Harriet looked at the superscription. ‘The Viscount Saint-George, Christ Church, Oxford, Inghilterra.’ Even without the Italian stamp, there was no mistaking where that came from. ‘I’ll take it,’ she said – ‘it might be urgent.’
Lord Saint-George, with his right arm in a sling, his forehead and one eye obscured by bandages and the other eye black and bloodshot, was profuse in welcome and apology.
‘I hope Danvers looked after you all right. It’s frightfully decent of you to come along.’
Harriet asked if he was badly hurt.
‘Well, it might be worse. I fancy Uncle Peter had a near squeak of it this time, but it’s worked out at a cut head and a busted shoulder. And shock and bruises and all that. Much less than I deserve. Stay and talk to me. It’s dashed dull being all alone, and I’ve only got one eye and can’t see out of that.’
‘Won’t talking make your head ache?’
‘It can’t ache worse than it does already. And you’ve got a nice voice. Do be kind and stay.’
‘I’ve brought a letter for you from College.’
‘Some dashed dun or other, I suppose.’
‘No. It’s from Rome.’
‘Uncle Peter. Oh, God! I suppose I’d better know the worst.’
She put it into his left hand, and watched his fingers fumble across the broad red seal.
‘Ugh! Sealing-wax and the family crest. I know what that means. Uncle Peter at his stuffiest.’
He struggled impatiently with the tough envelope.
‘Shall I open it for you?’
‘I wish you would. And, look here – be an angel and read it to me. Even with two good eyes, his fist’s a bit of a strain.’
Harriet drew out the letter and glanced at the opening words.
‘This looks rather private.’
‘Better you than the nurse. Besides, I can bear it better with a spot of womanly sympathy. I say, is there any enclosure?’
‘No enclosure. No.’
The patient groaned.
‘Uncle Peter turns to bay. That’s torn it. How does it start? If it’s “Gherkins” or “Jerry,” or even “Gerald,” there’s hope yet.’
‘It starts, “My dear Saint-George.” ’
‘Oh gosh! Then he’s really furious. And signed with all the initials he can rake up, what?’
Harriet turned the letter over.
‘Signed with all his names in full.’
‘Unrelenting monster! You know, I had a sort of feeling he wouldn’t take it very well. I don’t know what the devil I’m going to do now.’
He looked so ill that Harriet said, rather anxiously:
‘Hadn’t we better leave it till to-morrow?’
‘No. I must know where I stand. Carry on. Speak gently to your little boy. Sing it to me. It’ll need it.’
My dear Saint-George,
If I have rightly understood your rather incoherent statement of your affairs, you have contracted a debt of honour for a sum which you do not possess. You have settled it with a cheque which you had no money to meet. As cover for this, you have borrowed from a friend, giving him a post-dated cheque which you have no reason to suppose will be met either. You suggest that I should accommodate you by backing your bill at six months; failing which, you will either (a) ‘try Levy again,’ or (b) blow your brains out. The former alternative would, as you admit, increase your ultimate liability; the second, as I will myself venture to point out, would not reimburse your friend but merely add disgrace to insolvency.
Lord Saint-George shifted restlessly upon his pillows. ‘Nasty clear-headed way he has of putting things.’
You are good enough to say that you approach me rather than your father, because I am, in your opinion, more likely to be sympathetic to this dubious piece of finance. I cannot say I feel flattered by your opinion.
‘I didn’t mean that, exactly,’ groaned the viscount. ‘He knows quite well what I mean. The Governor would fly right off the handle. Damn it, it’s his own fault! He oughtn’t to keep me so short. What does he expect? Considering the money he got through in his giddy youth, he should know something about it. And Uncle Peter’s rolling – it wouldn’t hurt him to cough up a bit.’
‘I don’t think it’s the money so much as the dud cheques, is it?’
‘That’s the trouble. Well, why the devil does he go barging off to Rome just when he’s wanted? He knows I wouldn’t have given a dud if I could have got cover for it. But I couldn’t get him if he wasn’t there. Well, read on. Let’s hear the worst.’
I am quite aware that your premature decease would leave me heir-presumptive to the title—
‘Heir-presumptive? . . . Oh, I see. My mother might peg out and my father marry again. Calculating brute.’
—heir presumptive to the title and estate. Tedious as such an inheritance might be, you will forgive me for suggesting that I might prove a more honest steward than yourself.
‘Hell! That’s one in the eye,’ said the viscount. ‘If that line of defence has gone, it’s all up.’
You remind me that when you attain your majority next July, you will receive an increased allowance. Since, however the sum you have mentioned amounts to about a year’s income on the higher scale of payment, your prospect of redeeming your bill in six months’ time seems to be remote; nor do I understand what you propose to live on when you have anticipated your income to this extent. Further, I do not for one moment suppose that the sum in question represents the whole of your liabilities.
‘Damned thought-reader!’ growled his lordship. ‘Of course it doesn’t. But how does he know?’
In the circumstances, I must decline to back your bill or to lend you money.
‘Well, that’s flat. Why didn’t he say so at once?’
