Not to be Taken (5 page)

‘Technically, no,’ I replied a little lamely. ‘But she is certainly the equivalent in value, and more than the equivalent.’

He sliced his peach in two and flipped the stone neatly onto his plate. ‘This fellow Brougham. What’s he like? Is he any good?’

‘Doctor Brougham is considered one of the ablest surgeons in the county,’ I replied with distaste.

‘No doubt, but it isn’t his surgery that’s in question. What use is he as a physician?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Waterhouse,’ I said at last, ‘but you must make enquiries of this sort elsewhere. Brougham is one of my oldest friends, I have full faith in him, and I can’t listen to the innuendoes contained in your questions.’ I paused for a moment and then added: ‘I think, nevertheless, that it might be better if you were to tell me exactly what is in your mind. I know of the telegram you sent to the sexton here, which seems to me frankly a most outrageous thing to have done unless you have the strongest grounds for suspicion. But what is it you suspect?’

The man’s answer was certainly frank.

‘Very well. Perhaps it would be best. I suspect that my brother was poisoned. Can you honestly tell me that the same suspicion has never occurred to you?’

‘But good heavens,’ I began, ‘the idea is…’ I hesitated. I could not help myself. The thought of that bottle of medicine now lying in a locked drawer in my desk came to me as a sudden horrible shock. For why had Frances removed it if not out of exactly the same suspicion as I was now being taxed with? ‘The idea is preposterous,’ I concluded.

Unhappily my hesitation had not passed unnoticed. ‘I see that the same thought has occurred to you,’ Waterhouse commented dryly.

‘You mean food poisoning, of course?’ I asked, feebly enough.

‘No, I do not mean food poisoning.’

‘But who could have a motive for poisoning your brother?’ I protested as warmly as I could. ‘We were all very fond of him. He was –’

‘It’s you who are going too fast now,’ Waterhouse interrupted with a chilly little smile. ‘I’m not accusing anyone of having poisoned him. I merely say that the suspicion is in my mind that he died as a result of poison, and I feel it my duty to verify or disprove that suspicion. If my suspicion were to prove correct there is nothing at present to suggest to me that the poison might have been administered to him by any other person. It might have got into him by accident, or it might have been suicide. That would be a matter for the police.’

I felt that somehow I ought to be able to dispel the man’s suspicion there and then. I knew that now if ever was the time to do so. I was not at all sure that, in spite of his rather repellent manner, he was genuinely hoping that I could and would. But all I found myself able to do was to ask:

‘But what do you intend to do?’

He answered briskly, as if in some way I had made his mind up for him.

‘I intend to insist on a post-mortem.’ He saw that I was about to protest, and forestalled me. ‘Why not? There can be nothing to lose by it. We all want to get at the truth, I suppose – even my brother’s closest friends.’

‘But it will make such a lot of talk,’ was all I could find to oppose the idea. ‘It would be most unpleasant for Angela.’

‘Not at all.’ He favoured me again with the chilly little smile. ‘The request, of course, must come from Angela herself. I propose to put the suggestion to her now, if you’ve finished, and I shall look to you to support me. As a man of the world you can see that it’s a very reasonable one. And as for talk, you may be sure there’s plenty of that going already.

‘And you must admit’ – again the chilly smile was in evidence – ‘you must admit that telegram of mine to the sexton was a good idea. It’s saved us the extreme unpleasantness of an exhumation.’

4

If I had at first been inclined to ascribe Cyril Waterhouse’s determination to make trouble to resentment over Angela’s remissness in not letting him know at once of his brother’s death, I soon saw that I was wrong. He was resentful, no doubt, and equally without doubt he had no liking for poor Angela, but his conviction that there had been something wrong in his brother’s death was a perfectly genuine one.

There was a painful scene in the drawing-room, of course.

