Not to be Taken (4 page)

‘But he won’t take medicine, ever,’ Angela lamented. Anyone who would not take medicine must indeed have seemed strange to Angela, who regarded it almost as part of her normal diet, if not the best part.

Rona disregarded her and nodded approval of John’s last remark. ‘Exactly. You mean you approve of the principle but can’t quite swallow the practitioners – any more than the other side’s medicine. Well, I think you’re quite right. Christian Science seems to offer by far the most logical theory of illness that I’ve seen, and certainly the most interesting.’

Glen snorted. ‘Logic! I’ll tell you what logic is. You swallow a pin, and you get a pain under the pinny. That’s logic. Cause and effect. But John here will tell you there isn’t really a pain at all; what you feel is only –’

‘No, John won’t, because he doesn’t know anything about it,’ John interrupted in a tone that was light enough. ‘But I’ll tell you this: I won’t take any of your rotten medicines, my dear chap, so don’t waste your time prescribing one. I warn you, if you send a bottle round I’ll pour it straight down the sink.’

‘Oh, John, what a waste,’ Angela reproved; and she really looked as if she thought it was not so much a waste as sacrilege.

‘My dear fellow, I haven’t any intention of sending a bottle round,’ Glen retorted, ’and I wouldn’t care what you did with it if I did. Go on with your twinges, and let your gastric ulcer increase and multiply. I don’t mind.’

There was a little pause. I for one had an uneasy feeling that despite the lightness with which both John and Glen had spoken, there was a hint of bigger issues, almost of antagonistic principles, underneath the words.

If that were so, Angela effectively dispelled them.

‘That reminds me, Glen,’ she murmured. ‘My indigestion’s been rather worse lately, too. I wonder if we can both have been eating something that disagreed with us?’

‘I’ll call in and examine you tomorrow morning,’ Glen promised.

‘Oh, will you? Well, perhaps it would be best, just to be on the safe side… And you could examine John, too, if you could persuade him to leave the Works for ten minutes,’ Angela added, rather perfunctorily, I am afraid. ‘Well, perhaps I’d better… No, don’t bother, Douglas… If you don’t mind me just slipping off by myself… I’m sure they’re dying for drinks, John… Yes, well, good night…’

Angela got herself out of the room at last; John shut the door behind her and busied himself with decanters and siphon; the rest of us dropped easily into chairs near the fireplace.

‘What are the Works at present, John?’ Glen asked. The slight feeling of constraint had quite gone.

‘Oh, we’re still pulling down the stables. Would you believe it, there are no foundations at all. Stones laid just six inches below the surface. Simply disgraceful. It’s a marvel to me that the walls have stood up all these years.’

‘Look here, John!’ Rona spoke so abruptly that all of us turned to look at her. ‘You have been looking rotten lately, you know. Let Glen overhaul you. You may have leanings to Christian Science, just as I have; but you haven’t any hard-and-fast principles. You needn’t drink his medicine, but at least let him examine you – for our satisfaction, if you like.’

‘Oh, all right, if you make a point of it, Rona.’ John looked slightly sheepish. ‘But there’s really nothing wrong with me, you know. There never is.’

‘Not a day’s illness, man and boy, these sixty years,’ Glen scoffed. ‘Yes, my son, and those are just the ones who go off quickest in the end. I bet the state of your colon passes description.’

‘You need a holiday, John,’ Frances said. ‘I know for a fact that you haven’t left here for three years. That’s the worst of next-door neighbours. They notice that sort of thing.’

‘Why don’t you cut loose from the whole bag of tricks and go off to put electric light in the Temple of Angkor or some equally weird place, as in the old days?’ asked Glen.

For a moment quite a wistful look came into John’s most unwistful face. ‘Well, it’s funny you should say that, because I was approached only last week…’

‘Then go, man. This place is getting you down.’

‘And it wasn’t so far from Angkor either. Well, within a thousand miles.’

‘Then go, man!’

‘No, I had to turn the offer down. I couldn’t leave Angela, you see, and the climate wouldn’t have suited her at all.’

Glen made a rude noise with his lips.

That was all, I think, that turned out to be relevant. Only trivialities, you can see, but how they were to be raked over and sifted later.

5

There is no time more convenient for discussing our friends than in walking home from their houses.

The Broughams left when we did, and hardly were we halfway down the drive before Frances said:

‘You were quite right, Rona. John hasn’t been looking at all fit. Do you really think he has a gastric ulcer, Glen?’

‘I shouldn’t be surprised. Or gastro-enteritis in some form.’

‘Dangerous?’

