Harold’s first words, however, showed me that any message of mine to Blake would have been superfluous.
‘I say, you know, this is getting pretty serious, Douglas, don’t you think?’
‘What is?’
‘Why, what this brother of John’s is doing. Haven’t you heard? He got hold of Blake first thing this morning, before breakfast, and told him to lift the coffin and take it to the mortuary. Blake told him that he couldn’t do that now without an order from the Home Office (exhumation’s a pretty serious thing, you know), but Waterhouse said that the body hadn’t been buried yet, so the exhumation rules didn’t apply. Rather a nice point, don’t you think? Anyhow, he told Blake that if he wouldn’t take it on, he’d hire a couple of labourers from the village. So Blake agreed. Pretty forceful sort of chap, I should say. You’ve met him, haven’t you? How did he strike you?’
I told Harold that Cyril Waterhouse had certainly struck me as a pretty forceful sort of chap, and one quite capable of cutting through a legal or any other sort of tangle instead of wasting time in unravelling it. I also asked Harold how he had come to hear of the proposed post-mortem at all.
‘The late post-mortem, you mean,’ he said with a little snigger. ‘It’s over. How did I hear of it? My dear chap, we haven’t all got our heads buried under gooseberry bushes, you know. Why, the whole place is seething with it. I can tell you, some pretty serious things are being said, too.’
Harold proceeded to regale me with some of them as we walked along together.
The remarkable thing about Harold is that he is not only the first to know what people in our own lot are whispering, he has the general gossip of the village at his fingertips too. I never know how he manages this, for Harold comports himself with great propriety and would never dream of discussing any of his friends with, let us say, Miss Cornish, the postmistress – any more than Miss Cornish would dream of such an error of taste as attempting to discuss ‘the gentry’ with one of them. And yet Harold always seems to know just what Miss Cornish and her friends are saying, what the neighbouring farmers are saying, and what the humblest farm labourer is saying to his mates in the fields. I am in contact with them myself and employ four men on my fruit farm, but I never have the least idea what they are thinking. Our conversation on outside topics is limited to boxing matches and foreign affairs, concerning which the farm labourer of today is remarkably well informed and takes a surprising interest. I often think that it would be salutary for the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary to have a chat with my men. They would be surprised at the force with which any weakness in our foreign policy is deplored.
Harold continued to discuss the post-mortem, which seemed to excite him as much as, secretly, it excited me.
I learned that Cyril Waterhouse had telephoned early that morning to a well-known surgeon in London to come down and perform it, and to his own doctor in the fashionable suburb to come and assist. According to Harold, he had expressed his determination that no local surgical talent was to be employed.
‘It’s a direct insult to Glen,’ Harold bubbled. ‘Probably all against professional etiquette, too. I must say this chap Waterhouse doesn’t seem to care a damn for anything. I wouldn’t have liked to take the responsibility of lifting the body out of the grave like that. I’d like to know what the authorities will have to say about it when they hear.’
‘Confronted with a fait accompli, they’ll probably say nothing.’
‘Yes, that kind of chap always gets away with it,’ Harold said admiringly. ‘And of course if they do find anything, he’ll get any amount of credit.’
‘I don’t see how they can possibly find anything,’ I said firmly.
‘Well, frankly, no more do I,’ said Harold in a tone of regret.
We had come to the entrance of our lane, and I asked Harold if he would come along and share my tea, Frances having taken the car into Torminster.
Harold, however, had other intentions.
‘No, I thought of dropping in on the Broughams. You come along too. Glen might have some news.’
‘About the post-mortem, you mean? I thought you said he wasn’t present.’
‘Oh no. He was there all right. Rookeway – that’s the London chap – invited him to attend, of course. That’s always done.’
‘Oh, I see. Still, I shouldn’t think the Broughams would want to be bothered with us.’
‘I’m going,’ said Harold simply.
Curiosity struggled against good taste, and lost.
‘All right,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll come with you.’
