‘The voice that breathed o’er Eden was the voice of the serpent,’ said Anthony, red in the face. ‘Get lost, Corin! Drop dead, if you prefer it! One more crack out of you in criticism of my wife and I’ll knock you silly.’
‘Oh, Anthony!’ said Celia. Before she could add, ‘My hero!’ I slid out. My bags were already packed. I left without formal leave-taking, reflecting with some self-satisfaction that Dame Beatrice herself would have been the first to congratulate me on my handling of a domestic situation which, if Celia had been kinder and wiser, need never have arisen between her and Anthony.
I went back to my flat, left some laundry and a note for the woman who ‘did’ for me, re-packed and telephoned the first of the hotels to let the manager know that I should be along early on the following day. They had all been warned by McMaster that I could give only short notice of my visits, so that nobody could say exactly when these would be. The result was that I had been offered various types of accommodation, from an attic room in the staff quarters to a room in an annexe, to a luxurious suite on the ground floor which happened to be vacant at the time of my arrival. I had accepted what was offered without comment, regarding it as the luck of the draw so far as bedrooms were concerned. The food, drink and other amenities had always been beyond praise, so I had nothing to complain about.
The first of the Cornish hotels had been purchased from an old-established family which could no longer afford to keep it up, even by turning it into a tourist attraction. It was somewhat forbidding from the outward view, a very plain-looking Georgian house whose south façade was relieved from otherwise uncompromising austerity by a very fine pillared portico and the addition on either side of twin pavilions, light, graceful and charming.
I sub-edited the brochure for this house, finding little to add or alter, and telephoned McMaster, with whom I kept in touch when I was ready to pass on to the next hotel. When I handed in my key to the receptionist, she produced a letter for me.
As soon as I scanned the envelope I knew that the writing was unknown to me. As it had been re-addressed from my publishers’ London address, I took it for fan-mail, thrust it into my pocket and did not read it until I was in my room at the second Cornish hotel. This hotel was, as a building, the most interesting and unusual of all those which I had surveyed. It had begun as a monastery, had been fortified later by one of its abbots, had passed into private hands in the sixteenth century; from then onwards it had been altered and enlarged until the company of which McMaster was a director had taken it over, demolished its most grotesque and unfortunate features and left it in the form which might have been the intention of the original planners, at any rate so far as its outward appearance was concerned. Inside, like all the other McMaster hotels I had visited, it was almost boringly luxurious.
The room allotted to me was in one of the flanking-towers. It was small, but it looked straight out to sea and to the left and right there were magnificent views of the south Cornish coast. It was not until I began to undress to take a pre-dinner bath that I thought of the letter. It was from (of all people) Miss Eglantine Brockworth.
‘I take it very ill,’ the letter ran, ‘that you did not come to see me in hospital before you left Beeches Lawn. I have much to say to you and all is strictly confidential, so I can only tell it to someone I can trust. I observed you closely during the short time we were together and noted that you conducted yourself with propriety and self-restraint and this encourages me to confide in you. Come as soon as you can. The rozzers are rounding us all up and time is short.’
After dinner I rang up Beeches Lawn and got Celia.
‘I’ve had a letter from your aunt,’ I said, ‘sent on by my publishers. She wants me to visit her in hospital, but I hardly know her, so I don’t think it’s quite my scene.’
‘Meaning you hate visiting people in hospital,’ said Celia perceptively. ‘Well, don’t go. She’s a cagey old thing. She asked me to lend her that novel of yours. I thought she wanted to read it, but now I can see it was a way of getting in touch with you through your publisher without our knowing what she had in mind.’
‘Perhaps I ought to go,’ I said. ‘It seems unkind not to, now that she’s asked me. After all, she’s a very old lady.’
‘Please yourself, Corin, but I ought to warn you that they hate her at the hospital and it spills over on to her visitors. I go to see her from a sense of duty, but you don’t have to bother.’
