‘I had to forget my pride, Mr. Woodsley. The urge to see the dear little fellow was too great. So I phoned Mitchell and asked him if, as a special favour, he wouldn’t bring the child to see me. I tried to be as humble as I could, and it worked. He agreed and brought him to see me. It was from then that he and Gregory began to visit Eltonsbrody. I’m always in an ecstasy of fearful joy when Gregory comes. My God! Is it conceivable that I must now use the past tense when referring to that little chap? I bought a camera specially to take his picture every time he came to see me. And that portable gramophone is solely for his entertainment. I have a set of marbles, too, and a rubber ball and a small cricket bat. He and Tappin and I would often play cricket near the kitchen . . .’
Her voice broke. Her eyes were glistening. For a long time she was silent. When she spoke again she might have forgotten my presence.
‘Like his grandfather, he had it strong on him. I should have given anything to have watched him die. I should have danced with excitement. To stand beside his bed and watch him slowly strangling with pneumonia—gasping and gradually growing weaker and weaker—Ah! Death! The sweet rapture of death!’ She seemed to catch herself. She sighed and said: ‘But there! What have I been saying? I’ve let myself think aloud. Please bear with me, my boy.’
I still refrained from making any comment, studying her, trying to place her, to get her right in my judgment, to make up my mind one way or the other about her. It was difficult, because I had to admit that while her actual words sounded utterly loony, her manner was normal. The gleam in her eyes was that of a rational person. It is true that homicidal maniacs are supposed to behave with apparent normality, but nothing could convince me that she had homicidal tendencies. I even tried to tell myself that perhaps she was not so much insane as flighty, but the next moment had to shake my head. There was something too deliberate and reasoned about her air. Every now and then she would give me a twinkling glance that made me wonder whether she were not trying to pull my leg and laughing at me secretly.
When we were entering the driveway of Eltonsbrody she touched my arm and said: ‘How much would you like to bet they’re standing about in the dining-room discussing me furiously!’
She was right. The servants, except for Malverne, were in the dining-room. We entered the house by way of the kitchen (the front door was kept permanently locked), and we found them in a group near the sideboard, murmuring animatedly. They broke off self-consciously, and Jackman was the first to offer her sympathy.
Her mistress received it as any normal mistress would have done. She thanked her in a quiet voice.
I did not wait to hear more. I went upstairs to get my easel and things, for I intended neither the eccentricities of my hostess nor mysterious events of any kind to prevent me from getting on with my work. It is true I was on holiday, but I am of such a temperament that simply to laze and do nothing for several days in succession—even for one day—means utter misery and boredom. For me to enjoy a holiday I must intersperse my lazing with some well-planned bouts of work, or of love-making; either would do as a means to shutting out boredom.
At the top of the stairs, however, I found that the urge to pause and gaze at the two closed doors of the windward rooms proved too strong to resist. Now that Mrs. Scaife had aroused my curiosity in earnest, I was inclined to be suspicious and inquisitive about every little thing.
I moved a few paces along the corridor in an easterly direction, and tried the door of the doctor’s old room, deciding that I must satisfy myself that it really was locked.
It did not disappoint me. In fact, the knob seemed stuck tight with dust—or rust—for it would not turn at all.
For a while I stood listening to the wind, I could hear it whistling in under the open eaves (open in tropical fashion for airiness). I could hear it sending whirling draughts circling and writhing within the closed-up space of the room. In my fancy I could see cobwebs hanging in loops and festoons from the old fourposter, and draped all down the old wardrobe that swayed and creaked, and layers of dust on the chest of drawers and wash-stand. I saw myself walking across the room and watching the thick, grey dust rise in a sluggish cloud from the floor round my shoes. I even fancied I could hear the dull, grating crackle of a window as I pushed it up to let the wind come rushing freely in.
Then it occurred to me that there was a key-hole, and why shouldn’t I have a peep inside? I shoo-ed off my scruples, bent and applied my eye.
But the blackness of midnight rewarded my inquisitiveness. Some heavy curtain seemed to hang on the inside, or it might be, I told myself, that dust—or rust—and perhaps a little cobweb had blocked the aperture.
