Watson's Choice (11 page)

‘I see.
Was
the dog savage?’

‘No. On the contrary, it was an obedient, intelligent, extremely docile animal.’

‘There you are, then. Manoel. He would like to make his father look a fool, and Boo
did
look a fool – you can’t deny it.’

‘It interests me,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘to note that the fact that Manoel is Sir Bohun’s illegitimate son appears to be known to everybody.’

‘Oh, well, Boo’s proud of it, you know. He tells no end of a good tale about it all – so gallant, so romantic, and, I am perfectly certain, all lies. Anyway, Manoel undoubtedly exists, and undoubtedly he is Boo’s son. What is more, he hates Boo with an old-fashioned Mexican hatred that would give me nightmares if I were in Boo’s shoes. Boo’s shoes,’ she repeated thoughtfully. ‘It sounds like one of those novels where they make up half the words. Boo’s shoes, shoes boo the crowd, boos through Boo, shoos away coos – I mean cows – oh, dear! How silly!’

She grimaced, grinned, slid to the ground and was gone, closing the door behind her with scarcely a sound. Mrs Bradley looked thoughtful. There was no doubt that Mrs Dance was both shrewd and forthright. She had sensed the feeling that Manoel had for his father; she had summed up Linda Campbell; and she had no illusions whatever about Sir Bohun.

Mrs Bradley went down to tea and found her host alone with his fiancée. Linda looked at her smugly, and then slid her hand into Sir Bohun’s. He looked surprised, stared down at it and cast it off.

‘Nice of you, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘Thankful we’ve got
one
friend and well-wisher, anyway!’

‘One?’ Mrs Bradley enquired, seating herself by the fire and opposite the engaged couple.

‘The others – even Bell – and what business it is of his I
don’t
know – are dead against this set-up.’ Sir Bohun indicated the tea-pouring Linda with a jerk of his head. ‘I can understand young Grimston, of course. I’ve cut him out. But why on earth anybody else should object, I don’t follow at all.’

‘Spongers!’ interpolated Linda. ‘And that Bell boy is afraid he’ll lose his job when we’re married. And so he will, if
I
have any say in the matter. He’s far too big for his boots, and he knows far more of your business, Boo, than is good for him or for you. When we’re married
I
can do his job.’

‘Not in addition to your own, my dear.’

‘Of course I can! Running a staff of servants doesn’t take all day.’

‘I was thinking of little Tim.’

‘Tim? Oh, but I shan’t be teaching Tim after we’re married, Boo! You’ll have to get rid of those boys. We can’t have
adopted
children in the house. They’ll be horribly in the way.’

‘I beg your pardon, Linda!’ said Sir Bohun with the utmost sharpness. ‘No nonsense of
that
kind,
please!
Whether you continue to teach Timothy or not is at your own discretion, of course! I thought you were fond of the kiddie, that’s all, and would like to push him along at his lessons until he’s ready for school. But if you don’t choose to do it, he’ll have to have another governess, that’s all, for Grimston, of course, will have to go. I can’t have him mooning about when we’re married.’

‘Then
I’ll
choose her,’ said Linda, laughing, but with a suggestion of malice in her mirth. ‘I’m not going to brook any rivalry!’

‘Really, Linda!’ said Sir Bohun, obviously shocked. ‘Don’t be a common little chit!’

Mrs Bradley thought it high time to put an end to these embarrassing exchanges.

‘Did you ever find out where the
Hound of the Baskervilles
came from that night?’ she enquired, putting down her cup and helping herself to a sandwich. Sir Bohun shook his head.

‘Never set eyes on him again, and everybody denied all knowledge of him,’ he replied. ‘Somebody’s lying, of course, but I can’t find out who it is, or where he went when you and Miss Menzies got rid of him out of the house.’

‘Horrible great brute!’ said Linda Campbell. ‘I’m terrified of big dogs. I shall always believe you did it yourself just to frighten me.’

‘Why the devil should I want to frighten you?’ Sir Bohun testily demanded. ‘Something better to think about than frightening damn’ silly women with damned great dogs! What
I
still want to know – apart from who painted the dog, the thoughtless fools! – is who dared put two more rooms out of bounds than were agreed on between Bell and myself!’

‘You had better ask Brenda Dance,’ said Linda Campbell, with so much malice in her tone that Mrs Bradley was immediately, although not obviously, interested. ‘You should have arranged a few sitting-out places, my poor Boo, if you didn’t want your precious little-boy plans upset by a dirty little – ’

‘Linda!’ shouted Sir Bohun, endeavouring to drown the last word.

