Nursery Tea and Poison

by Anne Morice

  ‘You wouldn’t say they were already?’

  ‘Not seriously, no. They have to go through the motions of carrying out an investigation in accordance with the verdict, but, judging by my own experience, they’re being fairly perfunctory and kid glove about it. It looks as though they feel the Coroner was a little over-zealous and that it genuinely was an accident. Either that, or else . . .’

  ‘Else what?’

  ‘They realise that her death was hastened somewhat, as no doubt happens with dozens of senile citizens dotted around the neighbourhood and that they have about as much chance of proving it as you or I would have, if not less. Either way, our best bet is to lie low, be on our best behaviour and not give them any cause to change their policy.’

  ‘So why are they still hanging around?’

  ‘Well, as I told you, they’re obliged to dash about a bit and let justice be seen to be having a work out. They’ve probably gone to interview Primrose, and Mrs Thorne is not far away. She lives in one of the cottages behind the stables. There’s Jake too, come to that. He was in the house that evening, though I don’t suppose he could tell them any more than that one fact, always assuming that they were still awake when he had done so.’

  ‘Wouldn’t bank on that,’ Lindy said, chewing away in a ruminative fashion.

  ‘No, only kidding that time.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant about him not having anything he could tell them if he wanted to. I go along with you one hundred per cent that it was accidental, it has to be, but you know something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If it weren’t an accident, let’s just call this thinking aloud, and if it weren’t an accident, my money would be on Jake as the killer.’

  ‘What an extraordinary notion! How on earth did you come by it?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know . . . just something I . . . Remember my telling you how I spent that weekend out at Santa Barbara, where I first met Pelham?’

  ‘Vividly.’

  ‘Well, it’s a place on the coast, not too far from L.A. and lots of movie people have their homes there, Jake for one, and you get to hear the gossip. Did you know his last wife died of an overdose?’

  ‘I had heard something to that effect; no details though. Is Jake supposed to have killed her? Go on, you may as well tell me the whole bit now you’ve started.’

  ‘Well, let’s just say he didn’t work too hard at keeping her alive.’

  ‘I don’t call that very conclusive.’

  She selected a fresh blade of grass, sucked away at it in silence for a moment or two and then, evidently coming to a decision, said:

  ‘She was a lush and a nympho and the story goes he was fed up to here. Anyway, it wasn’t long after she died that he said goodbye to Hollywood and came over to England. He gave it out that he’d made every picture he ever wanted to and as much money as he could ever use, but there could have been a different reason why he needed to leave in a hurry. Maybe the rumours were getting too hot for the Studios to want to go on hiring him.’

  ‘Even so, why come all this way just to repeat the experiment on an elderly female he’d never clapped eyes on before?’

  ‘How about if she’d heard this story about him from Pelham and was going to put it around, so as Primrose wouldn’t marry him? No, I’m the one who’s kidding now. I know darn well it was an accident, just like you said. And Pelham has the same idea. He agrees with you that the police have to put on an act of being concerned, but they have more important things to do than work themselves into the ground over the death of some poor old invalid woman.’

  As it happened, this was not a very accurate paraphrase, but there was a second anomaly which engrossed me still more deeply as, talking of other matters now, we ambled back to West Lodge. If her remarks had truly reflected Pelham’s opinion, why had she set out gratuitously to present me with such a lurid version of Jake’s marital past?

  2

  Making fatigue the excuse, I retired to the apricot box soon after dinner, for the necessity of humping the heavy great bag from room to room was becoming excessively tedious and I no longer trusted it out of my sight. Moreover, I had hopes that my departure might fulfil what was becoming a long felt want, in enabling Pelham and Lindy to discuss their plans with Serena, which they had evidently been unwilling to do in my presence. Not a word had been spoken on the subject either before or during dinner and I could tell by the expectant look Serena turned on him every time Pelham opened his mouth that she was still in the dark.

  Another incentive was that Primrose was spending the evening with Jake, giving me a clear field to carry out one small but exacting task.

  This began with removing the sheets of airmail paper from my bag and inking over the dented impressions. The result was legible, but rather wobbly, so I made a fresh copy, tore the original into a million shreds, enclosed the copy in a covering note and put it into an envelope addressed to Robin.

  The nearest pillar-box was two miles away, but there was a system in force whereby the postman on the morning delivery collected outgoing mail from a box beside the front door. I was about to creep down and put my letter inside it when the telephone rang.

  I heard Serena answering, after which there was a brief interval, followed by Pelham’s voice.

  At this point I retreated back into my room, for it had struck me as not inconceivable that were Pelham to notice me going out of the front door with a letter in my hand his curiosity would be aroused to the pitch of being tempted to retrieve it and glance through the contents. Taking no chance of such an eventuality, either then or later, I pushed the envelope under my pillow, picked out a new thriller from the bookcase and lay down on my bed to while away the time until the coast should be crystal clear.

