Knock, Murderer, Knock!

by Harriet Rutland

  Her voice held a triumphant note, and Mr. Marston turned away with a snort of disgust.

  “You don’t mean to say...?” queried Miss Astill, her voice trembling with suppressed emotion.

  “Indeed, I do. You may depend that the doctor knows more about them than we do. Of course, he says that he requires her bedroom for Mrs. Napier because it is on the ground floor, and Mrs. Napier can no longer walk upstairs, but I shouldn’t be surprised if –”

  “Neither should I.” Mrs. Dawson added her voice to the discussion. “After all, what could be easier than for him to stroll out on to the terrace for a smoke and just walk into her room through the french window?”

  “Oh, but I can’t believe that,” said Mrs. Marston, fearful lest Winnie and Millie should pay too much attention to the conversation.

  “Nonsense! She would get him inside on some pretext or other,” continued Mrs. Dawson. “It wouldn’t be his fault. I blame her entirely.”

  “I don’t know so much about that,” boomed Lady Warme, in her deep voice. “You never know with a man. I wouldn’t be surprised at anything.”

  “I hardly think that even a girl like her would have the cheek to do such things right under our very noses,” protested Mrs. Marston half-heartedly.

  “Dear Mrs. Marston, you are far too warm-hearted to think badly of anyone,” returned Lady Warme. “I can believe anything of girls nowadays, anything. I’m sure I don’t know what they are coming to with their bare backs and shorts. They leave absolutely nothing to the imagination. Now, in my young days –”

  “Good God!” exclaimed Mr. Marston, as he joined them again. “Haven’t you finished tearing them to pieces yet? You’ll all be late for church. It’s half past ten by the wireless, ten to eleven by the Hydro clock, and five past by my watch!”

  Chapter 3

  For every one rule made by Dr. Williams there were three made by the residents themselves, but whereas his were printed on neat cards and hung about the Hydro, theirs were enforced by a kind of concerted freezing-out process, the technique of which was known to them alone. Thus the window tables in the dining-room became allotted to guests by virtue of their length of residence in the Hydro. If any stranger wandered towards one of them in the mistaken presumption that each table was alike with its bottle of Vichy or Evian, its old-fashioned cruet, its medicine-bottle and its box of digestive tablets, he would be greeted with a silence charged with such unmistakable emotion that, after casting several defiant glances through the window, he would turn and seat himself at one of the ill-lit tables in the less attractive part of the room.

  By this same silent means it had become an unwritten law that after luncheon those ladies who did not take an afternoon nap should congregate in the lounge, and that the men should drift into the reading-room. The fact that Miss Blake walked towards the reading-room after luncheon one day with a laughing glance over her shoulder at the pursuing Admiral did not, therefore, escape comment.

  “So it’s the Admiral’s turn now,” remarked Winnie, as she, her mother and sister, Miss Astill and Lady Warme, wandered by mutual consent towards one of the card-tables in the lounge and cut for partners. “She’s only got to look twice at a man and he simply grovels. It’s technique, that’s what it is. I wish I knew how she does it.”

  Miss Astill leaned across from her chair opposite, and patted her soft young hand so that the rings she wore on her own bony hand clicked loosely together.

  “Don’t ever wish that,” she said seriously. “You are just the kind of girl we all like to see here. You’re so unspoiled. It would be quite wicked to wish to be any different.”

  Mrs. Marston smiled as she shuffled the cards.

  “So kind of you to say so, Miss Astill,” she said, complacently. “I’m sure Charles and I have always tried to do our duty in bringing the girls up well. I’m no believer in letting youth have its fling. It’s only asking for trouble these days, especially with girls.”

  “‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ was a good maxim in my young days,” nodded Miss Astill, “and it holds good today just the same.” She glanced through her cards. “I suppose we are playing for halfpenny stakes as usual. My dear father would be horrified if he could see his little Eppie playing cards for money, but I’m afraid I’m a terrible gambler. Always ready to have my little flutter, you know.”

