Watson's Choice
Page 9
‘Ah,’ he said, when she came into the room, ‘splendid! Now I can ring for cocktails. I was getting desperate. Well, and how are you? Have you recovered from Christmas?’
‘Oh, yes. I always keep it in Oxfordshire.’
‘Why Oxfordshire?’
‘My favourite nephew and his wife live there, and, as a family, we all tend to gravitate to them when there is more work than usual, as at Christmastide, to be done. Shopping, catering and fitting guests into appropriate spaces seems to be water off a duck’s back where they are concerned, and one always takes advantage of that sort of hospitality. One cherishes the illusion in such households that one is no trouble.’
‘It’s the same here. This is a very well-run house. The housekeeper is completely efficient and completely unobtrusive. I always enjoy staying with Chantrey. I wonder what it will be like with Linda at the helm?’
‘There will probably be less efficiency for a time, but Sir Bohun, I hope, will prefer it. Of course, Miss Campbell may elect to keep the housekeeper in her present position of authority.’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised. I fancy Linda is a lazy little baggage. Why on earth Chantrey wants to get tied up to her I can’t for the life of me imagine. They don’t hit it off a bit. She’s always nagging the man. If it’s like that now, I simply can’t think what it will be like when they’re married.’
Mrs Bradley could not, either. She took a glass of sherry from the tray that was held out to her, sipped it appreciatively, and then remarked:
‘I did not see you at tea.’
‘I had it in the billiard-room with Lupez. Can’t stick listening to Chantrey and the Campbell bickering. (You can’t call it anything else.) It gives me the willies to hear her bullying the poor chap all the time. She’s going to do this; she’s not going to have that; she’s going to sack Grimston … that bird’s getting pretty well browned-off, I can tell you. One of these days he’s going to beat her up and walk out of this house. He’s one of those slow-combustion maniacs, and he’s sweet on the nasty little shrew. Did he but know it, he’s had a lucky escape, but he hasn’t got around to that yet. Mind if I have a cigarette? Would you care for one, too?’
The next confidante was Nanny Call, and after her came Manoel.
‘There’s going to be trouble, madam,’ said the pleasant-faced, elderly woman when Mrs Bradley asked her, when she met her on one of the landings after dinner, how the children were getting on.
‘How do you mean, Mrs Call?’ Mrs Bradley enquired. She did not gossip with servants unless she was engaged upon detective work, but she knew that Nanny Call was sensible and discreet, a decent, staunch old body.
‘She’s going to make him turn those little children out, madam. What’s more, she must have told Master Philip so. He came to me in real distress the other day. “Nanny,” he says to me – as white as a sheet he was, and his eyes like saucers – “Nanny,” he says, “if she turns us out, where shall we go? I don’t want to go to an orphanage,” he says, “and that’s the only thing I can see for it if she won’t let us stay here.” Did you ever, madam! Wicked and cruel, I call it, and when I get my notice I’m going to tell her so! But what can you expect of a jumped-up, common little thing like that!’
‘It is extraordinary that people will torture children,’ said Mrs Bradley, who did, indeed, find this the most extraordinary of all human aberrations. ‘It satisfies some feeling of egoism, I suppose. It makes one wonder whether cruelty is not one of the natural instincts. So many people are cruel that it seems cruelty must be part of our nature, doesn’t it?’
‘Master Philip is such a sensitive boy,’ said Mrs Call, not attempting to answer Mrs Bradley’s question. ‘But the trouble is, madam, that if she’s made up her mind to have him and little Master Timothy – who’s really no more than a baby – turned out of this house, turned out they’ll be, even if it was only to sleep under a hedge and starve to death tramping the roads.’
Mrs Bradley admired this forceful imagery in silence for a moment, then she said:
‘Sir Bohun will have a voice in the matter, you know. As he volunteered to take the children in, I can scarcely imagine his agreeing to turn them out.’
Nanny Call shook her head.
