by Muriel Spark
“Eric will grow out of this phase,” said Charmian. “My grandfather was wild as a youth.”
But Eric was amazed when his elders eventually stopped blaming themselves for his condition. He thought them hypocritical and callous to go back on their words. He longed for them to start discussing him again in the old vein; but by the time he was thirty-seven they had said quite bitter things to him. He had bought a cottage in Cornwall, where he drank their money. He was in a home for inebriates when the war broke out. He emerged to be called up by the military, but was turned down on account of his psychological history. He loathed Charmian, Godfrey and Lettie. He loathed his cousin Martin who was doing so well as an engineer and who, as a child, had always been considered dull in comparison with Eric. He married a negress and got divorced six months later; a settlement being made on her by Godfrey. From time to time he wrote to Charmian, Godfrey and Lettie, to tell them that he loathed them. When, in 1947, Godfrey refused him any more money, he made it up with Lettie and obtained small revenues and larger promises from her. But Lettie, when she saw so little return for her cash by way of his company, reduced her bounty to mere talk about her will. Eric wrote a novel, and got it published on the strength of Charmian’s name. It bore a similarity to Charmian’s writing. “Poor Eric,” said Charmian, “has not much originality. But I do think, Godfrey, now that he is really doing some work, we ought to assist him.” She sent him, over a period of two years, all she possessed. Eric thought her mean, he thought her envious of his novel, and said so. Godfrey refused to write him. Charmian had confided to Guy Leet, “I suspect that Godfrey has a secret horror of another novelist in the family.” And she added, what was not strictly true, but was a neat conclusion, “Of course, Godfrey always wanted Eric to join that dreary firm.”
By the time he was fifty Eric began to display what looked like a mind of his own. That is, instead of sending wild vituperative accusations to his family, he now sent cold reasoned denunciations. He proved, point by point, that they had let him down badly from the time of his first opening his eyes.
“In his middle-age Eric is becoming so like Godfrey,” said Charmian, “though of course, Godfrey does not see it.”
Eric no longer called Charmian’s novels lousy muck. He analysed them piece by piece, he ridiculed the spare parts, he demolished the lot. He had some friends who applauded his efforts.
“But he takes my work so seriously,” said Charmian. “Nobody ever wrote of it like that.”
Charmian’s health had failed by the mid-fifties. The revival of her novels astonished Eric, for he had by some fractional oversight misjudged an element in the temper of his age. He canvassed his friends and was angered and bewildered to find so many had fallen for the Charmian Piper period-cult.
Charmian’s remittances, smuggled through Mrs. Anthony, were received with silence. His second book had secretly appealed to Dame Lettie. It had been described as “realistic and brutally frank,” but the energy which he might have put into developing his realistic and brutally frank talents was now dispersed in resentment against Charmian. The revival of her novels finished him off and he found he could no longer write.
Even the reports in the papers that Godfrey, Charmian and Lettie had been recipients of threatening telephone calls failed to stimulate him.
Throughout the war, and since, he had been mainly living on women of means, the chief of whom had been Lisa Brooke. He had found it hard, after Lisa’s death, to replace her. Everyone was hard up, and Eric put on weight with the worry of it all, which did not help. His difficulties were approaching a climax at the moment he had received Olive’s letter. “Your father is being cruelly blackmailed by a certain Mrs. Pettigrew, the housekeeper. I think he would be willing to make up the past differences, if there was anything you could do without letting your mother know….”
He took the first train up to London, in a state of excitement, and spent the journey visualising the possibilities before him.
When he arrived at Paddington at a quarter to six he had no idea what he was going to do. He went into the bar and had a drink. At seven he emerged and saw a telephone box. He telephoned to the home of his father’s solicitor, and on the strength of his communication, obtained an interview that evening. He got from the solicitor an assurance that preparations for the new will would be delayed as long as possible. He received some additional advice to which he did not listen.
He went to call on Olive, but found her flat deserted. He stayed the night with some reluctant acquaintances in Notting Hill Gate. At eleven next morning he telephoned to Mrs. Pettigrew and met her for lunch in a café in Kensington.
