We glanced gravely at one another, as Mrs Tisser continued: ‘I told him that I didn’t agree, and that I’d dearly knock a shilling a week off his rent, if he could break himself of the habit. He laughed in what I can only call a fiendish manner, and I left the room without another word. He had never before made mock of me. Not that I felt vexed exactly. But his demeanour was certainly most alarming.’
‘That took place shortly after 8 a.m., you say, Mrs Tisser? Did you see him again that morning, before the fatality occurred?’
‘I did, your Honour; about five minutes later. We met on the stairs. He seemed to be in a state of suppressed excitement, and told me that he was going out to buy an “eternity” and do the job properly at last. “An eternity?” I asked, thinking that perhaps I had misheard. “A rhine, if you like, Mrs Tisser,” he answered, grinning like a devil.’
‘And then?’
‘And then, your Honour, he was away between ten minutes and a quarter of an hour, and at last came rushing upstairs like a whirlwind. Half a minute went by, and then I heard an extraordinary sound: a sort of muffled explosion from the sitting-room. And I saw him dash through the open door, across the corridor, and into the bedroom where he flung himself headlong at the balcony beyond. I screamed, and hurried downstairs.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Tisser, that will be enough. You need not repeat that part of your evidence; we have inspected the french windows and the shattered woodwork of the balcony which bear out your evidence. One more question. Do you know anything about the dead man’s emotional life?’
‘If you mean, did he ever try to bring a young woman home, he certainly did not, your Honour. He was a most exemplary young man in that respect; his medical studies seem to have been “both parent, child and wife” to him, as the saying goes. The only thing I recall…’
‘Yes, Mrs Tisser?’
‘One night he confided to me his love for a lady whom he had never met; someone who had taken complete possession of his heart. I thought at first that it must be a film actress, but he said that he didn’t even know what she looked like, and he couldn’t understand a word of what she said, either. It was then I first began to question his sanity. Well, about a week ago, as I was doing his room, I noticed a crumpled letter lying half-charred in the grate. My eye caught the first line: “O my wonderful Yma.” But I was too honourable to read any further, and I hardly like to mention it even now. She seems to have been his dream-lady: because once he came back from a visit to London, and his eyes were shining as he said: “Oh, I am so happy, Mrs Tisser.” I asked: “On account of the lady you mentioned?” and he answered: “I spent the whole afternoon with her, Mrs Tisser.” “So you’ve met her at last?” I said. “I mean in spirit,” he told me.’
More evidence was called as to the late Angus Hamilton Tighe’s state of health, but it proved to be inconclusive. We could not even decide that he had been overworking, or had financial difficulties, or was being blackmailed. Dr Thorne had never treated him for anything more than a twisted ankle. He possessed no close friends among his fellow medical students, and no relatives nearer than Canada. So we retired.
Since it seemed unlikely that Mrs Tisser had pushed him over the balcony, we naturally wanted to spare the feelings of the Tighe family in Alberta, by adding ‘while of unsound mind’ to the obvious verdict of ‘suicide’.
Only one juryman, Mr Pink, a retired chemist, dissented. He called for silence, and then spoke in grave, authoritative tones. ‘I think, ladies and gentlemen, that we can improve on that verdict. To begin with, I cannot regard it as a symptom of insanity in myself that I too admire, nay adore, the celebrated Peruvian singer Yma Sumac, though I have never seen her, nor do I know one word of Spanish. Her voice, surely the most wonderful in the world, compasses five full octaves and is true as a bell in every register. Poor young Tighe! I own a rare set of Yma’s early recordings which would doubtless have given him infinite pleasure, had I been aware that he shared my view of her genius.
‘But I have another observation to make of even greater importance: it is that when we inspected the corpse I noticed a discoloured right nostril.’
We gaped at him as he went on: ‘Which did not figure in the post-mortem report and was, in my view, caused by a “sternutatory”, not an “eternity”; or by an “errhine”, not “a rhine”. In non-technical language, by tobacco snuff. If the Coroner permits us, we will send a policeman to visit the only tobacconist in this town who sells that old-fashioned commodity – Hackett of Cold Harbour Cottages. The officer will almost certainly find that the late Tighe visited Hackett at about 8.15 a.m. The fatal sternutatory is probably contained in the pencil-box on his desk. Moreover, I noticed a familiar medical work on elementary physiology lying on the breakfast table. Look up “sternutation” in the Index, turn to the relevant page, and you will find, I think, a sentence to this general effect:
STERNUTATION: an involuntary reflex respiratory act, caused by irritation of the nerve terminals of the nasal mucous membrane, or by severe luminary stimulation of the optic nerve. The sternutator, after drawing a deep breath, compresses his lips; whereupon the contents of the lungs are violently expelled through the nostrils.
