Then, just as we were finishing, a shadow darkened my plate, and I turned my head to see Megan standing in the French window.
“Oh,” said her mother. “Here’s Megan.”
Her voice held a faintly surprised note, as though she had forgotten that Megan existed.
The girl came in and shook hands, awkwardly and without any grace.
“I’m afraid I forgot about your tea, dear,” said Mrs. Symmington. “Miss Holland and the boys took theirs out with them, so there’s no nursery tea today. I forgot you weren’t with them.”
Megan nodded.
“That’s all right. I’ll go to the kitchen.”
She slouched out of the room. She was untidily dressed as usual and there were potatoes in both heels.
Mrs. Symmington said with a little apologetic laugh:
“My poor Megan. She’s just at that awkward age, you know. Girls are always shy and awkward when they’ve just left school before they’re properly grown up.”
I saw Joanna’s fair head jerk backwards in what I knew to be a warlike gesture.
“But Megan’s twenty, isn’t she?” she said.
“Oh, yes, yes. She is. But of course she’s very young for her age. Quite a child still. It’s so nice, I think, when girls don’t grow up too quickly.” She laughed again. “I expect all mothers want their children to remain babies.”
“I can’t think why,” said Joanna. “After all, it would be a bit awkward if one had a child who remained mentally six while his body grew up.”
“Oh, you mustn’t take things so literally, Miss Burton,” said Mrs. Symmington.
It occurred to me at that moment that I did not much care for Mrs. Symmington. That anaemic, slighted, faded prettiness concealed, I thought, a selfish and grasping nature. She said, and I disliked her a little more still:
“My poor Megan. She’s rather a difficult child, I’m afraid. I’ve been trying to find something for her to do—I believe there are several things one can learn by correspondence. Designing and dressmaking—or she might try and learn shorthand and typing.”
The red glint was still in Joanna’s eye. She said as we sat down again at the bridge table:
“I suppose she’ll be going to parties and all that sort of thing. Are you going to give a dance for her?”
“A dance?” Mrs. Symmington seemed surprised and amused. “Oh, no, we don’t do things like that down here.”
“I see. Just tennis parties and things like that.”
“Our tennis court has not been played on for years. Neither Richard nor I play. I suppose, later, when the boys grow up—Oh, Megan will find plenty to do. She’s quite happy just pottering about, you know. Let me see, did I deal? Two No Trumps.”
As we drove home, Joanna said with a vicious pressure on the accelerator pedal that made the car leap forward:
“I feel awfully sorry for that girl.”
“Megan?”
“Yes. Her mother doesn’t like her.”
“Oh, come now, Joanna, it’s not as bad as that.”
“Yes, it is. Lots of mothers don’t like their children. Megan, I should imagine, is an awkward sort of creature to have about the house. She disturbs the pattern—the Symmington pattern. It’s a complete unit without her—and that’s a most unhappy feeling for a sensitive creature to have—and she is sensitive.”
“Yes,” I said, “I think she is.”
I was silent a moment.
Joanna suddenly laughed mischievously.
“Bad luck for you about the governess.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said with dignity.
“Nonsense. Masculine chagrin was written on your face every time you looked at her. I agree with you. It is a waste.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“But I’m delighted, all the same. It’s the first sign of reviving life. I was quite worried about you at the nursing home. You never even looked at that remarkably pretty nurse you had. An attractive minx, too—absolutely God’s gift to a sick man.”
“Your conversation, Joanna, I find definitely low.”
My sister continued without paying the least attention to my remarks.
“So I was much relieved to see you’d still got an eye for a nice bit of skirt. She is a good looker. Funny that the S.A. should have been left out completely. It is odd, you know, Jerry. What is the thing that some women have and others haven’t? What is it makes one woman, even if she only says ‘Foul weather’ so attractive that every man within range wants to come over and talk about the weather with her? I suppose Providence makes a mistake every now and then when sending out the parcel. One Aphrodite face and form, one temperament ditto. And something goes astray and the Aphrodite temperament goes to some little plain-faced creature, and then all the other women go simply mad and say, ‘I can’t think what the men see in her. She isn’t even good-looking!’”
