by Bruce, Leo
It was the first time in that house anyone had used those very ordinary words and I was pleased.
“Now what’s it all about? “she asked.
“Nothing—or everything. Either there has been a murder here or all your aunt’s guests have worked themselves to a point not far from hysteria over nothing at all.”
“What do you think?”
“Your aunt asked me that. I would say there is sufficient to make some of them very frightened. Moreover, there have been one or two nasty little things like room-searching.”
“You don’t think it could be something else? Nothing to do with Lydia Mallister at all?”
“Frankly that hadn’t occurred to me. Everyone seems to go back to Lydia Mallister’s death as a matter of course.”
“A red herring, perhaps?”
“It’s possible, I suppose. Did you know her?”
“Yes. Small, mean and vain. She could switch on a sort of wan charm when she liked and was intelligent and musical. I would say she would go to almost any length to do something thoroughly malicious.”
“Did she know she had to die?”
“Oh yes. She soon got that out of the specialists and, to do her justice, she faced it with courage. She knew almost to the day. Why? What are you thinking?”
“It was your saying that she would go to almost any length to be malicious. Do you think that, if she knew she was dying, she was capable of doing something which would make it look as though she had been murdered? Out of spite, I mean?”
Christine smiled.
“A brilliant idea. I would say it was possible but only if it involved James Mallister, and it couldn’t very well do that. He was in hospital. Perhaps your ingenious mind is working out something about that? No, no. He really was in hospital. My aunt has checked on it. He couldn’t have got out or anything. My aunt saw the night nurse. Besides, he was far too ill. No, I’m afraid your idea is out. She hated her husband with all the venom she had got, but no one else like that.”
“What about Esmée Weiton?”
Again Christine gave me that very full smile. “Oh, it wasn’t that kind of hatred. I don’t think she cared a damn about James and Esmée having an affair, or whatever they were having. No, she hated James for himself, for having married her and seen her health decline, for being a cheerful and good-natured man and for not being as ill as she was. See what I mean?”
“Whom else did she dislike?”
“Pretty well everyone except Phiz. But she only had one hate in her life, just as other people only have one love. That was for James. It was quite terrifyingly intense.”
“Did he know it?”
“Not fully. He used to say he was afraid he got on her nerves. I don’t think he felt anything much for her, except a sort of mild wonder and admiration at her courage.” Presently she said: “I hear you were thinking of leaving?”
“I was, yes. I’ve got some work to do.”
“I hope you won’t go. You’re the only person I can talk to. I’m devoted to my aunt, but she’s really in such a state over this that she can’t discuss it sensibly.”
“What do you intend to do? “I asked.
“Find out what it’s all about. I’m no detective, but I’ve got some common sense, which is all that’s needed here. I’ve had to come to my aunt’s rescue before.”
“You seem very confident.”
“I am. I’ll soon find out who’s playing monkey-tricks and have them out of the place in a flash. We can’t have this.”
“You don’t think there’s any danger in the situation?”
To my surprise she did not dismiss this. “I don’t know,” she said. “I shall have to feel that.”
“Abject fear is always dangerous,” I said rather pompously.
“Beast at bay? Yes, I know. I suppose the most ordinary person could do something desperate and violent out of fear. What do you think of the Gee-Gees?”
“I scarcely know them.”
“I’ve always thought them rather pets, but then I’ve always quite liked everyone at Cat’s Cradle. In different ways, of course. Even Lydia Mallister.”
We were interrupted there by Mrs Derosse’s return and soon afterwards those guests who were lunching in the house began to gather.
The idea that Christine had brought sunlight into the house has been borne out by the weather, which has suddenly turned Mediterranean. After a patchy summer with a July that I could only call chilly, it seems that August will go out in placid splendour. The winds round this house on a headland have been strong and various until now, but they seem to have dropped in deference to the golden sunlight. I am very pleased, of course, and amused by the coincidence of this coming at the time of Christine’s arrival, so that Miss Godwin and Miss Grey can both say: “You’ve brought the fine weather with you, anyhow!”
But this evening something happened which I disliked very much. I overheard a conversation. Only once or twice in my life has this happened to me by accident and I have never, needless to say, sought deliberately to overhear.
It was so warm and still that after dinner I went into the garden, which is on the more sheltered side of the house and in weather like this is delightful. I must say that Mrs Derosse is lucky in her employees, for Smithers the gardener seems as good as the Jerrisons. There was plenty of starlight and a thin new moon—would it be a harvest moon?—but the light was not sufficient to allow me to do anything but just sit quietly. I had almost dropped off to sleep when I heard voices.
For a moment I did not know whose they were or just where they were coming from. They were disembodied voices, as it were, sadly calling across the night. Then I realized that they were rising to me from the terrace below. On this, the south side of the house, the garden goes down in terraces almost to the beach. The speakers’ heads were not twenty feet from mine but, because they were lower and there was a rocky slope rising from where they stood, they had the illusion of being very much alone. Few people know how clearly voices carry upwards on a still night.
I recognized them after a moment—Steve Lawson and Sonia Reid.
