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Title: The documents in the case
Author: Dorothy L. Sayers
Robert Eustace
Release date: January 1, 2026 [eBook #77601]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Avon Books, 1930
Credits: Stephen Hutcheson, Cindy Beyer, Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE ***
DOROTHY L. SAYERS
AND
ROBERT EUSTACE
THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE
AVON
PUBLISHERS OF BARD, CAMELOT AND DISCUS BOOKS
AVON BOOKS
A division of
The Hearst Corporation
959 Eighth Avenue
New York, New York 10019
Copyright 1930 by Dorothy L. Sayers Flemming and
Robert Eustace
Copyright renewed 1958 by Lloyds Bank, Ltd.
Published by arrangement with Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.
ISBN: 0-380-01143-3
All rights reserved, which includes the right
to reproduce this book or portions thereof in
any form whatsoever. For information address
Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street,
New York, N. Y. 10022.
First Avon Printing, December, 1968
Seventh Printing
AVON TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND
FOREIGN COUNTRIES, REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA
REGISTRADA, HECHO EN CHICAGO, U.S.A.
Printed in the USA.
_CONTENTS_
SECTION ONE
Synthesis _page_ 11
SECTION TWO
Analysis _page_ 129
THE DOCUMENTS
IN THE CASE
INTRODUCTION
_Paul Harrison to Sir Gilbert Pugh_
[Letter covering the attached documents.]
REDGAUNTLET HOTEL, BLOOMSBURY, W.C.
18th March, 1930
DEAR SIR,
I am obliged by your letter of yesterday’s date, and hasten to send you,
as requested, the complete dossier of documents. When you have read
them, I shall be happy to call upon you at any time convenient to
yourself, and give you any further information that may be within my
power.
All the points I specially wished to make are, I think, fully covered by
my previous letter. But since that letter has now served its original
purpose of arousing your interest in the matter, I feel that it would be
better forgotten, as far as possible. I would rather you came to the
present documents with an entirely open mind. To me, who have been
working over them for the last six or seven months, they seem to point
clearly to one and only one conclusion, but I suppose it is possible
that both Sir James Lubbock and I may be mistaken. You will judge for
yourself. I only most earnestly beg of you to give the case your most
careful consideration. You will realise that it is of vital importance
to me to have the matter fully investigated.
You will, I fear, find some of the letters and statements very diffuse
and full of irrelevancies. I thought it best to send the originals,
complete and untouched, exactly as they stand. Many of the incidental
details, though unimportant in themselves, throw useful sidelights on
the situation, and will, I think, help a stranger, like yourself to
understand exactly what took place in my late father’s household.
I have arranged the papers, as nearly as possible, in chronological
order. My own statement (Number 49) explains fully how the various
documents came into my hands.
Trusting to hear further from you in due course,
I am, dear sir,
Yours faithfully,
PAUL HARRISON
SECTION ONE
SYNTHESIS
1. _Agatha Milsom to Olive Farebrother_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
9th September, 1928
MY DEAR OLIVE,
Thank you very much for your letter and kind inquiries after my health.
I like my new doctor very much indeed. I think he _understands me a
great deal better_ than Dr. Coombs, and he has put me on quite a
different treatment. He says I am just going through a “difficult phase”
at present, and that if only I can hold on and not let things get on top
of me for the next year or two I shall come out of it quite all right.
But I am not to have a rest-cure! It seems Dr. Coombs was all wrong
about that—of course he didn’t exactly _say_ she was wrong, it wouldn’t
be professional, but I could see that he _thought_ it! Dr. Trevor says
that rest-cures only “turn you in upon yourself,” and that makes things
worse. He says I must get right away from myself and my feelings, so as
to “sublimate” all these repressed urges and turn them into some other
sort of energy. He says it was quite all right to start with to have my
dreams and subconscious betrayals analysed, so as to know exactly what
was the matter with me, but that _now_ the time has come when I must
learn to throw all these bottled-up desires _outwards_, and give them
something to do. He explained it all _most_ clearly. I said, “I suppose
it is sex, doctor, isn’t it?” (Of course, one gets quite used to asking
things perfectly frankly, and one doesn’t mind it a bit.) And he said,
well, largely; and, of course, that was a thing most people suffered
from one way and another, and in these days one couldn’t always take the
obvious and direct way out of a condition of sex-repression, because it
would often be socially and economically inconvenient. I said that with
two million extra women in this country it didn’t seem possible,
certainly, for everybody to get married, and he smiled and said: “My
dear Miss Milsom, half my patients come to me because they are not
married—and the other half because they are!” We had quite a laugh
about it. He is very nice and rather good-looking, but he doesn’t seem
to think it necessary for all his patients to fall in love with him,
like that odd man I went to see in Wimpole Street, who suffered so
dreadfully from halitosis.
Well, anyway, he asked me what I was interested in, and I said I’d
always had an idea I should like to _write_. He said that was an awfully
good idea, and I ought to encourage it by trying my hand at a little
sketch or article every day, or by just putting down my observations of
people and things as I saw them. I’m sure I get subjects enough in this
house, as far as _matrimony_ goes, anyhow. Indeed, my dear, from what I
see of men, I’m very glad there are _other_ ways out of my troubles than
what Dr. Trevor calls the _direct_ way!! Do you mind, please, not
throwing my letters away—just stick them in one of the drawers in my
old desk when you’ve finished with them, because I think I might use
some of the funny little incidents that happen here to work up into a
novel some time. One puts these things down when they are fresh in one’s
mind, and then one forgets about them.
Well, we are jogging along here in our usual placid way—with the usual
little outbreaks, of course, when a meal goes wrong, as they will
sometimes, with all my care. Mr. Harrison is such an expert, you know,
that it is very hard for a person with only one pair of hands to keep
everything up to his high standard. And, fond though I am, and always
shall be, of dear Mrs. Harrison, I do sometimes wish that she was just a
_little_ more practical. If anything at all is left to her to do, she is
so apt to lose herself in a book or a daydream and forget all about it.
She always says she ought to have been born to ten thousand a year—but
who of us could not say that? I always feel myself that I was really
meant to “sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam”—you remember the games
we used to play about being princesses in the Arabian Nights, with a
train of a hundred black slaves, carrying alabaster bowls filled with
rubies—but alas! life is life and we have to make the best of it. And I
do sometimes feel it a little unfair that so _much_ should come upon my
shoulders. Women do want romance in their lives, and there is so little
of it about. Of course, as you know, I do feel for Mrs. Harrison—her
husband is such a dry sort of man and so lacking in sympathy. I do what
I can, but that is not the same thing and it is very worrying. I must
learn to detach myself. Dr. Trevor says it is very important to
cultivate detachment.
When I was shopping this morning I met Mr. Bell, who told me the top
maisonnette was let at last—to two young men! I said I hoped they
wouldn’t be noisy (though anything would be a relief after that awful
woman with her children), and he said they seemed quiet, gentlemanly
young fellows. One of them he thinks must be some kind of artist,
because they were so interested in the top back room which has a big
window with a north light—you know, the one Mr. Harrison always covets
so much. Though, of course, it is not nearly so convenient a house as
ours in other ways.
I have started on Tom’s stockings. They are going to be _very_ smart. I
have worked out an original design for the turnover—a sort of swirly
pattern in fawn, brown and black, taken from the coat of the kitchen
cat—tabby, you know. Mr. Perry saw it the other day when he called. He
thinks I have quite a talent for that kind of thing.
Give my love to Ronnie and Joan. I hope you are taking care of yourself.
Your loving sister,
AGGIE
2. _The Same to the Same_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
13th September, 1928
DEAR OLIVE,
I really think it is _very unkind_ of you to suggest that I like Dr.
Trevor simply because he is a _man_. I am the last person to imagine
that a woman doctor is necessarily inferior. Quite the contrary. Other
things being equal I much prefer a woman, but if the man happens to be
_right_ and the woman _wrong_, it would be absurd not to admit it. I do
feel that Dr. Trevor’s treatment is doing me good, and I am not the
least little bit prejudiced by the sex question one way or another. I
daresay Tom has been airing his opinions, but that does not impress me
at all. Men never ever get out of their heads that the whole world
centres round their high-mightinesses. I’m not blaming Tom, but _all_
men are self-centred. They can’t help it. Dr. Trevor says that it is a
necessary part of their psychological make-up; they have to be
self-regarding, just as woman have to be other-regarding—on account of
the children and so on. But I do beg you will not take Tom’s
pronouncements for Gospel where I am concerned.
I read such a clever article the other day by Storm Jameson, in which
she said that all women, in the depths of their hearts, resented men.
Now I do think that is so true. It is so maddening, the calm assumption
of superiority that a man puts on when he is talking to a woman. We had
quite a little dispute the other evening—about Einstein, of all people!
Mrs. Harrison started to talk about an interesting account of him in the
Sunday paper, but Mr. Harrison only grunted and went on reading
something tedious about the Government. However, she went on asking him
questions till he simply _had_ to answer, and then he said, quite
snubbingly, that he considered the man was a charlatan who was pulling
people’s legs with his theories. I said I didn’t think all these
professors would believe in him and have him down to lecture and so on
if it was just that. So he said, “Just you ask my old friend, Professor
Alcock, if you won’t believe me.” Mrs. Harrison said she couldn’t ask
Professor Alcock, because she had never seen him, and why didn’t Mr.
Harrison sometimes bring somebody interesting to the house? That seemed
to annoy him, though I thought it was very much to the point, but, being
only a paid subordinate, I said meekly that we were all entitled to our
own opinions. So he smiled sarcastically and said that perhaps _some_ of
us were better qualified to judge than others, and that the Sunday Press
was not always the best guide to knowledge. “But _you_ read the papers,”
said Mrs. Harrison. “When I’m given the chance,” said he.
If I had been in Mrs. Harrison’s place I should have taken warning from
the way he rattled _The Times_, but one cannot expect old heads on young
shoulders—or perhaps mature heads would be fairer to myself. But she is
perhaps a little tactless now and again, poor girl, and said if she
didn’t read the papers how was she to improve her mind? Of course, I
knew exactly what the answer would be—the virtues of the old-fashioned
domestic woman and the perpetual chatter of the modern woman about
things which were outside her province. It is the fatal subject, and
somehow or other it always seems to crop up. Mrs. Harrison was very much
hurt, and said of course she knew she couldn’t possibly come up to the
perfections of Mrs. Harrison No. 1. Then, of course, the fat was in the
fire. It was just like a woman to take it personally. Mrs. Harrison
began to cry, and he said, “Please don’t make a scene,” and went out and
slammed the door.
What I wanted to do was just to go up to Mr. Harrison and say, “Now do
be a little human. Make a fuss of her. Let her cry if she wants to and
then make it up and be friends.” But he isn’t the kind of person you can
very well say things to. He would think it impertinent of me. And it’s
true that it never pays to interfere between husband and wife. But if
only he would listen to me, I know I could put matters right. In my kind
of life one gets plenty of experience—lookers-on see most of the game,
you know—and Mrs. Harrison would be so ready to attach herself to him,
if only he would give her the chance. Often and often I’ve known her
work herself up for hours to make an appeal to his feelings, but he
receives it so coldly. Somehow it never seems to be the right moment. He
is always absorbed in his painting or his natural history or something.
How true it is that men live for Things and women for People! To pin
one’s heart to a Person always means suffering in this world, if one has
an acutely-sensitive nature. You are to be congratulated, Olive, on not
being sensitive. Temperament is a great gift, but a very unhappy one, as
I know so well from my own experience. I really _admire_ Mrs.
Harrison—she never loses hope, but goes on, day after day, trying to be
brave and devoted and to keep up her interest in life. And she has such
a vivid alert mind—she is keen on everything, even on things like
Einstein, which are so very modern and difficult. But I do not see how
one can go on being keen about things with so _very_ little
encouragement.
No, my dear! No men for me! It’s different for you, I know. You have the
children, and I’m sure Tom is attentive in his man’s way—but Mr.
Harrison is such a _stick_. And then, of course, he is a lot older than
she is.
So you see you are quite wrong in your ideas about me. Naturally, I am
interested in the new tenants, because, after all, we share the front
hall and the staircase with them, and it does make a difference whether
people are pleasant neighbours or not, but that is all! By the way, it’s
quite true that one of them is an artist. We saw the men carrying in the
lay-figure this morning—a life-sized one. It came out of the van not
wrapped up at all—a most naked and indecent sight—and was carried up
the path by Carter Paterson’s man, looking like the rape of the Sabines!
You should have seen the heads popping out of the windows all down the
street! Quite an excitement in our calm neighbourhood.
I am just turning the heel of the first stocking, tell Tom, and hope to
get the pair done before you go down to Norfolk. Mr. Perry is the
vicar—I’m sure I have told you about him before. Such a nice man, only
rather High Church, but not at all bigoted. I always enjoy a chat with
him.
I must stop now and get the joint in the oven for dinner. His lordship
is coming in to prepare his special mushroom dish with his own fair
hand!! So you see we have a treat to look forward to!
Ever your loving sister,
AGGIE
3. _The Same to the Same_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
20th September, 1928
DEAR OLIVE,
You ought to thank your lucky stars, my dear, that you _are_ the sort of
person for whom “a good husband” is enough. But then, of course, Mother
never brought us up to be brainy. We always lived so quietly at home,
and what you’ve never had you don’t miss, as the saying goes. I can’t
say I should have cared for an office job myself, though perhaps it
would have been better for my health if I had had something to occupy my
mind. But I am really feeling much better now, and I am getting free of
that dreadful sensation of being obliged to go back and see if I really
have done things when I know perfectly well I have. I know you say
everybody feels like that sometimes, but you don’t know what it’s like
to be _compelled_ to do it! The other night I got the idea that I had
left the beef out on the kitchen table, and though I really remembered
quite clearly shutting it up in the meat-safe, I simply _had_ to creep
downstairs in my dressing-gown and make sure, otherwise I shouldn’t have
got a wink of sleep. Still, that has been the only relapse for about a
fortnight now.
As a matter of fact, we have had quite a lot of thrills this week—very
good for us—occupies our minds, you know. The upstairs tenants have
arrived!! Two young men—the artist and a poet! They came in the day
before yesterday, and oh, my dear, the bumpings and noises! They brought
a grand piano—I only hope they won’t be playing it all night, because
I’m simply good for nothing if I don’t get my sleep before midnight—and
there’s a gramophone as well. Why can’t people be content with the
wireless, which shuts down at a reasonable hour?
I haven’t properly seen the poet yet, except that he’s rather tall and
dark and thin. I’ve only caught glimpses of him running in and out of
the front door, but the artist came in the first night after dinner to
ask about the coal bunkers. He is quite exciting looking—very
young—not more than twenty-four or five, I should say, with a lot of
thick hair and one of those rather sulky-handsome faces. He has very
nice manners, and didn’t address _all_ his conversation to Mr. and Mrs.
Harrison and leave me out in the cold, as most of these young men do.
Mr. Harrison, even, was quite gracious to him and offered him a drink,
and he stayed talking for quite a little while. His name is Lathom, and
he has very little money and has to take afternoon classes in an
Art-school, but, of course, that is only to make money until he gets
recognised. He has exhibited pictures in Manchester (I think he said),
and some other places up north, but he didn’t talk much about his work.
He seems nice and modest about it. I think Mr. Harrison is rather
pleased that there should be an artist in the house. He started laying
down the law about art at once, in his usual way, and brought out some
of his water-colours for Mr. Lathom to look at. Mr. Lathom said they
were very nice indeed, which rather surprised me, because I always think
they are rather wishy-washy. However, I suppose he couldn’t very well
have said anything else, as he was drinking Mr. Harrison’s whiskey and
had never seen him till that moment.
Mrs. Harrison seemed rather nervous all the time, and she said
afterwards she thought Mr. Lathom was quite a pleasant young man, but
she did wish George wouldn’t inflict his painting on everybody. It must
be very humiliating to be ashamed of one’s husband’s manners.
I have a dreadful confession to make about Tom’s stockings! With all my
care, one of the turn-overs has come out slightly larger and looser than
the other. It is so tiresome! Why should one’s knitting vary so from day
to day? I suppose as long as one is a human being and not a machine one
must get variations in one’s work, but I thought I had been so careful.
I simply can’t face unpicking it all, and it isn’t really very
noticeable. Tell Tom, if he can manage to put up with the trifling
difference for a few weeks, it will probably even itself up in the wash.
I went out to Virginia Water on Sunday on a ’bus and had a lovely walk.
I have been trying to put down my impressions in a little sketch. Dr.
Trevor thinks it is quite good, and says I must certainly persevere. He
says my power of _feeling_ things so intensely ought to make me a really
good writer, when I have mastered the technique of putting it down on
paper.
Best love to you all. Give the children each a hug from their Auntie. I
hope you are keeping free from colds.
Your affectionate sister,
AGGIE
4. _The Same to the Same_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
29th September, 1928
DEAREST OLIVE,
I am so glad Tom finds he can wear the stockings all right. Yes, I am a
wee bit proud of the pattern. And there’s one thing about it—it’s quite
original. He couldn’t have bought anything like it in a shop, and that’s
something in these machine-made days! Mr. Perry was tremendously
impressed with the finished result, and he said that if I cared to do
that sort of thing as a little business proposition, he thought he could
get me quite a number of commissions among his parishioners. I was
rather relieved, because he introduced the subject so delicately, I was
afraid he was going to ask me to make him a present of a pair!—which
would have seemed rather pointed, especially as he is unmarried! Anyway,
I said I should like very much to do it, only, of course, I couldn’t
undertake to do any big orders against time. I haven’t the leisure, for
one thing—and besides, inventing patterns is artistic work and can’t be
done to order. Mr. Perry _quite_ understood, and asked how much I should
charge, so I said ten shillings a pair. I think that is fair, don’t you?
They take ten ounces of double-knitting, not counting the small amount
of coloured wool for the tops, and then there is my work to be
considered, and the invention. You would have to pay _at least_ fifteen
shillings for anything of the same quality in a shop. I dare say with
practice I shall be able to get both legs the same.
Yes! I have at last made the acquaintance of the poet. I slept very
badly on Friday night, and I thought I’d like an early cup of tea, but
all the milk had been used for a rice-pudding, so at seven o’clock I
slipped out in my kimono to take in the morning delivery, and there, if
you please, was the young man coming downstairs with nothing on but a
vest and shorts! I couldn’t escape, so I carried it through as
unconcernedly as I could—and really, in my pyjamas and kimono I was far
less indecent than he was. I just said, “Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr.
Munting” (that’s his name—what a name for a poet!), “I was just taking
in the milk.” So he picked it up and offered it to me with a tremendous
bow. I had to say _something_ to the man, so I said: “Where are you off
to?” and he said he was going to run round the Square to keep his figure
down. I’m sure it doesn’t want keeping down, for it is all joints and
hollows, and I think he only said it to attract my attention to his
charming person, for his eyes were looking me up and down all the time
in the most unpleasant way.
He is very sallow and what Mother would have called bilious-looking,
with black eyes and wrinkles at the corners, and a sarcastic mouth, and
he smiled all the time he was speaking, in a way that makes a woman feel
most uncomfortable. He looks a great deal older than his friend—I
should put him at well over thirty, but perhaps it is only due to
leading a fast life. I didn’t say much to him, but got in as quickly as
I could. I didn’t want everybody to see him exposing himself there with
me on the doorstep. I saw him afterwards from my bedroom window, rushing
round the Square like a madman.
Mr. Harrison has been more amiable lately. He has bought a wonderful new
box of paints, on the strength of knowing a real artist, I suppose, and
spends his time working up some of his holiday sketches. He is very
excited about a new scheme for fitting up his studio, as he calls it,
with some new kind of electric bulbs, which give a light like daylight,
so that he can work in the evenings. So we shall get less of his company
than ever. Not that it makes any difference to me, personally, only it
seems such a very unsatisfactory idea of married life, to be out all day
and shut himself up every evening. I have written a little sketch,
called “These Men——.” Dr. Trevor thinks it is very promising, and says
I ought to try it on some of the evening papers, so I have sent it to
the _Standard_.
I’m so sorry about Joan’s bad throat. Do you think she wraps up enough?
I will make her one of my special scarves, if you will tell me what
coloured frocks she is wearing.
With best love,
Your affectionate sister,
AGGIE
5. _John Munting to Elizabeth Drake_
15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
30th September, 1928
DEAR BUNGIE,
Forgive me for this rotten series of scraps and post-cards, but I’m a
lazy devil, and there hasn’t been a place to sit down in for the last
fortnight. Lathom’s things are all over the place, and when I fling
myself into a chair in exhaustion, after hours of shifting furniture,
I’m sure to get up with one of his tubes of Permanent Blue adhering to
my pants.
This place isn’t too bad—rather Bayswatery, but there is a good north
light for Lathom’s doings, and that is the essential. We have the two
top floors in this mid-Victorian skyscraper, and share the hall and
staircase with the people downstairs, which is rather a blight on our
young lives, but I daresay we shall survive it.
Unfortunately, Lathom, who is one of those companionable blighters, has
gone and struck up an acquaintance with the Harrisons, and yesterday
evening I was hauled down to see them. Apparently Mr. H. goes in for
dabbling in water-colours, and wanted Lathom’s advice about some
lighting for his studio. Lathom grumbled a good deal, but I told him it
was his own fault if he would go about being so chatty.
I didn’t think much of Mrs. H—she’s a sort of suburban vamp, an
ex-typist or something, and entirely wrapped up, I should say, in her
own attractions, but she’s evidently got her husband by the short hairs.
Not good-looking, but full of S.A. and all that. He is a cut above her,
I imagine, and at least twenty years older; small, thin, rather
stooping, goatee beard, gold specs. And wears his forehead well over the
top of his head. He has a decentish post of some kind with a firm of
civil engineers. I gather she is his second wife, and that he has a son
_en premières noces_, also an engineer, now building a bridge in Central
Africa and doing rather well. The old boy is not a bad old bird, but an
alarming bore on the subject of Art with a capital A. We had to go
through an exhibition of his masterpieces—Devonshire lanes and nice
little bits in the Cotswolds, with trees and cottages. Lathom stuck it
very well, and said they were very nice, which is his way of expressing
utter damnation—but Harrison didn’t know that, so they got on together
like a house afire.
They’ve got an appalling sitting-room, all arty stuff from Tottenham
Court Road, with blue and mauve cushions, and everything ghastly about
it—like Ye Olde Oake Tea-Roomes. Harrison is fearfully proud of his
wife’s taste, and played showman rather pathetically. They keep a
“lady-help”—they would!—a dreadful middle-aged female with a
come-hither eye. She cornered me at the front door the other morning,
just as I was popping out for my daily dozen round the houses. She was
prowling round the hall in rose-pink pyjamas and a pale-blue _négligé_,
pretending to take in the milk. I dawdled on the stairs as long as I
could, to give her a chance to run to cover, but as she appeared to be
determined, and the situation was becoming rather absurd, I marched out,
and was, of course, involved in a conversation. I made myself as
repellent as I could, but the good lady’s curiosity would take no
denial. Last night was like a friendly evening with the Grand
Inquisitor. I told her all she wanted to know about my income and
prospects and family, and Lathom’s ditto so far as I knew them, and by
that time she was chatting so archly (lovely word!) about the young
ladies of the neighbourhood that I thought it best just to mention that
I was engaged. That worked her up into still greater excitement, but I
didn’t tell her much, Bungie, old dear. I’ve got a sort of weakness
about you, though you mightn’t think it, my child, so I said nothing.
Hadn’t I got a photograph? No, I didn’t approve of photographs. Well, of
course, they were only mechanical, weren’t they? Hadn’t Mr. Lathom
painted a portrait of my fiancée? I said that, though I had few
illusions about any of my belongings, I couldn’t expose you to the
ordeal of being painted by Lathom. So she said how like a man to talk of
his belongings, and she supposed Mr. Lathom was very Modern (capital M).
I said yes, terrifically so, and that he always painted his sitters with
green mouths and their noses all askew. So she said she supposed I wrote
poems to you instead. I replied that poems to one’s fiancée were a
little old-fashioned, didn’t she think so, and she agreed, and said,
“What was the title of my next volume?” So I said at random “Spawn,”
which I thought was rather good for the spur of the moment, and it
rather shut her up, because she wasn’t quite sure of the right answer,
and just said that that sounded very modern too, and she hoped I would
present her with a copy when it was printed. Then I got reckless, and
said I feared it never would be printed, because Jix had his eye on me
and opened all my letters to my publishers. You’d adore these people, my
dear—they are like something out of one of your own books. How is the
new work getting on?
I must stop now, old thing: I’ve been quill-driving all day on the
_Life_, and I’m just about dead. But I had to write you some sort of
yarn, just to show I hadn’t been and gone and deserted you.
Yours, Bungie, if indeed anything of one’s self can ever be anybody
else’s which, as an up-to-date young woman, you will conscientiously
doubt, but, at any rate, with the usual damned feeling of incompleteness
in your absence, yours, blast you! yours,
JACK
6. _The Same to the Same_
15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
4th October, 1928
DEAR BUNGIE,
Yours to hand, and your remarks about middle-aged spinsters noted. I
will try not to be (_a_) catty; (_b_) mid-Victorian; (_c_) always
imagining myself to be truly run after. I did not know I was all those
things, but, being a modern woman and a successful novelist, no doubt
you are quite right. Also, of course, you are quite right to speak your
mind. As you say, married life should be based on mutual frankness.
In return, may I just hint that there are some sides of life which I, as
a man, may possibly know more about than you do, merely through having
lived longer and knocked about more. I assure you I can size up some
types of people pretty well. However, it may give you pleasure to learn
that Mrs. Harrison, at any rate, is not out for my scalp. She has read
_Deadlock_ and is disgusted with its coarseness and cynicism, How do I
know? Because I was in Mudie’s when she went in to change it. The girl
said, no, it wasn’t a very nice book and she was afraid at the time Mrs.
Harrison wouldn’t care for it, and would she like the latest Michael
Arlen? Which she did.
Our place really looks very jolly now; I wish you could come and see it.
The Picasso is over the studio fireplace and the _famille rose_ jar is
in my sitting-room, and so are the etchings. They give my surroundings
quite a distinguished-man-of-letters appearance. I wish I could get rid
of this damned _Life_ and get back to my own stuff, but I’m being too
well paid for it, that’s the devil of it. Never mind—I’ll pretend I am
the Industrious Apprentice, working hard so as to be able to marry his
master’s daughter.
Glad the book seems to be working itself out amiably. For God’s sake,
though, don’t overdo the psycho-analytical part. It’s not your natural
style. Don’t listen to that Challenger woman, but write your own stuff.
The other kind of thing wants writing (forgive me) fearfully well if
it’s to be any good, and even then it is rather dreary and
old-fashioned. Glands, my child, glands are the thing, as Barrie would
say. Pre-natal influences and childhood fears have gone out with
compulsory Greek.
_A Don who encountered a Mænad_
_Was left with less wits than the Dean ’ad;_
_Till the Dean, being vexed by a Gonad,_
_Was left with less wits than the Don ’ad:_
_This shows what implicit reliance_
_We may place on the progress of Science._
Talking of Science, I have brought up all standing by Nicholson’s book
on _The Development of English Biography_. According to him, “pure”
biography is doomed, and we are to have the “scientific biography,”
which will in the end prove destructive of the literary interest. There
are to be nothing but studies of heredity and endocrine secretions,
economics and æsthetics, and so on—all specialised and all damned. This
is where I get off: I only hope this infernal work will get itself
published before the rot sets in. So back to the shop, Mr. Keats!
Yours, while this machine is to him,
JACK
On looking this through, I seem to be rather in a scolding mood. But
it’s only because I think so highly of your stuff that I don’t want you
to get sloppy and psycho. That kind of thing is all sentimentality,
really. _Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner; tout pardonner, c’est
tout embêter._
7. _The Same to the Same_
15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
8th October, 1928
DARLING OLD BUNGIE, OLD THING—
All right, damn it, no! I don’t want to hector and lay down the law. You
carry on in your own way, my child, and don’t pay any attention to me. I
quite see what you say about taking things for granted—so we’ll lay it
down quite clearly for future guidance that, although I am always right,
I must never be so ex officio and because I am a man and a husband. No
doubt it is irritating. I hadn’t quite looked at it from that point of
view, but possibly there is something in it. Signed Jacko, the
almost-human Ape.
Making a strenuous effort to adopt this feminine viewpoint, I am
beginning to wonder whether my neighbour goes quite the right way to
assert his position as head of the household. I fancy he must have read
somewhere that women like to be treated rough and feel the tight hand on
the rein and that sort of thing. Unfortunately, nature did not design
him for a sheik part, having made him small, dry, and a little bald on
top.
We were just starting off to dine with Lambert the other night, and were
waiting in the hall for a taxi, when Mrs. H. came in, rather flurried
and very wet. She was hanging up her waterproof, when Harrison came
charging out on the landing and called down:
“Is that you, Margaret? Do you know what time it is?”
“I’m sorry—I won’t be a moment.”
“Where on earth have you been?”
“That’s a secret” (in the tone of voice of someone who wants to have the
secret teased out of her. She was laughing to herself, and had a fattish
parcel tucked under her arm).
“Oh! I suppose it’s all the same to you if the dinner’s uneatable.”
Evidently no interest was to be taken in the “secret.” The next effort
was along the lines of cheerful common sense.
“Why didn’t you begin without me?”
“I don’t choose to. This is my home—or supposed to be—not a hotel” (in
a tone of peevish protest).
She had gone past us up to the first-floor landing, and, like the
Wedding-Guest, we could not choose but hear.
“I’m sorry, dear. I was getting something for to-morrow.”
“That’s no excuse. You’ve been chattering to some of your office friends
in some tea-shop or other and forgetting all about what you were
supposed to be doing. No, I don’t want any dinner now.”
“Oh, very well.”
He came running downstairs then and saw us. I think it gave him a shock,
because he pulled himself up and smiled and said something vague. Then
he turned and called up the stairs again:
“All right, my dear, I’ll be up in a minute.” His eyes were unhappy.
There’s something wrong in this house—something more than a little
misunderstanding about dinner time. I shouldn’t wonder if she gives this
man a devil of a time—probably without meaning it, that’s the rub.
Lathom, who is at the chivalrous age, was all for youth and beauty, of
course, and wanted to hop out and sling the old boy into his own
umbrella-stand, but I told him not to be an infernal ass. Why shouldn’t
the woman come home in time for meals? It’s not much to do, and I don’t
believe she has any other job in life except to sit reading novels in
the front window all day. I know, I’ve seen her at it. All the same, I
do wish we had a separate staircase. It’s a bore to have people fighting
out their matrimonial quarrels on one’s front doorstep. I’m a man of
peace, I am.
I heard afterwards (per Lathom, via Miss Milsom) that the mysterious
parcel was a present for Harrison, the next day being their
wedding-anniversary. The row in the hall rather spoilt the sentiment of
the occasion, I gather. Lathom says the man is a brute. But I don’t
altogether see that. He couldn’t be supposed to know, and anyhow, what
is the good of giving a person a lavish display of affection with one
hand and rubbing pepper into his eyes with the other?
Oh, Bungie, it’s the silly little things of life that I’m afraid of.
Don’t they frighten you, too, competent as you are?
Yours always,
JACK
8. _The Same to the Same_
15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE
12th October, 1928
DEAREST BUNGIE,
Things are looking up. This _Life_ will be finished by Christmas, I
hope. I am rather stuck at present over the chapter on “Religious
Convictions.” It is difficult to bring one’s mind into sympathy with
that curious Victorian blend of materialism and trust in a personally
interfering Providence. It’s odd how they seem to have blinded
themselves to the hopeless contradiction between their science and their
conventional ethics. On the one hand, an acceptance of the Darwinian
survival of the fittest, which ought to have made them completely
ruthless in theory and in practice; on the other, a sort of sentimental
humanitarianism, which directly led to our own special problem of the
multitudinous survival of the unfittest. They seem to have had a
pathetic belief that it could all be set right by machinery. I don’t
know, come to think of it, that we are in a much better position to-day,
except that we have lost the saving belief in machinery. Which doesn’t
stop our becoming more and more mechanical, any more than their having
lost their belief in anthropomorphism stopped them from becoming more
and more humanitarian. Compromise—blessed word!—Chesterton speaks
somewhere of the great Victorian compromise—but why Victorian, more
than anything else? At any rate, they had the consolation of feeling
that this earth and its affairs were extremely large and
important—though why they should have thought so, when they were
convinced they were only the mechanical outcome of a cast-iron law of
evolution on a very three-by-four planet, whirling round a fifth-rate
star in illimitable space, passes human comprehension. It would be more
reasonable to think so to-day, if Eddington and those people are right
in supposing that we are rather a freak sort of planet, with quite
unusual facilities for being inhabited, and that space is a sort of cosy
little thing which God could fold up and put in his pocket without our
ever noticing the difference. Anyhow, if time and space and straightness
and curliness and bigness and smallness are all relative, then we may
just as well think ourselves important as not. “Important,
unimportant—unimportant, important,” as the King of Hearts said, trying
to see which sounded best. So, like the Victorians, we shall no doubt
compromise—say it is important when we have a _magnum opus_ to present
to an admiring creation, and unimportant when it suits our convenience
to have our peccadilloes passed over.
Forgive me wandering away like this. It’s just a sort of talking the
thing out with you before I talk it out in the book. Because, for some
reason, it does seem to me important to do this job as well as I
can—not merely because it will do me good with publishers, and so make
it possible to embark on the important triviality of marriage, but for
some obscure and irrational motive connected with the development of my
soul, if I may so allude to it. I am increasingly not clear whether I am
a mess of oddly-assorted chemicals (chiefly salt and water), or a kind
of hypertrophied fish-egg, or an enormous, all-inclusive cosmos of
solar-systematically revolving atoms, each one supporting planetfuls of
solemn imbeciles like myself.
But, whatever I am, I must finish the _Life_ and then get on to _our_
life, Bungie, because that somehow does count for something to
JACK
9. _The Same to the Same_
15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
15th October, 1928
I knew it, Bungie—I knew it, I knew it! I knew we should be asked
downstairs to tea. And we’ve been! Down among the Liberty curtains and
the brass Benares ware! Three young women, two bright youths, the local
parson and the family. Crockery from Heal’s and everything too
conscientiously bright. Mrs. Harrison all radiance and very much the
centre of attraction.
No sooner had I got there than I was swept into a discussion about “this
wonderful man Einstein.” Extraordinarily interesting, wasn’t it, and
what did I make of it? Displaying all my social charm, I said I thought
it was a delightful idea. I liked thinking that all the straight lines
were really curly, and only wished I’d known all about it at school,
because it would have annoyed the geometry master so much.
“But you do think there’s something in it, don’t you? My husband says it
is all nonsense, but what do _you_ say?”
There was a little stir of triumph about this, and I somehow gathered
that the Einstein topic had been deliberately chosen for a purpose. I
said guardedly that I believed the theory was now generally accepted by
mathematicians, though with very many reserves.
“It really is, is it? Really true that nothing actually exists as we see
it? I do hope so, because I have always felt so strongly that
materialism is all wrong. There is something so deadening about
materialism, isn’t there? I do so wish I knew what life means and what
we really are. But I can’t understand these things, and, you know, I
should so like to, if only I had someone to explain them to me.”
“As far as I can make out,” I replied, “you are _really_ only made up of
large lumps of space, loosely tied together with electricity. It doesn’t
sound flattering, but there it is.”
She frowned attractively.
“But I can’t believe that.”
“Why do you want to believe it?” said Harrison. “It’s all words. When it
comes to doing anything practical you have to come back to common sense.
My friend Professor Alcock——”
“Yes, yes, I know.” She waved the interruption aside impatiently. “But
the idea is the real thing, isn’t it? Haven’t they come round to
thinking that poetry and imagination and the beautiful things of the
mind are the only true realities after all?”
“Of course beauty is the only true reality,” said Lathom eagerly. “But
it isn’t always what ordinary people think of as beauty. I mean, it’s
not pretty-pretty. When you think a thing, then you create it and it
exists. What’s the use of arguing what you make it _of_? That doesn’t
matter to the thing itself, any more than the stuff paints are made of
matter to the picture.”
“It matters a good deal in practice,” said Harrison. “Now the
Pre-Raphaelites understood that—though, mind you, I don’t think much of
the Pre-Raphaelite school myself. Some of their pictures are so
remarkably ugly, and so exaggerated in colour. Take that thing of Holman
Hunt’s, now——”
“Darling,” said Mrs. Harrison, with emphasis, “you’re sidetracking.”
“No, I’m not. I’m coming back to that. What I mean is that the
Pre-Raphaelites, especially William Morris, knew a great deal about the
material of their paints. They used to get the right stuff and grind it
themselves, so as to be sure it wasn’t adulterated. Now I’m all of their
opinion. I say they were quite right. I get my colours from a man up in
town, a wholesale dealer——”
“My husband is always so literal,” said Mrs. Harrison, taking the whole
company into a confederacy to condemn the unfortunate man. “But I didn’t
mean that at all. Mr. Lathom understands what I mean—don’t you, Mr.
Lathom?”
“Yes,” said Lathom, “and, of course, it’s true in a way. But you mustn’t
think that the form of the thing doesn’t matter, too. Whatever the world
is made of, there it is, and it’s ours to make something of.”
“It must be marvellous to paint great pictures!” said one of the young
women.
Lathom scowled frightfully, and, ostentatiously ignoring her, continued
his remarks to Mrs. Harrison in an undertone.
What a conversation, my God! Harrison faded out and I don’t blame him,
and I took the opportunity to tackle the parson, a fellow by the name of
Perry. He turned out to be an earnest and cultivated middle-aged spike
from Keble, and I took the opportunity to mention the _Life_ and the
difficulties about Victorian materialism.
“Yes,” he said, “we’ve rather got past that stage now, haven’t we? I’ve
got one or two books that I think might be useful to you, as giving the
point of view and all that. Shall I send them over?”
I said it was very good of him (not expecting much from it), and, by way
of a leg-pull, asked him what _he_ thought of relativity.
“Why, I’m rather grateful to it,” said he, “it makes my job much easier.
We’ll have a chat some day and go into it. I must be going now.”
He oozed competently away, and the party rambled on till I could stand
it no longer and rambled out into the passage, where I met Harrison.
“Hullo!” said he, “come and have a pipe in the studio. And a
whiskey-and-soda or something. Better than tea.”
I went in, expecting him to talk Art, but he didn’t. He just sat smoking
in silence and I did likewise. I had an idea I ought to say something to
him, but nothing presented itself. If I had said what I felt like
saying, he would have been angry with me.
So much for social life in Suburbia. I had a letter from Jim on
Wednesday. He is thoroughly enjoying himself in Germany, and begs to be
remembered to you. He is reading hard—or so he says—and he’d jolly
well better, the young cub, since if he fails in his tripos there’s no
money to give him another year there and he’ll have to go as an
apothecary’s apprentice or something. I haven’t looked up Cynthia or the
Brierleys yet, but I will pull myself together and do it before long.
