Latter End (7 page)

He took a folding case out of his breast pocket and handed it to her with a look of anxious pride. The portrait inside was a miniature on ivory. He said as he watched her scrutiny,

“It’s exactly like.”

Miss Silver looked at the miniature for quite a long time. During that time the idea of Lois Latter as the subject of an hysterical fancy faded from her mind. This was the portrait of a resolute and strong-willed woman. The line of cheek and jaw, the moulding of the chin, the curve of the lips were eloquent of this. The beautiful red mouth was hard. The eyes, for all their beauty and their brightness, were hard. This was a woman who knew what she wanted and knew how to get it.

The case was handed back across the table with the remark that it appeared to be a speaking likeness. Then, whilst Jimmy was agreeing, she fixed her serious gaze upon him and said,

“Would you like me to tell you what I really think, Mr. Latter?”

“Yes, yes—of course I would.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Before I do so, will you tell me if there were any ill effects from this last attack? For instance, did your wife rejoin the party in the drawing-room as she did on a previous occasion?”

“Yes, she did,” said Jimmy. “She seemed to be quite all right again, I’m thankful to say.”

Miss Silver spoke with authority.

“Then I do not believe that an attempt has been made to poison her. I think that someone has been playing a trick. A very wrong and spiteful trick of course, but not, I think, intended to have any serious consequences. The symptoms you have described could be produced by a harmless emetic such as ipecacuanha, a drug which is to be found in most households, and whose sweetish, not unpleasant taste would be readily disguised by fruit salad or coffee—especially if, as in this instance, sugar and a liqueur were added.”

She saw his face revert so suddenly to its natural boyishness as to suggest a ludicrous comparison with one of those rubber masks which can be drawn out to look lugubrious or compressed into jollity. Miss Silver dismissed this irrelevancy from her thought, and answered his smile with one of her own.

He said, “That’s marvellous—” and then broke off. “But there isn’t anyone who would play a trick like that. I mean, who would?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Do you really wish me to answer that question, Mr. Latter?”

He stared.

“Why, yes—of course.”

“Then I should have to come down and stay in the house.”

“Would you?”

She inclined her head.

“If you wish me to take up the case professionally.”

He pushed back his chair, appeared to be about to get up, but changed his mind.

“Well, I don’t know—” he said in a doubtful tone. “No— I don’t know at all. I can’t believe that anyone in the family would do a thing like that—I can’t really. I don’t feel I can bring a detective in on them—I mean, it would upset the whole bag of tricks.”

“It would not be necessary for them to know that I was a detective.”

The colour came up into his face.

“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” he said quickly. He got to his feet. “It’s been very good of you to let me come and see you. It’s relieved my mind no end—it really has.” His voice became tinged with embarrassment. “Will you tell me what I— I mean I owe you something—besides being awfully grateful—don’t I?”

Her smile had the effect of making him feel about ten years old.

“Not unless you decide to employ me, Mr. Latter.” She got up and put out her hand. “May I give you a word of advice?”

“I should be very grateful.”

He took her hand for a moment, and found it cool and small in his. She withdrew it and said,

“Do not try to combine in one house, people who are not really congenial to one another. Until your marriage, Miss Mercer was to all intents and purposes the mistress of the house. She is now in a different, and possibly difficult, position. I think her decision to go elsewhere is wise. Pray do not attempt to dissuade her. In the same way with your two young stepsisters, Mrs. Street and Miss Vane—until you married, Latter End was their home. It is unwise for them to continue to look upon it in that light. Encourage them in every way you can, even if possible financially, to make homes and centres of interest for themselves—” She paused, and added, “You might, I think, consider pensioning your old housekeeper, if it could be kindly done. So old a servant does not always fit in with a new mistress, and after more than fifty years of service she has earned a rest. There is one thing more. I should strongly advise Mrs. Latter to avoid eating or drinking anything which is separately or especially prepared for herself. Goodbye, Mr. Latter.”

It was a couple of days later that Antony Latter rang Julia up at her flat.

“Can I come round and see you?”

“If you don’t mind an awful mess. I’ve brought a lot of my things up from Latter End—books chiefly—and I’m unpacking them. They’re all over the floor.” When he walked in twenty minutes later he discovered this to be an understatement. They were not only all over the floor, but stacked on every chair and piled in sliding strata upon the table and the couch which was Julia’s bed. Julia herself in the red smock, which appeared to have been washed since he saw it last but which was rapidly acquiring a good deal of dust, looked up at him with a frown.

“It’s grim—isn’t it? I don’t know what happens to books when you get them out—there always seem to be about ten times as many of them. I’ve got a man coming to put up some shelves all round the window there, and I don’t know how I’m going to eat or sleep until he’s done it. I thought perhaps a big pile on each side of the door.”

