The Man Who Grew Tomatoes (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Why don’t you get the Salaman couple to come up to the house and do the cooking until you get somebody? You’ll have to advertise, I suppose. There’s no village woman capable of taking on the job in a house of this kind.”

  “The Salaman couple?”

  “Yes. They live at the lodge. Didn’t you know your lodge was inhabited by the son and daughter of Jewish refugees?”

  “I knew I had tenants there. Artists, I believe.”

  “Well, that’s the Salaman couple. Their parents are dead now. These children were brought out of Nazi Germany when they were about seven years old. They’re devoted to one another—at least, the brother is devoted to the sister. I don’t know about her.”

  “And they can and will cook?”

  “Pleased to, I shouldn’t wonder. They paint, and that sort of thing, but they’re much in demand as cooks when anybody round here gives a big dinner-party. Glad of the money, of course.”

  “That relieves me of one headache, then. I’d better make their acquaintance. I suppose they speak English? I’ve very little German.”

  “Oh, yes, they speak English. Do you want me to take you down there and introduce you?”

  “No, it doesn’t matter, thanks. As they’re my tenants, it will be in order for me to introduce myself. All the same, while you’re here, I’d like you to put me wise about one or two things. I’ve very little idea, at present, of what’s expected of me—as a landowner, for example.”

  “Well, if I may return to the object of my visit, I expect I can tell you anything you want to know. There are matters for which I need your authority before I deal with them. Shall we get them settled now? There are a couple of cottages over which there’s a spot of trouble. They fell vacant last summer and I want to put young Deems into one. He’s recently married—the girl’s father insisted; there’s a baby on the way who isn’t going to wait much longer—and Deems is a good cowman. He and his wife have been living in an almost derelict railway carriage, so I do want to house them as soon as I can. Trouble is, there’s old Mrs. Maidon to consider. Her place is condemned. Then there’s another claimant in John Palling.”

  Hugh listened without comment. At the end of the recital he said:

  “Well, I must leave it to you, unless you think I ought to see these people personally.”

  “That isn’t necessary in this case. Of course, if it weren’t that the lodge is let, I could put old Mrs. Maidon in there.”

  “Are the tenants satisfactory?—apart from being able to cook, I mean.”

  “Quite. Very nice people.”

  “But I understand they’re not here during the winter.”

  “That doesn’t help. I’d still have nowhere for old Mother Maidon to go in the summer.”

  “No, of course you wouldn’t. Look here, I’ve the glimmerings of a notion about this, but I’ll have to wait a week or two to get myself acclimatised. Are there any other points? If not, why don’t you come with me into Norwich for lunch? I’m short of a chauffeur, but you may trust my driving, I think.”

  “Crick left, then?” said Bembridge. “I don’t know that I ever really took to that young man. Paul Camber spoilt him horribly, I thought.”

  “It was because I was expected to follow suit that we parted company.”

  “I thought it couldn’t be because of Mrs. Hal.”

  “Oh?”

  “He was the only person of Paul’s household who had a good word to say for her. That’s what I meant,” Bembridge explained.

  “No, it was nothing to do with Mrs. Hal. It was because I did not see any reason why he should use my car for getting home at night and back in the morning.”

  “My word! You did stamp on his vested interests!”

  “So I gathered. It wasn’t that I minded lending the car, but I think the principle’s wrong. It seemed to me the thin end of the wedge. He’d have been joy-riding every time my back was turned.”

  “Paul used to wink at it. Sometimes…” He hesitated. Hugh, his eyes looking straight ahead, grunted at him to go on. “Sometimes I wonder whether Crick had some hold over Paul, you know.”

  “Some hold over him?” asked Hugh. “How do you mean?”

  “If I knew that, I could be frank with you. The answer is that I don’t know. Did it strike you as strange that Paul and his boy should have died in the same way, at widely different places but within a short time of one another?”

  “I thought of it as a coincidence, and a dreadful one.”

  “I’ve sometimes wondered whether Paul committed suicide.”

  “I’ve wondered that, but I think it most unlikely. Was there anything to suggest it?”

  “So far as knowledge goes, nothing at all. In any case, he is safely under the ground. It would do no good to begin to speculate now. Still, I’m glad you’ve got rid of Crick.”