Angela wept and had hysterics and refused for a long while to have anything to do with the idea of a post-mortem. She protested and she appealed, but neither tears nor pleas had the least effect upon Cyril. Never losing his temper, never even departing from his demeanour of cold calm, he insisted and continued to insist. I could not advise Angela that his suggestion was altogether an unreasonable one, and Frances, after taking some time to make up her mind, decided, too, that if anyone had any doubt, however ill-founded, such a doubt ought to be cleared up before it was too late. Neither she nor I hinted that we at any rate had some reason to believe that the doubt might not be so ill-founded.

Angela was therefore in a minority of one; and of course in the end she gave in. There was really nothing else she could do.

Then she tearfully announced an intention of going at once to bed.

But that, it appeared, did not suit her brother-in-law.

‘Not just yet, please, Angela,’ he said with an assumption of authority which irritated me. ‘If Mr and Mrs Sewell will excuse us, there are one or two things which it is imperative to do as quickly as possible.’

‘We’ll go home,’ Frances said quickly, and arose.

But Cyril had a use for us. ‘If you and your husband would be good enough to stay a little while, I think it would be
advisable
.’

Even Frances seemed nonplussed before the man’s evident determination to arrange matters exactly as he saw fit.

‘Well, if you want us to stay…’

‘I should be grateful. Both Angela and I, you see,’ Cyril said with deliberation, ‘may be looked upon as prejudiced parties. It might be useful later to have had two independent witnesses. You will understand perhaps when I add that I wish to ask about John’s will.’ He turned to Angela. ‘I imagine you have no objection to my examining the document, Angela?’

Angela looked her most helpless. ‘Of course I wouldn’t. But I haven’t seen it myself.’

Cyril looked really flabbergasted. ‘You haven’t seen it? But aren’t you in touch with his solicitors? Haven’t they produced it? What on earth is all this?’

‘Oh, Mr Ventnor rang up,’ Angela explained, beginning to weep again, ‘but he said they haven’t got John’s will. He said John didn’t make a will with them. I don’t see why you should blame me, Cyril.’

‘I’m not blaming you, Angela. I only want to find out the facts. Did Mr Ventnor give you to understand that John died intestate, then? I must say it seems most improbable.’

‘What does that mean, Douglas?’ Angela appealed to me.

‘That he never made a will.’

‘Oh no. At least I don’t think so. You see, Mr Ventnor said that John told him there was a will. He told me, too, a long time ago. Before we went to Brazil.’

‘You know what its contents were?’

‘Yes, John told me, of course.’

‘Well, what were they?’

‘Oh, he left everything to me.’

Cyril’s face did not change. ‘Have you any idea where the will is now?’

‘No, I don’t know. How could I? But I expect it would be in John’s desk, wouldn’t it?’

‘You haven’t even looked?’ Cyril asked incredulously.

‘No, I haven’t,’ said Angela, beginning to cry once more. ‘You don’t expect me to rummage through poor John’s papers almost before he’s buried, do you? I think it’s horrible.’

Cyril looked at me. ‘I think perhaps if you’ll come with me, we ought to do this at once. Angela, please get us John’s keys.’

I had to show him the way to the library, for he did not know his way about the house, and he at once tried the drawers of the big mahogany desk where John had spent so many hours drawing his plans and elevations. Only one drawer was locked. A key from the ring which Angela brought fitted it. Cyril drew it open and lifted out half-a-dozen folded documents. There were five insurance policies and the will.

Without more ado Cyril opened the letter and glanced through it. I could not help seeing that it was very short. I noticed, too, that Cyril’s jaw seemed to tighten rather curiously as he read.

‘Exactly,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Everything is left to you, Angela. Well, I congratulate you. You will be a wealthy woman.’

‘Oh, Cyril, how can you be so heartless?’

‘I’m only stating the fact. I see, by the way, that there is a codicil apportioning his life insurance. Five thousand pounds is set aside for the payment of death duties; forty-five thousand pounds is left to you outright; and the income of a further fifty thousand is left to you, the capital to revert to Maurice on your remarriage or death. Five, forty-five, fifty…good heavens!’ He snatched up the insurance policies and began to look through them with something more like agitation than I had yet seen in him.

