Miss Pym Disposes

by Josephine Tey

  "Where do you live, madam?" the coroner asked, when he had winkled her out of the crowd and installed her as evidence.

  She lived in the cottages between Leys and Bidlington, she said. On the highroad? Oh, yes, much too much on the highroad; in the summer .the dust was a fair sickener, and when the traffic was them there tanks-------. No, she had no cat. No, there had been no one in the room. She had just come in after breakfast and found it on the floor. It had never happened before.

  Poor O'Donnell, very nervous but clear and decided, gave evidence that she had put up the end by the wall and that Rouse had attended to the middle end. "Putting it up" meant hoisting the boom by the pulley rope and pushing the pin under it to keep it up. It was also kept up, to a certain extent, by the rope, the hanging end of which was given a turn round a cleat on the upright. No, they had not tested the apparatus before going.

  Froken, asked about the rope which had not proved a substitute for the pin, said that it had not been wound tightly enough to prevent sagging when the pin was removed. The twisting of the rope round the cleat was an automatic gesture, and no student thought of it as a precautionary measure. It was that, in fact, of course. The metal of the pin might break through some fault, and the rope in that case took the strain. Yes, it was possible that a rope, unaccustomed to a greater strain than the weight of a boom, stretched under the sudden addition of a ten-stone burden, but she thought not. Gymnasium ropes were highly tested and guaranteed. It was much more likely that the twist Miss Rouse gave it had been inadequate.

  And that seemed to be all. It was an unfortunate accident. The pin the police had abstracted had been used by all and sundry during the Demonstration, and was no evidence of anything.

  It was obviously Death by Misadventure.

  Well, that was the end of it, Lucy thought, when she heard the news. She had waited in the drawing-room, looking out at the rainy garden, not able to believe that something would not go wrong. No crime was ever committed without a slip-up somewhere; she had read enough case-histories to know that.

  There had been one slip-up already, when that little ornament came loose from a shoe. Who knew what else the police might have unearthed? And now it was over, and Innes was safe. And she knew now that it was for Innes that she had put herself in the Law's reverence. She had thought it was for Innes's mother, for Henrietta, for absolute justice. But in the latter end it was because whatever Innes had done she had not deserved what the Law would do to her. She had been highly tried, and her breaking-point was lower than normal. She lacked some alloy, some good coarse reinforcing stuff, that would have helped her to stand tension without giving way. But she was too fine to throw away.

  Lucy noticed with interest the quality of the cheer that greeted her as she went up to receive her diploma on Wednesday morning. The cheers for the various Seniors varied not only in intensity but in quality. There was laughter, for instance, and affection in the reception they gave Dakers. And Beau got a Head Senior's tribute; the congratulations of her inferiors to a highly popular Senior. But there was something in the cheer that they gave Innes that was remarkable; a warmth of admiration, a sympathy, and a well-wishing, that was accorded to no one else. Lucy wondered if it was merely that her inability to take the Arlinghurst appointment had moved them. Henrietta had said, during that conversation about Rouse and her examination tactics, that Innes was not popular. But there was something more in that cheer than mere popularity. They admired her. It was their tribute to quality.

  The giving of diplomas, postponed from Tuesday to Wednesday because of the inquest, was the last •event of Lucy's stay at Leys. She had arranged to catch the twelve o'clock train to London. She had been touched during the last few days to receive an endless string of small presents, which were left in her room with written messages attached. She hardly ever returned to her room without finding a new one there. Very few people had given Lucy presents since she grew up, and she still had a child's pleasure in being given something, however small. And these gifts had a spontaneity that was heart-warming; it was no concerted effort, no affair of putting the hat round; they had each given her something as it occurred to them. The Disciples' offering was a large white card which said:

  THIS WILL ADMIT

  Miss Lucy Pym

  TO THE FOUR DISCIPLES CLINIC AT MANCHESTER

  and will provide

  A COURSE OF TREATMENTS Of any kind whatever At any time whatever.

  Dakers had contributed a small untidy parcel, labelled: "To remind you every morning of our first meeting!" which on being opened proved to be one of those flat loofahs for back-scrubbing. It was surely in some other life that she had been peered at over the bathroom partition by that waggish pony's-face. It was certainly not this Lucy Pym who had sat in the bath.

