‘Beastly, beastly,’ said Mr Brookes. ‘Your bulbs all in?’
‘Not quite all,’ confessed Mr Mummery. ‘As a matter of fact I haven’t been feeling –’
‘Pity,’ interrupted his partner. ‘Great pity. Ought to get ’em in early. Mine were in last week. My little place will be a picture in the Spring. For a town garden, that is. You’re lucky, living in the country. Find it better than Hull, I expect, eh? Though we get plenty of fresh air up in the Avenues. How’s the missus?’
‘Thank you, she’s very much better.’
‘Glad to hear that, very glad. Hope we shall have her about again this winter as usual. Can’t do without her in the Drama Society, you know. By jove! I shan’t forget her acting last year in Romance. She and young Welbeck positively brought the house down, didn’t they? The Welbecks were asking after her only yesterday.’
‘Thank you, yes. I hope she will soon be able to take up her social activities again. But the doctor says she mustn’t overdo it. No worry, he says – that’s the important thing. She is to go easy and not rush about or undertake too much.’
‘Quite right, quite right. Worry’s the devil and all. I cut out worrying years ago and look at me! Fit as a fiddle, for all I shan’t see fifty again. You’re not looking altogether the thing, by the way.’
‘A touch of dyspepsia,’ said Mr Mummery. ‘Nothing much. Chill on the liver, that’s what I put it down to.’
‘That’s what it is,’ said Mr Brookes, seizing his opportunity. ‘Is life worth living? It depends on the liver. Ha, ha! Well now, well now – we must do a spot of work, I suppose. Where’s that lease of Ferraby’s?’
Mr Mummery, who did not feel at his conversational best that morning, rather welcomed this suggestion, and for half an hour was allowed to proceed in peace with the duties of an estate agent. Presently, however, Mr Brookes burst into speech again.
‘By the way,’ he said abruptly, ‘I suppose your wife doesn’t know of a good cook, does she?’
‘Well, no,’ replied Mr Mummery. ‘They aren’t so easy to find nowadays. In fact, we’ve only just got suited ourselves. But why? Surely your old Cookie isn’t leaving you?’
‘Good Lord, no!’ Mr Brookes laughed heartily. ‘It would take an earthquake to shake off old Cookie! No. It’s for the Philipsons. Their girl’s getting married. That’s the worst of girls. I said to Philipson, “You mind what you’re doing,” I said. “ Get somebody you know something about, or you may find yourself landed with this poisoning woman – what’s her name – Andrews. Don’t want to be sending wreaths to your funeral yet awhile,” I said. He laughed, but it’s no laughing matter and so I told him. What we pay the police for I simply don’t know. Nearly a month now, and they can’t seem to lay hands on the woman. All they say is, they think she’s hanging about the neighbourhood and “may seek situation as cook.” As cook! Now I ask you!’
‘You don’t think she committed suicide, then?’ suggested Mr Mummery.
‘Suicide, my foot!’ retorted Mr Brookes, coarsely. ‘Don’t you believe it, my boy. That coat found in the river was all eyewash. They don’t commit suicide, that sort don’t.’
‘What sort?’
‘Those arsenic-maniacs. They’re too damned careful of their own skins. Cunning as weasels, that’s what they are. It’s only to be hoped they’ll manage to catch her before she tries her hand on anybody else. As I told Philipson –’
‘You think Mrs Andrews did it, then?’
‘Did it? Of course she did it. It’s plain as the nose on your face. Looked after her old father, and he died suddenly – left her a bit of money, too. Then she keeps house for an elderly gentleman, and he dies suddenly. Now there’s this husband and wife – man dies and woman taken very ill, of arsenic poisoning. Cook runs away, and you ask, did she do it? I don’t mind betting that when they dig up the father and the other old bird they’ll find them bung-full of arsenic, too. Once that sort gets started, they don’t stop. Grows on ’em, as you might say.’
‘I suppose it does,’ said Mr Mummery. He picked up his paper again and studied the photograph of the missing woman. ‘She looks harmless enough,’ he remarked. ‘Rather a nice, motherly-looking kind of woman.’
‘She’s got a bad mouth,’ pronounced Mr Brookes. He had a theory that character showed in the mouth. ‘I wouldn’t trust that woman an inch.’