‘I remember well the impression that this passage made on me years ago, while I was studying for my pharmaceutical degree. I said to myself, in the very words of the deceased: “I have been doing it wrong all my life; I keep my mouth open, instead of shut.” The next time that I felt a sneeze coming on, I duly compressed my lips and, hey presto! found myself hurtling across the room like a stone from a catapult; but fortunately did not make for the french windows. In fact, I knocked myself out on the corner of the mantelpiece. Let me therefore record my opinion that the late Angus Hamilton Tighe died a martyr to scientific experiment and was no more suicidal than I am.’
So we brought in ‘Death by Misadventure’, after all, with a rider against experimental use of sternutatories; which, I fear, didn’t mean a thing to the general public.
Kill Them! Kill Them!
THE POTTERIES WERE by this time a distant smudge on the horizon behind us and the map showed us close to the Welsh border. Jenny drove.
Wales reminded us both of David, who had done his battle training in this region. So presently I said, knowing that this must be Jenny’s line of thought too: ‘They would have given him the award posthumously, of course, if the ground he won had been held. Not that it would have meant much to anyone, except the Regimental historian. Anyhow, the Japs infiltrated, the Indian battalions on the flanks rectified their line (as the saying is), and the Regiment had to fight its way back. It’s a rule that a reverse cancels all citations.’
‘An R.A.F. man who was giving the Brigade air-support – I met him last year in Trans-Jordania – says the attack was suicidal and criminal.’
‘It wasn’t the C.-in-C.’s fault. He had orders from London to secure a tactical success in that area before the monsoon broke. And felt awful about it.’
‘How do you know that, Father?’
‘Warell wrote to me as soon as the War ended and brought up the subject himself. His G.H.Q. was a thousand miles away, and though, when he’d seen the plan of attack submitted, he felt strongly tempted to fly up and run the show in person, a C.-in-C. couldn’t very well take over from a brigade commander. It just wasn’t done. Or so he said in his letter. I’ve kept it for you.’
‘According to my R.A.F. man, everyone was hopping mad at having to assault a scientifically entrenched position without proper artillery support – and just before the rain bogged everything down for the season. That sense of victimization must have been what sent David berserk. As you know, he was a confirmed pacifist, and had nothing against the Japs.’
We kept silent for a mile or two. Then I said: ‘One thing that he did has always puzzled me. At Oxford, when he was four years old, we were driving up the High and a great pack of black-coated, dog-collared parsons debouched from Queen’s College and swarmed across the street, making for Or
iel. An Ecclesiastical Congress was on. David shouted excitedly: “Kill them! Kill them!” Did he hate the colour of their clothes, do you think? Or was he simply anticlerical?’
‘Neither,’ Jenny answered. ‘I should say that it was the unnaturalness of the sight. Probably he always thought of clergymen in the singular, as I do. The vicar on the altar steps: singular. Like the mother beside the cradle: singular. Or the headmistress in her study: singular. Each aloof, self-sufficient, all-powerful and, in fact, singular. Don’t all Mothers’ Meetings, Ecclesiastical Congresses, and Headmistresses’ or Headmasters’ Conferences seem terribly artificial and awkward and dismal to you – I mean because of the loss of singularity? Whereas soldiers or sailors, or undergraduates, or schoolchildren, who go naturally into the plural…’
‘Clergymen do behave very awkwardly in a bunch, I agree, and David may have wanted to put them out of their misery by a sudden massacre. He had a kind heart.’
‘Also,’ said Jenny, ‘Mothers’ Meetings and Headmistresses’ Conferences go with seed-cake. When David was twelve and I was thirteen and we got invited to parties, he used to wander round and inspect the food supply as soon as we arrived. If it passed muster, we stayed. Otherwise he’d nudge me and whisper: “Seed-cake, Jenny.” And then we always sneaked out. He hated seed-cake. Seed-cake’s impersonal, and David was a real person.’
