Choice of Evils

by E. X. Ferrars

  When the telephone rang he was muttering to himself some lines from the Bab Ballads.

  ‘Among them was a bishop who

  Had lately been appointed to

  The balmy isle of Rum-ti-Foo

  And Peter was his name …’

  How many times he had repeated it since parting with Peter he had no idea, but it was irritating him deeply that he could not blot it from his mind. He snatched up the telephone and said, ‘Yes?’

  But it was not Peter who spoke. It was an unfamiliar voice, deeper than Peter'S, smooth and rather cold, though what followed was friendly.

  ‘Professor Basnett?’

  ‘Yes,’ Andrew repeated.

  ‘My name's Amory,’ the voice said. 'Simon Amory. Peter's told me that you're a relative of his.’

  ‘His uncle, actually,’ Andrew answered.

  ‘And that you met by chance in the town this afternoon. I think he told you about the show we're putting on this evening, he and I and dear Mina Todhunter, and that you were going to come along to listen to us. I expect he also told you that he's staying with me and that I'm laying on a small dinner party before the event. It would give me great pleasure if you would join us.’

  ‘That's very kind of you,’ Andrew said, though he was not aware that he had actually promised Peter that he would attend the performance in the Pegasus Theatre. ‘If it isn't putting you to any trouble…’

  ‘None at all. We'll be delighted to have you. I'll send the car for you. It's quite informal. Just a few friends. Well, we'll pick you up about half past six, if that's all right with you. Very early, I'm afraid, but as the show starts at eight it seemed better to be early than having to rush our drinks and our meal. I look forward to meeting you. Goodbye.’

  The ringing tone sang in Andrew's ear.

  He put his own instrument down and stood still for a minute, thinking over what had just happened. Just a few friends. He had before this accepted invitations to parties which were to consist of just a few friends and on arriving had found at least thirty people gathered together, all in evening dress. He hoped such a thing was not going to happen this evening. Following his trip from London and then his stroll about the town, he was distinctly tired and in spite of wanting to please Peter, would have preferred a quiet dinner by himself and the chance to go early to bed. However, he had committed himself now and it would be advisable, he thought, even if he was to meet only a few friends of Simon Amory, to change out of the slacks and pullover that he was wearing, and to put on the one dark suit that he had brought with him. When this was done he went downstairs and waited in the lounge for whoever it was who was coming to fetch him.

  It was Peter who came and he was driving a Rolls.

  When he saw Andrew admiring the car, he grinned and said, ‘You didn't know I'd risen to this, did you? Nice, isn't it?’

  ‘Is it really yours?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘Damn it, you always see through me,’ Peter said. ‘No, it's Simon's. I've still got my Mercedes, which is very nice too, but not in this thing's class. Well, hop in and we'll get going.’

  They both got into the car and Peter turned it in front of the hotel and took it down the short drive to the gates that led out to the main street.

  It was dusk and the streetlamps had all been lit. Only the sea was an expanse of darkness. Once in the street, Peter turned to the right, the road mounting a steep hill which soon left the houses behind. Between the road and the cliff-top the space was wooded with beech trees that even in the twilight it could be seen were covered in the splendid copper of autumn.

  ‘Now, tell me what I'm actually in for,’ Andrew said. ‘A few friends - that can mean anything. And different people have different ideas about informality.’

  ‘Oh, you needn't worry,’ Peter said. ‘I think we'll only be about half a dozen. You and I and Todhunter and Simon and the Chairman of the festival, a man called Edward Clarke, and a woman who's some sort of relation of Simon's. Her name's Rachel Rayne. She's just arrived from America and I don't know much about her.’

  ‘Isn't Amory married?’

  ‘He was, but she died, I think it was five or six years ago. Leukaemia, I believe. The curious thing is that he didn't start writing until after her death. I suppose it may have begun as a way of filling the gap, but with the fantastic success he had with that first book of his, I suppose it took him over, so to speak. Have you read it?’

