Not to be Taken (6 page)

‘Now John’s out of the way; father’s dead; one brother’s abroad and the other in jail; sister married a nonentity and has sunk out of sight; and Angela – she’s going to be a rich woman and a beautiful woman and an altogether wonderful, desirable, entrancing woman. Unless she goes and marries another John (which you can bet she won’t) she’ll never have another minute’s ill-health in her life. You see.’

‘Oh!’ said Harold.

‘Well I’m damned,’ I remarked.

There was a little silence. Glen tossed his cigarette into the fire and lit another. It was Rona, not he, who offered the box to Harold and myself.

She looked closely at her brother as she put the box down again on the table by his chair.

‘You’ve never told me any of this before, Glen,’ she said quietly

‘I don’t discuss all my cases even with you, my dear girl.’

‘You’re gossiping about this one now,’ Rona retorted quite nastily.

‘Not a case any longer,’ drawled Glen. ‘Ex-case. I’ll never be called in to Angela again. We-ell, not after the next fortnight. Give her that to get over the present spot of bother.’

‘Well, I think it’s abominable,’ Rona suddenly flared up, to my intense surprise. ‘Here you’ve been leading me and all the rest of us to believe that Angela was an invalid, and – and waste our sympathy and time on her; and you were laughing up your sleeve all the time.’

‘Here, steady on,’ returned her brother. ‘Professional secrets is secrets, you know.’

‘Then why are you giving them away now?’

‘The case is altered, eh?’ Harold sniggered.

‘Precisely,’ said Glen. ‘Besides, there’s more to it than professional secrecy. You observe my sister’s reaction now, gentlemen? Exactly. Her efficiency sense is outraged. And that’s exactly what would have happened if I’d given the show away before. She’d have girded up her loins, gone straight up to Oswald’s Gable and informed our pseudo-invalid that there was nothing at all the matter with her and the best thing she could do would be to take up her bed and walk. And
that
, gentlemen, would have been the worst possible treatment that could be applied. These cases have to be humoured. Rough-and-ready methods, honesty and all the rest of it don’t pay at all. Not at all. It would be quite on the cards for a woman like that to do herself some really serious injury, just to show. No, my dear girl, it’s no good getting your tail up. So long as she was in that state no one could be told she was shamming, not even her own husband; and last of all you.’

‘Absurd,’ said Rona, but less heatedly.

‘Well, it’s queer to think of,’ I put in, trying to turn the conversation a little, ‘but if it had been Angela who had died suddenly like that, and not John, I suppose you’d have insisted on a post-mortem. Exactly the opposite of what all of us thought.’

‘Exactly,’ Glen nodded.

My intervention had been unfortunate. With the subject brought back to the post-mortem again, Harold began unblushingly to try to get information out of Glen. I don’t think he necessarily wanted it to pass on and so gain a transitory importance, like your born scandalmonger; he was just illimitably inquisitive.

Glen, however, was giving nothing away, and even added a word of warning about what he had just told us.

‘It’s not for publication, mind, so try to restrain yourself for once, Harold. Rona won’t give it away, and Douglas is as close as an oyster; if it gets out I’ll know you’ve been blabbing – and I’ll never tell you another thing.’

Harold was beginning some indignant reply when the entry of the maid cut him short.

‘Miss Bergmann,’ she announced, and Mitzi Bergmann followed close on her words, looking even more worried than usual.

‘Oh, excuse me, please, Miss Brougham. It’s a note for Mrs Sewell.’ Mitzi had been four years in England and spoke excellent English.

‘Mrs Sewell isn’t here,’ Rona told her. ‘Only Mr Sewell. Have you had tea, Mitzi?’

‘Oh yes, thank you.’ Mitzi turned to me. ‘Please, Mr Sewell, would you open it? I think it is important.’

I took the note, somewhat battered from Mitzi’s hot grasp, and tore it open. It was much as I expected.

Frances, please come at once. Something terrible has happened. I don’t know what to do
.

A

Something terrible was always happening to Angela; and whenever it happened she implored Frances to go and console her.

