ he said after a pause. ‘I suppose I do. At any rate it covers the facts. I shouldn’t have thought him capable of such a gross bit of carelessness, but I’ve come to the conclusion John wasn’t altogether the man we thought him.’

‘He certainly wasn’t,’ I agreed. ‘But in what particular way?’

‘Oh, almost any way you like. In fact anything we believed him to be, he was probably the opposite.’

‘That’s pitching it rather strong,’ I demurred. ‘At any rate he was a good old sort.’

‘Oh yes. One of the best. To us.’

‘To us?’

‘We never came up against him. I doubt if John was quite such a good sort to those who did.’

‘He always used to say he was incapable of ruthlessness.’

Glen nodded. ‘Exactly. And we believed him. Haven’t you ever noticed how much we take for granted that what a person says about himself is true? John was very fond of disclaiming certain qualities. Result, we automatically disclaimed them for him too. Mostly, I should say, we were wrong.’

‘John probably believed he was speaking the truth.’

‘Maybe. But few of us like speaking the exact truth about ourselves, except the mental exhibitionists.’

‘Well,’ I said a little irrelevantly, ‘I’m glad it wasn’t murder.’

‘Um,’ said Glen.

There was another silence, which I broke.

‘You were right about Angela, Glen. And I suppose this sudden improvement in health will be maintained?’

‘Oh yes. Unless the next husband discovers a cure for cancer or does anything else calculated to attract admiring attention.’

‘I’ve never asked Rona. Did she have a terrible time with Angela that fortnight she was there?’

Glen grinned. ‘Pretty poor, I believe. But there were compensations.’

‘Angela keeps a comfortable house at any rate,’ I ruminated. ‘Queer about servants, isn’t it? Angela can’t have been a good mistress, but those self-centred, selfish, exacting women always seem to get good service; while really model employers, like Frances and me, who try to do the best we can for our maids and treat them with every possible consideration, get let down right and left.’

‘It’s the slave mentality,’ Glen answered carelessly. ‘They like being treated rough. Be kind to them, and they despise you. That girl of Angela’s – what was her name? – would never have stayed with Frances or Rona. She hated Angela, of course, but she respected her devastating selfishness and felt somehow morally compelled to work for it.’

I laughed. ‘Pritchard, yes. An unpleasant type. Funny you should mention her. I had rather an amusing encounter with her this morning.’

‘Eh? I thought she’d been sacked – and left, according to Rona, in floods of penitent tears.’

‘Yes. She was coming back to get some of her things.’

I told Glen of the incident.

I had been going down our lane to the village that morning when I passed a neatly dressed girl who looked somehow familiar. The girl smiled and said good morning, and I, feeling I ought to know her, stopped and asked vaguely how she was. She replied that she was quite well and asked politely after Mrs Sewell. It was not till she volunteered the information that she was going into a new place in Torminster on Monday, and had come back to get some things she had left behind, that I recognised Pritchard.

At that I made to pass on, but the girl detained me.

‘Oh, sir, perhaps you could give me some advice. There’s something been worrying me, and I don’t know what I ought to do about it.’

I promised her my advice for what it was worth.

‘It’s about that cider, sir. You remember I said in my evidence that I took Mr Waterhouse a glass of cider into the library at about half-past twelve. Well, I’ve remembered since it must have been nearer twelve than half-past, because I know Mrs Waterhouse wasn’t in the kitchen when I fetched it, and she’d been there before making the lemon sponge; and I know she wasn’t there when the baker called, which he does round about twelve every day, because that Maria asked me how many loaves –’

‘Well,’ I said, cutting short this breathlessly delivered rigmarole, ‘what’s the trouble in any case, Pritchard?’

‘Why, sir, do you think I ought to go to the police and tell them I’ve thought about it and believe I must have made a mistake about the time I took in the cider? I wouldn’t like to have to tell them I made another mistake, seeing I made one in my evidence already; but if you think it’s important, sir…’

‘I can’t see that it’s of the faintest importance,’ I told her, a little impatiently, for I was in a hurry. ‘The whole affair’s over and settled; and in any case what would a few minutes matter one way or another?’

‘Oh, thank you, sir. Then I won’t bother about it. That’s a weight off my mind.’

I extricated myself from her unnecessary gratitude and went on my way.

‘It all rather bears out what you were saying,’ I told Glen. ‘I was a bit fierce on one occasion with the girl, so it’s to me she comes for advice and then overdoes the gratitude.’

Glen was grinning again, broadly. ‘No doubt. But it’s darned lucky for Angela she did make that mistake over the time.’

‘For Angela? Why?’

‘You asked just now if Rona had a bad time with Angela. She did. It took all her efforts to dissuade Angela from throwing herself on the police and confessing to the murder of her husband, through that same glass of cider.’

‘
What
?’