  ‘I'm afraid I haven't.’

  ‘Or seen the play?’

  ‘No. But I saw a shortened version of it on television. I doubt if it was fair to him. For one thing it said that the book was by someone else and the television version was only based on characters created by him. If I'd been him I think I'd have been fairly disgusted.’

  ‘Well, it kept the money rolling in, I expect, so he was probably quite happy about it.’

  ‘What did he do before he took to writing?’

  ‘I think he was a chartered accountant.’

  ‘Here in Gallmouth?’

  ‘Oh no, in London. He's only lived full time in Gallmouth for the last few years. He and his wife saw a house here when they were on a visit to friends and fell in love with it and bought it for when he retired. But she died and never lived here.’

  ‘Peter, you said this afternoon that he puzzled you. What did you mean by that?’

  Peter did not reply at once. He peered ahead of him up the road that was lit by the long shaft from the car's headlights.

  Then he said, T said that, did I?’

  ‘Yes,’ Andrew replied.

  ‘Well, I shouldn't have. I didn't really mean anything.’

  ‘Oh, come on, of course you meant something. What was it?’

  ‘I suppose I was thinking …’ Peter paused, then went on hesitantly. ‘It's probably absurd, but I can't get rid of a feeling that he dislikes me. Yet he pressed me to come down to do this show tonight, and then to come and spend the weekend with him, and he's never been anything but pleasant and friendly to me. So it's probably some feeling in myself that's worrying me. Jealousy, for instance. I've done well enough in my way, but it can't compare with what's happened to him. And because I don't like the idea that I'm capable of such cheap jealousy, I've transferred the feeling on to him.’

  'Sounds complicated,’ Andrew observed.

  ‘Yet you know what I mean.’

  ‘I suppose I do, but I've never noticed any undue signs of jealousy in your character. I'll wait and see what I make of him myself.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Peter had slowed the car down outside a gate in a high stone wall. The gate was open and he turned the car in at it. ‘I admire him, you know, and I want to be liked by him, but I've got this queer feeling … Perhaps the fact is that I'm a little afraid of him.’

  He drove along a drive under two tall rows of chestnuts, splendidly copper-coloured like the beeches on the cliff. Andrew saw a house ahead of them, not as large as the approach to it had led him to expect, a building of only two storeys, with small windows in its stone walls and a small porch jutting out over an oaken front door. Lawns spread out to right and left of the house, with what looked like stables joined on to one end of it, and a summerhouse among some holly bushes a little way off from it on the other. There were lights in all the ground-floor windows. As the car stopped in front of the entrance the door opened.

  A light was on inside and the figure that stood in the doorway was only a dark shape against it: a man, tall, very erect and slimly built, but with wide shoulders and a striking air of dignity. That was Andrew's first impression of Simon Amory. He waited in the doorway while Peter leapt out of the car and hurried round it to open the door beside Andrew and as he did so Amory came forward, holding out his hand.

  ‘Professor Basnett?’ he said. ‘I'm so glad that you could come. Peter, there's no need to put the car in the garage. We'll be wanting it presently. Come in. Professor, and meet your fellow victims, the people who've been persuaded to come with us and listen to a few
of us talking a great deal too much about ourselves.’

  Andrew did not really see much of the other man's face until they were in the lighted hall. It was a long, narrow hall, with a steep staircase, carpeted in dark crimson, rising out of it to the floor above. The ceiling was low and dark with heavy beams. Andrew guessed that the house dated probably from the seventeenth century. The walls were white and decorated with a few flower prints. The only furniture was a bow-fronted walnut chest that had a telephone on it and a silver bowl filled with sprays of bronze leaves. At the far end of the hall was a glass door which presumably opened into the garden.

  Looking at his host, Andrew saw a man of about forty-five, with a sharp-featured face, high cheekbones and hollow cheeks, a long, sharp nose and a pointed chin, a taut nervous face that wore an oddly tight-lipped smile and had bright, observant eyes. His hair was dark and curly and still plentiful. His skin was tanned to a healthy brown.