Love to everybody. Wish I was up north with you among the burrns and
birrds. Give the Guv’nor my love. Has he had good sport? I suppose the
hills are beginning to look a bit grim again now, bless their granite
hearts. Remember me to all the artist fraternity.
Ever and ever yours, funny-face, old dear. I’d like to see your cheery
grin now and again. I must be damned fond of you—sometimes it
positively puts me off my stroke. Damned inconvenient. I shall really
have to see about this marriage business. I cannot have my work
interrupted in this way.
Yours deeply injured
JACK
10. _Agatha Milsom to Olive Farebrother_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
15.10.28
DEAREST OLIVE,
I am so sorry I have not written for such a long time, but I have been
feeling anything but fit. This household is _most_ trying to live with,
and I really feel that in my present nervous condition I am hardly fit
to cope with my work here. I have been to Dr. Trevor and put the whole
situation very fully and carefully before him, and he agrees that I
certainly ought not to be subjected to so much emotional strain. On the
other hand, I know poor Mrs. Harrison does cling to me so much for
sympathy and support that it seems almost wicked not to hang on if I can
possibly manage it. She has no one else to confide in at all, and I do
at least feel that here I am being of real use to somebody. Dr. Trevor
says that if only I can lose sight of my own difficulties in helping her
with hers, it will be good for me to make the effort, provided I do not
let the atmosphere of the house get on my nerves. I have started a
little exercise on Coué lines. Every morning I say to myself: “I am
cool, strong, confident,” twenty times, and at night I say: “I am
satisfied and at peace,” also twenty times. Dr. Trevor thinks these are
quite good phrases to say.
I _did_ hope, a few days ago, that the difficulty was going to solve
itself. Mrs. Harrison announced that she was going to take up office
work again. The idea of it seemed to brighten her up tremendously, and I
think it would be the best thing she could do. But, of course, the Bear
played his old trick again. When she first announced her decision, he
pretended to agree, and said she could do as she liked, so she was
awfully pleased, and rang up one of the people at her old office to see
if they had a vacancy there. As it happened, they had, and she
practically arranged to start work next week. Then Mr. Bear started off.
“All right? Well, I suppose it is all right if you think so. But don’t
you think it’s a trifle hard on me, my dear, having a wife out all day,
fagging herself to death in an office and coming home fit for nothing? I
give you a good home, and I rather expected, or hoped, you would like to
make it a home for me to come back to. That is the usual idea, isn’t it?
But I suppose the modern woman thinks differently about these things. If
hotel life is your notion of happiness you ought to go and live in
America.”
It is too bad to work upon the poor girl’s feelings in that selfish way.
She tried to reason with him, but, of course, the end was that she made
herself perfectly sick with crying, and wrote and told the people that
she couldn’t manage to take the job after all. And now he goes about
saying it’s a pity she can’t find something better to do with herself
than reading trashy novels all day. I spoke up. I said, “Mr. Harrison,
excuse me, but you ought not to speak to your wife like that. She gave
up the work she wanted to do, _entirely_ to please you, and I think you
ought to consider her a little more and yourself a good deal less.” I
daresay he wasn’t best pleased, but I thought it my duty to say it. I
felt most terribly exhausted after this trying scene. It is such a drain
upon one’s personality, coping with outbreaks of this kind. One is
giving, giving, all the time. I am asking Dr. Trevor to prescribe me a
tonic. A curious feature of my malady at the moment is a craving for
shrimps. Our fishmonger keeps very good ones, but sometimes I have to go
quite a long way to get them, because I am afraid he will think it funny
if I buy shrimps every day.
I am sure I don’t know what we should do if it were not for Mr. Lathom.
He often drops in of an evening now and cheers us up immensely. The Bear
is always dragging the poor man off into his studio, as he calls it, to
twaddle about art, but Mr. Lathom has most delightful manners and puts
up with it heroically. He thinks my scarf-patterns and stocking-tops
show great talent, “a very good sense of design.” He is a real artist,
so I am sure he wouldn’t say so if he didn’t think it.
We do not see much of the objectionable Mr. Munting, I am glad to say.
He often doesn’t come home till very late. You never know what these men
are after. It is a good thing that he shares the maisonnette with Mr.
Lathom, who I am sure would not allow any undesirable goings-on under
our roof.
I hope darling Joan is quite strong again now. Give her my love, and say
I have started on the scarf. I am doing a pattern of purple and white
clematis, which will be very chic, I think.
Your loving sister,
AGGIE
11. _John Munting to Elizabeth Drake_
15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE
19.10.28
Damn it all, yes, Bungie—I suppose you are right. Our ideas are always
ahead of our actions, or rather, askew to them, and we move lop-sided,
like a knight on a chessboard. We get somewhere, even if it isn’t the
place we thought we were aiming for. By the time the next generation has
come along, the ideas which were new and strange to us have become part
of its habitual commonplace. It goes straight along them, even when it
imagines it is rebelling against them.
And after all, this business of imagining that one is one kind of thing
and _being_ actually another—we all do it, all the time, so why
shouldn’t whole nations and periods do it? Have you read J. D.
Beresford’s _Writing Aloud_, by the way? It is enormously fascinating,
and I delight in the bit where he tells how, in his callow youth, he had
a “passionate impulse” to “save” a young prostitute he had talked to,
and then prayed desperately to be delivered from the sin of hypocrisy
and be made single-hearted and all that—only to be delighted, later on
in life, with the discovery that he was “not one person but fifty.” One
imagines—one dramatises oneself into the belief that one is going one
way, and lo and behold! the path “gives itself a little shake” like the
one in _Alice_ and one finds oneself walking at the front door again.
Our friend Mrs. Harrison is a perfect example of this dramatisation
business—and is quite capable of dramatising herself in two totally
inconsistent directions at once, rather like the Victorian age. Any
attitude that appeals to her sense of the picturesque she appropriates
instantly, and, I really believe, with perfect sincerity. If she reads a
“piece in the paper” about the modern woman who finds spiritual
satisfaction in a career, she _is_ that woman; and her whole life has
been ruined by having had to give up her job at the office. Capable,
intelligent, a comradely woman, meeting male and female on a brisk,
pleasant, man-to-man basis—there she is! If, on the other hand, she
reads about the necessity of a “complete physical life” for the
development of personality, then she is the thwarted maternal woman, who
would be all right if only she had a child. Or if she gets a mental
picture of herself as a Great Courtesan (in capital letters), she is
perfectly persuaded that her face only needed opportunity to burn the
topless towers of Ilium. And so on. What she really is, if reality means
anything, I do not know. But I can see now, what I didn’t see before,
that this power of dramatisation, coupled with a tremendous vitality and
plenty of ill-regulated intelligence, has its fascination. If ever she
found anyone to take one of her impersonations seriously, she would
probably be able to live very brilliantly and successfully in that
character for—well, not all her life, perhaps, but for long enough to
make an impressive drama of it. Unfortunately, the excellent Harrison is
not a good audience. He admires, but he won’t clap, which must be very
discouraging.
You will gather from this that I have been seeing a good deal of the
Harrisons. Quite right, Sherlock, I have. When you once make up your
mind to look on people as social studies, you can get quite reconciled
to their company. Mrs. H. cornered me in the artistic sitting-room last
night, while her husband was telling Lathom about aerial perspective, to
tell me about her own personality. She feels cramped in her
surroundings, it seems. Her mentality has no room to expand. It is so
hard for a woman, isn’t it? Perhaps the only way is to express herself
through her children—but then—if one has no children? She said she
always felt she could have made herself a happy life by living for and
in others. I did not say that she would probably end by devouring her
hypothetical family, though I could very well see her doing it. I felt
mischievous, and said that there were other forms of passionate
altruism, and that I could see her in a cloister, walking serenely among
the lilies and burning her soul away in contemplation. Could I really?
Well, yes, there was something very wonderful about the life of
devotion. I ought to write a book about it. At this point I became a
little alarmed, and turned the conversation to new books. We had a
little difficulty, because her idea of an important writer and my idea
are not exactly identical; however, we agreed that _The Constant Nymph_
was a very good piece of work, and, encouraged by that, she tackled the
awkward question of _Deadlock_. I tried to explain what I had really
meant by it and she proved quite adaptable. She said she did not mind a
book’s being “powerful,” provided it was filled with a “sense of the
beautiful.” She thought _Sweet Pepper_ was powerful, but nevertheless
there was something about it that redeemed it. What a pity it was that
Hutchinson hadn’t written another book like _If Winter Comes_. She
thinks that if only I wouldn’t be so harsh and mocking I might write a
book as strong and really beautiful as that.
These are the people who read the books, Bungie. And what are we to do
about it, you and I, if we want to live by bread?
Next day I met her in the hall, dressed in a demure grey frock, with a
long veil swathed nun-like about her cloche hat. She saluted me with a
grave and far-away smile. I grinned cheerfully, and mentioned that I was
going to watch a football match.
Your not-very-well-behaved and rather malicious
JACK
12. _The Same to the Same_
20.10.28
MY DEAR BUNGIE,
Don’t be a silly ass. I thought you had more sense than the ordinary
futile sort of woman. I am not in the least fascinated by Mrs. Harrison.
She quite simply interests me as a type—a personality, that is. It is
my job to be interested in people. I might want to use that kind of
person in a book some day.
Good heavens! If I was “fascinated” by her, I shouldn’t be likely to
analyse her in that dispassionate way. She is essentially a suburban
vamp, as I think I said before, if you have thought any of my remarks
worth remembering. And I never said she was beautiful. Her mouth is
sloppy and bad. . . .
* * * * *
Later: Saunders Enfield burst in on me when I was writing this, and
hauled me out to lunch with him. On returning, with the better part of a
bottle of perfectly good Corton inside me, I realise that the brilliant
line of defence I am taking up is exactly the one I should equally have
taken if the accusation had been true. I should have said just those
things, in exactly that tone of exasperated superiority, and I should
have elaborated them with such a wealth of detail that you could not
have failed to disbelieve every word of it.
My first impulse (after lunch, I mean) was to destroy the incriminating
paper, and to ignore your observations altogether. But I think that
would probably have a highly suspicious appearance also. Upon my word, I
don’t believe there _is_ any convincing reply to such a charge.
Except to tell you that I honestly don’t care a damn for any woman in
the world except one. And if you don’t believe that, my child, then it
doesn’t matter what you think of me, because I shall be beyond caring.
I believe you’re only pulling my leg, anyhow. Blast you! Don’t do it
again.
And believe me (as the business people say),
Yours faithfully,
JACK
13. _The Same to the Same_
15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
22.10.28
Hullo, Bungie, darling! My God, but I’m played-out! I’ve been sticking
to the accursed _Life_ like a leech, and have finished the religious
outlook. Having ground it out with incredible sweat and travail, I read
it through and thought it so awful that I was in two minds about
chucking the whole thing into the fire. However, I didn’t, but instead
went over and joined Jim in Paris for a week, on his way home, as you
saw by my post-card. We had a mildly riotous time in that cheerful city,
restraining each other in a brotherly way from the more perilous kinds
of exuberance, and reached home feeling fit for anything. I took up the
infernal religious outlook, read it through again, and came to the
conclusion that it was bloody good stuff, after all! So now I am
pressing forward with shouts of joy and encouragement to the critical
estimate, which is the only part of the thing I really want to write at
all. Dilkes, the dear old man, to whom I explained my troubles, talked
to me like fifty fathers, and said extraordinarily nice things. He
thinks, by the way, that the flippant and imaginative kind of biography
has had its day, having been too much imitated, and that the time has
come round again for solid facts and research. “The great humility of
science, in face of the infinite and valuable variety of Truth.” Isn’t
that an exquisite Victorian remark? “We should pray,” said he, making me
feel like a very grubby fourth-form infant, “to be delivered from
cleverness, because very clever people end by finding that nothing is
worth while.” So I said, rather ungraciously, that probably nothing
_was_ worth while, and he gave the funniest twinkle from under his thick
eyebrows and replied: “You must not think that, or you will become a
bore.”
My parson turns out to be rather an enlightened person. It appears he
took a mathematical tripos among other things, which is one up to him.
He also has read Eddington, and, moreover, took it for granted that I
had read Jeans and Japp and one or two other fantastic scientists whose
names I had never heard of, which was two up to him. Also, he seemed
quite delighted about the whole thing, and said he was thankful to find
that scientists would at last allow him to believe what the Church
taught, which in his young days they wouldn’t. I should have put this
down to the usual shifty ecclesiastical clap-trap, but for the obvious
fact that he knew what he was talking about, and I didn’t, so, feeling a
fool, I put a good face on the matter and asked his advice about the
religious outlook chapter. He gave me some really very useful stuff
about Victorian materialism, which you will find in the book when it’s
finished. We ended by discussing, with much laughter, some incredibly
silly letter from correspondents in the _Daily Dispatch_, one of whom
said: “Sir, Genesis says that God made Adam from the dust of the earth.
God is the initial cause and dust is protoplasm. Yours faithfully”;
while the reply observed briefly, “Sir, Dust is not protoplasm, Yours
faithfully.”
Dearest, do you really want to be married to the sort of unsatisfactory
bloke I am? It is extraordinarily brave and dear of you. You will have a
devil of a time. I want to warn you now that when I say I want you to
keep your independence and exquisite detachment, I don’t really mean it.
I shall try to mould you into the mirror of myself, fatally and
inevitably. When I say I am not jealous, either of your work or friends,
I am lying. When I promise to look at things from your point of view, I
am promising what I cannot perform. When I declare myself ready to
discuss everything fully and freely and have a _situation nette_, I am
pretending to be more honest than a man ever is or can be. I shall be
reticent, inconsistent, selfish and jealous. I shall put my interests
before yours, and the slightest suggestion that I should put myself out
to give you peace and quietness to work in will wound my
self-importance. I know it. I shall pretend to give you freedom, and
make such an unholy martyr of myself that you will take up your chains
for the sake of a quiet life. You will end by hating me, and leave me
for some scamp of a fellow who knows how to handle women. And you will
be quite right, from your point of view. I have been trying to look
honestly into the thing, and I want to warn you. You think I am
“different,” but I am not. With all your theoretical knowledge, Bungie,
you haven’t had experience. You are generous, I know, and think you are
willing to risk it, but I must try and make you understand the facts.
Don’t think that I am wanting for one moment to cut our engagement out.
I want you as I have never wanted anything. I want you terribly. But do
try and understand that it won’t be what you think. I don’t want us to
end in a ghastly sort of muddle.
I know you will say that you understand, but you don’t. You have an
idea—all women have—that you can enter into a man’s point of view. You
can’t; any more than I can enter into a woman’s point of view. Don’t,
for God’s sake, tell me to cheer up and it will be all right. Don’t be
sweet and understanding—be brutal, if you like—I shall not take
offence at anything you may say, but I want you to realise what you are
in for.
Yours ever,
JACK
P.S. This is arrant hypocrisy. I am bound to take offence, whatever you
say, and we shall have one of those painful and acrimonious arguments.
If you say nothing, I shall be offended at that, too. But for God’s sake
don’t chuck me, Bungie.
14. _The Same to the Same_
15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
26.10.28
DEAREST AND MOST WONDERFUL BUNGIE,
Forgive me for writing such a foul letter, and bless you for answering
it so promptly. The alarming list of faults which you have produced in
answer to mine relieves my mind a good deal. Thank Heaven for a woman
with a sense of humour. I was feeling rather awful that day, being
thoroughly fagged, and had, I suppose, a grouch against civilisation.
But I quite agree about the innocent “animal” business; I can imagine
nothing more tedious. All the same, I feel very strongly, in my more
honest moments, that love has got to be happy, for fear it should become
all-important. I can’t expect you to understand this, and you would be
an unnatural woman if you did, and I should hate you for it. But I do
feel that the old “not long will his love stay behind him” attitude is
degrading and horrible. I don’t want to feel that anybody’s life and
happiness is bound up with mine. What dignity is there in life if one is
not free to take one’s own risks? It doesn’t matter whether it’s a wife
or a parent or a child or a brother—people should set their own value
on themselves and not “live for others” or “live only in their
children,” or whoever it is. It’s beastly. And yet—if I heard you say
that—I don’t know, but I expect I should go off the deep end like poor
old Harrison.
I think Lathom is rather getting on my nerves. If I had known he was
such a gregarious devil I don’t think I should have agreed to set up
housekeeping with him. Fortunately, as he is merely an acquaintance, and
_not_ my wife or my father or my brother, I can more or less ignore his
vagaries. He is always “running down” to see the Harrisons, and having
them up here. You can’t get on with your work when people are
everlastingly coming in and out. I just chuck it now, and sit tight in
my own room, and let them get on with it.
I like the old boy, though—and, by jove, he does know how to cook! Yes,
cook! He has a passion for cookery as a fine art. I must get him to show
me how to make omelettes—I don’t believe _you_ know anything about it,
do you? Also rump-steak, on which his views are very sound. He also has
a fungus-complex—thinks the poor peasant ought to go forth and cull his
grub from the hedgerow, and all that. He knows a tremendous lot about
edible toadstools, and delivers lectures on them to Lathom, for whom he
has taken a great fancy. As a matter of fact, Lathom is one of those
offensively healthy people who shovel down anything that is set before
them, but Harrison doesn’t see that, and enthuses mildly on in a sort of
resistless river of speech that forces itself past all interruptions.
Mrs. H. yawns, Miss Milsom yawns, Lathom yawns and I do my best not to
yawn, because I’m the only person here who has any real sympathy with
the subject, so it’s up to me. I’m not sure, though, that his monologues
aren’t better than her intense duets. However, Harrison has now gone
away into the country on his lonesome, so perhaps we shall be free of
visitors for a bit.
I have been round to see Merritt & Hopkins, and this time saw the great
Man of Merritt himself. He was very genial, and encouraged me to dig my
old novel out of its sepulchre, in a last forlorn effort. You know—the
one I wrote just before I met you, and which no one will have anything
to do with. He has promised to read it himself, which was so decent of
him that I hadn’t the heart to suggest that a younger man might look
upon it with more sympathy!
I have just been reading the _Messenger’s_ interview with you, my child.
How entertaining! What grand publicity! And how damnable impertinent. I
suppose I shall be expected to put up with everybody having the right to
comment on My Wife in public. We shall have rows about it; I see that
inevitably. I shall sneer first and then lose my temper, and if you once
give in you will be a lost woman.
Are you still quite sure you want to risk matrimony with
Yours infuriatingly,
JACK
15. _George Harrison to Paul Harrison_
THE SHACK, NEAR MANATON, DEVON
22.10.28
MY DEAR BOY,
This month I must begin by wishing you very many happy returns of the
day, and I trust that the mail will live up to its reputation and
deliver my letter in time for the auspicious occasion. God bless you, my
dear boy, and send you all happiness and prosperity. You are now
thirty-six years old—still a very young man to hold the responsible
position you have made for yourself. Yet to me it seems strange to think
that when I was your age I had been married and settled for sixteen
years! I was only a boy of twenty when I married your dear Mother! Her
memory is very near and dear to me at this time, as indeed, at all
times. You must never think that, because I have formed other ties of
late years, I do not think of her with the deepest affection. But I know
you do not think so. You know that there is room in my heart for both:
and it is a great happiness to me to have a son whose face recalls, even
more vividly as the years go by, that of my dear first wife.
I was greatly pleased to have your letter and to know that the work goes
so well. Yours is a great opportunity. I know how proud and happy I
should have been at your age to have the advantage of working under so
distinguished a man as Sir Maurice. In my opinion he is the greatest
engineer of his day. It is most gratifying that he should entrust so
much of the responsible work to you. Be very careful to check _every_
figure and test _everything_, no matter how small, before it is put in
place. The most brilliant calculations will not compensate for a
defective bolt. Dolby’s is a first-class firm, but it is a sound rule to
take nothing for granted.
As you see, I am down in the old shack for my usual holiday. I was
obliged to take it rather late this year, as I could not be spared from
the office till we had got the new power-station through. However, the
weather is fortunately very favourable, and I have been able to do a
good deal of sketching as well as rambling after fungi. I missed our old
Puff-ball friend, _Lycoperdon giganteum_, of course, but I gathered a
beautiful dish of the little _Amethyst Agaric_ yesterday, and to-morrow
morning I am going out in search of _Amanita rubescens_, which I intend
to try very slowly and delicately stewed in beef broth, or in a
mock-beef gravy of _Fistulina Hepatica_, if I can find one in good
condition. I do not know whether any one has ever tried this combination
of two fungi. If it is a success I shall give the recipe in the little
book I am writing on _Neglected Edible Treasures_. Messrs. Hopkin &
Bigelow are interested in my “operculum,” and I rather think they mean
to publish it.
I am sorry you are not here to go a-mushrooming with me. Margaret, of
course, does not care for this kind of camp-life—I could not expect it
of such a thorough little town-bird as she is—so I have had to become
an old bachelor for the time being. I am hoping that young Lathom will
come out with me sometimes on sketching expeditions. He seems a very
decent, friendly young fellow, and it is very pleasant to have a
fellow-artist in the place, with whom to exchange ideas. He runs in and
out of our flat frequently of an evening, and we are always glad to see
him. His lively chatter seems to amuse Margaret, and it is nice to have
some young life about the place. We do not see quite so much of his
friend Munting. He is reserved and quiet and talks modestly enough,
though I believe he has written a book of very _risqué_ verse and a
rather salacious novel. Margaret says she dislikes his sarcastic manner,
but I cannot say I have found him in any way objectionable. Miss Milsom
seems to have taken offence at something he said to her, but then she is
not a particularly sensible woman. Nothing I can say will stop her
putting dripping in the pan when frying a steak, which is a great
nuisance. She has no real feeling for cookery.
Well, my boy, I have written rather a long letter, and I must stop now,
as I see the lad approaching with the bread, and I must secure his
services to take this to the post. I enclose a little cheque, as an
offering which is always suitable in every season and country, and
remain,
With every good wish,
Your affectionate Father,
GEO. HARRISON
16. _Agatha Milsom to Olive Farebrother_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
25.10.28
DEAREST OLIVE,
We are all breathing again! The Bear has taken himself off for one of
his camping holidays, complete with painting outfit and half a dozen
scribbling pads. He is actually going to write a book!—telling people
how to live on nettles and toadstools and that sort of thing, and how in
case of another Great War we could support the entire nation on boiled
hedgehogs or some such nastiness. My dear, it is such a relief to get
him out of the house! Of course, he couldn’t go off without creating an
unpleasantness. He was absurd enough to suggest that Mrs. Harrison
should go with him—the idea of it! in a horrible little shack, _miles_
from anywhere—damp as a well, I shouldn’t wonder, with no proper water
or _sanitation_ or anything. Did you ever hear of such a thing?
Naturally, Mrs. Harrison said she didn’t think she would care about
it—what did the man expect? He didn’t say anything more about it
_then_—I think I’ve taught him not to bully his wife when I’m
about!—but he took it out of her when they went upstairs. She came in
crying at 12 o’clock at night to sleep with me because she couldn’t
stand it any longer. “My dear,” I said, “why do you take notice of it?
If he wants your company so badly, why can’t he sacrifice himself for
once and take you to Brighton or Margate, or some nice cheerful place?
He just likes to make people miserable, that’s all.” So then I told her
a little about what Dr. Trevor said about the people who enjoy
inflicting torture on others. I said, “You must just look on it as a
kind of disease and not resent it if you can help it. Build up a wall of
protective thought about yourself and determine to be quite detached
about it.” We had a very interesting little talk about repressions, and
I have lent her my handbook to Freud. It is so important to get a
healthy angle on these things.
Mr. Lathom has been very nice, coming in almost every evening to keep us
company. It must be a relief to him not to be bothered with the Bear’s
everlasting drivel about Art. He is going to paint our portraits. Mrs.
Harrison is going up for her first sitting to-morrow. It is to be a
blue, green and bronze colour-scheme—blue dress, green background and a
big bowl of those bronze Chrysanthemums. It gave Mr. Lathom a great deal
of trouble deciding it. Of course, Mrs. Harrison is very
attractive-looking, but you couldn’t exactly call her _pretty_, with
those greeny eyes and her rather pale complexion. I haven’t decided what
to wear. I asked Mr. Lathom, but he said he thought I should look nice
in anything and he could safely leave it to me. I think I shall have it
done in that orange thing with the square yoke—the one which Mr.
Ramsbottom said made me look like a Pre-Raphaelite page—you
remember?—and have my hair waved and curled under all round to carry
out the idea. I pointed out to Mr. Lathom that my face wasn’t the same
both sides, and he laughed, and said no human being ever was the same
both sides—Nature never worked by rule and compass.
I am doing well with my stockings, and have had several orders for
scarves. Don’t forget to tell anybody who wants one that I am quite
ready to undertake the work. I am experimenting on some calendars, made
like the old-fashioned tinsel pictures, with the coloured paper-wrappers
off chocolate creams. Some of the designs are simply beautiful. You
might send me any you get. I think I might get some Christmas orders for
them. I’ve thought out quite an original idea. . . .
* * * * *
[The remainder of this letter, which contained only some designs for
needlework, has been detached.]
17. _John Munting to Elizabeth Drake_
15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE
28.10.28
DARLING BUNGIE,
Just a line to say I am running down to Oxford to stay with the Cobbs
for a week or two. It is simply impossible to work in this place at the
moment—the downstairs menagerie swarms over us all day. This is the
last time I’ll think of setting up housekeeping with a man on the
strength of a school and restaurant acquaintance. Of course, it’s
financially useful—but, damn it all! money isn’t everything, even when
one’s hoping to get married. Lathom will insist on being a little ray of
sunshine about the place. Damn sunshine. If it hadn’t gone joggling up
the perfectly good and placid atoms in the primeval ooze, they would
never have sweltered up in this unsatisfactory world of life and
bothersomeness.
The great idea now is to paint a portrait of Mrs. Harrison as a surprise
for Harrison on his return. Knowing Lathom’s style, I should say it
would be a very great surprise to him, indeed. It will probably be a
very fine work—the man can paint—but I wish they could get on with it
quietly by themselves and leave me alone. That poisonous old woman is in
and out the whole time. I daren’t emerge from my own room for a minute
without being collared and asked some imbecile question or other.
Impertinent old bitch. She’s a dangerous woman, too. In Harrison’s place
I’d give her the sack. She had the damned sauce to edge into my room
after me yesterday and ask whose photograph that was on my table, was it
my best girl’s? I said, No—it was my last mistress but three or four, I
had lost count. (It was Brenda’s, as a matter of fact.) I was told I was
a dreadful man and that Miss Drake ought to know the way I behaved. I
was furious. I don’t know how the devil she got hold of your name.
Lathom’s damned chattiness, I suppose—confound him! She wound up the
interview by saying, really, she didn’t think it safe to be in the same
room with me, and leered her way out. Disgusting fool! Fortunately, I
was only revising “Birth and Childhood,” or I should have been too
irritable to work for the rest of the day. I hope, for your sake, I am
not becoming neurotic—that would be the last straw.
Anyway, the Cobbs’ invitation came at the exact right moment to prevent
my doing something regrettable, so I’m barging off. Otherwise I should
probably have had a row with Lathom, which would have been a nuisance,
as I’ve paid the rent up to Christmas.
No news from Merritt yet. Probably he has slung the poor old MS. into a
drawer and forgotten about it. It could write its memoirs by this time:
_Pigeon-holes I Have Lived in_. How goes your latest?
My love to the Governor and everybody,
Your loving
J
18. _Agatha Milsom to Olive Farebrother_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
8.11.28
DEAREST OLIVE,
Ever so many thanks for sending the order from Mrs. Pottersby; I will
get on with it as quickly as I can. I have two more scarves in hand, and
Mr. Perry wants two dozen calendars for people in the parish, so you see
I am quite busy just at present. I am glad Tom’s rheumatism is no worse,
and that Joan’s little illness turned out to be such a trifling matter
after all. It must have given you a lot of anxiety.
I am feeling very much better, I am glad to say—in fact, we are all
brighter and happier for our period of peace and quietness. The Bear
came back in quite a good mood, for him!—and dear Mrs. Harrison seems
quite a different person. She reads a lot, and I am encouraging her to
live in her books, and abstract herself altogether from the wearing and
irritating realities of life. It is easy, because she has a wonderfully
vivid and romantic imagination, which makes the world of literature very
real to her. Of course, that is what Mr. Harrison would never be able to
understand. It is hopeless to try to discuss anything with him. I tried
to get him to talk about Gilbert Frankau’s new book the other day. He
said he hadn’t read it and didn’t want to. I gave him an outline of the
plot, but I don’t think he was listening. At any rate, he only said,
“Oh!” and went on to talk interminably about his eternal fungi and
hedgehogs. Still, provided he keeps his temper, it doesn’t much matter
what he talks about, and Mrs. Harrison listens to it all most patiently.
I wonder how she can do it, but she is in a wonderfully serene and happy
frame of mind. I am rather proud of my work, for I am sure it was our
little talk in my bedroom the other day that showed her the way out of
her troubles.
I am sorry for what you say about Ronnie. It is most trying for you that
he should have got mixed up with that sort of girl, but no doubt it will
all blow over. Dr. Trevor says that that kind of adolescent love-affair
should always be dealt with sympathetically, and will work itself out
naturally if not thwarted. I’m sure it would be _most unwise_ of Tom to
exert his authority in any way. I cannot forget how our poor dear Mother
_ruined_ my life—of course, with the best intentions—by her
old-fashioned ideas of what was “nice.” Nobody will ever know what I
suffered as a girl, and I am sure it is all due to that early
unhappiness that I am in the doctor’s hands now. It was not the same
thing for you, of course—you never had that complicated and
delicately-balanced temperament, and would probably always have been
happy enough, whether you had married or not. People of your kind are
much the most fortunate, but then one cannot help one’s temperament, can
one? If you take my advice, and treat Ronnie with sympathy and
indulgence, you will avoid making the mess of his life that our parents
made of mine. I feel that Ronnie and I are very much akin—perhaps a few
words from me would help to explain him to himself. I am writing to him
to-night.
Your loving sister,
AGGIE
19. _The Same to the Same_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
15.11.28
DEAR OLIVE,
I have been much surprised and deeply hurt by Ronnie’s letter to me,
which I enclose for you to see. I cannot believe that he would have
written in that spirit of his own accord. I can only suppose that you
and Tom have been prejudicing him against me. Of course, he is your
child and not mine, but it is quite a mistake to imagine that, merely
because of the physical accident of parenthood, you are, for that
reason, divinely qualified to deal with a sensitive temperament like
Ronnie’s. I (not having my eyes blinded) can see quite clearly through
what he writes, that you have succeeded in _apparently_ bringing him
into agreement with your point of view; but, if you did but know it, you
are merely encouraging him to repress his natural feelings, with
consequences which may be _terrible to contemplate_. I can imagine
nothing worse for him than what you call change of scene and
companionship, when I know perfectly well that you mean that
unimaginative and completely insensitive Potts person. I cannot imagine
a more dangerous influence for a boy in Ronnie’s state of mind than a
footballing parson. The harm done by men of that class is quite
incalculable, and their minds are, as a rule, perfect sinks of dangerous
and sublimated libidos (I don’t know whether that is the right way to
spell the plural). However, it is your own affair, and I am powerless to
interfere, but I do think you ought not to set the boy against me,
merely because I am, unhappily, in a position to know more than you do
about certain facts of life.
Thank you, I am glad to say we are all very well. Mrs. Harrison’s
portrait is finished. It is a very striking piece of colour. Of course,
Mr. H. thinks it does not do her justice, but then, as you would expect,
he is quite out of sympathy with modern art.
We are relieved from the presence of Mr. Munting, who has gone to
Oxford, on a visit to some friends, or so he says. I think it is much
more likely that he is leading a double life somewhere. He unblushingly
confesses to having innumerable disreputable entanglements, and I am
very sorry indeed for the girl he is engaged to.
Your affectionate sister,
AGGIE
20. _George Harrison to Paul Harrison_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE
20.11.28
MY DEAR BOY,
I was very glad to get your last letter—the one dated 7th October—and
to know that all goes on so well with you and the bridge. You took
exactly the course I should have advised myself in the matter of the man
Matthews. In such a case, consideration is out of place. Your duty to
the firm (to say nothing of the thousands who will use the bridge) must
come before any sympathy for the man and his special circumstances. Far
too much laxity is shown nowadays to outbreaks of so-called
“temperament,” with most disastrous consequences, and there is far too
much talk about “not being able to help one’s self.” I should not let
the matter prey on your mind in the least. I quite understand that the
man has brilliant powers and an attractive personality, and that you are
sorry to lose him, but it is fatally easy for a man like that to imagine
that the ordinary rules of morality do not apply to him, and to indulge
him in such ideas is bad for him, and may easily be ruinous to other
people and to his work. I entirely approve your decision, and so, I am
sure, must Sir Maurice, if the matter comes to his notice.
I am feeling greatly benefited by my little holiday, and am glad to be
back to work again. I found all well at home on my return. Margaret was
in very good spirits over a little surprise that she and Lathom had
prepared for me. She has been sitting to him for her portrait, and he
has made a very striking piece of work of it. While I cannot say I think
it does her justice, there is no doubt that it is a handsome piece of
_coloratura_, and the kind of thing to attract attention at the present
time. Lathom belongs, of course, to the modern school. He paints, I
feel, in too much of a hurry, and his pictures have not the beautiful
smooth finish of a Millais, or, among living artists, of a Lavery—but
no doubt he will grow out of this slapdash method when he is older. It
is a kind of affectation which besets the young painters of to-day, and,
while I cannot help but see the defects of his method, I am not blind to
the merits of the work and to the kind thought which prompted the
execution. He is anxious to show it at the Academy next year, and
Margaret is (naturally, I suppose) delighted with the idea. I was
obliged, however, to say that I did not care about the project. It is
the kind of picture to attract a good deal of comment of one sort and
another, and these young people do not quite see the amount of
undesirable publicity it might involve. I fear they are both rather
disappointed, but later on, when I was able to speak quietly about it to
Lathom alone, he saw the matter in the right light, and was very nice
about it. We are hanging it in a good light in the drawing-room, where
it will look very well.
There has been a very amusing sequel to this. Your old friend (or should
I say enemy?) Miss Milsom has taken it into her head that _her_ fair
features ought to be immortalised, too! Lathom, with his usual
extraordinary good nature, has actually consented to make a picture of
her—but only on the understanding that this time, if it turns out well,
he shall have the right to do as he likes with it! Miss Milsom is only
too enchanted at the idea of being hung at Burlington House. I did not
feel called upon to interfere, since he is obviously only “pulling her
leg,” and there is not the remotest chance of the portrait’s being
exhibited; for, as you know, the lady is scarcely the Venus of Milo! She
is very much excited about it, and has produced the most incredible
garment to be painted in—very tight as to the bust and voluminous as to
the skirt. I understand that a quattrocento effect is aimed at.
I am very hard at work of an evening now—with a number of sketches to
work up and my little _opus_ to prepare. I am illustrating it with
water-colours of various plants and fungi in their natural habitat, and
it should turn out a very pretty and useful volume.
I enclose the formulæ you asked for, and remain
Your affectionate
DAD
21. _Agatha Milsom to Olive Farebrother_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE
22.11.28
DEAR OLIVE,
I have received your letter about Ronnie. No doubt you think you know
best. I will not allude further to the matter.
I am feeling _much_ too upset to discuss such things just now. Mr.
Harrison has been behaving abominably, undoing all the good his absence
has done, and creating his usual atmosphere of unpleasantness.
Mr. Lathom painted a most _beautiful_ picture of Mrs. Harrison. They
both worked like galley-slaves to get it finished in time for his return
(H.’s, I mean). I say both, for sitting is most exhausting work, as you
would know if you had ever sat to anybody for a portrait, and she would
end up sometimes so cramped she could scarcely move. As for Mr. Lathom,
he seemed quite inspired over it, and painted and painted away without
food or rest, till I got quite worried about him, and had to bring him
up cups of hot Bovril and Ovaltine, for fear he should over-tax his
strength. He is an extraordinarily generous young man, because, though
he cannot be well off, he actually painted the portrait to _give_ to Mr.
Harrison, when I feel sure he could have sold it for a big price, it is
such a splendid piece of work, and he says himself it is one of the best
things he has ever done.
Well, they got it finished in time for the Bear’s return, and Mrs.
Harrison was ever so delighted with it, and thought the creature would
be pleased. It was quite pathetic to see how eagerly she looked forward
to surprising him, poor woman. Well, he was pleased, in his grudging
kind of way, though he had the impertinence to criticise the
painting—as if Mr. Lathom didn’t know more about Art with his eyes shut
than Mr. Harrison could learn in a month of Sundays. And then it was all
spoilt by the Bear’s horrible selfishness. Mr. Lathom said—very nicely
and courteously—he hoped Mr. Harrison would see no objection to its
being sent to the Academy. Of course, as it was the best thing he’d
done, you’d think anybody would see he had a right to exhibit it, and
you’d think, too, that when anybody had received a valuable present like
that, he’d be only too willing to be obliging. But the PIG just said,
“Well, Lathom, I don’t quite think we can go as far as that. My wife
would hardly like to be put on show, you know.”
I could see that Mrs. Harrison felt the discourtesy to Mr. Lathom
_dreadfully_, and she said at once she would be quite pleased to let the
portrait be shown, and then he laughed—just laughed, as if it was of no
importance to anybody, and said, “Oh, Lathom won’t insist on making an
exhibition of you, my dear.” I could see how vexed Mr. Lathom was, and
so could Mrs. Harrison, and she begged and prayed him not to be so
selfish and unkind, and Mr. Lathom spoke up and said, if Mrs. Harrison
would like her portrait shown, surely he was not going to be a Victorian
husband. Of course, that was unwise (as I could have warned him if I
could have got the chance), and we had one of the worst rows even I can
remember. Mr. Lathom couldn’t stand it and went out of the room in
disgust, and Mrs. Harrison cried, and her husband said the most
insulting and unjustifiable things, ending up with: “Of course, if you
want to make a public exhibition of yourself you can. Do exactly as you
like”—as though anybody _could_, when they had been spoken to like that
about it. So that was the end of trying to do something to please one’s
husband! It was a most miserable ending to the day we had all looked
forward to with so much hope and pleasure.
For once Mrs. Harrison has taken a firm line with him and refuses to
speak to him. It is a very uncomfortable situation for me, and I am
feeling very unwell. All my insomnia has come back, and so has the
uncontrollable longing for shrimps. It is very tiresome and
disappointing.
Mr. Lathom has been perfectly sweet about it all. He went in to see Mr.