‘Not in the least, provided he takes the ordinary precautions.’

‘But can you persuade him to do that?’

‘I doubt it,’ Glen said carelessly. ‘He’s infernally touchy about his health, like all these ex-sahibs with livers like leather and insides like a sanitary inspector’s nightmare. He’d suffer agonies rather than admit that he doesn’t feel exactly as fit as he did at seventeen. Mind you, I don’t say John’s in a bad state. He’s probably in very sound health, for his age. He takes a fair amount of exercise, and any insurance company would be delighted to have him on their books. But he’s got to begin taking care now, and he just hates the idea.’

‘He promised to let you overhaul him,’ I reminded Glen.

‘And a fat lot of good that’ll be, if he doesn’t do anything I tell him afterwards.’

‘You don’t think he will?’

‘Not he. It’s become a sort of point of honour. You were wrong about the Christian Science, Rona. He may think he approves of the principles, but what the old idiot really feels, though I dare say he doesn’t know it, is that he’s never needed a doctor in his life yet and he’s dam’ well not going to begin needing one now. Well, it’s no business of mine.’

‘It’s a pity, if he’s going to be stupid,’ Rona said a little absently.

We turned out of the gates and into the lane which led to the village. Our house, the only other except Oswald’s Gable, the big place where the Waterhouses lived, was only a few yards further.

Before we reached it Glen suddenly laughed.

‘Did you notice Angela? Green with jealousy, poor girl. John had something wrong with him for a wonder, and she wasn’t the centre of the sickroom picture.’

Frances smiled. ‘Poor Angela! Yes, I’m afraid she’s become rather fond of her ailments. And indigestion, too – almost her pet one.’

‘I’ve noticed before that Angela is getting inclined to look on indigestion as her prerogative,’ I agreed.

‘That’s what was making me laugh,’ said Glen.

We were still taking the affair lightly, you see, in spite of the ominous sound of the words ‘gastric ulcer.’ I wonder what our reactions would have been if someone had advanced the theory then that John’s twinges were not due to natural indigestion at all but that the poison was being administered to him by one of the very persons who had sat at his dinner table that night.

We should probably have received the idea with an almost amused incredulity – just as we did when, in due course, the contention was actually made.

The Funeral Will Not Take Place

John Waterhouse died a painful and a messy death, but he died gallantly.

His death was quite unexpected, not least by his own doctor. He was ill for five days, but seemed to be getting better all the time. The diarrhoea and sickness both abated, though they did not disappear; there was much less pain than at first; the temperature was never more than a few points above normal; but of course there was great weakness following the physical strain, and the pulse was weak. In the end he dropped quietly into unconsciousness and never came round.

His doctor, Glen Brougham, was surprised, but not astounded. He gave a death certificate without question and stated the cause as epidemic diarrhoea.

‘The poor old chap really died of heart failure,’ he told me a few hours afterwards. ‘His heart must have been a bit groggy all the time, though he never knew it. That’s often the case with these big, fleshly men. When the strain comes their hearts can’t stand up to it.’

We were all very much upset, for we had a strong affection for John. Frances, of course, had been in and out of the house during his illness, and had been able to help Angela and to take a good deal of responsibility off Mitzi Bergmann’s shoulders. For it must be admitted that Angela had not been very helpful herself, and but for Frances all the domestic arrangements would have fallen to Mitzi. Rona Brougham had taken complete charge of the sickroom and had even succeeded in getting herself installed in the house as nurse; so we had been satisfied that everything was right in that department. Rona did all that possibly could be done to save John, and his death was a bigger blow to her than to anyone; she was really quite knocked out by it, and one could hardly recognise the old imperturbable Rona in the weeping, almost distraught woman who cried for an hour in our drawing-room on the evening that John died, and would not be consoled. Indeed, what with Rona there and Angela in a state of semi-hysteria at Oswald’s Gable, Frances and I had such an evening as we are not likely to forget.

It may have been the strain of it which caused Frances to burst out when we were at last alone. She had borne up remarkably well so long as there was any need, as one could trust Frances to do; but once Glen had taken Rona home, and Angela had calmed down sufficiently to be left to the almost equally agitated Mitzi, Frances began to cry herself. She had been very fond of John, as all in our little circle were, and his death was a terrible shock to her.

‘Douglas,’ she cried as I tried to comfort her, ‘there’s something wrong. I know there is.’

‘Darling, what do you mean?’

‘Rona knows there is too. I’m certain she does.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Rona seemed to be blaming herself for John’s death.’

‘Frances,’ I said sharply, ‘you’re talking nonsense.’