As we went I pondered on some of the things Harold had told me. I had been sorry to hear them, but not surprised. Where there is an English village there will always be gossip, and where there is gossip there will always be a hint of malice. The easy camaraderie which existed between the Waterhouses, the Broughams and ourselves, had apparently not gone unremarked. But even so I think it would have surprised Glen (though it might not have distressed him much) to learn that in less than twenty-four hours after John’s death the chances of his stepping into the dead man’s shoes were being freely discussed – and that, it seemed, not only among the village people. It would certainly have infuriated Rona to know that considerable sympathy was being felt in the same quarters for herself, with the view freely expressed that she would rather have lost the wife than the husband. Not the least infuriating part would have been that this was undoubtedly true. Though we tolerated her, none of us had a very high opinion of Angela. I don’t really think that we liked her very much; though it is sometimes difficult to say exactly whether one likes a person in the country or not. Rural friendships are formed by propinquity, not by attraction.
I also wondered, somewhat uneasily, if these things were being said about the Broughams, what nonsense was being talked about Frances and myself. But that I hardly liked to ask Harold.
2
The Broughams lived in a house of fair size on the main road a few hundred yards beyond our lane, one of those whitewashed, rough-cast houses of indeterminate period which seem to crop up at each end of any West Country village.
Harold asked for Rona, and we were shown into the sitting-room. We had timed our arrival nicely, for Rona was sitting behind the big silver tea tray, and Glen was sprawling in the most comfortable armchair – from which characteristically he did not rise when we came in. Rona, I thought, looked listless and greeted us apathetically.
‘Hullo, here come the vultures,’ Glen remarked. ‘Well, you’ll get nothing from me, my lads. Professional reticence, seal of secrecy, and all the rest of it.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Harold. ‘I only want a cup of tea, if Rona’s got one to spare. And I brought Douglas along because Frances has deserted him for the giddy whirl of Torminster.’
Rona smiled wanly.
‘Blah!’ said Glen.
We sat down.
Harold helped himself to a piece of bread and butter.
‘Well?’ he said blandly. ‘Have they struck you off the register yet?’
‘Blah!’ said Glen.
‘Come on,’ Harold persisted. ‘You know you’ll have to tell us sooner or later. Was it epidemic diarrhoea, or wasn’t it?’
‘Read your newspapers and see,’ said Glen.
Harold pricked up his ears. ‘Newspapers, eh? That means something.’
‘It means nothing. This fandango’s bound to get into the newspapers, isn’t it? You can’t go snatching bodies out of graves and carving them up without a newspaper smelling something in the wind.’
‘Don’t be coarse,’ Harold reproved. ‘Have any sealed jars gone up to London for analysis?’
‘Wasn’t that rather the object of the proceedings?’
‘They have. Thank you.’
The maid brought in the extra cups, and I took advantage of the break
to change the subject; for to tell the truth Harold’s shameless questioning made me feel a little uncomfortable.
‘Look here, while we’re together…oughtn’t we to do something about Angela?’
‘What about her?’ asked Glen indifferently enough.
‘Well, I’m afraid she’s in a rather awkward position.’ I detailed the events of the preceding evening. ‘I think this fellow Cyril has his knife into her. Goodness knows why. He hasn’t accused her of anything, but what he thinks is pretty plain – or what he’s pretending to think. She ought to have proper advice.’
‘She’s got a solicitor, hasn’t she?’ Harold asked.
‘Goodness knows. I suppose there must be a family solicitor somewhere. She must get into touch with him.’
‘I’ll see that she does,’ Rona said. ‘I’ll go up there at once after tea.’
Glen laughed lazily. ‘I don’t think you need worry much about Angela.’
I suppose we looked our questions, for he went on:
‘Whatever complications John’s death leads to, and however much we miss the poor old chap, one thing’s certain: it’s going to be the making of Angela.’
