Accordingly, I went round to Whittington Terrace on the day after my arrival. I sent up my name by the maid (a new girl since my time), and, after a short interval, Margaret Harrison came down to me. She was dressed in deep mourning, very fashionably cut, and came up to me with the gushing manner which I had always so greatly disliked.
‘Oh, Paul!’ she said, ‘isn’t this terrible? How dreadful it has been for you, poor dear, all that long way away! I am so glad you have managed to get home!’
‘If you are,’ I said, ‘it must be for the first time on record.’
Her face took on the sulky look I knew so well.
‘I knew you never liked me, Paul,’ she said, ‘but surely this is hardly the time to bear a grudge.’
‘Perhaps not,’ said I, ‘but it hardly seems worth while to pretend that you are delighted to see me.’
‘As you like,’ she replied. ‘We may as well sit down, anyway.’
She sat down, and I went over and stood by the window.
‘You are staying here, of course?’ she inquired, after a short silence.
I replied that I preferred to live at an hotel for the present, because it was more convenient for business.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘you will have a lot of things to see about. I quite understand. I kept the house on, because I didn’t know what your plans would be. But perhaps you think it would be better to give it up?’
‘Do just as you like,’ I answered. ‘The furniture is yours, I believe?’
‘Yes; but this place is really more than I want when I am by myself. Besides’ – here she gave an affected shudder – ‘it seems, well, haunted, rather. If you are not coming here, I think I shall give it up and take a couple of rooms somewhere. I can look after your things till you get settled.’
I thanked her, and asked if she had made any plans for the future.
‘None at all,’ she said. ‘I feel rather stunned, just at the moment. It has been such a shock. I shall wait for a little time, anyhow, and see how things turn out. I shall be rather lost at first. We saw so few people – I have rather lost touch.’
‘You have all my father’s friends,’ I said.
‘Oh, but they are not my friends. They only used to come to tea and dinner and so on. They wouldn’t want me. I should only be an intruder. And, of course, they are all much older than I am. We should have really nothing in common.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you are a young woman, Margaret. You will probably marry again before very long.’
She made a great display of indignation.
‘Paul! How can you say such a heartless thing, and your poor father only just passed away! Anybody would think you don’t care for him at all. But I suppose a father isn’t the same thing as a husband.’
I was nauseated.
‘You need not trouble to display all this feeling on my account,’ I said. ‘It was quite enough to make him as unhappy as you did while he was alive, without playing the broken-hearted widow.’
‘You are very like him, you know,’ she observed. ‘You have just his way of snubbing and repressing people. You don’t seem to understand that everybody can’t keep their feelings bottled up as you do. It was not my fault that he was unhappy. I think he had an unhappy nature.’
‘That is nonsense,’ I said, ‘and you know it. My father was a most simple, friendly, companionable man – only you never would be a real wife to him.’
‘He wouldn’t let me,’ she said. ‘I know we didn’t hit it off very well, at the end, but I did try, Paul. I did indeed. In the beginning I was ready to give him all the love and affection that was in me. But he didn’t like it. He dried me up. He broke my spirit, Paul.’
‘My father was not a demonstrative man,’ I said, ‘but you know quite well that he was proud of you and devoted to you. If you had heard him speak of you as I have heard him—’
‘Ah!’ she said, quickly, ‘but I never did. That was the trouble. What is the good of being praised behind one’s back if one is always being scolded and snubbed to one’s face? It only makes it worse. Everyone thinks one has such a good husband, and that one ought to be so happy and grateful – and all the time they never know what one is suffering from unkind words and cold looks at home.’
‘Many women would envy you,’ I said. ‘Would you rather have had a husband who was all charming manners at home and unfaithful the minute your back was turned?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I would.’
‘I can’t understand you,’ I said. ‘You ought to be ashamed to speak like this.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘you can’t understand. That’s it. Neither could he.’
‘All I understand is that you ruined his life, and drove him to a dreadful death,’ I burst out. I had not meant to go so far, but I was too angry to think what I was saying.
‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘Oh, no – you can’t think that he – But why should he?’
I had gone too far now to retreat, and I told her what I thought.
‘You are quite wrong,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t have done that.’
‘He would have done anything for you,’ I cried angrily, ‘anything. Even to laying down his life to set you free—’
‘Even to sacrificing his reputation as a connoisseur of fungi?’ she interrupted, with an unpleasant smile.
‘Even that,’ I answered. ‘It’s all very well for you to sneer – you never cared for his interests – you didn’t understand them – you understand nothing at all, and you care for nothing except your twopenny ha’penny emotions.’
‘I do know this,’ she said steadily, ‘that if your father had thought that I wanted to be free of him – which he didn’t, because he had too good an opinion of himself – but if he had, he would have taken care I didn’t get rid of him without a row. He loved making rows. He wouldn’t have made things easy for me. He wouldn’t have missed the opportunity of rubbing it in.’
Her expression was as ugly and common as her words. I felt that I could not control myself much longer and had much better go.
‘I repeat,’ said I, ‘that you never understood my father, and you never will. It isn’t in you. I don’t think it’s any good prolonging this discussion. I had better be going. Can you give me Mr Munting’s address?’
I hoped to have frightened her by the sudden question, but she only looked mildly astonished.
‘Mr Munting? I’m sure I don’t know. I’ve only seen him once since he was married, and that was at the Royal Academy. And at the – the inquest, of course. I think he lives in Bloomsbury somewhere. I expect he’s in the telephone-book.’
I thanked her, and took my leave. Married! My father had never thought to mention that. It upset all my ideas. Because, if Munting was married, then what object could there have been in my father’s suicide – or murder, whichever it was? His death would have left Margaret no nearer to marrying Munting. And any other relation could have been carried on perfectly well, whether my father was alive or not. Certainly, he might simply have destroyed himself in sheer despair and misery, unable to bear the dishonour. But it did not seem so likely.
This news made me alter my plans. I determined not to go and see Munting at once. It would be better, I thought, to get hold of Lathom, and see if I could obtain any light on the question from him.
A little inquiry among the dealers produced Lathom’s address. He was living in a studio in Chelsea. I presented myself at the place the next morning, and was received by a vinegary-looking elderly woman in a man’s cap, who informed me that Mr Lathom was still in bed.
As it was already eleven o’clock, I handed her my card and said I would wait. She ushered me into as extremely untidy studio, full of oil-paint tubes and half-finished canvases, and waddled away with the card towards an inner door.
Before reaching it, however, she turned back, sidled up to me and said in a glutinous whisper:
‘Begging your pardon, Mr ’Arrison, but was you any relation to the pore gentleman w
ot died so mysterious?’
‘What business is that of yours?’ I snapped. She nodded with ghoulish enjoyment.
‘Oh, no offence, sir, no offence. There ain’t no need to take a person up so sharp. That was a funny thing, sir, wasn’t it? You’d be ’is son, per’aps?’
‘Never you mind who I am,’ I said. ‘Take my card to Mr Lathom and say I should be glad if he could spare me a few minutes.’
‘Oh, ’e’ll spare you a few minutes, sir, I shouldn’t wonder. Look funny if ’e didn’t, sir, wouldn’t it? There’s lots of things as ’ud look funny, I daresay, if we knew the rights on ’em.’
‘What are you getting at?’ I said, uneasily.
‘Ho, nothink, sir! Nothink! If you ain’t a relation it ain’t nothink to you, is it, sir? People do go off sudden-like, sometimes, and nobody to blame. There’s lots of things ’appen every day more than ever gets into the papers. But there! That ain’t nothink to you, sir.’
She sidled away again, grinning unpleasantly. I heard her talking and a man’s voice replying, and presently she shuffled back again.