‘I’m not. Oh, I don’t mean blaming herself literally. But she kept saying, “I ought to have saved him, I ought to have been able to save him.” ’

‘My darling, you mustn’t attach any importance to what anyone says in these conditions. Rona’s been under terrible strain. She nursed John most devotedly, and she knocked herself up. I know for a fact that she didn’t go to bed at all for the first two nights. Besides, you know what Rona is. She can’t bear failure, and she’ll be feeling that somehow she did fail. She didn’t, of course, and tomorrow she’ll have recovered her balance.’

But Frances was not convinced.

‘You can say what you like, but I believe that Rona was right from the beginning, and Glen wrong. I’m sure John didn’t die of epidemic diarrhoea.’

‘Pull yourself together, Frances.’

‘I know what I’m saying. What have you done with that bottle of medicine?’

‘It’s quite safe,’ I hedged.

‘Well, don’t throw it away,’ said Frances ominously. ‘It may be needed yet.’

2

How do rumours arise in a small village community such as ours? Nine times out of ten when you read of an exhumation taking place in a country churchyard, with all the melodramatic accompaniments of lanterns and secrecy, the act is the result of rumours with which the place has been seething for weeks.

Frances based her suspicions (which, I must admit, appeared to me then of the wildest nature) on nothing but a medicine bottle which she and I alone in Anneypenny knew to be in our possession. No enquiries seemed to have been made for it; no one had appeared in the least interested in it; no one, outside our own small circle, had even heard of its existence. Yet I know now that within a few hours of John’s death people in the village were saying that there was something queer about it. What had they to go on? So far as I can see, nothing at all. Perhaps there are some people who say this over every death that occurs, and only cease to do so when no one takes any notice of them.

I have often wondered whether Cyril Waterhouse was given some sinister hint by one of these rumour-mongers before he ever set foot in Anneypenny, which caused him to adopt the extraordinary attitude he did adopt, and take the otherwise almost inexplicable action he did take. There was an anonymous letter writer at work, the usual trouble-loving pest. Did Cyril receive some communication from that source? Or had he other, more sinister reasons of his own?

Cyril Waterhouse is John’s brother and the last sort of man to be brother to bluff, simple-souled John that the ordinary person would expect. I write ‘the ordinary person’ because the ordinary person rarely peers below the surface of character; but it may be that a psychologist would have used the tortuosities of Cyril’s mind as a clue to the possibility that John was not altogether the simple soul he appeared. And in that case, as will be seen, the psychologist would not have been far wrong.

Cyril is a businessman, engaged, I believe, in the import and export trade. He is in a prosperous way of business, has offices in the city of London, and lives in a big house in one of the wealthier suburbs. He is tall and thin and rather bald, and he wears pince-nez and that kind of striped trousers which denote a certain professional standing. He is a sharp man, is Cyril, and he knows it.

It is queer on what little things enormous issues depend. If Angela, with a fecklessness that was really absurd (
I
put it down as fecklessness, mark you, though Cyril had a different explanation) – if Angela had not omitted to notify Cyril at once of John’s death and invite him down for the funeral, quite possibly we should never have heard anything more about it, and Anneypenny would never have got into the headlines. As it was…

The funeral was a very quiet one. Angela had spent the intervening three days in a state of collapse, in bed, pronouncing herself incapable of doing anything at all. All the necessary arrangements were made by Glen and myself. In a half-hearted way Angela seemed to want John’s body to be cremated. Both Glen and Rona agreed with her. Frances, however, opposed the idea. She has never told me why, but I know the reason. She was right, of course, from one point of view; but I can’t help feeling it a pity…

Anyhow, the suggestion came to nothing. Angela, although protesting that this was what John had wanted, seemed unable to make her mind up; Glen seemed not to care either way; Rona was apathetic and did not press the point; Frances carried the day. Buried John was, therefore, in the ordinary way, in the little cemetery across the road from Anneypenny Church, and in the presence of no more than three or four of his wife’s relatives, of us his closest friends in the neighbourhood, and of a fair number of genuinely mourning villagers. His own side of the family was not represented at all.

It was Frances who discovered that Cyril had never been told.

Commenting after the ceremony was over on the absence of any relative of John’s, she asked if his brother, of whom we had heard vaguely once or twice, was not still alive. Angela answered that he was, but that John had never cared for him and had not seen him for years, and she let out that Cyril had not yet been informed of the death. Frances, who is strict about matters of that sort, was horrified and made Angela sit down and write to him there and then.

