by Bruce, Leo
Their sitting-room is small but they have some quite lovely things, not collected, I thought, during the Major’s years of foreign service, but English, most of them of the eighteenth century. They saw me looking about, as I can never refrain from doing in an interesting room.
“When we gave up our home,” said Dora Natterley, “there were some things we couldn’t be parted from. We simply cannot bear modern furniture. So we looked for a hotel in which we could have at least some of them round us.”
“They’re lovely,” I said. “That little bureau bookcase is a gem. And I think you chose very well when you came here. It’s most comfortable.”
There was a pause and Major Natterley said; “Oh yes. It’s comfortable.”
Jerrison brought in coffee and the Major charily made some mention of liqueurs. “Or do you prefer brandy?”
I chose an Armagnac and waited to find out why I had been invited.
“Yes, it’s comfortable,” said Major Natterley, “but just lately we have been a little undecided about it. We don’t want to move …”
Dora Natterley turned to me and asked quite suddenly and point blank: “Have you noticed anything? Since you’ve been here, I mean, about this place?”
“Well …” I began.
“You have!” said Dora Natterley. “I knew it. It must be quite obvious to an outsider that things are not … normal here.”
“I have noticed a certain air of constraint, perhaps. My friends who were here last year …”
“The Bellews. I remember them.”
“Were so pleased with it. So am I, so far as that goes.” By ‘that’ I suppose I meant comfort and food and all one asks of a guest house. “But I can’t pretend that I haven’t sensed something in the air.”
“Ah,” said Major Natterley, “that’s just it. In the air. It’s not something you can pin down.”
“Mrs Derosse—whom incidentally I like enormously—seems to think it dates from Mrs Mallister’s death.” I remarked.
“In a way, perhaps,” said Dora Natterley, “but we couldn’t help being aware of certain things that went on before that. We greatly dislike prying …”
“We don’t want to know anything about other people’s business,” put in the Major.
“But we can’t help being observant. Long before Mrs Mallister’s death things were not what I would call right here. Lydia Mallister herself was a very difficult woman.”
“We don’t want to bore you with all this,” said the Major suddenly to me.
“I assure you I’m not in the least bored,” I replied truthfully.
“We never believe in troubling other people with our perplexities, but we could not resist asking a newcomer how these things appeared to her.”
“Please go on. You were saying that Lydia Mallister was difficult.”
“She had a very caustic tongue. We do not approve of slanderous remarks and some of those made by Lydia Mallister were in the worst of taste. She made no secret of her contempt for her husband and said in so many words that she believed he and Esmée Weiton were …”
“Having an affair,” I supplied when she hesitated.
“Thank you, yes, that is what she said. It is against our principles to discuss people in that way, but we could not help seeing what she meant. James Mallister was indiscreet before his wife’s death and it has been positively scandalous since then. You cannot have failed to notice it”
“Yes, but I’m afraid I can’t see anything remarkable in it. Mallister’s not fifty and the girl is only about ten years younger than he is. They are both unattached. Why shouldn’t they go about together? Or get married if they want to?”
“Oh, no reason, now. We are the last to show narrow-mindedness or intolerance. But we were speaking of Lydia Mallister’s lifetime. We do not dislike James Mallister or Esmée. Or, with one or two exceptions, anyone else in the house. We are trying to tell you how this very unpleasant state of things arose.”
“Yes,” I said with my first mild touch of impatience. “Well, there was Lydia Mallister, a woman with a sharp tongue, confined to her room upstairs, and there was her husband far too friendly with Esmée Welton downstairs! It’s scarcely a unique situation.”
“But the two were connected by the gossip that was carried to Lydia Mallister’s room. We feel so strongly about this that we made a point of not visiting her. But there was no lack of ready informants and I daresay a good deal of exaggeration.”
“We were given to understand,” the Major took up the story, “.that Bishop Grissell’s sister was an old friend of Lydia Mallister’s. It was even said they were at school together. We could not help noticing that she visited Mrs Mallister daily.”
