“Oh, quite—very intriguing. Are you trying to warn me that Jimmy will vanish out of my life if I walk in the garden with you for half an hour in broad daylight? I’ve got a feeling I might be able to bear it, you know.”
He gave her a dark, hard look.
“I’m trying to warn you. You’re getting what you want all along the line. The girls are clearing out—Minnie will be clearing out. We’ll all be off on our own business, and you’ll get the place to yourself. Well, that’s all right—that’s what you want. But Jimmy doesn’t like it. He’s clannish—he doesn’t see any reason why the family shouldn’t continue to lead the tribal life at Latter End. Quite out of date, and flat in the face of human nature—families don’t do that sort of thing any more. Well, just ride him easy whilst you’re changing over. Most men hate changes. Jimmy loathes them. He’s got you on a pedestal about a mile high. Don’t choose this moment to come unstuck. It’s a damned long way to fall.”
He had not cared whether she was angry or not. She showed no sign of anger, but stood there, her face lifted to his, her smiling eyes intent upon him.
“You say I’m getting what I want. I told you I generally did.”
“You’ll be getting rid of us, won’t you?”
“And you think I want to get rid of you?”
The final word was undoubtedly stressed. She made a movement which brought her very near. Not near enough to touch him, but there was a sense of being touched—a most disquieting sense.
Antony had often been glad to see Julia, but never so glad as he was at this moment when she came round the corner of the yew hedge a dozen feet away. She came directly up to them and said in an uncompromising tone,
“Jimmy wants to play bridge. Will you come in and make up a four?”
It was not a comfortable game of bridge, but at least it afforded no opportunity for a tête-à-tête. Jimmy was fuddled, touchy—the word suspicion presented itself and was rejected—but he was, most undoubtedly, in every way the opposite of his usual self. He held magnificent cards, and played them with a lavish disregard for everything except the whim of the moment. Julia, who partnered him, had the air of being somewhere else. Her features seemed to have closed down over her thoughts. From start to finish she did not utter an unnecessary word. Lois looked merely bored. If she did not speak, it was because, very plainly, it wasn’t worth the trouble. No, not a comfortable game, but vastly preferable to being alone with Lois.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to be off rather early in the morning.” Antony addressed Jimmy. “There’s a man I want to catch. He’s only passing through London—coming down on the night train from Scotland. It’s rather important for me to see him. I think I’d better try and catch him at breakfast—he’s not going to have much spare time.”
Jimmy gave a sort of grunt.
“Rather sudden, isn’t it?”
“Well, no—not really. It was my coming down here that was sudden. I had to fit it in, as you wanted to see me on business.”
Lois raised her eyebrows.
“Business?”
“My business,” said Jimmy Latter.
Julia looked suddenly and directly at Antony. Her face had come awake. She said nothing, and almost immediately took up the cards and began to deal.
Lois laughed.
“I hope you don’t expect any of us to get up and see you off!”
At half past ten everyone was ready to say goodnight.
Antony went up to the room which had been his since he was ten years old. It was on the first floor, but separated from the principal bedrooms by a door giving upon the back stairs. The stairs went down steeply from a landing with, on the left, a small sewing-room where Marcia Vane’s maid used to work in the days when people had maids to sew for them, and, on the right, the room which was still called “Antony’s room.” There was also a bathroom.
As he was going along to have a bath, a girl came up the back stairs. He slowed down to let her go to wherever it was she was going, and saw her pass along the passage to the old sewing-room. Just before she got to it she looked back at him over her shoulder. He saw extravagantly waved fair hair, extravagantly darkened lashes, a mouth like a scarlet gash, and peeping pale blue eyes.
He went into the bathroom and shut the door. If this was Gladys Marsh, he was not surprised that she didn’t go down well with Julia and Ellie. As he turned on the taps and blessed Manny for having the water piping hot, he reflected that if Joe Marsh had been lacking in filial piety, he would probably not go unrequited.
He lingered in the hot water. The worst was over. He would take the road before seven, and wild horses wouldn’t get him back to Latter End until—he had a feeling that it might be the Greek kalends. Whether Lois was serious or not, it was extremely evident that she meant to precipitate a scene. Just why, he wondered then and was to wonder more in the horrible days to come—and never to be quite sure that he had found the answer.
He put it away and switched his thoughts with determination to his business with Latimer. His book was extraordinarily good—there was no doubt about that. The firm took exception to the handling of certain incidents. They were getting him to tackle Latimer, who was notoriously touchy. Antony had served with him in the early part of the war. There was some degree of friendship. The middle-aged partners had patted the new boy on the back and told him to go to it. “You’ll have to exercise tact. We don’t want to lose him, but we can’t publish those chapters as they stand.” He wondered how prickly Latimer was going to be, and then found himself thinking that he owed him something for providing such a good excuse for an early start. Nobody but Julia was to know that Latimer and he were to have lunched together. For that matter, they would probably do so still. Breakfast after a night in the train wasn’t perhaps the moment when a tactful approach would be appreciated, but as an excuse it served a useful turn.
