‘Has she?’
‘Yes, of course. By the way, you don’t insist on a husband’s rights to read his wife’s letters?’
‘Great heavens, no!’ said Peter, horrified.
‘I’m glad of that. It mightn’t be good for you. Here’s Bunter coming back; we may get some tea. Mrs Ruddle is in such a state of excitement that she has probably boiled the milk and put the tea-leaves into the sandwiches. I ought to have stood over her till she’d finished.’
‘Blow Mrs Ruddle!’
‘By all means – but I expect Bunter is doing that already.’
The precipitate entry of Mrs Ruddle with the tea-tray gave weight to the supposition.
‘Which,’ said Mrs Ruddle, setting down her burden with a rattle on a small table before the fire, ‘I’d a-brought it before, if it wasn’t the policeman from Broxford come a-busting in, jest as I was makin’ of the toast. Me ’eart come into me mouth, thinkin’ summink ’orrible ’ad ’appened. But it ain’t only summingses from the coroner. Quite a bunch of ’em ’e ’ad in ’is ’and, and these ’ere is yours.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Peter, breaking the seal. ‘They’ve been pretty quick. “To wit – To Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey, By virtue of a Warrant under the Hand and Seal of John Perkins” – all right, Mrs Ruddle, you needn’t wait.’
‘Mr Perkins the lawyer, that is,’ explained Mrs Ruddle. ‘A very nice gentleman, so I’m told, though I ain’t never seen ’im to speak to.’
‘ “. . . one of His Majesty’s coroners for the said county of Hertfordshire to be and appear before him on Thursday the tenth day of October” . . . you’ll see him and hear him tomorrow all right, Mrs Ruddle . . . “at 11 o’oclock in the forenoon precisely at the Coroner’s Court at the Crown Inn situate in the parish of Paggleham in the said County; then and there to give Evidence and be examined on His Majesty’s behalf, touching the death of William Noakes, and not to depart without leave.” ’
‘That’s all very fine,’ observed Mrs Ruddle, ‘but ’oo’s to give my Bert ’is dinner? Twelve o’clock’s ’is time, and I ain’t a-goin’ to see my Bert go ’ungry, not for King George nor nobody.’
‘Bert will have to get on without you, I’m afraid,’ said Peter, solemnly. ‘You see what it says: “Herein fail not at your peril.” ’
‘Lor’ now,’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘Peril of what, I should like to know?’
‘Prison,’ said Peter, in an awful voice.
‘Me go to prison?’ cried Mrs Ruddle, in great indignation. ‘That’s a nice thing for a respectable woman.’
‘Surely you could get a friend to see to Bert’s dinner,’ suggested Harriet.
‘Well,’ said Mrs Ruddle, dubiously, ‘maybe Mrs ’Odges would oblige. But I’m thinkin’ she’ll want to come and ’ear wot’s going on at the ’quest. But there! I dessay I could make a pie tonight and leave it out for Bert.’ She retreated thoughtfully to the door, returning to say, in a hoarse whisper:
‘Will I ’ave to tell ’im about the paraffin?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’
‘Oh!’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘Not as there’s anything wrong in borrowin’ a drop of paraffin, w’en it’s easy replaced. But them there pleecemen do twist a woman’s words so.’
‘I shouldn’t think you need worry,’ said Harriet. ‘Shut the door, please, as you go out.’
‘Yes, my lady,’ said Mrs Ruddle; and vanished with unexpected docility.
‘If I know anything about Kirk,’ said Peter, ‘they’ll adjourn the inquest, so it shouldn’t take very long.’
‘No. I’m glad John Perkins has been so prompt – we shan’t get such a crowd of reporters and people.’
‘Shall you mind the reporters very much?’
‘Not nearly as much as you will. Don’t be so tragic about it, Peter. Make up your mind that the joke’s on us, this time.’
‘It’s that, right enough. Helen’s going to make a grand cockadoodle over this.’
‘Well, let her. She doesn’t look as though she got much fun out of life, poor woman. After all, she can’t alter the facts. I mean, here I am, you know, pouring out tea for you – from a chipped spout, admittedly – but I’m here.’
‘I don’t suppose she envies you that job. I’m not exactly Helen’s cup of tea.’
‘She’d never enjoy any tea – she’d always be thinking about the chips.’
‘Helen doesn’t allow chips.’
