For a moment Mr. Symmington looked as though he did not know who his stepdaughter was, then he smiled.
“Oh yes, of course, Megan. She—er—has been back from school some time. We’re thinking about finding her something to do—yes, to do. But of course she’s very young still. And backward for her age, so they say. Yes, so they tell me.”
I went out. In the outer office was a very old man on a stool writing slowly and laboriously, a small cheeky-looking boy and a middle-aged woman with frizzy hair and pinze-nez who was typing with some speed and dash.
If this was Miss Ginch I agreed with Owen Griffith that tender passages between her and her employer were exceedingly unlikely.
I went into the baker’s and said my piece about the currant loaf. It was received with the exclamation and incredulity proper to the occasion, and a new currant loaf was thrust upon me in replacement—“fresh from the oven this minute”—as its indecent heat pressed against my chest proclaimed to be no less than truth.
I came out of the shop and looked up and down the street hoping to see Joanna with the car. The walk had tired me a good deal and it was awkward getting along with my sticks and the currant loaf.
But there was no sign of Joanna as yet.
Suddenly my eyes were held in glad and incredulous surprise.
Along the pavement towards me there came floating a goddess. There is really no other word for it.
The perfect features, the crisply curling golden hair, the tall exquisitely-shaped body! And she walked like a goddess, without effort, seeming to swim nearer and nearer. A glorious, an incredible, a breathtaking girl!
In my intense excitement something had to go. What went was the currant loaf. It slipped from my clutches. I made a dive after it and lost my stick, which clattered to the pavement, and I slipped and nearly fell myself.
It was the strong arm of the goddess that caught and held me. I began to stammer:
“Th-thanks awfully, I’m f-f-frightfully sorry.”
She had retrieved the currant loaf and handed it to me together with the stick. And then she smiled kindly and said cheerfully:
“Don’t mention it. No trouble, I assure you,” and the magic died completely before the flat, competent voice.
A nice healthy-looking well set-up girl, no more.
I fell to reflecting what would have happened if the Gods had given Helen of Troy exactly those flat accents. How strange that a girl could trouble your inmost soul so long as she kept her mouth shut, and that the moment she spoke the glamour could vanish as though it had never been.
I had known the reverse happen, though. I had seen a little sad monkey-faced woman whom no one would turn to look at twice. Then she opened her mouth and suddenly enchantment had lived and bloomed and Cleopatra had cast her spell anew.
Joanna had drawn up at the kerb beside me without my noticing her arrival. She asked if there was anything the matter.
“Nothing,” I said, pulling myself together. “I was reflecting on Helen of Troy and others.”
“What a funny place to do it,” said Joanna. “You looked most odd, standing there clasping currant bread to your breast with your mouth wide open.”
“I’ve had a shock,” I said. “I have been transplanted to Ilium and back again.”
“Do you know who that is?” I added, indicating a retreating back that was swimming gracefully away.
Peering after the girl Joanna said that it was the Symmingtons’ nursery governess.
“Is that what struck you all of a heap?” she asked. “She’s good-looking, but a bit of a wet fish.”
“I know,” I said. “Just a nice kind girl. And I’d been thinking her Aphrodite.”
Joanna opened the door of the car and I got in.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” she said. “Some people have lots of looks and absolutely no S.A. That girl has. It seems such a pity.”
I said that if she was a nursery governess it was probably just as well.
Three
I
That afternoon we went to tea with Mr. Pye.
Mr. Pye was an extremely ladylike plump little man, devoted to his petit point chairs, his Dresden shepherdesses and his collection of bric-à-brac. He lived at Prior’s Lodge in the grounds of which were the ruins of the old Priory.
Prior’s Lodge was certainly a very exquisite house and under Mr. Pye’s loving care it showed to its best advantage. Every piece of furniture was polished and set in the exact place most suited to it. The curtains and cushions were of exquisite tone and colour, and of the most expensive silks.