“All right, we’ll each do one. No, I’ll bring you the books, and you can build the stacks. Your clothes won’t hurt, and mine will.”

She said, “Your precious trouser knees! All right.”

They began to build. After a minute or two he said,

“Well—how’s everything?” To which Julia replied,

“Hellish!”

He raised an eyebrow.

“In what particular way?”

She thumped a heavy book down on to the stack and said,

“In every way you can possibly think of! Lois swears someone’s trying to poison her. Jimmy has been practically tearing his hair out, Ellie’s worrying herself into an illness, and Minnie looks as if she was having one. I don’t know how I’ve stuck it out. I wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for Ellie, but I can’t leave her down there alone. I had to come up on business, so I brought these wretched books, but I shall go down again tomorrow. I suppose you couldn’t come too?”

“I could, darling—but you make it sound almost too alluring.”

He found her eyes fixed on him with an appeal which it was difficult to resist.

“Antony, do come! It’s quite awful—it really is. I don’t think I can tackle it alone, and I think it ought to be tackled. I’ve got an idea—”

“What sort of idea?”

She hesitated.

“This poison business—it’s beastly, and it might be serious. Lois has had about five of these attacks. They’re not serious in themselves—she’s just sick, and then she’s all right again. Well, either she’s playing a trick on us, or somebody’s playing a trick on her. She won’t see a doctor, and she swears someone’s trying to poison her.” She gave a short scornful laugh. “Poisoners aren’t as inefficient as all that. No—she’s doing it herself, or someone else is doing it to frighten—or punish her.”

Antony shook his head.

“She isn’t doing it herself—you can wash that right out.”

“Yes, I think so. Too unbecoming. Well then, it’s somebody else. Who?”

“I don’t know. You said you had an idea. Are you going to tell me what it is?”

“Yes—I must. I’ve got a horrible feeling that it might be Manny.”

He looked first startled, and then relieved. “Manny?”

“Who else is there? Ellie—Minnie—me—you—Jimmy? You see? But Manny—well, I’m not so sure. She was frightfully angry about Mrs. Marsh going to the institute. She said—and it’s perfectly true—that Gladys Marsh wouldn’t have dared if Lois hadn’t backed her up. She’s seething about Hodson’s cottage, too, and about Lois not wanting to have Ronnie at Latter End, and—oh, heaps of things. Poor Minnie is the last straw. Manny knows she’s going, and of course she knows that Lois is at the bottom of it. And she’s got a nice bottle of ipecac sitting in the corner of the kitchen cupboard, with every opportunity of putting a teaspoonful in here and there when Lois has anything that the rest of us don’t.”

“Darling, what a lurid imagination you’ve got!”

She shook her head.

“I wish I had. I mean, I wish I didn’t think it was true, but—well, I’m practically sure. And—it isn’t safe, Antony.”

He said soberly, “There’s no proof. What are you going to do about it?”

He was sitting on the arm of a book-laden chair. She frowned up at him.

“I don’t know—tackle her, I suppose.”

His mouth drew awry.

“And what will you do if she bursts into tears on your shoulder and owns up?”

Julia turned a shade paler.

“I suppose I should have to tell Jimmy, and get him to pension her.”

He murmured, “Pensions for old age poisoners—Darling, I must say you’ve got a nerve! But suppose she denies it— where do we go from there?”

Julia’s eyes widened. The slanting light from the window behind Antony slid down into them, making them look like peaty water with the sun on it. She said slowly,

“I—don’t—know. I don’t know what there is to be done. It keeps me awake at night. You see, Lois makes everyone hate her, and when you get a lot of people all hating, things happen—horrid sorts of things. It’s like having a lot of electricity about—you don’t know where the lightning is going to strike.”

He said coolly, “Keep the drama for the great works, darling.”

The angry colour ran up into her face.

“You can laugh, but you don’t know what it feels like! I’m not dramatizing, I’m telling you about facts. Lois—well, she’s either got the wind up, or—I don’t know what. You know what it is when a person doesn’t show anything, but you can feel them being all worked up underneath—she’s like that. And Jimmy won’t let her take anything that’s made separately. He wanted her to knock off her beastly Turkish coffee, but she wouldn’t, so now he takes it too, poor darling, and you can see him hating every minute of it. Of course he knows perfectly well that no one will play tricks if he’s taking it.”

“So there have been no more attacks?”

“Not since you left. I say, that sounds rather incriminating, doesn’t it?” Her lips widened in the beginning of a smile, but it never got anywhere. She reached out for a small pile of books, dumped them on the stack, and said in a careful voice, “But it wouldn’t be you, naturally.”

He sat there swinging his foot and watching her.

“Is that intended for a compliment—a kindly tribute to my law-abiding character?”