‘No – she’d insist on silver – even if the pot was empty. Have some more tea. I can’t help its dribbling into the saucer. It’s the sign of a generous nature, or an overflowing heart, or something.’
Peter accepted the tea and drank it in silence. He was still dissatisfied with himself. It was as though he had invited the woman of his choice to sit down with him at the feast of life, only to discover that his table had not been reserved for him. Men, in these mortifying circumstances, commonly find fault with the waiter, grumble at the food and irritably reject every effort to restore pleasantness to the occasion. From the worst exhibitions of injured self-conceit, his good manners were sufficient to restrain him, but the mere fact that he knew himself to be in fault made it all the more difficult for him to recover spontaneity. Harriet watched his inner conflict sympathetically. If both of them had been ten years younger, the situation would have resolved itself in a row, tears and reconciling embraces; but for them, that path was plainly marked, NO EXIT. There was no help for it; he must get out of his sulks as best he could. Having inflicted her own savage moods upon him for a good five years, she was in no position to feel aggrieved; compared with herself, indeed, he was making a pretty good showing.
He pushed the tea-things aside and lit cigarettes for both of them. Then, rubbing fretfully upon the old sore, he said:
‘You show commendable patience with my bad temper.’
‘Is that what you call it? I’ve seen tempers in comparison with which you’d call that a burst of heavenly harmony.’
‘Whatever it is, you are trying to flatter me out of it.’
‘Not at all.’ (Very well, he was asking for it; better use shock tactics and carry the place by assault.) ‘I’m only trying to tell you, in the nicest possible manner, that, provided I were with you, I shouldn’t greatly mind being deaf, dumb, halt, blind and imbecile, afflicted with shingles and whooping-cough, in an open boat without clothes or food, with a thunderstorm coming on. But you’re being painfully stupid about it.’
‘Oh, my dear!’ he said, desperately, and with a very red face, ‘what the devil am I to say to that? Except that I shouldn’t mind anything either. Only I can’t help feeling that it’s I that have somehow been idiot enough to launch the infernal boat, call up the storm, strip you naked, jettison the cargo, strike you lame and senseless and infect you with whooping-cough and – what was the other thing?’
‘Shingles,’ said Harriet, drily; ‘and it isn’t infectious.’
‘Crushed again.’ His eyes danced, and all of a sudden her heart seemed to turn right over. ‘O ye gods! render me worthy of this noble wife. All the same, I have a strong suspicion that I am being managed. I should resent it very much, if I were not full of buttered toast and sentiment – two things which, as you may have noticed, tend to go together. And that reminds me – hadn’t we better get the car out and run over to Broxford for dinner? There’s sure to be some sort of pub there, and a little fresh air may help to blow the bats out of my belfry.’
‘That’s rather a good idea. And can’t we take Bunter? I don’t believe he’s had anything to eat for years.’
‘Still harping on my Bunter! I myself have suffered many things for love, very like this. You may have Bunter, but I draw the line at a partie carrée. Mrs Ruddle shall not come tonight. I observe the Round Table rule – to love one only and to cleave to her. One at a time, I mean, of course. I will not pretend that I have never been linked up before, but I absolutely refuse to be coupled in parallel.’
‘Mrs Ruddle can go home to bak
e her pies. I’ll just finish my letter and then we can post it in Broxford.’
But Bunter respectfully requested to be omitted from the party – unless, of course, his lordship required his services. He would prefer, if permitted, to utilise the leisure so kindly placed at his disposal in a visit to the Crown. He should be interested to make the acquaintance of some of the local inhabitants, and, as for his supper, Mr Puffett had been so good as to hint that there was pot luck waiting for him at his house whenever he might care to step in and partake of it.
‘Which means,’ said Peter, interpreting the decision to Harriet, ‘that Bunter wants to get a side-line through the local gossip on the late Noakes and all his household. In addition, he would like to establish diplomatic relations with the publican, the coal-merchant, the man who grows the best vegetables, the farmer who happens to have cut down a tree and can oblige with logs, the butcher who hangs his meat longest, the village carpenter and the man who does a job about the drains. You’ll have to put up with me. Nothing is ever gained by diverting Bunter from his own mysterious ends.’