Harrison when the uproar had calmed down a little, and finding it
impossible to move him, gave way gracefully. I was determined to do my
best to make it up to him, so I went up and said how sorry I was, and
added that I _insisted_ that he should do exactly as he liked with my
own portrait. He could show it anywhere he chose, I said, even if he
liked to call it _Portrait of a Middle-aged Spinster_. He laughed, and
said he wouldn’t think of calling it anything of the sort, and he
certainly wouldn’t show it if I would rather he didn’t, and I said I was
determined he _should_ show it, whatever it turned out like. So he said,
very well, that was a bargain, then. So we have begun the sittings. I am
rather nervous about the result, because as you know, I always
photograph very badly. But then a photograph cannot show the animation
of the face as a portrait can, and people have so often told me that my
animation is what gives character and interest to my looks. I hope it
will be a good likeness—perhaps you will say that if it is it won’t be
an attractive picture, but Mr. Lathom seems very keen on it, so perhaps
it will turn out better than you, with your sisterly prejudice, might
expect.
I am very tired with keeping the pose—I sat for two hours this morning
and again in the afternoon—so I hope I may get some rest to-night.
The scarf will be finished to-morrow, if I can get the right shade of
silk for the fringe.
Your affectionate sister,
AGGIE
22. _John Munting to Elizabeth Drake_
15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE
1.12.28
BELOVED BUNGIE,
Here we are again! Back home and full of beans and fit to face anything,
even Lathoms and Milsoms.
By the way, I’ve got to take back what I said about Lathom. I’ll forgive
him anything for being such a bloody fine painter. My God, he has made a
fine thing of Mrs. Harrison—old Halkett would grunt in his funny gruff
way and say, “It’s a masterpiece.” He wants to send it to the Academy
(where it would probably be the picture of the year, if the Committee
didn’t hang themselves in their own wires under the shock of seeing a
decent bit of painting for once)—only, of course, those imbecile women
have made a hash of it and put Harrison’s back up. Blether, blether
blether—rushing at the poor man with chatter about newspaper sensations
and standing under my portrait on opening day, blah! blah! blah! before
the poor man had finished reeling under the impact. Row, of course. I
told Lathom not to be a silly ass, and to go and apologise quietly to
Harrison afterwards and tell him there wasn’t the slightest intention of
showing it against his wishes. If he uses a little tact, the old boy
will take it for granted three months hence that the thing is going to
be shown and imagine he suggested it himself. I’ve got Harrison fairly
well sized up, but his wife is a silly egoist, and Lathom has no
practical sense at all as regards human relationships. Anyway, I hope
the thing will be there, because I’d like you to see it. It’s really
first-rate. And revealing, my God! only Mrs. H. doesn’t see that, and I
don’t think Lathom realises it either.
I’ve had a letter from Merritt—he “has read the book with much interest
and would be glad if I could find time to call and discuss it with him
at my convenience.” First time anybody’s even offered to discuss it. I
suppose that if I will consent to cut out all the “advanced” passages,
and “brighten” the style and give it a more “satisfactory” ending, he
will consider doing something with it. Well, he won’t get the chance,
that’s all.
Thank Heaven, the _Life_ is practically finished with. I’m thankful to
get rid of it. It has led me into reading a lot of scientific and
metaphysical tripe which is of no use to anybody, and least of all to a
creative writer (a fact I have taken delight in rubbing in, in the
course of the work!). And the further you go with it, the worse it gets.
Lucretius could make great poetry out of science, and Bacon got some
good work in on it—and even Tennyson could screw some fine lines out of
an unsound theory of evolution and perfectibility and all the rest of
it. But now, oh, heavens! after the bio-chemist, the mathematician. What
can you make out of the action of the glands of internal secretion upon
metabolism, or Pi and the square root of minus one? Despair and a kind
of gloomy grubbiness, that’s all. I’d rather have a Miltonian theology
to make poetry of than all this business of liver and gonads and the
velocity of light. Perry the parson gets out of it by pretending that
the Catholic Church knew all about it from the beginning, and that
inaccurate theological metaphors can be interpreted as pseudo-scientific
formulæ, which is a lie. The origin of life is our great stamping-ground
for discussion. You can’t make life synthetically in a
laboratory—therefore he deduces that it came by divine interference!
Rather an assumption! But, after all, he is little worse than the man of
science. “In some way or other, life came,” they say. “Sometime,
somehow, we may learn how to make it.” But even if one could learn to
make it, that doesn’t account for its having arrived spontaneously in
the first place. The biologist can push it back to the original protist,
and the chemist can push it back to the crystal, but none of them touch
the real question of why or how the thing began at all. The astronomer
goes back untold million of years and ends in gas and emptiness, and
then the mathematician sweeps the whole cosmos into unreality and leaves
one with mind as the only thing of which we have any immediate
apprehension. _Cogito, ergo sum, ergo omnia esse videntur._ All this
bother, and we are no further than Descartes. Have you noticed that the
astronomers and mathematicians are much the most cheerful people of the
lot? I suppose that perpetually contemplating things on so vast a scale
makes them feel either that it doesn’t matter a hoot anyway, or that
anything so large and elaborate must have some sense in it somewhere.
I wish I had Lathom’s robust contempt for all this kind of thing. His
attitude is that bio-chemistry cannot affect his life or his art, so let
them get on with it. I am tossed about with every wind of doctrine, and
if I’m not damn careful I shall end by writing a _Point Counterpoint_,
without the wit. You can’t really make a novel hold together if you
don’t believe in causation.
_Said a rising young author, “What, what?_
_If I think that causation is not,_
_No word of my text_
_Will bear on the next_
_And what will become of the plot?_”
Perhaps this accounts for my never having been able to produce a book
with a plot—except, of course, the one Merritt wants to see me about.
And that was a sort of freak book.
Well, never mind. Only a fortnight now and I shall be seeing you. Praise
God (or whatever it is) from (if direction exists) whom (if personality
exists) all blessings (if that word corresponds to any percept of
objective reality) flow (if Heraclitus and Bergson and Einstein are
correct in stating that everything is more or less flowing about).
Your ever faithful
JACK
23. _The Same to the Same_
4.12.28
BUNGIE DEAREST,
Just a line to say that the unexpected has happened! Merritt is all over
the book! ! ! Thinks it’s the biggest thing that ever happened, and has
offered me a first-class contract (£100 advance, 10% to 500, 15% to
1,000 and 20% thereafter, with a firm offer for the next two beginning
at top previous rate), on condition he can get it into print instanter
to publish before the end of Jan. The man’s as mad as a hatter!
I nearly sent round to get him certified, but instead found myself
accepting the terms. When you consider the frightful flop _Deadlock_
was, you realise that the thing is sheer stark raving madness, but who
cares?
Damn it, I always believed there was something in the book, but I
thought I was a fool to think so. But how can he ever imagine that it
will _sell_! . . . But that’s _his_ funeral.
He says it must have a new title. Try and think of something that will
look well on a jacket, there’s an ingenious cherub. It’s fearfully
urgent, because he’s got to get his travellers out with it at the
beginning of next month.
Lathom’s portrait of Miss Milsom is the wickedest piece of satire you
ever saw. She, fortunately, does not see it at all. In fact, she lugged
the parson up to have a look at it yesterday. Perry, though a parson, is
no fool. He looked grave, said that it was a striking picture, and added
that Mr. Lathom had a great gift which should be put to great uses.
Lathom grinned, and Miss Milsom began to babble about the Academy and
Mrs. Harrison’s portrait, at which Perry looked graver still. I suppose
he thinks that idiots should be charitably protected from themselves.
Lathom is in wild spirits and is working like something inspired. _O si
sic omnes_, meaning me!
Jim reports that he is toiling away like stink and really sticking to
it. I hope so. He will be at home when term ends, so you will meet the
white-headed boy of the family. I trust you will be able to bear with us
all. He is inflicting on us a friend of his who went down from Caius
this year—man called Leader—one of those infernally high-spirited
youths who bounce all over the shop like Airedale puppies—he rouses all
my worst instincts, but is perfectly harmless. He is now in London, at
St. Anthony’s College of Medicine, and I suppose one of these days he
will muddle though his hospital work and be turned out as a genial
G.P.—“Dr. Leader is _such_ a nice, cheerful man; he makes you feel
better the minute he comes into the room.” I hate cheerful people.
Still, he and Jimmy will amuse one another, and we shall have a chance
to get off on our own a bit.
Bless you, Bungie! I am counting the days till we meet.
Your own
JACK
24. _George Harrison to Paul Harrison_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
20th December, 1928
MY DEAR BOY,
A line at Christmas-time to send our best love, and to say that all our
thoughts are with you. Next Christmas, if all goes well, we shall have
you back, and things will seem more like themselves. Here, of course, a
sad shadow is cast on our festivities by the illness of the King. There
are distressing rumours, but I feel great confidence that he will pull
through in the end.
In spite of this feeling of depression and anxiety, we have decided to
make a little jaunt over to Paris. Margaret has seemed rather restless
lately, and I think this small excitement will do her good. I am such a
quiet sort of old fellow, that I fear she finds her life a trifle dull
at times. A visit to the “gay city” will set her up again, and it will
be beneficial to me, too, to be shaken out of my rut. We shall be
staying at the Hotel Victoria-Palace in the Rue ——; it is a pleasant,
respectable place, and not dear, as Paris hotels go. We shall do a
theatre or two and perhaps go up to Montmartre to see the “night-life”
one hears so much about. Young Lathom says he may be running over to
Paris for a few days, and, if so, will look us up and show us round the
town. It is kind and attentive of him, and we shall appreciate having an
up-to-date cicerone, for my own memories of Paris are very antiquated,
and I expect everything is very much changed.
I was very glad to hear that your work was progressing so well and that
your action in the matter of the man you dismissed was approved of.
Leniency in such a case is always a mistake, as I have found from bitter
experience.
We are doing better over here than we had really any right to expect
under the present depressed conditions. I think we shall secure the
contract for the Middleshire High-Power Station. If so, that will mean a
big job, which will probably take me away from London in the spring.
I am really wondering whether, before this happens, I ought not to take
some steps about replacing Miss Milsom by somebody who would be a more
suitable companion for Margaret. Miss Milsom has always seemed to me a
very tiresome woman, and lately she has been getting altogether above
herself. She consults these psycho-analytical quacks, who encourage her
to attach an absurd importance to her whims and feelings, and to talk
openly at the dinner-table about things which, in my (doubtless
old-fashioned) opinion, ought only to be mentioned to doctors. Besides,
she is very lazy and untidy, and, instead of putting her mind to the
housework, she litters the place with wool and bits of paper which she
calls “art materials,” and she borrows my paints and forgets to return
them. There is no harm, of course, in her doing needlework and making
calendars, if it does not interfere with her duties, but she has
frequently been very impertinent when I have had occasion to speak about
the unsatisfactory cooking. Lathom has been painting a picture of her—a
very clever thing, certainly, but it seems to have turned her head
completely. However, Margaret wishes to be kind to the woman, and says,
truly, that she would find it hard to get another post, so perhaps it
will be better to put up with her a little longer and see if the
situation improves. She is certainly most loyal and devoted to Margaret,
and that outweighs a great many drawbacks.
Well, I must not worry you with these small domestic matters. I hope
that you will be enjoying a very happy Christmas in your exile, and that
our little offerings have arrived quite safely. By the way, your
Plum-pudding was not, I can assure you, an example of Miss Milsom’s
culinary genius. I attended to that important matter myself—otherwise
you might have found many strange things in it—such as glass beads or
stencil-brushes! The calendar, however, was all the lady’s own work. She
wonders regularly every day whether you will like it, and whether your
colleagues will think it was painted for you by your fiancée. She means
kindly, poor woman, so, if you have not already expressed your hearty
delight, pray do so, and assure her that the masterpiece has an honoured
place on your walls.
With much love,
Your affectionate
DAD
25. _Note by Paul Harrison_
I can find only one letter for the next few weeks with any important
bearing on the subject of this inquiry. My father and stepmother were in
Paris from the 15th of December to the 7th of January. I received a few
picture post-cards with accounts of places visited, but they contained
nothing of any moment, and I did not preserve them.
Lathom joined them on or about the 28th of December, and spent the Jour
de l’An in their company. I believe that Mrs. Harrison wrote several
letters to Miss Milsom from Paris, but these I have been unable to
secure; in fact, I am informed that they have been destroyed. I visited
Miss Milsom (see my statement No. 49), and questioned her as tactfully
as possible on the subject, but could only get from her a rambling
diatribe, full of the same demented prejudice she has always displayed
against my father, and, in the absence of any direct evidence (such as
the original letters would have afforded), I feel bound to ignore her
remarks. Indeed, it is obvious that nothing which Miss Milsom says
_later_ than April, 1929, is of any evidential value whatsoever, and
that _all_ her statements, without exception, must be received with
extreme caution, except in so far as they tend to prove the influence
exerted, consciously or unconsciously, by her upon my stepmother.
Mr. Munting, who spent the Christmas season with his family and in the
company of his fiancée, not returning to town till the 15th of January,
has handed to me the only letter which he received from his friend
during this period.
26. _Harwood Lathom to John Munting_
POLPERRO
4th Jan., ’29
DEAR MUNTING,
How are you? And how did the season of over-feeding and Christian
heartiness leave your soul? Did honourable love survive the
domesticities? If so, I swear that you and your intelligent young woman
are either gods or beasts. Gods, probably—with that dreadful
temperateness of the knowledge of good and evil, seeing two sides to
every question. You will analyse your bridal raptures, if you have any,
and find the whole subject very interesting. You will have, Heaven help
you! a sense of humour about the business, and your friends will say how
beautiful it is to see such a fine sense of partnership between a man
and woman. A copulation of politic tape-worms! But where is the use of
being offensive to a man who will allow for my point of view? I hate
being allowed for, as if I were an incalculable quantity in an
astronomical equation.
Having (thank God!) no family, except my aunt at Colchester, I escaped
good King Wenceslas and departed for Paris, where everything is jejune
enough, and the weather just as snow-bound and bitter as in our own
happy island, but where at least the stranger is not sucked into the
_vie familiale_. I found the Harrisons dismally vegetating in a highly
respectable Anglophile hotel, and toted them round the usual stale
shows, getting my pleasure from their naïve enjoyment. Or, at any rate,
from _her_ enjoyment; the old boy was as peevish as ever, and brought
the blush of shame to my cosmopolitan cheek by walking out of a cabaret
in the middle, trailing his wife and friend after him in the approved
barn-door style. Being too wrathful for speech, I said nothing, and had
the pleasure of sitting out a family row in the taxi afterwards. _La
belle Marguerite_ was actually quite as shocked as he was, poor child,
but thrilled to an unregenerate ecstasy nevertheless. She has the
makings of a decent pagan soul if one could teach her. However, I needed
to do no teaching. His vulgar disgust (with which, if he had had the
elementary tact to leave her alone, she would have agreed) drove her
into an excited opposition, and she argued the point with an obstinacy
and wholeheartedness which it was a pleasure to listen to. I wouldn’t be
appealed to—I didn’t want a row, and besides, she will learn nothing
except by arguing it out for herself. In fact, I apologised and said, in
effect, that an artist became rather blind to the proprieties, legs, as
the bus-conductor said, being no treat to him. In fact, I controlled
myself marvellously, and—went away and walked about in a fury all
night!
After that we did picture-galleries, and I had to listen to Harrison’s
lectures on art. Never have I heard—not even in Chelsea—so much jargon
applied over so grisly a substructure of ignorance and bad taste. The
man ought to be crucified in the middle of all his own abominable daubs.
You would have enjoyed it, I suppose, or made copy of it.
We saw the New Year in with dancing and the usual imbecile festivities.
Mrs. H. thanked me with tears of excitement in her eyes—it was
pathetic—like giving sweets to a kid. Even H. was a little moved from
his usual grimth. I procured him a partner—no! I didn’t hire her, I
knew her—a decent little soul who used to live with Mathieu Vigor and
is now, I believe, Kropotzki’s _petite amie_—and she trundled him round
in the most amiable way. He emerged from the fray quite sparkling (for
him!), and solemnly led Madame out for the next dance! That didn’t go so
well, because he found fault with her steps, so I pushed him back on to
Fleurette, who could dance with a kangaroo, I think, clever little
devil.
I crossed on the 2nd, and came down here for warmth and sunshine (what a
hope!). The place has been ruined, of course, by “artistic” tourists,
and is lousy with Ye Olde Potterye Shoppes. The brave fishermen dangle
around in clean blue jerseys and polish up the boats in the harbour,
while they long for the film-season to start again.
I shall be back in Bayswater some time next week. I hope your sense of
humour is feeling robust, for I am in a foul mood and nothing pleases
me.
Yours ever,
LATHOM
27. _John Munting to Elizabeth Drake_
15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
[The opening sheets of this letter are lost, but the date is evidently
some time in January.]
* * * * *
. . . proofs coming along at express speed, I am enjoying a magnificent
illusion of importance and busy-ness. The novel will be out before the
_Life_, which is being held up considerably by copyright bothers over
the plates. All the better, as it is a mistake to bung two books out
right on top of one another.
I am feeling a great deal more sympathetic with Lathom just now. The
earnest Harrison has transferred his attentions, for the moment, to me,
because, as a literary man, I can, of course, tell him exactly how best
to prepare his fungus-book for the press. He comes teetering in at my
busiest moments to discuss points of grammar. I tell him my opinion and
he contradicts it at great length, pointing out subtleties in his
phrasing which I have not grasped. At length I either tell him that his
own original idea expresses his personality best, or fall back on _The
King’s English_ if the error is really too monstrous to let pass. This
works all right for a time, and he carries the book off with much
gratitude—returning later, however, with the demurrer to Mr. Fowler
carefully written down on paper. I once made the foolish suggestion that
he should write to Fowler and thrash it out with him direct; this was
fatal, as I had to listen to (_a_) the letter; (_b_) the reply; (_c_)
the rejoinder—so I now fall back as a rule on the phrase about
expressing personality. There was also a dreadful day when a
water-colour picture of fungi came out too green by three-colour
process. Lathom and I suffered dreadfully over this abominable
toadstool, and were at length forced to go out and drown the
recollection in Guinness.
All the same, I try my best to be helpful, because I am the only person
who can enter into Harrison’s interests, and he has really written a
very entertaining little piece of work, full of odd bits of
out-of-the-way knowledge, scraps of country lore and queer old-fashioned
recipes and things. He must have made extraordinary good use of his
holidays, and there’s not a plant or animal in the country fit for food
that he doesn’t know the last word about. He has made a wonderful
collection of botanical diaries, which ought to be of considerable
scientific value, and he brings a really scholarly mind to his rather
unscholarly subject. His water-colours, though too prim considered as
pictures, make really rather attractive book-illustrations, and his
drawings of plants and fungi are beautifully accurate in line and
colour—far better than the stuff you find in the usual text-books. And,
indeed, the vagaries of the three-colour process are enough to make Job
irritable. I told him that he should take as his motto for the book the
famous misprint in the Bible, “Printers have persecuted me without a
cause”—which pleased him.
Profiting by my position as literary guide and mentor, I have (with
colossal tact) persuaded him to let the famous portrait be shown. We got
round to it by way of cookery, oddly enough. I said that cookery was
really a very important creative art, which was not properly understood
in this country, being chiefly left in the hands of women, who were not
(pardon me, Bungie) as a rule very creative.
That led on to a general discussion of Art, and the yearning that every
creative artist feels to obtain a public response to his art. And so, by
devious ways, to Lathom and his picture. I said that, while I entirely
understood Mrs. Harrison’s quite natural feeling that to exhibit her
portrait would be, to a great extent, exhibiting herself, to Lathom it
was, of course, quite a different matter. It was his work, his handling
of line and colour, for which he wanted public recognition. But I
admitted that a woman could not be expected to appreciate this point of
view.
As I had foreseen, Harrison took this as an indirect criticism of his
wife, and promptly reacted against it. She was not, he said, like the
ordinary woman. She had a remarkable gift for artistic appreciation. He
felt sure that if he put it to her in the right light, she would see
that it was not a personal question at all. Indeed, she had made no
objection herself—it was he who had been afraid of exposing her to
unwelcome notoriety. But it should be made quite clear that the painting
was the important matter, and that the subject had no personal bearings
of any kind.
It was very odd, Bungie, to see him reassuring himself in this vicarious
way. And it was still odder that I had a feeling all the time as if I
was doing something unfair. His attitude about the thing was
preposterous, of course, but I have a queer feeling about Mrs. Harrison.
She isn’t so stupid that she can’t see Lathom’s point of view. It would
matter less if she were. It is that she is clever enough to see it and
adopt it when it is pointed out, and to make it into a weapon of some
kind for something or other. Not knowing that it is a weapon, either;
practising a sort of ju jitsu, that overcomes by giving way—good God!
what a filthy bit of obvious journalese metaphor!
Anyhow, Mr. Harrison worked off my little lecture on the creative artist
with great effect under my very nose the same evening, as though it was
all his own work. Mrs. H. started off with her usual lack of tact by
saying: “I thought you said,” and “I don’t want to discuss it,” but,
catching my eye, resigned herself to listen graciously and give consent.
So the Hanging Committee is, after all, to have the happiness of gazing
upon the portraits of Mrs. Harrison and Miss Milsom—blest pair of
sirens—and I hope they will be duly appreciative. Lathom is
pleased—and so he damn well ought to be! I hope it will calm him down,
for what with the portraits and the fungus-book and one thing and
another, he and I are both getting into a state of nerves.
_I want peace and quiet._ Damn all these people! Thank Heaven I’ve got
the proofs to see to, because I’m in no fit state to write anything. My
ideas are all upside down. I can’t focus anything. I suppose it’s just
the usual “between-books” feeling. I am going to take a few weeks’ lucid
interval and read astronomy or physics or something. Personally, I’m
dead sick of the blasted creative instinct!
Yours all-of-a-dither, but still devotedly,
JACK
28. _The Same to the Same_
15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
1st February, 1929
BUNGIE, MY DARLING,
What, in God’s name, are you going to do with me if I get jealous and
suspicious? Or I with you, if it happens that way? I ask this in damn
sober earnest, old girl. I’ve got the thing right under my eyes here,
and I know perfectly well that no agreement and no promise made before
marriage will stand up for a single moment if either of us gets that
ugly bug into the blood.
You remember—months ago—I passed on a cheerful little matrimonial
dialogue that took place by the umbrella-stand. To-night we had the
pleasure of hearing the thing carried on to the next stage.
Harrison had the brilliant idea of inviting Lathom and me to dinner to
taste his special way of frying chicken. Well, there we all were—Miss
Milsom frightfully kittenish in a garment she had embroidered herself
with Persian arabesques. (“I don’t know _what_ they mean, you know, Mr.
Munting. Probably something frightfully improper! I copied them off a
rug.”) Harrison who allows nobody to penetrate into “his” kitchen when
he’s working out a masterpiece, was frying away amid a powerful odour of
garlic. No Mrs. Harrison! We furiously make conversation—enter
H.—gives a black look round, and disappears again. I count the things
on the mantelpiece—two brass candlesticks, brass door-knocker
representing the Lincoln imp—two imitation brass
mulling-cones—ill-balanced pottery nude—quaint clock and pair of
Liberty nondescripts. Front door goes. Kitchen door in the distance
heard to burst open. “Well, where have _you_ been?” Awful realisation
creeps over us all that the sitting-room door has been left open. I say
hurriedly: “Have you read the new Michael Arlen, Miss Milsom?” We are
all aware that a prolonged cross-examination is proceeding. Lathom
fidgets. Voice rises to appalling distinctness: “Don’t talk nonsense!
How _long_ were you at the hairdresser’s?—Well, what _were_ you
doing?—Yes, but _what_ kept you?—Yes, of course, you met somebody. You
seem to be meeting a lot of people lately!—I don’t care who it ‘only’
was—one of the men from the office, I suppose—Carrie Mortimer?
nonsense!—I shall _not_ be quiet—I shall talk as loudly as I like—Did
you or did you not remember——?” Here I grow desperate and turn on the
gramophone. In comes Harrison, putting a good face on it. “Here’s the
wife, late as usual!” We sit down to dinner in embarrassed silence. I
murmur eulogies on the chicken. “Over-cooked,” says Harrison, shovelling
it all aside and savagely picking at the vegetables. After this,
everybody is afraid to eat it, for fear of not seeming to know good food
from bad. “It seems delicious to me, Mr. Harrison,” says Miss Milsom,
profiting nothing from long experience. “Oh,” says Harrison, sourly,
“you women don’t care what you eat. It’s overdone, isn’t it, Lathom?”
Lathom, quite helpless with rage, says in a strangulated voice, that he
thinks it’s just right. “Well, you’re not eating it,” says Harrison,
gloomily triumphant. By this time everybody’s appetite is taken
thoroughly away. There is nothing on earth the matter with the chicken,
but we all sit staring at it as though it was a Harpagus-feast of boiled
baby.
Well, I’ll spare you the rest of the nightmare. The point is that _this_
time, Mrs. Harrison didn’t come in bubblingly eager to say where she had
been and what she had been doing—and that _next_ time the alibi will
hold water—and then Harrison will start saying that you can’t trust
women, and will very likely be perfectly justified.
Bungie—I _see_ how these things happen, but how does one insure against
them? What security have we that we—you and I, with all our talk of
freedom and frankness—shall not come to this?
Love makes no difference. Harrison would cheerfully die for his
wife—but I can’t imagine anything more offensive than dying for a
person after you’ve been rude to them. It’s taking a mean advantage. And
what’s the good of it all to him, if he loves her so much that
everything she says gets on his nerves? I like Harrison—I think he’s
worth a hundred of her—and yet, every time there’s a row, she
ingeniously manages somehow to make him appear to be in the wrong. She
is completely selfish, but she takes the centre of the stage so
convincingly that the whole scene is engineered to give her the
limelight for her attitudes.
This house is becoming a nightmare; I shall have to chuck it, but I must
stay on till Easter, because the rent is paid up to the quarter and I
can’t afford to lead a double life and Lathom can’t manage more than his
own share. Hell!
_I to Hercules_ comes out next month. I hope old Merritt won’t be let
down over it. He continues to be enthusiastic. Senile decay, I should
think. Well, we’ll hope for the best. If my Press is as good as yours I
shan’t complain, my child.
Your envious
JACK
29. _Note by Paul Harrison_
It is unfortunate that throughout this important and critical period,
from the end of November to the end of February, we should have no help
from the Milsom correspondence. It seems that Miss Milsom and Mrs.
Farebrother had a renewed quarrel during the Christmas period, on the
subject of the youth Ronnie Farebrother, mentioned in former letters,
and that as a result they remained for some time not on speaking or
writing terms. Mr. Munting’s letters also contain no references to my
father’s domestic affairs during the month of February—no doubt because
he was preoccupied with his own private concerns.
During the last week of January, the wretched young Farebrother shot
himself. This gratifying fulfilment of her prophecies of disaster seems
to have driven Miss Milsom into a highly hysterical state of mind, which
probably precipitated the mental collapse that followed. Her
correspondence with her sister (which was then resumed) is therefore
quite useless for evidential purposes. We can, therefore, only guess at
the development of the situation between my stepmother and Lathom during
February—the month in which my father’s duties took him away from home
for fourteen days, in connection with the electrical installation in
Middleshire. In view of the extraordinary incident which finally broke
up the two households, it is, however, not difficult to form a correct
opinion.
30. _John Munting to Elizabeth Drake_
15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
17.2.29
DARLING BUNGIE,
You have seen the reviews, of course! Bless my heart and soul, what has
happened to the people? Of course, it was all started by that tom-fool
at the Guildhall (I don’t know why Cabinet Ministers should be the only
people who can sell one’s books for one nowadays)—but oh, my lights and
liver! Oh, goroo! goroo! The silly mutton-headed G.P. is walking into
the blooming shops by thousands and _buying_ the thing! _Paying_ for the
thing. Shoving down their hard-earned seven-and-sixpences for it! Lord
help us—what have I done that I should be a best-seller? Is thy servant
a tripe-hound that he should do this thing? First edition sold out.
Presses rolling out new printings day and night—Merritt nearly off his
head and saying, “I told you so.” Blushing author besieged in his
charming Bayswater flat (! ! ! !)—Remarkable portrait of blushing
author by that brilliant young artist Mr. Harwood Lathom (done in a fit
of boredom one afternoon when the model hadn’t turned up) being
scrambled for by four Press agencies, two literary hostesses and an
American lion-tamer! Everything gas and gaiters! Worm-like appeals, from
publishers who turned _Hercules_ down, for the next contract but seven,
and the _Wail_ and the _Blues_ and the _Depress_ and all the Sunday
Bloods yapping over the ’phone for my all-important, inspired and
inspiring views on “What does the Unconscious means to me?”—“Is
Monogamy Doomed?”—“Can Women tell the Truth?”—“Should Wives Produce
Books or Babies?”—“What is wrong with the Modern Aunt?”—and “Glands or
God—Which?”
Bungie, old thing, it all seems absolutely ghastly and preposterous, but
the blasted book is BOOMING—and—shall we get married, Bungie? Will you
take the risk on the strength of one fluky Boomer (which may perfectly
well be a Boomerang and prevent me from ever writing anything worth
doing for the rest of my life), and a set of contracts which I may go
mad with inability to fulfil? Because, if you will—say so, my
courageous infant, and we will tell your Uncle Edward to put up the
banns, and prance off hand in hand our own primrose way to the
everlasting bonfire.
Pull yourself together, Jack Munting!
Bungie, I’ve never told you how jealous I was because your books sold
and mine didn’t. If I tell you so now, don’t remember it against me.
Parson Perry says confession is a good thing. Perhaps he’s right. I
confess it now—and now forget it, there’s a good girl. Perhaps even now
it only means that my wretched book is howlingly bad. I always comforted
myself with thinking that I _must_ write better than you to be so
unsaleable—but I’m filthily pleased and cock-a-hoop all the same.
_Pull yourself together_, Jack Munting! You are becoming hysterical.
Your glands are functioning madly in the wrong places, and your
Unconscious has come unstuck!
Anyhow, I’m going to have quite enough to depress me to-morrow. That
crashing nuisance, Leader, has suddenly discovered that he knows the
fellow who’s written the book of the season, and is coming along to
“Look me up, old boy, and celebrate!”
_There was a young student of Caius_
_Who passed his exams with a squaius,_
_Ere dissecting at St. Bartholomews_
_Inward St. Partholomews, such as St. Heartholomews_
_To discover the cure of disaius._
Oh, well, I suppose one of the penalties of success is the way it brings
you in touch with your friends. I had an invitation to dine from the
Sheridans last week. “Such a long time since we met, isn’t it?” I will
see to it that it shall be longer still.
Well, let me know about the matrimonial outlook, won’t you? I have a
great many important engagements, of course, but I daresay I might be
able to fit this little matter in somewhere!
Yours _pomposo e majestuoso_,
JACK
PS. You need not trouble to make it a quiet one. I can easily afford a
top-hat—in fact, several.
31. _The Same to the Same_
15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE
20.2.29
DARLING BUNGIE,
Glory, alleluia! Then we will be married at Easter. Curse Uncle Edward’s
scruples! I could make you just as good a husband in Lent—but, as you
say, it’s a shame to upset the old boy. Now that the remote prospect has
really come so (comparatively) near, I feel all wobbly and inadequate.
It’s like bracing your muscles to pick up a heavy bag and finding
there’s nothing in it. One thought it was years off—and here it is—and
there it is, and that’s that.
Well!
Well, we are going to be married at Easter.
Well—it will be a good excuse for refusing silly invitations. No time.
Frightfully sorry. Going to be married at Easter, you know. A lot to do.
Ring. Best man. Bridesmaids’ presents and all that. Excuse me, old man,
I’ve got to see my tailor. Cheer-frightfully-ho, don’t you know.
I couldn’t get rid of Leader that way, though. He was horribly hearty
and stayed a very long time, and insisted on Lathom’s and my going down
to the College to see over the labs, and “meet a few of the men,” who
all hated me at sight, by the way, when they _did_ see me. I thought the
sooner we got it over the better, so we went this afternoon. Lathom is
in one of his vagrom moods—doing no work, and catching at any excuse to
waste time. I tried to get out of it, but no! I “absolutely must come,
old man.” I take it the idea was to impress Leader’s friends with the
idea that men of intellect are proud to know him. It had not occurred to
me that best-selling had such idiotic accompaniments.
Leader was in his element, of course, showing off his half-baked
knowledge, and exhibiting fragments of anatomy in bottles. I can see
Leader one of these days as the principal witness at an inquest,
frightfully slapdash and cocksure, professing that he can tell the time
of the murder to within five minutes by taking half a glance at the
corpse, and swearing somebody’s life away with cheerful confidence in
his own infallibility. He was highly impressive in the dissecting-room,
but at his best, I think, displaying his knowledge of poisons (which, by
the way, they seem to keep handy on the open shelves for any passing
visitor to help himself to). He was very great on synthetic drugs—all
made on the premises out of God knows what, and imitating nature so
abominably—abominably well, that is—that chemical analysis can’t tell
them apart. Indeed, indeed, sirs (and apart from the wearisomeness of
Leader), but this troubles me. Synthetic perfumes from coal-tar are bad
enough, and synthetic dyes, and I can put up with synthetic camphor and
synthetic poisons, but when it comes to synthetic gland-extracts like
adrenalin and thyroxin, I begin to get worried. Synthetic vitamins next,
I suppose, and synthetic beef and cabbages—and after that, synthetic
babies. So far, however, they don’t seem to have been able to make
synthetic life—the nearest they have got is stimulating frog-spawn into
life with needles. But what of the years to come? If, as the
bio-chemists say, life is only a very complicated chemical process, will
the difference between life and death be first expressible in a formula
and then prisonable in a bottle?
This is a jolly kind of letter to write to you, old girl, on this
auspicious occasion, but this everlasting question of life and the
making of life seems to haunt me—and it is, after all, not so remote
from the problem of marriage. We can pass it on and re-continue it, but
what is it? They say now that the universe is finite, and that there is
only so much matter in it and no more. But does life obey the same rule,
or can it emerge indefinitely from the lifeless? Where was it, when the
world was only a dusty chaos of whirling gas and cinders? What started
it? What gave it the thrust, the bias, to roll so ceaselessly and so
eccentrically. To look forward is easy—the final inertia, when the last
atom of energy has been shaken out of the disintegrating atom—when the
clocks stand still and time’s arrow has neither point nor shaft—but the
beginning!
One thing is certain. If I begin to think like this, I shall never write
another best-seller. Heaven preserve us from random speculation! Our own
immediate affairs are as important as the loves of the electrons in this
universe of infinitesimal immensities, and as far as we are concerned.
. . .
[The remainder of this letter, being of a very intimate nature, is not
available.]
32. _The Same to the Same_
SMITH’S HOTEL, BLOOMSBURY
25.2.29
DEAREST,
Just a hasty line to say that I have had to leave Whittington Terrace on
account of a very unfortunate incident, which I will tell you about
later on. I am here for a few days till I can get my belongings moved
out and warehoused somewhere _pro tem_.
It is all extremely tiresome. However, it only means that we shall have
to do our house-hunting a little earlier than we expected. I think I had
better run up to Kirkcudbright and have a yap with you about it, if I
can get away from publishers and agents.
All my love,
JACK
33. _Agatha Milsom to Elizabeth Drake_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
25.2.29
DEAR MADAM,
You will probably be very angry at what I am going to say, but I feel it
is my duty to warn you against Mr. John Munting. Girls do not always
know how men go on behind their backs, and it is only right they should
be told by those who have had _unfortunate experience_ of these men’s
real character.
You may think that Mr. Munting is honourable, but he has been turned out
of this house on account of indecent behaviour, and your eyes ought to
be opened to his goings-on. You may believe me because I have the best
right to speak of what _I know_. I have no doubt he will tell you that
this is all false and try to pull the wool over your eyes, but I have
_proof_ of what I say, and if you should want further evidence you can
write to Mr. Harrison at this address, and he will tell you that every
word is true.
I am sending you this warning for your good, because you ought not to
marry a man like that; he is not fit to marry a decent woman. You are
young, and you do not know what the consequences may be of marrying a
man of depraved habits. This is one incident I can tell you about of my
own knowledge, but _there are others_, or why does he so often come in
late at night?
Do not tell him I have written to you, as it is not a pleasant thing to
have to do, and naturally I do not care to write or talk about it in
detail. But ask him why he was ordered out of the house, and do not
believe the excuses he makes, because everybody here knows the truth and
could tell it if necessary.
Now for your own sake pay attention to what I say and have no more to do
with that disgusting man. I know I shall get no thanks for doing my
duty, but in this world one must not expect gratitude. I have already
been deprived of my livelihood and made to suffer mental and financial
persecution on this man’s account. However, I bear no malice, and remain
Your sincere well-wisher,
AGATHA MILSOM
34. _Elizabeth Drake to John Munting_
[Endorsed on the above.]
DEAR JACK,
What on earth is all this about? Is the woman mad?
Yours, in all confidence and love,
E
35. _Telegram from John Munting to Elizabeth Drake, dated_ 26.2.29
A little mad and quite mistaken. Do not worry. Am starting North
to-night.
JACK
36. _George Harrison to Paul Harrison_
27.2.29
MY DEAR PAUL,
I have to inform you of a most disagreeable incident which has caused a
disturbance in our family life, and in consequences of which I have had
to turn that man Munting out of the house. It occurred while I was
unfortunately obliged to be absent over the Middleshire Electrical
Installation, and, but for the accidental intervention of Miss Milsom,
Margaret might have been exposed to an annoyance and risk that I shudder
to think of.
I was summoned home by an urgent and rather incoherent letter from Miss
Milsom, accusing Munting of an indecent assault upon herself. You will
naturally understand that I found this rather difficult to believe,
since the man (to do him justice) had shown no signs of being actually
demented. By the same post I received a letter from Margaret written in
great mental distress, and begging me to take no notice of Miss Milsom,
on the ground that she was suffering from delusions. Obviously, whatever
was the truth of the matter, it was necessary that I should intervene,
and I hastened home at once (at a most inconvenient moment of my work,
but, fortunately, the greater part of the contract was settled, and
Freeman is quite competent to carry on).
On arriving, I immediately interrogated Miss Milsom closely. Her story
was that, on the night of the 22nd, at about 12.30, she had felt a
sudden craving for sardines (the woman is certainly unbalanced), and had
gone downstairs to ransack the larder. She came up again in the
dark—knowing the house well she did not trouble to turn on the
light—and was just entering her bedroom, which, if you remember, is
next to ours, when to her alarm she heard somebody breathing quite close
to her. She gave some sort of exclamation and tried to get her hand on
the landing switch but encountered the hand of a man. Thinking it was a
burglar, she started to scream, but the man gripped at her arm and said
in a whisper, “It’s all right, Miss Milsom.” She clutched at his arm,
and felt what she at once recognised as the sleeve of Munting’s quilted
dressing-gown, which he frequently wears when doing his writing. She at
once asked him what he was doing on her landing, and he mumbled
something about fetching some article or other from his overcoat on the
hall-stand and missing his way in the dark. She expostulated, and he
pulled her away from the lighting-switch, saying, “Don’t make a
disturbance—you’ll alarm Mrs. Harrison. It’s quite all right.” She told
him she did not believe him, and according to her account, he then made
advances to her, which she repelled with indignation. He replied, “Oh,
very well!” and started off upstairs. She went back and turned the light
on in time to see the tail of the dressing-gown disappearing upstairs.