  The devoted Miss Morris had made her a little felt purse—Heaven alone knew when the child had found time to fabricate it—and at the other end of the scale of worldly magnificence was Beau's pigskin case, which bore the message: "You will have so many parting gifts that you will need something to put them in," and was stamped with her initials. Even Giddy, with whom she had spent odd half hours talking about rheumatism and rats, had sent up a plant in a pot. She had no idea what it was—it looked fleshy and faintly obscene —but was relieved that it was small. Travelling with a pot plant was not her idea of what was fitting.

  Beau had come in between breakfast and Diploma-giving to help her pack, but all the serious packing was done. Whether anything would close once everything was in was another matter.

  "I'll come back and sit on them for you before morning clinic," Beau said. "We are free until then. Except for clinic there is nothing much to do until we go home on Friday."

  "You'll be sorry to finish at Leys?"

  "Dreadfully. I've had a wonderful time. However, summer holidays are a great consolation."

  "Innes told me some time ago that you were going to Norway together."

  "Yes, we were," Beau said, "but we're not any more."

  "Oh."

  "Innes has other plans."

  It was evident that this relationship was not what it had been.

  "Well, I'd better go and see that the Juniors haven't hogged all the best seats at the Diploma Do," she said, and went.

  But there was one relationship that showed satisfactory progress.

  The Nut Tart knocked at her door and said that she had come to give dear Miss Pym a luck-piece. She came in, looked at the piled cases, and said with her customary frankness: "You are not a very good packer, are you? Neither am I. It is a pedestrian talent."

  Lucy, whose luck-pieces in the last few days had ranged from a Woolworth monkey-on-a-stick to a South African halfpenny, waited with some curiosity to see what The Nut Tart's idea of the thing might be.

  It was a blue bead.

  "It was dug up in Central America a hundred years ago and it is almost as old as the world. It is very lucky."

  "But I can't take that from you," Lucy protested.

  "Oh, I have a little bracelet of them. It was the bracelet that was dug up. But I have taken out one of the beads for you. There are five left and that is plenty. And I have a piece of news for you. I am not going back to Brazil." ' "No?"

  "I am going to stay in England and marry Rick."

  Lucy said that she was delighted to hear it.

  "We shall be married in London in October, and you will be there and you will come to the wedding, no?"

  Yes, Lucy would come to the wedding with pleasure.

  "I am so glad about it," she said. She needed some contact with happiness after the last few days.

  "Yes, it is all very satisfactory. We are cousins but not too near, and it is sensible to keep it in the family. I always thought I should like to marry an Englishman; and of course Rick is a partner. He is senior partner although he is so young. My parents are very pleased. And my grandmother, of course."

  "And I take it that you yourself are pleased?" Lucy said, a shade dashed by this m
atter-of-fact catalogue.

  "Oh yes. Rick is the only person in the world except my grandmother who can make me do things 1 don't want to do. That will be very good for me."

  She looked at Lucy's doubtful face, and her great eyes sparkled.

  "And of course I like him very much," she said. When the diplomas had been presented, Lucy had mid-morning coffee with the Staff and said goodbye to them. Since she was leaving in the middle of the morning no one was free to come to the station with her. Henrietta thanked her, with undoubted tears in her eyes this time, for the help she had been. (But not in her wildest imaginings would Henrietta guess how much the help amounted to.) Lucy was to consider Leys as her home any time she wanted to come and stay, or if she ever wanted a lecturer's job, or if— or if—

  And Lucy had to hide the fact that Leys, where she had been so happy, was the one place in the world that she would never come back to. A place that she was going, if her conscience and the shade of Rouse would let her, to blot out of her mind.

  The Staff went to their various duties and Lucy went back to her room to finish packing. She had not spoken to Innes since that so-incredible conversation on Saturday morning; had hardly seen her, indeed, except for the moment when she had taken her diploma from Miss Hodge's hands.

  Was Innes going to let her go without a word?

  But when she came back to her room she found that word on her table. A written word. She opened the envelope and read

  Dear Miss Pym,

  Here it is in writing. For the rest of my life I shall atone for the thing I can't undo. I pay forfeit gladly. My life for hers.

