A Judgement in Stone

by Ruth Rendell

  “I thought I saw the Smiths’ van in the lane. How very unfortunate.”

  “Darling, I don’t want her here. I know it sounds silly, but it makes me feel quite ill to think of her being here. She goes about telling people Jeffrey divorced me and named you, and that he’s a dipsomaniac and all sorts of things. And I know she opened the last letter I had from Audrey.”

  “It doesn’t sound silly at all. The woman’s a menace. Did you say anything?”

  “I didn’t see her. Giles did.”

  George opened the door. He did so at the precise moment Eunice and Joan were creeping down the stairs in the dark. He put on the light, walked along the passage, and confronted them.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Smith.”

  Eunice was abashed, but not Joan. “Oh, hallo, Mr. Coverdale. Long time no see. Bitterly cold, isn’t it? But you can’t expect anything else at this time of year.”

  George opened the front door for her and held it wide. “Good night,” he said shortly.

  “Cheeri-bye!” Joan scuttled off, giggling, a schoolgirl who has been caught out of bounds.

  Thoughtfully, he closed the door. When he turned round Eunice had disappeared. But in the morning, before breakfast, he went to her in the kitchen. This time she wasn’t doing miracles with his dress shirt. She was making toast. He had thought of her as shy, and had blamed all her oddities on her shyness, but now he was aware, as he had been once six months before, of the disagreeable atmosphere that prevailed wherever she was. She turned round to look at him the way an ill-tempered cow had once looked at him when he went too close to its calf. She didn’t say good morning, she didn’t say a word, for she knew why he had come. A violent dislike of her seized him, and he wanted the kitchen back in its disordered state, the saucepans still not washed from the night before, an au pair muddling through.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got something rather unpleasant to say, Miss Parchman, so I’ll make it as brief as possible. My wife and I don’t wish to interfere in your personal life, you are at liberty to make what friends you choose. But you must understand we cannot have Mrs. Smith in this house.”

  He was pompous, poor George. But who wouldn’t have been in the circumstances?

  “She doesn’t do any harm,” said Eunice, and something stopped her calling him sir. She was never again to call George sir or Jacqueline madam.

  “I must be the best judge of that. You have a right to know the grounds of my objection to her. I don’t think one can seriously say a person does no harm when she is known to spread malicious slanders and—well, to abuse her husband’s position as postmaster. That’s all. I can’t, of course, prevent your visiting Mrs. Smith in her own home. That is another matter. But I will not have her here.”

  Eunice asked no questions, offered no defence. She shrugged her massive shoulders, turned away, and pulled out the grill pan on which three slices of toast were burnt black.

  George didn’t wait. But as he left the kitchen he was sure he heard her say, “Now look what you’ve made me do!”

  He talked about it in the car to Giles, because Giles was there and his mind was full of it and, anyway, he was always racking his mind for something to say to the boy.

  “You know, I’ve been very loth to admit it, but there’s something definitely unpleasant about that woman. Perhaps I shouldn’t be saying this to you, but you’re grown up, you must be aware of it, feel it. I don’t quite know the word I want to describe her.”

  “Repellent,” said Giles.

  “That’s exactly it!” George was so delighted not only to have been supplied with this adjective but also because it had been supplied, quite forthcomingly, by Giles, that he took his eyes off the road and had to swerve sharply to avoid hitting Mr. Meadows’ ancient labrador which was ambling along in the middle of the lane. “Look where you’re going, you daft old thing,” he called after it in a kind of affectionate relief. “Repellent, that’s the word. Yes, she sends shivers up my spine. But what’s to be done, Giles, old boy? Put up with it, I suppose?”

  “Mm.”

  “I dare say it’s just made me a bit nervous. I’m very likely exaggerating. She’s taken an enormous burden of work off your mother’s shoulders.”

  Giles said, “Mm,” again, opened his case, and began muttering bits out of Ovid. Disappointed, but well aware that there was to be no repetition of that inspired contribution to this very one-sided discussion, George sighed and gave up. But a very nasty thought had struck him. If Eunice had been able to drive, if she had been driving this car five minutes before, he was intuitively certain she wouldn’t have swerved to avoid the dog, or if it had been a child, to avoid that either.