  Winnie Marston restrained herself with difficulty from grimacing. There was, she thought, something definitely sick-making about these old women when they grew coquettish and facetious, and their sly jokes seemed infinitely more dirty than the latest Stock Exchange joke from robuster lips. She and Millie lived under a constant strain among them in their endeavour to laugh in the right places and to hide their laughter in the wrong ones.

  “One diamond,” called Lady Warme firmly, and the game started and continued smoothly, until a diversion was created by the entrance of Mrs. Napier with Nurse Hawkins.

  As soon as she saw the assembled women in the lounge she leaned heavily upon the nurse, and nothing would induce her feet to point in the right direction, so that both double doors had to be opened before she could be guided into the room. No chair would content her but the one in which Mrs. Dawson was sitting, and she proceeded to annex it by falling first over the back and then the arm of it, till Mrs. Dawson, in response to the appeal in Nurse Hawkins’ eyes, got up and moved to a neighbouring one. With a muttered, “Always neglects me. No pity,” Mrs. Napier settled herself in comfort and dusted down her dress with her large silk handkerchief.

  Nurse Hawkins stuffed a cushion none too gently behind her patient’s head, and glanced swiftly round the room.

  Miss Astill smiled icily.

  “If you’re looking for Miss Blake,” she remarked, “she’s in the reading-room with Admiral Urwin. You’ll have to take care or your nose will be put out of joint.”

  Winnie made a half-suppressed sound of remonstrance and, looking up, was startled to see the expression of vindictive hatred which momentarily replaced the impersonal professional look on Nurse Hawkins’ face. So suddenly was it obliterated that Winnie afterwards could not say with any certainty that she had not imagined it.

  Nurse Hawkins opened her mouth as if to reply, then checked herself, and having assured herself that Mrs. Napier was already interested in the book which Mrs. Dawson was showing her, moved out of the lounge with heightened colour and head held high.

  “And is she jealous!” exclaimed Winnie’s film-struck sister Millie. “Why, she looked as if she could have strangled Miss Blake!”

  “I must say it serves her right,” remarked Lady Warme. “She’s been setting her nurse’s cap at the Admiral for months. She ought to have more sense than to try and catch a sailor: they have had too much experience for any woman, even a nurse.”

  “You don’t think there’s anything wrong between them, do you?” asked Miss Astill anxiously.

  Lady Warme snorted.

  “Certainly not,” she replied, “but I don’t doubt that Nurse Hawkins wishes there were. These nurses are all alike, always looking for a husband. I’ve seen two of them married off to rich old patients here myself. I don’t believe that the doctor pays the nurses at all; he lets them come on prospects, like head waiters at those big London restaurants.”

  “But it’s so silly of her to be jealous,” meditated Winnie. “Miss Blake isn’t likely to prefer the Admiral to Sir Humphrey, even though the old man is a damned good sort.”

  “Winnie!” exclaimed her mother.

  “Sorry, Mother. Though he’s such a jolly good sort, I meant. After all, she is the only good-looking woman in this place...” The last word ended on a squeal of pain as Mrs. Marston’s foot gave her ankles a vicious little kick.

  But no one present had taken her words personally.

  “Oh, do you really think so?” said Miss Astill. “I always think that the doctor’s secretary has such a pretty little face.”

  “Miss Lewis is a great deal too pretty to be secretary to a
young widower like Dr. Williams, if you ask my opinion,” said Lady Warme. “Nurse Hawkins isn’t the only woman with her eye on the main chance, by any means.”

  Miss Astill looked pained.

  “But I’m sure the doctor...” she began.

  Lady Warme and Mrs. Marston laughed with each other significantly.

  “Oh, we all know what you think of the doctor,” they chorused, and Miss Astill glanced coyly downwards.

  “You don’t really believe that Miss Blake could prefer the Admiral to Sir Humphrey, do you?” asked Millie, looking reflectively at her buffer-polished nails.

  Lady Warme snorted at her cards.

  “I should say that Sir Humphrey has found out that she is nothing but a common adventuress,” she replied. “You only have to look at her to see what she is, while Sir Humphrey is a real gentleman.”