It was hardly a man’s house, and it did strike me that to live there would be rather like taking up one’s abode in a period room at a museum. Mr. Pye’s principal enjoyment in life was taking people round his house. Even those completely insensitive to their surroundings could not escape. Even if you were so hardened as to consider the essentials of living a radio, a cocktail bar, a bath and a bed surrounded by the necessary walls. Mr. Pye did not despair of leading you to better things.
His small plump hands quivered with sensibility as he described his treasures, and his voice rose to a falsetto squeak as he narrated the exciting circumstances under which he had brought his Italian bedstead home from Verona.
Joanna and I being both fond of antiquities and of period furniture, met with approval.
“It is really a pleasure, a great pleasure, to have such an acquisition to our little community. The dear good people down here, you know, so painfully bucolic—not to say provincial. They don’t know anything. Vandals—absolute vandals! And the inside of their houses—it would make you weep, dear lady, I assure you it would make you weep. Perhaps it has done so?”
Joanna said that she hadn’t gone quite as far as that.
“But you see what I mean? They mix things so terribly! I’ve seen with my own eyes a most delightful little Sheraton piece—delicate, perfect—a collector’s piece, absolutely—and next to it a Victorian occasional table, or quite possibly a fumed oak revolving bookcase—yes, even that—fumed oak.”
He shuddered—and murmured plaintively:
“Why are people so blind? You agree—I’m sure you agree, that beauty is the only thing worth living for.”
Hypnotized by his earnestness, Joanna said, yes, yes, that was so.
“Then why,” demanded Mr. Pye, “do people surround themselves with ugliness?”
Joanna said it was very odd.
“Odd? It’s criminal! That’s what I call it—criminal! And the excuses they give! They say something is comfortable. Or that it is quaint. Quaint! Such a horrible word.”
“The house you have taken,” went on Mr. Pye, “Miss Emily Barton’s house. Now that is charming, and she has some quite nice pieces. Quite nice. One or two of them are really first class. And she has taste, too—although I’m not quite so sure of that as I was. Sometimes, I am afraid, I think it’s really sentiment. She likes to keep things as they were—but not for le bon motif—not because of the resultant harmony—but because it is the way her mother had them.”
He transferred his attention to me, and his voice changed. It altered from that of the rapt artist to that of the born gossip.
“You didn’t know the family at all? No, quite so—yes, through house agents. But, my dears, you ought to have known that family! When I came here the old mother was still alive. An incredible person—quite incredible! A monster, if you know what I mean. Positively a monster. The old-fashioned Victorian monster, devouring her young. Yes, that’s what it amounted to. She was monumental, you know, must have weighed seventeen stone, and all the five daughters revolved round her. ‘The girls’! That’s how she always spoke of them. The girls! And the eldest was well over sixty then. ‘Those stupid girls!’ she used to call them sometimes. Black slaves, that’s all they were, fetching and carrying and agreeing with her. Ten o’clock they had to go to bed and they weren’t allowed a fire in their bedroom, and as for asking their own friends to the house, that would
have been unheard of. She despised them, you know, for not getting married, and yet so arranged their lives that it was practically impossible for them to meet anybody. I believe Emily, or perhaps it was Agnes, did have some kind of affair with a curate. But his family wasn’t good enough and Mamma soon put a stop to that!”
“It sounds like a novel,” said Joanna.
“Oh, my dear, it was. And then the dreadful old woman died, but of course it was far too late then. They just went on living there and talking in hushed voices about what poor Mamma would have wished. Even repapering her bedroom they felt to be quite sacrilegious. Still they did enjoy themselves in the parish in a quiet way… But none of them had much stamina, and they just died off one by one. Influenza took off Edith, and Minnie had an operation and didn’t recover and poor Mabel had a stroke—Emily looked after her in the most devoted manner. Really that poor woman has done nothing but nursing for the last ten years. A charming creature, don’t you think? Like a piece of Dresden. So sad for her having financial anxieties—but of course all investments have depreciated.”