  Jacqueline left a note in the kitchen to say she would be out all day. She didn’t want to see Eunice, who was upstairs doing the “children’s” bathroom. It was a pity, she now thought, that Giles had told her about seeing Joan Smith, and an even greater one that she had been so impulsive as to tell George. Eunice might leave, or threaten to leave, Jacqueline drove off through the village to the Jameson-Kerrs’ house, and when she saw the smeary windows, the dust lying everywhere, and her friend’s rough red hands, she told herself that she must keep her servant at any cost and that the occasional presence of Joan Smith was a small price to pay.

  Joan saw the car go by and put on her fleecy coat.

  “Off to the Hall, I suppose?” said Norman. “I wonder you don’t live up there with Miss Frankenstein.”

  Though she had once done so, Joan no longer unloaded her biblical claptrap onto her husband. He was the only person she knew who escaped it. “Don’t you say a word against her! If it wasn’t for her I might be dead.”

  Munching gum, Norman peered into one of his sacks. “Stupid fuss to make about a little tap.”

  “If it wasn’t for her,” shouted Joan with a flash of wit, “you wouldn’t be looking at mailbags, you’d be sewing them.”

  She jumped into the van and roared up over the bridge. Eunice was in the kitchen, loading the washing machine with sheets and shirts and table linen.

  “I saw her go off in her car, so I thought I’d pop up. Did you get into a row last night?”

  “Don’t know about a row.” Eunice closed the lid of the machine and put the kettle on. “He says you’re not to come here.”

  Joan’s reaction was loud and violent. “I knew it! I could see it coming a mile off. It’s not the first time the servants of God have been persecuted, Eun, and it won’t be the last.” She swept out a spindly arm, narrowly missing the milk jug. “Look what you do for them! Isn’t the labourer in the vineyard worthy of his hire? He’d have to pay you twice what you’re getting if you didn’t have that poky room up there, but he doesn’t think of that. He’s no more than a landlord, and since when’s a landlord got a right to interfere with a person’s friends?” Her voice rose to a tremulous shriek. “Even his own daughter goes about saying he’s a fascist. Even his kinsmen stand afar from him. Woe to him whom the Lord despiseth!”

  Unmoved by any of this, Eunice stared stolidly at the boiling kettle. No surge of love for Joan rose in her, no impulse of loyalty affected her. She was untouched by any of that passion which heats one when one’s basic rights are threatened. She simply felt, as she had been feeling ever since the night before, that her life was being interfered with. At last she said, in her heavy level way:

  “I don’t mean to take any notice.”

  Joan let out a shrill laugh. She was enormously pleased. She bubbled with excitement. “That’s right, dear, that’s my Eun. You make him knuckle under. You show him it’s not everyone that goeth when he says go and cometh when he says come.”

  “I’ll make the tea,” said Eunice. “Have a look at that note she’s left, will you? I’ve left my glasses upstairs.”

  14

  During term Melinda had only twice been home, but now that term had come to an end. Jonathan was going to Cornwall with his parents until after the New Year and she had been invited to go with them, but
it would have taken more than being in love to keep Melinda from Lowfield Hall at Christmas. With promises to phone every day, to write often, they parted and Melinda got on the train for Stantwich.

  Again it was Geoff Bealham who picked her up at Gallows Corner. No great coincidence this, as Geoff was always returning from his egg delivery round at about this time. But on December 18 it was dark at five, the windows of the van were closed and the heater on, and Melinda wore an embroidered Afghan coat and a big fur hat. Only the boots were the same.

  “Hi, Melinda. You are a stranger. Don’t tell me its your studies been keeping you up in Galwich.”

  “What else?”

  “A new boy friend, or that’s what I heard.”

  “You just can’t keep anything to yourself in this place, can you? Now tell me what’s new.”

  “Barbara’s expecting. There’ll be another little Baalham come July. Can you see me as a dad, Melinda?”

  “You’ll be marvellous. I’m so glad, Geoff. Mind you give my love to Barbara.”