The bar of the Crown was remarkably full when Bunter made his way in. No doubt the unobtrusive presence of the late Mr Noakes behind a locked door lent a special body to the mild and bitter. At the entrance of the stranger, the voices, which had been busy, fell silent, and glances, at first directed to the door, were swiftly averted and screened behind lifted tankards. This was fully in accordance with etiquette. Bunter saluted the company with a polite ‘Good evening’, and asked for a pint of old ale and a packet of Players. Mr Gudgeon, the landlord, fulfilled the order with a dignified leisure, observing, as he changed a ten-shilling note, that the day had been fine. Bunter assented to this proposition, saying further that the country air was agreeable after town. Mr Gudgeon remarked that a-many London gentleman had been known to say the same thing, and inquired whether this was his customer’s first visit to that part of the country. Bunter said that though he had frequently passed through the district he had never stayed there before, and that Paggleham seemed to be a pretty spot. He also volunteered the information that he was Kentish by birth. Mr Gudgeon said, Indeed? they grew hops there, he believed. Bunter admitted that this was so. A very stout man with one eye intervened at this point to say that his wife’s cousin lived in Kent and that it was all ’ops where he was. Bunter said there were hops where his mother lived; he himself knew little about hops, having been brought up in London from the age of five. A thin man with a lugubrious countenance said he supposed that there gallon of beer he’d had off Mr Gudgeon last June came from Kent. This appeared to be a reference to some standing jest, for the bar laughed appreciatively, and much chaff was bandied about, till the thin man closed the discussion by saying, ‘All right, Jim; call it ’ops if it makes you feel any better.’
During this exchange the customer from London had quietly retired to a window-seat, taking his pint with him. The conversation turned upon football. At length, however, a plump woman (who was, in fact, no other than Mrs Ruddle’s friend, Mrs Hodges) remarked, with that feminine impulsiveness which rushes in where the lords of creation fear to tread:
‘You lost a customer, seemin’ly, Mr Gudgeon.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Gudgeon. He darted a looked towards the window-seat, but it encountered only the back of the stranger’s head. ‘Where one goes another comes, Mrs Hodges. ’Tain’t much I’ll be losing on the beer.’
‘You’re right,’ said Mrs Hodges. ‘Nor nobody else, neither. But is it true as ’e was put away a-purpose?’
‘That’s as may be,’ replied Mr Gudgeon, cautiously. ‘We’ll be hearin’ tomorrow.’
‘And that won’t do no ’arm to the trade, I reckon,’ observed the one-eyed man.
‘Dunno about that,’ retorted the landlord. ‘We’ll ’ave to close the ’ouse till it’s over. ’Tis only decent. And Mr Kirk’s particular.’
A scrawny woman of uncertain age piped up suddenly:
‘Wot’s ’e look like, George? Can’t you let us ’ave a peep at ’im?’
‘ ’Ark at Katie!’ exclaimed the lugubrious man, as the landlord shook his head. ‘Can’t let a man alone, dead or alive.’
‘Go on, Mr Puddock!’ said Katie; and the bar laughed again. ‘You’re on the jury, ain’t you? You gets a front seat free.’
‘We don’t ’ave to view the body these days,’ Mr Puddock corrected her. ‘Not without we ask to. ’Ere’s George Lugg; you better ask ’im.’
The undertaker came out of the inner room, and all eyes were turned to him.
‘When’s the funeral to be, George?’
‘Friday,’ said Mr Lugg. He ordered a tankard of bitter and added to a young man who now came out, locking the door behind him and handing the key to Mr Gudgeon:
‘You better get started, Harry. I’ll be along in two ticks. We’ll want to close him down after the inquest. He’ll go till then.’
‘Ay’, said Harry. ‘ ’Tis fine, sharp weather.’ He called for a half-pint, took it down briskly, and went out, saying, ‘See you presently, then, Dad.’
The undertaker became the centre of a small circle, ghoulishly intent upon descriptive detail. Presently the voice of the irrepressible Mrs Hodges was raised:
‘And by what Martha Ruddle says, them as didn’t ’ave ’is custom ’ull lose least by ’im.’
‘Ah!’ said a small man with a fringe of sandy hair and a shrewd eye. ‘I’ve ’ad me doubts. Too many irons in that fire, I reckon. Not as I’ve a lot to grumble at. I don’t let no books run beyond the month, and I got me money – allus exceptin’ that there collar of bacon as ’e made trouble about. But it’s like that there ’Atry and these other big companies as goes bust – you puts money out o’ one thing into another, till you don’t rightly know wot you’ve got.’
‘That’s right,’ said the one-eyed man. ‘Allus investin’ in things, ’e wos. Too clever be ’alf.’
