The Man Who Grew Tomatoes
Page 1
Two deaths by drowning were followed by verdicts of Accidental Death, but neither the heir to the estate involved nor Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley was satisfied with these verdicts.
The Man who Grew Tomatoes is set in East Anglia, with excursions for salmon fishing into Scotland, and is undoubtedly one of the most exciting of Miss Mitchell’s novels.
Titles by Gladys Mitchell
Speedy Death (1929)
The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop (1929)
The Longer Bodies (1930)
The Saltmarsh Murders (1932)
Death at the Opera (1934)
The Devil at Saxon Wall (1935)
Dead Men’s Morris (1936)
Come Away, Death (1937)
St. Peter’s Finger (1938)
Printer’s Error (1939)
Brazen Tongue (1940)
Hangman’s Curfew (1941)
When Last I Died (1941)
Laurels are Poison (1942)
Sunset over Soho (1943)
The Worsted Viper (1943)
My Father Sleeps (1944)
The Rising of the Moon (1945)
Here Comes a Chopper (1946)
Death and the Maiden (1947)
The Dancing Druids (1948)
Tom Brown’s Body (1949)
Groaning Spinney (1950)
Devil’s Elbow (1951)
The Echoing Strangers (1952)
Merlin’s Furlong (1953)
Faintley Speaking (1954)
On Your Marks (1954)
Watson’s Choice (1955)
Twelve Horses and the Hangman’s Noose (1956)
The Twenty-Third Man (1957)
Spotted Hemlock (1958)
The Man Who Grew Tomatoes (1959)
Say it With Flowers (1960)
The Nodding Canaries (1961)
My Bones Will Keep (1962)
Adders on the Heath (1963)
Death of a Delft Blue (1964)
Pageant of Murder (1965)
The Croaking Raven (1966)
Skeleton Island (1967)
Three Quick and Five Dead (1968)
Dance to your Daddy (1969)
Gory Dew (1970)
Lament For Leto (1971)
A Hearse on May-Day (1972)
The Murder of Busy Lizzie (1973)
A Javelin for Jonah (1974)
Winking at the Brim (1974)
Convent on Styx (1975)
Late, Late in the Evening (1976)
Noonday and Night (1977)
Fault in the Structure (1977)
Wraiths and Changelings (1978)
Mingled with Venom (1978)
Nest of Vipers (1979)
The Mudflats of the Dead (1979)
Uncoffin’d Clay (1980)
The Whispering Knights (1980)
The Death-Cap Dancers (1981)
Lovers Make Moan (1981)
Here Lies Gloria Mundy (1982)
Death of a Burrowing Mole (1982)
The Greenstone Griffins (1983)
Cold, Lone and Still (1983)
No Winding Sheet (1984)
The Crozier Pharaohs (1984)
Gladys Mitchell writing as Malcolm Torrie
Heavy as Lead (1966)
Late and Cold (1967)
Your Secret Friend (1968)
Shades of Darkness (1970)
Bismarck Herrings (1971)
“No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries.”
John Keats
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © The Executors of the Estate of Gladys Mitchell 1959
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer Seattle 2014
www.apub.com
First published Great Britain in 1959 by Michael Joseph
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
E-ISBN: 9781477869024
“A Note about this E-Book”
The text of this book has been preserved from the original British edition and includes British vocabulary, grammar, style, and punctuation, some of which may differ from modern publishing practices. Every care has been taken to preserve the author’s tone and meaning, with only minimal changes to punctuation and wording to ensure a fluent experience for modern readers.