  “Of course I will,” said Geoff. “Now, what else? My auntie Nellie had a nasty fall off her bike and she’s laid up with a bad foot. Did you hear about your dad throwing Mrs. Smith out of the house?”

  “You don’t mean it!”

  “It’s a fact. He caught her sneaking down the stairs with your lady help and he told her not to come there again, and then he threw her out. She’s got bruises all down her side, or so I heard.”

  “He’s a terrible fascist, isn’t he? But that’s awful.”

  “Don’t know about awful, not when you think what she says about your ma and opens their letters, according to what I hear. Well, here’s where I leave you, and tell your ma I’ll drop the eggs in first thing Monday.”

  Geoff drove home to Barbara and the chickens, thinking what a nice girl Melinda was—that crazy fur hat!—and that the boy friend was a lucky guy.

  “You didn’t really throw Mrs. Smith out and bruise her all down her side, did you?” said Melinda, bursting into the morning room where George, the carpet covered with a sheet, was cleaning his guns because it was too cold in the gun room.

  “That’s a nice way to greet your father when you haven’t seen him for a month.” George got up and gave her a kiss. “You’re looking well. How’s the boy friend? Now what’s all this about me assaulting Mrs. Smith?”

  “Geoff Baalham said you had.”

  “Ridiculous nonsense. I never touched the woman. I didn’t even speak to her beyond saying good night. You ought to know village gossip by this time, Melinda.”

  Melinda threw her hat onto a chair. “But you did say she mustn’t come here again, Daddy?”

  “Certainly I did.”

  “Oh, poor Miss Parchman! It’s awfully feudal interfering with her friendships. We were so worried because she didn’t know anyone or go anywhere, and now she’s got a friend you won’t have her in the house. It’s a shame.”

  “Melinda …” George began.

  “I shall be very nice to her. I’m going to be very kind and caring. I can’t bear to think of her not having a single friend.”

  “It’s her married friend I object to,” said George wickedly, and he laughed when Melinda flounced out.

  So that evening Melinda began on a disaster course that was to lead directly to her death and that of her father, her stepmother, and her stepbrother. She embarked on it because she was in love. It is not so much true that all the world loves a lover as that a lover loves all the world. Melinda was moved by her love to bestow love and happiness, but it was tragic for her that Eunice Parchman was her object.

  After dinner she jumped up from the table and, to Jacqueline’s astonishment, helped Eunice to clear. It was to Eunice’s astonishment too, and to her dismay. She wanted to get the dishes done in time to watch her Los Angeles cop serial at eight, and now here was this great tomboy bouncing about and mixing gravied plates up with water glasses. She wasn’t going to speak, not she, and perhaps the girl would take the hint and go away.

  A kind of delicacy, an awareness of the tasteful thing, underlay Melinda’s extrovert ways, and she sensed that it would be disloyal to her father to mention the events of the previous Sunday. So she began on a different tack. She could hardly have chosen a worse subject, but for one.

  “Your first name’s Eunice, isn’t it, Miss Parchman?”

  “Yes,” said Eunice.

  “It’s a biblical name, but of course you know that. But I think it’s Greek really. Eu-nicey or maybe Eu-nikey. I’ll have to ask Giles. I didn’t do Greek at school.”

  A dish was banged violently into the machine. Melinda, herself a habitual dish-banger, took no notice. She sat on the table.

  “I’ll look it up. The Epistle to Timothy, I think. Of course it is! Eu-nicey, mother of Timothy.”

  “You’re sitting on my tea towel,” said Eunice.

  “Oh, sorry. I’ll have to check, but I think it says something about thy mother Eunice and thy grandmother Lois. I don’t suppose your mother’s name is Lois, is it?”

  “Edith.”

  “Now that must be Anglo-Saxon. Names are fascinating, aren’t they? I love mine. I think my parents had very good taste calling us Peter and Paula and Melinda. Peter’s coming next week, you’ll like him. If you’d had a son, would you have called him Timothy?”

  “I don’t know,” said Eunice, wondering why she was being subjected to this persecution. Had George Coverdale put her up to it? Or was it just done to mock? If not, why did that great tomboy keep smiling and laughing? She wiped all the surfaces viciously and drained the sink.