I had just begun to wonder if it might be worth my while getting one of my slimmer paint-brushes and doing a little probing with the handle to satisfy myself that it really was dust and cobweb when I thought I heard a sound nearby. A faint, quavering grunt.
I turned and glanced round.
It was Malverne. She was standing in the doorway of her mistress’s room, broom in hand, staring mournfully at me.
‘Well?’ I said. ‘What was the grunt for?’
‘Oi was sweeping the room,’ she said, her face still like a funeral.
‘Obviously. I notice you have a broom. Well, go on sweeping.’
She grunted again. Turned off, and before going back into the room, said: ‘If you want to see something come in here and Oi will show you.’
Curious at once, I followed her inside, asking: ‘What’s that? What do you want to show me?’
Her back was to me as I entered, but suddenly she turned round, and her bodice gaped open, revealing her naked breasts.
‘What the devil!’ I exclaimed, recoiling—then stopped recoiling, shocked but not unpleasantly shocked. ‘I see. So this is it?’
Her face unsmiling, still like an undertaker’s, she said: ‘What you mean by that?’
I replied: ‘I mean, your mistress warned me about you. You like to exhibit yourself, she said.’
‘How you loike them?’ she asked, glancing down sourly at her breasts.
‘Very attractive. Excellent pair. And now what’s your game?’
She grunted. ‘Oi ain’ got no game. Oi only want you to look.’
‘I am looking—and I’m very entertained, too, believe me,’ I told her. ‘But remember this, in case you don’t know. I’m an artist. It’s my living. I’ve seen dozens of female breasts—and made hundreds of sketches of them. This is nothing new to me.’
‘Oi know you does paint pictures and draw. You want to draw me?’
‘I can do better than that. I can haul you behind one of the oleander bushes in the front garden and give you what you really want.’
She shrugged her bodice right off, giving me a baleful glance and tossing her head. She grunted, sniffed faintly, too, then said: ‘Oi’m not a common girl, you better understand that. Oi don’t do no nastiness.’
I chuckled. ‘If you ask me, I think you and your mistress are a pair. You’re both clean potty.’
‘What that mean?’ she asked.
‘It means you’re round the bend. Look, tell me something. Have you ever taken a peep into those two windward rooms, Malverne?’
‘What Oi going to peep in them for? Oi can’t see nothing through the key-hole loike you been trying to do.’
‘Since you’ve been here, have you never seen the inside of them?’
‘Never once. And Oi don’t want to.’
‘Hasn’t your mistress ever asked you to go into them and sweep?’
‘Never once. Oi only sweeps in this room and the other room where you staying.’ She threw forward her breasts as though for better effect, grunting. Round, erect breasts, faintly blue-veined. Really splendid specimens.
‘Now, look, you can put on your bodice again if you like.’ I said. ‘I’ve seen enough for the time being. Again let me compliment you—and I really mean it. You have a wonderful figure. Now, tell me about those two rooms. Have none of the other
servants gone into them?’
‘Only Oi alone the mistress does allow to come upstairs here.’
‘Oh. Only you. And why’s that? Why can’t the others come up?’
‘Ask the mistress that. Don’t ask me.’
All this while she had not once broken even into the faintest smile. She kept turning herself from side to side in a gentle swaying motion like a mannequin, determined that I shouldn’t miss seeing any aspect of her figure. It was incredible, and once I had to blink hard, wondering what sort of creature she could be. She took the cake for abnormality.
‘But I’m interested,’ I said, trying to suppress the fact that the sight of her figure was beginning to disturb me. ‘Why does Mrs. Scaife forbid the rest of them from coming up here?’
She grunted, and said: ‘One noight Oi had a dream about the doctor’s old room. Oi dream Oi was standing insoide it, and Oi was naked. And the doctor was there looking at me. He look and he look at me, and Oi feel noice. And after he go on looking Oi soigh heavy and tell him Oi’m not that koind of girl. Oi don’t do no nastiness.’
I laughed. ‘You must have escaped from a mental home, Malverne. Look, I’m not interested in your Freudian dreams. I want to know about those two rooms—’
I was interrupted. The telephone began to ring.