‘Well, so she is,’ retorted his
inamorata
cattishly. ‘You know it as well as I do. And, what’s more, if I hadn’t grabbed you out of her clutches you’d be a co-respondent in the divorce court by this time, and, with
your
high-falutin’ ideas, you’d have had to marry
her
as soon as she’d got rid of Toby. And how would you have liked that?’

‘Quite as much as I like this, I dare say,’ replied Sir Bohun. ‘Stop talking nonsense and pour out more tea. There’s a scold’s bridle hanging up in the attic, and don’t you forget it, my girl! As for high-falutin’ ideas, I didn’t marry Manoel’s mother, did I?’

‘Is it true that Manoel comes from Mexico, not Spain?’ Mrs Bradley enquired, with the object of putting an end to the embarrassing exchanges.

‘He’s lived in both countries. Why do you want to know?’ demanded Sir Bohun.

‘Only that I would rather make an enemy of a Spaniard than of a Mexican,’ said Mrs Bradley calmly.

‘Who says I’ve made an enemy of Manoel? Have you been pumping the boy?’

‘No. But he wants to kill you. Didn’t you know?’

Sir Bohun began to swell and turn purple. Linda Campbell laughed aloud. Sir Bohun raised his hand as though to strike her across the face, caught Mrs Bradley’s basilisk eye, and, with a choking sound, went out of the room.

‘Poor Boo!’ said Linda lightly. ‘I shall have to cure him of that naughty temper when we’re married.’

‘He has had it rather a long time,’ said Mrs Bradley, eyeing her benignly. The drawing-room, when Mrs Bradley went down for dinner that night, was inhabited by Dance, who seemed to be at a loose end.

‘Ah,’ he said, when she came into the room, ‘splendid! Now I can ring for cocktails. I was getting desperate. Well, and how are you? Have you recovered from Christmas?’

‘Oh, yes. I always keep it in Oxfordshire.’

‘Why Oxfordshire?’

‘My favourite nephew and his wife live there, and, as a family, we all tend to gravitate to them when there is more work than usual, as at Christmastide, to be done. Shopping, catering and fitting guests into appropriate spaces seems to be water off a duck’s back where they are concerned, and one always takes advantage of that sort of hospitality. One cherishes the illusion in such households that one is no trouble.’

‘It’s the same here. This is a very well-run house. The housekeeper is completely efficient and completely unobtrusive. I
always
enjoy staying with Chantrey. I wonder what it will be like with Linda at the helm?’

‘There will probably be less efficiency for a time, but Sir Bohun, I hope, will prefer it. Of course, Miss Campbell may elect to keep the housekeeper in her present position of authority.’

‘I shouldn’t be surprised. I fancy Linda is a lazy little baggage. Why on earth Chantrey wants to get tied up to her I can’t for the life of me imagine. They don’t hit it off a bit. She’s always nagging the man. If it’s like that now, I simply can’t think what it will be like when they’re married.’

Mrs Bradley could not, either. She took a glass of sherry from the tray that was held out to her, sipped it appreciatively, and then remarked:

‘I did not see you at tea.’

‘I had it in the billiard-room with Lupez. Can’t stick listening to Chantrey and the Campbell bickering. (You can’t call it anything else.) It gives me the willies to hear her bullying the poor chap all the time. She’s going to do this; she’s not going to have that; she’s going to sack Grimston … that bird’s getting pretty well browned-off, I can tell you. One of these days he’s going to beat her up and walk out of this house. He’s one of those slow-combustion maniacs, and he’s sweet on the nasty little shrew. Did he but know it, he’s had a lucky escape, but he hasn’t got around to that yet. Mind if I have a cigarette? Would you care for one, too?’

The next
confidante
was Nanny Call, and after her came Manoel.

‘There’s going to be trouble, madam,’ said the pleasant-faced, elderly woman when Mrs Bradley asked her, when she met her on one of the landings after dinner, how the children were getting on.

‘How do you mean, Mrs Call?’ Mrs Bradley enquired. She did not gossip with servants unless she was engaged upon detective work, but she knew that Nanny Call was sensible and discreet, a decent, staunch old body.