‘Glen,’ said Rona, ‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ll see. From this moment Angela will begin to bloom like a flower in spring. Her health will reappear miraculously; she’ll become positively sturdy; we shall all be mightily astonished.’
We gaped at him for a moment, and then Harold cried delightedly:
‘I see. You mean there’s nothing wrong with her? Never has been. She’s a malade imaginaire. Eh?’
Glen lit a cigarette. Neither his sister nor the rest of us had finished our tea, but Glen never noticed things like that.
‘She took you all in?’ he said with a sardonic smile. ‘Well no wonder, poor girl. She took herself in. Been taking herself in for years. Neurotic case. Interesting psychologically.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear there’s nothing organically wrong with her,’ I said; a little blankly perhaps, for it was difficult to realise that Angela, whom we had treated, humoured, and sympathised with all this time as an incurable and pathetic invalid, was just as fit as Frances herself, and that all our sympathy had been wasted on a neurotic case.
‘Most interesting,’ Harold chimed in with a knowledgeable air. Harold has read a little Freud and is inclined to be proud of it. ‘A subconscious excuse for sexual frigidity, I suppose. Yes.’
‘Blah,’ said Glen.
‘Eh?’ Harold looked taken aback.
‘Keep the party clean. And keep Freud out of it too.’
‘Well, that’s pretty good, coming from you,’ Harold retorted hotly. ‘Keep the party clean, indeed. Did you hear that, Rona? In any case it’s pretty common knowledge amongst ourselves that Angela wasn’t altogether a satisfactory wife, in the usual meaning of the term, for a full-blooded man like John. You realised that, didn’t you, Rona?’
‘Oh, yes. I should think everyone did.’ Rona spoke listlessly, as if the subject did not interest her very much.
‘Well then,’ Harold pursued truculently, ‘I suggest my explanation for Angela’s invalid pose is the right one. If you’ve got a better one, Glen, let’s hear it.’
‘I’ve not only got a better one,’ Glen drawled. ‘I’ve got the real one. Angela’s an almost pure leptosome type. She has the long egg-shaped face; she looks taller than she is; long neck, flat breasts, pointed chin and all the rest of it. She’s a bit of a schizophrenic, too (and you’d understand what that means, Harold, if you’d ever read any psychologist a bit less out of date than Freud). But first and foremost she’s a self-constructive egocentric. She wants prestige, and she’ll go to any lengths to get it: even lie on her back in bed for the rest of her life, if that was the only way.
‘This invalid pose of hers doesn’t date from marriage, as according to your theory, Harold, it would. You’ve heard her tell us a hundred times what a frail, delicate girl she was, and how much time she had to spend resting and so forth when her brothers and sister were out playing, and how she used to lie and long to join them, and what a miserable childhood she had in consequence. Well, the pose was there then. She had no more the matter with her as a child than she has now. But her brothers were strong and athletic; her father was a beefy old rider to hounds known through three counties as a grand sportsman; her mother was an exceptionally beautiful woman; her sister was older than herself and had some brains. She was, in that society, the dud. And she couldn’t stand it. So she took to her bed and became the most interesting member of the family, and the most unusual: there’d probably never been an invalid in it before.
‘But marriage brings no change. Instead of marrying some weak personality whom she could dominate, she marries a man with a world-wide reputation, who, furthermore, by his beefiness and physique reminds her all the time of her father. Once more she’s in danger of being a nonentity: just the wife of a well-known man and of no interest in herself. So the pose is brought into play again.
‘Then she comes back here and finds herself among all sorts of people who knew her and esteem her, simply on account of her birth, at a higher value than her husband. It’s she who is to the fore now, and John drops into the background. That sets her on her feet, and a surprising improvement in health is the result. But after a bit John begins to edge forward. People like him; they find him interesting; at dinners he is becoming more of a draw than she is. Result, health suffers a sad relapse.