Thoroughly frightened, she rushed into my wife’s bedroom and had an
attack of hysterics. Margaret endeavoured to soothe her, and they spent
the rest of the night together. The next night, Miss Milsom summoned up
courage to remain in her own room, bolting the door. Margaret did the
same, and they suffered no further disturbance.
I then questioned Margaret. She was, naturally, very much upset, but
thought that Miss Milsom was completely mistaken, and making a mountain
out of a mole-hill. She is too innocent to see—what I, of course, saw
very plainly—that this shameless attack was directed against herself
and not against Miss Milsom. I did not suggest this to her (not wishing
to alarm her), and promised to hear Munting’s version of the affair
before taking any further steps.
I then interviewed Munting. He took the thing in the worst possible
way—with a cool effrontery which roused me to the highest pitch of
indignation—treated the whole matter as a triviality, and positively
laughed in my face. “The woman is demented,” he said, “I assure you my
tastes do not lie in _that_ direction.” “I never supposed they did,” I
answered, and made quite clear to him what my suspicions were. He
laughed again, and said I was mistaken. I said I knew very well that I
was _not_ mistaken, and asked him what other explanation he could offer
of being found outside my wife’s door in the middle of the night. “You
have heard the explanation,” said he, airily. “And a very convincing one
it is,” said I; “at least, you don’t deny that you were there, I
suppose?” He said, “Would you believe me if I did deny it?” I said that
his manner had convinced me that the story was true, and that nothing he
said would persuade me to the contrary. “Then it’s not an atom of use my
denying it, is it?” said he coolly. “Not an atom,” I said. “Will you
leave the house straight away or wait to be kicked out?” “If you put it
that way,” said he, “I think it would cause less excitement in the
neighbourhood if I went of my own accord.” I gave him half an hour to be
out of the house, and he said that would suit him very well, and had the
impudence to request the use of our telephone to order a taxi. I told
him I would not have him in our part of the house on any pretence
whatever. “Oh,” said he, “then perhaps you would be good enough to order
the taxi yourself.” I did so, in order to give him no excuse for hanging
about the place, and he took himself off. On the way downstairs he said,
in a more subdued tone, “Look here, Harrison. Won’t you believe that
this is all a mistake?” I told him to get out of the house before I sent
for the police, and he went without another word.
All this has upset us very much. I am only thankful that no further harm
has come of it. Margaret says he had never previously offered her any
rudeness, and I believe her; but, looking back on the matter, I can
remember occasions when I have not altogether cared for the tone of his
conversation. He is too experienced a man in this kind of thing,
however, to have shown his hand while I was there. I am only sorry that
our friendship with young Lathom, whom we all like so much, should have
led to this unpleasantness.
Lathom is extremely distressed, as you may imagine. I thought it well to
warn him to show more discretion in future with regard to his choice of
friends. He was too genuinely horrified and unhappy to wish to talk
about the matter; still, I think he was grateful for the advice.
Unhappily, this means that we shall lose him as well, since his means do
not permit of his keeping on the upper maisonnette by himself. I
suggested that he might stay till the end of the quarter, but he said
that he was engaged to visit some friends next month, and would be
leaving anyway at the end of the week.
This incident has made it very clear to me that Miss Milsom must be got
rid of. She is in a state of violent hysteria, and is obviously subject
to delusions about herself, and in no way a fit companion for Margaret.
I have given her a month’s salary in lieu of notice, and sent her home.
Out of all this hateful episode this one good thing has come: that I
have now a valid reason for insisting on this woman’s departure.
Other news has been rather over-shadowed by these anxieties, and must
wait till my next letter. I hope all is well with you.
Your affectionate
DAD
37. _Statement of John Munting_
It was a mistake from the very beginning for Lathom and myself to set up
housekeeping together. It happened purely by chance—one of those silly,
unnecessary chances that set one spinning out cheap platitudes about
fatality and the great issues that hang upon an accidental meeting. It
used to be considered highly unphilosophical to indulge in speculations
about coincidence, still more to base any work of art upon it—but that
was in the days when we believed in causality. Now, thanks to the
Quantum theory and the second law of thermo-dynamics, we know better. We
know that the element of randomness is what makes the Universe go round,
and that the writers of sensation novels are wiser in their generation
than the children of sweetness and light.
All the same, there still remains an appearance of causation here and
there, and I persist in attributing some of the blame to the
imbecilities of the public-school system. If Lathom had not worn an old
Wincastrian tie, I should never have spoken to him in the little
restaurant Au Bon Bourgeois in Greek Street. Or, at the most, I should
have asked him to pass the French mustard. As it was, my natural
aversion to my fellow-creatures being broken down by Burgundy, I was
fool enough to say: “Hullo! you come from the old school, I see. Did I
know you?”—and was instantly swamped and carried away in the flood of
Lathom’s expansiveness.
Lathom is an incorrigible extrovert. His thyroids and liver function
with riotous vigour. He beams out enthusiastically upon the world and is
refracted out from everything and everybody he meets in a rainbow of
colour. That is his fatal charm. In the ordinary way I am ill-adapted
for prismatic function. That evening was an unfortunate exception. I
couldn’t keep it up afterwards; that was the trouble.
When Lathom mentioned his name I recognised it at once. He is six years
younger than I am, and was an obnoxious brat in the Upper Third when I
was preparing for Oxford in the Sixth, but he had penetrated to my
Olympian seclusion in virtue of his reputation.
Lathom, of course—Burrage’s celebrated fag, who scrounged
toasting-forks. He was always in trouble with the other prefects for his
apparent inability to distinguish other people’s property from
Burrage’s. If anything was wanted, he took it; if anything had to be
done, he did it, regardless of other people’s convenience, or, indeed,
of his own. He was attached to Burrage, who naturally stood up for him.
In fact, I think we were all jealous of Burrage for having a fag so
ruthlessly competent. Burrage patronised the kid in his large,
appreciative way, and Lathom basked in the rays of Burrage’s approval. I
don’t blame Burrage altogether, but he certainly spoilt Lathom. He
protected him from the consequences of his actions. Perhaps Burrage had
advanced ideas about the non-existence of causation and imparted them to
Lathom. But Burrage was rather an ass, and his reactions were probably
more human and immediate.
Lathom was saved from disaster, partly by Burrage and partly by
Halliday. Halliday was a great man and captain of the First Eleven. He
took things easily and when he said that the kid was just potty we all
accepted the explanation. That was on the day of the picnic, when Lathom
turned up at feeding-time without his overcoat, and said he had thrown
it away because it got in his way. The weather turned to soaking rain
and Lathom got pneumonia and nearly died. We were all rather frightened
and distressed, and when Lathom turned up next term we made allowances
for him. I reminded Lathom that we had called him “Potty,” and he
laughed and said we were perfectly right.
I remembered, too, that in those days Lathom had earned a reputation for
himself by making caricatures of the masters. This fascinating gift had
earned him still more toleration. I was not surprised to hear that he
had become an artist. He said he was looking for a studio, and had seen
just the thing in Bayswater, only he couldn’t afford to take it.
I asked, why Bayswater, of all places? Why not Chelsea or Bloomsbury?
But Lathom said no, the rents were too high, and besides, Chelsea and
Bloomsbury were hopelessly arty and insincere. They lived at second-hand
and had no beliefs. To see life lived in the raw, one ought really to go
to Harringay or Totting, but they were really not central enough.
Bayswater was near enough to be convenient and far enough out to be
healthy suburban.
“The suburbs are the only places left,” said Lathom, “where men and
women will die and persecute for their beliefs. Artists believe in
nothing—not even in art. They live in little cliques and draw the
fashionable outlines in the fashionable colours. They can’t love—they
can only fornicate and talk. I’ve had some. And the aristocracy has lost
the one belief that made it tolerable—its belief in itself. It’s fool
enough to pretend to believe in the people, and what is the good of an
aristocracy playing at being democratic? And the people . . .” He made a
violent gesture. “Cheap scientific text-books—cheap atheism—cheap
sociology—cheap clothes—your blasted educationists have left them no
beliefs at all. They marry, and then the woman comes howling to the
magistrate for a separation order on any pretext, so as to get money for
nothing and go to cheap dance-halls. And the man goes yelping away for a
dole to shuffle all his responsibilities on to the State. But the
blessed people of the suburbs—they do believe in something. They
believe in Respectability. They’ll lie, die, commit murder to keep up
appearances. Look at Crippen. Look at Bywaters. Look at the man who hid
his dead wife in a bath and ate his meals on the lid for fear somebody
should suspect a scandal. My God! Those people are living, living with
all their blood and their bones. That’s reality—in the suburbs—life,
guts—something to chew at, there!”
At the time I was rather struck by this.
It ended, of course, in my consenting to share the maisonnette with
Lathom. An hour earlier, the very word would have put me off, but under
the spell of Lathom’s enthusiasm, and stupefied with food and
public-school spirit, I began to think there was really something raw,
red and life-like about living in a maisonnette with an Old Wincastrian.
And perhaps Lathom was right after all. The trouble is that raw, red
life is possibly better seen at second-hand. A good still-life of a
piece of rump-steak has none of the oozing clamminess of the real thing.
I wish, all the same, that I had tried to play up to Lathom better. It
was irritating, of course, to find that he was still regardless of other
people’s convenience. I did not object to his bagging the best room for
his studio—that was in the bond—but it was tiresome to have him
overflowing into my room all day when I was at work. Lathom is one of
those spasmodic workers who need constant applause and excitement. He
would work like fury for several hours, snarling at me if I came in to
retrieve a garment or lighter that he had borrowed; but, the fit over,
he would wander in to where I was grimly struggling with a knotty piece
of biography and talk. He talks well, but his interests are lop-sided.
He is a real creator—narrow, eager, headlong, and loathing
introspection and compromise. He questions nothing; I question
everything. I am only semi-creative, and that is why I cannot settle and
dismiss questions, as he does, in one burst of inspired insight or
equally inspired contempt. Lathom is all light and dark—a Rembrandt. I
am flat, cold, tentative, uneasily questioning, a labourer in detail. I
caught no fire from Lathom, and I quenched his. It is my disease to
doubt and to modify—to be unable to cry at a tragedy or shout in a
chorus. It was my fault that I did not help Lathom more, for, just
because of my uneasy sensitiveness, I understood him far better than he
ever understood me. It would have suited him better if I had violently
disagreed with him. But I had the fatal knack of seeing his point and
cautiously advancing counter-arguments, and that satisfied neither of
us. I see this now, and, indeed, I saw it then; it is characteristic of
people like me to see a thing and do nothing about it.
This, of course, was where the Harrisons came in. I liked Harrison. If I
had not liked him, I should not be making this statement, which is, I am
afraid, entirely contrary to the public-school tradition. Harrison was a
man of very great sincerity, no imagination and curiously cursed with
nerves. It is all wrong for a man of his type to have nerves—nobody
believes or understands it. In theory, he was extremely broad-minded,
generous and admiringly devoted to his wife; in practice, he was narrow,
jealous and nagging. To hear him speak of her, one would have thought
him the ideal of chivalrous consideration; to hear him speak to her, one
would have thought him a suspicious brute. Her enormous vitality, her
inconsequence, her melodrama (that is the real point, I think), got on
his nerves, and produced an uncontrollable reaction of irritability. He
would have liked her to shine for him and for him only; yet a kind of
interior shyness prompted him to repress her demonstrations and choke
off her confidences. “That will do, my dear”; “Pull yourself together,
my girl,” checked a caress or an enthusiasm; a grunt, a “Can’t you see
I’m busy,” a “Why have you suddenly got these ideas about” music or
astronomy or whatever the latest interest might be. Into the muffling of
his outer manner, her radiance sank and was quenched. Yet to others he
spoke with earnest pride of his wife’s brilliance and many-sided
intelligence.
Harrison’s instinct was to dominate, but by nature and training he was
unfitted to dominate that particular woman. It could have been done in
two ways—by capturing the limelight, or by sheer physical exuberance.
But neither of these things was in his power; he was inexpressive and
sexually unimaginative, as so many decent men are.
He had his means of self-expression: his water-colours and his cookery.
It was his misfortune that in the former he should have been weak,
conventional and sentimental, and bold and free only in the latter. I
believe, indeed, that all the imagination he possessed ran to the
composition of sauces and flavourings. It is surely a matter for
investigation whether cookery is not one of the subtlest and most
severely intellectual of the arts; else, why do its more refined
manifestations appeal to women hardly at all and to men only in their
later and more balanced age? Unlike music or poetry or painting, food
rouses no response in passionate and emotional youth. Only when the
surge of the blood is quieted does gastronomy come into its own with
philosophy and theology and the sterner delights of the mind. If
Harrison could have made a big public splash with anything, she could
have understood that and preened herself happily as the wife of a
notoriety. But she had no eyes for the half-lights.
At first it was amazing to me that Lathom showed so much patience with
Harrison. Lathom is a barbarian about food and magnificently intolerant
of bad painting. Twaddle about Art and Atmosphere got short shrift with
him. Yet he let Harrison bore him to any extent with his prattle and his
picturesque bits. Harrison did, indeed, treat him with a deference
flattering in a man of his age, but under ordinary circumstances that
would merely have infuriated Lathom, who, to do him justice, is no
drawing-room lion. It was not that Harrison provided the response which
I gave so awkwardly. In time I realised that, though I had my selfish
reasons for refusing to see it. Mrs. Harrison was the radiant prism for
Lathom’s brilliance, and Lathom used Harrison in that service as
carelessly as in the old days he had used the prefects’ toasting-forks.
He saw the tool ready to his hand and took it, without shame and without
remorse.
I have put all this down, as I saw it, without consideration for the
feelings of anybody. It is useless to blame people for their
peculiarities of temperament. At the time I did not interfere, because,
to tell the truth, I was working hard and involved in my own concerns,
and did not want to be bothered with Lathom’s affairs. Besides, I rather
prided myself on a cynical detachment in such matters. As it turns out,
I should have done far better to preserve this cheerful selfishness
throughout. That I did not was again due to sentimentality and
public-school spirit, and I am heartily ashamed of it.
I suppose I must say something about Mrs. Harrison. It is difficult,
because I both understood and disliked her. Just because she had no use
for me, I was detached enough to see through her. I have not the superb
and centralised self-confidence that could strike the colours from her
prism. I come back to that image, because it expresses her with more
accuracy than any description. My diffusion left her dead glass. But in
Lathom’s concentration she shone. He gave her the colour and splendour
her dramatic soul craved for. She saw herself robed with all the glowing
radiance that dazzled her half-educated eyes in the passionate pages of
Hichens and de Vere Stacpoole. I hardly think she was wicked—I do not
think she had any moral standards of her own. She would adopt any
attitude that was offered to her, provided it was exciting and colourful
enough. I think she had enjoyed herself at her office; she had radiated
there in the little warmth of popularity which always surrounds people
of abundant physical and emotional vigour, but at home she had only the
devotion of Miss Milsom, with her warped mind and perilous
preoccupations. She visualised herself into the character of a wronged
and slighted woman, because that was the easiest way to evoke clamorous
response from Miss Milsom—and, of course, from Lathom when he came
along.
It is rather surprising, I feel, that Harrison was never jealous of
Lathom, as he was of every other man, including myself. I fancy it was
because he looked on Lathom as his own friend, primarily. Now I come to
think of it, it was of his wife’s personal life that he was jealous—her
office, her interests, the friends she had made for herself—everything
that had not come to her through him. My position was different. He
distrusted me because of my work and opinions. I had written an
unpleasant book and I had no definite moral judgments. From such a man,
nothing but impropriety could be expected. He was wary and uneasy in my
presence. He could talk food with me, and did, but only, I think, in
despair for want of other appreciation. He was fearfully lonely, poor
soul, and I failed him miserably. And he was jockeyed by me into letting
his wife’s picture be shown at the Academy—but only because he thought
I was belittling his wife’s character. His change of mind was a
chivalrous rush to her defence. I was pleased with myself at the time, I
remember; I suppose my light-hearted diplomacy was about as disastrous
as diplomacy usually is. What devilish things we do when we try to be
clever. After all, Harrison probably understood his wife only too well,
but he could not bear that anyone should suspect the clay of his idol.
He destroyed himself rather than let her down. I rather think that
Harrison had something heroic behind his primness and his gold
spectacles.
There was one thing which I ought most certainly to have left severely
alone, and that was the final disaster, in which Miss Milsom was
concerned. For once I was seized with the idiotic whim to play the
martyr and the noble-spirited friend. At the very moment when my
reasonable and deliberate policy of detachment should have come to my
aid, I must choose to take the centre of the stage and indulge in
high-mindedness.
Lathom woke me up. He came and sat on my bed, and I noticed with
irritation that he had been borrowing my dressing-gown again. He always
took things.
“I’m in a mess,” he said.
“Oh?” said I.
He told me what had happened. I have seen Miss Milsom’s account. It is
accurate in all points but one. Far from repulsing Lathom, she had
encouraged him. He had broken from her at the foot of the staircase with
considerable difficulty. He was filled with a righteous disgust, which
struck me as funny under the circumstances.
“Disgusting old woman,” said he.
“True,” said I. “None should have passions but the young and the
beautiful. What are you going to do? Serve with Leah seven years in the
hope of getting Rachel in the end?”
“Don’t be filthy,” said he. “There will be a row about this, I’m
afraid.”
“Very likely,” said I. “But that is your affair.”
“Not altogether,” said Lathom. “You see, she thinks it was you.”
“Me?” I was considerably taken aback.
“Yes. You see, I had your dressing-gown——”
“So I observe.”
“She recognised the feel—the quilting, you know—damn it all, she
rubbed her ugly face in it——”
“Really,” I said, “the kittenish old creature.”
All the same, I was not pleased. Gestures which delight in the right
person are so indecent when performed by the wrong. In fact, it is only
when we contemplate the loves of unpleasant people that we see the
indecency of passion. It is disgusting to think of the amorous
transports of, let us say, Mr. Pecksniff. Grotesque characters only
exist for us from the waist upwards.
“I suppose,” I went on, “it didn’t occur to you to mention that you were
not me?”
“I didn’t say anything. I got away. I didn’t want to make a noise. In
fact . . .”
In fact, he had made use of me cheerfully enough, and was now wondering
whether I should put up with it.
“Look here,” I said, “what do you intend to do? If you want to carry on
an intrigue with Mrs. Harrison, I tell you, frankly, I’m going to get
out and leave you to it. It bores me and I don’t care about these alarms
and excursions. Anyhow, why don’t you leave the woman alone? You’re
doing her no good.”
Then he exploded and started to tramp about. She was the greatest
miracle God had ever made. They were meant for one another. They had got
into each other’s blood and all the rest of it. That, of course.
Equally, of course, if Harrison had been a decent sort of man he would
have sacrificed his own feelings. (As if Lathom had ever thought of
sacrificing anything.) But Harrison was a brute, who did not appreciate
the wonderful woman who had been entrusted to him. Lathom could suffer
himself, but he could not bear to see her suffer. It was all so damned
unjust. The man was not fit to live. He deserved to be murdered for his
rotten paintings, let alone for his cruelty to his wife. And to think
that his revolting hands should have the right . . .
And so on.
It is so very odd that in moments of excitement we should all talk like
characters in a penny novelette. However long one lives, I suppose it
always strikes one with the same shock of surprise.
“That’ll do,” I said at last. “We can take that as read. If Mrs.
Harrison feels as you do about it——”
He interrupted me to assure me at unnecessary length that she did.
“Very well,” I said, “why not do the decent and sensible thing and take
her away? You won’t find this kind of backstairs intrigue permanently
inspiring, you know. Besides, it seems to be the kind of thing you do
very badly.”
“I wish to God,” replied Lathom, “that I could take her away. Heaven and
earth, man, do you think I wouldn’t do it like a shot if I had half a
chance? But she won’t hear of it. She’s got some poisonous idea about
not making a scandal. It’s this damned awful suburban respectability
that’s crushing the beautiful life out of her. When you see what she was
meant to be—free and splendid and ready to proclaim her splendid
passion to the world—and then see what this foul blighter has made of
her——”
“Well, there you are,” said I. “That’s the raw, red life of the suburbs,
as per specification. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it? Look
here, Lathom, buzz off and let me get to sleep, there’s a good chap. You
can blow your feelings off in the morning.”
“Oh, all right.” He got up from the bed and hesitated at the door. “I
only thought I’d warn you,” he added, a little awkwardly, “in case the
old woman says anything to you.”
“Dashed good of you,” I said dryly. “What am I to do? Make love to the
confidante while you make love to the mistress, and go stark mad in
white linen?”
“Oh, you needn’t bother to do that,” said he. “I should just treat the
whole thing as a joke. Or, if she makes a fuss, apologise and say you
were a bit screwed. I’ll back you up.”
I was so infuriated with him for shoving the responsibility on to me in
this light-hearted way that I told him to clear out, which he did.
As a matter of fact, I rather under-estimated the seriousness of the
thing. I mean, I did not realise the lengths to which Miss Milsom’s
resentment might go. I determined merely to avoid the woman in future,
and, in fact, treat the whole episode as if it hadn’t occurred. I
thought Lathom had received a salutary shock and useful lesson on the
difficulties attending suburban love-affairs, and that he might bethink
himself and stop the whole thing before it had gone too far. A good
thing, too. I was clearing out and getting married at Easter, and there,
so far as I was concerned, was an end of it. Lathom could fish it out
for himself after that. My book had made a sudden success, and I was
feeling rather cock-a-hoop with myself.
Consequently, I was quite unprepared for the arrival of Harrison with
his accusation. He was dead-white with fury and intensely quiet. He did
not offer me a single opening by scattering his usual fiery particles of
rage. He put the accusation before me. Such and such things had been
stated—what had I to reply? I tried to dismiss the thing with airy
persiflage. He was not abashed by my assumption of ridicule. He simply
asked whether I denied being on the landing at that time, and, if not,
what I was doing there. When I refused to answer so absurd an
accusation, he told me, without further argument, to leave the house.
His wife must not be subjected to any kind of disagreeable contact. The
mere fact that I could take such an attitude to the matter (and, indeed,
my attitude had nothing dignified about it) showed that I was an
entirely unsuitable person to come into any sort of contact with Mrs.
Harrison. He was there to protect her from persons of my sort. Would I
go quietly or wait to be removed by force?
The deceived husband is usually considered to be a ridiculous figure,
but Harrison was not ridiculous. Sometimes I wonder whether he was
deceived. I thought at the time that he was, but perhaps the light of
faith in his eyes was really the torch of martyrdom. It is fine to die
for a faith, but perhaps it is still finer to die for a thing you do not
believe in. I do not know. He baffled me. If the garrison was disarmed
and beaten behind that impenetrable façade, I was never to know it.
Nobody would ever know it.
It is ironical that Lathom, coming to Suburbia to find raw, red life,
should have failed to recognise it when he saw it. It was there, all
right, in this dry little man, with no imagination beyond beef-steak and
mushrooms, but it did not wear bright colours, and Lathom liked colours.
The thing was farcical. And I believe I was the most farcical fool in
the whole outfit. Even then, the mocking censor which views one’s
personality from the outside sat sniggering in a corner of my brain.
Here was I, a successful novelist, presented with this monstrous
situation—one which was quite in my own line of work, too—and I hadn’t
even had the wits to see it coming. The thing was a gift.
I could see myself tackling it, too, in quite the right modern, cynical
way. No nonsense. No foolish shibboleths about honour and
self-sacrifice. A lucid exposure of the situation—an epigram or so—a
confrontation of Harrison (as representing the old morality) with the
unsentimental frankness of the new.
And the damnable thing was that I didn’t do it. When it came to saying,
“My good man, you are mistaken. My friend Lathom is the man you ought to
be after. He and your wife are carrying on a love-affair, for which you
are largely to blame, if, indeed, any blame attaches to these
unsophisticated manifestations of natural selection”—when it came to
the point, I didn’t say it. Looking at Harrison, I couldn’t say it. I
behaved like a perfect little gentleman, and said nothing whatever.
After that, I can only suppose that I became quite intoxicated by this
new and heroic view of myself. I went straight off to Lathom and told
him about it. I oozed priggishness. I said:
“I have stood by you. I have kept silence. I have agreed to leave the
house at once. But I will only do it if you will promise me to chuck the
whole business—clear out at the same time that I do. Leave these people
alone. You have no right to ruin the life of this decent man and his
wife, who were getting along quite well in their way till you came
along.”
I grew solemn and portentous about it. I enlarged on Harrison’s
sufferings. I painted a vivid picture of the miseries the woman must
needs undergo in the course of a secret love-affair. I called it vulgar.
I called it wicked and selfish. I used expressions which I thought had
perished from the vocabulary since the ’eighties. And I ended by saying:
“If you do not promise me to do the decent thing, you cannot expect me
to stand by you.” Which was mere blackmail.
There must be more of the old inhibitions alive in even the most modern
of us than one would readily credit. Lathom was actually abashed by my
eloquence. He protested at first; then he grew sulky; finally, he was
touched.
“You’re quite right, old man,” he said, “damn it. I’ve been behaving
like a cad. I couldn’t make her happy. I ought to go away. I will go
away. You’ve been damned decent to me.” He wrung my hand. I clapped him
sentimentally on the shoulder. We wallowed in our own high-mindedness.
It must have been a touching sight.
The first disagreeable consequence of this foolish interference with the
course of events arrived in the shape of a letter from my fiancée. Miss
Milsom had felt it her duty to send one of those warnings. I dashed up
to Scotland to put matters right. The greatest compliment I can pay to
the open mind and generous common sense of Elizabeth is to say plainly
that I had no difficulty about doing this. But I was reminded with a
slight shock that Victorian quixotry has a way of landing one in
complications. However, no harm appeared to be done, and later on I
received a letter from Lathom, dated from Paris, in which he informed me
that he was playing the game (the words were proof in themselves of the
condition to which I must have reduced him), and that, after a highly
emotional scene, Mrs. Harrison and he had agreed to part.
* * * * *
I got married soon after that, and forgot all about Lathom and the
Harrisons—the more so as Elizabeth did not encourage me to dwell on the
subject. A natural jealousy, I thought, particularly as she had not
seemed altogether impressed by my quixotic gesture. But women are
unconquerable realists, and nowadays they are not taught to flatter male
delusions as they once were. It is uncomfortable to think that perhaps
our repressed Victorian ancestresses were as clear-sighted as their
franker granddaughters. If so, how they must have laughed, as they made
their meek responses. In this century we do know, more or less, what
they are thinking, and meet them on equal terms—at least, I hope we do.
I was reminded of Lathom by receiving my ticket for the Private View at
the Academy on May 3rd. We had had our honeymoon, and were ready to
return to our place in the world. Almost the first thing I saw, as we
surged through the crowd, was the painted face of Mrs. Harrison, blazing
out from a wall full of civic worthiness and fagged society beauties,
with the loud insistence of a begonia in a bed of cherry-pie. There was
a little knot of people in front of it, and I recognised Marlowe, the
man who paints those knotty nudes, and created a sensation two years ago
with “The Wrestlers.” He was enjoying his usual pastime of being rude to
Garvice, the portrait-painter. His voice bellowed out over the din, and
his black cloak flapped gustily from a flung-out arm. “Of course you
don’t like it,” he boomed lustily, “it kills everything in the place
dead. That’s none of your damned art—that’s painting—a _painting_, I
tell you.” Several pained people, who had been discussing values in low
tones, shrank at the unseemly noise, and dodged waveringly from the
sweep of his hairy fist. “None of you poor pimples,” went on Marlowe,
threateningly “can _see_ colour—or thickness—you’re only fit to colour
Christmas cards at twopence a hundred. There isn’t a painter in the
whole beastly boarding-house crowd of you except this chap.” I will do
Marlowe the justice to say that, except where nudes are concerned, he is
singularly generous to the younger men. He glowered round through his
bush of beard and spectacles, and caught sight of me. “Hullo, Munting!”
he bawled. “Come here. Somebody said you knew this fellow Lathom. Who is
he? Why haven’t you brought him round to see me?”
I explained that I had only just returned from my honeymoon, and
introduced Marlowe to my wife. Marlowe roared approval in his
characteristic way, and added:
“Come along on Friday—same old crowd, you know, and bring this man
Lathom. I want to know him. He can _paint_.”
He spun round to face the picture again, and the crowd retired
precipitately to avoid him.
“Well,” said a man’s voice, almost in my ear, “and how do you think it
looks, now it’s hung?”
I spun round and saw Lathom, and with him, before I could adopt any
suitable attitude to the situation, Mr. and Mrs. Harrison, flung up from
the waves of sightseers like the ball from a Rugby scrum.
Retreat was hopeless, because Marlowe now had me tightly by the
shoulder, while with his other hand he sketched large, thumby gestures
towards the portrait to indicate the modelling and brushwork.
“Hullo, Munting!” said Lathom.
“Hullo, Lathom!” I said, and added nervously, “Hullo-ullo-ullo!” like
something by P. G. Wodehouse.
“Good God!” exploded Marlowe, “is this the man? The man and the model,
by all that’s lucky,” he bellowed on, without waiting for my embarrassed
answer. “I’m Marlowe; and I say you’ve done a good piece of work.”
Lathom came to my rescue by making a suitable acknowledgment of the
great man’s condescension, and I was sliding away with a vague bow and a
muttered remark about an engagement, when I felt a tap on the shoulder.
It was Harrison.
“Excuse me one moment, Mr. Munting,” said he.
A row in the Academy would have its points from the point of view of my
Press agent, but I was not anxious for it. However, I asked Elizabeth to
wait a moment for me, and stepped aside with Harrison.
“I think,” said he, “I am afraid—that is, I feel I owe you an apology,
Mr. Munting.”
“Oh!” I said. “That’s all right. I mean, it doesn’t matter at all.” Then
I pulled myself together. “I’m sorry,” I said, “it’s my fault, really. I
ought not to have come. I might have known you would be here.”
“It’s not that,” he said, determined to face it. “The fact is—I fear I
did you an injustice that—er—that last time we met. Er—the
unfortunate woman who made all the trouble——”
“Miss Milsom?” I asked; not because I didn’t know, but to help him on
with his sentence.
“Yes. She has had to take a rest—in fact, to undergo a course of
treatment—in fact, she is in a kind of nursing-home.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. There can really be no doubt that the poor creature is—well,
demented is perhaps an unkind way of putting it. Perhaps we had better
say, unbalanced.”
I expressed sympathy.
“Yes. From what my wife tells me—and Mr. Lathom—and from what I hear
from the poor creature’s relatives, I now feel no doubt at all that
the—the accusation, you know—was entirely unfounded. A nervous
delusion, of course.”
“Yes, yes,” said I.
“I quite understand, of course, your very chivalrous motives for not
putting the blame on her at the time. The position was most awkward for
you. You might perhaps have given me a hint—but I perfectly understand.
And my wife, you will realise, was so very much upset——”
“Please,” I broke in, “do not blame her or yourself for a single
moment.”
“Thank you. It is very kind of you to take it in this reasonable spirit:
I cannot say how much I regret the misunderstanding. I hope you are very
well and prosperous. You are quite a famous man now, of course. And
married. Will you do me the honour to present me to your wife? I hope
you will come and see us some day.”
I was not keen to make the introduction, but it could scarcely be
avoided. The preposterous situation was there, and had to be imagined
away. Mrs. Harrison glowed. For the first time I saw her in full
prismatic loveliness, soaked and vibrating with colour and light. I
asked her what she thought of the show.
“We haven’t seen much of it yet,” she said, laughing, “we came straight
to see _the_ picture. Is it going to be the picture of the year as they
call it, do you think, Mr. Munting?”
“It looks rather like it,” said I.
“Fancy that! It does make me feel important—though, of course, I don’t
count for anything, really. The painting is the thing, isn’t it!”
“The subject of the portrait counts for something, too,” said Elizabeth.
“I don’t see how anybody can make a picture of one of those cow-faced
people. Except a satirical one, of course. It’s the painter’s job to get
the personality on the canvas, but what is he to do if there is no
personality? Mr. Lathom . . .”
She looked at the portrait, and then at Mrs. Harrison, and something
seemed to strike her. It was the thing that had struck me, months
before, when I first saw what Lathom had made of it. She grew a little
confused, and Lathom struck in.
“Mrs. Harrison and you would agree about the importance of
subject-matter,” he said. “I can’t persuade her to admire Laura Knight.”
Mrs. Harrison blushed a little.
“I think they are very clever pictures,” she said, a trifle defiantly,
and with a side-glance at her husband, “but they are rather peculiar for
a woman to have painted, aren’t they? Not very refined. And I mean, they
are so unnatural. I’m sure people don’t walk about, even in their
bedrooms, like that, with nothing on. And I think pictures ought to make
one feel—uplifted, somehow.”
“Come, come, Margaret,” said Harrison, “you don’t know what you are
talking about.”
“But you said the same thing yourself,” she came back at him.
“Yes, but I don’t care about your discussing them here.”
“Oh!” said Marlowe, loudly, “you are afraid of the flesh. That is our
trouble—we are all afraid of it, and that is why we insist and
exaggerate. ‘_Hoc est corpus_,’ said God—but we turn it into
hocus-pocus. There’s no hope for this generation till we can see clean
flesh and ‘sweet blood’—Meredith’s phrase—without being shocked at its
fine troublesomeness. If one were to strip all these people now”—he
waved a hand at a fat man in a top-hat and an emaciated girl, who caught
his eye and stood paralysed—“you would think it indecent. But it’s not
as indecent as the portrait-painter who strips their souls for you. Some
men’s work would be publicly censored, if the powers knew how to
distinguish between flesh and spirit—which, thank God, they don’t.” He
clapped Lathom on the shoulder. “How about that other thing of yours, my
boy?”
Lathom laughed a little awkwardly.
“Is that the portrait of Miss Milsom?” I interrupted, hastily—for I saw
trouble coming up like a thunder-cloud over Harrison’s horizon. “We must
go and have a look at it. You’re doing pretty well to have two pictures
in such a crowded year. We mustn’t keep you too long. Which room is it
in, Lathom?”
He told us, and when we had said our farewells, pursued us into the next
room.
“I say, old man,” he whispered breathlessly, “I couldn’t really help
this. Couldn’t in decency get out of it, could I?”
“No,” said I, “I suppose you couldn’t. It’s not my funeral, anyhow.”
“It’s the first time we’ve met,” he went on, “and it will end here.”
“But for my damned interference it wouldn’t have begun here,” I
answered. “I’m not blaming you, Lathom. And I’ve really no right to make
conditions. I don’t think it’s wise—but I can’t set up to be a
dictator.”
“Oh, you admit that, do you?” said Lathom. “I’m rather glad to know it.”
He hesitated, and added abruptly, “Well, so long.”
I was thankful to see the end of the episode. From every point of view
it seemed advisable to drop all connection with Lathom and the
Harrisons, and I saw none of them again until the 19th of October.
38. _Margaret Harrison to Harwood Lathom_
May 4th, 1929
PETRA DARLING,
Oh, how wonderful it was, darling, to see you again, even under the
Gorgon’s eye—such a cold stony eye, darling, and with all those people
around. I had been dead all through those dreadful months. When you went
away, I felt as if the big frost had got right into my heart. Do you
know, it made me laugh when the pipes froze up in the bathroom and we
couldn’t get any water and He was so angry. I thought if he only knew I
was just like that inside, and when the terrible numb feeling had passed
off, something would snap in me, too. Was that a foolish thing to think,
Petra? Not a very poetical idea, I am afraid, but I wished I could have
told it to you and heard your big, lovely laugh at your Darling Donkey!
Oh, Petra, we can’t go on like this, can we? I couldn’t go through those
long, long weeks again without seeing or hearing you, not so much as
your dear untidy writing on an envelope. And, darling, it was so
dreadful to hear you say you couldn’t work without your Inspiration,
because your work is so wonderful and so important. Why should He stand
between you and what God meant you to do? The life we live here is so
cramped and useless; the only way I can fulfil any great purpose is in
being a little help in your divine work of creation. It is so wonderful
to know that one can really be of use—part of the beauty you make and
spread all about you. It isn’t even as if I counted for anything in
_His_ work. A woman can’t be an inspiration for an electrical profit and
loss account, or a set of estimates, can she? He doesn’t think so,
anyway. He just wants to have me in a cage to look at, darling—not even
to love. He doesn’t care or know about love—thank God! I say now,
because I can keep myself all for my own marvellous Man. Oh, I have so
much to give, so much, all myself, such as I am—not clever, darling,
you know I am not that, though I love to hear about clever, interesting
things—but loving and real and _alive_ for you, only you, darling,
darling Petra. I never knew how much beauty there was in the world till
you showed it to me, and that’s why I feel so sure that our love must be
a _right_ thing, because one could not feel so much beauty in anything
that was wrong, could one? Fancy going on living for years and years,
starved of beauty and love, when there is all that great treasure of
happiness waiting to be taken. Oh, darling, he was going on at dinner
last night about how his grandfather lived to be a hundred and his
father about ninety-four, and what a strong family they were, and I
could see them, going on year after year, grinding all the happiness out
of their wives and families and making a desert all round them, just as
He does. I looked up Gorgons in a book, darling, and it said they were
immortal, all except the one Perseus killed, and I’m sure they are,
darling, the stony horrors. Sometimes I wish I could die. Do you think
they would let me come and be near you after I was dead? But I know you
think we don’t live after we are dead, but just turn into flowers and
earth again. It does seem much more likely, doesn’t it, whatever the
clergymen say—so I suppose it would be no good me dying, would it? Just
think—only one life, and to be able to do nothing with it—nothing at
all, and then just die and be finished. It makes me shudder. It’s all so
cold and dreary. What right have people to make life such a wasted,
frozen thing? Why are they allowed to live at all if they don’t _live_
in the true sense of the word? And life can be such a great thing if it
is really _lived_. Oh, Pet darling, thank you for having taught me to
live, even if it was only for a few short, wonderful weeks! When I’m all
alone (and I’m always alone, nowadays, not even poor Milsom to talk to
now), I sit and try to read some of the books you told me about. But I
stop reading, and my mind wanders away, and I’m just living over again
the hours we had together, and the feel of your dear arms round me.
Sometimes he comes in and finds me like that, and scolds me for letting
the fire out and not putting the light on. “You’re always mooning
about,” he says, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing.” Oh,
darling, if he only did know, how angry he would be and how wicked he
would think me in his ugly little mind!
Dear one, you won’t leave me all alone again, will you? We said we would
try to forget one another, but I think you knew as well as I did how
impossible it was. Well, we have tried, haven’t we, and we’ve found it
is no good. You thought it would be better for me, but it isn’t. I feel
far, far more miserable than I did, even in the days when we were seeing
each other and trying to keep down all the things we were thinking and
feeling together. I would rather suffer the awful pain of seeing and
wanting you, than feel so dead and empty, as if my heart had been all
drained out of me, beloved. And I know now that it is just as bad for
you, because you can’t do your work without me, and your work ought to
come first, darling, even if you have to mix your paints with my heart’s
blood.