“Have you quite finished, Joanna?”
“Well, you do agree, don’t you?”
I grinned. “I’ll admit to disappointment.”
“And I don’t see who else there is here for you. You’ll have to fall back upon Aimée Griffith.”
“God forbid,” I said.
“She’s quite good-looking, you know.”
“Too much of an Amazon for me.”
“She seems to enjoy her life, all right,” said Joanna. “Absolutely disgustingly hearty, isn’t she? I shouldn’t be at all surprised if she had a cold bath every morning.”
“And what are you going to do for yourself?” I asked.
“Me?”
“Yes. You’ll need a little distraction down here if I know you.”
“Who’s being low now? Besides, you forget Paul.” Joanna heaved up a not very convincing sigh.
“I shan’t forget him nearly as quickly as you will. In about ten days you’ll be saying, ‘Paul? Paul Who? I never knew a Paul.’”
“You think I’m completely fickle,” said Joanna.
“When people like Paul are in question, I’m only too glad that you should be.”
“You never did like him. But he really was a bit of a genius.”
“Possibly, though I doubt it. Anyway, from all I’ve heard, geniuses are people to be heartily disliked. One thing, you won’t find any geniuses down here.”
Joanna considered for a moment, her head on one side.
“I’m afraid not,” she said regretfully.
“You’ll have to fall back upon Owen Griffith,” I said. “He’s the only unattached male in the place. Unless you count old Colonel Appleton. He was looking at you like a hungry bloodhound most of the afternoon.”
Joanna laughed.
“He was, wasn’t he? It was quite embarrassing.”
“Don’t pretend. You’re never embarrassed.”
Joanna drove in silence through the gate and round to the garage.
She said then:
“There may be something in that idea of yours.”
“What idea?”
Joanna replied:
“I don’t see why any man should deliberately cross the street to avoid me. It’s rude, apart from anything else.”
“I see,” I said. “You’re going to hunt the man down in cold blood.”
“Well, I don’t like being avoided.”
I got slowly and carefully out of the car, and balanced my sticks. Then I offered my sister a piece of advice.
“Let me tell you this, my girl. Owen Griffith isn’t any of your tame whining artistic young men. Unless you’re careful you’ll stir up a hornet’s nest about your ears. That man could be dangerous.”
“Oo, do you think so?” demanded Joanna with every symptom of pleasure at the prospect.
“Leave the poor devil alone,” I said sternly.
“How dare he cross the street when he saw me coming?”
“All you women are alike. You harp on one theme. You’ll have Sister Aimée gunning you, too, if I’m not mistaken.”
<
br /> “She dislikes me already,” said Joanna. She spoke meditatively, but with a certain satisfaction.
“We have come down here,” I said sternly, “for peace and quiet, and I mean to see we get it.”
But peace and quiet were the last things we were to have.
Four
I
It was, I think, about a week later, that Partridge informed me that Mrs. Baker would like to speak to me for a minute or two if I would be so kind.
The name Mrs. Baker conveyed nothing at all to me.
“Who is Mrs. Baker?” I said, bewildered—“Can’t she see Miss Joanna?”
But it appeared that I was the person with whom an interview was desired. It further transpired that Mrs. Baker was the mother of the girl Beatrice.
I had forgotten Beatrice. For a fortnight now, I had been conscious of a middle-aged woman with wisps of grey hair, usually on her knees retreating crablike from bathroom and stairs and passages when I appeared, and I knew, I suppose, that she was our new Daily Woman. Otherwise the Beatrice complication had faded from my mind.
I could not very well refuse to see Beatrice’s mother, especially as I learned that Joanna was out, but I was, I must confess, a little nervous at the prospect. I sincerely hoped that I was not going to be accused of having trifled with Beatrice’s affections. I cursed the mischievous activities of anonymous letter writers to myself at the same time as, aloud, I commanded that Beatrice’s mother should be brought to my presence.