As the day went on, Mr Mummery felt better. He was rather nervous about his lunch, choosing carefully a little boiled fish and custard pudding and being particular not to rush about immediately after the meal. To his great relief, the fish and custard remained where they were put, and he was not visited by that tiresome pain which had become almost habitual in the last fortnight. By the end of the day he became quite light-hearted. The bogey of illness and doctor’s bills ceased to haunt him. He bought a bunch of bronze chrysanthemums to carry home to Ethel, and it was with a feeling of pleasant anticipation that he left the train and walked up the garden path of Mon Abri.
He was a little dashed by not finding his wife in the sitting-room. Still clutching the bunch of chrysanthemums he pattered down the passage and pushed open the kitchen door.
Nobody was there but the cook. She was sitting at the table with her back to him, and started up almost guiltily as he approached.
‘Lor’, sir,’ she said, ‘you give me quite a start. I didn’t hear the front door go.’
‘Where is Mrs Mummery? Not feeling bad again, is she?’
‘Well, sir, she’s got a bit of a headache, poor lamb. I made her lay down and took her up a nice cup o’ tea at half-past four. I think she’s dozing nicely now.’
‘Dear, dear,’ said Mr Mummery.
‘It was turning out the dining-room done it, if you ask me,’ said Mrs Sutton. ‘ “Now, don’t you overdo yourself, ma’am,” I says to her, but you know how she is, sir. She gets that restless, she can’t abear to be doing nothing.’
‘I know,’ said Mr Mummery. ‘It’s not your fault, Mrs Sutton. I’m sure you look after us both admirably. I’ll just run up and have a peep at her. I won’t disturb her if she’s asleep. By the way, what are we having for dinner?’
‘Well, I had made a nice steak-and-kidney pie,’ said Mrs Sutton, in accents suggesting that she would readily turn it into a pumpkin or a coach-and-four if it was not approved of.
‘Oh!’ said Mr Mummery. ‘Pastry? Well, I –’
‘You’ll find it beautiful and light,’ protested the cook, whisking open the oven-door for Mr Mummery to see. ‘And it’s made with butter, sir, you having said that you found lard indigestible.’
‘Thank you, thank you,’ said Mr Mummery. ‘I’m sure it will be most excellent. I haven’t been feeling altogether the thing just lately, and lard does not seem to suit me nowadays.’
‘Well, it don’t suit some people, and that’s a fact,’ agreed Mrs Sutton. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if you’ve got a bit of a chill on the liver. I’m sure this weather is enough to upset anybody.’
She bustled to the table and cleared away the picture-paper which she had been reading.
‘Perhaps the mistress would like her dinner sent up to her?’ she suggested.
Mr Mummery said he would go and see, and tiptoed his way upstairs. Ethel was lying snuggled under the eiderdown and looked very small and fragile in the big double-bed. She stirred as he came in and smiled up at him.
‘Hullo, darling!’ said Mr Mummery.
‘Hullo! You back? I must have been asleep. I got tired and headachy, and Mrs Sutton packed me off upstairs.’
‘You’ve been doing too much, sweetheart,’ said her husband, taking her hand in his and sitting down on the edge of the bed.
‘Yes – it was naughty of me. What lovely flowers, Harold. All for me?’
‘All for you, Tiddley-winks,’ said Mr Mummery, tenderly. ‘Don’t I deserve something for that?’
Mrs Mummery smiled, and Mr Mummery took his reward several times over.
‘That’s quite enough, yo
u sentimental old thing,’ said Mrs Mummery. ‘Run along, now, I’m going to get up.’
‘Much better go to bed, my precious, and let Mrs Sutton send your dinner up,’ said her husband.
Ethel protested, but he was firm with her. If she didn’t take care of herself, she wouldn’t be allowed to go to the Drama Society meetings. And everybody was so anxious to have her back. The Welbecks had been asking after her and saying that they really couldn’t get on with out her.
‘Did they?’ said Ethel with some animation. ‘It’s very sweet of them to want me. Well, perhaps I’ll go to bed after all. And how has my old Hubby been all day?’
‘Not to bad, not too bad.’
‘No more tummy-aches?’
‘Well, just a little tummy-ache. But it’s quite gone now. Nothing for Tiddley-winks to worry about.’