‘Mr Lathom says ’e’ll be with you in five minutes, sir, if you will be so good as to wait. ’E’ll come fast enough, sir, don’t you be afraid. A very agreeable gentleman is Mr Lathom, sir. I been doin’ ’im over three months, now, ever since ’e come over from France. Some time in October that would be, sir, before this ’ere sad accident ’appened. Mr Lathom was very much upset about it, sir. You’d ’ardly ’ave known ’im for the same gentleman w’en ’e came back after the inquest. Looked as if ’e’d been seein’ a ghost – that white and strange ’e was. A terrible sight the pore gentleman must ’a’ been. A crool way to die. But there! We must all die once, sir, mustn’t we? And if it ain‘t one way it’s another, and if it ain’t sooner it’s later. Only some folks is misfortunit more than others. Would you care for a cup of tea, sir, while you’re waitin’?’
I accepted the tea, to get rid of her. The stove, however, turned out to be in a corner of the studio, and having lit the gas and put the kettle on, she returned. All the time she was speaking, she rubbed one skinny hand over the other with a curious, greedy action.
‘Very strange ’ow things turns out, ain’t it, sir? There was a gentleman lived down our street, a cats-meat man ’e was, and the best cats’-meat in the neighbourhood – thought very ’ighly of by all, ’e was. ’E married a girl out of one of them shops w’ere they sells costooms on ’ire purchase. They ain’t no good to nobody, them places, if you asks me. Well, ’e died sudden.’
‘Did he?’
‘Ho, yes! very sudden, ’e died. A very ’ot summer it was, and they brought it in ’e’d got the dissenter, with eatin’ somethink as didn’t agree with ’im. So it may ’a’ bin, far be it from me to say otherwise. But afore the year was up she’d gone and married the young man wot was manager of the clothes-shop. A good marriage it was for ’er, too. Ho, yes! She didn’t lost nothink by ’er ’usband dyin’ w’en ’e died, if you understand me, sir.’
I made no answer. She took the kettle off and filled the teapot.
‘Now, that’s a nice cup o’ tea, sir. You won’t find nothink wrong with that. That’s ’olesome, that is. I knows ’ow to make the sort of tea that gentlemen like. Cutts is my name, Mrs Cutts. They all knows me about ’ere. I been doin’ for the artists this thirty year, and I’m up to all their goin’s-on. I knows ’ow to cook their breakfisses and look after their bits of paintings and sich, an’ w’en to speak an’ w’en to ’old my tongue, sir. That’s wot they pays me for.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘it’s an excellent cup of tea.’
‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir. My name is Cutts, if you should ever be a-wantin’ me. Anybody in these studios will tell you w’ere to find Mrs Cutts. ’Ere’s Mr Lathom a’comin’, sir.’
She lurched away as Lathom emerged from his bedroom.
I will admit that the first impression he made upon me was a good one. His appearance was clean, and his manners were pleasant.
‘I see Mrs Cutts has given you a cup of tea,’ he said, when he had shaken hands. ‘Won’t you have a spot of breakfast with me?’
I thanked him, and said I had already breakfasted.
‘Oh, I suppose you have,’ he answered, smiling. ‘We’re rather a late crowd in these parts, you know. You won’t mind if I carry on with my eggs and bacon?’
I begged him to use no ceremony, and he produced some eatables from a cupboard.
‘It’s all right, Mrs Cutts,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll do the cooking. This gentleman wants to talk business.’
The noise of a broom in the passage was the only answer.
‘Well now, Mr Harrison,’ said Lathom, dropping his breezy manner, ‘I expect you have come to hear anything I can tell you about your father. I can’t say, of course, how damned sorry I am about it. As you know, I wasn’t there at the time—’
‘No,’ I said, ‘and I don’t want to distress you by going into details and all that. It must have been a great shock to you.’
‘It certainly was.’
‘I can see that,’ I added, noticing how white and strained his face looked. ‘I only wanted to ask you – after all, you were the last person to see him—’
‘Not the last,’ he interrupted, rather hastily. ‘That man Coffin saw him, you know, gathering the – wretched fungi – and the carrier saw him later still, after I had left the place.’
‘Oh, yes – I didn’t mean quite that. I mean, you were the last friend to see and talk to him intimately.’