Without hesitation, I moved to the small bedside table and took up the instrument, certain that it must be Mitchell. I said: ‘Hallo. This is Eltonsbrody.’
There was a pause—a rather lengthy pause, I thought—then I heard a deep sound that might have been a grunt. The instrument went dead.
I looked round. Malverne had left the room. Puzzled, I was returning the instrument to its cradle when I heard a footstep, and Mrs. Scaife came in. She was smiling. ‘So you’ve answered the phone for me again, my boy. Very kind of you. Was it Mitchell?’
‘The person didn’t answer,’ I said. ‘I barely heard a grunt.’
‘Ah.’
‘But I don’t understand it,’ I said. ‘I thought you told me only Mitchell puts through calls to here.’
‘That’s so.’
‘Well, I’m quite sure it wasn’t he who called this time. Whoever it was must have been surprised to hear my voice and just hung up on me.’
‘I see.’
‘You do? I’m afraid I don’t.’
She smiled again. ‘Don’t let the matter upset you, my boy. He will ring up again. Never fear. You must have given him a scare. That’s why he hung up without answering. He expected me to answer.’
After a pause, she added: ‘He’s an old servant. He used to be with us here as a man-of-all-work, but when the doctor died he left and went to Bridgetown to set up in his trade—his favourite trade. He’s a maker of tombs.’
‘I could have guessed it was something like that,’ I said, and at the dryness of my tone she laughed and told me: ‘Like myself, he is fascinated by the subject of death. He and I got on very well together. It was he who built the doctor’s tomb.’
‘I see.’
‘By the way, was Malverne annoying you just before I came in?’
‘Far from it. She was entertaining me.’
She uttered deprecatory sounds. ‘Well, I warned you, didn’t I?’
‘Don’t let it upset you,’ I said, but fidgeted somewhat in embarrassment. ‘I’m perfectly capable of handling such situations.’
She sighed. ‘When she’s dead I’m sure her bosom is going to haunt this house. Just her bosom. It will hover all over the place. She has bared it so often, upstairs here as well as downstairs.’
‘I wouldn’t mind being haunted by such a ghost,’ I murmured, making to leave the room.
She laughed softly. ‘Wicked young man! Oh, well! But Michael had a weakness for female bosoms, too. And Borkum.’
‘Borkum?’
‘Yes. Borkum. The old servant who phoned a few moments ago. He loved female bosoms. He would be entranced by Malverne’s idiosyncrasy if he were here.’
‘Would he? When last was he here, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘I haven’t seen him for a long time—nor heard from him. Not since shortly after the doctor’s death. But I knew he would get in touch with me to-day. Borkum never fails me.’
As she turned off to go out into the corridor, she added in a low voice: ‘He and I have a gruesome little job to perform, Mr. Woodsley.’
‘Gruesome?’
‘And satisfying. Yes. Gruesome and satisfying. For me it will be.’
6
Well, I had got accustomed to these horrifying statements, so I expressed no alarm. I merely nodded and murmured: ‘Quite so,’ and left her.
That morning I spent two satisfying hours before my easel which I set up in a secluded corner of the grounds, in the shade of a mahogany tree—not far from the tool-shed, Tappin’s headquarters. I had chosen this spot because from here Eltonsbrody showed up best in the bright morning sunshine, and the trees were arranged and spaced exactly as I wanted them—all save one dwarfed flamboyant which, I decided, would have to be left out, as it obscured an essential patch of red represented by the southern brick wall of the kitchen. To have omitted that bit of red would have upset the harmony of my colour-scheme, and this was unthinkable. Yet, at first, I felt distinctly uneasy about choosing this spot, because I feared that Tappin would have proved a nuisance.
I was wrong. He was curious but most discreet. He strolled up and asked me if I were painting a picture of the house, and when I told him yes, he wagged his head, and said that when he was at school he used to draw, but nowadays he was not so good at it. He used to draw tubs and mugs and chairs, and once he ‘did paint a big picture wid water-colours in a choild’s animal-book.’ Then he showed his discretion by refraining from hanging round to watch me at work. He seemed to sense that I would have found this annoying.