Green Welsh hills and wild-eyed Welsh sheep and the syllable Llan appearing on every second fingerpost. Hereabouts David had commanded his platoon in aggressive tactical schemes; perhaps had sten-gunned the imaginary garrison of that farmhouse at the top of the slope. It was a splendid eighteenth-century building with a broad whitewashed front, generous windows and an irregular slate roof yellow with lichen; also a large midden, cocks and hens of an old-fashioned, handsome, uneconomical breed, black cows, and bracken litter at the entrance to the byres. A sign read: TEAS.
As we rounded a sharp corner we came on a glossy charabanc, which had just disgorged its load of excursionists by the farmhouse gate. They were all earnest, black-coated, dog-collared clergymen, and seemed profoundly ill at ease. Forty or fifty at least, and – this is a true story, not a joke, for neither Jenny nor I felt prepared for a joke – every one of them had a slice of impersonal seed-cake in his hand, out of which he had taken a single thoughtful bite.
I had a vision of a serious apple-cheeked little boy, sitting between Jenny and me and shaking his fist in a fury.
‘Kill them, kill them!’ I shouted involuntarily; but Jenny, scared as she was, had the presence of mind to swerve and drive on.
Harold Vesey at the Gates of Hell
THE DIM OLD ‘Pelican’ sign had been wittily repainted by a modern poster artist. The once foul stable yard, frequented by hordes of sooty sparrows, had been converted into a car park. White muslin curtains graced the windows. An adjoining network of howling, stinking, typhoidal slum, where in my childhood policemen dared enter only four by four – truncheons drawn and whistles in their mouths – had utterly vanished; garaged residences now occupying the site were already well matured, their elms almost overtopping the roofs. The road-crossing which pale-faced street-Arabs with ragged trousers, bare feet and scanty brooms used to sweep clear of mud and horse-dung for us gentry to cross – ‘Don’t forget the sweeper, lady!’ – had become a gleaming asphalt roundabout, and the rain-water gurgling down the gutters looked positively potable.
‘There are the gates of Hell!’, I nevertheless reminded myself, as I pushed open the door marked ‘Saloon Bar’. Amelia, my nurse, had told me so when I was four years old, pointing across the road through the bathroom window. ‘A man goes in at that door sober, industrious and God-fearing; he comes out a fiend in human guise, whether it’s the beer or whether it’s the gin.’ She then dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘I had a good home and husband once,’ she said. ‘I never thought as I should be forced to earn my living in domestic service at twenty pound a year. And look what’s happened to that poor foolish Annie! The Pelican has been her downfall, too.’ She was referring to our parlour-maid’s fatal love for Harold, the barrel-man, a big red-faced ex-soldier with shoulder-of-mutton fists, green baize apron, and shiny black corduroys. Annie had stolen two of our silver entrée dishes to buy Harold a watch-chain for Christmas; and been dismissed without a character.
Mr Gotobed, Junior, the plump-faced innkeeper – probably ‘Brassy’ Gotobed’s grandson – lounged alone behind the bar. He was youngish, with side-burns, Savile Row tailoring and an Old Malthusian tie. I entered hesitantly and earned an easy though enigmatic smile.
On the walls hung three Baxter prints, two matched warming-pans, a cluster of knobkerries, an Indian Mutiny bundook, a dartboard, a large wooden spoon, a pair of indifferent French Impressionist paintings in art-gallery frames, and an iron hoop.
‘With what may I have the pleasure of serving you, sir?’
‘A double brandy,’ I ordered, remembering the beer and the gin.
‘Splash?’
‘No, thanks; neat.’ And I drank it at a blow.
‘These were the gates of Hell, Mr Gotobed,’ I remarked, putting down two half-crowns.
‘Sir?’
‘I used to live in that big house opposite.’
‘You mean Rosemary Mansions?’
‘I mean Rosemary House, before it became immansionized. That was when the Pelican’s best beer still sold at twopence a pint; and was strong as the kick of a dray-horse. When tankards and curses flew along this ancient bar like bees on a summer’s day. When soused lobsters went tumbling out into the inspissated muck, heels over busby, with almost boring regularity, propelled by the hobnailed boots of courageous Corporal Harold Vesey. These, I repeat, were the gates of Hell.’
‘That will have been in what I might call pre-Reformation days, sir,’ he said rather crossly. ‘My clientele now consists almost entirely of City men. But we have a lot of quiet democratic fun here together. It amused us last year to form a Saloon Bar Darts Club and enter for the South-West London Championship. We won that wooden spoon fair and square; and my team treasure it like the apple of their corporate eye.’