‘Well, perhaps you’d better keep this under your hat,’ said Glen, still grinning, ‘but there was a bit of a muddle over that glass of cider. Actually it was Angela’s glass. She drinks a glass of cider every morning, because someone once told her cider was good for the kidneys. Professes to loathe the stuff, of course, but nobly sacrifices herself for her kidneys. John used to have a glass, too, round about eleven, and he generally drew them both and gave Angela hers. Well, apparently he did so as usual that morning, and it must have been before he strolled over to your place. Have you ever seen a woman with a glass of something she doesn’t like? She’ll carry it all round the place with her before she drinks it instead of getting it over quick and nasty like a man. Angela seems to have been accompanied by that glass of cider most of the morning. She had it with her in the drawing-room when she wrote a letter; she had it with her in the kitchen when she was making that famous limonspong (the only dish, I gather, that Angela is able to make with her own white hands, and goodness knows how she can make that); and she carried it with her, so far as Rona could make out, into the larder to show it the limonspong being put on the shelf to set. But there she left it and, like Angela, forgot all about it.

Then along comes Pritchard, with a haughty request to Maria for a glass of cider for the master. The cider barrel was kept in the larder, you see. Probably you know the place; it’s the old dairy of the house and big enough for half-a-dozen larders, Pritchard wasn’t allowed in the larder by Maria; so it was Maria who had to draw the cider when it was wanted. And naturally, being a thoroughly lazy slut and seeing a glass standing there already, she picked it up and gave it to Pritchard. John, of course, had no idea he was drinking stuff that had been drawn over an hour earlier, and history stops short of recording whether he found it a trifle flat.’

‘But what’s all this got to do with Angela murdering him?’ I asked, bewildered.

‘Why, you see, Angela had dissolved in it some tabloid or other of her own. Killing two birds with one stone: the cider for the kidneys, and the tabloid for some other portion of her perfectly sound anatomy. When John was taken bad she instantly jumped to the conclusion that it was her stuff that had done it: for by that time she knew about the cider, having gone to look for it just before lunch and learning from Maria that it had gone into the library. It was a new concoction that she hadn’t sampled before, and she still blames John’s death on it, the ridiculous woman. However, I will say she made the greatest amends in her power. She threw all the rest of the tabloids down the WC. That must have caused her a wrench.’

‘Then you don’t know what it was?’

‘Oh yes, I do. It was something young Strangman had made up for her. For the nerves. I’ve forgotten the details, but the stuff was perfectly harmless. Aloes and soap, probably. No, don’t you see? It’s all a case of wish fulfilment. John was in the limelight, through having died. When we thought he’d been murdered he was still more in the limelight, poor chap. There was only one way Angela could turn the limes onto herself and away from him, and that was by being put on trial for his murder. Consciously she professed to dread such a ghastly idea, but all the time her subconscious was egging her on to try to get into that dock.’

‘Good heavens,’ I said inadequately.

‘Oh, it’s not so rare as all that. In fact I believe it’s the case with the majority of detected murderers. Certainly most of them thoroughly enjoy their trials. To be the centre of all that attention and the cause of all that fuss flatters their egoism no end. And what could be more attractive than to receive the attention and cause the fuss, and yet not have to do the unpleasant deed?’

‘Then it’s lucky Rona did manage to dissuade her,’ I said dryly, ‘for I doubt very much whether our local police would have grasped the psychological complexities involved.’

We pondered the strange ways of the human mind for a few minutes in silence, with the help of a mouthful of beer.

‘Did John know there was nothing organically wrong with Angela?’ I asked. ‘It was a complete surprise to me.’

‘I don’t know,’ Glen said slowly. ‘I think on the whole that he believed she really was an invalid. We’re all fairly suggestible, you see, and Angela certainly was a first-class suggester.’

‘On the other hand, that secret cupboard of his was half full of patent medicines and pills and things which I’m pretty sure he must have unobtrusively removed from Angela’s possession.’

‘Oh yes, he thought she drugged herself far too freely, as of course she did. He spoke to me about it more than once, and asked if something couldn’t be done on the lines of treatment for a real drug taker: you know, keeping the shot the same size to look at, but gradually diminishing the drug content. In fact,’ added Glen with a chuckle, ‘I believe he may have tried his hand at something of the kind himself, because he borrowed an old pill-making machine of mine not long ago, as he said, to put up in handy form some foul-tasting Eastern preparation he had by him which was supposed to give one a distaste for smoking. That was after I’d warned him that he must cut down his smoking really seriously. He didn’t let on, and I didn’t ask him, but I somehow had the idea at the time that he intended to knock out a few plain chalk tablets to substitute for Angela’s usual muck. Anyhow, I just casually mentioned that plain chalk tablets were procurable from any of the big drug houses, and he jumped at the notion: just the thing, he said. Lucky I did, too, because he reported afterwards that he couldn’t make the machine work – some vital part broken or something. I hadn’t used it for ages.’