‘Quite, quite – just so.’
‘I wanted to hear from you whether you were, yourself, quite satisfied about it – satisfied that it really was an accident, that is?’
He put the bacon into the pan, where it sputtered a good deal.
‘What’s that? I didn’t quite catch.’
‘Were you satisfied it was an accident?’
‘Why, of course. What else could it have been? You know, Mr Harrison, I hate to say anything about your father that might seem – to blame him in any way, that is – but, of course, I mean it is a very dangerous thing to experiment with wild fungi. Anybody would tell you the same thing. Unless you are a very great expert – and even then one is liable to make mistakes.’
‘That is what is troubling me,’ I said. ‘My father was a very great expert, and he was not at all a man to make mistakes.’
‘None of us are infallible.’
‘Quite so. But still. And it was odd that it should have happened just at the very time you were away.’
‘It was very unfortunate, certainly.’ He kept his eyes on the bacon, while he prodded it about with a fork. ‘Damnably unfortunate.’
‘So odd and so unfortunate that I cannot help thinking there may have been a reason for it!’
Lathom took two eggs and cracked them carefully. ‘How so?’
‘You are aware, perhaps, that my father was – not altogether happy in his married life.’
He gave an exclamation under his breath.
‘Did you speak?’
‘No – I have broken the yolk, that’s all. I beg your pardon. You are asking me rather a delicate question.’
‘You may speak frankly to me, Mr Lathom. If you saw much of my father’s family life, you must have noticed that there were – misfits.’
‘Well, of course – one sees and hears little things occasionally. But many happily married people spar at times, don’t they? And – well – there was a difference of age and all that.’
‘That is the point, Mr Lathom. Without necessarily saying anything harsh about my father’s wife, it is a fact that a young woman, married to an older man, may, not unnaturally, tend to turn to someone more of her own age.’
He muttered something.
‘In such a case my father, who was the most unself-regarding man who ever breathed, might have thought it his duty to give her back her liberty.’
He turned round swiftly.
‘Oh
, no!’ he said, ‘surely not! That’s a dreadful idea, Mr Harrison. It never occurred to me. I am sure you can put it out of your mind.’ He hesitated. ‘I think –’ he went on, with a troubled look, ‘oh, yes, I am sure you need not think that.’
‘Are you quite sure? Did he never say anything?’
‘He never spoke of his wife except in terms of the deepest affection. He thought very highly of her.’
‘I know. More highly than she – more highly than any woman perhaps could deserve?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘But,’ I said, ‘that very affection would have been all the more reason for him to – to take himself out of her life in the most complete and unanswerable way.’
‘I suppose so – from that point of view.’
‘And, if it was so, I should like to know it. Will you tell me, Mr Lathom, on your honour and without concealment, whether there was anything between my father’s wife and your friend Mr Munting?’
‘Good Lord, no!’ he said, taking the pan off the fire and shovelling the eggs and bacon out into a plate. ‘Nothing of the sort!’
‘Just a minute,’ said I. ‘Mr Munting is your friend, and you want to be loyal to him. That’s obvious. And I’m aware I’m asking you to do one of those things which people with public-school education don’t do. I am not a public-school man myself, and you must excuse me if I suggest that just for once you should come down to brass tacks and cut out the Eton-and-Harrow business. My father has died, and I want your personal assurance that he did not kill himself on your friend Munting’s account. Can you give it to me?’
‘On my word of honour, there was not the very slightest attachment or understanding of any kind between Mrs Harrison and Jack Munting. They rather disliked each other, if anything. Jack was married last Easter to a very charming woman, with whom he is much in love. He never gave a thought to Mrs Harrison, or she to him.’
I felt sure he believed what he said.
‘Wasn’t there a disturbance of some kind?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes.’ A cloud passed over his face. ‘There was. That wretched potty woman, Miss Milsom, invented some sort of story. But it was the most absolute rubbish. And Mr Harrison came to see what utter nonsense it all was. My dear man, the woman’s in an asylum.’