“I wish you to know, Mrs. Pettigrew,” he said, “that I’m with you. The old man deserves a lesson. I take the moral point of view, and I’m quite willing to forgo the money.”
“I’m sure,” said Mrs. Pettigrew at first, “I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Eric.” She wiped the corners of her mouth with her handkerchief, pulling her lower lip askew in the process.
“He would die,” said Eric, “rather than my poor mother got to know about his gross infidelities. And so would I. In fact, Mrs. Pettigrew,” he said with his smile which had long ceased to be winning, “you have us both in your hands, my father and I.”
Mrs. Pettigrew said, “I’ve done a lot for your parents. Your poor mother, before she was taken away, I had to do everything for her. There aren’t many that would have put up with so much. Your mother was inclined to be—well, you know what old people are. I suppose I’m old myself, but—”
“Not a bit,” said Eric. “You don’t look a day older than sixty.”
“Well, I felt my years while I had your mother to attend to.”
“I’m sure you did. She’s impossibly conceited,” said Eric; “impossible.”
“Quite impossible. And, now, your father—”
“He’s impossible,” said Eric, “an old brute.”
“What exactly,” said Mrs. Pettigrew, “had you in mind, Mr. Eric?”
“Well, I felt it my duty to stand behind you. And here I am. Money,” he said, “means hardly anything to me.”
“Ah, you can’t go far without money, Mr. Eric—”
“Do call me Eric,” he said.
“Eric,” she said, “your best friend’s your—”
“Well, of course, a little cash at the right time is always useful. At the right time. It’s surprising, really, my father has lived so long after the life he’s led.”
“Eric, I would never let you go short. I mean, until the time comes…”
“You can always get ready cash out of him?”
“Oh yes.”
Eric thought: I bet you can.
“I think we should see him together,” said Eric.
She looked at his little hands. Can I trust him? she wondered. The will was not yet signed and sealed.
“Trust me,” said Eric. “Two heads are better than one.”
“I would like to think it over,” she said.
“You would prefer to work alone?”
“Oh, don’t say that. I mean, this plan of yours is rather sudden, and I feel, after all I’ve done for Godfrey and Charmian, I’m entitled to—”
“Perhaps, after all,” said Eric, “it is my duty to go down to Surrey to see Mother and inform her of her husband’s little indiscretions. Distasteful as that course might be, in fact, it might save a lot of trouble. It would take a load off my father’s mind, and there would then be no need for you to take any further interest in him. It must be a strain on you.”
She came back on him sharply: “You don’t know the details of your father’s affairs. I do. You have no evidence. I have. Written proof.”
“Oh yes,” he said, “I have evidence.”
Is it bluff? she wondered.
“When do you want to come and see him?” she said.
“Now,” he said.
But when they got back, Godfrey was still out. Mrs. Anthony had left. Mrs. Pettigrew felt quit
e frightened. And when Eric started roaming about the house, picking up the china ornaments and turning them upside down to look at them, she felt quite vexed. But she held her peace. She felt she knew her man. At least she ought to, with all her experience.
When he sat down, eventually, in Charmian’s old chair, she ruffled his hair, and said, “Poor Eric. You’ve had a raw deal from them, haven’t you?” He leaned his large head against her bosom and felt quite nice.
After tea Mrs. Pettigrew had a slight attack of asthma and withdrew to the garden, where she got it under control. On her return she thought she saw Godfrey in the chair where she had left Eric. But it was Eric all right. He was asleep, his head lolling sideways; although in features he most resembled Charmian, he looked remarkably like Godfrey in this pose.
Charmian’s impression of Godfrey’s brightness and health, when she saw him from her window, became more pronounced when he was shown into her room.
“Cheerful place,” he said, looking round.
“Come and sit down, Godfrey. Guy Leet had just gone. I’m afraid I’m rather tired.”
“Yes, I saw him leaving.”
“Yes, poor soul. It was kind of him to visit me. He has such difficulty getting about.”