Laying them down again, he stared at Angela.

‘A hundred thousand pounds! And taken out only five years ago. Why, the premiums must have been colossal. Did you know that John had insured his life for a hundred thousand pounds, Angela?’

‘I knew he was insured, of course,’ Angela fluttered. ‘I don’t think he ever told me how much it was. Why? Is it a lot?’

Cyril looked at her with compressed lips. ‘A remarkably large amount.’

‘Oh well, that’s a good thing, I suppose,’ Angela said vaguely. ‘Oh dear, my head is aching so. I’m not very strong, Cyril, you know, and all this has been a terrible strain. I think I’ll go to bed now.’

‘In just a few minutes,’ Cyril demurred. ‘Sewell, if you’ll take Angela back to the drawing-room, there is something I wish to do before I rejoin you. Angela, where can I find Miss Bergmann?’

‘Mitzi? Oh dear.’ Angela held her forehead in both hands, as if the effort to think was almost too much for her bursting brain. ‘Well, I expect she’s in the sewing-room.’ She described its situation in vague terms, which I amplified.

Cyril held the door open for her and disappeared up the staircase.

On the way back to the drawing-room I asked Angela who Maurice was, and learned that he was Cyril’s only son and John’s only nephew.

‘A pleasant surprise for him,’ I remarked.

‘Oh, I don’t think it was a surprise, was it?’ Angela said absently. ‘I mean, John had written to tell Maurice about it a long time ago. I remember he said so when he told me.’

‘You knew about the hundred thousand, then?’

‘Oh dear, what does it matter?’ Angela said petulantly. ‘I knew John had insured himself, and I knew I was to get it all while I was alive, or the income or something, and Maurice wouldn’t get any till I was dead. What
does
it matter?’

Privately I thought it might matter a great deal, but I did not say so. I also found time to admire Cyril’s control. He must have heard of the provision for Maurice, and perhaps he hoped for a substantial legacy for himself; yet his face had not altered at all in the drawing-room when Angela told him so casually that she was to have everything.

Cyril’s three minutes lengthened out to half an hour, and then to three quarters. It was not until nearly fifty minutes later he reappeared and intimated with great politeness that Angela might now go to bed, and we might take our departure – which we did, not unthankfully.

It was not until a day or two later that we learned how that fifty minutes had been employed: in a careful search, assisted by a Mitzi willing or unwilling but no doubt intrigued, of Angela’s bedroom, rest room and bathroom.

What he expected to find was pretty obvious; what he did find was detailed in the coroner’s court later. But the inference to me was that, if he had been speaking the truth when he told me after dinner that he had suspicion of no definite person, the discovery of the will and its provisions had quite altered that.

5

Frances and I did not talk much on our way home that
evening
.

Only after she had gone upstairs and I had locked the house up and followed her did she call me in from my dressing-room.

She was sitting in front of her mirror, a pot of cold cream in her hand, and she continued to rub it into her face while we talked. I remember that, for it struck me as such a good example of the way the trivial combines in life with the significant.

‘Douglas, I can’t help feeling worried. We backed that man up, you know, about the post-mortem. Were we right?’ ‘I think we were.’

‘Wouldn’t it be much better to leave things? After all, there’s no
real
suspicion of anything, is there? I mean, it’s all so impossible. John…us… Angela… Why not leave things?’

‘When things go over a certain line it’s impossible to leave them.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. But… Douglas, I’m frightened. This post-mortem – what are they going to find?’

Misbehaviour of a Lady

I met Harold Cheam in the village the next afternoon.

I had put in a hard morning grease-banding the pear orchard against a bad invasion of winter moth and, while not deliberately avoiding Oswald’s Gable and all its complications, had not been sorry to put it out of my mind for a time. Angela had all my sympathy, but it was no place of mine to constitute myself her guardian.

