Choice of Evils

by E. X. Ferrars

  ‘What did she say about having disappeared from the Pegasus without telling anyone she wanted to walk home?’

  ‘Oh, she apologized. Said she was halfway home before it occurred to her she ought to have told Amory what she was going to do, but anyway he was so surrounded by people she probably couldn't have got through to him. And she decided on getting away and walking home because crowds always got on her nerves and she'd the beginning of a headache. An awfully unconvincing head-ache, it seemed to me. But as I said, what do you think she was up to?’

  They were near the top of the cliff where the ground levelled off and a path ran near to the edge of it. The sea looked a long way below them.

  ‘Except that she wanted to have a good look round Amory's study when he was safely out of the way, I've no idea,’ Andrew said. ‘We can't tell if she was looking for something special or just wanting to take a look at how genius organizes itself. It just might have something to do with her sister.’

  ‘But she's been dead for years,’ Peter said.

  ‘Yes, but the sort of thing I was thinking of…’ Andrew hesitated. ‘Well, suppose Rachel thought her sister had given Amory something which she felt really belonged to her, and she wanted to get hold of it. No, don't take any notice of that. I'm just saying the first thing that's come into my head. Almost certainly totally wrong. But that reminds me, I was thinking last night I really must get hold of a copy of this book of Amory's.’

  There was a thoughtful, faraway look on Peter's face.

  ‘D'you think she could have stolen something from Amory's desk?’ he asked. 'Some paper, possibly, or even some oddment of jewellery that had come to her sister perhaps from their mother and which, as you said, she felt belonged to her. She didn't look as if she'd stolen anything when we found her in the house. I mean, she didn't look excited, or furtive, or scared, or anything.’ He paused. ‘Do you think I ought to tell Amory about having seen her come out of the summerhouse?’

  ‘That's up to you,’ Andrew said, ‘but I'd be inclined to stick to your first feeling that you didn't want to get involved. It isn't as if you know Amory particularly well, or owe him anything. Now, about this book, d'you think I can get it at Todhunter'S?’

  ‘Oh, certainly/ Peter said. ‘Her window was full of copies yesterday, wasn't it?’

  'So it was. Well, I'll go there when we get back and pick one up. It looks to me as if I've been missing something.’

  ‘Yes, it's good, it really is. It makes me feel I'd like to get to know Amory better, but it isn't easy. I have this funny feeling that he doesn't like me, so why did he invite me down? Perhaps the fact is that he doesn't much like anyone. Yet the book doesn't give you that feeling at all. It's pretty grim in parts, but at the same time there's a sort of - well, you could almost call it tenderness in it. I'll be interested to know what you think of it when you've read it.’

  They walked on for some time and when they reached a point where the cliff path began to drop, leading down to a small cove that nestled in a curve of the cliffs, they turned back and presently, after descending the slope that they had climbed some time before, made their way to the shopping mall and Mina Todhunter's shop.

  If she was at home, she did not appear. A younger woman served them, telling them that it was surprising how many people had been into the shop that morning to buy Simon Amory's book. She said she supposed that it was because of the show the evening before, then looking at Peter with sudden surprise, asked him if he had not been one of the writers on the platform. He admitted that he had been, and she then assured him that she believed she had read everything that he had ever written. He tried not to look as pleased as he certainly felt, and when she thrust a copy of one of his books at him and asked him eagerly to autograph it for her, he did it casually, as if it were something that he was doing every day.

  ‘Were you at the Pegasus last night?’ he asked as he handed it back to her.

  ‘Oh yes, I'm a regular member of the Literary Society,’ she said. ‘I wouldn't miss anything they put on. I'm going to The Duchess of Malfi too, tonight. I'm so looking forward to it. Really, the festival's been a great success.’

  Andrew had been roaming round the shop, looking at what they had in stock.

  ‘Miss Todhunter's had quite a revival, hasn't she?’ he said. ‘I'd very nearly forgotten her myself.’

  Peter laughed. 'She doesn't write for people like you, I imagine. And now that I'm grown up you've no need to read her.’