Since, however, you have put your name to a cheque, and that name must not be dishonoured, I have instructed my bankers—
‘Come! that sounds a bit better. Good old Uncle Peter! You can always get him on the family name.’
—instructed my bankers to arrange to cover your cheque—
‘Cheque, or cheques?’
‘Cheques, in the plural; quite distinctly.’
—cover your cheques from now until the time of my return to England when I shall come and see you. This will probably be before the end of the Trinity Term. I will ask you to see to it that the whole of your liabilities are discharged by that time, including your outstanding Oxford debts and your obligations to the children of Israel.
‘First gleam of humanity,’ said the viscount.
May I offer you, in addition, a little advice? Bear in mind that the amateur professional is peculiarly rapacious. This applies both to women and to people who play cards. If you must back horses, back them at a reasonable price and both ways. And, if you insist on blowing out your brains, do it in some place where you will not cause mess and inconvenience.
Your affectionate Uncle,
Peter Death Bredon Wimsey.
‘Whew!’ said Lord Saint-George, ‘that’s a stinker! I fancy I detect a little softening in the last paragraph. Otherwise, I should say that a nastier kind of letter never came to soothe the sufferer’s aching brow. What do you think?’
Harriet privately agreed that it was not the kind of letter she would care to receive. It displayed, in fact, almost everything that she resented most in Peter; the condescending superiority, the arrogance of caste and the generosity that was like a blow in the face. However:—
‘He’s done far more than you asked him,’ she pointed out. ‘So far as I can see, there’s nothing to prevent you from drawing a cheque for fifty thousand and blueing the lot.’
‘That’s the devil of it. He’s got me by the short hairs. He’s trusted me with the whole dashed outfit. I did think he might offer to settle up for me, but he’s left me to do it and hasn’t even asked for an account. That means it’ll have to be done. I don’t see how I can get out of it. He has the most ingenious ways of making a fellow feel a sweep. Oh, h
ell! my head’s splitting.’
‘You’d better keep quiet and try to go to sleep. You’ve nothing to worry about now.’
‘No. Wait a minute. Don’t go away. The cheque’s all right, that’s the chief thing. Just as well, because I’d have had a job to raise the wind elsewhere, laid up like this. There’s one thing about it – I can’t use this arm, so I shan’t have to write a long screed full of grateful penitence.’
‘Does he know about your accident?’
‘Not unless Aunt Mary’s written to him. My Grandmother’s on the Riviera, and I don’t suppose it would occur to my sister. She’s at school. The Governor never writes to anybody, and my Mother certainly wouldn’t bother with Uncle Peter. Look here, I must do something. I mean, the old boy’s been thoroughly decent, really. Couldn’t you write a line for me, explaining all about it? I don’t want to let my family in on this.’
‘I’ll do that, certainly.’
‘Tell him I’ll settle the blasted debts as soon as I can produce a recognisable signature. I say! think of having a free hand with Uncle Peter’s pile and not being able to sign a cheque. Enough to make a cat laugh, isn’t it? Say I – what’s the phrase? – appreciate his confidence and won’t let him down. Here! You might give me a spot of the stuff in that jug, would you? I feel like Dives in what’s-his-name.’
He gulped the iced drink down gratefully.
‘No, damn it! I must do something. The old boy’s really worried. I think I can work these fingers after a fashion. Find me a pencil and paper and I’ll have a shot.’
‘I don’t think you’d better.’
‘Yes, I had better. And I will if it kills me. Find me something, there’s a darling.’
She found writing materials, and held the paper in place while he scrawled a few staggering words. The pain made him sweat; a shoulder joint which has been dislocated and returned to position is no cushion of ease the day after; but he set his teeth and went through with it gamely.
‘There,’ he said, with a faint grin, ‘that looks dashed pathetic. Now it’s up to you. Do your best for me, won’t you?’
Perhaps, thought Harriet, Peter knew the right way with his nephew. The boy was unblushingly ready to consider other people’s money his own; and probably, if Peter had simply backed his bill, he would have thought his uncle easy game and proceeded to issue more paper on the same terms. As it was, he seemed inclined to stop and think. And he had, what she herself lacked, the grace of gratitude. His facile acceptance of favours might be a sign of shallowness; still, it had cost him something to scribble that painful note.
It was only when, in her own room after Hall, she set about writing to Peter, that she realised how awkward her own task was going to be. To put down a brief explanation of her own acquaintance with Lord Saint-George and a reassuring account of his accident was child’s play. The difficulties began with the matter of the young man’s finances. Her first draft ran easily; it was slightly humorous and rather gave the benefactor to understand that his precious balms were calculated to break the recipient’s head, where other agents had not already broken it. She rather enjoyed writing this one. On reading it over, she was disappointed to find that it had an air of officious impertinence. She tore it up.
The students were making a vast noise of trampling and laughter in the corridor. Harriet briefly cursed them and tried again.
The second draft began stiffly: ‘Dear Peter – I am writing on behalf of your nephew, who has unfortunately—’
This one, when finished, conveyed the impression that she disapproved strongly of uncle and nephew alike, and was anxious to dissociate herself as far as possible from their affairs.