To my dear JULIET O’HEA without permission but with affection and gratitude
Contents
CHAPTER ONE Inheritance
CHAPTER TWO Rumours
CHAPTER THREE Mrs. Hal
CHAPTER FOUR Anonymous Spite
CHAPTER FIVE Two Deaths by Drowning
CHAPTER SIX Enter Circe
CHAPTER SEVEN Fancies, Facts, and Theories
CHAPTER EIGHT Siren
CHAPTER NINE Penelope and the Suitors
CHAPTER TEN Gently-Smiling Jaws
CHAPTER ELEVEN Wayland, but Not Smith
CHAPTER TWELVE Love Apples
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Apples of Discord
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Marriage Lines
CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Man Who Knew
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Not Paul but Peter
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Stolen Child
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The Cruel Brother
CHAPTER NINETEEN Family Tree
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
Inheritance
“Gladness shall clothe the earth, we will enstile
The face of things an universal smile.”
Richard Crashaw
On a wonderful Wednesday in September, Hugh Camber went to take possession of his inheritance. He left his lodgings in London at nine in the morning, convinced that he would never return to them again. The business with the lawyers was completed; the old house waited to welcome the new heir; the village, no doubt, was en fête to greet “Mr. Harry’s boy,” and, possibly, no one was sorry to be rid of the testy widower Paul and his delicate son, Stephen.
Hugh Camber was forty, the physical counterpart of Mr. Rochester but totally unlike him in character. His father, the younger son of old Henry Camber of Camber Abbey, had been left one-ninth of the family fortune and had squandered it angrily, referring to it with great contempt as “that handful of halfpence.” He then married a quiet and sensible young woman who bore him two sons—Hugh, now heir to the family money and estates, and, three years later, another boy christened Henry, after his father and grandfather, and known to the family as Hal.
The mother contrived, by means known only to herself, to scrape together enough money to send the two boys to an obscure public school. From this, Hugh went into the Civil Service and Hal became a charter pilot and was killed in a crash, leaving a widow and a very young son.
Harry, Hugh’s father, had died when Hal was fifteen, and Hugh, very much his mother’s son, had helped her to keep the younger brother at school until he was seventeen. Once Hal was launched, Hugh looked after his m
other until her death, and without any help from Hal. Although he missed her sorely, it never occurred to him to fill the blank by marrying. He knew that Hal had married, but he had never seen his son, who was still a very small child at the time of Hal Camber’s funeral.
Although his own father had shaken the dust of the family estate off his feet, Hugh had often visited Camber at the invitation of Arthur Camber, his wealthy uncle. Arthur was a kindly man, and Hugh often thought that some of the family money found its way surreptitiously into his mother’s banking account, compensation, possibly, for the discrepancy between her circumstances and those of Gertrude Camber, Arthur’s indulged and extravagant wife.
Thus Hugh was comparatively well-acquainted with Cousin Paul, Arthur’s only son and, under Arthur’s will (the Camber estates were not entailed) the heir-apparent to the property.
In the course of time, first Gertrude and then Arthur died, leaving Paul, a man of twenty-eight, already married and with a baby boy named Stephen, in possession of the inheritance. Since that time Hugh had seen little of the house or of its new owner. He had been invited one Christmas, but it proved to be an occasion of grandeur which had left Hugh uncorrupted by envy but which had shown him clearly that as a relation he was not considered an asset by Paul and his wife.
When he read in the obituary columns that Paul’s wife had died, he sent a letter of condolence which was acknowledged briefly, not by Paul but by the secretary who also acted as Stephen’s tutor. When he read, a few years later, that the boy, then fifteen, had been drowned, he did not write. When, shortly afterwards, Paul himself was drowned upon a fishing holiday, Hugh wondered whether it could have been suicide. He soon dismissed the thought, in the belief that Paul was not the man to take his own life. His reaction, apart from grieving for his son, would have been to marry again and beget another. Fate, obviously, had had other plans for Paul. Strange, though, thought Hugh, that both father and son had been drowned; stranger still that the two deaths had brought him back to Camber, this time not as a poor relation but as owner. Paul, surprisingly, had left him the estate.