  ‘Well, naturally we always have a supply of her works here,’ the young woman said, ‘and during the holiday season, when people come here with their children, we sell quite a lot. And it isn't like the old days. If only they'd put some of her stories on television, I'm sure they'd have been a great success and probably be very popular still. But of course she's practically given up writing. She says she's too old and doesn't understand what young things want nowadays. I try to persuade her that's nonsense and that she could be as successful as ever if she'd only try, but she only laughs. She says why should she keep on working hard when she's got plenty of money. She only keeps the shop going because it's an interest for her.’

  A door behind the counter opened just then and Rachel Rayne came out. She was in a dark brown trouser-suit with a brightly coloured scarf round her neck and had a shoulder bag slung from one shoulder. She looked startled to see Andrew and Peter there, and for a moment seemed uncertain as to whether or not she was glad to encounter them, then decided to give them a pleasant smile and to say that it was interesting to see how publicity really worked.

  ‘I'm told they've had one of their busiest mornings for years,’ she said. ‘I see you've been buying Simon's book. Professor.’

  Peter replied for Andrew. ‘Yes, I don't think he liked the feeling of being one of the very few people who hadn't read it. Now what about a coffee, Rachel? I've discovered there's quite a nice place just round the corner from here.’

  ‘That's a good idea,’ she said. 'Thank you.’

  ‘Andrew?’ Peter said.

  Andrew hesitated, uncertain as to whether his company would really be welcome to the two younger people, but Peter took hold of him by the elbow and said, ‘Oh, come on. You've nothing else to do. Let's go.’

  So Andrew walked along with Peter and Rachel to the coffee shop that Peter had discovered at some time since his arrival in Gallmouth, a small place with a row of tables covered in shiny plastic, and a counter with a coffee machine on it and plates of Danish pastries. Peter gave the order for the coffee and the three of them sat down at one of the tables. Rachel seemed to be in a thoughtful mood and did not respond to Peter's chatter about the evening before. Andrew wondered if she had any suspicion that Peter had seen her emerging from the summer-house and diving into the house by the garden door.

  Suddenly she said, ‘Professor, could I ask you for some advice?’

  ‘Oh Lord,’ he said, ‘if there's a thing I don't like doing, it's giving advice.’

  ‘But I've got to talk to someone,’ she said. T thought I'd try Mina, but she just gave me a brush-off. I'm so bloody ignorant about such a lot of things, that's the trouble. In the old days I nearly always asked my sister what to do when I was in a muddle, she was so practical. You'd never have thought it to look at her, she seemed such a vague, gentle person, but she was really extraordinarily wide awake and sensible.’

  ‘Yet she died intestate, didn't she?’ Peter said. 'That doesn't sound very practical.’

  She gave a start, staring at him with wide, bewildered eyes.

  ‘Intestate?’ she said. ‘What on earth makes you think so?’

  'Something Clarke said yesterday evening in the bar, after you'd vanished in the crowd,’ Peter replied. ‘Didn't you know it?’

  She did not answer at once, then she said, ‘No, I didn't.’

  ‘Well, since I gathered she'd nothing much to leave, I don't suppose it made much difference,’ Peter said. ‘And in any case, I suppose she'd have left what she had to S
imon.’

  ‘Intestate,’ she said, as if she were experimenting with the word. ‘Intestate - really? What was it Edward Clarke said?’

  ‘Oh, we'd got talking somehow about making wills,’ Peter said. 'There's something about it in the book Simon's writing now, and Clarke said he'd come to him to find out from him, being a solicitor, how it really worked. Then Clarke said Simon really ought to know more about it than he did, because his wife died intestate.’

  Rachel was still staring at him, her gaze intent.

  ‘You're sure of this, are you, Peter?’ she said in a curiously excited way.

  ‘I'm sure of what Clarke told me last night,’ Peter said.

  'She died intestate,’ she muttered, as if she were still trying to come to terms with the word. ‘And I didn't know.’

  ‘But would it have made much difference to you?’ Peter asked. ‘Wasn't it true that she'd nothing much to leave?’