‘All right, Mitzi,’ I said with a little smile. ‘I’ll come.’

‘No, please, Mr Sewell,’ Mitzi said earnestly, ‘it is dreadful. Really, this time she means it. I don’t know what is happening.’

‘Very well. Tell Angela I’ll be there in ten minutes – or thereabouts.’

With somewhat incoherent thanks to me and apologies to Rona, Mitzi retired. I rose reluctantly.

‘The usual SOS from Angela,’ I explained, ‘I suppose I’d better go up and see what it’s all about.’

To my surprise Glen rose too.

‘I’ll stroll a little way with you,’ he said. ‘I want a mouthful of air before surgery.’

Knowing Glen as I did, I suspected some motive beyond the wish for a breath of air. Nor was I wrong. We had hardly gone fifty yards before he began to grin and said:

‘I thought we’d keep Harold on tenterhooks a bit longer, but I expect you’d like to hear about the post-mortem.’

‘I certainly would. But it wasn’t fair to ask you.’

‘That’s why I’m telling you,’ said Glen. ‘Well, it’s a washout. Nothing doing. Friend Cyril can pack up his nasty suspicions and take them back to Mincing Lane with him.’

My voice probably sounded as relieved as I felt.

‘John died of epidemic diarrhoea?’

‘Absolutely. No sign of any other disease, no sign of anything else at all. Nothing (if you want the technical details) but a bit of reddening of the duodenum and a very slight reddening of the jejunum. Precisely what one would expect, in fact, after epidemic diarrhoea.’

‘Thank goodness,’ I said.

It seemed that Cyril had had his trouble for nothing. I hoped, somewhat viciously, that the Home Office might have something to say about his body snatching after all.

‘Then that’s the end of that,’ I added. ‘And now, presumably, John really can be buried at last.’

‘Less certain vital parts of him,’ Glen replied with professional callousness. In answer to my look of enquiry he went on: ‘Oh yes. The bigwig surgeon was satisfied, I was satisfied, the assistant was satisfied, but dear old Cyril isn’t satisfied. He’s insisted on the usual organs being sent up to some hospital or other for analysis.’

‘What on earth for?’ I asked, mystified.

‘Seems almost as if he’d got inside information, doesn’t it?’ Glen said.

‘Your taste in jokes, Glen, like your manners, is deplorable,’ I told him.

3

It was, therefore, without any anticipation of ill that I made a comparatively blithe way to Oswald’s Gable.

Angela was in tears and had sought her usual refuge: bed. She received me there with the aplomb of the habitual invalid – and one who knows, at that, that she looks very nice in bed. She seemed to think it deliberate malice on the part of Frances to be in Torminster when she, Angela, wanted her.

‘Oh well, I suppose you’ll do,’ she told me peevishly. ‘You’re not very sympathetic, are you, Douglas? But after all, it’s advice I want, not sympathy… Douglas, what am I to do? Everyone’s against me.’

‘Nonsense, Angela,’ I soothed. ‘No one’s against you.’

I sat, a trifle gingerly, on the end of the bed where I had been bidden, and confronted Angela, looking very young and pretty and pathetic, in a pale silk dressing-jacket with her hair just untidy enough to be charming. I knew quite well that the effect was calculated, as all Angela’s effects were; but the knowledge, instead of putting me at my ease, only seemed to embarrass me the more.

‘Oh, indeed?’ she sniffed, dabbing at her nose with an absurd little handkerchief – and being very careful not to disturb the powder, as I saw with fascination. ‘Well, if
your
parlourmaid took your most private letters and gave them to your horrible brother-in-law, and
he
opened them, wouldn’t you say they were against you?’

‘What are you talking about, Angela?’ I asked.

Angela explained. She had written a private – a
most
private – letter that morning, and given it to the parlourmaid to post. And the parlourmaid, instead of posting it, had carried it straight to Cyril, who had opened it – and found himself well rewarded.

‘Cyril opened it?’ I repeated incredulously.

‘Yes. He’s like that, you know.’

‘But whom was it to?’

Angela actually bridled.