Mrs. Baker was a big broad weather-beaten woman with a rapid flow of speech. I was relieved to notice no signs of anger or accusation.
“I hope, sir,” she said, beginning at once when the door had closed behind Partridge, “that you’ll excuse the liberty I’ve taken in coming to see you. But I thought, sir, as you was the proper person to come to, and I should be thankful if you could see your way to telling me what I ought to do in the circumstances, because in my opinion, sir, something ought to be done, and I’ve never been one to let the grass grow under my feet, and what I say is, no use moaning and groaning, but ‘Up and doing’ as vicar said in his sermon only the week before last.”
I felt slightly bewildered and as though I had missed something essential in the conversation.
“Certainly,” I said. “Won’t you—er—sit down, Mrs. Baker? I’m sure I shall be glad to—er help you in anyway I can—”
I paused expectantly.
“Thank you, sir.” Mrs. Baker sat down on the edge of a chair. “It’s very good of you, I’m sure. And glad I am that I came to you, I said to Beatrice, I said, and her howling and crying on her bed, Mr. Burton will know what to do, I said, being a London gentleman. And something must be done, what with young men being so hotheaded and not listening to reason the way they are, and not listening to a word a girl says, and anyway, if it was me, I says to Beatrice I’d give him as good as I got, and what about that girl down at the mill?”
I felt more than ever bewildered.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I don’t quite understand. What has happened?”
“It’s the letters, sir. Wicked letters—indecent, too, using such words and all. Worse than I’ve ever seen in the Bible, even.”
Passing over an interesting sideline here, I said desperately:
“Has your daughter been having more letters?”
“Not her, sir. She had just the one. That one as was the occasion of her leaving here.”
“There was absolutely no reason—” I began, but Mrs. Baker firmly and respectfully interrupted me:
“There is no need to tell me, sir, that what was wrote was all wicked lies. I had Miss Partridge’s word for that—and indeed I would have known it for myself. You aren’t that type of gentleman, sir, that I well know, and you an invalid and all. Wicked untruthful lies it was, but all the same I says to Beatrice as she’d better leave because you know what talk is, sir. No smoke without fire, that’s what people say. And a girl can’t be too careful. And besides the girl herself felt bashful like after what had been written, so I says, ‘Quite right,’ to Beatrice when she said she wasn’t coming up here again, though I’m sure we both regretted the inconvenience being such—”
Unable to find her way out of this sentence, Mrs. Baker took a deep breath and began again.
“And that, I hoped, would be the end of any nasty talk. But now George, down at the garage, him what Beatrice is going with, he’s got one of them. Saying awful things about our Beatrice, and how she’s going on with Fred Ledbetter’s Tom—and I can assure you, sir, the girl has been no more than civil to him and passing the time of day so to speak.”
My head was now reeling under this new complication of Mr. Ledbetter’s Tom.
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Beatrice’s—er—young man has had an anonymous letter making accusations about her and another young man?”
“That’s right, sir, and not nicely put at all—horrible words used, and it drove young George mad with rage, it did, and he came round and told Beatrice he wasn’t going to put up with that sort of thing from her, and he wasn’t going to have her go behind his back with other chaps—and she says it’s all a lie—and he says no smoke without fire, he says, and rushes off being hot-like in his temper, and Beatrice she took on ever so, poor girl, and I said I’ll put my hat on and come straight up to you, sir.”
Mrs. Baker paused and looked at me expectantly, like a dog waiting for reward after doing a particularly clever trick.
“But why come to me?” I demanded.
“I understood, sir, that you’d had one of these nasty letters yourself, and I thought, sir, that being a London gentleman, you’d know what to do about them.”
“If I were you,” I said, “I should go to the police. This sort of thing ought to be stopped.”
Mrs. Baker looked deeply shocked.