  ‘Oh, yes, absolutely true,’ she said. ‘A few thousand, left to her by an aunt, and that, as you said, naturally went to Simon. But if it had been more …’ She gave a strange little laugh. ‘I'm sorry, it's taken me so by surprise.’

  ‘D'you think, if she'd made a will, she'd have left those few thousand to you?’ Peter asked. ‘D'you feel Simon ought to have done something about it?’

  ‘Oh no, no, why should he?’ She picked up her shoulder bag, which she had put down on the table. ‘You'll forgive me if I don't stay, won't you? I've just thought of some-thing I ought to be doing.’

  She got up and hurried out, leaving her coffee undrunk.

  ‘Now what do you make of that?’ Peter asked, staring after her.

  ‘Perhaps the truth is that her sister had a lot to leave,’ Andrew said, ‘and she's got some idea that she can get some of it out of Simon.’

  ‘But he only got rich after he started writing,’ Peter said.

  ‘And the little I know about intestacy,’ Andrew said, ‘which I picked up when a friend of mine died and I had to help to sort things out, is that the first two hundred thousand or thereabouts goes automatically to the spouse, and anything over that gets divided equally among the children, and if there isn't a spouse and there aren't any children, then it gets divided equally among the several relatives.’

  ‘But how does that affect Rachel?’ Peter demanded. ‘Why should she get excited about it?’

  ‘I can think of only one possibility,’ Andrew said, 'though it wouldn't mean much unless Mrs Amory was actually a fairly rich woman.’

  ‘What's that?’

  'Simply that Simon Amory wasn't her spouse.’

  ‘Not her spouse?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But they'd been married for years.’

  ‘Well, just suppose they weren't really, and Rachel knew it. And if that should be the case, she and not Simon would be her sister's heir. Doesn't it make sense of how she acted just now? And she may have dashed away to challenge him about it. For all we know a few thousands may mean quite a lot to her.’

  ‘Andrew, what an imagination you've got!’

  ‘Anyway, I'd prefer not to get involved in the matter, and if I were you, I'd keep out of it too. I don't see how either of us can help her.’

  Presently they walked back to the Dolphin, where Peter had left his car and he drove off in it to Simon Amory's house while Andrew went into the hotel and into the bar, where he ordered a sherry. There was no one else in the bar at the time, but only a few minutes after Andrew had settled in a chair by the window Edward Clarke came in, accompanied by the two people of whom Andrew had had a glimpse the evening before, Magda Braile and Desmond Nicholl. Edward Clarke greeted him warmly.

  ‘You're staying here?’ he said. 'So are our friends whom you met yesterday. Of course you'll have lunch with us.’ He bought drinks for the three of them and carried them over to the table at which Andrew was sitting. They sat down around it and Magda Braile gave Andrew a charming smile.

  ‘We didn't really meet yesterday, did we?’ she said. 'There was too much of a crowd in that room. But you're an old friend of Simon'S, I presume.’

  Andrew wondered how often he would have to deny this.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I met him for the first time yesterday,’ he said.

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Really?’ she said. T thought only old friends would have been allowed into that gathering. But come to think of it, perhaps old friends were just the people he wouldn't have wanted. I wasn't welcome, was I, and I'm a very old friend?’

  Desmond Nicholl picked up the book that Andrew had bought that morning, and which he had put down on the table before him.

  ‘Death Come Quickly/ he observed. The skin stretched so tightly over his cadaverous face looked almost as if it might split if he ventured to smile. T wonder where he picked up that title. There are parts of the country where it's the name local people give to a small wild red geranium, though there are other people who call it Herb Robert.’

  ‘All right, darling, we all know you're a botanist,’ Magda said. ‘But Herb Robert wouldn't have been much of a title for a book, would it?’

  ‘Professor Basnett is a professor of botany,’ Clarke told them.

  ‘Are you really?’ Magda said, as if this for some reason delighted her. ‘And of course you knew where that title came from.’

  ‘I'm afraid not,’ Andrew said. ‘I'm not that kind of botanist. You could take me for a walk in the most beautiful of woods and I'd hardly be able to name one of the wild flowers I saw there. My work was strictly in laboratories.’