“So different,” said Godfrey, leaning back in his chair like a satisfied man, and stretching his legs apart, “from the way he got about in the summer of 1902 in the villa on Lake Geneva, up to 1907 at his flat in Hyde Park Gate, in Scotland and Biarritz and Torquay and then in the Dolomites when you were taken ill. Then nineteen years later when he was living in Ebury Street, up to the time of—”
“I should like a cigarette,” said Charmian.
“What?” said Godfrey.
“Give me a cigarette, Godfrey, or I shall ring and ask the nurse to fetch one.”
“Look here, Charmian, you’d better stay off cigarettes. I mean—”
“I would like to smoke a cigarette before I die. As to Guy Leet—you yourself, Godfrey, have hardly any room to talk. You yourself. Lisa Brooke. Wendy Loos. Eleanor—”
“The little rotter,” said Godfrey. “Well, just look what he’s come to and only seventy-five. Bent double over two sticks.”
“Jean Taylor must have talked,” she said. She stretched out her hand and said, “A cigarette, Godfrey.” He gave her one and lit it.
“I’m getting rid of Mrs. Pettigrew,” he said. “A most domineering bitch. Always upsetting Mrs. Anthony.”
Charmian inhaled her cigarette. “Any other news?” she said.
“Alec Warner,” he said, “is losing control of his faculties. He came to see me this morning and wanted me to take my pulse and temperature. I ordered him out of the house.”
Charmian began to laugh, and could not stop, and eventually had to be put to bed, while Godfrey was taken away and given a soft-boiled egg with thin bread and butter, and sent off home.
At eight o’clock they had finished supper. Mrs. Pettigrew said, “If he isn’t home by nine I’d better ring the police. He might have had an accident. That car, it isn’t safe. He’s a menace on the road.”
“I shouldn’t worry,” said Eric, reflecting that, after all, the new will was not signed.
“Oh, I always worry about him,” she said. “That’s what I mean when I say that I’m entitled to…”
Godfrey drove more carefully than usual. Having satisfied himself that Warner’s information was accurate he felt that life was worth taking care of. Not that one had doubted Warner’s information. Poor Charmian. At any rate, she had no call, now, to be uppish and righteous. Not that she really had been priggish; but she had always assumed that air of purity which made one feel such a swine. Poor Charmian; it was very catty of Taylor to gossip about her after all these years. Still, Taylor had done one a good turn without knowing it….
Here he was at home. A long drive for an old man.
Godfrey came in with his glasses in his hand, rubbing his eyes.
“Where on earth have you been?” said Mrs. Pettigrew. “Eric is here to see you.”
“Oh, good evening, Eric,” said Godfrey. “Have a drink.”
“I’ve got one,” said Eric.
“I’m keeping quite well, thank you,” said Godfrey, raising his voice.
“Oh, really?” said Eric.
“Eric wishes to speak to you Godfrey.”
“Mrs. Pettigrew and I are in this together, Father.”
“In what?”
“The question of the new will. And in the meantime, I expect to be remunerated according to the situation.”
“You’re growing a paunch,” said Godfrey. “I haven’t got a paunch.”
“Otherwise we shall really have to present Mother with the facts.”
“Be reasonable, Godfrey,” said Mrs. Pettigrew.
“Get to hell out of my house, Eric,” said Godfrey. “I give you ten minutes or I call the police.”
“I think we’re a little tired,” said Mrs. Pettigrew, “aren’t we?”
“And you leave tomorrow morning,” he said to her.
The door bell rang.
“Who can that be?” said Mrs. Pettigrew. “Did you forget to leave the car lights on, Godfrey?”
Godfrey ignored the bell. “You can’t tell Charmian anything,” he said, “that she doesn’t know already.”
“What did you say?” said Mrs. Pettigrew.
The door bell rang again.
Godfrey left them and went to open it. Two men stood on the doorstep.
“Mr. Colston?”
“That’s right.”
“Could we have word with you? It’s the C.I.D.”
“The car lights are on,” said Godfrey.
