Memento Mori

by Muriel Spark

  Charmian tottered gaily up the path on Henry Mortimer’s arm. He was telling her he had just read, once more, her novel The Gates of Grandella in its fine new edition.

  “It is over fifty years,” said Charmian, “since I read it.”

  “It captures the period,” said Mortimer. “Oh, it brings everything back. I do recommend you to read it again.”

  Charmian slid her eyes flirtatiously towards him—that gesture which the young reporters who came to see her found so enchanting—and said, “You are too young, Henry, to remember when the book first came out.”

  “No indeed,” he said, “I was already a police constable. And a constable never forgets.”

  “What a charming house,” said Charmian, and she caught sight of Godfrey waiting inside the hall, and felt she was, as always when people made a fuss over her, making him sick.

  The conference did not start for some time. Emmeline Mortimer consulted in low tones with the ladies of the deputation in the hall, whether they would first like to go “upstairs,” or, if the stairs were too much for them, there was a place downstairs, straight through the kitchen, turn right. “Charmian,” said Mrs. Pettigrew out loud, “come and make yourself comfortable. I’ll take you. Come along.”

  Henry Mortimer piled the men’s coats and hats neatly on a chest, and, having shown the way upstairs to the male candidates, ushered the rest of the men into the dining-room where, at the long table, bare except for a vase of shining daffodils, and at the top, a thick file of papers, Gwen was already seated, fuming sulkily to herself.

  When Godfrey came in he glanced round at the furnishings with an enquiring air.

  “Is this the right room?” he said.

  Alec Warner thought: He is probably looking for signs of a tea-tray. He probably thinks we are not going to get any tea.

  “Yes, I think this is most suitable,” said Henry, as one taking him into consultation. “Don’t you? We can sit round the table and talk things over before tea.”

  “Oh!” said Godfrey. Alec Warner congratulated himself.

  At last they were settled round the table, the three strangers having been introduced as a Miss Lottinville and a Mr. and Mrs. Jack Rose. Mrs. Mortimer withdrew and the door clicked behind her like a signal for the start of business. The sunlight fell mildly upon the table and the people round it, showing up motes of dust in the air, specks of dust on the clothes of those who wore black, the wrinkled cheeks and hands of the aged, and the thick make-up of Gwen.

  Charmian, who was enthroned in the most comfortable chair, spoke first, “What a charming room.”

  “It gets the afternoon sun,” Henry said. “Is it too much for anyone? Charmian—another cushion.”

  The three strangers looked uneasily at each other, simply because they were strangers and not, like the others, known to each other for forty, fifty years it might be.

  Godfrey moved his arm to shoot back his sleeve, and said, “This telephone man, Mortimer, I must say, it’s a bit thick—”

  “I have a copy of your statement here, Colston,” said Henry Mortimer, opening his file. “I propose to read each one aloud by turn, and you may add any further comments after I have read it. Does that course meet with approval?”

  No one seriously disagreed with that course.

  Gwen looked out of the window. Janet Sidebottome fiddled with the electric battery of her elaborate hearing-aid. Mrs. Pettigrew laid her arm on the table and her chin on her hand and looked intense. Charmian sat with her heart-shaped face composed beneath her new blue hat. Alec Warner looked carefully at the strangers, first at Mrs. Rose then at Mr. Rose and then at Miss Lottinville. Mrs. Rose had her eyebrows perpetually raised in resignation, furrowing deep lines into her forehead. Mr. Rose held his head sideways; he had enormous shoulders; his large mouth drooped downwards at the same degree of curvature as his chin, cheeks and nose. The Roses must be nearly eighty, perhaps more. Miss Lottinville looked small and slight and angry. The left side of her mouth and her right eye kept twitching simultaneously.

  Henry Mortimer’s voice was not too official, but it was firm:

  “…just after eleven in the morning…on three separate occasions…It sounded like that of a common man. The tone was menacing. The words on each occasion were…”

  “…at various times throughout the day…the first occasion was on 12th March. The words were…The tone was strictly factual…. He sounded young, like a Teddy-boy….”