Darling, if you think it’s better we shouldn’t be real lovers, don’t
leave me altogether. Let us see each other sometimes. It doesn’t matter
even if the Gorgon is there and we have to talk the silly meaningless
tea-party talk. Our real selves will be saying the real things to one
another all the time, and we can look at one another and be a little bit
happy. I can _feel_ with my eyes, can’t you, darling? When you met us
yesterday and stood there with that absurd top-hat in your hand—it was
so funny to see you in that stiff, formal morning dress, but you looked
very splendid and it made me so proud to think you were really all mine
and no one knew it—well, when I saw you, I could feel in all my
fingers, darling, the queer lovely feel of your hair that first day—do
you remember—when you put your head on my knees and broke down and said
you loved me. Such a dear head, darling, all rough and crisp, and the
strong, splendid bones under it, full of wonderful thoughts. If I shut
my eyes I can feel it—I’m doing it now, darling. Shut yours—now, this
minute—and see if you can’t feel my hands. Did you, Petra darling—did
you feel all the love and life in them? Tell me when you write if you
can feel me as I feel you!
You will write, darling, won’t you? You will spare me that little ray at
least from the great fire of your life and love. Don’t leave me all in
the dark, Petra, and I’ll be content with whatever you give me.
Everything has been so ghastly that I haven’t got it in me to be
exacting, dear.
Always your own, only, for ever,
LOLO
39. _The Same to the Same_
June 6th, 1929
PETRA, MY DARLING, MY DEAR, DEAR MAN DARLING,
Oh, my dearest, isn’t it terrible to see the summer coming, and to feel
so wintry and lonely. Your letters have been a help, but what wouldn’t I
give for you yourself, the real you!
You will tell me again that I’m not telling the truth. That I don’t
really love you because I won’t give up being conventional and
respectable and go away with you, but it isn’t that, Petra darling. You
think in your dear, impetuous way that it would all be so easy, but it
wouldn’t really, darling. You think that because you are a man, and you
don’t consider how awful it would be, day after day, all the sordidness
and trouble. It wouldn’t really be fair to make you go through all that.
Even if He would let me go—which, of course, he wouldn’t, because he is
so selfish—it would be a long, drawn-out misery. I know how horrid it
is because I know a woman who got her divorce. Of course, her husband
took all the blame, but it was a miserable time for everybody, and she
and her man friend had to go right away, and he gave up his post, a very
good post, and they are living in quite a slummy little place in rooms,
and don’t even get enough to eat sometimes.
Anyway, the Gorgon would _never_ consent to me divorcing him, because he
prides himself on being very virtuous and proper, and he would probably
have to leave his firm or something. He would never do that. He thinks
more of his firm than of anything in the world—far more than he does of
me or my happiness, which he has never considered at all from the day he
married me.
Doesn’t it seem too awful that one has to pay so heavily for making a
mistake? I keep on thinking, if only I hadn’t married him. If only I
were free to come to you, Petra darling—what a wonderful time we could
have together! But then I think again that if I hadn’t married him, I
should never have lived here, never met you, and oh, darling, what could
make up for that? So I suppose, as they say in the nature-books, that He
has “fulfilled his function” in bringing us together. I looked at him
last night as he sat glooming over the mutton, which wasn’t quite done
as he likes it (you would never let a stupid thing like mutton poison
the whole beautiful day for you, but he does), and I thought of Mr.
Munting saying once, “All God’s creatures have their uses,” when Miss
Milsom had made me one of her lovely scarves—and I said to myself, “If
only you could know, my dear Gorgon, what is the one thing in our lives
I thank you for!” That would really have given him something to gloom
about, wouldn’t it?
It is so funny—he is always asking when you are coming to see us again.
His Cookery Book is going to be published in a few weeks’ time, and he
is ridiculously excited about it. He thinks it is a great work of art,
and is going to send you a copy as from one artist to another. Wouldn’t
that make a good reason for you to call on us, if you could get over to
England? It is clever of you to be able to find so many things to say
about his silly little water-colours—you who are a really great painter
(I have learnt not to say artist now. Do you remember how impatient you
were with me when I called you “artistic”? We nearly had a quarrel that
day. Fancy us quarrelling about anything—now!).
It makes me sad, Petra darling, to think of my poor lonely Man so far
away, wanting his Lolo. And I’m a little frightened, too, when I think
of all the beautiful ladies in Paris. I expect they think a lot of you,
don’t they? Do you go to a great many fashionable parties? Or do you
live the student-life I used to read about and think how gay and jolly
it must be? You don’t tell me very much about the people you see and the
places you go to. I wish you weren’t a portrait-painter—you must have
so many opportunities to find someone more beautiful than your poor Lolo
and so much cleverer. Don’t say they aren’t more beautiful than I am,
because I shall know you aren’t telling the truth. I’m not really
beautiful at all—only when I had been with you I sometimes used to look
in the glass and think that happiness made me _almost_ beautiful,
sometimes. I have been reading in a book about the real Laura and
Petrarch—did you know, she was really only a little girl and that he
hardly saw her at all? Perhaps she was only beautiful in his
imagination, too. But that didn’t prevent her from being his
inspiration, did it? I wonder if you are the same. Perhaps I inspire you
better from a distance. I don’t think a woman _could_ feel like that.
She wants her Man always, close to her. Darling, do say you want me like
that, too.
I must stop now. The Gorgon will be wanting its tea. I am living just
like a hermit now. I never go anywhere and I try to do all I can to keep
him in a good temper, for fear he should get the idea that there is
Somebody Else in my life. How dreadful it would be if he suspected
anything. He is fairly reasonable now, except when his food isn’t quite
right. But oh! I am so lonely.
Darling, I love you so much I don’t know what to do with myself. I have
kissed the paper twenty times where your dear, darling name is. You must
kiss it, too, and think you are kissing your own, your absolutely ownest
own,
LOLO
40. _The Same to the Same_
14th June, 1929
DARLING,
Your letter hurt me so dreadfully, I cried and cried. Oh, Petra, you
can’t love me at all, or you wouldn’t say such awful things. You can’t
really think that if I love you I ought to let _him_ divorce _me_.
Darling, do think how horrible it would be! How could I go through all
that terrible shame in public, and all my friends looking on and
thinking hateful things about our beautiful love! At least, I suppose I
could go through with it—one can go through all kinds of agonies and
still live—but that you should _want_ me to do it—that you could think
of your Lolo in such a sordid way—that’s what hurts me, darling. You
used to say you wanted to stand between me and trouble, and couldn’t
bear to think of anything ugly touching our pure and lovely passion. And
yet now you want to smirch me with the stain of the divorce courts and
see my name in the papers for people to snigger at. Oh, Petra, it’s
absolutely clear you don’t really love me one bit.
You couldn’t feel the same to me, Petra, I know that, if I came to you
all dirtied and draggled from an ordeal like that. Just think of having
to stand up in the witness-box and tell the judge all about our love. It
would all sound so different to their worldly, coarse, horrible minds,
and our love would seem just a vulgar, nasty—I don’t like to write the
word they would call it, even to you—instead of the pure, clean, divine
thing it really is.
Darling, I’m not thinking of myself—I’m thinking of you and our love. I
don’t want a single spot to touch it. It would be better to suffer all
our lives as we are suffering now—as _I_ am suffering, for sometimes,
Petra, I don’t think you suffer at all—rather than to look at each
other with the shadow of an ugly scandal between us. You don’t
understand. You don’t realise what a difference these things make to a
woman. It does not make any difference to a man, but even you would see
the stain on me for ever afterwards, and would turn against me.
Tell me you don’t really mean it, darling. There must be some other way
out. Let us think very hard and find out. Or if you really think so
little of me, tell me so, and we will say good-bye again—for always,
this time. I expect I was wrong to stick to our agreement before. You
wanted to be released then, and you wouldn’t have asked it if you hadn’t
been tired of me already in your heart. Let’s end it all, Petra. Perhaps
I shall die, and then you will be free. I feel unhappy enough to
die—and if I’m too strong for wretchedness to kill me, there are always
easy ways out of it all.
Your heart-broken
LOLO
41. _The Same to the Same_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE
30th June, 1929
DARLING, DEAR PETRA, MY DEAREST,
Of course I do forgive you. It’s you really that must forgive me for
saying such awful things. I didn’t mean them. I knew really, deep down
in my heart, that you loved me all the time. Of course I couldn’t say
good-bye—it would kill me—— Yes, I meant that part of it.
But you do see now, don’t you, that we can’t take that way out. For my
sake, you say, darling, but, indeed, I could bear anything for
myself—only I don’t want to spoil the lovely thing we have made. We
will do just as you say, wait for a year and see if anything happens. It
may, if we only want it enough. God might make a miracle to help us.
Such things have happened before now. He might even die—“in him
Nature’s copy’s not eterne”—doesn’t somebody say that in a play
somewhere? We used to go and see Shakespeare sometimes when I was at
school, and do the plays in class, though I didn’t pay much attention to
them then. I didn’t understand what a difference art and poetry make to
one’s life. I was waiting for you to come and teach me, my dear.
I am going to do some really solid reading now, to try and be more
worthy of my darling when the happy time comes. (I must believe there
will be a happy time, or I should go mad.) This year of waiting shall be
a year of self-development. That will make the desolate days pass more
quickly. Goodness knows I shall have time enough, for He never lets me
go out anywhere or have any of my own friends to see me. The only people
I ever have to talk to are his friends from the office. They talk about
bridges and electrical plant interminably. I don’t know how people can
live with such petty, dull things taking up all their minds. Sometimes
one or two of them have the graciousness to ask me if I have seen the
latest play or film, but I never have, and I just have to sit and smile
while He says, “We’re quiet, domestic people, my wife and I; we don’t
care about this night life.” And if I ever suggest going out, he
pretends that I want to be “gadding round” in nightclubs at all hours. I
am ashamed of being so ignorant of the things everybody is talking
about. Other husbands take their wives out. But no—if I want to stir
out of doors, I’m a bad woman—“one of these modern wives who don’t care
for their homes.” What kind of place is my home, that I should care
about it?
I have got that book you were talking about, _Women in Love_. It is very
queer and coarse in parts, don’t you think, and rather bewildering, but
some of the descriptions are very beautiful. I don’t understand it all,
but it is thrilling, like music. That bit about the horse, for instance.
I can’t quite make out what he means, but it is terribly exciting. What
funny people Lawrence’s characters are! They don’t seem to have any
ordinary lives, or have to make money or run households or anything.
That woman who is a schoolmistress—she never seems to have to bother
about her work, one would think it was all holidays at her school. I
suppose the author means that the humdrum things don’t really count in
one’s life at all, and I expect that is true, only in actual life they
do seem to make a lot of difference.
Oh, I do hate this cramping life—always telling lies and smothering up
one’s feelings. But tyrants make liars. It is what somebody I read about
in the papers calls “slave-psychology.” I feel myself turning into a
cringing slave, lying and crawling to get one little scrap of precious
freedom—a book, a letter, a thought even—and carrying it off into a
corner to gloat over it in secret. That is the way in which I am
learning to build up an inner life for myself, a lovely, secret freedom,
so that the things He says and does can’t really hurt me any longer. The
real Me is free and happy, worshipping in my hidden temple with my
darling Idol, my own dear Petra darling.
How I do love you! My starved life is full when I think of you—brimmed
with joy and inward laughter. And one day, perhaps, we shall come out of
the dark catacombs and build our temple of Love in the glorious
sunlight, with the golden gates wide open for all the world to see and
marvel at our happiness.
Yours, beloved, yours utterly and completely,
LOLO
I love to write the name you call me by—the name that is only yours.
Such a silly name it would sound to people who didn’t know what it
means. _He_ uses the name other people use—just like an uncle or
something. That’s all he is—a sort of Wicked Uncle in a fairy-tale. I
can bear him better if I think of him just as that.
42. _The Same to the Same_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE
18th July, 1929
DARLING, DARLING,
I hardly know how to breathe for joy! To know that I shall see you, hear
your dear voice, hold your hand again! He heard me singing in the
kitchen this morning and asked what I was yowling about. I should have
liked to tell him. Think of his face if I had said: “My lover is coming
home and I am singing for joy!” I said meekly that I was sorry if it
disturbed him, and he said in his courteous way that it didn’t matter to
him if I liked to hear the sound of my own voice, but the girl would
probably think I was mad. I said I didn’t care what the girl thought of
me, and he answered: “That’s just the trouble with you. You don’t care.
You’re right up in the air.” So I am—so I am! Right above the clouds,
Petra darling, up in the golden sunlight, where nothing can touch me.
He’s quite right for once, if he did but know it.
Darling, we must be very careful when you come. I don’t know how I shall
manage to keep the happiness out of my eyes and voice. But he won’t
notice—he never notices how I’m feeling. Besides, he will monopolise
you with his precious book. It’s really out at last, and he’s clucking
over it like a hen that’s laid an egg. People say to me: “So your
husband has written a book, Mrs. Harrison. So clever of him. Fancy a man
knowing such a lot about cooking! What exciting meals you must have.
Aren’t you afraid he’ll poison himself sometimes with those queer
toadstools and things?” And I smile and say, “Oh, but my husband would
never make a stupid mistake. He knows so much about them, you see.”
That’s quite true, too. He doesn’t make mistakes about things—only
about people. He never gets anything right about me—not one single
thing. But then he really _cares_ about mushrooms and takes trouble to
study them.
I wonder how his first wife put up with him. She was a homely sort of
person, from all accounts—the sort that are good housekeepers and
mothers and all that. I think, if I’d ever had a child I could have been
happier, but he has never given me one, and doesn’t seem to want to. I’m
glad of that now—since I met you. It would be terrible to have his
child now—it would seem like a sort of treason to you, beloved. Don’t
be afraid, dearest. He never touches me—you know what I mean—and I
wouldn’t let him. I don’t let him even give me his usual morning peck if
I can help it. I don’t refuse, of course—that would make him suspicious
at once. I just happen to be busy and keep out of his way. He’s glad, I
think, because he always used to grumble at any demonstration and say,
“That’ll do, that’ll do”—though he’ll let the cat swarm all over him
and knead bread on his chest for hours together. I suppose he thinks a
woman’s feelings don’t matter as much as a cat’s!
But I don’t know why I bother about him at all, when you, you, you are
the one thing filling my heart. Oh, my darling, my Petra, my heart’s
heart! You are coming back. Nothing else is of importance in the whole
world. The sun’s shining and everything is happy. I went out to do some
shopping to-day—silly, trivial things for the house—and I could have
kissed the bread and the potatoes as I put them into my basket, just for
joy that you and I and they exist in the same world together! Petra,
beloved, you and I, you and I—oh, darling, isn’t it wonderful!
Your happy
LOLO
43. _The Same to the Same_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE
August 2nd, 1929
PETRA, OH, MY DEAR!
Oh, darling, never say now that the luck isn’t on our side sometimes.
Something even bigger than luck, perhaps. That we should save that last,
wonderful evening out of the wreck—so perfect, so unspeakably
wonderful—our evening of marvellous love. Just think—that it should be
your last night, and that he should be called out suddenly like that,
and ask you, himself, not to go before he got back. And even then, if it
hadn’t been the girl’s night out, we shouldn’t have been safe. But it
was, by such incredible luck, Petra mine.
Do you know, there was a moment when I was frightened. I thought, for a
horrible minute, that he had suspected something after all, and had only
pretended to go out, and would come slinking back on purpose to catch
us. Did that occur to you? And were _you_ afraid to say anything, lest
_I_ should be frightened? I was. And then, quite suddenly, I felt
certain, absolutely _certain_ that it was all right. We were being
watched over, Petra. We had been given that great hour—a little bit of
eternity, just for you and me. God must be sorry for us. I can’t believe
it was sin—no one could commit a sin and be so happy. Sin doesn’t
exist, the conventional kind of sin, I mean—only lovingness and
unlovingness—people like you and me, and people like him. I wonder what
Mr. Perry would say to that. He is just crossing the road now to
Benediction, as he calls it. He thinks he knows all about what is right
and what is wrong, but lots of people think his candles and incense
wicked, and call him a papist and idolater and things like that. And
yet, out of his little, cold, parish experience, he would set himself up
to make silly laws for you, darling, who are big and free and splendid.
How absurd it all is! He preached such a funny sermon the other day,
about the Law and the Gospel. He said, if we wouldn’t do as the Gospel
said, and keep good for the love of God, then we should be punished by
the Law. And he said that didn’t mean that God was vindictive, only that
the Laws of Nature had their way, and worked out the punishment quite
impartially, just as fire burns you if you touch it, not to punish you,
but because that is the natural law of fire.
I am wandering on, darling, am I not? I only wondered what kind of
natural revenge Mr. Perry thought God would take for what he would call
our sin. It does seem so ridiculous, doesn’t it? As if God or Nature
would trouble about us, with all those millions and millions of worlds
to see to. Besides, our love is the natural thing—it’s the Gorgon who
is unnatural and abnormal. Probably that’s _his_ punishment. He denies
me love, and love is Nature’s revenge on him. But, of course, he
wouldn’t see it that way.
Oh, darling, what a wonderful time these last weeks have been. I enjoyed
every minute. I have been so happy, I didn’t know how to keep from
shouting my happiness out loud in the streets. I wanted to run and tell
the people who passed by, and the birds and the flowers and the stray
cats how happy I was. Even the Gorgon being there couldn’t spoil it
altogether. Do you remember how angry he was about _The Sacred Flame_?
And you were holding my hand, and your hand was telling mine how true
and right it was that the useless husband should be got out of the way
of the living, the splendid wife and her lover and child. Darling, I
think that play is the most wonderful and courageous thing that’s ever
been written. What right have the useless people to get in the way of
love and youth? Of course, in the play, it wasn’t the husband’s fault,
because he was injured and couldn’t help himself—but that’s Nature’s
law again, isn’t it? Get rid of the ugly and sick and weak and worn-out
things, and let youth and love and happiness have their chance. It was a
brave thing to write that, because it’s what we all know in our hearts,
and yet we are afraid to say it.
Petra, darling, my lover, my dearest one, how can we wait and do
nothing, while life slips by? The time of love is so short—what can we
do? Think of a way, Petra. Even—yes, I’m almost coming to that—even if
the way leads through shame and disgrace—I believe I could face it, if
there is no other. I know so certainly that I was made for you and that
you are all my life, as I am yours. Kiss me, kiss me, Petra. I kiss my
own arms and hands and try to think it’s you. Ever, my darling, your own
LOLO
44. _The Same to the Same_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE
5th Oct., 1929
Oh, Petra, I am so frightened. Darling, something dreadful has happened.
I’m sure—I’m almost quite sure. Do you remember when I said Nature
couldn’t revenge herself? Oh, but she can and _has_, Petra. What shall I
do? I’ve tried things, but it’s no good, Petra, you’ve _got_ to help me.
I never thought of this—we were so careful—but something must have
gone wrong. Petra, darling, I can’t face it. I shall kill myself. He’ll
find out—he must find out, and he’ll be so cruel, and it will all be
too terrible.
Petra, I was so desperate I tried to make him—don’t be angry, Petra—I
mean, I tried to be nice to him and make him love me, but it wasn’t any
good. I don’t know what he will do to me when he discovers the truth.
Darling, darling, do _something_—anything! I can’t think of any way,
but there must be one, somehow. Everybody will know, and there will be a
frightful fuss and scandal. And even if we got a divorce, it wouldn’t be
in time—they are so slow in those dreadful courts. But I don’t expect
he would divorce me. He would just smother it all up and be cruel to me.
I don’t know. I feel so ill, and I can’t sleep. He asked me what was the
matter with me to-day. I’d been crying and I looked simply awful. Petra,
my dearest, what _can_ we do? How cruel God is! He must be on the
conventional people’s side after all. Do write quickly and tell me what
to do. And don’t, don’t be angry with me, darling, for getting you into
this trouble. I couldn’t help it. Write to me or come to me—I shall go
mad with worry. If you love me at all, Petra, you must help me now.
LOLO
45. _Statement of John Munting_
[Continued.]
The next news I had about the Harrisons was about the middle of October,
1929, when I got a note from Lathom, written, rather unexpectedly, from
“The Shack, Manaton, Devon.” He said that he was staying with Harrison,
who was having his annual “camp” among the water-colour “bits” and the
natural foodstuffs. Harrison, it appeared, had been so pressing that he
really had not known how to refuse, especially as he was really feeling
rather played-out after several months’ strenuous work in Paris. After
the unbearably hot and prolonged summer, the prospect of pottering about
a bit among the lush grass and deep lanes of Devon had seemed
attractive, even when coupled with the boredom of Harrison’s company.
“As a matter of fact,” he added, “the old boy is not so bad when you get
him in the country by himself. This is the kind of life that really
suits him. As a family man he is a failure, but he quite comes out and
blossoms doing the odd bits of work about the shack. And he certainly is
a first-class cook, though up to the present I have successfully avoided
his nettle-broth and stewed toadstools, not wishing to be cut off in my
youth. This is a pretty place—miles away from everywhere, of course,
stuck down on a circumbendible lane which runs down from Manaton (half a
dozen houses and a pub) to the deep valley which separates the Manaton
Ridge and Becky Falls from Lustleigh Cleave. The only neighbours are the
sheep and cows—an old ram walked into the kitchen the other day.
Harrison was grunting over the stove and didn’t see him at first.
‘Be-hey-hey,’ says the ram; ‘Eh-heh-heh,’ bleats Harrison, looking up;
and damn it, he was so exactly like the old fellow that he wanted
nothing but a pair of horns to complete the resemblance! We wash the
crockery, and then Harrison takes his newest superfine painting-box,
with the collapsible legs and all the rest of it, and trundles away into
the valley, where he sits all day in a gorse-bush, trying to put the
tumbling of the stream on paper. The drought has dried it up a good bit,
but never was anything so desiccated as the arid little plan of it he
produces with pride for me to see, painted with a brush with three hairs
in it—peck, peck, scratch and dab—like a canary scrabbling for seed.
Why don’t I take the opportunity to do some work in this glorious place?
No, thanks; I’m a figure and portrait wallah—besides, I’ve come here
for a rest. It is not mine to sing the stately grace—I smoke my pipe in
the doorway, drive the cattle out of the back garden, and see that the
stewpot doesn’t boil too fast.
“So here I am, in comfortable exile with Menelaus, while Helen sits at
home and sews shirts. And it’s a better way, too. One mustn’t take these
things too seriously. Damned if Harrison hasn’t got the right idea after
all. Look after the grub and leave women to their own fool devices. They
give a man no peace. You, being married, have perhaps got your house in
order. Do you find it as easy to do your work, now that you’re hooked up
to a whirlwind? But, of course, your whirlwind works too, and helps to
turn the mill-wheel, which no doubt makes all the difference.”
Lathom went on in this strain for a page or so. Cynicism from him was
something new, and I took it to spell restlessness of some sort or
other. Either, I thought, he was getting fed up with the lady’s
exactions, or the trio had arrived at a _modus vivendi_. It was no
affair of mine.
He ended up by saying that he would be running up to town in a day or
two and would look me up. I was then living in Bloomsbury—in fact, in
my present house—and my wife was away with her people. I had arranged
to go with her, but at the last moment an urgent matter turned up—an
Introduction to an anthology, which had to be rushed out in a great
hurry before some other publisher get hold of the idea, and I had to
stay behind to get the thing fairly going, as it meant a good deal of
work at the British Museum.
When Lathom turned up at about one o’clock on the 19th, I explained this
to him and apologised for having no lunch to offer him. Like most men,
and women, too, when left to themselves, I found solitary meals
uninspiring. So, apparently, did “the girl,” whom, till my wife left me,
I had imagined to be a good cook. Not that I had ever expected Elizabeth
to leave her writing to see after my meals, so I can only suppose that
her moral influence was enough to make the difference between roast
mutton and raw.
Lathom commiserated me, and we went and had some grub at the “Bon
Bourgeois.” He seemed to be in high spirits, when he thought about it,
but had a way of going off into fits of abstraction which suggested
nerves or preoccupation of some kind. He asked about the anthology and
my work generally with apparent interest, and then, to my surprise,
broke suddenly into my description of the plot of my new novel by
saying:
“Look here, if the wife’s away, why don’t you come down to the Shack
with me for the week-end? It’ll do you good, freshen you up and all
that.”
“Good heavens,” I said, “it’s Harrison’s place. He won’t want me.”
“Oh yes, he’d love to have you. Oh, rather. In fact, he only said to me
yesterday, when I was starting off, he wished I could bring you back
with me. He’s quite forgotten all that misunderstanding. He’s rather
distressed about it, really. Thinks he did you an injustice. Would like
to make it up. He says you must be harbouring resentment, because you’ve
been in town all this time and haven’t been to see them.”
“That’s nonsense,” I said. “_You_ know why I’ve thought it best to keep
out of it.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t. Naturally he thinks you’re offended.”
“Didn’t you tell him I was busy?”
“Of course. Oh, yes. Played up the popular literary man for all it was
worth. So he said, of course you were too important nowadays to remember
your old friends.”
“Damn it,” I said, “what a tactless devil you are, Lathom. You needn’t
have hurt his feelings.”
“No, but look here. Why not come down? It’ll please the old boy no end,
and as neither of the women will be there, there won’t be any
awkwardness. It’s a damned good opportunity for being civil to him
without involving your wife.”
“Civil is a good word for it,” I objected. “I don’t know that it’s
particularly civil to plant myself on the man like that, and make him
feed me and so on, without notice, when he probably doesn’t want me.
Just at the week-end, too, when it’s difficult to get extra supplies.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” said Lathom, “we’ll take some grub down with
us. I was going to in any case. Everything has to be brought out there
by a carrier twice a week. Frightful desolate hole. We’ll take a bit of
beef and a couple of pounds of sausages. That’ll see us through all
right.”
I considered it.
“I say,” said Lathom, suddenly. “Do come, old man. I wish you would.
It’s all right there, you know, but I do get a bit bored at times. I’d
like to have a yap with somebody who talks my language.”
“If you’re fed up,” I said reasonably, “why do you stay?”
“Oh, well—I promised I would, don’t you see. It’s not bad really, but
it would do us both good to have a bit of a change.”
“Now, look here, Lathom,” said I, “I don’t like the idea particularly.
I’m not particularly puritan” (I don’t know why one uses that phrase—I
suppose it is easier to disown one’s decencies when one represents them
as something grotesque in a black suit and steeple-hat), “but
considering the way you behaved to Harrison, I think it’s rather thick
to go and push your friends on to him. What you do is your own business”
(looking back on it, I seem to have extracted a great deal of
satisfaction from this original thought), “but it’s rather different for
me.”
“Punk!” said Lathom. “That’s all absolutely over. Finished. Washed out.
It’s you who keep on digging it up again. Can’t you forget it and come
down and help me out with old Harrison?”
“Why so keen?”
“Oh, I’m not particularly keen. I thought you’d like it, that’s all. It
doesn’t matter. What are you doing this afternoon? B.M. again?”
I said, no; I avoided the Reading Room on Saturday afternoons, because
it was so crowded, and asked him about his work.
He talked about it a little, in the same vague way as before, saying how
difficult it was to settle to anything, and displaying some irritability
with his sitters of the moment. His triumph at the Academy had made him
fashionable, and fashionable women were all alike, it seemed;
small-minded and featureless. One might as well paint masks. All of
which I had heard so often from other painters that I put Lathom down as
already spoilt.
I suggested that he should stay up in town and do a show with me, but he
said he was fed up with shows. He had only come up to see his agent, and
was catching the 4.30. Why didn’t I change my mind and come with him?
It ended in my changing my mind, and going. I hardly know why, except
that I was only six months married and my wife was away, which, to the
well-balanced mind, is no good reason for idle behaviour.
The express ran us down in smooth, stuffy comfort, and reached Newton
Abbot dead on time at 9.15. I cannot say—though I have tried—that I
remembered any particular incident on the way down. I hate talking on
railway journeys, anyway, and Lathom did not seem very conversational. I
read—it was Hughes’ _High Wind in Jamaica_—an over-rated book, I
think, considered as a whole, but memorable for that strange and
convincing description of the earthquake. The thick heat and silence,
and then the quick, noiseless shift of sea and shore, like the tilting
of a saucer. Good, that. And the ghastly wind afterwards. And the child,
not realising that anything out of the way had happened, because nobody
gave the thing its proper terrifying name. That is very natural. I do
not care for the part about the pirates. It is an anti-climax.
I know we dined on the train, but railway meals are seldom memorable.
Lathom grumbled, and left his portion half-eaten, and I said something
about his acquiring a taste for hedgehog-broth and stewed
toadstools—some silly remark which he took as a deadly insult.
At Newton Abbot we changed into the local, and dawdled through
Teigngrace, Heathfield and Brimley Halt, taking over half an hour about
it, till we were turned out, twenty minutes late, on the platform at
Bovey Tracey. It was a quarter-past ten and dark, but the smell of the
earth came up pleasantly, with a welcome suggestion of rain in the air.
I stood on the platform, clutching an attaché case in one hand and the
bag with the beef and sausages in the other, while Lathom transacted
some occult business with a man outside. Then he came back, saying
briefly, “I’ve got a man to take us,” and we stumbled out to where an
aged taxi thrummed mournfully in the gloom. Lathom bundled in, and I
parked my bags at his feet.
“What the devil’s that?” he said crossly.
“The grub, fathead,” said I, following him in.
“Oh, yes, of course, I’d forgotten,” he said. “Come on, let’s get going,
for God’s sake!”
Being used to Lathom, I ignored his irritability. We jolted off.
The taxi had a churchyard smell about it, and I mentioned the fact.
Lathom slammed the window down with an impatient grunt. I remarked,
foolishly, that he didn’t seem very enthusiastic about the trip. He
said:
“Oh, don’t talk so much.”
It seemed to me that the prospect of seeing Harrison again had rather
got on his nerves, and I looked forward to an exasperating week-end.
“_Vous l’avez voulu_, Georges Dandin,” I reflected, and lit a cigarette
resignedly. The narrow road heaved and sank between the dark hedges, but
climbed on the whole, wriggling determinedly up and round to the ridge.
A dim light or so and a cluster of black roofs announced civilisation,
and Lathom roused himself to say: “Manaton—there’s a good view from
here by daylight.”
“We shan’t be long now, then, I suppose,” said I.
He did not reply, and I suddenly became aware that I could hear him
breathing. Once I had noticed it, I couldn’t seem to shut my ears to the
sound. It was like hearing your own heartbeats in the night—when they
seem to grow louder and louder, till they fill the silence and keep you
from going to sleep. The breaths seemed quite to rasp my ear, they were
so heavy and so close.
“Eh!” said Lathom, unexpectedly. “What did you say?”
What had I said? It must have been ages ago, for Manaton was well behind
us now, and the car was nosing her broken-winded way steadily down and
down, with deep cart-ruts wringing her aged bones. I recollected that I
had said I supposed we shouldn’t be long now.
“Oh, no,” said Lathom. “We’re nearly there.”
We bounced on in silence for ten minutes more; then creaked to a
standstill. I put my head out. Dim fields, trees and the tinkling of a
distant stream coming remotely up on a puff of south-west wind. No
light. No building.
“Is this it?” I asked, “or has the engine conked?”
“What?” said Lathom, irritably. “Yes, of course this is it. What’s the
matter? Push along—we don’t want to stay here all night.”
I wrestled with the door and edged out, Lathom close at my heels. He
paid the driver, and the car began to move off, lurching on down the
slope to find a place to turn.
“Here!” said I; “have you got the beef?”
“Oh, hell,” said Lathom, “I thought you had it.”
I plunged after the taxi, reclaiming the food, and came back to where
Lathom was standing. His hurry seemed to have left him. He was striking
a match and having a little trouble with it. The car, a hundred yards
off, choked, crashed its gears, burbled, choked again, burbled, choked,
and came thudding up on bottom gear. It passed us, labouring and
bumping, moved up into second, hesitated into top, and its red rear
light vanished, showed, jerking, vanished and span slowly skywards.
“Ready?” said Lathom.
I did not point out that I had been patiently waiting for him to make a
move, but grasped the bags and followed.
“We’ve got a field to cross,” he explained, holding a gate open for me.
We staggered along for a little. Then he stopped and I bumped up against
him.
“Over there,” he said.
I looked, and saw a patch of extra darkness, between the darkness of
some tree-stems.
“There’s no light,” I said. “Is he expecting you? I hope he won’t be
annoyed with me for coming.”
“Oh, he won’t be annoyed,” said Lathom, shortly. “He’s gone to bed, I
expect. Early bird. Up with the lark and down with the sun and all that.
It doesn’t matter. We can forage round for ourselves.”
A few more minutes, and we stood at the door of the shack. You know what
it’s like—indeed, all England knows by now—a low, two-roomed cottage,
ugly, built of stone, with a slate roof. Only one story—what in
Scotland they call a but and ben. The windows were unshuttered, but not
a spark of light showed through them—no candle, not so much as the
embers of a fire.
Lathom gave an ejaculation.
“He must have gone to sleep,” he muttered. I was fumbling for the handle
of the door, but he pushed me aside, and I heard the latch click open.
He paused, staring into the dark interior.
“I wonder if he’s gone wandering off and got lost somewhere,” he said,
hesitating on the threshold.
“Why not go in and see?” I countered.
“I’m going to.” He stepped in and the unmistakable rattle of matches in
the box told me that he was getting a light. He was clumsy about it, and
only after several futile scratches and curses did the small flame flare
up; he held it high, and for a moment I saw the living-room—a kitchen
table cluttered with crockery, a sink, an empty hearth, and a jumble of
painting gear, clumped in a corner. Then the match flickered and burnt
his fingers, and he dropped it, but made no effort to strike another.
“Juggins!” said I, defiantly, for this cheerless welcome was getting on
my nerves. “Here—isn’t there a candle or anything?”
I hunted through my pockets for a petrol lighter. This gave a steadier
light, by which I found and lit a bedroom candle on a bracket just
behind the door. The untidy room leaped into existence again. I set the
candle down on the table, beside the sordid remnants of a meal. A chair
lay overturned on the floor. I righted it mechanically and looked round.
Lathom was still standing just inside the door, with his head cocked
sideways, as though he were listening.
“Well, I’m damned,” said I, “this is very cheerful. If Harrison—”
“Listen a minute,” he said, “I thought I heard him snoring.”
I listened, but could hear nothing except a tap dripping into the sink.
“Looks to me as if he’d gone out,” I said. “How about starting the fire
up? I’m chilly. Where’s the wood?”
“In the basket,” said Lathom, vaguely.
I investigated the basket, but it was empty.
“Oh, well,” I said, “let’s have a drink and get to bed. If Harrison
comes in later, you’ll have to do the explaining.”
“Yes,” said Lathom, eagerly. “Good idea. Let’s have a drink.” He
wandered about. “Where the devil’s he put the whiskey?” He flung open a
cupboard door, and groped about, muttering.
At this point a thought occurred to me.
“Would Harrison go out and leave the door unlocked?” I said. “He’s a
careful sort of fellow as a rule.”
“What?” Lathom’s head emerged for a moment from the cupboard. “No—no—I
should think he would lock up.”
“Then he must be about somewhere,” I said. We had been talking almost in
whispers—I suppose with the idea of not disturbing the sleeper, but now
I lost patience.
“Harrison!” I shouted.
“Shut up!” said Lathom. “He must have left the whiskey in the bedroom.”
He picked up the candle and plunged into the inner room.
The shadows parted and flowed in after him as he went, leaving me in
darkness again. His footsteps shuffled to a halt and there was a long
pause. Then he spoke, in a curious, thick voice with a catch in it, like
a gramophone needle going over a crack.
“I say, Munting. Come here a minute. Something’s up.”
The inner room was in a sordid confusion. My hurrying footsteps tripped
over some bedclothes. There were two beds in the room, and Lathom was
standing by the farther of the two. He stepped aside, and his hand shook
so that the candle-flame danced. I thought at first that the man on the
bed had moved, but it was only the dancing candle.
The bed was broken and tilted grotesquely sideways. Harrison was
sprawled over it in a huddle of soiled blankets. His face was twisted
and white and his eyeballs rolled up so that only the whites showed. I
stooped over him and felt for his wrist. It was cold and heavy, and when
I released it it fell back on the bed like dead-weight. I did not like
the look of the nostrils—black caverns, scooped in wax—not flesh,
anyway—and the mouth, twisted unpleasantly upwards from the teeth, with
the pale tongue sticking through.
“My God!” I cried, but softly—and turned to look at Lathom, “the man’s
dead!”
“Dead?” He was looking at me, not at Harrison. “Are you sure?”
“Sure?” I put a finger beneath the fallen jaw, which woodenly resisted
me. “Why, he must have been dead for hours. He’s stiff, man, stiff!”
“So he is, poor old b——” said Lathom.
He began to laugh.
“Stop that,” I said, snatching the candle away from him, and dumping him
roughly down on to the other bed. “Pull yourself together. You want a
drink.”
I found the whiskey with some trouble. It was on the floor, under
Harrison’s bed. He must have grasped at it in his struggles and let it
roll away from him. Fortunately, the cork was in place. There was a
tumbler, too, but I did not touch that. I fetched another from the
living-room (Lathom cried out not to be left in the dark, but I paid no
attention), and poured him out a stiff peg, and made him swallow it
neat. Then I stood over him as he sat and shuddered.
“Sorry, old man,” he said at last. “Silly of me to make an ass of
myself. Bit of a startler, isn’t it? But your face—oh, Lord!—if you
could have seen yourself! It was priceless.”
He began to giggle again.
“Don’t be a fool,” said I. “We’ve got no time for hysterics. Something’s
got to be done.”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Yes—something must be done. A doctor, or
something. All right, old man. Give me another drink and I’ll be as
right as rain.”
I gave him another small one and took some myself. That seemed to clear
my mind a little.
“How far are we from Manaton?”
“About three miles, I think—or a little over.”
“Well,” I said, “I suppose somebody there will have a telephone, or can
send a messenger. One of us had better get along there as fast as
possible and get on to the police.”
“Police?”
“Yes, of course, you ass. They’ve got to know.”
“But you don’t suppose there’s anything wrong about it?”
“Wrong? Well, there’s a dead man—that’s pretty wrong, I should think.
He must have died of something. Did he have a heart, or fits, or
anything?”
“Not that I know of.”
I surveyed the distasteful bed again.
“It looks more as though—he’d eaten something—”
I stopped, struck by an idea.
“Let’s look at the things in the other room,” I said. Lathom jumped to
his feet.
“When I left him he said something about fungi—he was going to get some
special kind—”
We went out. In a saucepan on the table was a black, pulpy mess. I
sniffed it cautiously. It had a sourish, faintly fungoid odour, like a
cellar.
