by Ian Sansom
Lizzie Walter had been murdered, it seemed, some time during the night of 5 November, strangled with a shoelace. My account of my discovery of her body was to be the subject of further investigation. The police were following a number of lines of enquiry.
It was by now about two o’clock in the afternoon. My arrival caused something of a commotion among the staff at the Hudsons’. The plainclothes policemen – hats, overcoats, pipes, and far from actual knuckle-rappers or indeed knuckle-draggers themselves – were insisting on speaking with Mr Hudson, local dignitary, and with Morley, as my employer, who had arrived up at the house with Miriam to look in on Molly’s rehearsals for Don Giovanni.
The policemen were invited to wait in the library by the staff, while I was shown into the drawing room by a butler with a pencil moustache that seemed to express not only his dissatisfaction with his lot in life in general but his very especial displeasure with me. The Hudson party were relaxing after lunch in what was a very well-appointed room, with large French windows running along one side, an enormous faded Turkish – Morley always insisted upon calling such a ‘Turkey’ – carpet, polished wood just about everywhere, a grand piano, of course, and a big brass fender in the fireplace with vast logs a-burning. I remember a lot of crimson velvet and mulberry, rose du barry, opaline blue, caca du dauphin – Louis XV sort of colours – drypoint etchings on the walls, and lots of extremely fine and expensive-looking furniture: gesso cabinets, mirror tables and an extremely fine, expensive-looking mahogany occasional table which sported an extremely fine, expensive-looking diamond-cut decanter, which contained what little remained of what had undoubtedly been some extremely fine vintage port. Much of the furniture seemed designed solely to hold and display the kinds of objets and knick-knacks inexplicably favoured by the wealthy, including statuettes of the likes of Apollo, Pan and the Dying Gladiator. It was a scene of moneyed calm and tranquillity. Miriam was deep in conversation with the conductor Fritz; Morley and the Hudsons were hunkered down in armchairs by the fire. And Molly and her son Henry stood smoking by the French windows, rather as though – I thought – about to flee.
‘Ah, Sefton,’ said Morley. ‘We missed you this morning.’
The butler approached Mr Hudson, spoke quietly to him, and Mr Hudson then came to speak quietly to Morley. The two men made to leave – to speak to the police.
‘Carry on,’ said Mr Hudson. ‘We’ll be back in a moment.’
‘Now, can I get you a drink?’ asked Mrs Hudson, getting up and leading me in the direction of the port. ‘The decanter was a gift from Molly. Isn’t it lovely?’
‘It’s absolutely lovely,’ I said. ‘I won’t though, thank you.’
The contrast between the Hudsons’ delightful post-prandials and my own rather unpleasant morning in the Lewes police station was making me feel rather out of sorts.
‘Everything’s all right, is it?’ she asked, perhaps sensing something wrong in my demeanour. ‘Is there some sort of … trouble?’ She looked deeply troubled by the prospect of trouble.
‘It’s probably best you speak to your husband, Mrs Hudson,’ I said.
She poured herself a generous measure of port.
‘It’s not these ghastly National Trust people, is it?’
‘No,’ I said, having no clear idea what she was talking about.
‘It’s just they are very insistent. Even though we’re trying to make a go of things with the theatre now. Not the plumbing?’
‘Plumbing?’
‘We’re having terrible problems with the plumbing at the moment. It’s the problem with these old houses, you see. All sorts of trouble with the valves and pressure. We get this terrible knocking at night.’ Somehow she’d already finished her port. ‘Morley says he’s going to have a look at it later.’ Morley fancied himself as something of an expert when it came to country house plumbing, having designed and installed some state-of-the-art system in St George’s that was always breaking down. (His book, Country Plumbing, first published in 1930, and in print ever since, eventually paid for the professional replumbing of St George’s, after many years of problems arising from his various avant-garde solutions.)
‘So that’s good, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Hudson.
‘Yes, Mrs Hudson,’ I said. She seemed to be in need of reassurance. ‘That’s very good indeed.’
‘Sefton!’ said Miriam, acknowledging my presence. ‘Do you have Pablo with you? I was just talking to Fritz about him.’
‘Erm …’
Fortunately, at that moment, Molly and Henry, having finished their cigarettes, wandered over.
‘You’ll perhaps be able to help us, Miriam,’ said Molly.
‘I doubt that very much,’ said Miriam, smiling.
‘Would you agree with me, Miriam,’ Molly continued, ‘Henry disagrees, that Zerlina is in many ways the counterpart of the Don?’
‘Zerlina?’ said Miriam. ‘I don’t know. Sefton? What do you think?’
I did my best to think on my feet – and failed.
‘Zerlina?’ I asked.
‘In the Don,’ said Miriam.
‘Ah, yes, of course, in the Don.’
(For anyone like me who has perhaps momentarily forgotten some of the names of some of the characters in Don Giovanni, or – and unlikely as it seems, there may be some – who have absolutely no idea what it’s about, or why it matters, I refer you to Morley’s A Beginner’s Guide to the Opera, one of his many popular A Beginner’s Guide to series. A Beginner’s Guide to the Opera was first published back in 1929 and remains in print to this day, since everyone, it seems, is forever a beginner in opera, or at least forever starting again. Personally, I’ve sat through several Magic Flutes and can still make neither head nor tail of the damned thing and how anyone can sit through the whole of The Marriage of Figaro is beyond me. The main plot of Don Giovanni, just to remind us all, concerns the efforts of a woman named Donna Anna and her betrothed, Don Ottavio, to identify the man – Don Giovanni – who has attempted to rape and seduce her and who has murdered her father, the Commendatore. Zerlina is a peasant girl who is one of the many other women who has attracted the Don’s dubious attentions.)
‘She wraps poor Masetto around her little finger, doesn’t she?’ said Molly. (Masetto – I refer again to A Beginner’s Guide – is Zerlina’s betrothed.) ‘And uses her charms—’
‘Her certo balsamo,’ added the conductor, Fritz.
‘Precisely, her certo balsamo,’ continued Molly, rolling and extending every Italian vowel and consonant that could possibly be rolled and extended, ‘to soothe him.’ (There is no mention of certo balsamo in Morley’s guide, whatever the pronunciation, so I leave it to the reader’s imagination.)
‘Making Zerlina the equivalent of the rapist and murderer, Don Giovanni, is that what you’re suggesting?’ asked Miriam.
‘In a sense, I suppose,’ said Molly.
‘Which makes absolutely no sense, of course,’ said Miriam. ‘Except in the obvious sense that the opera is all about dreadful people attempting to seduce one another.’
‘Which it most certainly is,’ said Molly.
‘Surprise, surprise,’ said Miriam, ‘since most operas are all about dreadful people attempting to seduce one another, aren’t they, Sefton?’
‘Yes,’ I agreed.
‘I very much like this idea of Zerlina as the counterpart to the Don,’ said Fritz.
‘Though Zerlina is a lowly peasant woman and the Don is an arrogant, vile nobleman who can do whatever he wants, without fear of retribution?’
‘But he gets his final comeuppance,’ said Fritz. ‘Remember, Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni: the rake is punished.’
‘Yes!’ agreed Molly.
‘What, punished, as in the ridiculous ending when the Commendatore’s ghost drags him down to hell – a kind of divine intervention, which we are clearly encouraged to view as a ludicrous joke?’
‘A joke?’ said Fritz.
‘The opera was firs
t produced when?’ asked Miriam.
‘In 178 …’ said Fritz.
‘Seven, I think you will find,’ said Miriam. ‘Which surely makes it both a critique of the old feudal Europe and a prescient harbinger of the French Revolution, does it not? And not so much a portrait of the war of the sexes as a damning indictment of the relationship between the privileged and the rest of us?’
‘Ah, come on,’ said Molly, sounding very defensive and very American. ‘I think Don Giovanni is a portrait of the game of love, darling. I think you’re taking it far too seriously.’
‘And I don’t think you’re taking it seriously enough,’ said Miriam. ‘I would have thought that if Don Giovanni teaches us anything, it’s that the social order is rotten, that women are not allowed to be active participants in what you call “the game of love” and that indeed the whole system is explicitly designed to repress and silence us.’
‘Well, in that case we shall have to agree to disagree,’ said Molly.
‘Alas,’ said Miriam. ‘We shall, since I take Don Giovanni entirely seriously as a work of great art – and you seem to see it as a bit of a joke.’