“Won’t listen,” she was saying. “Doesn’t believe I’ve got it and anyway it’s too late now.”
“But it’s not. It’s never too late. We can prove they knew.”
“I said that. Wants to see it.”
“Bluffing … You’ve got to get it, do you hear? You’ve damn well got to! If not …”
A little of Sonia’s spirit seemed to return. “If not, what?” she asked defiantly.
“If not, you know what I shall do.”
“You wouldn’t. I know you wouldn’t. I’m not afraid of that.”
“I damn well would! You’ve got to get it and get it at once …”
This, I thought, is where I came in. How should I take myself out of earshot? They were coming up the steps to where I was sitting and if I stood up and walked away they would see me. I thought the best thing was to greet them as soon as they came in sight as though it was the first I knew.
“Hullo! “I said, “you two popped up like someone from the underworld. Is there a way right down to the beach there?”
Sonia’ kept her head. “Hullo, Mrs Gort! Yes, we’ve been down to the bay. No moonlight bathing, though. That’s an over-rated pleasure if ever there was one.”
“How long have you been sitting here?” asked Steve Lawson, quite pleasantly but with a hint of anxiety in his voice.
“Only a few minutes,” I said, “and I’m going in now. But it is lovely tonight, isn’t it? Let’s all go in and have a nightcap.”
Actually I drink very little, but I think I have a reputation at Cat’s Cradle for liking it more than an old lady should. Anyway, they both seemed quite pleased to join me, relieved that I had apparently overheard nothing of their somewhat cryptic conversation.
Who, I wondered when I was in my room later, wouldn’t listen? And what were the two ‘its’? The ‘it’ which someone didn’t believe Sonia had, and the �
��it’ which she must at all costs get?
7
REALLY, the atmosphere in this house grows more and more like the threatening stillness which comes before a thunderstorm. It’s quite uncanny. Not the weather—the weather is as gorgeous as ever, and we’re all saying we’ve never known so many hours of sunshine in England. No, it’s the atmosphere in the house. No one seems unaffected by it.
After lunch today I found myself alone in the garden with the bishop and his sister. I ought to have gone up to my room at once and started to work, but it was so pleasant in the deckchair on the lawn which forms the highest terrace that I foolishly stayed too long and saw the two tall figures bearing down on me. If it was to be only reminiscences of Nairobi or Natal, Ngoundere or Niagara, I could doze in peace but there was a look in their eyes which suggested that their approach was purposeful and that I was in for something more immediate than Mother Hubbards or big game. I was right.
“Settling down, Mrs Gort? “boomed the bishop. “Find you can work here?”
“Splendidly, thank you,” I said disobligingly.
This seemed to nonplus him somewhat. “Don’t find too many distractions?” he tried.
“None. That’s why I chose Cat’s Cradle.”
“That’s why we chose it originally, wasn’t it, Phiz my dear?”
“It was,” said Phiz. She has a trick of drawing in her breath sharply and nasally after voicing her monosyllables. It has the effect of a snort.
“No longer, I fear,” said the bishop. “No longer a peaceful little haven, unfortunately. After a vigorous and I hope fruitful life, we found in this remote place the very repose we had always wanted. ‘Port after stormy seas, ease after war’, you know. Not once but many times as we were paddled up the crocodile-infested rivers of Madagascar in our frail canoes, I remarked to my sister that one day we would return to England and settle down for the evening of our days. At last the time came and we did so. Then what happened?”
The question was clearly rhetorical but Phiz could not resist it. “Murder! “she said and snorted vigorously.
“I would not go as far as to say that,” returned the bishop judiciously, “but our old friend Lydia Mallister died in what we cannot help thinking ambiguous circumstances. Her life, it is true, had been despaired of by the doctors, though not by us. We have seen far too many miraculous recoveries in far places to despair of one here, with all medical science to aid it.”
“Remember Mwomba?” asked Phiz with something intended for a smile on her equine face.
“A case in point!” said the bishop enthusiastically. “Mwomba-Mwomba was a tribal chief in my diocese …”
“And he recovered? “I asked, looking impressed, but at the same time neatly curtailing several minutes of missionary narrative.
“He did, though his case was considered quite as hopeless as that of Lydia Mallister. Mind you “—he raised a bristly forefinger—” I do not say that Lydia would have mended completely. But I firmly believe she might have been alive today.”
“Then why isn’t she? “I asked innocently.
“Ah,” said the bishop, throwing into the interjection such occult significance that I was startled.
“That’s the point,” said Phiz.
“You knew her well?”
“School chums,” said Phiz loudly. “Ragged old Holly together—Miss Hollington, games mistress. Lyddy was a sport.”
I had not previously heard her speak at such length and thought this betokened some deep sentiment or emotion.
“We were not, however,” the bishop pontificated, “on such intimate terms with the man she married. We have never, to be frank, felt much confidence in Mallister.”
“Stinker! “put in Phiz, reverting to her normal curtness.
“My sister, as you will observe, Mrs Gort, is apt to be a mite … categorical. But there certainly has always seemed to us to be something unhealthy about Mallister.”
I felt it was time to make some contribution to this friendly chatter. “I must say he looks the picture of health to me,” I said.