  Mrs. Dawson joined in the conversation.

  “Has it ever occurred to any of you,” she remarked, “that we really know nothing about Sir Humphrey Chervil? You’ll find no mention of his name in either Burke or Debrett. It always seems a strange trait in the human character that we inquire so closely whether the Smiths or Browns of this world come from Yorkshire or Gloucestershire but are willing to take any title at its face value.”

  Lady Warme swung round in her chair.

  “That remark is in extremely bad taste, Mrs. Dawson,” she said, and ice could almost be heard clinking in her voice. “As for not finding his name in the peerage, I would remind you that the copies of Debrett and Burke in the library are twenty-five years old, and many eminent people have been elevated to titles since they were printed. My own name is not in those particular copies, but I hope that you will not question my right to a title on that account.”

  Mrs. Dawson grimaced and returned to her book.

  “Dear Lady Warme,” purred Miss Astill, “of course we all know who you are –”

  “Warme’s Patent Cornflour,” whispered Mrs. Napier, but luckily her voice did not carry beyond Mrs. Dawson’s ears.

  “– and it’s the same with Sir Humphrey, as we all know. Such charming manners, and manners maketh man! I’m sure Sir Humphrey is an only son, and owns some stately home of England. Besides, his name is quite familiar to me. I may have seen his photograph in one of those society periodicals In the Royal Enclosure at Ascot or something like that.”

  “He certainly goes out of his way to be pleasant to all of us,” agreed Mrs. Marston, who had not given up hope that one of her daughters might become Lady Chervil.

  “Indeed, yes,” continued Miss Astill. “Very pleasant. He’s been advising me about a little affair of business; so kind of him. I’m sure I don’t see why he should waste time on me.”

  She smiled self-consciously, and Winnie looked at her sharply. Surely Miss Astill didn’t imagine that Sir Humphrey was interested in her? These old maids!

  Mrs. Dawson made a pencilled note on a piece of paper and abandoned her book temporarily. She glanced at Mrs. Napier’s nodding head, then sat for a moment watching the four at the card-table, wondering for the hundredth time how they could all talk so incessantly without losing touch with their game.

  Miss Astill rose from her chair.

  “If you’ll excuse me – such a delightful game – but I must really get on with the altar-cloth for the dear Vicar.” She gathered up her tapestry work-bag and went to sit beside Mrs. Dawson.

  Lady Warme turned to Miss Blake, who had just entered the lounge.

  “Oh, Miss Blake, would you care...?” She indicated the chair which Miss Astill had just vacated.

  “Thanks very much, but I never play cards.” Miss Blake smiled vaguely at them all, sat down, and, opening her book, began to read.

  The three card-players got up and arranged themselves near the fire, and soon there was no sound except the clicking of knitting-needles or scissors.

  Miss Astill threaded her needle with a strand of scarlet silk.

  How like Miss Blake to walk in and disturb them all, she thought. The Hydro was a different place nowadays. Miss Blake had no consideration for the feelings of others, but strolled about in clothes which showed a really indelicate amount of limbs. She had such an arrogant way of walking, too, swinging her legs from the hips so that she really looked quite indecent from behind. She made no secret of the fact that she only cared for the company of men, however old they were, and that story about her and Sir Humphrey, about her enticing him into her bedroom, she meant – the very thought made her blush – well, really, you never knew how it all might end. So far as she could ascertain, Miss Blake had left the doctor alone, but you never knew what she might do next. Surely something ought to be done about it.

  “I wish you would read to us, Miss Blake,” she said aloud. “We are all busy with our needlework and it would help to pass the afternoon more pleasantly.”

  “It would be like our schooldays when we took it in turns to read John Halifax, Gentleman, in the sewing hour,” said Lady Warme.

  As soon as she had said this she looked around furtively.

  Perhaps that was a book unknown to the others, she thought. Even though it was so many years since she had married John Warme, she was still afraid lest she should make a reference to something which might associate her with the old life, when, the eldest of a swarm of wet-nosed children, she had taken her thick slices of bread and jam to St. Chad’s Elementary School and had returned to help behind the counter of the little grocer’s shop which had proved such a gold-mine to her parents.