‘I’ll write to her, then,’ I said, ‘and tell her that I’m quite tied up at present, but I’ll visit her as soon as I can.’
9
Chaucer’s Prioress
« ^ »
I was so well up to time that I decided to go and see Aunt Eglantine before I tackled the hotel in Dorset. As that was my last assignment I thought I could expect VIP treatment in the matter of a room so long as I let the manager know, some days beforehand, that he was to expect me. I felt that it was only civil to let Celia know when I proposed to visit her aunt, so I telephoned and asked when the visiting hours were. She replied with cordiality and a warmth which surprised me and invited me to lunch with them, as hospital visits were restricted to the early evenings except for patients on open order.
‘And you must come back for dinner and the night,’ she said. ‘Longer, if you can spare the time.’
‘How about Anthony?’ I asked. She understood me and replied that Anthony would also look forward to seeing me again.
‘We both took your words very much to heart,’ she said. ‘It was good of you to speak out the way you did. We were making fools of ourselves, but it’s perfectly all right now.’
‘Is Rouse bothering you again?’
‘Not for more than a week now; in fact he has only called on us once since you left and that was to ask Anthony whether he was sure he had identified the corpse correctly. We thought it was a very odd question, but, of course, in a police investigation I suppose there has to be no doubt about whose death is being looked into. From what I hear, he’s now busy harassing all the people who were staying or had stayed here at what he calls “the crucial time”. Anyway, we’ll tell you all about it when we see you. When will that be?’
‘Would a week from now be all right?’
I put in another couple of nights at the hotel in Cornwall, completed my amendments to the two Cornish brochures and sent them off to McMaster with a note to tell him that I was on the last lap of my course. Then I went back to my flat for another change of clothes and to deal with a crop of correspondence and stayed there until I went again to Beeches Lawn.
There was no doubt about the genuineness of Anthony’s welcome and Celia kissed me when I arrived, which was very pleasant. By what appeared to be mutual agreement, although it was unspoken, we avoided any reference to Gloria Mundy or Detective-Inspector Rouse and, after a lazy afternoon terminated by a cup of tea, Anthony drove me to the hospital, which was not in the town, and took me up to Aunt Eglantine’s room.
‘I don’t want you,’ she said to him. ‘Come back for this young man in an hour’s time.’
‘I’m glad you’ve got a room to yourself,’ I said, when Anthony had left us.
‘The nurses aren’t,’ she said, her plump, purple-veined old face creasing into an impish gleam of amusement. ‘I keep ’em on their toes, you know. Well, what have you come to see me about?’
‘I thought you had called me to your side by white witchcraft, dear Madame Eglantine,’ I said.
‘Ah,’ she said, looking pleased, ‘you remembered that I am named for Chaucer, not Shakespeare.’
‘Yes, but Shakespeare’s “sweet musk roses” seem to partner you well enough.’
She gave a girlish little giggle.
‘I suspect flattery,’ she said. ‘You just behave yourself. Are you surprised to find that I am not under arrest?’
‘But you didn’t kill Gloria Mundy, did you?’ The words slipped out involuntarily, but I could not recall them. However, she received them with great good humo
ur.
‘I thought of it,’ she said, ‘but I decided she wasn’t worth a life sentence — not that it would have lasted very long in my case. I give myself about another five years of life, that’s all. The law is very unjust in certain respects. They would have awarded me thirty years, I suppose, but I should have slipped out of their hands in five, whereas a boy of twenty, even with a remission for good conduct, would not have got away with that, would he? Did they show you the body?’
‘Yes, Anthony and I both saw it.’
‘I read about the inquest in the papers. They said that nothing but the hair was recognisable. Is that so?’
‘Well, yes. Still, it made identification a very simple matter.’
‘That hair was a wig, of course. It was two-coloured to create an effect.’
‘It was not a wig.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Naming no names, I know a man who used to wash her hair for her.’
‘She bore Anthony a child. Did you know that?’