“Oh, no, sir. I couldn’t go to the police.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve never been mixed up with the police, sir. None of us ever have.”
“Probably not. But the police are the only people who can deal with this sort of thing. It’s their business.”
“Go to Bert Rundle?”
Bert Rundle was the constable, I knew.
“There’s a sergeant, or an inspector, surely, at the police station.”
“Me, go into the police station?”
Mrs. Baker’s voice expressed reproach and incredulity. I began to feel annoyed.
“That’s the only advice I can give you.”
Mrs. Baker was silent, obviously quite unconvinced. She said wistfully and earnestly:
“These letters ought to be stopped, sir, they did ought to be stopped. There’ll be mischief done sooner or later.”
“It seems to me there is mischief done now,” I said.
“I meant violence, sir. These young fellows, they get violent in their feelings—and so do the older ones.”
I asked:
“Are a good many of these letters going about?”
Mrs. Baker nodded.
“It’s getting worse and worse, sir. Mr. and Mrs. Beadle at the Blue Boar—very happy they’ve always been—and now these letters comes and it sets him thinking things—things that aren’t so, sir.”
I leaned forward:
“Mrs. Baker,” I said, “have you any idea, any idea at all, who is writing these abominable letters?”
To my great surprise she nodded her head.
“We’ve got our idea, sir. Yes, we’ve all got a very fair idea.”
“Who is it?”
I had fancied she might be reluctant to mention a name, but she replied promptly:
“’Tis Mrs. Cleat—that’s what we all think, sir. ’Tis Mrs. Cleat for sure.”
I had heard so many names this morning that I was quite bewildered. I asked:
“Who is Mrs. Cleat?”
Mrs. Cleat, I discovered, was the wife of an elderly jobbing gardener. She lived in a cottage on the road leading down to the Mill.
My further questions only brought unsatisfactory answers. Questioned as to why Mrs. Cleat should write these letters, Mrs. Baker would only say vaguely that “’T would be like her.”
In the end I let her go, reiterating once more my advice to go to the police, advice which I could see Mrs. Baker was not going to act upon. I was left with the impression that I had disappointed her.
I thought over what she had said. Vague as the evidence was, I decided that if the village was all agreed that Mrs. Cleat was the culprit, then it was probably true. I decided to go and consult Griffith about the whole thing. Presumably he would know this Cleat woman. If he thought advisable, he or I might suggest to the police that she was at the bottom of this growing annoyance.
I timed my arrival for about the moment I fancied Griffith would have finished his “Surgery.” When the last patient had left, I went into the surgery.
“Hallo, it’s you, Burton.”
I outlined my conversation with Mrs. Baker, and passed on to him the conviction that this Mrs. Cleat was responsible. Rather to my disappointment, Griffith shook his head.
“It’s not so simple as that,” he said.
“You don’t think this Cleat woman is at the bottom of it?”
“She may be. But I should think it most unlikely.”
“Then why do they all think it is her?”
He smiled.
“Oh,” he said, “you don’t understand. Mrs. Cleat is the local witch.”
“Good gracious!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, sounds rather strange nowadays, nevertheless that’s what it amounts to. The feeling lingers, you know, that there are certain people, certain families, for instance, whom it isn’t wise to offend. Mrs. Cleat came from a family of ‘wise women.’ And I’m afraid she’s taken pains to cultivate the legend. She’s a queer woman with a bitter and sardonic sense of humour. It’s been easy enough for her, if a child cut its finger, or had a bad fall, or sickened with mumps, to nod her head and say, ‘Yes, he stole my apples last week’ or ‘He pulled my cat’s tail.’ Soon enough mothers pulled their children away, and other women brought honey or a cake they’d baked to give to Mrs. Cleat so as to keep on the right side of her so that she shouldn’t ‘ill wish’ them. It’s superstitious and silly, but it happens. So naturally, now, they think she’s at the bottom of this.”
The Complete Miss Marple Collection Page 44