I had therefore heard nothing of any further developments, and I am afraid it had slipped my memory completely that I had promised old Blake to let him know about the grave.

Harold’s first words, however, showed me that any message of mine to Blake would have been superfluous.

‘I say, you know, this is getting pretty serious, Douglas, don’t you think?’

‘What is?’

‘Why, what this brother of John’s is doing. Haven’t you heard? He got hold of Blake first thing this morning, before breakfast, and told him to lift the coffin and take it to the mortuary. Blake told him that he couldn’t do that now without an order from the Home Office (exhumation’s a pretty serious thing, you know), but Waterhouse said that the body hadn’t been buried yet, so the exhumation rules didn’t apply. Rather a nice point, don’t you think? Anyhow, he told Blake that if
he
wouldn’t take it on, he’d hire a couple of labourers from the village. So Blake agreed. Pretty forceful sort of chap, I should say. You’ve met him, haven’t you? How did he strike you?’

I told Harold that Cyril Waterhouse had certainly struck me as a pretty forceful sort of chap, and one quite capable of cutting through a legal or any other sort of tangle instead of wasting time in unravelling it. I also asked Harold how he had come to hear of the proposed post-mortem at all.

‘The late post-mortem, you mean,’ he said with a little snigger. ‘It’s over. How did I hear of it? My dear chap, we haven’t all got our heads buried under gooseberry bushes, you know. Why, the whole place is seething with it. I can tell you, some pretty serious things are being said, too.’

Harold proceeded to regale me with some of them as we walked along together.

The remarkable thing about Harold is that he is not only the first to know what people in our own lot are whispering, he has the general gossip of the village at his fingertips too. I never know how he manages this, for Harold comports himself with great propriety and would never dream of discussing any of his friends with, let us say, Miss Cornish, the postmistress – any more than Miss Cornish would dream of such an error of taste as attempting to discuss ‘the gentry’ with one of them. And yet Harold always seems to know just what Miss Cornish and her friends are saying, what the neighbouring farmers are saying, and what the humblest farm labourer is saying to his mates in the fields. I am in contact with them myself and employ four men on my fruit farm, but I never have the least idea what they are thinking. Our conversation on outside topics is limited to boxing matches and foreign affairs, concerning which the farm labourer of today is remarkably well informed and takes a surprising interest. I often think that it would be salutary for the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary to have a chat with my men. They would be surprised at the force with which any weakness in our foreign policy is deplored.

Harold continued to discuss the post-mortem, which seemed to excite him as much as, secretly, it excited me.

I learned that Cyril Waterhouse had telephoned early that morning to a well-known surgeon in London to come down and perform it, and to his own doctor in the fashionable suburb to come and assist. According to Harold, he had expressed his determination that no local surgical talent was to be employed.

‘It’s a direct insult to Glen,’ Harold bubbled. ‘Probably all against professional etiquette, too. I must say this chap Waterhouse doesn’t seem to care a damn for anything.
I
wouldn’t have liked to take the responsibility of lifting the body out of the grave like that. I’d like to know what the authorities will have to say about it when they hear.’

‘Confronted with a
fait accompli
, they’ll probably say nothing.’

‘Yes, that kind of chap always gets away with it,’ Harold said admiringly. ‘And of course if they
do
find anything, he’ll get any amount of credit.’

‘I don’t see how they can possibly find anything,’ I said firmly.

‘Well, frankly, no more do I,’ said Harold in a tone of regret.

We had come to the entrance of our lane, and I asked Harold if he would come along and share my tea, Frances having taken the car into Torminster.

Harold, however, had other intentions.

‘No, I thought of dropping in on the Broughams. You come along too. Glen might have some news.’

‘About the post-mortem, you mean? I thought you said he wasn’t present.’

‘Oh no. He was there all right. Rookeway – that’s the London chap – invited him to attend, of course. That’s always done.’

‘Oh, I see. Still, I shouldn’t think the Broughams would want to be bothered with us.’