He came back to his room, and to the realization that it was probably the last night he would ever spend there. His books still filled the shelves of a huge ramshackle book-case, the sort that runs up to the ceiling and down to the floor— the bottom shelf crammed with bound volumes of the Boys’ Own Paper; school prizes in the next, the kind you never read; and so on through the idols of his teens to long rows of small leather-bound editions at the top. Some of them he would want to take. For the rest, what did one do with the relics of one’s youth? They ought to have gone in salvage during the war, but he could just see Jimmy with his foot down and a peremptory “None of Mr. Antony’s things!” If he couldn’t think what to do with the books, the pictures were much worse—an endless collection of school groups, college groups—rows and rows of faces, blazers, jerseys. A bonfire was really the only solution. The years of the war made an impassable gulf between himself and the face, the blazer, the jersey, which had been his on the farther side of it.
He stood looking at one or two of the later groups, and found it melancholy work. Bill Rogers, killed at Alamein— Jervis at Hellfire Corner—Mapleton in the blitz—Anstey in Burma—Danvers in France—Macdonald just gone, nobody knew where. No use looking back. Good fellows with whom he had had a good time, but you have to go on… He reflected that there was another side to it. Thompson was a Brigadier. Amusing in its way, because Thompson hadn’t really cut much ice with the crowd. Well, Antony Latter who had cut quite a lot of ice in his day was only a captain. It all depended on what you pulled out of the bag. He was lucky to be alive and sound after Alamein and the wound which had kept him on the shelf for two years. The thing he really resented was breaking his leg in France because he’d been given a lift in a jeep by a chap who had never driven one before and who had got off himself without a scratch.
He switched on to a plan for asking Julia to clear up his room, and then thought perhaps better not, because it might hurt Jimmy’s feelings. He had reached this point, when a very slight sound made him turn.
Besides the ordinary door of this room there was another. It wasn’t one you would notice unless you happened to know it was there, because it was papered to match the rest of the room and there was no handle on this side. This room had once been a double room, and the slip beyond the papered door its attendant dressing-room, but ever since he could remember, the dressing-room had been Marcia’s dress-cupboard. It was strictly forbidden to use it when they played hide-and-seek, but they always did. It was too tempting. The cupboard had its own door on to the main landing. It didn’t communicate with Marcia’s room, which lay on its farther side, but you could nip out of her door into the cupboard, and so into this room, and on to the back-stair landing, with a choice of going either up or down, or through the swing-door back to the main landing again. Very strategic.
All this was in Antony’s mind as he turned—not very consciously, but as things are which you have always known. The paper-covered door was opening. In another moment it had opened and Lois came in.
She was a shock. He had been away back in the past—she wasn’t in the picture. She hadn’t any business in Marcia’s cupboard—that was the first instinctive reaction, changing to “Of course it’s hers now,” and obliterated by the crashing conclusion, she hadn’t any business in his room.
It was midnight. Probably everyone else in the house was asleep—he hoped so at any rate. He was in his pyjamas, and she in the sort of negligee which the vamp wears in every bedroom scene, something transparent and flesh-coloured, slipping at the shoulder. There was an atmosphere of scent and emotion. He was so angry that he could hardly find words or get them out. She didn’t wait for them, but said hurriedly,
“I must speak to you. Antony, please do listen.”
“Lois, are you mad? We can’t talk here—like this. For God’s sake go back to your room!”
She gave a muted version of her rippling laugh.
“Thinking of my reputation, darling?”
He said bluntly, “I’m thinking about Jimmy. You’d better think about him too.”
She came up close and said,
“I’d so much rather think about you, darling.”
“Lois—”
“It’s two years since you kissed me. Don’t you want to kiss me now?”
“Lois—”
“You used not to be such an icicle, my sweet.”
“You used not to be Jimmy’s wife. And I hate to remind you that two years ago is two years ago.”
“You were in love with me then.”
“I’m not the least in love with you now.”
She laughed and narrowed her eyes at him.
“Joseph!”
He was too angry to care what he said. If she asked for it she could have it.
“Are you really keen on being Potiphar’s wife? Definitely repulsive, don’t you think?”
The door moved again. The paper had a pattern of bunches of violets on a white ground. The bunches on the door were moving. He could see them over Lois’ shoulder—the shoulder from which that damnable garment was slipping. The door opened quite wide and Jimmy came in.
It needed only this to plunge them all into tenth-rate farce, but even through his swirling rage he was aware that the farce had a sinister slant. Jimmy, in pale blue pyjamas with his light hair wildly on end, ought to have fitted the part of the comic husband, but he didn’t. He was starkly tragic. He stood a yard inside the door and looked at them, his eyes pale and fixed between reddened lids, his face dead white and pouring with sweat. For the moment even Lois had nothing to say. It was Jimmy who spoke.
“Go back to your room!”
“Really, Jimmy!”
He spoke again.
“I heard what you said.”
She gave a short laugh, shrugged her shoulders, and walked past him.