The train pulled in to the station and Hugh hoisted down his hand-luggage from the rack and helped an elderly woman with hers. He had written to the housekeeper at Camber Abbey, asking for a car to meet him. At the station entrance the chauffeur from Camber, a saturnine young man with Spanish side-whiskers and a self-contained air, helped him to stow the luggage in the boot of the car.
“Anything more, sir?”
“No. Haven’t I seen you before? What’s your name?”
“Crick, sir. No, we’ve never met, Mr. Camber.”
The drive took three-quarters of an hour through country which Hugh well remembered. The housekeeper was on the steps to welcome him.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Hugh. You’ll like to have a cup of tea, I expect.”
“No, thanks, Mrs. Brunton.” (The lawyers had reminded him of her name.) “I didn’t have lunch on the train, so perhaps you can find me something solid. This Norfolk air makes me hungry.”
“Very good, sir. Crick will bring up your bags. I’ll show you the room we’ve got ready.”
He followed her up the stairs, the chauffeur coming behind with a suitcase in either hand. Mrs. Brunton opened a door. The room was low-ceilinged; dark with ancient oak. He went straight to the window and looked out, reflecting, still with a sense of wonder, that all he looked on was his own.
Below him was a very broad terrace which stretched the whole front of the house. Beyond it was pasture on which some cattle were grazing. There was no garden, as such, but, to his left, he could see the narrow head of the lake. A gravel path led away to the double gates through which the car had passed. The lodge—no lodge-keepers now—was tenanted, he had been told, by artists who resided there from April until October but who went back to London for the winter. They would be gone pretty soon, he supposed, as it was midway through September. Hugh turned away from the window to find that the chauffeur had gone and that the housekeeper was still in the doorway.
“All right, then, Mrs. Brunton,” he said. “I’ll wash and brush up, as they say, and be down in about ten minutes.”
As he washed his hands and combed his hair he wondered what he was going to be given to eat. He was famished, for his landlady, not at all pleased at losing a quiet, reliable tenant, had provided an inadequate breakfast. Accustomed to saving his money, Hugh had not thought of lunching on the train, feeling certain that a meal would be ready for him at Camber.
He remembered where the dining-room was. The housekeeper herself waited on him. There was soup, followed by cold ham, a beetroot, and some cheese.
“I hadn’t thought of anything until dinner tonight, sir, so, if you can manage with this…”
“Of course. But—you don’t usually bring in food and wait at table, Mrs. Brunton, do you?”
“No, sir, and shall not be doing so again.”
“No, hardly your job. Where are the maids? Their half-day off?” (The lawyers had told him that the house was fully staffed. The women might have changed their half-day for once, he thought. They did not get a new master very often.)
“The maids? They went, sir.”
“I see. I suppose they go in to Norwich when they get the time.”
“They’ve left. They said they wouldn’t stay any longer.”
“Why not?” Hugh spoke sharply, but the housekeeper remained calm.
“And I’d like you to accept my own notice, too, sir. I waited until you arrived, but now I should like to leave. My married daughter is expecting me tonight.”
Hugh took a spoonful of soup. He had not spent twenty-two years in the Civil Service for nothing. If there is one thing worth learning, he reflected, it is not to rush any fences. There was a mystery in the air; that was certain. Something was wrong, but nothing would be gained by his being too precipitate.
“I see,” he said. “But what’s the idea? You’ve been here some time, haven’t you?”
“Eleven years, sir. Since poor little Master Stephen was a child of four. Such a dear little boy, and so delicate. It was a wicked shame he should die like that, and such dreadful things said about him.”
“I hardly knew him,” said Hugh. “I don’t think I saw him after his christening. What dreadful things were said about him?”
“That he was drunk when he fell in the water.”
“Drunk?”
“Yes, sir, drunk.”
“What? A boy of that age?”
“That’s what’s been said.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know who started it. I wish I did. But a good number of folk have asked me whether it was true. As if it could have been! Why, the master never touched a drop of anything! It’s wicked talk, that’s what it is!”