‘She’s going to make him turn those little children out, madam. What’s more, she must have told Master Philip so. He came to me in real distress the other day. “Nanny,” he says to me – as white as a sheet he was, and his eyes like saucers – “Nanny,” he says, “if she turns us out, where shall we go? I don’t want to go to an orphanage,” he says, “and that’s the only thing I can see for it if she won’t let us stay here.” Did you
ever
, madam! Wicked
and
cruel, I call it, and when I get my notice I’m going to tell her so! But what can you expect of a jumped-up, common little thing like that!’

‘It is extraordinary that people will torture children,’ said Mrs Bradley, who did, indeed, find this the most extraordinary of all human aberrations. ‘It satisfies some feeling of egoism, I suppose. It makes one wonder whether cruelty is not one of the natural instincts. So many people are cruel that it seems cruelty must be part of our nature, doesn’t it?’

‘Master Philip is such a sensitive boy,’ said Mrs Call, not attempting to answer Mrs Bradley’s question. ‘But the trouble is, madam, that if she’s made up her mind to have him and little Master Timothy – who’s really no more than a baby – turned out of this house, turned out they’ll be, even if it was only to sleep under a hedge and starve to death tramping the roads.’

Mrs Bradley admired this forceful imagery in silence for a moment, then she said:

‘Sir Bohun will have a voice in the matter, you know. As he volunteered to take the children in, I can scarcely imagine his agreeing to turn them out.’

Nanny Call shook her head.

‘You don’t know her as we’re beginning to know her, madam. I would have said that the master was a strong-minded man.’ Mrs Bradley, who, as his psychiatrist, knew a great deal better than this, held her peace. ‘But really,’ the woman continued, ‘I begin to have my doubts. She does just as she likes with him, madam, and so high and mighty with it as makes you wonder. She’s changed several things already that suited the master but don’t suit
her
– and that’s
before
they’re married! Why, the other day, she even went so far as to countermand his orders to Mrs Pearson, and when Mrs Pearson referred the matter back to him he give her the most terrible shock by telling her to do as Miss Campbell said. I doubt if Mrs Pearson will stop here very much longer. If she could get a parallel sort of place, I wouldn’t be surprised if she wouldn’t pack her bag to-morrow!’

‘There are not a great many housekeepers’ posts of this kind in these days,’ Mrs Bradley gently pointed out. ‘There isn’t the money about.’

‘Folks have their pride, madam,’ Mrs Call retorted, ‘and there’s some things even beggars can’t abide.’

Mrs Bradley, who had come up to get her fur coat, for it was a brilliant moonlight night, intensely cold, and she proposed to take a turn in the garden as an antidote to the poisonous mental atmosphere of the house, went downstairs again, and, in the moonlit garden, found Manoel. He was smoking a cigar and was wearing a black Homburg and a heavy overcoat with an astrakhan collar.

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘I shall be glad of company. Let us stroll as far as the lake.’

Manoel, who had been leaning with his back against the terrace parapet so that the light from an uncurtained window was full upon his face, gave her a flashing smile and raised the hat.

‘By all means,’ he replied. ‘You are just the person. I had hoped to see you alone, but did not know how to arrange it. This is contrived by God. You know, I am to go. She wishes it, and my father makes me to obey. I wish she were dead. It would make simple what is now nothing but complication. Why should I go, to please her, but not myself or, I think, my father? But there it is. He has ordered me out of the house; that house which should one day be mine.’

He spoke passionately although in low tones.

‘No one seems very happy about the marriage,’ said Mrs Bradley, as they began to walk towards the steps which led down to the garden.

‘I do not understand it,’ said Manoel. ‘No, it is dark to me, this arrangement. If I thought my father would be happy – not that I care for him much – but even that could be tolerated. As it comes’ – he made a gesture, the glowing tip of his cigar pointing it – ‘there is no happiness for anybody. She does not love him. He does not love her. There is
un engaño
– how do you call it –?’

‘A trick. Some fraud. Some deceit.’

‘So I believe. She has … no, I have not the English word.… I wish to say …’

‘She has hooked him?’

‘The metaphor to catch fish! That is good. I like it. She has hooked him. But how? But why? She is not beautiful. She is not gay. She is not charming. She has good features, but there is no life, no soul. She is
perverso, malo
– bad, bad, bad! How can I kill her, and not be found out?’

Mrs Bradley was neither prepared nor able to offer any
suggestions.
She had once got away with murder herself, but only from the highest motives had that particular murder been committed. She seldom thought about it, and never with the slightest regret. She said to Manoel: