“Oh. Thank you,” said Tuppence.
The girl went out again and Mrs. Lancaster said,
“There, you see. Very thoughtful, aren’t they?”
“Yes indeed.”
Tuppence poured out her coffee and began to drink it. The two women sat in silence for some time. Tuppence offered the plate of biscuits but the old lady shook her head.
“No thank you, dear. I just like my milk plain.”
She put down the empty glass and leaned back in her chair, her eyes half closed. Tuppence thought that perhaps this was the moment in the morning when she took a little nap, so she remained silent. Suddenly however, Mrs. Lancaster seemed to jerk herself awake again. Her eyes opened, she looked at Tuppence and said,
“I see you’re looking at the fireplace.”
“Oh. Was I?” said Tuppence, slightly startled.
“Yes. I wondered—” she leant forward and lowered her voice. “—Excuse me, was it your poor child?”
Tuppence slightly taken aback, hesitated.
“I—no, I don’t think so,” she said.
“I wondered. I thought perhaps you’d come for that reason. Someone ought to come some time. Perhaps they will. And looking at the fireplace, the way you did. That’s where it is, you know. Behind the fireplace.”
“Oh,” said Tuppence. “Oh. Is it?”
“Always the same time,” said Mrs. Lancaster, in a low voice. “Always the same time of day.” She looked up at the clock on the mantelpiece. Tuppence looked up also. “Ten past eleven,” said the old lady. “Ten past eleven. Yes, it’s always the same time every morning.”
She sighed. “People didn’t understand—I told them what I knew—but they wouldn’t believe me!”
Tuppence was relieved that at that moment the door opened and Tommy came in. Tuppence rose to her feet.
“Here I am. I’m ready.” She went towards the door turning her head to say, “Goodbye, Mrs. Lancaster.”
“How did you get on?” she asked Tommy, as they emerged into the hall.
“After you left,” said Tommy, “like a house on fire.”
“I seem to have had a bad effect on her, don’t I?” said Tuppence. “Rather cheering, in a way.”
“Why cheering?”
“Well, at my age,” said Tuppence, “and what with my neat and respectable and slightly boring appearance, it’s nice to think that you might be taken for a depraved woman of fatal sexual charm.”
“Idiot,” said Tommy, pinching her arm affectionately. “Who were you hobnobbing with? She looked a very nice fluffy old lady.”
“She was very nice,” said Tuppence. “A dear old thing, I think. But unfortunately bats.”
“Bats?”
“Yes. Seemed to think there was a dead child behind the fireplace or something of the kind. She asked me if it was my poor child.”
“Rather unnerving,” said Tommy. “I suppose there must be some people who are slightly batty here, as well as normal elderly relatives with nothing but age to trouble them. Still, she looked nice.”
“Oh, she was nice,” said Tuppence. “Nice and very sweet, I think. I wonder what exactly her fancies are and why.”
Miss Packard appeared again suddenly.
“Goodbye, Mrs. Beresford. I hope they brought you some coffee?”
“Oh yes, they did, thank you.”
“Well, it’s been very kind of you to come, I’m sure,” said Miss Packard. Turning to Tommy, she said, “And I know Miss Fanshawe has enjoyed your visit very much. I’m sorry she was rude to your wife.”
“I think that gave her a lot of pleasure too,” said Tuppence.
“Yes, you’re quite right. She does like being rude to people. She’s unfortunately rather good at it.”
“And so she practises the art as often as she can,” said Tommy.
“You’re very understanding, both of you,” said Miss Packard.
“The old lady I was talking to,” said Tuppence. “Mrs. Lancaster, I think she said her name was?”
“Oh yes, Mrs. Lancaster. We’re all very fond of her.”
“She’s—is she a little peculiar?”