‘And a ’ard bargain ’e did drive,’ said Mrs Hodges. ‘Dear, oh, dear! Remember when ’e lent my poor sister that bit o’ money? Crool, it was, wot she ’ad to pay. And makin’ ’er sign away all her furniture.’
‘Well, ’e never made much on the furniture,’ said the sandy man. ‘A soakin’ wet day that was, w’en they come up for sale. Tom Dudden ’ad ’em over at Pagford, and there wasn’t a soul there but the dealers.’
An ancient man with long grey whiskers raised his voice for the first time:
‘Ill-gotten goods never thrive. ’Tis in Scripture. Because he hath oppressed and forsaken the poor, because he hath violently taken away a house which he builded not – ah! and the furniture, too – therefore shall no man look for his goods. In the fulness of his sufficiency shall he be in straits – ain’t that so, Mr Gudgeon? – He shall flee from the iron weapon – ay – but there ain’t no good fleein’ when the ’and of the Lord is agin the wicked man. There’s a curse upon ’im, and we ’ave lived to see it fulfilled. Wasn’t there a gentleman came down from London this morning with a writ agin ’im? In the same pit that ’e digged for others is ’is foot taken. Let the extortioner consume all that he hath – ’tis writ so – Ah! let ’is children be vagabonds and beg their bread—’
‘There, there, Dad!’ said the innkeeper, seeing that the old gentleman was becoming excited. ‘ ’E ain’t got no children, praise be.’
‘That’s true,’ said the one-eyed man, ‘but ’e ’ave got a niece. It’ll be a sad come-down for Aggie Twitterton. Wonderful set up, she allus wos, thinkin’ there was money comin’ to ’er.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Hodges, ‘them as gives themselves airs above other folks don’t deserve nothin’ but disappointments. ’Er dad wasn’t only Ted Baker’s cowman when all’s said and done, and a dirty, noisy, foul-mouthed fellow in ’is drink, wot’s more, as there ain’t no call to be proud on.’
‘That’s right,’ said the old man. ‘A very violent man. Beat ’is pore wife something crool, ’e did.’
‘If you treat a man like dirt,’ opine
d the one-eyed man, ‘ ’e’ll act dirty. Dick Twitterton was a decent sort enough till ’e tuk it into ’is ’ead to marry the schoolmistress, with ’er airs and lah-di-dah ways. “Wipe yer boots on the mat,” she says to ’im, “afore you comes into the parlour.” Wot’s the good of a wife like that to a man w’en ’e comes in mucky from the beasts an’ wantin’ ’is supper?’
‘Good-lookin’ feller, too, wasn’t he?’ said Katie.
‘Now, Katie!’ said the lachrymose man, reprovingly. ‘Yes, ’e wos a well set-up man, wos Dick Twitterton. That’s wot the schoolmistress fell for, you see. You be keerful o’ that soft ’eart o’ yours, or it’ll get you into trouble.’
More chaff followed upon this. Then the undertaker said:
‘None the more for that, I’m sorry for Aggie Twitterton.’
‘Bah!’ said the lachrymose man. ‘She’s all right. She’ve got ’er ’ens an’ the church organ, and she don’t do so bad. Gettin’ a bit long in the tooth now, but a man might go farther and fare wuss.’
‘Well, there, Mr Puddock!’ cried Mrs Hodges. ‘Don’t say as you’re thinkin’ o’ makin’ an offer.’
‘ ’E’s a one to talk, ain’t he?’ said Katie, delighted to get her own back. The old man chimed in solemnly:
‘Now, do ’ee look where you’re goin’, Ted Puddock. There’s bad blood o’ both sides in Aggie Twitterton. ’Er mother was Willum Noakes’s sister, don’t ’ee forgit that; and Dick Twitterton, ’e was a violent, God-forsaking man, a swearer and a sabbath-breaker—’
The door opened to admit Frank Crutchley. He had a girl with him. Bunter, forgotten in his corner, summed her up as a lively young person, with an up-and-coming eye. The couple appeared to be on affectionate, not to say intimate terms, and Bunter gained the impression that Crutchley was seeking consolation for his losses in the linked arms of Bacchus and Aphrodite. He stood the young lady a large port (Bunter shuddered delicately) and submitted with good humour to a certain amount of chaff when he offered drinks all round.
‘Come into a fortune, ’ave you, Frank?’