I liked the fellow, and had already had one or two interesting chats with him. Despite his heavy, gauche appearance, he was a man of extremely alert wits, and very intelligent. He read his newspaper carefully, and was well informed about world events. He said he was particularly interested in flying saucers and the Russian Sputnik, and he could tell me all about the doings of Sir Vivian Fuchs and his party in the Antarctic.
As things fell out, Tappin and I had a very serious conversation on Tuesday afternoon (it will be gathered of course, that the events described in the previous pages occurred on Easter Sunday night and Easter Monday morning). How this conversation came about is as follows:
On Tuesday morning, when the servants entered the dining-room for Prayers, Mrs. Scaife, instead of announcing the First Lesson, as customary, told Tappin to go and call McTurk. ‘There’s something I have to say to all of you this morning, servants,’ she went on, ‘and I think it best that I say it in the presence of McTurk as well. It concerns him, too.’
Tappin went out and returned in a few minutes with McTurk, a solemn, elderly looking negro. He and Tappin did not get on well together. They were always quarrelling over something, and Tappin (so Jackman told me) went out of his way sometimes to do things ‘to mek mock of de old man.’
McTurk came in, a surprised, disgruntled scowl on his wrinkled face. He frowned at his mistress and asked: ‘Miss Dahlia, is true you send Tappin to call me in to Prayers?’
‘Yes, McTurk, I did.’
Tappin grinned. ‘’E ain’ want to believe me, Miss Dahlia.’
In my easy chair in the sitting-room, I could not suppress a smile.
Mrs. Scaife gave McTurk a quizzical glance. ‘You hate being dragged away from your chickens and goats, eh, McTurk?’
McTurk uttered a rumbling sound, and told her, his gaze sulky and lowered: ‘It’s awroight, Miss Dahlia. Ef you send to call me Oi will come. But Tappin is a man what always meking some joke, and Oi ain’ know when to tek him serious.’ He took up a position under the picture of Mr. Gladstone, now repaired and in its place again. At once Bayley hissed at him: ‘Mr. McTurk, sir, dat picture over you’ head was de pictu
re what fall down yesterday morning!’
‘What you saying to me, boy?’
Bayley put his hand to his mouth and sniggered—and Jackman became infected, too. Malverne seemed on the point of smiling, then changed her mind and retained her mournful mien. Tappin guffawed, the bloodshot patch in his eye adding to the attractive, roguish twinkle that accompanied his mirth.
Mrs. Scaife looked from one to the other of them and smiled. ‘Everyone seems to be in a very good humour this morning.’ Her voice was good-natured. She smiled at McTurk and said: ‘Don’t you take any notice of them, McTurk. Show them you’re indifferent to their jibes.’
McTurk uttered more rumbling sounds, sulky and forbidding like a thunder-cloud. There was more tittering from the others, and when it had died down, Mrs. Scaife told them: ‘When Prayers are over I want you all to remain for a while until I’ve said what I have to say. Don’t simply go rushing off, please.’
This morning McTurk’s deep, rumbling voice gave greater pitch to the murmurous chorus of the Lord’s Prayer. But that was the only difference. The wind accompanied them as always with its monotonous drone, and from the poultry-runs and the goat-pens at the back of the house came the same sounds of cackling and clucking and the bleating of the goats.
When the prayer was over, Mrs. Scaife raised her head, looked round and smiled.
‘I know you must be curious and a little surprised, but it won’t take me long to explain.’ She put down the Bible on the sideboard. ‘You servants have been with me a number of years, and you’ve done good service. McTurk, and you, Jackman, you were here since Doctor Scaife’s time. And, you, Tappin, came shortly after the doctor’s death when Borkum left me to go to Bridgetown to work on his own.’ She glanced at Jackman again. ‘Jackman, you remember Borkum, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Miss Dahlia.’
Her mistress nodded. ‘Yes, Borkum isn’t the kind of man one easily forgets. A splendid man of all trades. Though I must admit, Tappin, that you proved by no means inferior to Borkum in a practical sense. You’re not as educated as Borkum, of course. Borkum went to Edinburgh and studied medicine for three years. He could not finish his studies because his father died and his poor mother could not afford to keep him at the university any longer. A great pity, because he has a good brain. He would have made a clever doctor.’
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