“Well, she has fancies,” said Miss Packard indulgently. “We have several people here who have fancies. Quite harmless ones. But—well, there they are. Things that they believe have happened to them. Or to other people. We try not to take any notice, not to encourage them. Just play it down. I think really it’s just an exercise in imagination, a sort of phantasy they like to live in. Something exciting or something sad and tragic. It doesn’t matter which. But no persecution mania, thank goodness. That would never do.”
“Well, that’s over,” said Tommy with a sigh, as he got into the car. “We shan’t need to come again for at least six months.”
But they didn’t need to go and see her in six months, for three weeks later Aunt Ada died in her sleep.
Three
A FUNERAL
“Funerals are rather sad, aren’t they?” said Tuppence.
They had just returned from attending Aunt Ada’s funeral, which had entailed a long and troublesome railway journey since the burial had taken place at the country village in Lincolnshire where most of Aunt Ada’s family and forebears had been buried.
“What do you expect a funeral to be?” said Tommy reasonably. “A scene of mad gaiety?”
“Well, it could be in some places,” said Tuppence. “I mean the Irish enjoy a wake, don’t they? They have a lot of keening and wailing first and then plenty of drink and a sort of mad whoopee. Drink?” she added, with a look towards the sideboard.
Tommy went over to it and duly brought back what he considered appropriate. In this case a White Lady.
“Ah, that’s more like it,” said Tuppence.
She took off her black hat and threw it across the room and slipped off her long black coat.
“I hate mourning,” she said. “It always smells of moth balls because it’s been laid up somewhere.”
“You don’t need to go on wearing mourning. It’s only to go to the funeral in,” said Tommy.
“Oh no, I know that. In a minute or two I’m going to go up and put on a scarlet jersey just to cheer things up. You can make me another White Lady.”
“Really, Tuppence, I had no idea that funerals would bring out this party feeling.”
“I said funerals were sad,” said Tuppence when she reappeared a moment or two later, wearing a brilliant cherry-red dress with a ruby and diamond lizard pinned to the shoulder of it, “because it’s funerals like Aunt Ada’s that are sad. I mean elderly people and not many flowers. Not a lot of people sobbing and sniffing round. Someone old and lonely who won’t be missed much.”
“I should have thought it would be much easier for you to stand that than it would if it were my funeral, for instance.”
“That’s where you’re entirely wrong,” said Tuppence. “I don’t particularly want to think of your funeral because I’d much prefer to die before you do. But I mean, if I were going to your funeral, at any rate it would be an orgy of grief. I should take a lot of handkerchiefs.”
“With black borders?”
“Well, I hadn’t thought of black borders but it’s a nice idea. And besides, the Burial service is rather lovely. Makes you feel uplifted. Real grief is real. It makes you feel awful but it does something to you. I mean, it works it out like perspiration.”
“Really, Tuppence, I find your remarks about my decease and the effect it will have upon you in exceedingly bad taste. I don’t like it. Let’s forget about funerals.”
“I agree. Let’s forget.”
“The poor old bean’s gone,” said Tommy, “and she went peacefully and without suffering. So, let’s leave it at that. I’d better clear up all these, I suppose.”
He went over to the writing table and ruffled through some papers.
“Now where did I put Mr. Rockbury’s letter?”
“Who’s Mr. Rockbury? Oh, you mean the lawyer who wrote to you.”
“Yes. About winding up her affairs. I seem to be the only one of the family left by now.”
“Pity she hadn’t got a fortune to leave you,” said Tuppence.
“If she had had a fortune she’d have left it to that Cats’ Home,” said Tommy. “The legacy that she’s left to them in her will will pretty well eat up all the spare cash. There won’t be much left to come to me. Not that I need it or want it anyway.”
“Was she so fond of cats?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so. I never heard her mention them. I believe,” said Tommy thoughtfully, “she used to get rather a lot of fun out of saying to old friends of hers when they came to see her ‘I’ve left you a little something in my will, dear’ or ‘This brooch that you’re so fond of I’ve left you in my will.’ She didn’t actually leave anything to anyone except the Cats’ Home.”