Mr Mummery experienced no more distressing symptoms the next day or the next. Following the advice of the newspaper expert, he took to drinking orange-juice, and was delighted with the results of the treatment. On Thursday, however, he was taken so ill in the night that Ethel was alarmed and insisted on sending for the doctor. The doctor felt his pulse and looked at his tongue and appeared to take the matter lightly. An inquiry into what he had been eating elicited the fact that dinner had consisted of pig’s trotters, followed by a milk pudding, and that, before retiring, Mr Mummery had consumed a large glass of orange-juice, according to his new régime.
‘There’s your trouble,’ said Dr Griffiths cheerfully. ‘Orange-juice is an excellent thing, and so are trotters, but not in combination. Pigs and oranges together are extraordinarily bad for the liver. I don’t know why they should be, but there’s no doubt that they are. Now I’ll send you round a little prescription and you stick to slops for a day or two and keep off pork. And don’t you worry about him, Mrs Mummery, he’s as sound as a trout. You’re the one we’ve got to look after. I don’t want to see those black rings under the eyes, you know. Disturbed night, of course – yes. Taking your tonic regularly? That’s right. Well, don’t be alarmed about your hubby. We’ll soon have him out and about again.’
The prophecy was fulfilled, but not immediately. Mr Mummery, though confining his diet to Benger’s food, bread-and-milk and beef-tea skilfully prepared by Mrs Sutton and brought to his bedside by Ethel, remained very seedy all through Friday, and was only able to stagger rather shakily downstairs on Saturday afternoon. He had evidently suffered a ‘thorough upset’. However, he was able to attend to a few papers which Brookes had sent down from the office for his signature, and to deal with the household books. Ethel was not a business woman, and Mr Mummery always ran over the accounts with her. Having settled up with the butcher, the baker, the dairy and the coal-merchant, Mr Mummery looked up inquiringly.
‘Anything more, darling?’
‘Well, there’s Mrs Sutton. This is the end of her month, you know.’
‘So it is. Well, you’re quite satisfied with her, aren’t you, darling?’
‘Yes, rather – aren’t you? She’s a good cook, and a sweet, motherly old thing, too. Don’t you think it was a real brainwave of mine, engaging her like that, on the spot?’
‘I do, indeed,’ said Mr Mummery.
‘It was perfect providence, her turning up like that, just after that wretched Jane had gone off without even giving notice. I was in absolute despair. It was a little bit of a gamble, of course, taking her without any references, but naturally, if she’d been looking after a widowed mother, you couldn’t expect her to give references.’
‘N-no,’ said Mr Mummery. At the time he had felt uneasy about the matter, though he had not liked to say much because, of course, they simply had to have somebody. And the experiment had justified itself so triumphantly in practice that one couldn’t say much about it now. He had once rather tentatively suggested writing to the clergyman of Mrs Sutton’s parish, but, as Ethel had said, the clergyman wouldn’t have been able to tell them anything about cooking, and cooking, after all, was the chief point.
Mr Mummery counted out the month’s money.
‘And by the way, my dear,’ he said, ‘you might just mention to Mrs Sutton that if she must read the morning paper before I come down, I should be obliged if she would fold it neatly afterwards.’
‘What an old fuss-box you are, darling,’ said his wife.
Mr Mummery sighed. He could not explain that it was somehow important that the morning paper should come to him fresh and prim, like a virgin. Women did not feel these things.
On Sunday, Mr Mummery felt very much better – quite his old self, in fact. He enjoyed the News of the World over breakfast in bed, reading the murders rather carefully. Mr Mummery got quite a lot of pleasure out of murders – they gave him an agreeable thrill of vicarious adventure, for, naturally, they were matters quite remote from daily life in the outskirts of Hull.
He noticed that Brookes had been perfectly right. Mrs Andrews’s father and former employer had been ‘dug up’ and had, indeed, proved to be ‘bung-full’ of arsenic.
He came downstairs for dinner – roast sirloin, with the potatoes done under the meat and Yorkshire pudding of delicious lightness, and an apple tart to follow. After three days of invalid diet, it was delightful to savour the crisp fat and underdone lean. He ate moderately, but with a sensuous enjoyment. Ethel, on the other hand, seemed a little lacking in appetite, but then, she had never been a great meat-eater. She was fastidious and, besides, she was (quite unnecessarily) afraid of getting fat.