“It’s about your sister,” said the senior-looking of the men, “Dame Lettie Colston, I’m afraid.”
Next day was Sunday. “HOAX CALLER STRIKES AT LAST” declared the headlines. “Aged Welfare Worker, 81, killed in bed. Jewellery and valuables missing.”
Chapter Fifteen
“If you look for one thing,” said Henry Mortimer to his wife, “you frequently find another.”
Mrs. Mortimer was opening and closing her mouth like a bird. This was because she was attempting to feed a two-year-old boy with a spoon, and as he opened his mouth to take each spoonful of soft egg, she involuntarily opened hers. This child was her grandson whom she was minding while her daughter was confined with a second child.
Mrs. Mortimer wiped the infant’s mouth and pushed a jug of milk out of his reach.
“Look for one thing and you find another,” said Henry Mortimer. “They found twenty-two different wills amongst Lettie Colston’s papers, dated over the past forty years.”
“Silly woman,” said Emmeline Mortimer, “to change her mind so often.” She tickled the cheek of her grandson and clucked into his face, and while his mouth was open in laughter she popped in the last spoonful of egg, most of which he spluttered out. “I was sorry for poor old Godfrey breaking down at the inquest. He must have been fond of his sister,” she said.
She gave the child his mug of milk which he clutched in both hands and drank noisily, his eyes bright above the rim, darting here and there.
When the child was settled in a play-pen in the garden Mrs. Mortimer said to her husband,
“What’s that you were saying about poor Lettie Colston’s wills?”
“The chaps were checking up on her papers in the course of routine, in case they should provide any clue to the murder, and of course they checked up on all her beneficiaries. Quite a list out of twenty-two consecutive wills.”
“The murderer wasn’t known to her, was he?”
“No—oh no, this was before they got him. They were checking up, and…”
Dame Lettie’s murderer had been caught within three weeks of her death and was now awaiting trial. In those three weeks, however, her papers had been thoroughly examined, and those of the beneficiaries of her twenty-two wills who were still alive had been quietly traced, checked, and dismissed from suspicion.
Only one name had proved a very slight puzzle; Lisa O’Brien of Nottingham, whose name appeared in a bequest dated 1918. The records, however, showed that Lisa Brooke, nee Sidebottome, aged 33, had married a man named Matthew O’Brien aged 40 at Nottingham in that year. The C.I.D. did not look much further. Lisa O’Brien in the will must be a woman of advanced years by now and, in fact, it emerged that she was dead; O’Brien himself, if still alive, would be beyond the age of the suspect. The police were no longer interested, and ticked the name O’Brien off their list.
Henry Mortimer, however, as one acquainted with the murdered woman and her circle, had been approached, and had undertaken to investigate any possible connection between the murder and the anonymous telephone calls. Not that the police believed these calls had taken place; every possible means of detection had failed, and they had concluded, with the support of their psychologists, that the old people were suffering from hallucinations.
The public, however, had to be satisfied. Henry Mortimer was placed in charge of this side of the case. The police were able to announce:
The possibility of a connection between the murder and the anonymous telephone calls which the murdered woman was reported to receive from time to time before her death, is being investigated.
Mortimer fulfilled his duties carefully. Like his colleagues, he suspected the murderer to be a chance criminal. Like his colleagues, he knew the anonymous voice would never be traced in flesh and blood. Nevertheless, he examined the police documents, and finally sent in a report which enabled the police to issue a further statement:
The authorities are satisfied that there is no connection between the murder of Dame Lettie Colston and the anonymous telephone calls of which she had been complaining some months before her death.
Meantime, however, Henry had noticed the details of Lisa O’Brien, and was interested.
“You look for one thing and you find another,” he had said to himself. For he had never before heard of this marriage of Lisa’s. Her first marriage with rich old Brooke had been dissolved in 1912. Her secret marriage with Guy Leet had recently come to light, when Guy had claimed her fortune. But Matthew O’Brien—Henry did not recall any Matthew O’Brien. He must be quite old now, probably dead.