  “I didn’t, you know. He got rid of himself. Anyhow, I really don’t need a chauffeur. But I do need a cook, and need one badly. I will certainly see what these Salamans have to say. In fact, I’ll tell you what’s in my mind. But, look, let’s go now for lunch. We can talk in the car.”

  “Yes?” said Bembridge, when they had cleared the park gates and were on the Norwich road. “What had you thought of doing?”

  “Well, look, if this Salaman couple are all right, and will help me out, why shouldn’t I let them have a wing up at the house? I don’t need a place that size all to myself. If they occupied one wing, and kept it clean and so forth, it would help with my servant problem, especially during the winter. I should have to make it a stipulation that they made it their permanent quarters and stayed all the year round, I suppose.”

  The agent was silent for a moment, thinking it over.

  “It would free the lodge for old Mrs. Maidon, of course, and get us over that particular fence,” he said. “But the Salaman couple are cosmopolitans. It may be that they wouldn’t relish spending the winter in the country. It can be pretty quiet here.”

  “Yes, well, we should have to find out what they thought. Anyway, I’ve got to meet them yet. I’m not sure whether cosmopolitans would be the sort of people I should like if I had to meet them every day.”

  The two men lunched in Norwich, and on the way home Bembridge asked Hugh to take tea with himself and his wife.

  “We live at the old parsonage,” he added. “It’s a gem of a Queen Anne house and I’d like to show you what we’ve done with it, if you’d be interested. It took the whale of a lot of doing up when we took it over from the Reverend Arthur Tolley, but, to my mind, the result’s rather pleasing.”

  Mrs. Bembridge turned out to be a kittenish woman of about thirty whose face gained in character rather than in charm when she smiled. Her speech—at any rate, her choice of words—was surprisingly direct and almost naïve.

  “You’re not much like Paul,” she said.

  “We were only cousins, you know,” said Hugh, “and I believe I take after my mother, whereas Paul was more like our grandfather.”

  “I’m rather glad you’re not like him. Come and meet Catherine Tolley. Catherine, this, as you’ve just heard, is the new Mr. Camber.”

  “How do you do?” said the vicar’s sister. She was younger than Marion Bembridge, a pleasant, graceful creature with the quiet eyes of a countrywoman and a light, warm handclasp. “I hope you’re going to enjoy being at Camber.”

  “Well, I haven’t liked it much, so far, I’m bound to admit. All the servants except a tweeny and the two gardeners walked out on me. Even Mrs. Brunton and the chauffeur have gone. I don’t know what wild rumours went ahead of me.”

  There was the beginning of an awkward pause; then Marion Bembridge exclaimed (in the nick of time, as it seemed to Hugh):

  “Servants? Oh, I’ll find you some more. Servants never stay long anywhere in these restless times, I’m afraid. Anyway, you need not starve. The Salamans will always do your cooking.”

  “So your husband tells me.”

  Hugh enjoyed his visit and
was amused by a short but earnest conversation with his hostess at parting.

  “I’m glad you’re driving Catherine home so that Charles need not. I can see he’s tired. You do like Charles, don’t you?”

  “Very much,” said Hugh, who had made up his mind on this point.

  “He likes you, too. I can tell that. So will you raise his salary?”

  “Well, er…”

  “I knew you would. You’re not a bit like Paul. He was a horrid sort of person. You must come to tea again soon, and when you do I shall call you Hugh.”

  “Thank you, Marion.”

  “That’s very nice. And don’t worry about Mrs. Hal. I’ll help you chase her away.”

  “I shan’t need any help,” said Hugh. “Good-bye, and thank you very much for giving me tea. Miss Tolley, are you going to sit with me in front?”

  He drove her home to one of the few good cottages in the village and received a grateful wave of the hand from a lanky man who looked up from his gardening at the sound of the car. On his way home, Hugh pulled up just within the lodge gates, sounded his horn, got out, and knocked at the lodge door. A very handsome young woman with a short upper lip, beautiful teeth, and a rather magnificent nose appeared on the threshold.

  “Yes?”

  “My name’s Camber.”