  1 am sorry that this has spoiled Leys for you. And I hope that you will not be unhappy about what you have done for me. I promise to make it worth while.

  Perhaps, ten years from today, you will come to the West Country and see what I have done with my life. That would give me a date to look forward to. A landmark in a world without them. Meanwhile, and always, my gratitude—my unspeakable gratitude.

  Mary Innes.

  "What time did you order the taxi for?" Beau asked, coming in on top of her knock.

  "Half-past eleven."

  "It's practically that now. Have you everything in that is going in? Hot water bottle? You hadn't one. Umbrella downstairs? You don't possess one. What do you do? Wait in doorways till it's over, or steal the nearest one? I had an aunt who always bought the cheapest she could find and discarded it in the nearest waste-paper-bin when the rain stopped. More money than sense, as my nanny used to say. Well, now. Is that all? Consider well, because once we get those cases shut we'll never get them open again. Nothing left in the drawers? People always leave things stuck at the back of drawers." She opened the small drawers of the table and ran her hands into the back of them. "Half the divorces in the Western Hemisphere start through the subsequent revelations."

  She withdrew her right hand, and Lucy saw that she was holding the little silver rosette; left lying at the back of the drawer because Lucy had not been able to make up her mind what to do with it.

  Beau turned it over in her fingers.

  "That looks like the little button thing off my shoe," she said.

  "Your shoe?"

  "Yes. Those black pump things that one wore at dancing class. I hung on to them because they are so lovely when one's feet are tired. Like gloves. I can still wear the shoes I wore when I was fourteen. I always had enormous feet for my age, and believe me it was no consolation to be told that you were going to be tall." Her attention went back to the thing she was holding. "So this is where I lost it," she said. "You know, I wondered quite a lot about that." She dropped it into her pocket. "You'll have to sit on the case, I'm afraid. You sit on it and I'll wrestle with the locks."

  Automatically Lucy sat on it.

  She wondered why she had never noticed before how cold those blue eyes were. Brilliant and cold and shallow.

  The bright hair fell over her lap as Beau wrestled with the locks. The locks would do what she wanted, of course. Everything and everyone, always, since the day she was born, had done what she wanted. If they hadn't, she took steps to see that they did. At the age of four, Lucy remembered, she had defeated a whole adult world because her will to have things her way was greater than all the wills combined against her. She had never known frustration.

  She could not visualise the possibility of frustration.

  If her friend had the obvious right, to Arlinghurst, then to Arlinghurst she should go.

  "There! That's done it. Stand by to sit on the other if I can't manage it. I see Giddy's given you one of his loathsome little plants. What a bore for you. Perhaps you can exchange it for a bowl at the back door one day."

  How soon, Lucy wondered, had Innes begun to suspect? Almost at once? Certainly before the afternoon, when she had turned green on the spot where it had happened.

  But she had not been sure until she saw the silver rosette on Lucy's palm, and learned where it had been found.

  Poor Innes. Poor Innes, who was paying forfeit

  "Tax-i!" yelled a voice along the corridor.

  "There's your cab. I'll take your things. No, they're quite light; you forget the training I've had. I wish you weren't going, Miss Pym. We shall miss you so much."

  Lucy heard herself saying the obvious things. She even heard herself promising Beau that she might come to them for Christmas, when Beau would be home for her first "working" holidays.

  Beau put her into the cab, took a tender farewell of her, and said: "The station" to the driver, and the taxi slid into motion and Beau's face smiled a moment beyond the window, and was gone.

  The driver pushed back the glass panel and asked: "London train, lady?" Yes, Lucy said, to London.

  And in London she would stay. In London was her own, safe, nice, calm, collected existence, and in future she would be content with it. She would even give up lecturing on psychology.

  What did she know about psychology anyhow?

  As a psychologist she was a first-rate teacher of French.

  She could write a book about character as betrayed by facial characteristics. As least she had been right about that. Mostly.

  Eyebrows that sent people to the stake.

  Yes, she would write a book about face-reading.

  Under another name, of course. Face-reading was not well seen among the intelligentsia.