  “…first thing in the morning…every week since the end of August last. It was the voice of a cultured, middle-aged man…the tone is sinister in the extreme….”

  “It was the voice of a very civil young man….” This was Charmian’s account. Godfrey broke in. “How could he be a civil young man saying a thing like that? Use your head, Charmian.”

  “He was,” said Charmian, “most civil on all three occasions.”

  “Perhaps,” said Henry, “if I could continue…? Then Charmian can add her comments.”

  He finished Charmian’s statement. “That is correct,” said Charmian.

  “How could he be civil?” said Godfrey.

  “Mr. Guy Leet,” Henry announced, taking up the next paper. “Oh, Guy isn’t here, of course—”

  “Guy asked me to say,” said Alec, “we could discuss his case as much as we like so long as we don’t discuss his private life up to 1940.”

  “Has to get about on two sticks,” commented Godfrey.

  “Guy’s account,” said Henry, “is substantially the same as the others, with the most interesting exception that he gets Tol calls from London at between six and seven in the evening when the cheap rate is on. In his opinion the offender is a schoolboy.”

  “Nonsense,” said Dame Lettie. “A middle-aged man.”

  “It is simple,” said Henry, “to trace a Tol call from London to the country. And yet the police have not yet traced any caller to Guy Leet at Stedrost.”

  “Quite,” said Dame Lettie. “The police—”

  “However, we will discuss these factors later,” said Henry. “Next Mr. Ronald Sidebottome—Oh, Ronald’s not here either. What’s happened to Ronald, Janet?”

  “He was a youth—a Teddy-boy, as I’ve said,” Janet Sidebottome replied.

  “Ronald” roared Godfrey into her ear. “Why hasn’t Ronald turned up? He said he was coming.”

  “Oh, Ronald. Well, he was to call for me. I suppose he forgot. It was most annoying. I waited and then I rang him up but he wasn’t at home. I really can’t answer for Ronald these days. He is never at home.”

  Alec Warner took out a small diary and scribbled something in pencil.

  “Ronald’s statement,” said Mortimer, “describes the caller as a man well advanced in years with a cracked and rather shaky voice and a suppliant tone.”

  “There must be something wrong with his phone,” said Dame Lettie. “The man’s voice is strong and sinister. A man of middle years. You must remember, Henry, that I have had far more experience of the creature than anyone else.”

  “Yes, Lettie, my dear, I admit you have been greatly tried. Now Miss Lottinville, your statement…‘At three o’clock in the morning…A foreigner…’”

  Mrs. Mortimer put her head round the door. “Tea is ready, Henry, when you are. I have laid it in the breakfast room so that—’

  “In five minutes, Emmeline.”

  She disappeared and Godfrey looked yearningly after her.

  “Finally, Mr. Rose,” said Henry. “‘I received the call at my business premises at twelve noon on two days running…the man sounded like an official person…late middle age….’”

  “That sounds accurate,” said Dame Lettie. “Only I would describe the voice as sinister.”

  “Did he have a lisp?” said Godfrey.

  “Mr. Rose has not mentioned a lisp in his statement—Had he a lisp, Mr. Rose?” said Henry.

  “No, no. Like an official. My wife says an army man, but I would say a government chap.”

  Every
one spoke at once.

  “Oh no,” said Janet Sidebottome, “he was—”

  “A gang,” said Dame Lettie, “there must be a gang.”

  Miss Lottinville said: “I assure you, Chief Inspector, he—”

  Henry waited for a while till the noise subsided. He said to Mr. Rose,

  “Are you satisfied with your account as I have read it?”

  “A hundred per cent,” said Mr. Rose.

  “Then let’s continue the discussion after tea,” said Henry.

  Miss Lottinville said: “You have not read the statement of this lady on my left.” The lady on her left was Mrs. Pettigrew. “I haven’t had any of your phone calls,” she said. “I’ve made no statement.”

  Alec Warner wondered, from the vehemence of her tone, if she were lying.

  Mrs. Mortimer sat with her silver tea-pot poised at a well-spread table.

  “Come and sit by me,” she said kindly to Gwen, “and you can help to pass the cups.”