  “What’s your favourite name then?” said her inquisitor.

  Eunice had never thought about it. The only names she knew were those of her relatives, her few acquaintances, and those she had heard spoken on television. From this last, in desperation she selected, recalling her hero whose latest adventure she would miss if she didn’t get a move on.

  “Steve,” she said and, hanging up her tea towel, marched out of the kitchen. It had been an intellectual effort which left her quite exhausted.

  Melinda was not dissatisfied. Poor old Parchman was obviously sulking over the Joan Smith business, but she would get over that. The ice had been broken, and Melinda hoped confidently for a rapport to have grown up between them before the end of her holiday.

  “Eu-nee-kay,” said Giles when she asked him, and, “There was this man, you see, who got drunk at a party, and he was staggering home at about three in the morning when he landed up in the entrance to a block of flats. Well, he looked at all the names by the bells, and there was one called S. T. Paul. So he rang that bell, and when the guy came down, all cross and sleepy in his pyjamas, the man said, ‘Tell me, did you ever get any replies to your letters?’ ” He let out a great bellow of laughter at his own joke, then abruptly became doleful. Maybe he shouldn’t tell jokes like that with his conversion in view.

  “You’re crazy, Step,” said Melinda. She didn’t appreciate, was never to appreciate, that she was the only person to whom her stepbrother ever uttered more than one isolated sentence. Her mind was on Eunice, whom she sought out, armed with the Bible, next day with a dictionary of proper names. She lent her magazines, took her the evening paper George brought home, and obligingly ran upstairs to fetch her glasses when Eunice said, as she always did, that she hadn’t got them with her.

  Eunice was harassed almost beyond bearing. It was bad enough that Melinda and Giles were about the house all day so that Joan Smith couldn’t come to see her. But now Melinda was always in her kitchen or following her about “like a dog,” as she told Joan. And she was perpetually on tenterhooks what with those books and papers constantly being thrust under her nose—which she didn’t tell Joan.

  “Of course you know what all that amounts to, don’t you, Eun? They’re ashamed of their wicked behaviour, and they’ve put that girl up to soft-soaping you.”

  “I don’t know,” said Eunice. “She gets on my nerves.”
/>
  Her nerves were playing her up, as she put it to herself, in a way they had never done before. But she was powerless to deal with Melinda, that warm unsnubbable girl. And once or twice, while Melinda was haranguing her about names or the Bible or Christmas or family histories, she wondered what would happen if she were to pick up one of those long kitchen knives and use it. Not, of course, Eunice being Eunice, what the Coverdales would do or what would become of her, but just the immediate consequence—that tongue silenced, blood spreading over and staining that white neck.

  On the twenty-third Peter and Audrey Coverdale arrived.

  Peter was a tall pleasant-looking man who favoured his mother rather than his father. He was thirty-one. He and his wife were childless, from choice probably, for Audrey was a career woman, chief librarian at the university where he had a post as lecturer in political economy. Audrey was particularly fond of Jacqueline. She was a well-dressed elegant bluestocking, four years older than her husband, which made her only seven years Jacqueline’s junior. Before training as a librarian she had been at the Royal Academy of Music, which Jacqueline had attended before her first marriage. The two women read the same kind of books, shared a passionate love of Mozartian and pre-Mozartian opera, loved fashion and talking about clothes. They corresponded regularly, Audrey’s letters being among those examined by Joan Smith.

  They hadn’t been in the house more than ten minutes when Melinda insisted on taking them to the kitchen and introducing them to Eunice.

  “She’s a member of this household. It’s awfully fascist to treat her like a bit of kitchen equipment.”

  Eunice shook hands.

  “Will you be going away for Christmas, Miss Parchman?” said Audrey, who prided herself, as Jacqueline did, on having a fund of small talk suitable for persons in every rank of life.

  “No,” said Eunice.

  “What a shame! Not for us, of course. Your loss will be our gain. But one does like to be with one’s family at Christmas.”

  Eunice turned her back and got the teacups out.