“We feel rather awful being in her house,” said Joanna.
“No, no, my dear young lady. You mustn’t feel that way. Her dear good Florence is devoted to her and she told me herself how happy she was to have got such nice tenants.” Here Mr. Pye made a little bow. “She told me she thought she had been most fortunate.”
“The house,” I said, “has a very soothing atmosphere.”
Mr. Pye darted a quick glance at me.
“Really? You feel that? Now, that’s very interesting. I wondered, you know. Yes, I wondered.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Pye?” asked Joanna.
My Pye spread out his plump hands.
“Nothing, nothing. One wondered, that is all. I do believe in atmosphere, you know. People’s thoughts and feelings. They give their impression to the walls and the furniture.”
I did not speak for a moment or two. I was looking round me and wondering how I would describe the atmosphere of Prior’s Lodge. It seemed to me that the curious thing was that it hadn’t any atmosphere! That was really very remarkable.
I reflected on this point so long that I heard nothing of the conversation going on between Joanna and her host. I was recalled to myself, however, by hearing Joanna uttering farewell preliminaries. I came out of my dream and added my quota.
We all went out into the hall. As we came towards the front door a letter came through the box and fell on the mat.
“Afternoon post,” murmured Mr. Pye as he picked it up. “Now, my dear young people, you will come again, won’t you? Such a pleasure to meet some broader minds, if you understand me. Someone with an appreciation of Art. Really you know, these dear good people down here, if you mention the Ballet, it conveys to them pirouetting toes, and tulle skirts and old gentlemen with opera glasses in the Naughty Nineties. It does indeed. Fifty years behind the times—that’s what I put them down, as. A wonderful country, England. It has pockets. Lymstock is one of them. Interesting from a collector’s point of view—I always feel I have voluntarily put myself under a glass shade when I am here. The peaceful backwater where nothing ever happens.”
Shaking hands with us twice over, he helped me with exaggerated care into the car. Joanna took the wheel, she negotiated with some care the circular sweep round a plot of unblemished grass, then with a straight drive ahead, she raised a hand to wave goodbye to our host where he stood on the steps of the house. I leaned forward to do the same.
But our gesture of farewell went unheeded. Mr. Pye had opened his mail.
He was standing staring down at the open sheet in his hand.
Joanna had described him once as a plump pink cherub. He was still plump, but he was not looking like a cherub now. His face was a dark congested purple, contorted with rage and surprise.
And at that moment I realized that there had been something familiar about the look of that envelope. I had not realized it at the time—indeed it had been one of those things that you note unconsciously without knowing that you do note them.
“Goodness,” said Joanna. “What’s bitten the poor pet?”
“I rather fancy,” I said, “that it’s the Hidden Hand again.”
She turned an astonished face towards me and the car swerved.
“Careful, wench,” I said.
Joanna refixed her attention on the road. She was frowning.
“You mean a letter like the one you got?”
“That’s my guess.”
“What is this place?” asked Joanna. “It looks the most innocent sleepy harmless little bit of England you can imagine—”
“Where to quote Mr. Pye, nothing ever happens,” I cut in. “He chose the wrong minute to say that. Something has happened.”
“But who writes these things, Jerry?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“My dear girl, how should I know? Some local nitwit with a screw loose, I suppose.”
“But why? It seems so idiotic.”
“You must read Freud and Jung and that lot to find out. Or ask our Dr. Owen.”
Joanna tossed her head.
“Dr. Owen doesn’t like me.”
“He’s hardly seen you.”
“He’s seen quite enough, apparently, to make him cross over if he sees me coming along the High Street.”
“A most unusual reaction,” I said sympathetically. “And one you’re not used to.”
Joanna was frowning again.
“No, but seriously, Jerry, why do people write anonymous letters?”
“As I say, they’ve got a screw loose. It satisfies some urge, I suppose. If you’ve been snubbed, or ignored, or frustrated, and your life’s pretty drab and empty, I suppose you get a sense of power from stabbing in the dark at people who are happy and enjoying themselves.”