  After an hour had passed I was almost as sleepy as I had pretended to be earlier, but still no lights had been switched off and no one had come upstairs. The most frustrating part of all was that having wasted so much time I could no longer depend on myself to waken early enough to catch the postman in the morning. One solution was to try the reviving effects of a hot bath, which involved transferring the letter to my sponge bag, but I had not even got as far as putting one toe in the water when I heard footsteps outside, immediately followed by someone turning the handle and then rapping on the bathroom door. This called for an abrupt change of tactics and, having flung on my dressing gown, I draped a towel round my neck and sauntered on to the landing in the relaxed style of one who had been wallowing inside for hours.

  Unfortunately, it was a complete waste of my art, for there was no one in sight and both bedroom doors were shut. I stood beside one of them, announcing in a loud voice that the bathroom was now clear and, receiving no response, opened the door and looked inside.

  She was sitting on the bed, not having started to undress and one look was enough to tell me that disaster had struck again. The one I got in return brought the news that, in some inexplicable fashion, it was all my fault.

  ‘Bathroom’s okay now,’ I said hesitantly.

  ‘No more practical jokes, I trust, Tessa?’ she asked, staring at me with stony dislike. ‘You wouldn’t have left a live toad in the bath, for instance?’

  I was so stupefied by this reception that for once I was rendered speechless and she stood up and turned her back on me. I heard her say:

  ‘I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such treatment, from you of all people, but please leave me alone now and go to bed.’

  It was not a tone to admit any argument and I obeyed, closing the door behind me and trudging up to the box room, wondering whether everyone had gone mad, or whether I was on my own.

  There was still the letter to dispose of, but I had the whole night for that, since, needless to say, all desire for sleep had now left me.

  3

  The air had cleared by the morning, although Serena still looked haggard and miserable when I came upon her in the kitchen, where I had gone in search of coffee. She was reading the
post, which I was in a position to know had been delivered about ten minutes earlier, but she pushed it aside when I wandered in and, after apologising for speaking so harshly the night before, invited me to sit down while she went to work with the orange juice and coffee grinder. Primrose, it appeared, had already gone out, having breakfasted on a hunk of bread and dripping. Impending nuptials had not so far done much to modify her manners and customs.

  ‘I ought to have known you would never behave so maliciously,’ she said, setting the glass down in front of me. ‘The trouble is that I speak in haste and regret at leisure, or would if I had any leisure. Last night I felt so distracted after they’d told me the news that I lashed out at the first person who came along and it happened to be you. I am sorry. Do you forgive me?’

  ‘Oh, certainly. What news was that?’

  ‘Because in my heart I know only too well that you’re on my side,’ she went on, choosing to unburden herself at her own pace. ‘You wouldn’t have set out to raise false hopes deliberately.’

  ‘Is that what I did?’

  ‘Yes, and you must understand that it was the shock and disappointment which made me so cross. I’ve got over it now.’

  ‘Got over what?’

  ‘In fact, I regretted it immediately. I lay awake half the night worrying about it, along with all the other horrid things that have happened. At one moment I thought I heard someone creeping past my door and I made sure it was you and that you’d packed your bags and were leaving. Ridiculous, really, because how on earth could you have carried them all the way to the station in the dead of night? Anyway, there are no trains.’

  ‘Yes, it would have been rather madcap.’

  ‘But you know how exaggerated one’s fears become in the small hours? In the end I forced myself to go up and make sure you were still there, which of course you were. I could hear you turning over in bed.’

  ‘I wish you’d come in and told me all this at the time.’

  ‘Oh no, darling, you can’t imagine that even I would be so selfish as to wake you up just for my own peace of mind?’

  ‘In the first place, I probably wasn’t asleep, and if we’d hammered away at it all through the night we might conceivably have got to the nub before dawn broke. I think you mentioned that Pelham and Lindy had some news for you? I suppose you wouldn’t care to tell me what it was?’

  She brought the coffee and toast over from the stove and sat down at the table, saying with a sigh:

  ‘Yes, I keep forgetting that you don’t know yet. Well, brace yourself because Lindy is expecting a baby.’

  ‘So it’s out at last! I can’t tell you why, but now that it is I find it something of an anti-climax.’

  ‘You won’t when you’ve grasped all the implications.’

  ‘Then I rely on you to tell me what they are, but in the meantime did I dream it or did you tell me when I first arrived that Lindy couldn’t have children?’

  ‘No, it’s true. At least, it wasn’t true, but it was what they told me. Not meaning to deceive, you know, there’s no question of that, it was all a misunderstanding. Naturally, I assumed there was some physical reason to prevent it. Wouldn’t you have done the same?’

  I nodded and she said: ‘Well, it wasn’t that at all. It was purely a matter of temperament.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘No, it is rather incredible, but apparently it stems from something which happened when she was a schoolgirl. Only about sixteen, I gather, and she became pregnant. The boy was only a year older and between them they fixed up an abortion. It had to be done on the cheap because her parents were the old fashioned, puritan sort and she didn’t dare ask them for help. The result was that she nearly died of a haemorrhage.’

  ‘I can see how that might put one off, but now that she’s respectably married there’s no earthly reason to suppose that it could be repeated.’

  ‘Well wait, because that wasn’t the whole story. In addition to being at death’s door and so on, the experience affected her mind and she went right off the rails for a time. The mere mention of sex gave her the horrors and that was when she took up with this analyst. For two years she visited him every single week and from the way she describes these consultations it sounds rather like going to confessional.’