“Physically, doubtless. But I am not a blind believer in the tag mens sana in corpore sano. I have known too many excessively unhealthy minds in patently healthy bodies for that. I remember, for instance, a man in Durban”—or was it Dondo or Dares-Salaam?—”a powerful fellow in the pink of condition …”
“But with a nasty mind? “I interpolated briskly. “Yet I wouldn’t say that of Mallister. I have spoken to him several times and he seems to be a very normal creature.”
It occurred to me at that moment that, with these two and others in the house, Mallister would have had a poor chance if he had not been absent at the time of his wife’s death.
“Normal? Man’s a monster! “shouted Phiz.
“You see, Mrs Gort, our affection for our old friend Lydia Mallister makes us perhaps too keenly observant. We cannot help seeing that there is an association of sorts between him and the young woman Esmée Welton.”
“You don’t need to be keenly observant to see that,” I told them. “I saw it my first day in the house. But what about it? They’re both free agents.”
“You saw it at once, did you?” said the bishop. “That’s highly significant.”
“I told you,” said Phiz to her brother. “They’re quite shameless.”
“It is not the present situation which gives us concern,” explained the bishop patiently. “They are, as you say, free agents. But this had started while our poor Lydia was still alive.”
“Did she mind?” I asked innocently.
“I beg your pardon?”
I repeated my question.
“What would you feel?” asked Phiz sharply. “Husband running around with another woman.”
“It would depend on the husband,” I pointed out reasonably.
This seemed to baffle them and I saw them exchange glances. The bishop then began from a new angle.
“We are not, I hope, intolerant or narrow-minded people. We have seen too much of the world and its ways for that. When I first took up my ministry to the people of the Comorro Islands I found …”
“Terrible,” I said quickly. “But this is England.”
“I was about to demonstrate that we have seen and heard too much to be stuffy. But in this case we felt our broad-mindedness was stretched to the utmost.”
“It was flagrant,” said Phiz.
Yet, I thought, it had not been without advantage to Miss Grissell. Perhaps this was an unkind and unworthy thought, but the pomposity of the bishop and the growls of his sister were not easy to bear.
“You dislike Mallister,” I said. “All right. We are all entitled to our likes and dislikes. But you can scarcely connect Mallister with what you call the ambiguity about his wife’s death. He had been in hospital for some weeks when it happened. Fortunately for him, in the light of subsequent gossip, he wasn’t even in the house.”
“No, but Esmée Welton was,” said Phiz.
This left a very nasty silence.
“Are you really suggesting …” I began, but this time it was I who was interrupted by the bishop. “We are suggesting nothing,” he said. “Far be it from me to add to the suspicions and suggestions already rife. No one wishes more that all his doubts could be dissolved, but the memory of our old friend puts us under certain obligations. It has been rumoured that since the obstacle of Mallister’s married state has been removed by Lydia’s death, the two of them, Mallister and Esmée Welton, are contemplating matrimony. We feel that, before that happens, further investigations should be made. I would have been failing in my duty if I had not pointed out to the authorities that there were those of us here who were far from satisfied with the facts that have so far emerged.”
“The authorities?” I asked.
“I have communicated with the Chief Constable,” said the bishop. “Colonel Lyle de Lisle De lisle L’Isle.”
“An acquaintance of yours?”
“Rather more than that. Lie
Low, as he was called in the service, has been a friend of mine since our days in Bulawayo”—or was it Basutoland or Bloemfontein?-—“and what days they were! I remember on one occasion …”
“How very fortunate that he is now the Chief Constable here! “I said crisply. “And what does he think of this matter?”
“Ah, that I cannot tell you. The police here as in other parts of the world must preserve a discreet silence about their inner thoughts. But at least he is in possession of what few facts are known to us. What steps he will order we cannot say, but remembering my friend Lie Low and his love of thoroughness, I should not be surprised if they were exhumation and a post-mortem.”
“In other words, you think Lydia Mallister was poisoned?”
“It is not for us …” began the bishop, but his sister cut in: “Of course she was!”
I was beginning to understand how people had been convicted of crimes through local gossip and suspicion.
“I wonder,” I said, “why you tell me all this?”
“I feel that, as an arrival here after the main events, you should be put in the picture,” said the bishop. “I wish to make no secret of the fact that I have written to Colonel Lisle.”
“Then let me make my position clear,” I said. “I do not deny that since I came here my curiosity has been aroused. I should not be human if it hadn’t. But not by the death of Lydia Mallister. I see no reason to think that anything but natural. What has intrigued me is the spectacle of all the guests and staff working themselves up to a state of suspicion and even fear. Into this I will not be drawn.”
I thought that put the matter pretty strongly and would settle both the bishop and his formidable sister, but I had underestimated them. They rose together as if by pre-arrangement and stood over me.
“I don’t think you will be able to avoid it,” said the bishop. “If you remain here, that is. I don’t think anyone in the house will be able to avoid it.” They moved away and I was left to think over that.
But that conversation, curious as its implications were, was nothing to what happened later today. I am still bewildered by the unexpectedness of it.