“Oh, Lord,” whimpered Lathom, “I knew it would happen some day. I told
him over and over again. He laughed at me. Said he couldn’t possibly
make a mistake.”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said, “but it looks rather as if he had. Poor
devil. Of course, it would happen the very day there was nobody here to
help him. I suppose he was absolutely on his own. Didn’t any tradesmen
call, or anything?”
“The carrier comes over on Mondays and Thursdays with supplies,” said
Lathom, “and takes the orders for the next visit.”
“No milkman? No baker?”
“No. Condensed milk, and the carrier brings the bread. If there’s nobody
in he just puts the things on the window-sill.”
“I see.” It seemed to me pretty ghastly. “Well,” I went on, “will you go
or shall I?”
“We’d better both go, hadn’t we?”
“Nonsense.” I was positive about this. I don’t know why, except that it
seemed damnable, somehow, to leave Harrison’s body alone, when leaving
it could do no possible harm. “If you don’t feel fit to go, I will.”
“Yes—no!” He looked about him uneasily. “All right, you go. It’s
straight up the hill, you can’t miss it.”
I took up my hat, and was going, when he called me back.
“I say—do you mind—I think I’d rather go after all. I feel rather
rotten. I’ll be better in the fresh air.”
“Now, look here,” I said firmly. “We can’t stay shilly-shallying all
night. If you don’t like staying in the house, you’d better go yourself.
But make up your mind, because the quicker we get on to somebody the
better. Get the police and they’ll probably be able to find a doctor.
And you’ll have to give them Mrs. Harrison’s address.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. Yes—I suppose—I suppose—they’d better
break it to her.”
“Somebody’s got to. It’s a beastly business, but you don’t know any
relations you could get hold of, do you?”
“No. Very well. I’ll see to it. Sure you won’t come with me? You don’t
mind staying?”
“The sooner you go, the shorter time I’ll have to stay,” I reminded him.
“Right-ho!” he paused, appeared about to say something, then repeated
“right-oh!” and went out, shutting the door behind him.
Three miles uphill in the dark—it would take him close on the hour,
certainly. Then he had to knock somebody up, find a telephone, if there
was one, get on to the police—say half an hour for that. Then, it all
depended whether there was an available car in the village—whether he
came straight back, or waited for the officials, who would come,
presumably, from Bovey Tracey. I need not, I thought, expect anything to
happen under an hour and three-quarters or so. I suddenly remembered
that I was cold, and started to hunt for kindling. I found some, after a
little search, in an outhouse. The fire consented to light without much
persuasion, and after that, and when I had found and lighted two extra
candles, I began to feel in better condition to take stock of things.
A bottle of Bovril on the mantelpiece presented itself to me with
helpful suggestiveness. I took up the kettle to fill it at the tap. A
glance at the sink nearly turned me from my intention, but I conquered
the sudden nausea and drew my water with care. Impulse would have
flooded the repulsive evidences of sickness away, but as the phrase
flashed through my mind the word “evidence” asserted itself. “I must
preserve the evidence,” I said to myself, and found myself
subconsciously taking note that this trifling episode went to prove—as
I had always believed—that Anatole France was right in supposing that
we always, or at any rate usually, think in actual words.
The Bovril and the psychology together restored my self-confidence. I
began to reconstruct Harrison’s manner of death in my mind. He was quite
stiff. I tried to remember what I had read about _rigor mortis_. One
thinks one knows these things till it comes to the point. My impression
was that rigidity usually set in about six or seven hours after death,
and that it began in the neck and jaw and extended to the limbs and
trunk, going away in the same order, after an interval which I could not
remember. I braced myself up to go back to Harrison and feel him again.
The jaw was rigid, the limbs still fairly flexible. It seemed to me,
then, that he must have died some time that morning. I could not quite
recollect by what train Lathom had said he had come to town, but,
presumably, whenever it was, he had left Harrison fit and well. It was
now getting on for midnight on Saturday. Say Harrison had been dead six
hours—what then? I had no idea how long fungus-poisoning—if it was
fungus-poisoning—took to act. Presumably, it would depend on the amount
taken and the state of the victim’s heart.
What meal was it whose remains lay on the table? I looked into the
cupboard. In it there was a large cottage-loaf, uncut. On the table was
another from which a couple of slices or so seemed to have been taken.
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. If two loaves represented four days’
allowance before the carrier called again, the suggestion was that the
last meal had been taken some time on the Thursday. Say Harrison had
finished up the old loaf on Thursday morning, the remains probably
represented Thursday’s mid-day or evening meal. The cupboard also
contained about a pound of shin of beef, still in the paper in which the
butcher had wrapped it, and smelling and looking rather on the stale
side, a dried haddock, and a large quantity of tinned food. The meat was
not “off,” but the blood had dried and darkened. It looked as though the
carrier had left it on his Thursday’s visit. Evidently, therefore,
Harrison had been alive then to take it in. But since he had not cooked
it, I concluded that he must have been taken ill some time on the
Thursday night or Friday morning.
Pleased with these deductions, I reasoned a little further. How soon
after the meal had the trouble started? He had not cleared the table.
Was he the kind of tidy man who clears as he goes? Yes, I thought he
was. Then the illness had come on fairly soon after the meal. The chair
which had stood before the used plate was now lying on its side, as
though he had sprung up in a hurry and knocked it over. Searching about
on the floor, I came upon a pipe, filled, and scarcely smoked. There was
a cup, half-filled with coffee. I began to see Harrison, his supper
finished, his chair pushed back against the edge of the rug, his pipe
lit up, lingering over his after-dinner coffee. Suddenly he is gripped
with a spasm of pain or nausea. He jumps up, dropping his pipe. The
chair catches the edge of the carpet and falls over as he makes a dash
for the sink. He clings to the edge of it and is horribly sick. What
next?
I took up the candle and went out into the little yard at the back of
the house, where there was the usual primitive country convenience. It
occurred to me, as I pursued my sordid investigations, that the lot of
coroners’ officers, policemen, doctors and detectives was much more
disagreeable than sensational fiction would lead one to suppose. I soon
had enough of the yard and came in again.
After that—the bedroom, I supposed. And whiskey, of course. Pain and
exhaustion would call for spirits. Well, I knew where I had found the
whiskey and the tumbler. Then more sickness—by that time he had been
too bad to move. Then—I did not like the look of the broken bedstead.
How did one die of fungus-poisoning? Not peacefully, I supposed. There
was no peace in that twisted body and face. How long had the agony of
delirium and convulsion lasted? It must be a damnable thing to die in so
much pain, absolutely alone.
I did not like these ideas. I took a sheet from the other bed, and laid
it gently over Harrison’s body, being careful to disturb nothing. Then I
went back and sat by the fire.
At about half-past two, I heard voices outside, and opened the door to
Lathom, a police-sergeant, and a man who was introduced as Dr. Hughes of
Bovey Tracey. He was a brisk and confident middle-aged man, and brought
an atmosphere of reassurance along with him.
“Oh dear, yes,” he said, “I’m afraid he’s quite dead. Been dead for
seven or eight hours, if not more. How very unfortunate!” He drew a pair
of forceps from his pocket and rolled up the dead eyelids delicately.
“Mmm! The pupils are slightly contracted—looks as if your diagnosis
might be correct, Mr. Lathom. Poisoning of some kind seems indicated. No
tablets? Glasses? Anything of that sort?”
I produced the tumbler from under the bedclothes, and explained about
the whiskey-bottle.
“Oh, yes. Here, Sergeant—you’d better take charge of these.”
“The whiskey is all right,” I volunteered. “At least, we both had some
about three or fours ago, without any ill effects.”
“That was rash of you,” said Dr. Hughes, with a sort of grim smile.
“We’ll have to impound it, all the same.”
“The mushrooms are in here, doctor,” said Lathom, anxiously.
“Just a moment. I’ll finish here first.” He felt and flexed the body,
and looked it over carefully. “Was this bed like this when you left him?
No. Broken in a convulsion, probably. Yes. All right, Sergeant, you can
carry on here. I shall want the body and these bedclothes taken down to
the mortuary, just as they are. And any other utensils—”
Lathom pulled my arm. “Let’s clear out of this,” he urged. I stood my
ground. Something—either inquisitiveness or the novelist’s greed for
copy—impelled me to hang about and get in the way.
The doctor finished his investigations and covered the body up again.
“Now then,” he said, “that’s about all I can do for the moment. Where’s
this saucepan you were telling me about? Oh, yes. Fungus of some sort,
obviously, but I can’t say what by looking at it. That will all have to
go to London, Sergeant. When the Superintendent comes he’ll see the
things packed up. I’ll give you the address they’re to go to. Sir James
Lubbock, the Home Office Analyst—here you are, and you’ll see they
telephone him to expect them, won’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What will you do, Sergeant? Hold the fort here till they send down to
relieve you?”
“Yes, sir. The Superintendent will be here very soon, sir, I expect.
They’ve called him up.”
“Very well. Now I’d better be off. I’m wanted for a baby case. You’ll
find me out at Forbes’s place if you want me. Lucky I hadn’t started. I
don’t for a moment suppose anything will happen for hours, but it’s her
first, and they’re naturally fidgety. If I don’t get there pronto, it’ll
be B.B.A., out of pure cussedness, and I shall never hear the last of
it. Well, good night. Sorry I can’t give anybody a lift, but I’m going
out in the opposite direction.”
He hastened out, and we heard his car chug away down the lane. The
sergeant observed that it was a bad business all round, and suggested
that he should take down notes of what Lathom and I could tell him. I
found some logs in the outhouse and piled them on the fire till it
roared up the chimney. More and more I began to feel that this was a
scene from a book; it was like nothing in life at all. It was—hang
it—it was almost cosy. I should have ended, I think, by almost enjoying
it—the policeman’s voice cooing like the note of a fat wood-pigeon, the
ruddy blaze on his round face, the thick thumb that turned the pages of
his notebook, the pink tongue licking the stubby pencil, and Lathom,
talking, answering, explaining so lucidly (he had got over his
nervousness and was childishly eager to tell his story)—I could have
enjoyed it, if it had not been for a fear in the back of my mind.
The sun . . .
You do not want a description of that stiff, cold sunrise. I was facing
the window, and saw it—first a whiteness, then a hardening of the
sky-line—then a bluish reflection on the ceiling—then an uncertain
gleam under the blanket of cloud. The weather was going to change.
I got up and wandered out across the fields. The stream, far off, was
the only voice in the silence, and that was impersonal. It had no blood
nor life behind its chatter.
I wandered to the edge of the slope, where the valley plunged down,
gorse and heath and bracken all jumbled among the grey boulders, and
looked across to where the huge tors humped their granite shoulders over
the heights of Lustleigh Cleave. They looked grim enough.
What I was wondering was just this: Had Harrison ever guessed about his
wife and Lathom? What had Lathom said to him in those long, solitary
days? Had Harrison decided that his best way was to clear out from the
place where he was not wanted? I knew that, for all his irritating
mannerisms, the man had a sterling unselfishness in him—and it would
have been so easy for him—with his knowledge—to make a mistake on
purpose when he was gathering fungi.
Would anyone choose a death so painful? Well—a man only the other day
had committed suicide by pouring petrol over his clothes and setting
himself on fire. And nothing could be made to appear more natural than
this poison-death of Harrison’s. Why had Lathom been so anxious for me
to come down with him? Had he had doubts about his reception? Had he
expected something? Had Harrison—possibly—agreed, promised, even
hinted that Lathom might return to find the way clear? Or had Lathom
spoken some shattering word—shown irrefutable evidence—and left the
facts to do their bitter work?
A cock crew in the valley. A sheep said “Baa!” just behind me, so that I
started and laughed. This kind of thing was morbid, and Harrison was the
very last man to lay violent hands on himself. _He_ clear meekly out to
make way for a rival? Not likely!
I hurried back to the shack. The sergeant was dozing, his belt off and
his tunic unbuttoned. Lathom was staring into the fire with his chin on
his hands.
“Hullo, you two!” I said with unnecessary heartiness. The policeman
jerked awake. “Lor’ bless me,” he muttered apologetically. “I must ’a’
dropped off.”
“Why not?” said I. “Best way to pass the time. Look here, there’s a
pound of sausages in our kit that we brought down last night. How about
a bit of grub?”
We did not care about using any of the pots and pans in that place, so
we whittled a stick to a point, and toasted the sausages on that. They
tasted none the worse.
SECTION TWO
ANALYSIS
46. _Margaret Harrison to Harwood Lathom_
15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
20.10.29
OH, PETRA, MY DEAR, MY OWN DEAR AT LAST!
When I heard your voice on the ’phone this morning, telling me what had
happened, I didn’t know how to believe it. It all seemed so strange. And
when I hung the receiver up, I had to pinch myself to be sure it wasn’t
a dream. I went upstairs, and there was the girl in her dressing-gown on
the landing. She must have been hanging over the stairs, for she said,
“Oh, ma’am. Whatever’s happened? I heard the telephone a-ringing and
looked out and heard you talking. Has there been an accident, ma’am?” I
said, “Yes; a dreadful accident. Mr. Harrison’s dead.” She stared at me,
and I said, “He’s poisoned himself with eating some of those nasty
toadstools.” She began to cry, “I knew he would! Oh, ma’am, what an
awful thing. Such a nice gentleman as he was.” That seemed to make it
real, somehow. “A nice gentleman”—well, she wasn’t married to him. She
couldn’t know how I was feeling. That was just as well, wasn’t it,
Petra? She hung about and brought me some tea, sniffing and sobbing over
it. I couldn’t say anything, but that was all right. She thought I was
stunned with grief, I suppose. I did feel stunned. I can’t realise, even
now—though I’ve just seen it in the paper. Fancy that! People keep on
calling, but I’ve said I can’t see them. I want to be alone with my
freedom.
Oh, Petra—didn’t I tell you that God was on our side? Our love is so
beautiful, so _right_—He had to make a miracle happen to save it. Isn’t
it wonderful—without our doing anything at all! That shows how right it
was. I am so glad, now, that we didn’t do anything of the terrible
things we thought about. It would have been so dangerous—and we
might—I don’t know—we might have wondered afterwards. It would have
been like living over a volcano. And now, Heaven has stepped in and made
everything all right for ever and ever.
How glad I am you weren’t there when it happened. That seems like a
special providence, too, doesn’t it? Because you would have had to go
for a doctor, and then he might have recovered. And besides people might
have thought you had something to do with it—if they ever found out
about you and me, I mean. Doesn’t it seem like a judgment on him, Petra?
And I used to be so angry about his cooking and his toadstool book and
everything—and all the while he was digging a pit for himself to fall
into, like the wicked man in the Bible! It was all planned out from the
beginning, to set us free for our beautiful life together. What was that
thing people used to say—something in Latin about when God wishes to
destroy anybody He first makes him mad. He _was_ mad about the
toadstools and things, you know. Sometimes, when he had those dreadful
fits of temper, I used to think he was really and truly mad. I was
afraid of him then, but I see now there was nothing to be afraid of. It
was all meant to help us in the end.
And Petra—that other thing I was afraid of—you know—it’s all right!
Nothing is going to happen! It was just a mistake. Isn’t that splendid?
Because now we shan’t have to get married in such a hurry. That might
have made people talk, you know. We only have to wait a little bit
now—just a little patience, my sweetheart, and then—oh, Petra! Think
of the happiness! Everything has come right at once, hasn’t it, my
darling? All the clouds cleared away and the sun shining.
Well, now, darling—you won’t mind if I talk just a little bit of
business? It seems horrid to think of it, when our love ought to be the
one thing in our minds, but we must be a little bit practical. Of
course, I had to send for the lawyer this morning and he showed me the
will. There will be about £15,000 when it is all cleared up. Half of
this goes to his son, Paul, straight away, and I get the other half for
my lifetime, after which it would all go to my children—his and
mine—that is, if there were any, and failing them, it goes to Paul when
I die. So you see, I shall only be bringing you a small income, dear,
but you are making money now, so we shan’t be so badly off, shall we?
It’s funny—I suppose if you and I had really had a child, the law would
have presumed it was _his_ (think of that!), and then it would have
inherited the money! But I think perhaps it is better as it is. It might
not have seemed quite honourable to profit by anything that wasn’t quite
true, and I should like to feel that everything about our love was
absolutely clear and honourable, and that we had nothing to reproach
ourselves about. Of course, narrow-minded people might think our love
itself was wicked—but one can’t help loving, can one, darling? One
might as well tell the sun not to rise. Because you and I belong to one
another, and nothing in all the world can alter that. So you won’t mind
about the money, will you, Petra? I was afraid he might have made some
mean condition about my not marrying again, but I suppose he didn’t
think of that.
You will have to stay for the inquest, of course. Shall I have to go? I
don’t like the idea of standing up with everybody looking at me.
Besides, I can’t tell them anything, can I? Do you think he ought to be
buried down there or brought back to London? I want to do whatever you
think would look right. I have cabled to Paul, but he is so far away in
the wilds, I don’t know whether I shall get an answer in time. All these
things are so absurd and hateful. We surround death with such a lot of
hypocrisy and formality. It ought to be made just simple and beautiful,
like the leaves falling. I shall have to order mourning and a widow’s
veil—think of wearing black clothes when one is happy. I should like a
robe made of the rainbow—I’m wearing it in my heart, darling—all for
you!
Write quickly, dearest, and tell me what to do. And tell me that you are
as glad as I am and that you love me, love me, love me as I love you!
LOLO
47. _Extract from the “Morning Express” of Tuesday, October 21st, 1929_
MUSHROOM DEATH MYSTERY INQUEST
————
POISONED MAN’S LONE AGONY
————
WELL-KNOWN ARTIST GIVES EVIDENCE
————
The little schoolroom in the remote village of Manaton in Devon was
crowded to-day, when Dr. Pringle, the coroner for the district, opened
the inquest on the body of George Harrison, aged 56, Head of the
Accounts Department of Messrs. Frobisher, Wiley & Teddington, Electrical
Engineers, who was found dead under extraordinary circumstances in his
little cottage, “The Shack,” on Saturday night.
Evidence of the deceased’s curious hobbies was given by his friend, Mr.
Harwood Lathom, the brilliant young artist, who had been staying with
him in “The Shack,” and who discovered the body.
The deceased, who is the author of _Neglected Edible Treasures_, an
interesting and highly original volume, dealing with the foodstuffs to
be obtained from our native woods and hedgerows, was stated to have been
fond of experiments in unconventional cookery, and it was suggested that
he had fallen a victim to accidental poisoning, by consuming a dish of
venomous toadstools, a portion of which, it is alleged, was discovered
on the table in “The Shack” at the time of his death.
The inquest was adjourned for a fortnight, to enable a chemical analysis
to be made of certain organs.
After formal evidence of identification, the first witness called was
Mr. Harwood Lathom. Dressed in a suit of heathermixture plus-four tweeds
and with an expression of anxiety and distress on his face, Mr. Lathom
gave his evidence in a subdued tone.
SWEALED HEDGEHOG
Mr. Lathom said that he had known Mr. Harrison and his family for a
period of rather over twelve months. He had occupied the adjoining
maisonnette to theirs in Bayswater, and had there formed an acquaintance
with them, which had resulted in a considerable degree of intimacy. He
had painted a portrait of Mrs. Harrison, which had been exhibited in the
spring of 1929 at the Royal Academy. Financial and other considerations
had resulted in his giving up the lease of the maisonnette in February,
and going to live in Paris, but the friendship with the Harrisons had
been kept up by correspondence and occasional visits.
Mr. Harrison had been accustomed to take an annual holiday “on his own”
at “The Shack,” living a bachelor existence, and making the experiments
in natural cookery in which he was interested. He also painted in
water-colours. On Mr. Lathom’s return to England, in October, Mr.
Harrison had suggested that he should join him in his residence at “The
Shack.” They had gone down there together on Saturday, the 11th of
October, and had passed a very enjoyable holiday.
* * * * *
_The Coroner_: Will you explain the arrangements made about obtaining
supplies of food and so on?—Bread, meat and vegetables were brought,
when required, by the carrier, who called on Monday and Thursday, and
took the orders for his next visit. A supply of tinned food, including
condensed milk, was kept in “The Shack.” There was no delivery of
newspapers. Letters were fetched from the post-office at Manaton by
anybody who happened to be walking that way, or brought by the carrier
on his visits.
Who did the cooking and housework?—We shared the work of washing up,
carrying wood and so on. Mr. Harrison did all the cooking. He was a
first-class cook.
Did he supplement the fresh and tinned meat and so on, with what may be
called experiments in natural diet?—Oh yes. One evening we had swealed
hedgehog, for example. (Laughter.)
Was it good?—It was delicious. (Laughter.)
“I NEVER ATE ANY TOADSTOOLS”
_The Coroner_: Hedgehog—was that the only unconventional dish you saw
prepared?—No. On two or three occasions Mr. Harrison gathered fungi of
various kinds and had them for breakfast or supper.
Did these fungi include the ordinary mushroom of commerce?—On one
occasion, yes.
Did you eat any of that dish?—I ate a small quantity. I do not care
much for mushrooms.
And on the other occasions?—On, I think, two occasions, Mr. Harrison
brought in other fungi, which, he explained, were good to eat. A great
number of fungi are to be found in the valleys and damp, low-lying spots
in the neighbourhood. One variety was called, I believe, Chantarelles,
or some such name, and there was also a purple one, called “Amethyst”
something-or-other.
These were fungi of a kind not usually eaten by the ordinary person? The
sort commonly called toadstools.—Yes; common, wild fungi.
Was the flavour of them agreeable?—I do not know. They smelt very
savoury, but I did not eat any of them.
How was that?—I did not think it was safe. I was afraid of eating
something poisonous.
You knew that a great many edible varieties of fungi exist in addition
to the common mushroom? There is a Government publication dealing with
them, I believe?—I believe there is.
And Mr. Harrison was considered an authority on the subject?—I do not
know if he was generally so considered. He had devoted much attention to
the subject and had written a book on our natural food resources.
Had you read the book?—I had read parts of it.
But you did not feel sufficient confidence in the deceased’s judgment to
partake of the toadstools yourself?—I suppose I did not. These things
are largely a matter of prejudice. I did not care about the idea of
eating toadstools.
UNHEEDED WARNINGS
_The Coroner_: But Mr. Harrison ate them and was none the worse.—Oh,
certainly. He appeared to enjoy them very much and there were no
ill-effects.
Did you ever remonstrate with the deceased about his habit of eating
these dangerous fungi?—I told him I was afraid there would an accident
some day. The subject had frequently been mentioned previously, when he
was preparing his book. Mrs. Harrison and his friends often said, more
or less jokingly, that there would be a coroner’s inquest on him one of
these days.
And how did the deceased receive these warnings?—He laughed, and said
it was all ignorance and prejudice. He said there was no danger at all
for anybody who had thoroughly studied the subject.
Can you tell us how these dishes of fungi were prepared?—He had several
methods. Sometimes he would grill them with butter and garlic, and other
times he would stew them with condensed milk or in beef-stock. He was
fond of inventing new methods of cooking things.
“I AM GOING TO HUNT FOR FUNGI”
_The Coroner_: Now let us come to the time of the death. You had gone up
to London, I think?—Yes. I had occasion to consult my agents and to
transact a few matters of business in town. I went up by the 8.13 from
Bovey Tracey on the Thursday morning. I had ordered a taxi the day
before.
Was Mr. Harrison quite well when you left him?—Perfectly. He was in
particularly good spirits. He had risen early, with the intention of
gathering a certain kind of fungus for his supper. It was one particular
sort which he said he knew where to get.
Do you recollect its name?—I am not sure. I think he called it “Warty
Hat.” (Laughter.) He said he knew of a wood where it was very plentiful.
I have here a copy of Mr. Harrison’s book. I see there is a fungus
mentioned as being of an edible nature, called “Warty Caps.” Would that
be the one? Its Latin name is _Amanita rubescens_.—I should think that
would be the one.
Had Mr. Harrison started out before you left?—No. He saw me off at the
gate into the lane.
POISONED DEATH AGONY
Mr. Lathom then stated that he had returned to “The Shack” late on
Saturday night, bringing with him Mr. John Munting, a mutual friend of
himself and the Harrisons, and the author of a successful novel.
Arriving at “The Shack” at about eleven o’clock, they found the place in
darkness and the fire out. The remains of a dish of mushrooms was on the
table in the outer room, together with the shells of some boiled eggs, a
loaf of bread and a cup one-quarter filled with coffee.
On penetrating into the inner room, they discovered the body of
Harrison, lying half-dressed on the bed. It was cold when found, and the
features much distorted. Various articles in the room were flung about
in a disorderly fashion and the trestle-bedstead was broken. Both in
this and in the outer room there were signs that the dead man had
vomited persistently. A bottle of whiskey and a tumbler were found
beneath the bed.
As there is no telephone communication between “The Shack” and Manaton,
Mr. Lathom was obliged to go on foot to summon assistance. The landlord
of the inn at Manaton telephoned to the police-station at Bovey Tracey.
Sergeant Warbeck, who received the message, communicated at once with
Dr. Hughes, and proceeded in the doctor’s car to the scene of the
tragedy.
* * * * *
_The Coroner_: Was Mr. Harrison a man of cheerful disposition?—He was a
reserved man of quiet tastes and behaviour on the whole, though subject
to occasional fits of annoyance about trifles.
During the time you were with him at “The Shack,” did he appear to have
anything on his mind?—Certainly not: he was in excellent spirits.
In your opinion, he was not a man likely to lay violent hands on
himself?—Far from it. I was convinced at the time, and still am, that
his death was a pure accident, due to some fungi he had eaten.
It came as a great surprise to you?—Well, of course, I was very much
shocked and upset, but when I came to think it over—no, I cannot say I
was greatly surprised.
Dr. Hughes gave evidence that he had examined the body of Harrison and
formed the opinion that when seen by him at about 1.30 a.m. deceased had
been dead seven or eight hours. He had had the body removed to Bovey
Tracey for the purpose of an autopsy. Acting in collaboration with the
police, he had sent certain organs, portions of bed-linen, and remains
of food to be chemically analysed.
* * * * *
_The Coroner_: At this point of the inquiry, can you form any conclusion
as to the cause of the death?—The appearances suggest that deceased was
poisoned by some substance which produced violent sickness and diarrhœa,
followed by prolonged delirium and convulsions, ending in coma and
death. The pupils of the eyes were slightly contracted, suggesting also
the action of a poison.
Would fugus-poisoning have this effect?—Yes, and so would certain other
vegetable poisons; opium, for example. It is, however, unusual for the
appearance to persist so long after death. I do not place much reliance
upon this symptom.
Do the general symptoms, as noted by you, appear to point to poisoning
by a deadly fungus?—They are consistent with that possibility.
Dr. Hughes added that there were no exterior signs of the application of
physical violence.
WIDOW SHEDS TEARS
Mr. John Munting confirmed Mr. Lathom’s evidence in every particular.
A rustle of sympathy went round the little court when the widow, Mrs.
Margaret Harrison, appeared in the box. Fashionably but quietly dressed
in a black face-cloth costume and closely-fitting cloche hat, Mrs.
Harrison gave her evidence in a voice so subdued as to be scarcely
audible.
She declared that her husband had greatly looked forward to this country
holiday. On such occasions he was accustomed to go to “The Shack” by
himself, or with a male friend. She never accompanied him to “The
Shack.” On previous holidays he had frequently taken as his companion
his son by an earlier marriage, Mr. Paul Harrison, a civil engineer, now
absent in Central Africa. She had always understood that the deceased
cooked for himself at “The Shack,” and made experiments with
unconventional foodstuffs.
She had warned him again and again of the danger attending such
experiments, but deceased had great confidence in his ability to
distinguish edible varieties of plants from the poisonous kinds, and
always laughed at any remonstrance.
On being asked whether the deceased was a man who might be considered
likely to take his own life, the widow replied indignantly:
“He had no reason to do such a dreadful thing, and I am sure he was the
last person to think of it.”
The witness here broke down and sobbed violently, and had to be assisted
to her seat.
The coroner then adjourned the inquest for a fortnight to permit of an
analysis of the contents of the viscera and the various articles found
in the house.
48. _Extract from the “Morning Express” of Wednesday, November 5th,
1929_
SIR JAMES LUBBOCK ON SHACK POISON DRAMA
————
“ACCIDENTAL DEATH” VERDICT
————
CORONER’S WARNING WORDS TO PARENTS
————
Startling evidence was given to-day at the resumed inquest at Manaton on
the body of George Harrison, 56 years old, of 15, Whittington Terrace,
Bayswater, who was found dead under mysterious circumstances in the
lonely cottage known as “The Shack,” on Saturday, October 19th.
At the previous sitting of the coroner’s jury, evidence was given by the
well-known artist, Mr. Harwood Lathom, of his finding of the body on
returning with Mr. John Munting, author of _I to Hercules_, from a brief
visit to London. Mr. Lathom, who had been spending his holiday alone in
“The Shack” with Mr. Harrison, described the curious bachelor life led
by the deceased at “The Shack,” and his habit of cooking and eating
unconventional dishes of hedgehogs, mushrooms and other natural objects.
HOME OFFICE EXPERT AND “DEADLY FUNGUS”
Sir James Lubbock, the Home Office Analyst, was the first witness to be
called at the resumed inquest. He stated that he had made an analysis of
the contents of the stomach and other organs of the deceased, together
with vomited matter obtained from the bedclothes and elsewhere. He had
also analysed the remains of a dish of mushrooms and other articles of
diet found on the table.
“From the stomach, the vomited matter, and from the unconsumed portion
of the dish of fungus,” said Sir James, “I obtained by analysis a
considerable quantity of a substance known as _muscarine_, which is the
poisonous principle of a fungus, _Amanita muscaria_, or the Fly Agaric.”
Sir James added that, estimating the amount of the poison which had been
rejected from the body in the course of the sickness, he came to the
conclusion that deceased must have consumed a very large quantity of the
poison.
Sufficient to cause death?—Certainly. Muscarine is an exceedingly
deadly poison.
What would be the symptoms of poisoning by muscarine?—They vary in
different cases. Generally speaking, a sensation of acute sickness would
be experienced almost immediately after the meal, followed by violent
vomiting and diarrhœa. There might also be a feeling of suffocation and
dizziness, sometimes accompanied by blindness. The victim would suffer
acute distress and intense depression and fear of death. Unconsciousness
might supervene, or there might be violent convulsions and prolonged
delirium. Death would probably ensue as a result of respiratory
paralysis.
Will you explain that more simply to the jury?—The poison would
paralyse the muscles of the throat and chest, and the victim would be
unable to breathe and would die of suffocation.
You have seen that Dr. Hughes mentioned in his evidence that the pupils
of the eyes were slightly contracted when he first saw the body. What
conclusion do you draw from that?—I cannot definitely say. Myosis (that
is, contraction of the pupils) is characteristic of the effects of
certain poisons, including muscarine, but the contraction usually
disappears at death, though, curiously enough, in the case of eserine, a
pronounced myosis has been found five hours after death. I should regard
a slight degree of contraction as consistent with muscarine poisoning,
but not, in itself, conclusive evidence one way or another.
Have you ever seen a case of muscarine poisoning?—I have seen perhaps
half a dozen cases in my own experience, mostly among children who had
eaten the Fly Agaric in mistake for an edible mushroom. One case, I
remember, was brought to the hospital too late for anything to be done,
and the patient expired in convulsions after a period of
unconsciousness. Three or four were treated by the injection of atropin
and recovered completely. Another case was not brought to my notice till
after the symptoms had cleared up of their own accord; in this case the
amount eaten was very small.
Such cases are not always fatal?—By no means. If the proper treatment
can be given immediately, the prognosis is favourable. Without such
treatment, however, and where a large quantity of the poison is
consumed, recovery would be less likely.
_The Coroner_: In your opinion, what was the cause of death in the case
of Mr. Harrison?
_Sir James Lubbock_: I have not the slightest doubt that he died of
poisoning by muscarine, taken in the dish of fungus submitted to me for
analysis.
Sir James further added that the Fly Agaric, _Amanita muscaria_, was
frequently found in woods and sheltered places, and was liable to be
eaten in mistake for another member of the same family, _Amanita
rubescens_, or Warty Caps, an edible fungus which it very closely
resembled.
Reference was made to the Government publication, _Edible and Poisonous
Fungi_, and to the book _Neglected Edible Treasures_, written by the
deceased, and pictures of the fungi in question were passed round among
the jury.
Questioned with regard to the eggs, bread, coffee, whiskey and other
articles of diet found in “The Shack,” Sir James said he had subjected
them all to careful analysis, without discovering anything of a
deleterious character.
DECEASED SEEN GATHERING FUNGI
Dr. Hughes of Bovey Tracey, who performed the autopsy, said that he had
found the heart of the deceased very greatly dilated, a symptom
characteristic of poisoning by _Amanita muscaria_.
Harold Coffin, a labourer, gave evidence that he had met with deceased
on the morning of October 17th. He had a satchel slung over his
shoulder, and appeared to be searching for something on the ground. The
time would be about 8 a.m. Deceased was then entering a small wood
situated in the valley below Manaton. The witness had frequently seen
deceased wandering about the country, sometimes with a sketching-easel
and sometimes gathering plants and roots. Deceased had sometimes
conversed with the witness about making a meal of unnatural things, such
as nettles and toadstools, and witness had always supposed him to be a
little peculiar in his head.
Henry Trefusis, a carrier, stated that he had delivered a loaf of bread,
a pound of shin of beef and other provisions to “The Shack,” at 10.30
a.m., on Thursday, October 17th. Deceased had called out to him from the
outhouse to put the goods on the window-sill. As far as he could see and
hear, deceased was then in his usual health and spirits.
Mr. Lathom, recalled, confirmed his previous statement that Mr. Harrison
had spoken to him on the Wednesday evening about his intention of
gathering fungi the next day, and had mentioned a name resembling “Warty
Hats” or “Warty Caps.”
The coroner, in summing up the evidence to the jury, laid stress on the
danger of experimenting in unusual articles of diet. It was notorious,
he said, that other nations, such as the French, were accustomed to eat
many natural products, such as frogs, snails, dandelions and various
kinds of fungi, which in this country were considered unfit for human
food. Such experiments, when conducted by highly expert persons, might
sometimes turn out well, but, on the other hand, nobody was infallible,
and undoubtedly a wise caution was in most cases to be preferred. Sir
James Lubbock had cited some very sad instances of unfortunate children
who had succumbed to the effects of accidentally eating those dangerous
toadstools which unhappily grew in such great profusion in many parts of
the country, and he would like to urge on all parents the advisability
of strictly forbidding their boys and girls to tamper with anything
which they might pick up on their rambles. The present case would serve
as a terrible warning, which he hoped would not soon be forgotten. It
was most unfortunate that, owing to the remote situation of “The Shack”
and the unlucky absence of Mr. Lathom in London, there should have been
no help at hand when the deceased was overtaken by this terrible
accident. The circumstances of his lonely and agonising death were such
as to arouse the deepest compassion for the widow and son of the
deceased.
The jury, after a few minutes’ consultation, brought in a verdict of
Accidental Death, due to poisoning by _Amanita muscaria_. The foreman
said that the jury desired to express their deep sympathy with the
bereaved family. They would also like to add a rider to the effect that
teachers in the schools of the surrounding districts should be
encouraged to warn their pupils against the eating of toadstools, and
that charts displaying the various kinds of poisonous fungi should be
hung in the classrooms.
[An article on Fungi, by Professor Brookes, the distinguished
naturalist, will be found on p. 8.]
49. _Statement by Paul Harrison_
I was in Africa when the news of my father’s death reached me. The work
on which I was engaged was nearly completed, and I at once made
arrangements for handing over the concluding portions of the job and
returning to England. It took a little time to settle all this and to
arrange for my journey to the coast, and it was not till the 6th of
January, 1930, that I arrived in London.
From the moment that I heard the cause of death assigned, I was
positively convinced that there was no accident about it. My father’s
expert knowledge of fungi was very great; and he was a man of almost
exaggerated precision in matters of this kind. It was entirely
incredible to me that he could ever have mistaken a stool of _Amanita
muscaria_ for _Amanita rubescens_, even in the gathering of it; far more
so that he could have peeled and prepared the fungus for eating without
noticing the difference. To the average coroner’s jury, accustomed to
dealing with schoolchildren and trippers, such a mistake would no doubt
seem perfectly natural; but my father was no more likely to take
_Muscaria_ for _Rubescens_ than to take a piece of cast-iron for a piece
of chilled steel. I immediately scouted the whole idea of accident. Two
possibilities remained for me to investigate. Either my father, in his
unselfish devotion to the worthless woman he had married, had destroyed
himself by a painful method which would look like accident and so disarm
suspicion; or else he had been murdered. In either case, I was
determined that the woman should not benefit by the crime which she had
caused.
Feeling as I did towards Margaret Harrison, I could not bring myself to
take up my residence at my father’s house. I therefore took a room at an
hotel in the Bloomsbury district, which has the advantage of being
central, and set myself to examine the problem under all its aspects.
I read and re-read carefully all the newspaper reports of the inquest,
and also all the letters which my father had written to me during the
last two years. The most important of these latter I have included among
the documents submitted to you. There was another, the essentials of
which are covered by Mr. Munting’s statement, which mentioned that Miss
Agatha Milsom had had to be “put away,” and that the character of Mr.
Munting was accordingly considered to have been cleared from suspicion.
I fastened at once upon this incident. I had naturally never believed
that Miss Milsom’s version of this episode was the true one. I believed
my father to have been quite correct in his original suspicions. Miss
Milsom’s illness had, I decided, enabled Munting to pull the wool over
his victim’s eyes very nicely. Margaret Harrison and Munting had been
corresponding all along, until the convenient decease of my father set
them free to come together again after a decent interval.
This suggestion led me directly to the idea of suicide. In some way my
father’s eyes had been opened to what was going on; and the agent must
undoubtedly have been Lathom. He was Munting’s friend and, deliberately
or unconsciously, he must have let fall some words during his stay at
“The Shack” which made the situation plain. I thought it probable that
this young man had played a double-faced part, and forwarded Munting’s
interests under pretence of being friendly with my father. As regards
the idea of murder, Munting appeared to have an alibi. His arrival with
Lathom on the Saturday night had been witnessed, and I did not think it
likely that he could have made any earlier appearance in that
sparsely-populated district without being seen. It seemed possible that
he and Lathom had been confederates, and committed the murder in
collusion; but at the moment I was inclined to think that my father had
been hounded into self-destruction by this precious pair, or rather
trio.
It seemed to me that any first step must be to see Margaret Harrison.
She would learn before long that I was in London, from my father’s
solicitors, with whom I necessarily had business. It was better,
therefore, to call on her at once, both to prevent her from suspecting
my suspicions and to keep up appearances in the eyes of the
neighbourhood.
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 an 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 wot 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 ’appens 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’ for ’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 eating 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 did, if you
understand me, sir.”