  “Oh, yes! So nice to have a new one. I am just up-to-date with the rent. Not more. Just up-to-date.”

  “Oh, of course. I really came to ask whether you and your brother would come and do a bit of cooking for me. You see…”

  “Perfectly. That Mrs. Hal who pokes her finger into pies. The servants are all fled. Who blames them? Is she coming to keep house for you?”

  “No.”

  “You will see. Meanwhile, we come to cook. When? Tonight?”

  “If you would be so good.”

  “Is there food?”

  “You’d better come up to the house and have a look round.”

  “No. There will be the usual things, but no meat, and in Norwich the shops will be shut.” She turned her head. “Jacob!”

  A movement in the tiny passage resolved itself into a slender, black-haired young man, as good-looking as his sister and remarkably like her in appearance.

  “Ja, meine Hildegarde?”

  “Speak in English. This is the new Mr. Camber. Meet him. He wants us to cook. Tonight, this evening, now! We shall take our saddle of mutton. We are not orthodox,” she added, for Hugh’s information. “So difficult in a village. We eat anything.”

  “But I can’t let you cook your own joint for me!”

  “Not so. You shall buy it, then you invite us to eat it with you. If you give us some wine we do it for nothing. A bargain? Yes?”

  It was a bargain. The dinner-party was a merry one. Daisy Norgate knew nothing of the contents of the wine-cellar and tearfully refused to go down and investigate, so Jacob explored and came up with two bottles of Beaune.

  “Shades of Mrs. Hal, I imagine,” said Hugh. “I understand that my cousin was a teetotaller.”

  “Please?”

  “Didn’t drink—beer, wines, and spirits, you know, Miss Salaman.”

  “Hildegarde, please, and Jacob.”

  “All right, then, Hildegarde. Thank you.”

  “But that is so strange, we think. We have talked about it often, have we not, Jacob?”

  “Better, perhaps, not to talk about it now,” said her brother darkly.

  “I think I know what you mean,” said Hugh. “A rumour reached me. I discounted it. It’s incredible, or almost so.”

  “But why so?” Hildegarde regarded him with her liquid and luminous eyes. “Is it then impossible in England for a boy of fifteen to be drunk and to fall into the water and be drowned?”

  “Not necessarily, but I should consider Stephen’s to be a special case.”

  “Because Mr. Paul Camber did not like to drink, must it be that his son did not like to experiment with drinking? I think it is better on the Continent, where children drink wine in a natural manner. There are no pleasures like forbidden pleasures, Mr. Camber.”

  “Hugh, please. What do you think about that, Jacob?”

  Young Salaman was scowling down at his glass. He looked up and shrugged.

  “I think,” he said, “that Hildegarde should learn when to be silent on some matters. At any rate”—he looked at his glass again—“it seems that Mr. Paul Camber kept wine for his guests.”

  “Does that mean you haven’t dined here before?”

  “Of course we have not. Mr. Bembridge accepted us as tenants. Mr. Camber, to him we did not exist, except, perhaps, to pay the rent.”

  “What about the boy, Stephen?”

  “I have talked to him,” said Hildegarde, more in response to a glance from her brother, it seemed, than as an answer to Hugh’s question. “Not much. Hardly at all. He seemed a nice boy. Very delicate, I think. He was not at school. He had a tutor, a man named Verith.”

  “Not a good type,” said Jacob. “If Stephen Camber had had a mother to take charge of things, I do not think Verith would have been allowed in this house.”

  Hugh was more than interested.

  “A bad hat?” he suggested. Jacob shrugged.

  “I will go to the kitchen and bring in the next course,” he said. “Come, Hildegarde. I need some help, please.”

  Hildegarde made a grimace, but obeyed at once. They were in the kitchen for some time—longer, Hugh suspected, than it had taken to dish up the next course. When they came back, Jacob’s sallow cheeks were flushed and Hildegarde looked petulant. Hugh complimented them upon their cooking and helped himself generously to the food.

  “We have been quarrelling,” stated Hildegarde, mollified by Hugh’s evident appreciation of their efforts. “He is a pig of obstinacy.”

  “Arguing,” amended Jacob, “not quarrelling. My sister is very difficult.”