‘I’m going,’ said Harold simply.

Curiosity struggled against good taste, and lost.

‘All right,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll come with you.’

As we went I pondered on some of the things Harold had told me. I had been sorry to hear them, but not surprised. Where there is an English village there will always be gossip, and where there is gossip there will always be a hint of malice. The easy camaraderie which existed between the Waterhouses, the Broughams and ourselves, had apparently not gone unremarked. But even so I think it would have surprised Glen (though it might not have distressed him much) to learn that in less than twenty-four hours after John’s death the chances of his stepping into the dead man’s shoes were being freely discussed – and that, it seemed, not only among the village people. It would certainly have infuriated Rona to know that considerable sympathy was being felt in the same quarters for herself, with the view freely expressed that she would rather have lost the wife than the husband. Not the least infuriating part would have been that this was undoubtedly true. Though we tolerated her, none of us had a very high opinion of Angela. I don’t really think that we liked her very much; though it is sometimes difficult to say exactly whether one likes a person in the country or not. Rural friendships are formed by propinquity, not by attraction.

I also wondered, somewhat uneasily, if these things were being said about the Broughams, what nonsense was being talked about Frances and myself. But that I hardly liked to ask Harold.

2

The Broughams lived in a house of fair size on the main road a few hundred yards beyond our lane, one of those whitewashed, rough-cast houses of indeterminate period which seem to crop up at each end of any West Country village.

Harold asked for Rona, and we were shown into the sitting-room. We had timed our arrival nicely, for Rona was sitting behind the big silver tea tray, and Glen was sprawling in the most comfortable armchair – from which characteristically he did not rise when we came in. Rona, I thought, looked listless and greeted us apathetically.

‘Hullo, here come the vultures,’ Glen remarked. ‘Well, you’ll get nothing from me, my lads. Professional reticence, seal of secrecy, and all the rest of it.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Harold. ‘I only want a cup of tea, if Rona’s got one to spare. And I brought Douglas along because Frances has deserted him for the giddy whirl of Torminster.’

Rona smiled wanly.

‘Blah!’ said Glen.

We sat down.

Harold helped himself to a piece of bread and butter.

‘Well?’ he said blandly. ‘Have they struck you off the register yet?’

‘Blah!’ said Glen.

‘Come on,’ Harold persisted. ‘You know you’ll have to tell us sooner or later. Was it epidemic diarrhoea, or wasn’t it?’

‘Read your newspapers and see,’ said Glen.

Harold pricked up his ears. ‘Newspapers, eh? That means something.’

‘It means nothing. This fandango’s bound to get into the newspapers, isn’t it? You can’t go snatching bodies out of graves and carving them up without a newspaper smelling something in the wind.’

‘Don’t be coarse,’ Harold reproved. ‘Have any sealed jars gone up to London for analysis?’

‘Wasn’t that rather the object of the proceedings?’

‘They have. Thank you.’

The maid brought in the extra cups, and I took advantage of the break to change the subject; for to tell the truth Harold’s shameless questioning made me feel a little uncomfortable.

‘Look here, while we’re together…oughtn’t we to do something about Angela?’

‘What about her?’ asked Glen indifferently enough.

‘Well, I’m afraid she’s in a rather awkward position.’ I detailed the events of the preceding evening. ‘I think this fellow Cyril has his knife into her. Goodness knows why. He hasn’t accused her of anything, but what he thinks is pretty plain – or what he’s pretending to think. She ought to have proper advice.’

‘She’s got a solicitor, hasn’t she?’ Harold asked.

‘Goodness knows. I suppose there must be a family solicitor somewhere. She must get into touch with him.’

‘I’ll see that she does,’ Rona said. ‘I’ll go up there at once after tea.’

Glen laughed lazily. ‘I don’t think you need worry much about Angela.’

I suppose we looked our questions, for he went on:

‘Whatever complications John’s death leads to, and however much we miss the poor old chap, one thing’s certain: it’s going to be the making of Angela.’