I had not spent long with Mrs Hudson but she struck me as the sort of perfectly content rich sort of person who – though clearly an ardent lover of art and of opera, might equally enjoy a rubber of bridge, a round of golf and other nice things and good works – was not perhaps entirely accustomed to Miriam’s rather more passionate and robust approach to the arts. I rather fancied the poor woman was developing a twitch.
‘Would anyone like another drink?’ she asked, having magically produced another bottle of port from somewhere, and having already refilled her own glass.
‘Why not,’ said Miriam. ‘Anyway, Sefton, as you were saying: news of the dog?’
This was clearly not the moment to explain what had happened to Pablo, but – and here was a problem I often encountered during our years together – it was extremely difficult under any circumstances either to refuse or to lie to Miriam. She would have made an excellent police inspector, I always thought, a natural metaphorical knuckle-rapper, or an army interrogator, or a spy: she had this relentless way of looking at you that quickly weakened one’s resolve. I therefore, against my better judgement, explained to Miriam what had happened to Pablo, leaving out most of the more unpleasant details, to the sound of silence, except for the burning of logs in the Hudsons’ generous grate.
Mr Hudson and Morley re-entered the room towards the end of my telling of the tale, their solemn presence only adding to what had quickly become a rather mournful atmosphere.
‘We had a dog that died in the lake some years ago,’ said Mrs Hudson, once I had rounded out the story with my own fond tribute to poor Pablo and his winning doggy ways. ‘It was terribly sad. Do you remember, darling?’
‘Remember?’ said Mr Hudson. ‘It is seared upon my memory. One of the worst things that’s ever happened.’
‘Robert and the children were out rowing on the lake, the dog leapt out of the boat, swam towards the shore, but the children were calling him back, and of course he turned back towards the familiar voices and exhausted himself, the poor thing.’
‘Ah, yes. It was a most melancholy affair.’
‘And this is a dreadful business altogether,’ said Morley, looking rather sharply at me and presumably referring to the death of Lizzie Walter as much as to the death of the dog.
‘Shall we have a drink?’ asked Mrs Hudson.
‘Perhaps we all need some fresh air?’ said Mr Hudson. ‘Come on, I’ll give you a tour,’ said Mr Hudson. ‘You’ve not been down to the theatre yet, have you, Morley?’
Morley had not yet been to the theatre. And so down to the theatre we went.
CHAPTER 21
UNDERSTANDABLY, Miriam avoided my presence during our walk to the theatre through the grounds of the Hudson estate, instead huddling close to Henry, who sought to offer what comfort he could to a woman whose dog has unexpectedly died: an arm around the shoulder, a few tender words, and threatening glances in the direction of the person thought to be responsible for the death of the poor creature, which is to say, me. He was an odd sort, Henry. To borrow a Morley tag, altissima quaeque flumina minimo sono labi.
Morley, Molly and the Hudsons, meanwhile, were doing their absolute best to keep the party’s spirits up. Morley was entertaining everyone with tales of his adventures: I had no idea that he had explored King Frederik VIII Land as part of a meteorological survey back in the early 1930s, or indeed that he’d met and befriended the nationalist leader Habib Bourguiba during his travels in the Maghreb and that they shared a great love of Tunisian checkers.
Neither Morley nor Mr Hudson made any mention to me of the death of Lizzie Walter.
Our final approach to the theatre was made through an area that looked as though it were a woodland that had recently been felled.
‘Is this what I think it is?’ asked Morley.
‘It rather depends on what you think it is,’ said Mr Hudson. ‘But if you think it is what I think you think it is, it most certainly is!’
‘Really?’ said Morley. ‘A stumpery?’
‘Indeed!’ said Mr Hudson.
‘It’s a stumpery, Sefton!’
‘A stumpery?’ I said.
‘Yes, yes, take a note. A stumpery!’ exclaimed Morley, as though he were Howard Carter at the tomb of Tutankhamun.
‘A stumpery?’ I repeated, producing from my pocket the small German-made notebook that I kept about myself at all times for the sole purpose of jotting down Morley’s remarks, enthusiasms and observations.
‘Like a rock garden, Sefton, except made from stumps.’
‘Right-o.’