  “And I’ve been thinking,” said Hugh.

  “Yes?” Hildegarde looked at him with innocent, avaricious eyes. “Of something to our advantage?”

  “To our mutual advantage, I hope.”

  “Stop gobbling your noisy food, Jacob, and listen to Hugh.”

  Jacob, who had the table-manners of a prince, shrugged and said:

  “You are like a greedy child, Hildegarde. Always, ‘What is for me? What is for me?’ Please, Hugh, you are saying?”

  “What do you think of the lodge as a dwelling-house?”

  “It is what we can afford—just,” replied the boy.

  “With much self-sacrifice,” put in his sister hastily. “You are not going to put a little new paint on the front door and raise the rent?”

  “Nothing like that at all. How would you two like to take over the west wing of this house at the same rent?”

  “For two shillings a week less,” said Hildegarde promptly. “There is much work to be done in the west wing to make it habitable. No—perhaps when I think again, for no rent at all. Then I become your cook-housekeeper for no wage, and Jacob will be the butler.”

  “Very well. Until I get a cook you can live here rent-free. If you decide to take the west wing, though, it must be a permanent arrangement. You will not spend your winters in London. You will be here all the time. Look, think it over. Let it go until after Christmas. Let’s not mention it again until the New Year.”

  “Why are you making us this so generous offer?” demanded Jacob.

  “The truth is that Bembridge has to find a house of some sort for old Mrs. Maidon. Her cottage has to be condemned,” said Hildegarde. “There is always a reason for what seems to be kindness.”

  “So she will have the lodge?” asked Jacob.

  “That’s it. And now, Jacob, tell me about the tutor Verith.”

  “I knew very little about him, except that he was bad.”

  “What sort of bad? Do you mean because he got the girl Beresford into trouble?”

  “No, no. I mean his political opinions. He taught the young boy his political o
pinions.”

  “Oh, Jacob! Not politics!” said Hugh. “I’m sure I should agree with every word you chose to utter, but don’t utter now, there’s a good chap. You’ll spoil my dinner.” He glanced at Hildegarde for support. She smiled.

  “Your old Mrs. Thing may have the lodge after Christmas,” she said, nodding her dark head vigorously. “But to spend the winter here at Camber, no, not possible. I make up my mind.”

  “Let’s talk it over later,” said Hugh.

  “Later! Later! Always the compromise! Always the procrastination! So English! So ineffectual! You wait until your Mrs. Hal Camber shall come! Then I laugh!”

  “But why, Hildegarde? What’s so funny about Mrs. Hal?”

  “She is not funny at all. She is like a little beetle in the woodwork. She will nibble and nibble, and then, one fine day, the beams of the roof will fall down.”

  “The death-watch beetle?”

  “The death-watch beetle!” She glanced at her brother. Jacob’s face was a mask. He twirled the stem of an empty wine-glass. Hildegarde took it away and nodded to Hugh to re-fill it. “It must come, Jacob. It is silly for you to sulk and to tell me, with your eyes, Be quiet, be quiet. Hugh is a good and kind man, and he shall hear the truth. I am older than you and wiser, and I know more about people than you will ever know.”

  “What is all this?” asked Hugh, although he could guess what was coming.

  “It is about Paul Camber, and Stephen Camber, and Mrs. Hal, and Verith, and Beresford the farmer, and his daughter’s little baby, and—”

  “Hildegarde!” shouted Jacob, waving his long, thin hands. “I beseech you! I command you! Silence upon this point! You will be arrested! You are against the law to say such things! I will not defend you if you find yourself in trouble over this!”

  Hugh thought it advisable to intervene.

  “If Hildegarde means that there are rumours about the illegitimate Beresford baby, I’ve already heard them,” he said calmly. “As to the deaths of my cousin and his son, well, no notice need be taken of what is repeated by the scandal-mongering old women in the village or the nonsense that goes round in the tap-room of the pub.” He smiled at Hildegarde. “So I uphold Jacob’s opinion. The less said upon these controversial issues the better. Let’s all have some more wine.” He raised his glass. “Down with the busy-bodies, including Mrs. Hal!” He drank, and laughed aloud.