Joanna shivered. “Not nice.”
“No, not nice. I should imagine the people in these country places tend to be inbred—and so you would get a fair amount of queers.”
“Somebody, I suppose, quite uneducated and inarticulate? With better education—”
Joanna did not finish her sentence, and I said nothing. I have never been able to accept the easy belief that education is a panacea for every ill.
As we drove through the town before climbing up the hill road, I looked curiously at the few figures abroad in the High Street. Was one of those sturdy countrywomen going about with a load of spite and malice behind her placid brow, planning perhaps even now a further outpouring of vindictive spleen?
But I still did not take the thing seriously.
II
Two days later we went to a bridge party at the Symmingtons.
It was a Saturday afternoon—the Symmingtons always had their bridge parties on a Saturday, because the office was shut then.
There were two tables. The players were the Symmingtons, ourselves, Miss Griffith, Mr. Pye, Miss Barton and a Colonel Appleton whom we had not yet met and who lived at Combeacre, a village some seven miles distant. He was a perfect specimen of the Blimp type, about sixty years of age, liked playing what he called a “plucky game” (which usually resulted in immense sums above the line being scored by his opponents) and was so intrigued by Joanna that he practically never took his eyes off her the whole afternoon.
I was forced to admit that my sister was probably the most attractive thing that had been seen in Lymstock for many a long day.
When we arrived, Elsie Holland, the children’s governess, was hunting for some extra bridge scorers in an ornate writing desk. She glided across the floor with them in the same celestial way I had first noticed, but the spell could not be cast a second time. Exasperating that it should be so—a waste of a perfectly lovely form and face. But I noticed now only too clearly the exceptionally large white teeth like tombstones, and the way she showed her gums when she laughed. She was, unfortunately, one of your prattling girls.
“Are these the ones, Mrs. Symmington? It’s ever so stupid
of me not to remember where we put them away last time. It’s my fault, too, I’m afraid. I had them in my hand and then Brian called out his engine had got caught, and I ran out and what with one thing and another I must have just stuffed them in somewhere stupid. These aren’t the right ones, I see now, they’re a bit yellow at the edges. Shall I tell Agnes tea at five? I’m taking the kiddies to Long Barrow so there won’t be any noise.”
A nice kind bright girl. I caught Joanna’s eye. She was laughing. I stared at her coldly. Joanna always knows what is passing in my mind, curse her.
We settled down to bridge.
I was soon to know to a nicety the bridge status of everyone in Lymstock. Mrs. Symmington was an exceedingly good bridge player and was quite a devotee of the game. Like many definitely unintellectual women, she was not stupid and had a considerable natural shrewdness. Her husband was a good sound player, slightly overcautious. Mr. Pye can best be described as brilliant. He had an uncanny flair for psychic bidding. Joanna and I, since the party was in our honour, played at a table with Mrs. Symmington and Mr. Pye. It was Symmington’s task to pour oil on troubled waters and by the exercise of tact to reconcile the three other players at his table. Colonel Appleton, as I have said, was wont to play “a plucky game.” Little Miss Barton was without exception the worst bridge player I have ever come across and always enjoyed herself enormously. She did manage to follow suit, but had the wildest ideas as to the strength of her hand, never knew the score, repeatedly led out of the wrong hand and was quite unable to count trumps and often forgot what they were. Aimée Griffith’s play can be summed up in her own words. “I like a good game of bridge with no nonsense—and I don’t play any of these rubbishy conventions. I say what I mean. And no postmortems! After all, it’s only a game!” It will be seen, therefore, that their host had not too easy a task.
Play proceeded fairly harmoniously, however, with occasional forgetfulness on the part of Colonel Appleton as he stared across at Joanna.
Tea was laid in the dining room, round a big table. As we were finishing, two hot and excited little boys rushed in and were introduced, Mrs. Symmington beaming with maternal pride, as was their father.
The Complete Miss Marple Collection Page 43