‘You don’t know her as we’re beginning to know her, madam. I would have said that the master was a strong-minded man.’ Mrs Bradley, who, as his psychiatrist, knew a great deal better than this, held her peace. ‘But really,’ the woman continued, ‘I begin to have my doubts. She does just as she likes with him, madam, and so high and mighty with it as makes you wonder. She’s changed several things already that suited the master but don’t suit her – and that’s before they’re married! Why, the other day, she even went so far as to countermand his orders to Mrs Pearson, and when Mrs Pearson referred the matter back to him he give her the most terrible shock by telling her to do as Miss Campbell said. I doubt if Mrs Pearson will stop here very much longer. If she could get a parallel sort of place, I wouldn’t be surprised if she wouldn’t pack her bag to-morrow!’
‘There are not a great many housekeepers’ posts of this kind in these days,’ Mrs Bradley gently pointed out. ‘There isn’t the money about.’
‘Folks have their pride, madam,’ Mrs Call retorted, ‘and there’s some things even beggars can’t abide.’
Mrs Bradley, who had come up to get her fur coat, for it was a brilliant moonlight night, intensely cold, and she proposed to take a turn in the garden as an antidote to the poisonous mental atmosphere of the house, went downstairs again, and, in the moonlit garden, found Manoel. He was smoking a cigar and was wearing a black Homburg and a heavy overcoat with an astrakhan collar.
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘I shall be glad of company. Let us stroll as far as the lake.’
Manoel, who had been leaning with his back against the terrace parapet so that the light from an uncurtained window was full upon his face, gave her a flashing smile and raised the hat.
‘By all means,’ he replied. ‘You are just the person. I had hoped to see you alone, but did not know how to arrange it. This is contrived by God. You know, I am to go. She wishes it, and my father makes me to obey. I wish she were dead. It would make simple what is now nothing but complication. Why should I go, to please her, but not myself or, I think, my father? But there it is. He has ordered me out of the house; that house which should one day be mine.’
He spoke passionately although in low tones.
‘No one seems very happy about the marriage,’ said Mrs Bradley, as they began to walk towards the steps which led down to the garden.
‘I do not understand it,’ said Manoel. ‘No, it is dark to me, this arrangement. If I thought my father would be happy – not that I care for him much – but even that could be tolerated. As it comes’ – he made a gesture, the glowing tip of his cigar pointing it – ‘there is no happiness for anybody. She does not love him. He does not love her. There is un engaño – how do you call it –?’
‘A trick. Some fraud. Some deceit.’
‘So I believe. She has … no, I have not the English word.… I wish to say …’
‘She has hooked him?’
‘The metaphor to catch fish! That is good. I like it. She has hooked him. But how? But why? She is not beautiful. She is not gay. She is not charming. She has good features, but there is no life, no soul. She is perverso, malo – bad, bad, bad! How can I kill her, and not be found out?’
Mrs Bradley was neither prepared nor able to offer any suggestions. She had once got away with murder herself, but only from the highest motives had that particular murder been committed. She seldom thought about it, and never with the slightest regret. She said to Manoel:
‘If you feel prepared to listen to advice, you will do as Sir Bohun suggests – go right away from here and as soon as you can. It does no good to brood over wrongs. You are a young man of talent and determination. Forget your rights and take up your duties. Go out and make another fortune for yourself. Put the sea betwe
en you and temptation. For your own sake I urge it.’
Her eloquence, and the beautiful voice in which it was rendered, appeared to mollify the young man. They had reached the lake, and stood for a time looking at the reflection of the moon on its quiet waters. The night was eerily still, and this stillness suddenly seemed to impress itself upon Manoel, for he shivered, turned abruptly and began to walk back towards the house.
‘Do you play billiards?’ he asked, as Mrs Bradley turned with him.
‘Yes. Not as well as you do, I dare say.’
He gave a short laugh.
‘I have had plenty of practice these last days. It is the only room, except my bedroom, into which she does not come, I think. And my bedroom – I lock the door at night!’
‘A pretty kettle of fish,’ wrote Mrs Bradley to Laura when she went to her room that night, ‘and I shall not be at all sorry to bring my visit to an end. Expect me on Monday at midday.’