  He opened one of the doors in the narrow hall and ushered Andrew in ahead of him. Andrew's first impression was that the room was full of people, but that, he realized in a moment, was merely the result of the low, dark ceiling and the great fireplace that occupied most of one wall. A fire of logs was alight in it. But he noticed that there were also a couple of discreetly placed radiators. It would be a very comfortable room in winter. The number of people waiting there was actually only three, a short, bald man of about fifty, a slim woman of perhaps thirty-five, and a square, heavily built, crop-haired woman who was probably in her seventies and who, Andrew felt sure as soon as he saw her, was Mina Todhunter.

  This turned out to be right, for Simon Amory introduced her at once.

  ‘And I don't need to tell you who Mina Todhunter is,’ he said, ‘for even if you were too old to have her works read to you in your infancy, I expect you often read them in your time to a younger generation. Your nephew, for instance.’

  She smiled up at Andrew and in a deep, gruff voice said, ‘Your nephew's told me already that he cut his teeth on them.’

  She was sitting on a low sofa, close to the fire. She had a square face and a square head, covered with short, bristly grey hair. Her eyes, slightly bulging, were a pale, clear blue under thick grey eyebrows. Her lips were thick and when she smiled her mouth seemed to open right across her face, showing excellent false teeth. Her body was thick and heavy and looked powerful. She was wearing a very simple dress of red and black jersey and a pair of long, dangling earrings of black and gold plastic.

  It was strange in a way, he thought, that until that afternoon, he could not remember having seen her works in any bookshop that he had visited for a very long time, and he had a feeling that if they had been there they would have caught his eye. He had mildly sentimental memories of Mr Thinkum. He had enjoyed reading about him to Peter, who was his sister's only child and Andrew's only nephew. He and Nell had had no children and Peter had always meant a great deal to them.

  Simon Amory continued his introductions. ‘My sisterin-law, Rachel Rayne, just home from America, after spending nearly ten years there. She was a professor of Social Anthropology in one of those Mid-Western universities, but now she's come home to a job in London.’

  The young woman who was standing by one of the small windows set deep in the thick walls gave Andrew a pleasant smile and said, ‘But not as a professor, as you'll understand. They're much more lavish over there with the title than we are here. Here, I'm a mere senior lecturer.’

  She was on the tall side, slim and delicately made, with an oval face with neat, small features and grey eyes set far apart under finely arched eyebrows. Her hair was fair and brushed straight back from her face into a bunch of curls at the back of her head. She was wearing well-cut trousers of some heavy, dark green silk and a pale green blouse, an outfit that suited her very well. Andrew worked it out that if she was Simon Amory's sister-in-law she was probably the sister of his dead wife, unless she was the wife of a brother of his. But she had no ring on her left hand, he noticed.

  ‘Are you performing this evening?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, heavens, no!’ she said. ‘I'm no writer. Producing an occasional paper is the very most I can do, and that almost kills me.’

  There was a very faint trace of an American accent in her voice, acquired presumably during her ten years in the Middle West and which probably would be shed when she had had a year or two in London. It was a resonant voice, soft but very clear.

  ‘And now let me introduce you to our Chairman/ Amory said, turning to the short, bald man who was standing by the fire. ‘Edward Clarke, who's responsible for the whole show. He's Chairman of the Gallmouth Literary Society and though this is a festival of the Arts and not exclusively literary, he's seen to it that we scribblers had our fair share of time. There was a poetry reading yesterday, very successful, though the day before we had some ballet, and tomorrow we hand over to the drama people. They're doing The Duchess of Malfi.’

  ‘Ah, The Duchess of Malfi,’ the short man said. He appeared to be about fifty and had a round, red face with soft-looking, bulging cheeks and a small, red mouth which hardly moved when he spoke. His voice was thin and shrill. ‘Our first idea was some comedy, some Goldsmith, perhaps - She Stoops to Conquer, or something like that, but then we began to feel that that's too hackneyed and that we'd go for tragedy. You know the play, of course, Professor. A wonderful thing.’