But I refused to be sidetracked. ‘It was the time,’ I insisted, pointing to a handsome portrait of the Duke of Cornwall suspended behind the bar, ‘of that boy’s great-great-great-grandmother. I remember the old lady well, driving along High Street in an open barouche with a jingling escort of Lancers.’
He eyed me with awe. ‘Three greats?’ he inquired, ‘are you sure?’
‘Rip van Winkle’s the name,’ I answered. ‘I suppose it’s no use asking you what happened to Corporal Harold Vesey? I’m sure of the surname because he sent our parlour-maid Annie a lace-Valentine inscribed: “Yours respectably, Harold Vesey, Corporal, 1900”; that was after he came back gloriously wounded from the South African war. Harold was barrel-man; and porter at the Gates of Hell.’
‘Rings a bell,’ said Mr Gotobed meditatively. ‘Hell’s bells, if you like, ha, ha! 1900? Time of my grandfather?’
‘If your grandfather was the bold hero in the purple waistcoat whom the boys nicknamed “Brassy”,’ I said, and ordered another brandy.
He waved that one off. ‘Funny,’ he remarked, ‘how we reckon time here in terms of war. South African. First World. Second World.’
‘Harold Vesey had served at Tel-el-Kebir in 1882. He was a veteran when I knew him.’
‘Indeed? Well, I never saw any service myself, and I’m not ashamed to tell you the story, now it’s all over. If it had been a question of volunteering, I dare say I’d have gone along with all the other b. fools. But not under Conscription. We Malthusians have our pride. Between you and me I fooled the Board by a simple and quite ingenious wheeze. A fortnight beforehand I started eating sugar. Gradually worked up to two pounds a day. Ghastly treatment with ghastly symptoms. Ghastly expensive, too, with rationing in full blast. Naturally, just because of the rationing, the medicos never suspected a thing.’
‘Naturally,’ I agreed.
‘Harold once fooled his M.O. too, to avoid being drafted somewhere on garrison duty. He chewed cordite, which sent up his temperature to 106. When duly crimed, he owned up; whereupon the Colonel drafted him to South Africa instead, which was what he wanted. And he subsequently had the pleasure of relieving Ladysmith. But that, of course, took place in the days before Conscription.’
‘Good for him!’ said Mr Gotobed without conviction and switched the topic again. ‘By the way, see that iron hoop over there? It’s a curious relic of my grandfather’s days. I bought it at an antique shop for our Christmas celebration to use as a frame for the wreath of holly and ivy over the door. The old merchant told me that iron hoops were trundled here in the days of gaseous street-lighting and horse-drawn traffic.’
‘Harold Vesey gave me an iron hoop once,’ I said, ‘but unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to use it. I was a little gentleman and little gentlemen were supposed to use only wooden hoops. We were also forbidden to whistle on our fingers or turn cartwheels, because that was what the street-Arabs did. Thus you obscure the relentless evolution of modern society, Mr Gotobed. The street-Arab is forced by industrial progress to become a respectable citizen. His grandsons, if not his sons, are born little gentlemen; and therefore forbidden to whistle on their fingers or turn cartwheels on the bemuddied crossing. And iron hoops, like peg-tops with dangerous spikes (another ancient working-class distinction) are relegated to the antique shops. Harold Vesey would have been surprised.’
I kept on the Harold Vesey tack mercilessly, until the bell rang again in Mr Gotobed’s mind.
‘Vesey? I’ve got it now. Yes, my grandfather employed one H. Vesey at the Pelican. Comic story in its weird way. It seems that soon after he sent that Valentine to your parlour-maid, an aunt died and left him an Essex country cottage and a small legacy – in recognition of his patriotic services. However, just before Hitler’s War, when he was in his late seventies, the County Council condemned the cottage and transplanted him to a brand-new Council-house: modern plumbing, well-equipped kitchen, built-in cupboards, everything laid on. But the obstinate old – well – basket didn’t take to it. Sulked. Sat out on a bench in the garden, all weathers, “just to spite them,” he said – until he was carried off by pneu– monia. The joke was that they never got around to pulling down the cottage after all. Its timbers were still sound and the premises served during the War to accommodate evacuees. Recently my father bought the place – that’s how I happen to know the story. He spent four or five thousand pounds on doing it up for a week-end hang-out. But the Council wouldn’t let us alter the façade or build another storey, because by then – this is the real pay-off – the cottage had been scheduled as an ancient monument. What a country, eh?’