It was a fine afternoon, and at three o’clock, when he was quite certain that the roast beef was ‘settling’ properly, it occurred to Mr Mummery that it would be a good thing to put the rest of those bulbs in. He slipped on his old gardening coat and wandered out to the potting-shed. Here he picked up a bag of tulips and a trowel, and then, remembering that he was wearing his good trousers, decided that it would be wise to take a mat to kneel on. When had he had the mat last? He could not recollect, but he rather fancied he had put it away in the corner under the potting-shelf. Stooping down, he felt about in the dark among the flower-pots. Yes, there it was, but there was a tin of something in the way. He lifted the tin carefully out. Of course, yes – the remains of the weed-killer.
Mr Mummery glanced at the pink label, printed in staring letters with the legend: ‘ARSENICAL WEED-KILLER. POISON.’ and observed, with a mild feeling of excitement,’ that it was the same brand of stuff that had been associated with Mrs Andrews’s latest victim. He was rather pleased about it. It gave him a sensation of being remotely but definitely in touch with important events. Then he noticed, with surprise and a little annoyance, that the stopper had been put in quite loosely.
‘However’d I come to leave it like that?’ he grunted. ‘Shouldn’t wonder if all the goodness has gone off.’ He removed the stopper and squinted into the can, which appeared to be half-full. Then he rammed the thing home again, giving it a sharp thump with the handle, of the trowel for better security. After that he washed his hands carefully at the scullery tap, for he did not believe in taking risks.
He was a trifle disconcerted, when he came in after planting the tulips, to find visitors in the sitting-room. He was always pleased to see Mrs Welbeck and her son, but he would rather have had warning, so that he could have scrubbed the garden-mould out of his nails more thoroughly. Not that Mrs Welbeck appeared to notice. She was a talkative woman and paid little attention to anything but her own conversation. Much to Mr Mummery’s annoyance, she chose to prattle about the Lincoln Poisoning Case. A most unsuitable subject for the tea-table, thought Mr Mummery, at the best of times. His own ‘upset’ was vivid enough in his memory to make him queasy over the discussion of medical symptoms, and besides, this kind of talk was not good enough for Ethel. After all, the poisoner was still supposed to be in the neighbourhood. It was enough to make even a strong-nerved woman uneasy. A glance at Ethel showed him that she was looking quite white and tremulous. He must stop Mrs Welbeck somehow, or there would be a
repetition of one of the old, dreadful, hysterical scenes.
He broke into the conversation with violent abruptness.
‘Those Forsyth cuttings, Mrs Welbeck,’ he said. ‘Now is just about the time to take them. If you care to come down the garden I will get them for you.’
He saw a relieved glance pass between Ethel and young Welbeck. Evidently the boy understood the situation and was chafing at his mother’s tactlessness. Mrs Welbeck, brought up all standing, gasped slightly and then veered off with obliging readiness on the new tack. She accompanied her host down the garden and chattered cheerfully about horticulture while he selected and trimmed the cuttings. She complimented Mr Mummery on the immaculacy of his garden paths. ‘I simply cannot keep the weeds down,’ she said.
Mr Mummery mentioned the weed-killer and praised its efficacy.
‘That stuff!’ Mrs Welbeck started at him. Then she shuddered. ‘I wouldn’t have it in my place for a thousand pounds,’ she said, with emphasis.
Mr Mummery smiled. ‘Oh, we keep it well away from the house,’ he said. ‘Even if I were a careless sort of person –’
He broke off. The recollection of the loosened stopper had come to him suddenly, and it was as though, deep down in his mind, some obscure assembling of ideas had taken place. He left it at that, and went into the kitchen to fetch a newspaper to wrap up the cuttings.
Their approach to the house had evidently been seen from the sitting-room window, for when they entered, young Welbeck was already on his feet and holding Ethel’s hand in the act of saying good-bye. He manoeuvred his mother out of the house with tactful promptness and Mr Mummery returned to the kitchen to clear up the newspapers he had fished out of the drawer. To clear them up and to examine them more closely. Something had struck him about them, which he wanted to verify. He turned them over very carefully, sheet by sheet. Yes – he had been right. Every portrait of Mrs Andrews, every paragraph and line about the Lincoln poisoning case, had been carefully cut out.
Mr Mummery sat down by the kitchen fire. He felt as though he needed warmth. There seemed to be a curious cold lump of something at the pit of his stomach – something that he was chary of investigating.
The Nine Tailors Page 21