“No, it isn’t. You’re out of it because—” She bit her lip and stopped suddenly. What an absolute damned fool jealousy made of you. Only when it was goading at you all the time something suddenly gave way and you came out with the very last thing you meant to say.

He looked at her quizzically.

“Gratifying, but inconclusive. I should like to know why you are not considering me as a possible poisoner.”

She spoke then, quite gravely and simply.

“Because you are fond of Lois. You used to be very fond of her.”

He shook his head.

“The answer is in the negative, darling.”

She blazed up suddenly.

“You were in love with her!”

“Quite a different thing, my child.

‘Yesterday’s fires are clean gone out, yesterday’s

hearth is cold;

No one can either borrow or buy with last

year’s gold.’ ”

Julia felt her heart leap up. He was telling her what she would have given almost anything in the world to be sure about. It leapt up, and it sank down again. Because what else could he say? He wouldn’t tell her or anyone else if he was still in love with Jimmy’s wife. She said in her deepest, gloomiest voice,

“I’ve got to go back there tomorrow, and it’s going to be absolute hell. Lois hasn’t got her new staff coming in for another fortnight, so we’ve all got to hang on till then. Ellie and Minnie are doing the work, so they can’t clear out. As a matter of fact neither of them has anywhere to go. Minnie won’t go to that awful old Miss Grey, I’m thankful to say, and Ellie hasn’t managed to find a room yet—they’re sending Ronnie to Brighton, and it’s packed. I shall have to stand by as long as they are there. I only hope I get through without having a final row with Lois.”

He gave a short dry laugh.

“Feeling optimistic about it?”

She said vehemently, “I mustn’t have one—because of Ellie. I keep telling myself that. You know, Antony, I’m not letting myself really hate her, but I could.”

“You’re putting over a pretty good imitation, darling.”

She looked at him, her eyes sombre, all the light gone out of them, her brows a black straight line.

“I’ve thought about it a lot. You can hate in such a lot of different ways. I think it’s all right to hate with your mind. Because what your mind hates isn’t people—it’s the things which are really hateful—the things everybody ought to hate. That’s all right, but when you begin to hate with your emotions it’s dangerous, because they swing you off your balance and the hating carries you away. You don’t know where it’s going to take you, or what it’s going to make you do. I’m trying very hard only to hate the things that Lois does, but sometimes—I’m afraid.”

Antony got up. She had moved him more deeply than he cared to show. He brought her half a dozen books, and when she had taken them he put both hands on her shoulders and shook her a little.

“You’re a stupid child, but you mean well. Stick to it! It won’t do Ellie any particular good if you pour oil on the troubled embers.”

She laughed, releasing the happiness she always felt when he touched her. Far below the words they used, the current ran between them smooth and strong. She said in a young voice,

“I don’t want to have a row.”

Antony went down to Latter End next day. He didn’t want to go, his every instinct warned him against going. But he went. It wasn’t Julia’s asking that took him there. He had found it hard to say no to her, but he had said it. He hoped he would have stuck to his no, but he was to have no means of telling, for that evening Jimmy rang him up. No to Julia was possible, if difficult. No to Jimmy became quite impossible during the three minutes of that country call.

“I’ve a very particular reason for wanting you to come. The fact is I want to talk to you—about the girls. They’ll have to have some money. Old Eliza Raven left me a little—you know I went down to settle her affairs. Well, I want the girls to have it. Thought perhaps you’d be trustee. And then there’s Minnie—I’m very unhappy about Minnie—I don’t mind saying so. I’ve got to talk to you.”

Not possible to go on saying no. Afterwards he was to wonder what difference it would have made if he had. It might have made a very dreadful difference, or it might have made no difference at all. The part which depended upon a guilty premeditation may have been already fixed. The part which depended upon the turn of a chance might still have turned the way it did. Or there might have been no chance at all, in which case the tragedy would have been so much the deeper. Just how much Antony’s presence at Latter End contributed to the event, he never found it possible to decide. The only thing certain was that had he known what lay ahead he would, even at the last moment, even in the village of Rayle itself, have turned his car about and gone back to town.

He took Julia down with him. As far as she was concerned, the barometer had risen, the sky was clear, and the sun shone. The fact that it was one of those unseasonable weeping September days made no difference. She carried her weather with her, and when Antony and she were together there were no dull days. There might be a storm, there had been one or two earthquakes and an occasional conflagration, but there were also floods of sunshine and quite enchanting rainbows. Today it didn’t matter to her in the least that the rain fell, and that when they emerged into the country their view was bounded by dripping hedgerows and curtains of white mist. You could always talk. Julia talked.

“Lois had had one in the eye anyhow.”

“Darling—your English style!”

She laughed.