“I bet she got rather a kick out of that,” said Tuppence. “I can just see her saying all the things you told me to a lot of her old friends—or so-called old friends because I don’t suppose they were people she really liked at all. She just enjoyed leading them up the garden path. I must say she was an old devil, wasn’t she, Tommy? Only, in a funny sort of way one likes her for being an old devil. It’s something to be able to get some fun out of life when you’re old and stuck away in a Home. Shall we have to go to Sunny Ridge?”
“Where’s the other letter, the one from Miss Packard? Oh yes, here it is. I put it with Rockbury’s. Yes, she says there are certain things there, I gather, which apparently are now my property. She took some furniture with her, you know, when she went to live there. And of course there are her personal effects. Clothes and things like that. I suppose somebody will have to go through them. And letters and things. I’m her executor, so I suppose it’s up to me. I don’t suppose there’s anything we want really, is there? Except there’s a small desk there that I always liked. Belonged to old Uncle William, I believe.”
“Well, you might take that as a memento,” said Tuppence. “Otherwise, I suppose, we just send the things to be auctioned.”
“So you don’t really need to go there at all,” said Tommy.
“Oh, I think I’d like to go there,” said Tuppence.
“You’d like to? Why? Won’t it be rather a bore to you?”
“What, looking through her things? No, I don’t think so. I think I’ve got a certain amount of curiosity. Old letters and antique jewellery are always interesting and I think one ought to look at them oneself, not just send them to auction or let strangers go through them. No, we’ll go and look through the things and see if there’s anything we would like to keep and otherwise settle up.”
“Why do you really want to go? You’ve got some other reason, haven’t you?”
“Oh dear,” said Tuppence, “it is awful being married to someone who knows too much about one.”
“So you have got another reason?”
“Not a real one.”
“Come on, Tuppence. You’re not really so fond of turning over people’s belongings.”
“That, I think, is my duty,” said Tuppence firmly. “No, the only other reason is—”
“Come on. Cough it up.”
“I’d rather like to see that—that other old pussy again.”
“What, the one who thought there was a dead child behind the fireplace?”
“Yes,” said Tuppence. “I’d like to talk to her again. I’d like to know what was in her mind when she said all those things. Was it something she remembered or was it something that she’d just imagined? The more I think about it the more extraordinary it seems. Is it a sort of story that she wrote to herself in her mind or is there—was there once something real that happened about a fireplace or about a dead child. What made her think that the dead child might have been my dead child? Do I look as though I had a dead child?”
“I don’t know how you expect anyone to look who has a dead child,” said Tommy. “I shouldn’t have thought so. Anyway, Tuppence, it is our duty to go and you can enjoy yourself in your macabre way on the side. So that’s settled. We’ll write to Miss Packard and fix a day.”
Four
PICTURE OF A HOUSE
Tuppence drew a deep breath.
“It’s just the same,” she said.
She and Tommy were standing on the front doorstep of Sunny Ridge.
“Why shouldn’t it be?” asked Tommy.
“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have—something to do with time. Time goes at a different pace in different places. Some places you come back to, and you feel that time has been bustling along at a terrific rate and that all sorts of things will have happened—and changed. But here—Tommy—do you remember Ostend?”
“Ostend? We went there on our honeymoon. Of course I remember.”
“And do you remember the sign written up? TRAMSTILLSTAND—It made us laugh. It seemed so ridiculous.”
“I think it was Knock—not Ostend.”
“Never mind—you remember it. Well, this is like that word—Tramstillstand—a portmanteau word. Timestillstand—nothing’s happened here. Time has just stood still. Everything’s going on here just the same. It’s like ghosts, only the other way round.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about. Are you going to stand here all day talking about time and not even ring the bell?—Aunt Ada isn’t here, for one thing. That’s different.” He pressed the bell.