  Gwen lit a cigarette and sat down sideways at the place indicated.

  “Have you been afflicted with these phone calls?” Emmeline Mortimer asked her.

  “Me? No, I get wrong numbers.”

  Mrs. Pettigrew said confidentially to Mrs. Mortimer: “I’ve had no trouble myself from any phone calls. Between ourselves, I think it’s all made up. I don’t believe a word of what they say. They’re trying to draw attention to themselves. Like kids.”

  “What a delightful garden,” said Charmian.

  They were assembled once more in the dining-room where a fire sparkled weakly in the sunlight.

  Henry Mortimer said: “If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practise which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”

  Dame Lettie said suddenly and sharply, “Who is the man, Henry?”

  “My dear Lettie. I can’t help you, there.”

  She looked so closely at him, he felt almost that she suspected himself.

  “Lettie thinks you are the man,” said Alec wickedly.

  “I hardly think,” said Henry, “Lettie would attribute to me such energy and application as the culprit evidently possesses.”

  “All we want,” said Godfrey, “is to stop him. And to do that we’ve got to find the man.”

  “I consider,” said Janet Sidebottome, “that what Mr. Mortimer was saying just now about resigning ourselves to death is most uplifting and consoling. The religious point of view is too easily forgotten these days, and I thank you, Mr. Mortimer.”

  “Why, thank you, Janet. Perhaps ‘resigning ourselves to death’ doesn’t quite convey what I mean. But of course, I don’t attempt to express a specifically religious point of view. My observations were merely confined—”

  “You sound most religious to me,” said Janet.

  “Thank you, Janet.”

  “Poor young man,” mused Charmian. “He may be lonely, and simply wanting to talk to people and so he rings them up.”

  “The police, of course, are hopeless. Really, Henry, it is time there was a question in the House,” said Lettie warningly.

  “Considering the fairly wide discrepancies in your various reports,” said Henry, “the police at one stage in their investigations assumed that not one man but a gang was at work. The police have, however, employed every method of detection known to criminology and science, so far without success. Now, one factor is constant in all your reports. The words, ‘Remember you must die.’ It is, you know, an excellent thing to remember this, for it is nothing more than the truth. To remember one’s death is, in short, a way of life.”

  “To come to the point—” said Godfrey.

  “Godfrey,” said Charmian, “I am sure everyone is fascinated by what Henry is saying.”

  “Most consoling,” said Janet Sidebottome. “Do continue, Mr. Mortimer, with your words.”

  “Ah yes,” said Miss Lottinville who was also enjoying Henry’s philosophising.

  And Mrs. Rose, with her longanimous eyes and resignation, nodded her head in sad, wise and ancient assent.

  “Have you considered,” said Alec Warner, “the possibility of mass hysteria?”

  “Making telephones ring?” said Mr. Rose, spreading wide his palms.

  “Absurd!” said Dame Lettie. “We can eliminate mass hysteria.”

  “Oh no,” said Mortimer. “In a case like this we can’t eliminate any possibility. That is just our difficulty.”

  “Tell me,” Alec asked the Chief Inspector with his piercing look, “would you describe yourself as a mystic?”

  “Never having previously been called upon to describe myself, I really couldn’t say.”

  “The question is,” said Mr. Rose, “who’s the fellow that’s trying to put the fear of God in us?”

  “And what’s the motive?” said Godfrey. “That’s what I ask.”

  “The question of motive may prove to be different in each case, to judge by the evidence before us,” said Mortimer. “I think we must all realise that the offender is, in each case, whoever we think he is ourselves.”

  “Did you tell them,” said Emmeline Mortimer when they had gone, “what your theory is?”

  “No—oh no, my dear. I treated them to brief philosophical sermons instead. It helped to pass the time.”

  “Did they like your little sermons?”

  “Some of the women did. The young girl seemed less bored than at other times. Lettie objected.”

  “Oh, Lettie.”

  “She said the whole afternoon had been pointless.”

  “How rude. After my lovely tea.”

  “It was a lovely tea. It was my part that was pointless. I’m afraid it had to be.”