The next day Cyril arrived, preceded by a wire which put Angela in a flutter of nerves and exasperation. She seemed genuinely not to understand why Cyril should be coming down at all; she did not want him; and she was plainly a little frightened of him. She actually came running down to our house herself instead of sending Mitzi to ask Frances if she would go up to Oswald’s Gable, and made Frances promise to help her through what she obviously expected to be an ordeal. Frances told her that she and I would dine at Oswald’s Gable that evening if she liked, and Angela almost kissed her with gratitude.

And that is how Frances and I, having already been in at the beginning of the first stage, came to be present when the curtain went up for the second act.

And go up the curtain did, in the most dramatic way.

For as we were sitting rather awkwardly with Angela in the drawing-room, not knowing quite what to talk about over our cocktails and waiting for Cyril, who had arrived late and was still upstairs dressing, the parlour maid came in and spoke to Angela with an embarrassment not generally to be seen in so perfectly trained a maid.

‘Excuse me, madam, may I speak to you a moment?’

‘Yes, Pritchard,’ Angela replied petulantly. ‘What is it?’

‘The sexton is here, madam. He wishes to know if it will be convenient for him to fill in the grave tomorrow.’

‘Convenient?’ Angela looked bewildered. ‘How can I know whether it’s convenient for him?’

‘I think he means after your telegram, madam.’

‘Telegram? What telegram?’ As usual Angela appealed to the nearest person. ‘What does she mean, Douglas?’

A sudden feeling of uneasiness invaded me. ‘Would you like me to go and speak to him, Angela?’

‘Oh, would you? Thank you so much, Douglas.’

I went out. The sexton, who combined that post with those of village carpenter, joiner and undertaker, and only became a sexton when duty commanded, was waiting at the back door.

‘Yes, Blake?’ I said non-committally.

The old man touched his cap. ‘I only wanted to know if Mrs Waterhouse would like me to fill the grave in tomorrow, sir, or shall I put it off any longer? By rights it ought to have been done today, but when she sent me that telegram…’

‘Yes, of course. By the way, have you the telegram on you?’

‘Yes sir, I believe I got it in me pocket. Let’s see now.’ He dragged out an enormous collection of very dirty pieces of paper and began to sort them through with maddening slowness. Of course Blake knew just as well as I did that Angela had sent him no telegram, but the decencies had to be preserved; and for sheer instinctive tact, commend me to any West Anglian countryman.

At last the telegram was found, and I read it through quickly. It ran:

DO NOT FILL IN GRAVE PENDING INSTRUCTIONS FROM ME. WATERHOUSE.

It was addressed to ‘The Sexton, Anneypenny, Dorset,’ and it had been handed in at ten twenty-seven that morning in London.

I gave it back to the old man.

‘I think, Blake,’ I said, ‘that I shouldn’t bother Mrs Waterhouse this evening. I’ll see that she sends you the instructions tomorrow.’

3

I thus took a dislike to Cyril Waterhouse before I had even met him.

This dislike was confirmed during dinner. The man’s appearance I have already described: his manner was unpleasing in the extreme. Toward Frances and myself he was coldly civil but let us see plainly that he considered us inconvenient interlopers; toward his sister-in-law he was cold and curt to the verge of rudeness, and over it. Dinner that evening was not a happy meal.

When the two women had withdrawn and Pritchard had served us with our coffee, Waterhouse broke through the laboured small talk with which I was trying to ease the situation and said abruptly:

‘I’m not at all satisfied about my brother’s death. I understand that you and your wife saw as much of his illness as anyone. Please give me some account of it.’

I complied, of course, with as good a grace as I could muster. The illness had followed the usual course of summer diarrhoea, I told him, and death had been due to collapse following the intense physical strain. Everything, so far as I understood, had been perfectly normal.

‘He had been expected to die?’ Waterhouse asked.

I answered no, his death had been a surprise and a terrible shock to all of us.

Waterhouse began to peel a peach from one of the Gable glasshouses in a scientific way, as if he were dissecting a fact.

‘I don’t understand,’ he remarked. ‘Why was no second doctor called in? Can you tell me that?’

‘I suppose Doctor Brougham saw no necessity.’

‘He did not consider my brother’s condition dangerous?’

‘So far as I know, he didn’t. Serious perhaps, but not dangerous… Though this sort of question,’ I added, a little stiffly, for I was becoming nettled by this examination, ‘would surely be better addressed to him.’

He took no notice of my intended snub. ‘And why was no professional nurse sent for?’

‘Miss Brougham very kindly undertook the nursing. She is a most competent woman.’

‘Is she a trained nurse?’