“That’s the only thing that will be different. My old lady will be drinking milk and talking about fireplaces, and Mrs. Somebody-or-other will have swallowed a thimble or a teaspoon and a funny little woman will come squeaking out of a room demanding her cocoa, and Miss Packard will come down the stairs, and—”
The door opened. A young woman in a nylon overall said: “Mr. and Mrs. Beresford? Miss Packard’s expecting you.”
The young woman was just about to show them into the same sitting room as before when Miss Packard came down the stairs and greeted them. Her manner was suitably not quite as brisk as usual. It was grave, and had a kind of semimourning about it—not too much—that might have been embarrassing. She was an expert in the exact amount of condolence which would be acceptable.
Three score years and ten was the Biblical accepted span of life, and the deaths in her establishment seldom occurred below that figure. They were to be expected and they happened.
“So good of you to come. I’ve got everything laid out tidily for you to look through. I’m glad you could come so soon because as a matter of fact I have already three or four people waiting for a vacancy to come here. You will understand, I’m sure, and not think that I was trying to hurry you in any way.”
“Oh no, of course, we quite understand,” said Tommy.
“It’s all still in the room Miss Fanshawe occupied,” Miss Packard explained.
Miss Packard opened the door of the room in which they had last seen Aunt Ada. It had that deserted look a room has when the bed is covered with a dust sheet, with the shapes showing beneath it of folded-up blankets and neatly arranged pillows.
The wardrobe doors stood open and the clothes it had held had been laid on the top of the bed neatly folded.
“What do you usually do—I mean, what do people do mostly with clothes and things like that?” said Tuppence.
Miss Packard, as invariably, was competent and helpful.
“I can give you the name of two or three societies who are only too pleased to have things of that kind. She had quite a good fur stole and a good quality coat but I don’t suppose you would have any personal use for them? But perhaps you have charities of your own where you would like to dispose of things.”
Tuppence shook her head.
“She had some jewellery,” said Miss Packard. “I removed that for safekeeping. You will find it in the right-hand drawer of the dressing table. I put it there just before you were due to arrive.”
“Thank you very much,” said Tommy, “for the trouble you have taken.”
Tup
pence was staring at a picture over the mantelpiece. It was a small oil painting representing a pale pink house standing adjacent to a canal spanned by a small humpbacked bridge. There was an empty boat drawn up under the bridge against the bank of the canal. In the distance were two poplar trees. It was a very pleasant little scene but nevertheless Tommy wondered why Tuppence was staring at it with such earnestness.
“How funny,” murmured Tuppence.
Tommy looked at her inquiringly. The things that Tuppence thought funny were, he knew by long experience, not really to be described by such an adjective at all.
“What do you mean, Tuppence?”
“It is funny. I never noticed that picture when I was here before. But the odd thing is that I have seen that house somewhere. Or perhaps it’s a house just like that that I have seen. I remember it quite well . . . Funny that I can’t remember when and where.”
“I expect you noticed it without really noticing you were noticing,” said Tommy, feeling his choice of words was rather clumsy and nearly as painfully repetitive as Tuppence’s reiteration of the word “funny.”
“Did you notice it, Tommy, when we were here last time?”
“No, but then I didn’t look particularly.”
“Oh, that picture,” said Miss Packard. “No, I don’t think you would have seen it when you were here the last time because I’m almost sure it wasn’t hanging over the mantelpiece then. Actually it was a picture belonging to one of our other guests, and she gave it to your aunt. Miss Fanshawe expressed admiration of it once or twice and this other old lady made her a present of it and insisted she should have it.”
“Oh I see,” said Tuppence, “so of course I couldn’t have seen it here before. But I still feel I know the house quite well. Don’t you, Tommy?”
“No,” said Tommy.
“Well, I’ll leave you now,” said Miss Packard briskly. “I shall be available at any time that you want me.”
She nodded with a smile, and left the room, closing the door behind her.
“I don’t think I really like that woman’s teeth,” said Tuppence.
“What’s wrong with them?”
The Complete Tommy and Tuppence Page 70