  “How I wish,” said Emmeline, “you could have told them outright, ‘Death is the culprit.’ And I should like to have seen their faces.”

  “It’s a personal opinion. One can’t make up one’s mind for others.”

  “Can they make up their own minds, then?”

  “No. I think I’ll go and spray the pears.”

  “Now, darling,” said Mrs. Mortimer. “You know you’ve done enough for one day. I’m sure it’s been quite enough for me.”

  “The trouble with these people,” he said, “they think that the C.I.D. are God, understanding all mysteries and all knowledge. Whereas we are only policemen.”

  He went to read by the fire in the dining-room. Before he sat down he straightened the chairs round the table and put back some of them in their places round the wall. He emptied the ash-trays into the fire. He looked out of the window at the half-light and hoped for a fine summer. He had not mentioned it to Emmeline yet, but this summer he hoped to sail that yacht of his for which, in his retirement, he had sacrificed a car. Already he could feel the bright wet wind about his ears.

  The telephone rang. He went out to the hall, answered it. Within a few seconds he put down the receiver. How strange, he thought, that mine is always a woman. Everyone else gets a man on the line to them, but mine is always this woman, gentle-spoken and respectful.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I told him straight what I feel,” said Mrs. Pettigrew to Mrs. Anthony. “I said, ‘It’s all a lot of rot, Inspector. It started with Dame Lettie Colston, then Godfrey feels he’s got to be in the picture and one sets off the other. To my dying day I’ll swear it’s all make up.’ But he didn’t side with me. Why? I’ll tell you why. He’d be put out of Dame Lettie’s will if he agreed it was all her imagination.”

  Mrs. Pettigrew, though she had in fact, one quiet afternoon, received the anonymous telephone call, had chosen to forget it. She possessed a strong faculty for simply refusing to admit an unpleasant situation, and to go quite blank where it was concerned. If, for
instance, you had asked her whether, eighteen years before she had undergone a face-lifting operation, she would have denied it, and believed the denial, and moreover would have supplied gratuitously, as a special joke, a list of people who had, “really” had their faces lifted or undergone other rejuvenating operations.

  And so Mrs. Pettigrew continued to persuade herself she had not heard the anonymous voice on the telephone; it was not a plain ignoring of the incident; she omitted even to keep a mental record of it, but put down the receiver and blacked it out from her life.

  “A lot of imagination all round,” said Mrs. Pettigrew.

  “Ah well,” said Mrs. Anthony, “we all got to go some day. But I shouldn’t like to have that chap on the phone to me. I’d give him something to get along with.”

  “There isn’t any chap,” said Mrs. Pettigrew. “You hear what I say?”

  “I got my deaf-aid in, and I hear what you say. No need to raise your voice.”

  Mrs. Pettigrew was overcome by that guilt she felt whenever she had lowered herself to the intimacy of shouting at Mrs. Anthony, forgetting to play her cards. By way of recompense she left the kitchen aloofly, and went to find Godfrey.

  He was sitting by the fire, maddeningly, opposite Charmian.

  “Please, Godfrey, let us not have all this over again. Ah, it’s you, Mrs. Pettigrew,” said Charmian.

  “She is not Taylor,” said Godfrey, with automatic irritability.

  “I know it,” said Charmian.

  He looked unhappily at Mrs. Pettigrew. There was really no consolation left in the house for a man. He was all the more disturbed by Charmian’s increasing composure. It was not that he wished his wife any harm, but his spirits always seemed to wither in proportion as hers bloomed. He thought, looking at his wife, It is only for a time, this can’t last, she will have a relapse. He felt he was an old man in difficulties. Mrs. Pettigrew had made another appointment for his lawyer that afternoon. He did not feel up to keeping it. He supposed he would have to see the lawyer some time, but that long fruitless going to and from Kingston yesterday had left him exhausted. And that madman Mortimer, making a fuss over Charmian—everyone making a fuss over Charmian, as if she were still somebody and not a helpless old invalid—roused within him all those resentments of the long past; so that, having made the mistake of regarding Charmian’s every success as his failure, now, by force of habit, he could never feel really well unless she were ill.