‘Glen,’ said Rona, ‘What
do
you mean?’

‘You’ll see. From this moment Angela will begin to bloom like a flower in spring. Her health will reappear miraculously; she’ll become positively sturdy; we shall all be mightily astonished.’

We gaped at him for a moment, and then Harold cried delightedly:

‘
I
see. You mean there’s nothing wrong with her? Never has been. She’s a
malade imaginaire
. Eh?’

Glen lit a cigarette. Neither his sister nor the rest of us had finished our tea, but Glen never noticed things like that.

‘She took you all in?’ he said with a sardonic smile. ‘Well no wonder, poor girl. She took herself in. Been taking herself in for years. Neurotic case. Interesting psychologically.’

‘Well, I’m glad to hear there’s nothing organically wrong with her,’ I said; a little blankly perhaps, for it was difficult to realise that Angela, whom we had treated, humoured, and sympathised with all this time as an incurable and pathetic invalid, was just as fit as Frances herself, and that all our sympathy had been wasted on a neurotic case.

‘Most interesting,’ Harold chimed in with a knowledgeable air. Harold has read a little Freud and is inclined to be proud of it. ‘A subconscious excuse for sexual frigidity, I suppose. Yes.’

‘Blah,’ said Glen.

‘Eh?’ Harold looked taken aback.

‘Keep the party clean. And keep Freud out of it too.’

‘Well, that’s pretty good, coming from you,’ Harold retorted hotly. ‘Keep the party clean, indeed. Did you hear that, Rona? In any case it’s pretty common knowledge amongst ourselves that Angela wasn’t altogether a satisfactory wife, in the usual meaning of the term, for a full-blooded man like John. You realised that, didn’t you, Rona?’

‘Oh, yes. I should think everyone did.’ Rona spoke listlessly, as if the subject did not interest her very much.

‘Well then,’ Harold pursued truculently, ‘I suggest my explanation for Angela’s invalid pose is the right one. If you’ve got a better one, Glen, let’s hear it.’

‘I’ve not only got a better one,’ Glen drawled. ‘I’ve got the real one. Angela’s an almost pure leptosome type. She has the long egg-shaped face; she looks taller than she is; long neck, flat breasts, pointed chin and all the rest of it. She’s a bit of a schizophrenic, too (and you’d understand what that means, Harold, if you’d ever read any psychologist a bit less out of date than Freud). But first and foremost she’s a self-constructive egocentric. She wants prestige, and she’ll go to any lengths to get it: even lie on her back in bed for the rest of her life, if that was the only way.

‘This invalid pose of hers doesn’t date from marriage, as according to your theory, Harold, it would. You’ve heard her tell us a hundred times what a frail, delicate girl she was, and how much time she had to spend resting and so forth when her brothers and sister were out playing, and how she used to lie and long to join them, and what a miserable childhood she had in consequence. Well, the pose was there then. She had no more the matter with her as a child than she has now. But her brothers were strong and athletic; her father was a beefy old rider to hounds known through three counties as a grand sportsman; her mother was an exceptionally beautiful woman; her sister was older than herself and had some brains. She was, in that society, the dud. And she couldn’t stand it. So she took to her bed and became the most interesting member of the family, and the most unusual: there’d probably never been an invalid in it before.

‘But marriage brings no change. Instead of marrying some weak personality whom she could dominate, she marries a man with a world-wide reputation, who, furthermore, by his beefiness and physique reminds her all the time of her father. Once more she’s in danger of being a nonentity: just the wife of a well-known man and of no interest in herself. So the pose is brought into play again.

‘Then she comes back here and finds herself among all sorts of people who knew her and esteem her, simply on account of her birth, at a higher value than her husband. It’s she who is to the fore now, and John drops into the background. That sets her on her feet, and a surprising improvement in health is the result. But after a bit John begins to edge forward. People like him; they find him interesting; at dinners he is becoming more of a draw than she is. Result, health suffers a sad relapse.