To Antony the last crooked twist was given by the fact that though she almost touched Jimmy, he did not move to avoid her. She might not have been there. In a moment she wasn’t there. The door in the wall had shut behind her. But for Jimmy Latter she had been gone before that. There wasn’t any Lois any more.
It was all over between one minute and the next. Antony got hold of himself, and prepared to save anything that could still be saved. He said, “Jimmy, old chap—” and Jimmy turned those pale eyes upon him.
“I heard what she said.” And then, “She said, ‘two years ago.’ I’d like to know—what happened—two years ago.”
There was no expression in his voice, no trace of his usual manner. The words came with dreadful pauses between them. Jimmy—whose words tumbled over one another because there were always too many of them to pack neatly into a sentence! And now this dreary monotone—“I want to know—what happened—two years ago.”
“Nothing for you to mind. You’ve got to believe me. I was in love with her, and I asked her to marry me. She said no, and she married you. That’s all there ever was. I thought you knew.”
Jimmy nodded. He said, still in that difficult way,
“Not—your—fault—”
Antony came up and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Look here, Jimmy, don’t make too much of this. There’s no harm done. You really mustn’t make too much of it. I’ll tell you the bare truth. For God’s sake try and believe it. Lois had had a row with you—about old Hodson’s cottage—”
“She lied to me about it.”
The shoulder under Antony’s hand was as cold and hard as ice. He went on insistently.
“Well, you had a row, and she was angry. She doesn’t like not getting her own way. She wanted to score you off. The best way she could think of was to flirt with me. Well, we’ve known each other long enough to be blunt—I told her there was nothing doing. And just then Julia came to call us in. Women don’t like leaving a row unfinished—they think of ways to get even with you and have the last word. I do honestly believe that’s what brought Lois here tonight. It was damned silly of her, and you’ve every right to be angry, but don’t think it was worse than it was. I’ll be off at six in the morning, and I’ll keep out of the way—you can trust me for that! Jimmy—for God’s sake—”
It was no good. Jimmy Latter gave him a heartrending look and said so.
“It’s no good. I heard what she said.”
He turned and went out through the door in the wall.
Antony left Latter End before anyone was up. His step rang as hollow in the hall as if the house were empty. When he drew back the bolts and turned the key in the lock it seemed as if someone must wake. He came out into the early morning—dew on the grass, and a light breeze blowing. He got out his car and took the road with a sense of escape.
During the next two days he was kept extremely busy. He lunched with Latimer, got on better than he expected, and was dragged off by him to his cottage on the Thames. Latimer would take no denial. His manuscript was there, they could go through it together—“Your partners are damned old women, but I can’t be bothered to fight them.” And, most unexpected of all, “It’s no good saying no—you must come down and meet my wife.”
Latimer the married man! Antony could hardly stretch his mind to take it in. He felt the most lively curiosity as to Mrs. Latimer. In the event, he found her a comfortable, placid housewife, comely in a country fashion and an inspired cook. In fact just what Latimer ought to have married. Being Latimer, it was quite unbelievable that he should have done so. Yet there she was, and there was Latimer, very much the husband and as pleased as Punch.
Leave of absence having been granted with alacrity by the firm, it was six o’clock next evening before he returned to his hotel. Just time in hand to change and get out to Hampstead to dine with the Mathiesons, where he spent a very pleasant evening. In the back of his mind the sense of escape persisted.
He came back to the hotel after midnight to find a slip in his room—“Miss Vane has rung up twice. She says will you please ring her when you come in.” Antony stood frowning at the words. They forced the doors of his mind and brought a sense of catastrophe with them. Nonsense of course, utter ludicrous nonsense. She might have a dozen good reasons for ringing up… “Miss Vane has rung up twice. She says will you please ring her when you come in.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and lifted the receiver of the table instrument. When he had given the number he stayed there waiting. It was ten minutes past twelve. The only upstairs telephone extension at Latter End was in Lois’ bedroom. If Julia was expecting a call from him she must be waiting for it in the study. He had the strangest, strongest impression of her waiting for him to call her up—the instrument on Jimmy’s table—Julia in the writing-chair, waiting in a fixed silence which went on, and on, and on.
It was nearly half an hour before the call came through. At the first sound of the bell he lifted the receiver and heard her say,
“Antony?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“Something has happened.”
“What is it?”
She went on in French—the French she had learned in the schoolroom with Miss Smithers, its familiar British ring just making what she had to say incredible.
“It’s something dreadful, Antony. It’s Lois—she’s dead.”
He made some exclamation, he didn’t know what.
“How?”
“I don’t know. It was something in her coffee.”
“Julia!”
He heard her take a shuddering breath.
“The police have been here. They’ll be coming back in the morning.”
“When did it happen?”
“After dinner—as soon as she drank her coffee. Will you come down?”
“Of course.”
“Early?”
“I’ll be down by eight.”
“Make it half past seven. I’ll meet you at the first milestone beyond the village. I want to talk to you.”
Something ran like a taut string between them. He said, “All right,” and hard on the last word there came a click and they were thirty miles apart.
He hung up at his end, and found his hand stiff and numb from the grip in which he had been holding the receiver.