‘Dear Madame Eglantine, you are romancing.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it is quite true. I know. I listen behind doors, you see.’
‘You are a disgraceful old party, then.’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘listening behind doors is an art.’
‘No, it isn’t. You mean a craft. That’s where the word ’crafty‘ comes from. Originally it was used to describe people who listened behind doors.’
‘You are making that up. Anyhow, it is an art, and one not unlike your own. You invent stories and so do I. I invent them for when the door opens suddenly and I am caught out. Well, what have you been doing with yourself since I saw you last? Nothing very creditable, I’ll be bound.’
‘You tell me about Gloria’s baby and then I’ll tell you all about my wicked deeds. What did you get hold of when you listened behind doors?’
‘You first,’ she said; so I described the two Cornish hotels and added a couple of stories straight out of Rabelais concerning my doings in each. She laughed and laughed.
‘I must tell the nurses,’ she said. ‘It will keep them happy for weeks.’
‘I expect they’ve heard better ones from the young doctors,’ I said. ‘Now it’s your turn.’
‘Why haven’t you married, personable young man?’
‘No money to get married on at the time, and now I’ve let the chance go by.’
‘Nonsense. I prophesy that you will meet her again before long. Are you any good at picking up stitches?’
‘No, nor threads. Come on, play fair.’
‘Oh, yes, you want to know what I heard. First, that girl did not turn up out of the blue.’
‘She didn’t?’
‘No. Anthony Wotton asked her to come.’
‘You’ve got the story wrong.’
‘I never get stories wrong.’ I thought of Rubens and the portrait in the old house and said nothing. Encouraged or else irritated by my silence, she went on, ‘She came to blackmail him on the strength of the baby.’
I said sternly, ‘You really must not tell these awful whoppers, Madame Eglantine.’
‘Chaucer spelt it with an “e” and a “y”, whereas my misguided parents preferred Shakespeare’s rendering. What kind of flower is eglantine? Did your teachers tell you that?’
‘Eglantine is the old word for the sweetbrier. That’s why Oberon connected it with musk roses, I suppose,’ I told her.
‘I must remember to spell it Shakespeare’s way in my will. I shall leave you a competence. I am a very wealthy woman. Write both spellings down for me. Underline the one and run a light stroke neatly through the other.’
I took up the writing-pad which was on her bedside locker and printed in my best capitals EGLENTYNE and EGLANTINE.
‘Which is to be underlined and which is to have a line drawn through it?’ I asked.
‘Don’t ask stupid questions!’ she snapped at me. I drew a faint line through the first name and underlined more thickly the other. I deduced that she was getting tired, so I rose to go. She was having none of that, and ordered me to sit down again. She drew the writing-pad towards her and smiled.
‘I shall never get out of here alive, you know,’ she said. ‘They are witches and they meet at Hetty Pegler’s Tump.’
‘I’ve been there,’ I said, anxious to avoid the discussion of the Malleus Maleficarum which seemed imminent, ‘but I didn’t crawl inside.’
‘The Neoliths must have lacked stature,’ said Aunt Eglantine. ‘Did you ever visit Grime’s Graves?’
This subject lasted us for the remainder of my visit. A warning bell sounded and a nurse came in and told me that visiting hours were up. I bent over and kissed Aunt Eglantine.
‘You must come again,’ she said, ‘before they finish me off.’
I left the hospital and crossed the road to where Anthony had parked the car. He lowered the book he was reading and then tossed it on to the back seat.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you stayed a lot longer than I thought you would.’
‘I did make one attempt to leave because I thought I was tiring her, but she wouldn’t have it. I suppose she gets bloody bored in there.’
‘Did she mention Gloria?’
‘Yes. She told me two things about her, both of them sheer invention, I feel sure.’
‘Did she get on to the Malleus?’
‘No. Hetty Pegler intervened and we also talked about Grime’s Graves.’