“I know! But you’ve got to take a holiday sometimes. If you don’t you get all clamped up and stiff. I’m frightfully particular on paper.”

“Dulce est desipere in loco! All right—who’s been giving Lois one in the eye?”

“Jimmy. He met old Hodson down the lane, and Hodson let him have it—really good stuff on the lines of ‘It wouldn’t have happened in your father’s day, nor yet in your grandfather’s—taking the roof from over a poor man’s head to let foreigners in!’ All that sort of thing. And all Jimmy could do was to stand there and gape. And when he said, ‘But I thought you wanted to go to your daughter-in-law,’ Hodson came back at him with ‘And who told you a dirty lie like that, Mr. Jimmy?’ ”

Antony whistled.

“What happened after that? By the way, how do you know all this?”

“I was there. I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed myself so much. Jimmy told Hodson there had been a misunderstanding, and that the cottage was his for as long as he wanted it. Then he went home and blew right up. I got out of the way, but not before I heard him tell Lois that she must leave the management of the place to him. I hope it will do her good.”

“A pious hope can do no harm,” said Antony drily. “When did all this happen?”

“Just before I came up. Antony, it’s Minnie I’m miserable about. I think Ellie will be all right if we can get her through the next six months. Jimmy is going to give her an allowance, and if she can get a room at Brighton she’ll be able to see Ronnie every day, and she won’t have all this housework which is wearing her out. I think she’ll be all right—I’ve got to think she will, or I shall blow right up. But Minnie—she’s proud, you know, though she’s so gentle. She won’t take money from Jimmy—I believe she’d rather die. That’s what frightens me—she hasn’t got anything to live for. And she looks desperate—Jimmy’s awfully unhappy about it. The only person who can do anything is Lois. I suppose you couldn’t say something?”

Antony frowned at the long, wet road running on into the mist.

“I did.”

“Any good?”

“I thought so at the time. At least I thought there was a possibility. Now I don’t. The fact is, Minnie has got on Lois’ nerves, and when that happens it’s the end—no good arguing about it. There’ll be a clean sweep, and we’ll all start fresh. I don’t suppose Latter End will see very much of any of us after this.”

Julia was silent for a long time. Then she said,

“It’s rather an—amputation, isn’t it? I oughtn’t to feel it, because I haven’t been down there so much, but it hurts all right. It’s stupid of me, but one of the things I mind most about is Mummie’s picture hanging there on the wall behind that woman’s chair. It hurts like hell.”

“Jimmy would give you the portrait if you asked him for it.”

The dark colour rushed into her face.

“I couldn’t do that! It would be like turning Mummie out— for her!”

They drove in silence for a while, the mist closing them in. It was like being together in a room with white walls, a room so small that they could not move away from one another. He was aware of her thoughts—the colour and rhythm of them coming up out of warm depths. What Julia was aware of she kept to herself. Presently she said,

“I wish we were going anywhere else.”

He gave her a light answer.

“Wishes are cheap. Where would you like to go?”

“To Latter End ten years ago.”

Antony laughed.

“I’ve just left school, and you and Ellie are fourteen.”

“And there isn’t any Lois. It would be heaven, wouldn’t it?” Then, with sudden energy, “Do you know what she has done now? She’s got that odious Gladys Marsh in the house.”

“What’s happened to Joe?”

“Gone down to a sister in Devonshire. There’s supposed to be some idea of his going into his brother-in-law’s business. The fact is, he’s up against it in the village—everyone’s crying shame on him about his mother. And Gladys hates Rayle—they’d like to get out. The sooner the better, I should say. But meanwhile there’s Gladys at Latter End, putting onthe most awful side you ever saw.”

“What is she supposed to be doing there?”

“Odds and ends of sewing, maiding Lois—and whether she’s supposed to or not, she listens at doors. Ellie did dig her toes in and say she must do her own room, but there was some head-tossing over it—‘I don’t know, I’m sure. Housework is so bad for the hands, and not at all what I’m accustomed to.’ ” Julia gave an angry laugh. “I told Ellie I’d scream the house down if she gave in, so she stuck it out. Gladys now gives a perfect imitation of gentility with a mop and a duster—little finicky dabs and flicks, as if she’s never done a room in her life.”

Antony put out his left hand and let it rest for a moment on Julia’s knee.

“Darling, do turn off the gas and simmer down! If you go on boiling up like this you’ll boil over, and then the fat is going to be in the fire, which none of us particularly wants. Suppose you tell me about the new book instead.”

She gave him a look, half angry, half melting.

“There isn’t any new book.”

“There seemed to be a lot of well-inked paper lying about on your table.”

“It’s not a book—it’s a mess. I can’t write when things are happening.”

But she began to tell him about it all the same.