“And during the last months, Sonia Reid was scarcely less regular in her visits. Then Miss Godwin and Miss Grey would occasionally call on her in the afternoon.”
“But all this is surely most natural?”
“Perhaps. But we felt it was the husband’s duty to spend much of his time with his wife.”
“And didn’t he?”
“Not as much as he should have done.”
“I gather that he has paid dearly for that.”
“In money, you mean? Oh we never discuss money, Mrs Gort.”
“You’re very lucky. How do you manage? “There was a pained silence. “We never,” said Dora at last, “discuss other people’s money affairs.”
“I see. I understand Mrs Mallister cut her husband out of her will.”
“It’s not a thing we would care to go into, but we have been told that he receives the very large sum for which her life was insured.”
“Yes. That must have annoyed her,” I said tactlessly. “She couldn’t cut him out of that.”
The Major wished to reprove my vulgarity with a change of subject, but could only think of offering me another drink, a thing he was most unwilling to do.
“Would you care for another brandy?” he ventured gingerly. He seemed surprised when I promptly said: “Yes, please.”
“But there are other matters which have been forced on our notice,” went on Dora Natterley. “Mrs Mallister was taking, on her doctor’s prescription, some very powerful sleeping-pills called Dormatoze.”
“Most invalids take one or another of these things,” I said, “when they’re confined to their rooms and have no exercise.”
“That may be so. But a friend of ours who is a doctor tells us that an overdose of these to a woman in Lydia Mallister’s condition would be fatal.”
“Surely,” I said, “an overdose of sleeping-pills can be fatal to anyone, whatever the condition. And, anyway, was there any question of this? Her doctor knew about them and gave a certificate.”
“We understand he told Mr Mallister that his wife took one sleeping-pill each night. He said he was most careful to regulate this. He saw her every day, or every other day, and watched her supply. It is usual, I believe, with conscientious doctors to do so.”
“Well then?”
“It is very distasteful to enter into these details, but we feel that as we live in the house we cannot entirely ignore them. There is a curious sequence to this. Dormatoze is not often prescribed and never legally sold without a prescription. Yet a fortnight after Mrs Mallister’s death we were made aware that someone else in the house had a supply.”
“Really? How was that?”
“I remained in bed one morning,” said Dora Natterley, and I realized that she had used the singular pronoun at last. In the circumstances, perhaps, she could not very well do otherwise. “One of the women who works here, a Mrs Smithers, brought me some breakfast. I happened to mention that I had not slept well and she recommended me to take a sleeping-pill. ‘Miss Reid has some,’ she said, ‘because I’ve seen them.’ We do not care to question the servants, but I asked her, thinking that I might buy some, what Sonia Reid took. ‘Dormatoze,’ she said, ‘the same as poor Mrs Mallister was taking. Only Miss Reid gets hers in London.’ This so surprised me that I asked a quest
ion almost before I realized the impropriety of doing so. ‘How do you know?’ I said. ‘Because it’s on the box,’ Mrs Smithers told me. ‘From a chemist in Chelsea. I couldn’t help noticing because I come from Battersea myself.’”
“I’m sorry,” I told Dora Natterley, “but I can’t see much in that.”
“A girl like Sonia Reid taking sleeping-pills? She’s in the very best of health. Besides, I asked her a few days later whether she ever had to take anything to help her to sleep. ‘Never,’ she told me. ‘Sleep like a top.’ So what were we to think?”
I said that did seem a little strange.
“We talked it over,” went on Dora Natterley, and I realized that she was back to the conjugal ‘we’. “We naturally had no wish to become involved in these matters, but we felt that this little detail might be disposed of at once by a word from Sonia Reid. We decided to tax her with it.”
“We were most reluctant,” put in the Major, “but the household by then seemed so full of doubts and suspicions of all kinds that it would have been a relief to have this dismissed.”