‘Marvellous for ferns, as you can see.’
‘And mushrooms,’ said Mr Hudson. ‘We’ve had the most incredible crop this year.’
‘I was thinking of developing one at St George’s,’ said Morley, who during my years with him redesigned his gardens at least half a dozen times. A stumpery would certainly have been an innovation.
‘It’s all about the quality of the roots,’ said Mr Hudson, ‘and what can grow among them. Oak is best, obviously. But you can also achieve tremendous effects with sweet chestnut. Beech. And then the plants just sort of take over. Ferns. Winter aconites, snowdrops, scilla, epimediums, uvularia. Mahonias.’
‘We love a good mahonia,’ said Mrs Hudson.
‘Oh, me too, quite so,’ said Morley.
‘But the mushrooms,’ said Mr Hudson. ‘Look: like you wouldn’t believe.’ He pointed in the growing dusk towards what were indeed some unbelievable – enormous, multitudinous – specimens clinging around the sad and ugly stumps and I suddenly recalled a dark afternoon in Spain, gathering wood, sodden leaves everywhere, and suddenly coming across just a few spindly-stalked mushrooms and our Spanish compatriots becoming highly excited. They dried them over the fire and made tea from them, which they swore had extraordinary mind-expanding properties, but which I recall tasted largely of soil and produced little but a slight feeling of sickness and sway. I suppose I have been spoiled over the years by strong drink and advances in modern pharmacology.
Eventually, we approached the famous Hudson theatre, which had been famously converted from a barn. Converting a barn into a theatre is, I suppose, a process that might take an afternoon, a week, a month, or years, depending on the state of the barn and your idea of what exactly constitutes a theatre. The Hudsons’ idea of what exactly constitutes a theatre was not inconsiderable and their barn was by no means average – and I speak as someone who is more than familiar with the average barn.
Morley’s Guide to the Farm Buildings of the British Isles (1938) was yet another of his books that I expected to sell approximately no copies whatsoever, and which in fact sold in its tens of thousands, enjoying reprint after reprint – popular, presumably, not only with farmers and landowners but with country-dwellers, would-be country-dwellers and anyone else with an interest in cowsheds, pig sheds
and threshing barns. Farm Buildings was in fact almost as popular as Morley’s book on the Settle–Carlisle railway line, 72 Miles, 1,728 Yards (1935), a perennial bestseller that eventually allowed Morley to indulge his own passion for rail and steam and to build a small miniature railway in the grounds of St George’s. In similar fashion, the proceeds from Farm Buildings allowed Morley to update and upgrade his own farm buildings, a process of reciprocity and reinvestment that Morley called – hilariously – a sty for a sty.
I lived through the entire process of the writing and production of Farm Buildings with Morley, taking most of the photographs, writing most of the captions, and indeed large parts of the text, and it was for me what one might these days call a ‘learning experience’. In my early twenties I would have been unable to distinguish between a barn and any other kind of a farm building. By the time I was thirty years old I could tell a brew house from a bake house, a cart shed from a coach house and if pushed would probably also have been able to identify a hemmel, a bee bole, a cheese room and a root store. To this day, if you are having trouble distinguishing between, say, a typical Breckland granary building and a Cumbrian salving shed, I’m your man.
In Farm Buildings Morley – or, rather, I, at Morley’s request – attempted to identify a standardised set of features among British farm buildings, dividing them roughly into three categories: those buildings used for the storage and processing of crops (barns, granaries, hop kilns, oasts, cider houses, fruit stores, etcetera); those used for transport and machinery (cart sheds, mostly); and those used for the housing and managing of farm animals (cattle yards, stables, pigsties). Often, I discovered, farmsteads relied on one building to perform all such functions, rendering our system of identification if not entirely worthless then perhaps of merely scholarly value. Nonetheless, my extensive studies of the possible functions of farm buildings meant that I knew exactly what to expect in the Hudsons’ barn: a series of internal subdivisions, with the doors opening to a large threshing bay, where the harvested crop would be beaten and the grain separated from the chaff in the cross-draught, with perhaps a small adjoining chaff house. In a barn converted into a theatre I suppose what I expected was perhaps a small stage, some scattering of chairs, and the threshing bay thoroughly swept and cleared of grain.