  ‘I've seen it once,’ Andrew replied. ‘Wasn't it a bit ambitious for you?’

  ‘Ah, our people aren't amateurs,’ Edward Clarke said, guessing correctly that that was what Andrew had assumed. ‘Professionals, every one. Our director's retired, but he'd a notable career while he wasstill working, and he knew how to collect the actors we needed. I saw them rehearsing yesterday afternoon. I think we can promise you a fine performance.’

  ‘Who's the Duchess?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘A very gifted young woman - well, she isn't as young as she looks, I dare say she's seen forty - but outstandingly talented. Name of Magda Braile.’

  ‘Magda Braile!’

  There was a hiss of astonishment in Amory's voice, or it might have been disbelief. His eyes opened wide and shone with extraordinary brilliance.

  ‘You said Magda Braile?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I know it's amazing that she was ready to take part in our modest little festival, and I realized we're extraordinarily privileged to have got hold of her- ’

  ‘I thought you'd Fran Borthwick,’ Amory interrupted.

  'So we had, but she's gone down with flu. That's why it's such an extraordinary bit of luck to get someone like Magda Braile to take over.’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed!’ There was sneering sarcasm in the voice and a brilliance in Amory's eyes that could only have come from violent anger. He seemed about to say something more but then with an effort to take command of himself. All he said was, ‘Drinks, everybody?’

  CHAPTER 2

  Dinner was served by a small man in a white jacket. The dining-room faced the sitting-room across the narrow hall. Like the sitting-room it had a low, dark ceiling and it had two small windows set deep in thick stone walls. Andrew found himself sitting between Mina Todhunter, who was on Simon Amory's right, and Rachel Rayne. The table was long and narrow and dark with two or three centuries of polishing. The man in the white jacket, Andrew under-stood, was the husband of the cook and besides acting as butler, when it was required of him, was gardener and chauffeur. In fact, the couple ran the establishment and were regarded by Amory as the most valuable asset that wealth had brought to him.

  ‘I've a very wonderful woman myself,’ Mina Todhunter said gruffly to Andrew, ‘but she only comes in once a week. She goes through my flat like a whirlwind, leaving it spotless. But I have to look after the shop almost by myself, with only a little help now and then, and I'm getting a bit stiff in the joints for coping with it. I've thought of asking my Mrs Leonard to give me a second morning, but it would be so expensive. Wages are fantastic nowadays.’

  ‘Yo
u live over the shop, do you?’ Andrew asked.

  It surprised him that Miss Todhunter should be worrying about paying for two mornings from her Mrs Leonard. If her books had been selling steadily from the time when he had first become acquainted with them, at least thirty years ago, to the present time, he would have thought that she must be at least prosperous, if not actually rich.

  ‘Yes, I've a very nice little flat there,’ she replied. ‘I was born there and grew up there. My father started the shop, so I had books in my blood from my infancy. Of course I haven't spent my whole life there. I was in the ATS in the war and I've travelled a certain amount. But when my father died I wanted to keep the old place going in his memory. Financially, it isn't exactly a gold mine, but I find it very interesting. One gets to know some of one's regular customers, you know, and some of them are very interesting. That's how I got to know Simon. And it's a very quiet life really, and I can get on with my writing, though I don't do much nowadays. Taste in children's reading has changed very much since television got going.’

  ‘Has your Mr Thinkum never been televised?’ Andrew asked.

  She gave a little crow of laughter.

  ‘Imagine that!’ she said. ‘You're a professor and you're acquainted with my Mr Thinkum! That's one of the nicest things that's happened to me for a long time.’ Her slightly bulging, pale blue eyes glistened with pleasure. ‘Oh, of course, you had to read them to Peter when he was a child. But to have remembered them all this time!’