“And Sonia denied having any sleeping-pills?” I suggested.
“Worse than that,” said Dora Natterley. “She became very angry and asked what on earth it was to do with us. We tried to explain that unfortunately we are all, much against our wills, caught up in these circumstances, but she became quite offensive. We said we had hoped she could dismiss our doubts immediately, but she said it was ridiculous to have any doubts on such a subject. Then we asked why, if she needed sleeping-pills, she had to go to London for them instead of getting them prescribed by Dr Cuffley. She said she happened to be in London when she wanted them. She had, in fact, spent a weekend in town a week or so before Mrs Mallister’s death. We reminded her that she had told us she never took sleeping-pills and she called us impertinent to question her about it. You can see that we have cause to feel disturbed, can’t you?”
“Not really, I’m afraid,” I said as kindly as possible. “Unless you are seriously suggesting that Sonia Reid killed Mrs Mallister.”
“We should never make such a suggestion,” said Dora Natterley. “Never. It would be against all our principles. But we cannot help finding the circumstances questionable.”
“Surely if you or anyone else in the house have reason to think that Mrs Mallister’s death was not a natural one you have a remedy. You should go to the police.”
“That we would certainly never do. We should find it quite unbearable to be involved in such a thing.”
“But you say you are involved willy-nilly, Mrs Natterley.”
“Not in police inquiries and a public scandal.”
“I’m considered rather blunt,” I told them both. “It seems to me a simple matter. Either you and the others believe that Lydia Mallister was murdered, or you have all allowed yourselves to get into a state of suspicion and doubt about nothing at all. If the first, you have an obvious duty. If the second, the sooner the whole thing is forgotten the better.”
They both seemed to think this over.
“We find it so difficult to dismiss it from our minds,” said Mrs Natterley at last. “Something is always happening to stir it up. Look at this evening, for instance, and the scene Sonia Reid made at dinner.”
“Yes,” I admitted, “that was unpleasant.”
“Besides,” said the Major. “It’s not only the events of the past. You yourself have noticed it. What we cannot help feeling is that something is still going on, and perhaps even more is impending, too. It isn’t at all comfortable.”
“It’s interesting,” I could not help saying.
“But suppose it is also dangerous? If our very worst doubts are well-founded “—I let the curious phrase pass—“it seems likely that there is a murderer under this roof at this moment.”
I considered that. “I hope you’re not trying to frighten me, Major Natterley? “I said.
“Not in the least. We should never wish to do such a thing. But you do see the possibility?”
“I see that if Lydia Mallister was murdered—and I’m bound to say I have no reason as yet to think she was—it looks as though her murderer was someone who was then and is still in the house. No one has left since, I believe?”
“No one. We have made no study of crime, Mrs Gort, but it is commonly believed that a murderer too often finds himself under the necessity of striking again. Someone, perhaps, knows something which would be fatal to him if it were revealed, someone who may be unaware that he possesses any such information.”
“That is a common gambit of crime fiction,” I said, “but I don’t know how often it happens in real life. Most double and treble murders seem to be the dreary repetitions of a sex maniac or of an utterly ruthless criminal obtaining money by a tried method.”
“But there are cases, surely …”
“I can only call to mind one at the moment,” I said. “The Birmingham Doctor Ruxton. He murdered his wife and found himself obliged to murder their servant who returned to the house unexpectedly and found him disposing of the body.”
“I am sure there are many others. Frankly we cannot make up our minds whether to stay or not. If we leave, it might even look as though we had something to conceal.”
“I suppose it might,” I said politely, as though this had only now occurred to me.
“It is all very unpleasant. We have never had any experience of this kind before. We find it morbid. Yet we cannot help feeling a certain disquiet.”
“We have found it a great relief to discuss the whole matter with you, Mrs Gort. We said today, that you would obviously have a level-headed view of it all. That is why we invited you to share our confidence.”
“And your Armagnac,” I said brightly. “I’m most grateful to you.”