“How did it all happen?”
“I could hardly tell you, sir. I never did think it right for Master Stephen to go about on his own so much, but, of course, not going to school and that, he had nobody to visit in the holidays or to ask here as a guest, and, after Mr. Verith went, Master Stephen pined for him, I think, and took to going off, sometimes for the whole day, by himself. It was not my place to say anything, but I did hear Mrs. Hal ask Mr. Paul once whether he thought it was safe.”
“Still, the boy was fifteen, Mrs. Brunton. He shouldn’t require apron strings at that age. Lots of boys like roving about on their own, you know.”
“Strong, big lads, sir, maybe do. But Master Stephen was frail. Besides, he did mope after Mr. Verith went, I know he did. I was very fond of Master Stephen and I could read him like a book. He lost all trust in his father after he sent Mr. Verith away.”
“Oh, Paul sent the tutor away, did he?”
“He could hardly help it, sir. There was trouble with a young girl.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Mr. Paul was very proper about that sort of thing. She was a very respectable girl, too, until Mr. Verith took her to London for a week-end and brought about her ruin
.”
“Oh, dear!” (Paul had never had the reputation of being particularly proper as a young man. He must have reformed, Hugh decided.)
“Her father came up and created. Farmer Beresford it was. He wanted Mr. Paul to see Mr. Verith married the girl, but Mr. Verith denied it all and said not to lay the girl’s ruin at his door, as it certainly was not him that was responsible. So Mr. Paul orders Mr. Verith to marry and keep his job or to get out, and Mr. Verith—so Crick told Gertie, that was housemaid here until today—Mr. Verith said as he was not going to give his ancient and honoured name to some other man’s bastard, not if the Angel Gabriel bade him to do so.”
“Very spirited of him. So he went?”
“He did, sir, and it’s my earnest and powerful belief that poor Master Stephen would be alive today if Mr. Verith had still been with us. It seemed like a judgement on the master because, when the girl’s baby was born, it had no look at all of Mr. Verith.”
“You can’t go by that. All babies look very much alike, no matter what their fond relatives may say. Anyway, the fact remains that this Verith did persuade the girl to go to London with him, and I don’t suppose his sole object in doing so was to take her to the Zoo.”
Mrs. Brunton sniffed but made no other comment. Her next remarks were purely practical. Had she done rightly, she wanted to know. Dinner had been arranged for half-past six, so that she could catch the eight-fifteen train.
“As I hope there will be no objection to Crick driving me to the station? It’s been usual,” she said when, later, she brought in the dinner.
“Oh, that’s all right, Mrs. Brunton. A pleasant journey.”
She hesitated.
“As I do hope you realise it isn’t personal feeling, sir. It’s just what’s happened. None of us can abide the place any more.”
Hugh decided not to ask for an explanation. All he said was:
“What about Crick? Does he propose to go, too?”
“Crick is not a woman, sir. The gardeners likewise. All the outdoor staff will stay, being men.”
“I see.” The housekeeper seemed to be inviting him to demand the reason for this distinction between the sexes, but Hugh applied himself to his meal and Mrs. Brunton waited upon him in silence. She brought in coffee at the end and asked whether she should take it to the library. He said he would have it at table, so she left the tray beside him and went away. A little later he heard the car drive off. He lit a cigarette, finished his coffee, and strolled out on to the terrace. It was a fine, still evening, with mist over the lake and the beginning of a moon. He paced up and down, rueful and puzzled. He had had no very clear picture of his homecoming (as he had thought of it ever since he had received the lawyers’ letter) but it had never presented itself as a matter of a servantless ménage and a disappearing housekeeper, but rather as an occasion for the fatted calf and general rejoicing. He took a few turns up and down the terrace and then went back to the dining-room and rang the bell, determined to find out whether there was anyone else in the house, or whether the echoing mansion was tenanted by him alone.