He started the engine. I stared out through the windscreen and hoped he would not ask what Aunt Eglantine had said about Gloria’s hair and her child, not that I believed either story. When the remark came, it was not a question but a simple assertion.
‘She has a bee in her bonnet about my having given Gloria a child,’ he said. ‘Sooner or later she tells everybody so. I suppose you got it, too.’
‘Yes, she did rather throw the information at me. I took it for what it was worth — sheer balderdash.’
To my astonishment he said he would tell me the truth, as he might need the help of a true friend later on. I realised, not for the first time, that he was desperately afraid of what Detective-Inspector Rouse might ferret out concerning his former relationship with Gloria and I realised, too, that he was far more concerned with the effect which possible revelations would have on his marriage than fears for his own personal safety.
The last thing on earth that I wanted was to become any more deeply involved in his affairs than I already was, but noblesse oblige, as, in its blackmailing way, it usually does, so I said something trite about doing anything I could. There was a long silence until I remarked that surely we were going rather a long way round to get back to Beeches Lawn.
‘Oh, Celia won’t be expecting us just yet,’ he said. ‘I told her you would probably need a pick-me-up in a pub after spending an hour solo with Aunt Eglantine. Anyway, I was going to tell you about the baby.’
‘Good Lord! So the story was true! I thought she was making it up because she dislikes you,’ I said.
‘She doesn’t dislike me personally. She simply thinks that I’m not good enough for Celia. That may be so, but Celia accepted me of her own free will, so our marriage is our business and not the business of that frustrated old demonologist.’
‘Did you know Aunt Eglantine before your marriage?’
‘No, thank goodness. She had to be invited to the wedding, but that was the first time I had met her.’
‘She told me some cock and bull story — ’
‘About that baby? It wasn’t mine, of course, and, to give you some idea of what Gloria was like, I must tell you the whole story. It happened while I was still having this damn silly affair with her and, of course, before I began to rumble her. She had this friend who had got herself mixed up with some extraordinary sect in America and desperately wanted to free herself from them and come to England. The scheme was for me to take Gloria to meet her at the airport and motor them both back to Gloria’s flat.
‘I couldn’
t see any harm in that, so I did it. The friend turned out to be a waif-like creature with (what had not been told me, although I don’t suppose it would have made any difference at the time I agreed to meet her) a two-month-old baby. Well, now, Corin, the next bit is a blur in my memory, but when we got to the car I found the baby dumped in my arms, Gloria with an arm over my shoulders and the skinny Lizzie taking the photograph, complete with giggles.’
‘What photograph?’
‘My photograph holding the baby, of course, with Gloria’s arm round both of us and the two girls laughing their heads off. I took it as a joke at the time, fool that I was.’
‘Sounds like the makings of a promising farce,’ I said. ‘Stock situation, what?’
‘May sound like that to you, but to me it’s been a nightmare. I’ve lived on the edge of a volcano these last years, and when she turned up here I was scared out of my wits and I’ll tell you this, old man: I never had a better moment in my life than when we both identified that dead girl as Gloria Mundy. What other rubbish did old Eg hand out to you?’
‘That Gloria’s red and black hair was a wig.’
We covered the miles between the hospital and the house before we spoke again. He turned in at the lane which led up to his garage, parked the car, locked the shed behind us and then, as we walked through the kitchen garden, I said, ‘That puzzles me, you know. It was the only thing we had to go by in recognising Gloria. Why wasn’t it destroyed in the fire along with the rest of her?’
‘I would rather not think about it. That awful body is something I want to forget.’
‘Yes, I know. Strange, though, that Miss Brockworth should have made such a remark.’
‘Very strange,’ he agreed. ‘Please don’t let Celia pump you too much about the visit to the hospital. She’s a devil at worming things out of people. I convinced her long ago that there was nothing but the mildest of shipboard flirtations between Gloria and me — at least, I thought I had — but Gloria’s death has stirred up old doubts in Celia’s heart, so, for my sake, watch your step, if you don’t mind, old man.’
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