  But Mrs. Marston’s next words reassured her: “Such a sweet story, I always think,” for Mrs. Marston, she knew, had been “finished” at Ascot.

  “I don’t mind reading to you if you would really like it,” said Miss Blake, stretching herself in her chair

  “Just like a cat,” remarked Millie in an undertone.

  “– but let me fetch another book. I don’t think you’ll like this one.”

  “Too modern for us, I suppose,” replied Lady Warme, while Miss Astill leaned forward and read the title.

  “Brave New World. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it. Is it a new book?”

  “I’m afraid not,” replied Miss Blake indulgently. “It must be at least four years old.”

  “The last book I saw you with was the one with the rude title,” said Mrs. Marston. “In All My Nakedness, I think it was called.”

  “Without My Cloak,” corrected Miss Blake. “You wouldn’t call me naked just because I took off my coat, would you?”

  “Yes, I should,” came a booming whisper from Mrs. Napier, who had apparently been asleep through the rest of the conversation. “Some of the frocks she wears under that thing she calls a house-coat are no bigger than vests.”

  Miss Blake remained unperturbed, but without further protest she turned over the pages of the book until she came to Lenina’s attempted seduction of the savage.

  Her clear young voice floated pleasantly through the lounge. She was aware of altar-cloth, scarf, socks, and sewing being dropped, but although she expected to be stopped every minute, she was allowed to read on to the end of the chapter.

  “Shall I go on?” she asked.

  Lady Warme rose from her chair, with crimsoned face, and drew herself up to her full height.

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she said. “Of all the low, immoral books. But I’m not surprised. That is just the kind of literature I imagined you would choose. I don’t wonder that the youth of today is corrupt, with that kind of dirt lying on every library shelf for young hands to reach.”

  Miss Blake corrected her with a smile.

  “Not every shelf, Lady Warme. It was banned in the Irish Free State, or Eire, as they call it now.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it. It’s about the only decent thing Eve heard about the Irish,” replied Lady Warme, with dignity. “But I know you are only trying to be flippant.”

  “But,” persisted Miss Blake, her eyes twinkling, “what kind of literature would
you like me to read?”

  “I have no desire to enter into a literary discussion with you,” replied Lady Warme. “There are plenty of classics in the English language if you want to improve your mind.”

  “Shakespeare, for instance?”

  “Shakespeare is, of course, the master.”

  Lady Warme stooped to pick up the gaudy-coloured scarf she was knitting out of odd pieces of wool for the lepers.

  Miss Blake turned a few pages and read again:

  “But virtue, as it never will be woo’d

  Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven:

  So lust, though to a radiant angel link’d,

  Will sate itself in a celestial bed,

  And prey on garbage.”

  Mrs. Dawson’s hearty laugh rang through the lounge.

  “I don’t blame you, Miss Blake,” she said. “They’re always baiting you, and she asked for it.”

  Lady Warme ignored this interruption.

  “Miss Blake,” she said, “I order you to stop reading. You are insulting me and these others ladies with that – that incestuous book. I shall complain to the doctor.”

  “But,” protested Miss Blake, “that was Shakespeare.”

  Lady Warme, now white with passion, blundered out of the room.

  For a few minutes there was silence, then Mrs. Dawson came across the lounge.

  “Good for you,” she said. “I couldn’t have routed the old girl better myself.”

  “Really, Miss Blake,” came a protest in Miss Astill’s most indignant tones. “You had no business to offend poor dear Lady Warme with that disgusting book.”

  “I wonder that you dared read it aloud,” said Millie.

  “Dear Lady Warme, she was very much upset,” boomed Mrs. Napier.

  “I hope it won’t bring on one of her attacks.”

  “But she really did ask for it.”

  “I know it’s very wrong of me, but I can’t help smiling at the way she went out. She could hardly see for temper.”

  “It’s a dreadful book, but, of course, very clever.”