  ‘And was she finally absolved?’

  ‘Only partially, it seems. What she rather endearingly calls the priority disturbance, the sex phobia, was resolved, as I am happy to say we can all see for ourselves, but she still has to rely on psychiatric treatment and drugs when she feels a fit of hysteria or depression coming on. It seems that these drugs make her very forgetful sometimes, which can lead to embarrassment and, to be candid, Tessa, I can’t really see that the game is worth the candle because when they left on this trip she was no nearer being reconciled to the idea of having a baby.’

  ‘So why has she now changed her mind?’

  ‘Extraordinary the power these people have over their patients, isn’t it?’ Serena asked, pursuing her own train of thought. ‘You’ll never credit this, Tessa, but apparently he told her that this particular mental block had gone too deep ever to be dislodged and that she must accept it; learn to live with it, to use her own phrase. He said her only hope, if she wanted to live a near normal life was to marry a man older than herself and to establish from the outset that she could never have children; that to do so would almost certainly endanger her sanity. Don’t you find that incredible?’

  ‘Not totally, no.’

  ‘Neither did Pelham, as far as I can make out. He married her on those terms and that was that.’

  ‘Only it wasn’t, because here they are and everything has changed. Did Pelham break his promise and talk her round?’

  ‘Oh, dear me, no, nothing like that. He was quite prepared to stick to their bargain and they took all the proper precautions. However, it seems that something went wrong once before and when she found she was pregnant they bundled her straight into a clinic. Now it has happened again and she is willing to go through with it, and who do you suppose is responsible for that?’

  ‘Can’t imagine. Not me, and not Primrose, presumably?’

  ‘Oh, good gracious no, not Primrose. She doesn’t know anything about it yet and I quite dread telling her. The heavens will fall in, I shouldn’t wonder, and make a good deal of noise while they do it. No, this is Richard’s work. Our own dear Richard Soames! So that makes two things we have to thank him for. There won’t be much left of our lives soon, if he keeps it up at this rate.’

  ‘Did he suspect she was pregnant right from the start?’

  ‘No, when she had her first bilious attack he was inclined to put it down to food poisoning. It was that, combined with one or two features about Nannie’s death, which made him decide on a post mortem, and we all know what that led to. It wasn’t until he saw Lindy for the second time that he put two and two together and told her what he thought was the matter. She immediately flew into the most dreadful panic, but he impressed upon her that the only way to conquer her fears was to go out and meet them, instead of running away.’

  ‘And he won her over, just like that, at the drop of his flat tweed cap?’

  ‘Oh, goodness knows what arguments he used, but he’s a clever old monkey and, mind you, Tessa, I don’t see what else he could have done. It must have been as plain to him as it is to me that subconsciously she really longs to have a child. Everything is made so easy for you young ones nowadays that it defies belief that this could have happened to her twice in one year, purely by accident.’

  ‘Did they tell you all this last night? No wonder you were so late coming to bed.’

  ‘It didn’t take very long, once they got started. It was breaking the ice which was the difficult part. I thought it was so tactful of you to leave us alone, but it didn’t work out at all well at first. They sat about patting and pawing each other, you know how they do? Even yawning occasionally, but at the same time you could see they were keyed up, like
people are when they’re sharing a secret. Then the telephone rang and it was Richard, asking for Pelham. When he came back he smiled at Lindy and gave her the thumbs up sign and that was when the whole story came out. Richard’s call was to let them know that the pregnancy test was positive.’

  ‘Whereupon Lindy clapped her hands and cried: “Oh, what a silly girl I’ve been, but kind Uncle Richard has made everything all right!”?’

  ‘No, not quite. It was really Pelham who was the more elated of the two. All the same, I’m sure that subconsciously it’s what she’s wanted all along and if she can only keep out of the psychiatrist’s clutches it will all work out very well for her.’

  ‘Either that or . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Or they knew about this when they arrived here, but couldn’t make it public until . . .’

  ‘Until the doctors had confirmed it? Is that what you were going to say?’

  It wasn’t, of course, but the alternative explanation which had occurred to me was in too nebulous a form to be shared with anyone else at that stage and, taking my silence for agreement, she said:

  ‘Well, it’s possible, but I think you’re making everything unnecessarily complicated, as usual. I am sure they would have dropped a hint if that had been the case, and even more sure that they wouldn’t have been so set against coming to live here.’

  ‘You mean they’ve changed their minds about that too?’

  ‘Pelham certainly has. Why else would I be so bothered? It will alter everything for us, and most of all for Primrose just when she was on the brink of achieving her heart’s desire. Pelham is convinced the child will be a boy, if not twin boys, and even if he’s wrong there’s no reason now why they shouldn’t try again.’

  ‘Yes, I see. That does make rather a pickle of things.’

  ‘It’s not that I mind for myself. In some ways, I’m in favour of the family coming back to Chargrove and it will be nice to have children about the place again. I am sure I shall be able to go on living here, more or less on the same terms as before, but can you imagine what it will do to Primrose?’