But there were still Grimston and Bell for her to hear. Curiously enough – yet naturally enough, too, considering how wide was her circle of acquaintances and how far-reaching her own reputation – both approached her, although at different times, with the same request.
Grimston came first. He brought in her early-morning tea.
‘I collared it from the maid because I particularly wanted to see you alone and where we wouldn’t be overheard,’ he said. ‘I say, I’m sorry about that three in the morning business. You’ve forgiven me, haven’t you? Please!’
‘Forgiven you, but not forgotten the unwarrantable intrusion,’ said Mrs Bradley solemnly. ‘Why, you might have murdered me in my bed, and I none the wiser!’
Grimston laughed, a sincere and youthful sound; then his face darkened as he said:
‘Not to beat about the bush – and I do hate asking you; please believe that; but – could you? – I mean, I shan’t be able to stay here with Philip once Linda takes command. Could you recommend me for a job if I needed a recommendation?’
‘I see no reason why I should, nor why I should not, child. In any case, my recommendation would be of no value. I know nothing of your qualifications, nor of the needs of boys who have a tutor instead of going to school. Why cannot you apply for a post in the usual way, through a scholastic agency?’
‘I’m black-listed. I let a boy die.’
‘You let a boy die? How was that?’ (The suicidal tendency, if it existed, might be capable of explanation, she thought.)
‘Yes. It was my first post after I left the University. I had to take the school swimming. I can swim, but I’m no great shakes. A boy got into difficulties. I was on the bank. I watched him struggling. I was afraid to go in after him. When at last I made myself go in, and got to him, it was too late. I got him out, but he died before we could get the water out of his lungs. There was something in the paper – praising me, you know. I couldn’t bear it. I told the headmaster the truth, and gave in my resignation. He wouldn’t accept it. Said it would look bad for the school. The fatality (he said) was bad enough, but if the parents gave up thinking I was a hero and realized that I was a poltroon (his exact words) things would be ever so much worse. I tried to commit suicide that night. I did cut my throat, but – but not enough. Then he did sack me. I couldn’t take another post at a school. I couldn’t stand it, for one thing, and, for another, I feel sure my reputation would follow me.’
‘Nonsense! Look at it in a practical way. Why did that boy get into difficulties?’
‘Direct disobedience, of course.’
‘Exactly.’
‘That doesn’t absolve a schoolmaster, you know.’
Mrs Bradley regarded him compassionately, and suddenly promised to do her best for him.
After lunch came Bell with a message from Sir Bohun, who needed a word of five letters to give the Lancashire equivalent of what Columbus said when he sighted the West Indies and spotted an animal. Mrs Bradley suggested ‘eland’, and Bell, having thanked her, hesitated and then asked her whether she happened to know of anybody who needed a secretary.
‘I don’t think I shall be staying on here after Sir Bohun is married,’ he said. ‘There are – reasons why I can’t. It’s been a pretty good billet, and I don’t really want to leave, but I don’t think I shall be able to help myself. In any case, I expect things will be very different, and I don’t suppose I should like it much if I did stay.’
Mrs Bradley nodded thoughtfully.
‘I cannot make any promises,’ she said. Bell murmured gratefully. She looked at him, then, and asked:
‘Have you kept the competition papers, by any chance?’
‘Yes, I have. I’ve had no instructions about them, and when that is the case I usually hang on to things until it’s obvious Sir Bohun won’t ask for them. Why? Do you want to look at them? I can get them for you if you like.’
‘I should like to see them.’
‘Morbid psychology?’
‘Not necessarily morbid.’
‘I’ll go and get them at once. You’ll let me have them back at some time or other, won’t you? – just in case Sir Bohun wants them, you know.’
‘They are not confidential documents, I take it?’
‘Oh, no. Why should they be?’
‘Good. They should make very interesting reading. If I might have them to-day … I am going home on Monday.’