I will not recount the twists and mental wrigglings in which Angela indulged during the next ten minutes, obviously anxious to tell me about the letter and ask my advice, and yet at the same time unbearably coy about it. In view of the importance which was attached to this letter later I will give its text now, just as it was read out in the coroner’s court a fortnight afterwards:

D
ARLING
B
OY
:

I am in great trouble and very unhappy. Please come at once and tell me what to do. You know that John died last week
– most unexpectedly! –
of some internal trouble from which he had been
suffering for a long time.

Now his brother is down here, acting very strangely. He seems to
think there was something wrong about John’s death and has
insisted on a post-mortem. I am so frightened. He is treating me as
if I were a
criminal.
If he finds out about us, I don’t know what he
might do. For God’s sake don’t say anything to anyone about the
France trip
–
and remember, I wasn’t in London at all that week; I was in Bournemouth all the time. You could come and stay in Torminster, and Peters could drive me over. Nobody could know, and I must have your advice, now more than ever
.

All my love, darling boy, still,

Your distracted

A
NGELA
.

And the letter was addressed to Philip Strangman, Esq., St Joseph’s Hospital, London, EC.

The gist of this precious communication I gathered then from Angela, and it did not need a fool to see that if Cyril’s suspicions, whatever they might have been, had not proved groundless and appearances at the post-mortem had been ominous, the information which this letter afforded might have been capable of a most sinister interpretation. Even as it was, I thought the lack of trust was bad enough, and I scolded Angela suitably.

She hung her head and tried to look ashamed, but there was a curiously triumphal glint in her eye which made me feel a little disgusted. Nor was this disgust lessened when I learned, in answer to further questions, that this Philip Strangman was not, as I had imagined from the ‘Esq.’ after his name, a surgeon on the hospital’s staff, but a mere unfledged medical student.

‘Were you mad, Angela?’ I said without sympathy.

Angela bridled. ‘Don’t take that tone, please, Douglas. I know I’m older than Philip, if that’s what you mean; but age isn’t everything. We love each other.’

‘You mean you’re lovers,’ I said somewhat brutally.

‘We’re that, in the vulgar sense of the word too,’ Angela answered, not without dignity.

‘And what would John have thought about it? I wonder,’ I demanded a little hotly, for I resented the silly woman’s betrayal of my friend.

‘John knew. And he quite understood.’

‘John knew?’ I echoed.

‘Certainly he knew. I told him. Only a few weeks ago. I didn’t wish to deceive him, and offered to leave here. We talked it over. He was fond of me, in his way, but he knew he’d never suited me – any more than I’d ever suited him. He advised me to stay here with him, on a purely friendly basis, until Philip was earning enough to keep us both. It was very generous of him and I was grateful and agreed. John always was very generous, you know.’

‘He certainly was,’ I agreed, rather nonplussed. The gesture did undeniably sound like John. And yet…

‘So, seeing that the whole thing had John’s approval, will you please get into touch with Philip for me (since apparently it isn’t safe to write a letter while Cyril’s still in the house) and ask him –’

‘No, I won’t,’ I cut Angela short: for to tell the truth the complacency with which she brought out John’s acquiescence in the role – for, after all, that was what it amounted to – of
mari
complaisant
, irked me very much. ‘Nor, I’m sure, will Frances. And my advice to you, Angela, is –’

‘Oh, well, if you won’t help me I don’t want your silly advice,’ Angela pouted – yes, literally pouted. ‘Will you go away, please, Douglas?’

‘I certainly will, Angela. And in view of your incredible idiocy in writing such a letter, I think I’d better congratulate you about the post-mortem. If they
had
found anything –’

Her manner completely changed as she darted forward and caught at my arm.

‘You mean – they haven’t found anything?’ she asked breathlessly.

‘Apparently not.’

‘John
did
die of epidemic diarrhoea?’

‘According to Glen, there’s no reason to doubt it.’

‘Glen…oh!’ She frowned. I noticed that she no longer looked like a spoiled and helpless child. ‘But Cyril practically said that…’

‘What did Cyril practically say?’