But when I reached my room I thought that both their Armagnac and their confidence had been shared sparingly.
5
IT is three days since that conversation with the Natterleys and I know today that whatever ‘it’ is that they all discuss, I am now involved.
It’s my own fault, really. I realized, as I made a certain remark, that I was throwing out a challenge, not to any individual but to fate. I had not really taken ‘it’ seriously. Good, gossiping Mrs Jerrison and those ridiculous Natterleys had failed to convince me that there was anything more in the house than a mild attack of mass hysteria. So during lunch, which gathers most of us together, I dropped my bombshell.
“I always keep a diary,” I said.
Phiz exploded.
“Sheer sentimentality, diary-keeping,” was her snorted comment. “Or exhibitionism.”
“Not at all. My diary has very little in it about me.”
“What is it about, then?”
“The people I meet, chiefly. Their affairs interest me far more than my own.”
“Worse,” said Phiz. “Mean to say after you leave us at night you go up to your room and write about us?”
“When there’s anything to write about.”
“Perhaps you would tell us,” said the bishop rather haughtily, “whether you have found the trivialities of our life in this house worth a place in your diary?”
“Not the trivialities,” I said, “except where they are significant. The realities. And, perhaps, the speculations.”
The bishop grunted. I hoped it would recall to him a diary kept in Kenya or Kassala, Khartoum or Kafa Kumba, because I felt I had said more than was wise. But no. He seemed to take the matter too seriously for anecdotes.
I also mentioned, as I see now foolishly, that I should not be in to dinner on the following evening. I told this to Mrs Derosse, but of course it was audible to everyone. I might have guessed what these two statements of mine would produce, but, as I say, I did not yet take the situation very seriously.
“Going up to town, Mrs Gort?” asked Esmée.
“No. Only to Northmere. I have some friends there.”
“Going by car? “It was Steve Lawson who asked this.
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“Yes. I’ve hired Woodhams.”
I thought no more about these commonplace exchanges at the time and set out during the afternoon to visit Paul and Valerie, a young couple I have known for some years. Paul is an artist, Valerie very much a mother, and when I reached their place at tea-time I found that they were having one of their rare but devastating quarrels. I needn’t go into that—it concerned the children; Paul’s work; Valerie’s being tied to the house like a slave; Paul not having a moment’s peace in which to think; Valerie’s friends being insulted when they came to see her; Paul being unable to suffer fools; Valerie thanking God that she could or she would have left long ago; Paul remembering someone called Michael and Valerie wanting to know what about a certain Gloria. It was quite evident that they would enjoy this better if left to themselves and that it would be protracted by the presence of a third person. If I left them to reach a climax of bitterness and recrimination at about ten o’clock that evening, they would be in bed, in tears, and in one another’s arms by eleven. But, if I stayed, it would go on till they were too tired for reconciliation. So I made an excuse and by half-past six was approaching Cat’s Cradle.
I stopped the chauffeur in the road beyond the drive and walked up to the front door, which is kept open. I met no one and thought with some amusement that the evening’s ‘changing’ had begun.
I had been thinking, on my way back from Northmere, about the Natterleys’ ‘strike again’ theory, which had seemed to me at the time merely melodramatic. Yet, I remembered, there is nothing quite as dangerous as a creature cornered and afraid. If it was true that there had been a murder here, it was also true, as I had admitted, that it was almost certainly by someone in the house. To carry the hypothesis farther, if someone else was the only person with information—consciously or not—which would incriminate the culprit, then it was quite logical to expect him or her, given the opportunity, to eliminate the one who knew too much. But there were several conditions attached to this. The murderer wouldn’t do it unless the proof was clear and definite and had not already been passed on. To hasten the death of a woman who could not in any case live long might be the act of someone cowardly and desperate, but not by nature homicidal. To plan and carry out the death of someone who happened to have incriminating knowledge was a different and perhaps more inhuman crime.