CHAPTER 7
TWO HOSTAGES OF FORTUNE
‘They are all innocent and mild;
No grief nor want amongst them found,
But all are well and safe and sound.’
THOMAS WASHBOURNE – Damon Paints the Joys of Heaven
*
AS IT HAPPENED, Mrs Bradley did not even remain under Sir Bohun’s roof until the Monday. She had written to Laura on the Friday night to catch the morning post, but just before midday on the Saturday she received a telegram.
Grandson John wished on you parents called abroad what instructions Menzies
This message did not surprise Mrs Bradley. She had known for some time that her second son and his wife might suddenly go abroad again, and she had agreed to take charge of the little boy provided that she could board him out most of the time and, later on, send him to a preparatory school if they looked like being out of the country for any length of time. She had already made preliminary arrangements for him to stay on a farm. One of her former students at Cartaret Training College, where she had reigned for a short but interesting time as Warden of one of the Houses, had married a farmer, and, by a coincidence which she afterwards recognized as the gift of a beneficent Providence, the farm was not very far from Sir Bohun’s house.
‘Look,’ she said to him, ‘my grandson will be lonely, perhaps, without another boy for company. Let me have Philip, and Timothy as well, and Nanny Call to keep an eye on all three of them. John is a lively child, healthy and quite well-behaved.’
Sir Bohun Chantrey jumped at it.
‘The very thing!’ he exclaimed. ‘Beatrice, that’s really wonderful. I could not wish for anything to fall out more aptly.’
In consequence of this attitude, Mrs Bradley found herself one frosty morning in early January escorting Nanny Call and three little boys to Joysey’s Farm, and, later, found herself leaving them there and reverting to the house in Kensington from which she could get to her clinic.
‘What a bit of luck that Alice Boorman decided to wed with a farmer,’ said Laura, welcoming her employer home with China tea and biscuits. ‘She always was a sensible sort of old scout. How often do we go and see how the boys are getting on?’
‘Once a week, I should think, but not yet. Let us give them time to settle down and get to know one another. We can leave them alone for at least a fortnight. Our dear Alice seems delighted to have them, and she can be relied on, I think, to be kind but firm. I am not so sure about her husband.’
‘Oh, he’s certain to spoil them, but it won’t matter. And I don’t know why you should carp and cavil. You always spoil children.’
‘Of course, I’m terribly sorry about Tim,’ said Philip, when his brother had been removed, ‘but it does give us more scope.’
To the horror of Alice Cartwright (née Boorman), Mrs Bradley approved openly of this unethical attitude.
‘Of course it will give them more scope,’ she pronounced, ‘and I am very glad to know that Philip is not hypocritical. He and John are of an age, and will enjoy themselves far more without having the tiny boy tagging along. John is bloody, bold, and resolute, and Philip is clever, and will soon think of mischief far beyond the range of John’s intelligence. I have the highest hopes of the association for both of them’.
The boys apparently had the highest hopes of it, too, and settled down to the winter life of the farm, the society of the farm animals, and to an orgy of quiet devilment conceived chiefly in innocence and because of a thirst for experiment.
Both possessed bicycles, and Alice, with an enthusiasm undimmed by some years of teaching geography to unreceptive audiences, showed them how to read an ordnance map of the district. They went out for short runs in the mornings if the weather was moderately fine, and for longer ones after their midday meal, provided that they promised not to sit on the damp ground. They were also under pledge to keep an eye on the time (measured for them by their Christmas-present wrist-watches) and to return to the farm before the light failed.
Having extracted this particular promise easily enough (since as John immediately pointed out, they would want to be back in time for tea), one mild afternoon Alice saw them off. She had not asked them where they proposed to go, and it was as well, perhaps, that this was so, for she would have felt compelled to forbid them to carry out their plans, which included a visit to two railway stations, one of which had been abandoned and left deserted for several years. It had lost its usefulness when a large housing estate had been opened about a mile and three-quarters up the line. A new station had been built to serve this new estate, and the old station had become a mere dump for heavy iron objects whose use and function could only be guessed at.