  'So you're not really a botanist, and you're not an old friend of Simon'S, so what exactly are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I'm what's generally called a plant physiologist,’ he answered, ‘and I'm an uncle of Peter Dilly's.’

  ‘Ah, so it was Peter Dilly you came to listen to - now I understand. What a charming little man he is. I'd like to meet him again. I enjoyed his talk much the most of the three. Do you think he'll be coming to The Duchess of Malfi this evening? And are you?’

  ‘I don't know what Peter's plans are, but I shall certainly be there.’ Andrew had not made up his mind till just then that he would go to the theatre that evening, but he felt that it would have been discourteous to admit it. He was still finding it difficult, however, to imagine this woman in the sombre character of the Duchess. ‘But it's only by chance I'm here. I didn't know, when I came to Gallmouth, that there'd be a festival in progress, or that Peter would be on the spot/

  ‘What brought you then?’ she asked. ‘It seems a pretty dead and alive sort of place to me.’

  ‘That happens to be what attracts me to it,’ Andrew said. ‘I've been coming here at intervals over several years. It's very restful.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ she said. ‘You come here when you want to get away from your hectic life in London. But you're retired, aren't you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you a Fellow of the Royal Society?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘And you probably go to lots of their meetings and banquets and things, so you come to Gallmouth to recover.’

  ‘Well, I shouldn't say that exactly describes my life in London,’ Andrew said, ‘but I sometimes get tired of my own cooking, so I thought a break in things before the winter begins to close in on us would be pleasant.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the winter … D'you know, I really rather like the winter, though each time one comes round I say to myself, "How many more of these have you got?" I have a feeling I shall die in the winter.’

  ‘You don't do anything of the sort,’ Desmond Nicholl said in a quiet, cold voice. ‘You don't think of dying at all. And why should you? You're a quite healthy specimen.’

  ‘I tell you, never a day goes by without my thinking about it,’ she protested. ‘Being healthy has nothing to do with it. Life is so horribly dangerous. I could walk out of that door when we've had our lunch and be knocked down by a car and killed on the spot. Or our dear Simon could lose control of himself and
stick a knife in my back, which is what he'd really like to do, you know. Didn't you see that last night? He hates me, he really hates me. And he's really very violent by nature, though he always keeps a tight hold on it. Poor Simon, I'm really so sorry for him. And I can't forget how much I loved him once. That's when I was a little girl. You know. Professor, I've known him since I was a child.’

  'So really you've known him all your life?’ Andrew said.

  ‘Very nearly,’ she replied. ‘My father was vicar in Boringwood - that's a village in Hampshire I don't expect you've ever heard of - and Simon's father retired there after he came home from India. I'm not sure what he'd been doing there, but he became great friends with my father. But I didn't see much of Simon then. He was at Winchester, and only came home for the holidays. All the same, we made friends. He was really very good to me, and I worshipped him. He was so handsome and so good-natured. But he had a violent temper even then. Oh, my goodness, yes!’ She gave a little laugh. ‘We had a neighbour who had a son a couple of years older than Simon and much bigger, and if the two of them had the slightest excuse for it, they'd fight. And Simon nearly always came out on top, he was so much the cleverer of the two. And I used to love watching them battering each other, though I was dreadfully frightened too, but that was really all part of the enjoyment. And of course by the time I was about fifteen I was hopelessly in love with him. Did you know that children of that age can fall passionately in love. Professor?’

  ‘I seem to remember having been through a phase of it myself,’ Andrew answered. ‘But I was rather faithless. I remember a girl for whom I thought I would be ready to die went down with measles, and by the time she came out of quarantine I'd attached myself to someone quite different.’

  ‘All the same, you understand what I'm talking about,’ she said. ‘Desmond won't believe I was ever in love with Simon. He doesn't like to think I was in love with him during my adolescence, which I was, as I said - desperately. That's just jealousy, of course. He doesn't like to think I was really in love with anyone till I met him/

  ‘Oh, for God's sake!’ Desmond Nicholl muttered in a tone of disgust. 'The trouble with you is that you've never been in love with anyone. Now, shall we go through to lunch?’