She tore it up, cursed the students again and made a third draft.
This, when completed, turned out to be a moving, and, indeed, powerful piece of special pleading on the young sinner’s behalf, but contained remarkably little of the gratitude and repentance which she had been instructed to convey. The fourth draft, erring in the opposite direction, was merely fulsome.
‘What the devil is the matter with me?’ she said aloud. ‘(Damn those noisy brats!) Why can’t I write a straightforward piece of English on a set subject?’
When she had once formulated the difficulty in this plain question, the detached intellect bent meekly to its academic task and produced the answer.
‘Because, however you put it, all this is going to hurt his pride damnably.’
Answer adjudged correct.
What she had to say, stripped of its verbiage, was: Your nephew has been behaving foolishly and dishonestly, and I know it; he gets on badly with his parents, and I know that, too; he has taken me into his confidence and, what is more, into yours, where I have no right to be; in fact, I know a great many things you would rather I did not know, and you can’t lift a hand to prevent it.
In fact, for the first time in their acquaintance, she had the upper hand of Peter Wimsey, and could rub his aristocratic nose in the dirt if she wanted to. Since she had been looking for such an opportunity for five years, it would be odd if she did not hasten to take advantage of it.
Slowly and with extreme pains, she started on Draft No. 5.
Dear Peter,
I don’t know whether you know that your nephew is in the Infirmary, recovering from what might have been a nasty motor accident. His right shoulder is dislocated and his head badly cut; but he is getting on all right and is lucky not to have been killed. Apparently he skidded into a telegraph pole. I don’t know the details; perhaps you have already heard from his people. I met him by chance a few days ago, and only heard of the accident to-day, when I went round to see him.
So far, so good; now for the awkward bit.
One of his eyes was bandaged up and the other badly swollen, so he asked me to read him a letter he had just that moment received from you. (Please don’t think his sight is damaged – I asked the nurse, and it’s only cuts and bruises.) There was nobody else to read it to him, as his parents left Oxford this morning. As he can’t write much himself, he asks me to send you the enclosed and to say he thanks you very much and is sorry. He appreciates your confidence and will do exactly as you ask him, as soon as he is well enough.
She hoped there was nothing there that could offend. She had started to write ‘honourably do as you ask,’ and then erased the first word: to mention honour was to suggest its opposite. Her consciousness seemed to have become all one exposed nerve-centre, sensitive to the lightest breath of innuendo in her own words.
I didn’t stay long, as he was really a good bit under the weather, but they assure me he is doing very well. He insisted on writing this note himself, though I suppose I oughtn’t to have let him. I’ll look him up again before I leave Oxford – entirely for my own sake, because he is perfectly charming. I hope you don’t mind my saying so, though I’m sure you don’t need to be told it.
Yours,
Harriet D. Vane.
I seem to be taking a lot of trouble about this she thought, as she carefully re-read it. If I believed Miss de Vine, I might begin to imagine – damn those students! – Would anybody believe it could take one two hours to write a simple letter?
She put the letter resolutely into an envelope, and addressed and stamped it. Nobody, having put on a twopenny-halfpenny stamp, was ever known to open the envelope again. That was done. For a couple of hours now she would devote herself to the affairs of Sheridan Lefanu.
She worked away happily till half-past ten; the racket in the passage calmed down; words flowed smoothly. From time to time, she looked up from her paper, hesitating for a word, and saw through the window the lights of Burleigh and Queen Elizabeth burning back across the quad, counterparts of her own. Many of them, no doubt, illuminated cheerful parties, like the one in the Annexe; others lent their aid to people who, like herself, were engaged in the elusive pursuit of knowledge, covering paper with ink and hesitating now and again over a word. She felt herself to be a living part of a community engaged in a com
mon purpose. ‘Wilkie Collins,’ wrote Harriet, ‘was always handicapped in his treatment of the supernatural by the fatal itch’ (could one be handicapped by an itch? Yes, why not? Let it go, anyway, for the moment) ‘the fatal itch to explain everything. His legal training—’ Bother! Too long. ‘. . . was handicapped by the lawyer’s fatal habit of explaining everything. His ghaisties and ghoulies’ – No; worn-out humour— ‘His dream-phantasms and apparitions are too careful to tuck their shrouds neatly about them and leave no loose ends to trouble us. It is in Lefanu that we find the natural maker of – natural master of – the master of the uncanny whose mastery comes by nature. If we compare—’
Before the comparison could be instituted, the lamp went suddenly out.
‘Curse!’ said Harriet. She rose and pressed down the wall-switch. Nothing happened. ‘Fused!’ said Harriet, opening the door to investigate. The corridor was in darkness, and a lamentable outcry on either side proclaimed that the lights were out in the whole of Tudor.
Harriet snatched her torch from the table and turned right towards the main block of the building. She was soon swept into a crowd of students, some with torches and some clinging to those that had them, all clamouring and wanting to know what was wrong with the lights.
‘Shut up!’ said Harriet, peering behind the barrier of the torch-lights to find anybody she recognised. ‘The main fuse must have gone. Where’s the fuse-box?’
‘I think it’s under the stairs,’ said somebody.