‘Now John’s out of the way; father’s dead; one brother’s abroad and the other in jail; sister married a nonentity and has sunk out of sight; and Angela – she’s going to be a rich woman and a beautiful woman and an altogether wonderful, desirable, entrancing woman. Unless she goes and marries another John (which you can bet she won’t) she’ll never have another minute’s ill-health in her life. You see.’
‘Oh!’ said Harold.
‘Well I’m damned,’ I remarked.
There was a little silence. Glen tossed his cigarette into the fire and lit another. It was Rona, not he, who offered the box to Harold and myself.
She looked closely at her brother as she put the box down again on the table by his chair.
‘You’ve never told me any of this before, Glen,’ she said quietly
‘I don’t discuss all my cases even with you, my dear girl.’
‘You’re gossiping about this one now,’ Rona retorted quite nastily.
‘Not a case any longer,’ drawled Glen. ‘Ex-case. I’ll never be called in to Angela again. We-ell, not after the next fortnight. Give her that to get over the present spot of bother.’
‘Well, I think it’s abominable,’ Rona suddenly flared up, to my intense surprise. ‘Here you’ve been leading me and all the rest of us to believe that Angela was an invalid, and – and waste our sympathy and time on her; and you were laughing up your sleeve all the time.’
‘Here, steady on,’ returned her brother. ‘Professional secrets is secrets, you know.’
‘Then why are you giving them away now?’
‘The case is altered, eh?’ Harold sniggered.
‘Precisely,’ said Glen. ‘Besides, there’s more to it than professional secrecy. You observe my sister’s reaction now, gentlemen? Exactly. Her efficiency sense is outraged. And that’s exactly what would have happened if I’d given the show away before. She’d have girded up her loins, gone straight up to Oswald’s Gable and informed our pseudo-invalid that there was nothing at all the matter with her and the best thing she could do would be to take up her bed and walk. And that, gentlemen, would have been the worst possible treatment that could be applied. These cases have to be humoured. Rough-and-ready methods, honesty and all the rest of it don’t pay at all. Not at all. It would be quite on the cards for a woman like that to do herself some really serious injury, just to show. No, my dear girl, it’s no good getting your
tail up. So long as she was in that state no one could be told she was shamming, not even her own husband; and last of all you.’
‘Absurd,’ said Rona, but less heatedly.
‘Well, it’s queer to think of,’ I put in, trying to turn the conversation a little, ‘but if it had been Angela who had died suddenly like that, and not John, I suppose you’d have insisted on a post-mortem. Exactly the opposite of what all of us thought.’
‘Exactly,’ Glen nodded.
My intervention had been unfortunate. With the subject brought back to the post-mortem again, Harold began unblushingly to try to get information out of Glen. I don’t think he necessarily wanted it to pass on and so gain a transitory importance, like your born scandalmonger; he was just illimitably inquisitive.
Glen, however, was giving nothing away, and even added a word of warning about what he had just told us.
‘It’s not for publication, mind, so try to restrain yourself for once, Harold. Rona won’t give it away, and Douglas is as close as an oyster; if it gets out I’ll know you’ve been blabbing – and I’ll never tell you another thing.’
Harold was beginning some indignant reply when the entry of the maid cut him short.
‘Miss Bergmann,’ she announced, and Mitzi Bergmann followed close on her words, looking even more worried than usual.
‘Oh, excuse me, please, Miss Brougham. It’s a note for Mrs Sewell.’ Mitzi had been four years in England and spoke excellent English.
‘Mrs Sewell isn’t here,’ Rona told her. ‘Only Mr Sewell. Have you had tea, Mitzi?’
‘Oh yes, thank you.’ Mitzi turned to me. ‘Please, Mr Sewell, would you open it? I think it is important.’
I took the note, somewhat battered from Mitzi’s hot grasp, and tore it open. It was much as I expected.
Frances, please come at once. Something terrible has happened. I don’t know what to do.
A
Something terrible was always happening to Angela; and whenever it happened she implored Frances to go and console her.
‘All right, Mitzi,’ I said with a little smile. ‘I’ll come.’
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