I made no answer. She took the kettle off and filled the tea-pot.
“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 know ’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—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 educations 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.”
“There was no foundation for it, then?”
“None whatever.”
“Then why did your friend Munting take it lying down, and let himself be
kicked out of the house?”
“I wish you wouldn’t keep on calling him ‘my friend Munting,’ as if you
took us for a pair of undesirables,” he retorted, irritably. He picked
at his eggs and bacon, and pushed the plate away again.
“What else could he do but go? Your father was perfectly
unreasonable—wouldn’t have listened to the Archangel Gabriel. Anyway,
the more you protest about these matters, the less you’re believed.
Munting did the right thing—cleared out and married somebody else.
Couldn’t have a row with a man twice his age, you know.”
I got up.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Lathom. I’m sorry to have troubled you. I am
very glad to have your assurance. Mr. Munting is in town, I suppose?”
“You’re not going to rake it all up with him?”
“I should feel more satisfied if I had had a word with him,” I answered.
“I wouldn’t. You can take my word for it. I mean to say, there’s Mrs.
Munting to be considered.”
“I shouldn’t say anything to her. After all, it’s surely natural enough
that I should wish to have Mr. Munting’s account of the business.”
“Yes—oh yes, I suppose it is.” He still looked worried and
dissatisfied. “Well, good-bye. If you really must see Munting, here’s
his address.”
As I opened the door of the studio, I nearly tripped over Mrs. Cutts,
who was washing the linoleum. She came and let me out at the house-door.
“Puttin’ yer money on the wrong horse, young man, ain’t you?” she
whispered.
“Look here,” I said, “you know something about this.”
“That’s as may be,” said she, slyly. “Mrs. Cutts knows ’ow to govern ’er
tongue. An unruly member, ain’t it, sir? That’s wot the Bible says.”
“I’ve no time to waste,” I answered; “if you have anything to say to me,
you will find me at my hotel.” I mentioned the name, and then, with a
certain disgust at the business, slipped half a crown into her hand.
She curtseyed, and I left her bobbing and dipping on the doorstep.
I cursed myself for a fool as I set off to find Munting. Undoubtedly
Lathom would have warned him by telephone of what to expect. I was sure
of it when I saw him. He struck me as conceited and pretentious—the
usual type of modern literary man.
He was perfectly polite, however; assured me in a tone of the utmost
sincerity that the story about himself and Margaret Harrison was
entirely unfounded, and referred me back to Lathom for evidence as to my
father’s state of mind in the week preceding his death.
Finding myself quite unable to penetrate this polished surface of
propriety, I took my leave. The manner of both men left me in no doubt
that there was something to conceal, but I could get no farther than a
moral certainty.
Mrs. Cutts seemed to offer the best hope of information, but I could not
as yet reconcile myself to handling so dirty a tool. It occurred to me
that it might possibly be worth while to get hold of Miss Milsom. I was
not at all clear in my mind that her madness might not have some method
in it.
At first I could not think how to trace her. I could have asked Margaret
Harrison, of course, but I did not want to do that. Finally, I decided
to call on the local padre, the Rev. Theodore Perry, and see if he knew
where his lost sheep had strayed to.
I knew him well, of course, and it did not seem unnatural that I should
ask after the welfare of a woman who had been for some time in my
father’s employment. I sandwiched the question in, in the course of a
casual conversation, and he told me at once what he knew.
“Poor woman, I’m afraid she is not altogether normal. One hopes it is
only a passing phase. I don’t quite know where she is—one of these
nursing-homes of the modern sort, I think. Her sister, Mrs. Farebrother,
would be able to tell you. No, I don’t suppose they are very well off.
The fees in these places are high. In the days of faith—or
superstition, if you like—a convent or a béguinage would have provided
the proper asylum for such a case, with some honest work to do and a
harmless emotional outlet—but nowadays they make you pay for
everything, not only your pleasures.”
He gave me Mrs. Farebrother’s address, and I said I would see what could
be done. He smiled at me in a futile, clerical way, and said it would be
a work of charity.
I left him, feeling anything but charitable, and went to see Mrs.
Farebrother. She seemed to be a good, honest, sensible woman, worried by
family and financial cares, and accepted gratefully my suggestion of a
small pension, during the period that her sister might be requiring
medical care.
The interview with Agatha Milsom was a painful one to me. The woman is
undoubtedly quite unbalanced, with a disagreeable sex-antagonism at the
bottom of her mania. According to her, my father had treated his wife
with abominable cruelty, and I was obliged to listen for a long time to
her rambling accusations. The name of John Munting roused her to such
excitement that I was afraid she would make herself ill; unfortunately,
I could get nothing reliable out of her. For one thing, she was obsessed
with the idea that he had had designs upon her maiden modesty, and for
another, many of her statements were so ludicrous that they cast
suspicion over the rest.
As regards my father, however, I obtained one thing. I suggested that
her memory of certain domestic incidents might be at fault, and in proof
of her assertions she promised to get back from her sister, and send to
me, all the letters she had written home during the previous two years.
It seemed to me that, since her mental deterioration had come on only
gradually, the letters written at the time might possibly be considered
to attain a reasonable level of accuracy. She kept her promise, and from
this correspondence I selected the letters of relevant date, and these
are the documents included in this dossier. It will be seen that great
allowance must be made for bias; that much conceded, the statements may,
I think, be accepted as having a basis in fact.
I need not say how distressing they were to me. They cast a light upon
the miserable domestic conditions which my father had had to endure. I
regretted most bitterly that I had taken over that work in Central
Africa, thus leaving him to the undiluted companionship of a selfish,
discontented wife and a semi-demented and vulgar woman. My father was
not the man to go abroad for the sympathy he could not find at home, and
it was no wonder that he had welcomed the acquaintanceship of two young
men who could, at least, make some pretence of entering into his
interests.
But the thing which emerged from the letters with startling illumination
was the intimate footing upon which Lathom had stood with the whole
household. As may be seen by the few letters included above, my father
was by no means a gossipy correspondent, and I had not realised that
Lathom had become so much of a tame cat about the drawing-room. I had
thought of him as being my father’s friend almost entirely, and I
believe that my father himself took that view, and, wittingly or
unwittingly, gave me that impression. But it now seemed clear to me that
this was not so, and that, what with my father’s innocent pleasure in
the apparent admiration and friendliness of this brilliant young man,
and what with the perverse misconception of the wretched Agatha Milsom,
we had all been “led up the garden,” as the expression is.
I saw now why both Lathom and Munting, standing by one another in a
conspiracy of silence, had been able to deny with such obvious sincerity
that there had ever been an undue intimacy between Munting and Margaret
Harrison. Lathom had said that my father’s last days had been free from
suspicion; I saw now that this was possible. I also saw why Lathom had
been so unwilling that I should ask Munting the same question, and why
Munting had referred me back to Lathom for the answer. Munting must, I
thought, be considered cleared of any offence except a refusal to betray
his friend’s confidence; and I was obliged to confess that most people
would think he had acted rightly. Lathom, too, had kept to the code of
what is usually called honour in these matters. As for Margaret
Harrison—but from her I had never expected anything but lies.
But if this was the truth, why should my father have committed suicide?
For I still did not believe in the theory of accident. Either something
must have opened his eyes during Lathom’s visit to town, or else that
other, darker suspicion, which I had hardly liked to glance at, was only
too well-founded.
I am a business man. I have the business man’s liking for facts. To me,
an expert’s knowledge is a fact. Experts occasionally make mistakes, but
to me it appears far less probable that an expert should be mistaken
than that an artist and a woman should be unprincipled. And I cannot
make it too clear that my father’s expert knowledge in the matter of
fungi was to be trusted. I would as cheerfully stake my life on the
wholesomeness of a dish prepared by my father as on the stability of a
girder-stress calculated by my chief, Sir Maurice Berkeley. But I would
not venture a five-pound note on the honesty or virtue of such people as
Lathom and Margaret Harrison.
But to prove the truth of my suspicions, I needed more facts—the sort
of facts that a jury would accept. To them, my father’s knowledge of
fungi would not be a fact at all.
I turned the matter over in my mind, and eventually came to the
conclusion that, whether I liked it or not, I must see the woman Cutts.
I hoped that she would come to me, but several days passed and I saw
nothing of her. Either the creature had no facts to sell, or she was
holding off in the hope of securing better terms. I saw through her
artifice well enough, but I saw also that she had me at a disadvantage.
Eventually, and with great reluctance, I wrote to her as follows,
addressing the letter to Lathom’s studio.
“Mrs. Cutts—
“Madam,—When I saw you the other morning at Mr. Lathom’s
studio, you suggested that you might be in a position to do some
work for me. I shall possibly be requiring some assistance of
this kind in the near future, and shall be obliged if you would
call on me one evening at my hotel to discuss the matter.”
On the second day after dispatching this, I was informed that a lad was
waiting downstairs to see me. I went down and found a ferrety-eyed
youth, who introduced himself as Archie Cutts.
“Oh, yes,” I said, “you have come about the work I mentioned to your
mother.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied. “Mother says as she can’t bring it ’ere, not
’avin’ the tools by ’er, but if you was to come down to our place on
Friday, the party as she obliges bein’ out that night, she would be
willing to make an arrangement.”
This was disagreeable.
“If I am to take that trouble,” said I, “I shall want to know, first,
whether your mother is likely to be able to do what I want.”
He looked cunningly at me with his shifty eyes.
“Mother says she could show you letters from a lady as you know very
well, only she won’t trust ’em to me, bein’ valuable to ’er and not
wantin’ to lose ’em.”
“Oh, I see,” said I, loudly, “testimonials, eh? Letters of
recommendation. I see. And your mother thinks she understands what is
required and would be able to give satisfaction?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did she say anything about terms?”
“She says she’ll leave that to you, sir, w’en you see the work.”
“Very well.” There was nothing to be got by argument. “Tell your mother
I will try and find time to call on her on Friday evening.”
“Yes, sir. Nine o’clock would suit mother best.”
I made the appointment for nine, and gave the lad a shilling for his
trouble. At nine o’clock on the Friday evening I found myself knocking
at a dilapidated door in a long drab street of very squalid houses. The
ferret-eyed lad let me in, and I saw, with considerable repulsion, my
former acquaintance, seated in some pomp at a round table, containing a
lamp, a wool mat and a family Bible.
She greeted me with a condescending nod, and the youth withdrew.
“Well, now,” I said, “Mrs. Cutts, you have asked me to come and see you,
and I hope you are not wasting my time, because I am a very busy man.”
This forlorn effort to establish my dignity made no impression on her.
“That’s for you to say, sir,” said she. “I wasn’t for intrudin’ on you.
I am a respectable woman, thank God, and can maintain myself in my
station by ’ard work, and never ’ad no complaints. Not but wot I’d be
willin’ to oblige a gentleman if ’e was requirin’ my services, not bein’
too proud to do a favour.”
“Quite so,” said I, “and if you can do the work I want, I will see that
it is made worth your while.”
“Wot sort of work was you thinkin’ of, sir?”
“I gathered from what you said to me,” I answered, “that you thought you
might be able to throw some light on the circumstances of my father’s
death.”
“That’s as may be. There’s ways and ways of dyin’. Some is took, and
some takes French leave, and others is ’elped out of life, ain’t they,
sir?”
“Have you got any information to show that my father was helped out of
life?”
“Well, there, sir. I wouldn’t go for to say sech a thing—nor yet for to
deny it, ’uman nature bein’ that wicked as you can see for yourself any
Sunday in the _News of the World_. But wot I says is, w’en persons is
wicked enough to ’ave goin’s on be’ind a gentleman’s back, there’s no
knowin’ wot may come of it, is there?”
“You said you had letters to show me.”
“Ah!” she nodded. “There’s good readin’ in letters sometimes, sir.
There’s letters as would be worth ’undreds of pounds in a court of law,
to some people as one might name.”
“Come, come, Mrs. Cutts,” said I, “very few letters are worth anything
like that.”
“That’s not for me to judge, sir. If letters should turn out not to be
worth nothin’, why, they’re easy destroyed, ain’t they, sir? There’s
many a person I daresay wishes that ’e, or it might be she, sir, ’ad
destroyed the letters wot they ’ad written. I was never one for writin’
letters myself. A word’s as good, and leaves nothin’ but air be’ind it,
that’s wot I say. And them as leaves letters about casual-like, might
often be grateful for a word of warnin’ from them as is wiser’n
themselves.”
Her screwed-up eyes twinkled with consciousness of power.
“A word of warnin’ is soon given, and may be worth ’undreds. I ain’t got
no call to press you, sir. I ain’t dependent on anybody, thank God.”
“Look here,” I said, briskly, “it’s no use beating about the bush. I
must see these letters before I know what they’re worth to me. For all I
know they’re not worth twopence.”
“Well, I ain’t unreasonable,” said the hag. “Fair and square is my
motter. Ef I was to show you dockyments ter prove as your pa’s missis
was sweet on my young gentleman there, would that be worth anything to
you, sir?”
“That’s rather vague,” I fenced. “People may be fond of one another and
no great harm done.”
“Wot may seem no ’arm to some may be great ’arm to a right-thinking
person,” said Mrs. Cutts, unctuously. “You can ask all about this
neighbour’ood, sir, and they’ll tell you Mrs. Cutts is a lawful married
woman, as works ’ard and keeps ’erself to ’erself as the sayin’ is. Not
but wot there’s a-many things as a ’ard-workin’ woman in these parts ’as
to shet her eyes to, and can’t be blamed for wot is not ’er business.
But there is limits, and w’en people is writin’ to people as isn’t their
own lawful ’usbands about bein’ in the fambly way and about others as
_is_ their lawful ’usbands not ’avin’ the right to exist, and w’en them
lawful ’usbands dies sudden not so very long arter, then wot I ses is,
it might be worth while for them as is right-thinkin’ and ’ose place it
is to interfere, to ’ave them there dockyments kep’ in a safe place.”
I tried not to let her see how deeply I was interested in these hints.
“This is all talk,” I said. “Show me the letters, and then we can get
down to brass tacks.”
“Ah!” said Mrs. Cutts. “And supposin’ my young gentleman should come
’ome and look for them letters, as it might be to-night, wot a peck of
trouble I might be in. Do right and shame the devil is my motter, but
motters won’t feed a fambly o’ children when a ’ard-workin’ woman loses
’er job—now, will they, sir?”
I thought the time had come to lend an air of business to the bargain. I
drew a five-pound note from my pocket, and let it crackle pleasantly
between my fingers. Her eyelids twitched, but she said nothing.
“Before we go any further,” I said, “I must look at the letters and see
that they are actually from the person you mention, and that they are of
genuine interest to me. In the meanwhile, since I have put you to some
trouble—”
I pushed the note towards her, but held my hand over it.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t mind lettin’ you ’ave a look. Looks breaks no
bones, as the sayin’ is.” She fumbled in a remote pocket beneath her
skirt and produced a small packet of papers.
“My eyes ain’t so good as they was,” she added, with sudden caution.
“’Ere, Archie!”
The ferrety youth (who must have been listening at the door) answered
the summons with suspicious promptness. I noticed that he had provided
himself with a formidable-looking stick and immediately pushed my chair
back against the wall. Mrs. Cutts slowly detached one letter from the
bundle, and spread it out flat on the table, disengaging it from its
folds with a well-licked thumb.
“W’ich one is this, Archie?”
The youth glanced sideways at the letter and replied:
“That’s the do-something-quick-one, Mother.”
“Ah! and w’ich is the one about the pore gentleman as was done in in a
play?”
“’Ere you are, Mother.”
She slid the letters across to meet my hand. I released the note; she
released the letters and the exchange was affected.
These were the letters numbered 43 and 44, and dated August 2nd and
October 5th respectively, as above. If you will glance back to them, you
will see that they offered valuable evidence.
I at once recognised them for genuine documents in my stepmother’s
handwriting.
“How many letters have you?”
“Well, there’s more than I ’ave ’ere. But them as I ’old in my ’and,
w’ich makes eight, countin’ them two, is the ones as ’ud interest
anybody as wanted to know w’y a gentleman might die sudden.”
“Are there any that say definitely how he died or what he died of?”
“No,” said Mrs. Cutts, “I wouldn’t deceive a gentleman like you, sir.
Tell the truth, likewise fair and square. Them eight letters, sir, is
wot they calls excitements to murder, and would be so considered by any
party as might ’appen to receive them. But as for saying in so many
words ‘weed-killer’ or ‘prussic acid,’ I will not say as you will find
them words in black and white.”
“That, of course, detracts from their value,” I said carelessly. “These
letters are evidence of sad immorality, no doubt, Mrs. Cutts, but it’s
one thing to wish a person dead and another to kill him.”
“There ain’t sech a great difference,” said Mrs. Cutts, a little shaken.
“It says in the Bible—‘’E that ’ateth ’is brother is a murderer,’ now,
don’t it, sir? And there’s some as sits on juries ’as the same way of
thinkin’.”
“Maybe,” said I, “but all the same, it’s not proof.”
“Very good, sir,” said Mrs. Cutts with dignity. “I wouldn’t contradict a
gentleman. You ’and me them letters back, Archie. The gentleman don’t
want ’em. Ef Mr. Lathom ’ad any sense ’e’d burn the rubbishin’ stuff,
and so I’ll tell ’im, clutterin’ up the place.”
“I don’t say that, Mrs. Cutts,” said I, holding on to the letters. “They
are of interest, but not of as much interest as I thought they might be.
What value did you think of placing on them?”
“To them as knew ’ow to use ’em”—here Mrs. Cutts appeared to size me up
from head to toe—“letters like them might be worth a ’undred pounds
apiece.”
“Rubbish,” said I. “I’ll give you fifty pounds for the lot, and that’s
more than they’re worth.”
I put the two letters back on the table and flicked at them
disdainfully.
“Fifty pound!” shrieked Mrs. Cutts, “fifty pound! And me riskin’ losin’
a job as is worth more than that any day in recommendations and perks,
not countin’ my money regular every week!”
She gathered the letters together and began to tie the packet up again.
“Mr. Lathom ’ud give five times that much to know as they wos safe,” she
added.
“Not he,” said I. “I doubt if he has as much as a hundred pounds in the
world. Whereas, if your son likes to come round with me to my hotel, I
can give him cash on the nail.”
“No,” said Mrs. Cutts, “I can’t let them letters go. Supposin’ Mr.
Lathom wanted to read ’em and they wasn’t there.”
“That’s your affair,” said I. “If you don’t want to sell them, you can
keep them. If I were you I’d put them back quickly where you found them,
and say nothing to Mr. Lathom about it. There’s such a thing as
blackmail, you know, Mrs. Cutts, and judges are pretty strict about it.”
Mrs. Cutts laughed scornfully.
“Blackmail! Nobody ain’t goin’ to charge theirselves with murder, and
don’t you think it.”
“There’s no murder there,” said I. “Good night.”
I rose to go. The woman let me get as far as the door and then came
after me.
“See ’ere, sir. You’re a gentleman, and I don’t want to be ’ard on a
gentleman wot’s pore father ’as died sudden. Give me two ’undred pound,
and I’ll let yer take copies of ’em and Archie shall go with you and
bring ’em back.”
“Copies don’t count so well in a court of law as originals,” I said.
“They could be swore to,” said Mrs. Cutts.
“Not at this time of night,” said I.
The youth Archie leaned across and whispered to his mother. She nodded
and smiled her unpleasant smile.
“See ’ere, sir, I’ll risk it. Archie shall bring you them letters to
your ’otel in the mornin’ and you shall take copies and ’ave them swore
to afore a lawyer. I dursn’t let you ’ave them, really I dursn’t, sir.
I’m takin’ a sad risk as it is for a respectable woman.”
“Very well,” I replied. “But copies are only worth a hundred pounds to
me at the very outside.”
“You’re makin’ a very ’ard bargain, sir.”
“It’s that or nothing,” said I.
“Well, sir, if you say so. I’ll send Archie round at ten o’clock, sir.”
I agreed to this and walked away, glad to get out. I lay awake all
night, fancying that Mrs. Cutts would go to Lathom in the interval and
make better terms with him.
However, Archie was there with the letters in the morning as agreed, and
I took him and them round to a solicitor’s, where typed copies were made
and sworn. I also made an affidavit that I recognised the writing of the
originals as being in my stepmother’s handwriting. I then paid the lad
the agreed hundred pounds in Treasury notes, and dismissed him.
I have entered into all these details in order that there should be no
doubt as to the genuineness of these copies, and to make quite clear why
I am unable at the moment to forward the originals.
It is true that I could probably have forced Archie into handing the
letters over, since he had no right to them. But several reasons urged
me to take the other course. First, I had no legal right to them either,
and was not clear how my action might be looked upon by the police.
Secondly, and this was more important, I could hardly hope that Lathom
would not discover their absence, and, if he did, he might take fright
and leave the country and thus add great difficulties to my task. It
would take some weeks, perhaps, to collect all the evidence I needed,
and by the time I was ready to set the law in action, he might hide
himself very effectually. Thirdly, I did not wish to alienate Mrs.
Cutts. I foresaw that she might be very useful, not only in bringing me
fresh letters, if any arrived that threw further light on the business,
but also in keeping watch on Lathom’s movements. I suggested to Archie
that there might be possibilities of further reward in the future, and
cautioned him against alarming Lathom.
It is conceivable, however, that Mrs. Cutts may consider it more
advantageous to blackmail Lathom than to assist me. Up to the moment of
writing, he is still living in Chelsea, and apparently feels himself
safe. But for all I know, Mrs. Cutts may have retained the letters and
be blackmailing him on her own account. Or she may have delivered her
warning, and he may have destroyed the letters and made himself (as he
imagines) secure. In the latter case it will, of course, be impossible
to produce the original documents in court, and then the certified
copies will justify their existence.
Having obtained the evidence of the adultery, I now felt myself in a
position to put pressure on Munting, and accordingly went round to see
him again.
“I perfectly appreciate,” I said, “the reasons for your silence at our
last interview. But if I tell you that I have in my hands independent
proof that Lathom was Margaret Harrison’s lover, perhaps you will feel
justified in assisting my inquiries.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“My dear man,” he said, “if you have proof already, I don’t see what
assistance you require. May I ask what you call proof? After all, one
doesn’t make these accusations without sufficient grounds.”
“I have got the letters written to Lathom by my stepmother,” I said,
“and they leave the matter in no doubt whatever.”
“Indeed?” said he. “Well, I won’t ask you where you got them from.
Private detective work is not in my line. If you really believe that
your father was driven to do away with himself, I am extremely
sorry—but what can one do about it?”
“I do not think so,” I said. “I believe, and these letters afford strong
evidence to my mind, that my father was cruelly and deliberately
murdered by Lathom at Margaret Harrison’s instigation. And I mean to
prove it.”
“Murdered?” he cried. “Good God, you can’t mean that! That’s absolutely
impossible. Lathom may be a bit of a rotter in some ways, but he’s not a
murderer. I’ll swear he isn’t that. You’re absolutely mistaken.”
“Will you read the letters?”
“No,” he said. “Look here. You’re a man of the world. If things have got
to this point, I don’t mind admitting that Lathom did have some sort of
an affair with Mrs. Harrison. I did what I could to make him drop it,
but, after all, these things will sometimes happen. I told him it was a
poor sort of game to play, and when I got the opportunity—over that
Milsom affair—I told him I’d shut up about it on condition he cleared
out. He assured me afterwards, in the most solemn way, that it was all
finished with. Why, damn it, I asked him about it the very day we went
down to Manaton, and he repeated that the whole affair was absolutely
over and done with.”
“He was wise,” I said dryly, “since he was taking you down there to view
my father’s dead body. Even you might have suspected something if you
had gone to ‘The Shack’ in the knowledge that it was to Lathom’s
interest to find what he did find.”
His face changed. I had touched him on the raw somewhere.
“Did you, as a matter of fact, believe Lathom?”
“I believed him—yes.” He turned his pipe thoughtfully over between his
fingers. “I believed that the affair had been put an end to. But I was
not altogether sure that Lathom’s affection for Mrs. Harrison had
ceased.”
“And when you found that my father had died so opportunely—did no
suspicion enter your mind?”
“Well—I admit it did just pass through my mind that Harrison might have
done it himself. I—I didn’t want to believe it. I don’t know that I did
really believe it. But it did occur to me as a possibility.”
“Nothing more?”
“Absolutely nothing more.”
“Will you read the letters, and tell me if, after that, you still think
there was nothing more?”
He hesitated.
“If you are so sure that Lathom is innocent, you may be able to prove
his innocence.”
He looked at me doubtfully, and slowly put out his hand for the letters.
He read the endorsement by the solicitor, and looked sharply at me
again, but said nothing. I waited while he read the documents
through—first quickly, then for a second time slowly and with great
attention.
“You will notice,” I said, “that, shortly before the time when he told
you the affair was over, Margaret Harrison had written him a letter
clearly indicating that she believed herself to be about to have a child
by him.”
“Yes, I see that.”
“And that he was not informed that this belief was erroneous, till after
my father’s death.”
“No.”
“Plenty of motive for murder there.”
“Plenty of motive, certainly. But motive by itself is nothing. Good
heavens, man, if everybody committed murder because they had a motive,
precious few of us would die natural deaths.”
“But you will admit that murder was being urged upon him in various
ways, in all these letters.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily go so far as to admit that. Mrs. Harrison is an
emotional, imaginative woman. She picks up phrases out of books. Plenty
of people talk in this vague way about love—about its being supreme,
and justifying itself, and sweeping obstacles aside and so on, without
ever intending to put their words into action. I’ve written that kind of
thing myself—in books.”
“Very likely. As a modern novelist you need not be expected to uphold a
high standard of morals. But in practice, I take it, you would not wish
to excuse or justify murder.”
“No. I confess to an old-fashioned prejudice against murder. It may be
inconsistent of me, but I do. And so, I am sure, would Lathom.”
“Lathom is obviously very much under the influence of Margaret
Harrison.”
“I should have said it was the other way round.”
“In some things. In theory, no doubt. But when it comes to doing things,
I should say she was infinitely more practical—and more unscrupulous.
But say, if you like, he is only under the influence of a strong
passion—don’t you think that might lead him to do things which
conflicted with his principles, or prejudices, or whatever you like to
call them? Come now, you have called me a man of the world. Murders are
done every day, for much less motive than Lathom had.”
He drummed on the table.
“Well,” he burst out at last, “I’ll admit that. I’ll admit—for the sake
of argument—that Lathom _might_ have murdered your father, though I
don’t believe it for a moment. But it was physically impossible. How
could he? He was here in London all the time.”
“That’s where you can help me. Why was it impossible? How do you know it
was impossible? Can you prove that it was impossible?”
“I’m sure I can.”
“Will you let me have all the facts you know about the whole thing from
the beginning?”
“Of course I will. Damn it all, if Lathom _did_ do it, he deserves
everything that’s coming to him. He’d have to be an absolute swine. Mind
you, Lathom and I didn’t always get on together, but—its absurd. He
can’t have done it. But we’ve got to kill the possibility.”
He began to walk up and down, visibly perturbed. I waited. We were
interrupted by a servant announcing dinner.
“You’ll stay?” said Munting. “You must meet my wife. She has a very
clear head for this kind of thing.”
I accepted, not wishing to lose a day in getting to the bottom of the
matter. We did not, of course, talk about the subject while the maid was
in the room, but after dinner we all went into the library, and there
outlined the story to Mrs. Munting. I mention her, not because she was
able to contribute anything of great value to the discussion (though,
being a woman, she was more willing than her husband to allow that a
young man might murder an older one for a woman’s sake), but because she
fetched out the letters which Munting had written to her during his
period of residence at Whittington Terrace, in order to verify facts and
dates. In the end, she handed the letters over to me in case I might
find in them any clue or suggestion which we had overlooked. Munting
rather naturally objected to having his love-letters (if one can call
these rambling effusions by that name) put into the hands of a
comparative stranger, but his wife, with that curious lack of delicacy
which virtuous women often display, laughed, and said she was sure I
should not pay any attention to the personal passages.
“Mr. Harrison is not proposing to publish your Life and Letters, you
know,” she said.
This childish remark seemed to amuse Munting. He said: “No; I fancy I’m
safe with him,” and raised no further objection. Probably his vanity was
sufficient to assure him that the exposure of his intimate feelings was
bound to leave a favourable impression. Indeed, it is obvious that, even
in writing to his fiancée, he was writing for effect half the time, and
quite possibly with an eye to future publication. With young men like
Beverley Nichols and Robert Graves prattling in public about their
domestic affairs, we need hardly expect to find any decent reticence
among the smart novelists of to-day.
Taking the question of _Motive_ as settled for the moment, we proceeded
to discuss the subjects _Means_ and _Opportunity_. Under these heads,
the Muntings put forward a number of objections to the murder theory,
and I was bound to recognise that they looked sufficiently formidable.
Here is the schedule which I drew up immediately after this
conversation.
POINTS TO BE INVESTIGATED IN CONNECTION WITH THE DEATH OF GEORGE
HARRISON
_A. Means_
1.—_Did Harrison really die of muscarine poisoning?_
Muscarine (the poisonous principle of _Amanita muscaria_) was obtained
in large quantities from (_a_) the viscera; (_b_) the bedclothes; and
(_c_) the half-eaten dish on the table.
The appearance of the body and the symptoms of the illness, as deduced
from the attendant circumstances, were both consistent with muscarine
poisoning.
Sir James Lubbock stated on oath that the cause of death was muscarine
poisoning.
_Questions_: Could any other poison have produced similar effects or a
similar chemical analysis? The analyst’s attention having been specially
directed to muscarine by the inquiries on the opening day of the
inquest, did he, in fact, search for any poison other than muscarine?
NOTE: To write to Sir James Lubbock and put these points before him.
* * * * *
* * * * *
2.—_In any case, how did the muscarine get into the body, if we
exclude the hypotheses of accident and suicide?_
Supposing that Lathom had himself gathered the poisonous fungi and
surreptitiously added them to the dish while it was in course of
preparation, the murder might have been very simply accomplished. If he
had merely put them into the basket with the genuine edible fungi
gathered by my father, the latter would certainly have discovered and
thrown them away when preparing the dish. It would, therefore, be
necessary to wait, and add them when the process of cooking was already
so far advanced that the fungi had lost their characteristic colour and
shape.
On any ordinary occasion it would have been easy for Lathom to do this.
It will be seen from the evidence at the inquest that Lathom was often
left at home in “The Shack” while Harrison went sketching or botanising.
In the actual case there are difficulties, some of which have to be
considered under the heading “Opportunity.”
_Questions_: Did Lathom know _Amanita muscaria_ sufficiently well to be
able to find it and know it for what it was? (_Answer_: Quite possibly
my father might have shown it to him and warned him against it. Or he
might have studied the pictures in my father’s books or in some other
book.)
If not, can he have got some accomplice to procure the fungus for him?
(Not impossible, but unlikely. Country people usually pay little
attention to fungi, and the element of risk involved would be very
great.)
In what way was the dish of fungi cooked? It would be easier to add a
foreign substance to a stew, for example, which is done slowly and needs
little superintendence, than to a grill or a fry, which takes only a few
minutes and is under the cook’s eyes all the time. (_Answer_: Munting,
speaking from memory, thinks the dish appeared more in the nature of a
stew. My father’s letter to me (No. 15) of October 22nd, 1928, is of
interest in this connection.)
NOTE: To ask Sir James Lubbock if he can confirm this.
If Lathom was able to recognise and procure _Amanita muscaria_, could he
not have boiled it on some previous occasion and added the poison to the
stew in liquid form, so as to run less risk of my father’s recognising
the intrusion of the wrong fungus?
(_Answer_: Very probably.)
(As regards the question of Means, therefore, it seemed clear that
Lathom might readily have had access to the poison, and that there was
no mechanical difficulty at all to prevent his having introduced it into
the dish of mushrooms. When, however, we came to consider the subject of
Opportunity, we were faced with a more important set of difficulties.)
B. _Opportunity_
_1.—At what time was the poison actually administered to
Harrison?_
A terminus _a quo_ is provided by the evidence of Harry Trefusis, who
saw Harrison alive and apparently well at 10.30 a.m. on Thursday. By
this time, Lathom was presumably in the train and on his way to London.
The terminus _ad quem_ can be stated with rather less accuracy. From the
fact, however, that the shin of beef delivered that morning was
afterwards discovered still wrapped in its original paper, it appears
quite certain that Harrison was rendered incapable of seeing to any
household affairs before the evening. From my knowledge of my father, I
should be prepared to swear that he would certainly never have left meat
in this condition over-night. He would have put it on to boil for stock,
or, at the very least, would have transferred it to a
plate—particularly in the case of shin of beef, which, being glutinous,
has a habit of sticking to the wrapping-paper. When I stayed at “The
Shack” with my father, he was accustomed to have his evening meal about
seven o’clock. After this, he would wash the crockery and tidy the place
up, and put on any stock that might be required for the next day. He
would then sit and read for an hour or two, retiring to bed about ten,
possibly taking a cup of cocoa or some patent food before retiring.
It thus seems likely that the poison was taken between the hours of
10.30 a.m. and 8 p.m., and most probably at or about 7 pm.
* * * * *
_Question_: What evidence have we that Lathom actually went to London by
the 7.55 at all? Could he have returned to “The Shack” surreptitiously
during the interval? By hiring a motor-bicycle or car, he might easily
have made his way back from Bovey Tracey or (if this might appear too
obvious) from Brimley Halt, Heathfield, Teigngrace of Newton Abbot. He
could then have lurked about in the neighbourhood of “The Shack” till he
saw Harrison go out, and taken the opportunity to add the poison to the
dish or stock-pot.
* * * * *
NOTE: To inquire as to Lathom’s movements in town. If anybody met him
there on Thursday morning, this hypothesis falls to the ground. If not,
to find out whether he really entered the train at Bovey Tracey, and if
anybody of his description hired any sort of motor vehicle at any point
along the line. This would not, in fact, cover every contingency, for an
active man might easily have walked the ten or twelve miles between
Newton Abbot and “The Shack.” A motor vehicle is perhaps more likely, as
providing a quicker getaway after the crime.
* * * * *
* * * * *
2.—_Is it possible that the poisonous fungus, or liquid
prepared from fungus, was added, not to the fungus gathered by
my father on the Thursday, but to some other collection of
fungus gathered the previous day?_
This appears unlikely, for three reasons. First: My father always made a
great point of eating his fungi freshly gathered. It would have been
quite unlike him to gather them over-night and eat them next day. He
considered early morning the best time for picking fungus. He had stated
his intention of gathering Warty Caps on the Thursday morning, and was,
in fact, seen apparently doing so by the witness Coffin. Secondly: If
the fungi eaten on Thursday night were gathered the previous day, what
became of those gathered on Thursday morning? They were not found in
“The Shack.” Thirdly: For Lathom’s purpose it was necessary that
Harrison should have had the intention of gathering Warty Caps, and no
other kind of fungus, since this is the only variety which could
reasonably be confused with _Amanita muscaria_. It would appear,
therefore, more than a coincidence that my father should have been seen
gathering fungus in a spot where Warty Caps were usually to be found. Of
course, Lathom’s evidence on this point is suspect, and verification is
necessary.
_Questions_: Are Warty Caps (_Amanita rubescens_) actually plentiful in
the spot where Harrison was seen by Coffin?
Can any of the contents of the dish of fungi actually be identified as
_Amanita rubescens_?
When did Harrison mention to Lathom his intention of gathering _Amanita
rubescens_? This question is important, because, if the poisonous fungi
were introduced among the harmless ones in their natural state, it is
absolutely necessary that the two varieties should bear at least a
superficial resemblance to one another. Even in a half-cooked state,
there could be no confusion between _Amanita muscaria_ and, say,
_Chantarelles_ or _Bolitus edulis_ or _Amanitopris fulva_.
Unfortunately, no one can throw any light on this except Lathom himself,
and it is not likely that he will tell the truth.
NOTE: To verify the habitat of _Amanita rubescens_, and, if possible,
its presence in the actual dish of fungi analysed.
C. _Further Questions and Objections_ (Miscellaneous)
If Lathom was guilty of administering poison to Harrison, why did he
return to “The Shack” on Saturday? Would it not have been wiser to
remain in town till the death was discovered?
This is an objection which to me appears to carry some weight. I can,
however, see certain considerations which might account for a proceeding
so apparently reckless from a practical point of view.
(_a_) Lathom may have wished to be on the spot to conceal any accidental
traces of the crime. As we do not yet know his exact procedure, it is
not certain what these could have been—a bottle, perhaps, containing
extract of _Amanita muscaria_, a pan in which he had prepared it; a book
or papers containing notes; traces of his previous arrival by
motor-bicycle or otherwise; possibly some letter or message left by
Harrison, containing his own suspicions as to the manner of his death.
NOTE: Munting’s opinion is that Lathom originally intended to remain
alone in “The Shack” while he (Munting) came to fetch help, but when it
came to the point found himself unable to face it. This is consistent
with the above explanation, if we suppose that Lathom was overcome by
fear or remorse at the sight of the body, and was thus prevented from
carrying out his design. From Munting’s own statement it will be seen
that Lathom was in a nervous state from the moment of his meeting
Munting in town, down to the time when the body was discovered.
(_b_) Supposing the plot had failed to work, Harrison would have been
expecting Lathom’s return. Let us say he had discovered an _Amanita
muscaria_ among his fungi—he would wonder how it had got there, and if
Lathom never turned up might conceive such suspicion of him as would put
him on his guard against any further attempts. On the other hand, he
might have mentioned to people in the neighbourhood that Lathom was due
to come back, in which case, the plot succeeding, Lathom’s absence might
have a suspicious look.
Further explanations suggested by the Muntings:
(_c_) Lathom (supposing him guilty) would probably have no idea when the
death might be expected to take place. As Thursday, Friday and Saturday
passed without news, he might be overcome by nervous restlessness and an
overwhelming anxiety to see for himself what was going on. (I suppose
that from artists and persons of unbalanced temperament, such behaviour
may be expected, half-witted as it may appear.)
(_d_) The alleged hankering of a murderer to revisit the scene of the
crime. (This I hold to be pure superstition and quite baseless in fact.)
(_e_) Remorse. Perhaps Lathom regretted what he had done, and was making
a belated effort to save Harrison’s life by fetching medical assistance
before it was too late. (In this suggestion, put forward by Mrs.
Munting, the wish is probably father to the thought.)
Why did Lathom take Munting down to “The Shack” with him? This again
seems to me to have been the act of a madman. Unless, indeed, he was
cunning enough to foresee that this was exactly the appearance it
_would_ present, and was therefore the best defence he could put up
against suspicion.
Further, of course Munting provided Lathom with a complete alibi for the
whole of Saturday and an unprejudiced witness as to the discovery of the
body. Suppose, for example, that Harrison, instead of having been dead
six or seven hours, had been only just dead or on the point of expiring
when they got there, Munting could have given evidence that they had
found him in that condition on their arrival.
On the other hand, Lathom was running a very serious risk, not only of
defeating his own ends, but of having the whole vile plot exposed. If
they had found Harrison still alive, they would have had no choice but
to summon a doctor immediately; the victim might have recovered, or at
least recovered sufficiently to denounce Lathom.
* * * * *
NOTE: Is Munting entirely cleared from complicity in the murder? His
behaviour has been suspicious, and he has withheld information as long
as possible. Not to trust him too far.
* * * * *
Neither Munting nor his wife seems to find as much difficulty as I do
about this part of the business. They agree that a man of Lathom’s
temperament, having committed a murder, would be afraid to be alone, and
would take any risks to secure companionship. They instance Patrick
Mahon’s incredible rashness in taking Miss Duncan to sleep at the
Crumbles on the very night after he had murdered Emily Kaye, and while
her dead body was actually lying in the next room. These people are both
novelists and are supposed to have studied human nature. They say it is
full of inconsistencies and I daresay they are right. I admit that, to
me, the mentality of men like Lathom is perfectly incomprehensible, and
I am ready to believe anything.
* * *
It was late when I left the Muntings, taking away with me the letters
they gave me, and having obtained from Munting a promise that he would
draw up a statement of the course of events during the periods not
covered by the letters, and containing, in particular, an exact account
of what took place at “The Shack.” This is the statement which forms
part of this dossier, divided into chronological sections for greater
ease of reference. I regret that it is so diffuse and adorned with so
many unnecessary personal reflections and literary embellishments. It
seems that the vanity of writers must be indulged at all costs, even
where a straightforward summary of events would be far more useful. I
have not, however, ventured to omit or alter anything, preferring to
submit the documents exactly as they stand.
My next step was to write to Sir James Lubbock, raising the various
points noted in the schedule for his consideration. In the course of a
few days I received the following courteous reply.
HOME OFFICE
12 January, 1930
PAUL HARRISON, ESQ. DEAR SIR,
I have your letter of inquiry with regard to the circumstances attending
your late father’s unfortunate death. I quite understand that you are
anxious to have the fullest information about it, and will do my best to
clear up the various points you raise.
You may rest fully assured that the death was in fact due to the cause
stated at the inquest, viz.: poisoning by muscarine, the poisonous
principle of the fungus _Amanita muscaria_. In such a case I should not
confine myself to searching for the particular poison suggested by the
circumstances, but should search, as a matter of routine, for all the
various classes of scheduled poisons, including not only the other
vegetable alkalis but also the metallic poisons. The analysis was made
with great care, and I can confidently state that every possibility was
eliminated, except that of poisoning by muscarine. This poison, which
was present in very considerable quantities, was unmistakably
identified, while the symptoms and post-mortem appearances, as reported
by the witnesses, were indubitably consistent with this form of
poisoning.
I may add that preparations of the viscera, vomit, etc., and the
unconsumed part of the dish of fungi have been preserved untouched, as
is my invariable custom in such cases, so as to be available for future
reference or analysis in case of any further question being raised.
Humanly speaking, however, you may rely absolutely on the accuracy of my
results.
With regard to the composition of the dish, I find, on referring to my
notes, that this consisted of fungi exhibiting the structural features
of _Amanita_, stewed whole in a preparation of beef broth, flavoured
with garlic and pot-vegetables.
Your further question displays a slight misapprehension. The isolation
of muscarine itself in a pure state from the fungus would be a chemical
experiment of considerable difficulty, and has, so far as I know, been
accomplished only by two men, Harnack and Nothnagel; their results have
not, I believe, received confirmation as yet. Choline aurichloride and
muscarine aurichloride have been obtained by Harnack from fractionation
of extracts of the fungus, and, more recently, King obtained muscarine
chloride from the same source. But I conceive your question to mean,
simply, “Could a poisonous liquid be produced by simply boiling the
fungus in water of broth?” To this, my answer is, Yes; the liquid part
of a stew made with _Amanita muscaria_ would be equally poisonous with
the solid part. In fact, according to Dixon Mann, the solid parts of the
fungus, when thoroughly desiccated, are harmless, and are eaten with
impunity in certain parts of the Continent, so that the juices when
extracted by ebullition would probably contain a greater proportion of
poisonous matter than the solid residue.
Trusting that these facts are what you require,
I remain,
Yours faithfully,
JAMES LUBBOCK
* * * * *
* * * * *
The ground being thus cleared for my investigations, I determined to
clear up the Manaton end of the thing first, Munting having meanwhile
undertaken to make inquiries as to Lathom’s movements in London on the
17th and 18th of October.
“The Shack” had been locked up, and the key deposited with the local
constable. Being the executor under my father’s will, I had no
difficulty in obtaining it, and took the opportunity of asking a few
questions at the public-house. All I could gather was, however, that Mr.
Lathom had knocked them up on the Saturday night in a “terrible state”
and “looking as though he had seen a ghost,” and had announced that Mr.
Harrison had been found dead. As he seemed on the point of collapse, the
publican had comforted him with strong drink and had himself summoned
the police from Bovey Tracey, the village constable being, as it
happened, absent on some duty or other. While waiting, Mr. Lathom had
recovered himself and had asked to make a trunk call to town. This was,
of course, the call to Margaret Harrison. The telephone is in the
landlord’s private room, and the landlord had, with a proper delicacy,
retired and shut the door on his guest, so that nothing had been
overheard. On coming out, Lathom had seemed greatly agitated, and had
explained that he had been breaking the news to the dead man’s family.
This was disappointing, as it would have been interesting to know in
what words Lathom had announced the event. From Margaret Harrison’s
letter, however, it seems that he represented the thing as an accident.
Yet she must surely have had her suspicions of a death occurring so
opportunely and so pat upon her own instigations to murder. Possibly she
managed to convince even herself by her hypocrisy—Munting thinks it not
unlikely, and no doubt he has had experience of her type of mentality.
I next obtained the address of the labourer, Harold Coffin. His wife was
at home, and informed me that I should find her husband at work carting
some timber which had fallen in the recent gale. If I followed the lane
leading down past “The Shack” I could not miss him. Following these
directions, I came upon him on the outskirts of a small wood. He was
very ready to tell me all he knew, and led me at once to the spot, not
very far away, where he had last seen my father.
It was, of course, too late in the season for _Amanita rubescens_, but
the site which he pointed out seemed suitable enough for it, and he
also, without being prompted, mentioned that he had often seen fungi
growing there, of a reddish-brown colour with grey patches on the top. I
took _Edible and Poisonous Fungi_ from my pocket and asked him to look
through it. He hesitated some time between the pictures of _Amanita
rubescens_ and _Amanita muscaria_, and finally said he thought it might
be one of those two. The colour of _Amanita muscaria_ seemed a bit
overdone, he thought, but then, pictures in books wasn’t always right,
was they, sir? The wood, locally known as Five-Acre Wood, was a great
place for toadstools, and he had often seen my father gathering the
great _Hepatica_ fungus from the trees—the huge liver-coloured lumps
commonly known as “Poor Man’s Beefsteak.” Coffin was quite clear that my
father was actually gathering fungi, and not merely looking for them. My
father had spoken to him and said something about, “Getting my supper,
you see, Coffin. You ought to try some yourself; you’re missing a
treat.” Coffin had often thought of those cheerful words when he heard
of the poor gentleman’s death, and had taken them as a warning.
Coffin said he knew Mr. Lathom quite well by sight, having met him from
time to time in the public-house when having a friendly glass. He had
never seen him in the Five-Acre Wood but once, and that was with Mr.
Harrison, about a week before the latter’s death. His own work had lain
in and about the Five-Acre during the first fortnight of October—he was
employed by Mr. Carey—all this round here was Mr. Carey’s land—and he
thought he should have seen Mr. Lathom if he had come there alone at any
time.
Having thanked and rewarded Coffin, I made my way to “The Shack.” Except
for the removal of the bedclothes and other objects required for the
inquest it was exactly as it had been left at the time of the death. The
broken bedstead, with its terrible witness to my poor father’s
death-agony, still stood in a corner of the bedroom. Even Lathom’s
painting materials lay huddled in a corner. I suppose he had forgotten
to remove them. A few roughly-daubed canvases in oil contrasted strongly
with my father’s delicate water-colours, of which I found a number put
away in a drawer. Dust had gathered thickly everywhere.
I made a careful search on shelves and in drawers for any notes or
papers that might throw light on my problem, but found nothing except a
few bills and the last letter my father had received from me. There were
one or two novels, a number of local guide-books and botanical books of
reference, and some artist’s catalogues. Delving among these, I at
length came on a large-scale map of the district, with notes upon it in
my father’s handwriting. He had apparently used it as a kind of
botanical chart, marking on it the localities in which various plants
and fungi were to be found. Five-Acre Wood was clearly shown, and upon
it my father had made a small cross accompanied by the note “_Amanita
rubescens_.” I looked for any mention of _Amanita muscaria_, but could
see none; either my father had not found it in the district, or else he
had concerned himself with edible varieties only.
One question, therefore, seemed clearly answered. My father _had_,
without question, been gathering fungi for his supper on the 17th
October, and the place where he had gathered them was a place in which
he was accustomed to find _Amanita rubescens_.
I could find nothing further of any interest at “The Shack,” though I
spent a whole day there. I passed the night at the inn, and next day
departed to Bovey Tracey to check Lathom’s movements.
My first interview was with the taxi-driver. This man’s name is William
Johnson and he lives in the High Street. He perfectly recollects having
driven to Manaton on Thursday, 17th October, and taken Lathom to catch
the 8.13. The circumstance had been strongly impressed upon his mind by
the catastrophe that followed it so closely, and the fact that he had
actually visited “The Shack” and seen the victim, only two days before
the discovery of the body, has naturally made him a kind of local hero.
He is positive that my father and Lathom parted on the best of terms.
They shook hands, and my father said: “Well, hope you have a good
journey. See you back on Saturday. What train do you think you’ll
catch?” Lathom answered that he wasn’t quite sure, and added: “Don’t
wait up for me if I’m late.”
This answers one of our questions, and makes it quite clear that at
least one person besides my father knew that Lathom was expected back on
the Saturday.
My next question was, At what time had Lathom ordered his taxi? The man
remembered this, too. A telephone message was put through to him from
Manaton at about nine o’clock on the Wednesday evening. He can verify
this, if necessary, by his order-book.
This is interesting. It makes it seem likely that Lathom only decided to
make this trip to town at the last moment—in fact, after hearing my
father express his intention of gathering _Amanita rubescens_ the
following day.
Finally, I inquired whether Johnson had actually seen Lathom get into
the train. By a stroke of good fortune he was able to answer this
question definitely. He had to put a parcel on the train for a printer
at Bovey Tracey, and, while doing this, he had seen Lathom take his seat
in a third-class smoker. As the train went out, Lathom leaned out of the
window and shouted something to a porter—some question, he thought,
about changing at Newton Abbot.
I hired this man’s taxi, which was a reasonably good one, and
interviewed the railway staff at the three intermediate stations between
Bovey Tracey and Newton Abbot. Here, as was natural, the men found some
difficulty in remembering the events of three months ago. I could not
find anybody who recollected seeing Lathom. In each place I asked for a
name of anybody in the village who might be likely to have a car or
motor-cycle for hire, and went to see the proprietors of the vehicles,
but without result. Nowhere could I find any record of such a
transaction.
Newton Abbot is a larger place, and I anticipated difficulty. On the
contrary, and greatly to my surprise, I got on to Lathom’s trail almost
immediately. No sooner had I mentioned his name to the station-master
than he said at once:
“Oh, yes, sir—that was the gentleman who lost a pocket-book last
October. Did he ever find it?”
Taking this cue as it presented itself, I replied that he had not, and
that, being in the neighbourhood, I had promised to call and ask about
it.
“Well, sir,” said the station-master, “we made inquiries all down the
line, and had several men out searching, but they never found it. They
would have brought it to me if they had, for they were all decent
fellows and Mr. Lathom offered a reward. I’m afraid some tramp must have
picked it up, sir. There’s a lot of them about these days and they’re
not over-honest.”
“No doubt that was it,” said I. “Let me see—whereabouts did he say he
lost it?”
“Said he thought it must have fallen out of his breast-pocket when he
was leaning out of the window. He couldn’t say exactly where, but he
thought it must be just the other side of Heathfield. Here’s the note I
made in my book, you see, sir, and here’s the gentleman’s name and
address that he wrote down himself.”
I recognised the handwriting in which Lathom had written out Munting’s
address for me.
“Well, it was very tiresome,” I said, “but I am sure you did all you
could. There was money in the pocket-book, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir, and the gentleman’s ticket to town. He was in quite a way
about it, because he said he hadn’t enough money on him to book again.
So I spoke to the ticket-collector, and he said he could make it all
right on the train, and Mr. Lathom could settle it with the Company when
he got to town.”
These inquiries had taken the greater part of the day, so I decided to
stay that night in Newton Abbot and interview the ticket-collector the
next day. He was still on the same train and perfectly recollected the
affair of Lathom and his ticket. I went on up to Paddington with him,
and there the friendly collector directed me to the official in the
Inquiry Bureau who had dealt with the matter on the previous occasion.
After considerable referring back and forth and ringing up the head
office, it was clearly established that Lathom had duly arrived by the
1.15, without his ticket, had explained the circumstances and had left
his name and address, promising to send the ticket on if it turned up.
As a matter of fact, it never had turned up, but as the booking-clerk at
Bovey Tracey had clearly remembered issuing it and had identified Lathom
on his next visit as being the person to whom the ticket had been
issued, the Company had accepted the explanation and allowed the matter
to drop.
This was something of a blow. I had really reckoned more than I realised
on finding that Lathom had left the train at some point and doubled back
to Manaton. There was just one possibility. He might have hurried across
to the down platform and taken the 1.30, which would land him back at
Bovey Tracey at about half-past six. This would have meant very quick
work, for the explanation to the authorities at Paddington must have
taken him nearly ten minutes. And at the other end he would have had to
get, somehow or other, to Manaton and then do the three miles out to
“The Shack,” and then snatch his opportunity to rush in, unseen, and
drop the poison into the stew while my father’s back was turned. It
seemed almost impossible. Apart from everything else, it was
inconceivable that he should not have been seen, either at Newton Abbot
or at Bovey Tracey. He would have had to pass the barrier, and he would
have had to hire a car, for nothing else would have got him down to “The
Shack” before supper-time.
I turned it over and over in my mind and could make nothing of it. It
seemed that I must abandon this whole theory. I returned to my hotel in
a mood of deep depression, and found there, waiting for me, a letter
from Munting, which I append here in its place.
50. _John Munting to Paul Harrison_
DEAR HARRISON,
A damnably awkward thing has happened. Lathom turned up here last night.
The girl showed him straight into my study and I was caught without hope
of escape.
He looked nervous and irritable, and came straight to the point.
“Look here,” he said, “has this fellow Harrison been round to see you?”
I hesitated, and he went on at once, “Can’t you say yes or no? What’s
the good of lying about it?”
“Yes,” I said, “he came round.”
“What did he want?”
I said you were naturally anxious to have all available details about
your father’s death.
“Yes, that’s all very well,” he cut in, angrily. “What have you been
saying to him? Have you been discussing my private affairs?”
“I don’t think,” I answered cautiously, “I told him anything that he
didn’t know already.”
“Have you been spreading scandals about Mrs. Harrison and me? Come on,
out with it!”
“Sit down,” I said, “it’s no good shouting at me like that.”
“Sit down be damned! I suppose you’ve been chattering as usual. I should
have thought you would have the decency to shut up about what wasn’t
your business. I warned you about him, didn’t I? Why couldn’t you keep
the fellow out?”
“My dear man,” I said, “if I’d refused to see him, he’d have thought
there was something very suspicious about the business.”
“So I suppose you blabbed it all out like a good, virtuous little boy.”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “he seemed to know all about it.”
“Nonsense! How could he know, unless you told him?”
“Possibly,” I said, “he gathered it from your manner, or from Mrs.
Harrison. Besides,” I added, feeling that attack was my only possible
form of defence, “I thought you told me it was all over and done with.
Isn’t it? I assured Harrison that it was. I had only your word to go on.
If it wasn’t all over, what the devil did you mean by taking me down to
Devon with you? You know perfectly well that if I’d known it was still
going on, wild horses wouldn’t have taken me down there.”
This brought him up all standing.
“Yes, well,” he said, “of course it’s all over. But why did you have to
tell him anything about it at all?”
“Look here,” I said, “you’ve not been straight with me, and I don’t
believe you now. I’ve had quite enough of this. You’ve dragged me into
this business again. I’ve been your scapegoat once and I’d fed up. Do
you expect me to go on taking the blame for your idiotic love-affairs?
I’ve got my wife to consider.”
I was afraid he would go back to the very difficult question of how you
got to know about the intrigue. I didn’t want to tell him about the
letters, which you had shown me more or less in confidence, and yet I
felt a perfect cad for not warning him of his danger. It seemed
abominable to have listened to such suspicions against a man, without
giving him the chance to clear himself. Fortunately, he abandoned this
point.
“What does the fellow want?” he went on. “What’s he think he’s going to
find out? The thing’s clear enough, isn’t it?”
“Well,” I said, “to tell you the truth, Lathom, when I came to consider
the thing I couldn’t help suspecting——”
“Suspecting! My God, _you’ve_ got your beastly suspicions now. What in
the devil’s name do _you_ suspect?”
“I couldn’t help suspecting,” I went on, as steadily as I could, “that
old Harrison had found out something and committed suicide.”
“Oh!” said Lathom. “Well, what if he did? The man was a ——” (a word
which I will spare you). “The best thing he could do was to clear out
from a place where he wasn’t wanted. Damn good riddance. A good thing if
he did have the sense to see it.”
“That’s a pretty rotten thing to say, Lathom.”
“Don’t be such a damned hypocrite.”
“I mean it,” I said. “You’re behaving like an absolute swine. Harrison
was damned decent to you, and you seem to think that just because you
can paint better than he could, you are perfectly justified in seducing
his wife and then accepting his hospitality and driving him to commit
suicide.”
“I hadn’t anything to do with it,” he retorted, “he was all right when I
left him. You ask anybody down there who saw him. He was as cheery and
friendly as could be. I’m not responsible for what he did behind my
back. I was in London all the time. I can prove it.”
“I don’t see that it needs proving,” said I.
“Oh, don’t you?” he burst out violently. “Well, I do. You’ll be saying
next that I had something to do with his death.”
He stopped suddenly and I caught him looking sideways at me, as if to
see how I should take this suggestion. It turned me quite cold, and I
had a curious sensation as if my stomach had turned right over.
“Well,” I said, “if anybody heard you talking like this, they might be
excused for thinking so.”
“Oh, might they!”
“It’s dangerous to talk about wanting people out of the way, you know,”
I went on, watching him.
“Punk!” he said. “Now, I’ll tell you, Mr. Good Little Moral Boy, I’ll
tell you just exactly where I was all the time—all the time, do you
hear? And then you can come and beg my pardon.”
“I don’t want——” I began.
“No, but I do. Got that? I do. And you may as well make a note of it. On
Thursday, now—Thursday—have you got that?—I was at the dentist’s at
two o’clock, see? First thing I did when I got to town. You can verify
that, I suppose? Or do you imagine I have bribed the dentist? You’d
better write his address down. Get on with it.”
“Really, Lathom——”
“No, you won’t. Any excuse not to believe me, I suppose. Well, I’ll do
it for you. Dentist, two o’clock, name and address, here you are. Seven
o’clock—you’ll allow that I couldn’t get to Devon and back between
two-thirty and seven, I suppose—or do you imagine I chartered an
aeroplane?”
“I suppose nothing of the sort.”
“Damn it, suppose what you like. I can give you what I was doing at four
o’clock. Come now, that’s close enough, isn’t it? I had tea with
Marlowe. He’s a painter, but even you will allow he’s honest enough. Tea
with Marlowe, four o’clock. At seven, I dined at the ‘Bon Bourgeois,’
and paid by cheque—you can confirm that, you know—and went on to the
first night of Meyrick’s show. He saw me there. Is that good enough?”
He was writing all these times and places down, digging the pencil
savagely into the paper. I said:
“You seem to remember it all very clearly.”
“Yes, that’s one in the eye for you, isn’t it, my lad? Sorry and all
that, but you asked for it. I slept that night at the studio. I’m afraid
I’ve only Mrs. Cutts’ word for it, and, of course, she’d say anything.”
“Very likely,” said I.
“That gives you a gleam of hope, doesn’t it? But seeing I didn’t get
home till four ack emma, after celebrating with Meyrick’s crowd—ask
them—it doesn’t leave much margin, does it? Particularly as I was up
again at nine o’clock.”
“That’s very unusual,” I said, trying to speak lightly. “Whatever did
you get up at nine for?”
“To spite you. And incidentally, to sign for a beastly registered
letter. Providential, wasn’t it?”
“Obviously,” said I.
“At ten-thirty I went to see my agent. You know him, don’t you?” I
admitted knowing the agent.
“I lunched at Lady Tottenham’s. Went to see her about a sitting at
twelve and stayed on. Anything fishy about Lady Tottenham?”
“Nothing, except her husband’s income. Sardines, isn’t it?”
“Damned witty. You ought to put that in your next book. Then I went
round to Winsor & Newton’s and paid a bill. By cheque. And ordered some
stuff. No doubt they will be happy to show you their books.”
I was silent.
“Dinner at Holtby’s. Very stately and all that. Old boy thinks of
presenting a portrait to Liverpool Town Hall. Most respectable party.
Went on to the Aitchbone—not so respectable, but full of people. Spent
the night with the Goodman boys. Breakfasted there. Came on. Looked you
up, and you had me under your own bloody inquisitive eye for the rest of
the day. Now then!”
I asked him why he was so anxious to tell me all this.
“To tell your pal Harrison,” he snapped back. “He seems blasted anxious
to stick his nose into my concerns. Tell him to keep out of it. I don’t
like the swine.”
“I don’t see,” I said, “why you should work yourself up into this
extraordinary state of mind because a man has made a few ordinary
inquiries about his father. Unless, of course, you have anything special
to hide.”
This seem to sober him down. He pulled his face into something more
nearly resembling amiability and then suddenly began to laugh.
“I’m sorry. I lost my temper rather. Anything to hide? Good God,
no—except that I’m sorry Harrison has got on to—that business with
Margaret, you know. She must have let something out, accidentally. But
I’ll swear the old man never knew a word about it. Not a damn thing. He
was as right as rain—best of pals, and all that. But I don’t like that
pup of his.”
I put down the pen with which I had been fidgeting all this time, got up
and went and stood by him on the hearth-rug.
“Lathom,” I said, “why did you come here?”
He looked at me, and for a moment I thought he was on the point of
getting something off his chest. I had a horrible fear of what it might
be. If he had spoken, I really do not know what I should have said or
done. I might—I don’t know. I was really quite horribly frightened.
But nothing came of it. He shifted his gaze and said, in a curious,
embarrassed way:
“I’ve told you. I wanted to know what you’d done with Harrison—to find
out how the matter stood. Afraid it’s been awkward for you. I didn’t
quite realise. It can’t be helped. He’d have to know sometime, anyhow.
I’d better be going.”
He held out his hand. In the state things were in, I could not take it.
Either I was being a perfect Judas Iscariot, in which case I hadn’t the
face to give him my hand, or else _he_ was, in which case I felt I would
rather be excused. It was all so involved that at the moment I was
completely incapable of deciding anything.
“Oh!” he said. “I’ve said one or two things, haven’t I? All right. Sulk
about it if you like. I’m damned if I care.”
He slammed out. After a moment I went after him. “Lathom!” I called.
I don’t know what I meant to say to him. The only answer was the hang of
the outer door.
Honestly, Harrison, I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know
whether I’ve been a skunk or a moral citizen. I don’t know whether I’ve
warned a guilty man, or betrayed an innocent one, or the other way
round. But I’m feeling like hell about it, because—well, frankly,
because I cannot believe that an innocent man would have such a
watertight alibi.
It’s perfectly obvious he came here to ram the alibi down my throat. But
it _is_ an alibi. I’m enclosing the paper with the names and addresses
he wrote down so pat. You can investigate it all, if you like, but it’s
certain to be sound. He knew it. He was perfectly confident. Besides——
Anyway, I won’t touch it. It makes me sick.
I’ve finished that statement, by the way. Here it is. I hope to God the
whole thing comes to nothing and I never hear of it again. I ask you, as
a favour, to leave me out of it if you can.
Yours very truly,
J. MUNTING
51. _Statement of Paul Harrison_ [Continued]
Disregarding the hysterical tone of his last few sentences, I felt that
on the whole Munting was right, and had behaved with more discretion and
public spirit than I had credited him with.
It was obvious to me that Lathom was losing his nerve. As to his guilt,
I had by now no shadow of a doubt. The blatant way in which he had
marked his trail, right up from Manaton to London and back again, and
his determination to let Munting know all about it, were actions
entirely inconsistent with the carelessness of an innocent man. The
trouble was that he was now on the alert. At any minute he might take
alarm and bolt. On this account, I decided to waste no valuable time in
checking his alibi. The fact that he had produced it with such
confidence left me no hope of breaking it down; moreover, some of the
inquiries were of a sort that could only be made satisfactorily by the
police.
It was evident that I must abandon the whole idea of a return to
Manaton. Only one possibility was left, namely, that the poison had been
left in such a place that my father was bound to add it to the dish of
fungi himself; and that this manœuvre had been carried out before Lathom
left for London.
I knew that all the foodstuffs in “The Shack” had been carefully
analysed and found harmless, with the exception of the half-eaten dish
of fungi itself. I was, therefore, forced to conclude that the poison
had been added to the beef-stock in which the fungi were stewed.
Anything else would be dangerous, for the presence of muscarine in, say,
the salt or the coffee would be a circumstance so suspicious as to
impress even the coroner’s jury.
There was nothing difficult about this. The stock would have been
prepared from Monday’s delivery of shin of beef. It was my father’s
habit always to keep a pan of stock simmering on the hob. By Thursday
morning there would probably be just sufficient left to cook his evening
meal, after which he would boil up the new supply of shin for the rest
of the week.
Now, in what form would the poison have been added? Not in the solid
form, for my father would have noticed the presence of fungi in his
stock. But a teacupful of poisonous liquid might easily have been poured
in at any moment. I was, therefore, brought back to my previous idea
that Lathom had managed to procure the _Amanita muscaria_ and decoct the
poison during my father’s absence from the hut.
But how I was ever to prove this, I did not know. I had plenty of
evidence of motive and opportunity, but nothing that could put the crime
beyond any reasonable doubt in the minds of twelve good and true
jury-members. And besides, I was by no means satisfied of Lathom’s
ability to identify _Amanita muscaria_ with certainty. Was there no
easier and more reliable method by which he might have obtained the
stuff? Was it possible, for instance, to buy muscarine? If so, and if
one could trace the sale to Lathom, there would be genuine evidence of
criminal intent. For what innocent reason could an artist require
muscarine?
The difficulties of the thing stared me in the face. Even if muscarine
was procurable commercially (which I thought very unlikely, for, so far
as I know, it has no medicinal use), it was impossible for me, as a
private individual, to broadcast an investigation among all the chemists
in the country. Only the police could do that, and I could not set the
police to work without producing the very evidence which was the object
of the search. There were not only chemists—there were all the research
laboratories too. The thing seemed hopeless.
At this point the word “laboratories” struck a chord in my mind. Had not
there been something in the Munting correspondence about a laboratory?
I had not paid much attention to the passage when I first read it,
because my mind had been taken up with the idea of Lathom’s having
gathered the fungus on the spot. And, indeed, the facts had been so
buried in a lot of vague twaddle about the origin of life and other
futile Muntingesque speculations that I had skimmed the pages over in
disgust, but when I turned back to the letter I cursed myself for not
having given it fuller consideration before.
Two facts emerged very clearly from the welter of surrounding nonsense:
1. That Lathom had been shown a collection of poisons,
apparently kept where anybody could easily get at them; and
2. That Leader had drawn the special attention of the party to
certain synthetic, or laboratory-made poisons, indistinguishable
by analysis from natural vegetable products.
Here at last was something definite. Supposing that a bottle of
muscarine had by any chance formed part of the collection, what was
easier than for Lathom to have helped himself to it?
I did not know whether it was possible for an outside person to
penetrate the laboratories of St. Anthony’s College unchallenged, but
this I could easily find out by the simple process of going there.
Probably I should only have to ask to see some doctor or student.
Lathom, for instance, could have asked to see this man Leader, whom he
already knew. Leader might very well be able to give us some help in the
matter. Munting was my point of contact with Leader, and the next step
was obviously to go round and get a note of introduction.
Munting, of course, showed great unwillingness to interfere in the
matter. His interview with Lathom seemed to have upset him badly. At
length, however, I persuaded him that he had a duty in the matter.
“If you refuse to help me,” I said, “and I am able to prove the murder,
you will be something very like an accessory after the fact.”
Mrs. Munting, who, in practical common sense, is worth ten of her
husband, agreed with this point of view.
“It would be very unpleasant if you got into trouble about it, Jack. I
do think if Mr. Lathom really has done this dreadful thing, you oughtn’t
to stand in the way of getting it found out. A man like that is very
dangerous. And they say that when a poisoner has once committed a murder
and got away with it, he is very likely to try it again. It might be you
or young Mr. Harrison next time.”
“Do you really think so?” he muttered, unhappily.
“I do. And oh, Jack! Do think of the awful cruelty of letting that poor
man die such a painful, lingering death, all alone in that place,
without a soul to come near him. Anyone who could do that would be an
absolute monster. I don’t care what excuse he had.”
“That’s been haunting me,” said Munting—and he did look very white and
ill. “All right, Harrison. I’ll see it through. Look here, I’ll come
along to the place with you.”
We walked in complete silence till we came to St. Anthony’s. There were
numbers of people passing in and out through the wide entrance, and
nobody took the slightest notice of us.
“I think the labs. are up this staircase,” said Munting, leading the
way. “And here’s where we hang up the hats and coats,” he added,
rattling his umbrella into a hat-stand placed inside the heavy swinging
door.
“Is that usual?” I inquired.
“We did it last time,” said Munting, “I remember it distinctly. And as
the idea is to see whether it’s feasible to roam unchallenged about the
place, we may as well look as much like the inhabitants as possible. If
Lathom did come here poison-hunting, he’d scarcely have omitted that
precaution.”
Having thus shed the outward insignia of visitors, we found ourselves in
a wide corridor, smelling faintly of chemists’ shops, with numbered
doors on either side. A few men in white overalls passed us, but took no
notice of us. We walked briskly, as though with a definite objective,
and, selecting at random a door near the end of the corridor, pushed it
boldly open.
A big room, full of sinks and tables and well-lit by large windows,
presented itself to our view. A student sat at a bench near us with his
back to the door. He was boiling something in a complicated apparatus of
glass tubes over a Bunsen burner. He did not look up. Over by the window
four men were gathered round some sort of experiment, which apparently
absorbed all their attention. A sixth man, mounted on a pair of steps,
was searching for something in a cupboard. He glanced round as we
entered, but, seeing that we did not look likely to assist him in
finding what he wanted, ignored us, and, coming down, went up to the
student with the apparatus.
“What’s become of the . . . ?” (something I didn’t catch) he asked
irritably.
“How should I know?” demanded the other, who was pouring some liquid
into a funnel and seemed annoyed at the interruption. “Ask Griggs.”
We backed out again, unregarded, and tried another door. Here we found a
small room, with a solitary, elderly man bending over a microscope. He
removed his eye from the lens and looked round with a scowl. We begged
his pardon and retired. Before we had closed the door, his head was back
at the eyepiece again, while his right hand, which had never stopped
writing, continued to take notes.
We intruded, with equal ease and equally unchallenged, into a
lecture-room, where forty or fifty students were gathered round a
demonstrator at a blackboard; into two more laboratories, one empty and
the other containing two absorbed men and a dead rabbit, and finally
into yet a fourth laboratory, where a dozen or so students were laughing
and talking and seemed to be waiting for somebody.
One of these, having nothing particular to do, came forward and asked if
we wanted anybody in particular. Munting replied that he was looking for
Mr. Leader.
“Leader?” said the student. “Let me see. He’s a second-year man, isn’t
he? Where’s Leader, anybody know?”
A young man in spectacles said he fancied Leader was in Room 27.
“Oh, yes, to be sure. Try 27—along the corridor on the right, up the
steps and the second door on the left. If he’s not there, I expect
they’ll be able to tell you. Not at all, pleasure.”
We found our way to Room 27, and there, among a group of students, found
Leader, who greeted Munting with loud demonstrations of joy. I was
introduced, and explained that I was anxious for a little information,
if he could spare the time.
He led us to a quiet corner, and Munting reminded him of his previous
visit with Lathom and the conversation about synthetic poisons. He was
only too delighted to assist us, and led us along at once to another
room, inhabited only by the usual couple of absorbed men in a far
corner, who took no notice of us.
“Here you are,” said Leader, cheerfully, displaying an open cupboard,
stacked with glass bottles. “Convincing demonstration of the way we’ve
got Mother Nature beat. Synthetic thyroxin—some stuff you produce in
your own throat, handy and available without the tedious formality of
opening you up. A small daily dose gives you pep. Camphor, our own
brand, cures cold and kills beetles. Take a sniff and admire the fine,
rich, natural aroma. Cinchona, all my own work, or, strictly speaking,
Professor Benton’s. Adrenalin—that’s the stuff to make your hair stand
on end; full of kidney punch. Muscarine—not so pretty as scarlet
toadstools, but just as good for giving you tummy-ache. Urea——”
“That’s very interesting, isn’t it?” said Munting.
“Very,” said I. My hand shook a little as I took the bottle from Leader.
It was a squat, wide-mouthed glass jar, about half-full of a whitish
powder, and clearly labelled “Muscarine (Synthetic) C_{5}H_{15}NO_{3}.”
“It’s rather deadly, I suppose,” I added, with as much carelessness as I
could assume.
“Fairly so,” said Leader. “Not quite as powerful as the natural stuff, I
believe, but quite disagreeable enough. A teaspoonful would settle your
hash all right, and leave a bit over for the dog. Nice symptoms.
Sickness, blindness, delirium _and_ convulsions.” He grinned fondly at
the bottle. “Like to try some? Take it in a little water and the
income-tax won’t bother you again.”
“What’s it made of, Leader?” asked Munting.
“Oh—inorganic stuff, you know—all artificial. I couldn’t say offhand.
I can look it up if you like.” He hunted in a locker and produced a
notebook. “Oh, yes, of course. Cholin. You start with artificial
cholin.”
“What’s that? Something to do with the liver?”
“Well, yes, in the ordinary way. But you can make it by heating ethene
oxide with triethylamine. That gives you your cholin. Then you oxidise
it with dilute nitric acid—the stuff you etch with, you know. Result,
muscarine. Pretty, isn’t it?”
“And if you analyse it again chemically, could you tell the difference
between that and the real stuff?”
“Of course not. It _is_ the real stuff. I don’t think we’ve got any of
the natural muscarine about the place, or you’d see. But there’s no
difference at all, really. Nature’s only a rather clumsy kind of
chemist, don’t you see. You’re a chemical laboratory; your body, I
mean—so am I—so’s everybody—only rather a careless and inaccurate
one, and given to producing unnecessary flourishes and ornaments, like
your face, or toadstools. There’s no _need_ to make a toadstool when you
want to produce muscarine. If it comes to that, I don’t suppose there’s
any real need for your face—from a chemical point of view. We could
build you up quite easily in the labs, if we wanted to. You’re mostly
water, you know, with a little salt and phosphates and all that kind of
thing.”
“Come, Leader, that won’t quite do. You couldn’t make me walk and talk,
could you?” (This was Munting, of course.)
“Well, no. There’s a trifling hitch there, I admit—always supposing
anybody wants to hear your bright conversation.”
“Then there is something—what I call Life—which you can’t imitate.”
“Well, yes. But I daresay we shall find it some day. It can’t be
anything very out-of-the-way, can it? I mean, there’s an awful lot of it
knocking about. The trouble is, one doesn’t seem to be able to find it
by chemical analysis. If one could, you know, it would probably turn out
to be something quite ordinary, and then one could make it.”
“The lost formula of _Rossum’s Universal Robots_, eh?”
“Very likely,” said Leader, “that’s a play, isn’t it? I never go to
high-brow plays. All rot, you know—more in your line. But there it is.
Analyse you and you’re just so much dead matter. Analyse toadstools, and
you get this muscarine stuff. Makes one think a bit less of the marvels
of Nature, don’t it?”
“Except,” said Munting, who had by now mounted on his usual hobby-horse,
“except for the small accident of Life, which is, as you say, a
triviality, no doubt, but yet——”
I interrupted him.
“We don’t want to waste Mr. Leader’s time with metaphysics.”
“No,” said Munting, obstinately, “but what I want to know——”
A tremendous clattering of feet in the corridor heralded the throwing
open of the door and the irruption of a large number of young men in
overalls.
“Oh, Lord,” said Leader, “we’ll have to clear out.” He looked at his
watch. “I say, do you mind if I barge off? There’s a demonstration I’ve
simply got to attend. Nuisance, but I’m rather behindhand with Dimmock’s
subjects. Must mug it up somehow. Awfully pleased to have seen you. Can
you find your way out?”
“Just a moment,” said Munting. “You remember the fellow I brought with
me last year—Lathom—the artist?”
“Yes, of course—the fellow who was so keen on poisons. Asked such a lot
of questions about the right dose, and was so struck with our synthetic
stuff. Didn’t seem able to get over the fact that you couldn’t
distinguish artificial muscarine from the natural product by chemical
analysis. Very intelligent bloke I thought he was—for an artist. I
remember him perfectly. Why?”
“Have you seen anything of him since?”
“No. Why?”
“I just wondered. He said something once about looking you up.”
“Well, he didn’t. Perhaps he came in the vac. There’s nobody here then,
except the swots and the dunces trying to cram themselves for the exams.
Tell him to come in term-time. I really must buzz along. I say, come and
feed one night, won’t you?”
Munting promised to do so, and Leader escaped, cannoning violently into
the demonstrator as he dashed out. We followed, not wishing to be caught
and interrogated.
“That was Benton,” said Munting, looking back at the closing door. “I
wish we could have had a word with him. If Leader——”
“About the origin of life, I suppose? You’re cracked about the origin of
life. It’s the origin of death we’re investigating. We’ve got what we
came for. It’s clear enough that anybody might have walked in and helped
himself to a dose of that stuff. Look at those places we went into. No
one to stop us—and it’s term-time, too. In the vac. the place is
absolutely deserted. If Lathom was over here in the vac.—and he was.
Don’t you remember those letters of Margaret Harrison’s? He was here in
July.”
“Yes,” agreed Munting, thoughtfully. “Yes, I quite see that. But the
difficulty is to _prove_ it. Just because it’s so easy to get in, it’s a
million to one against anybody having noticed you. And you can’t expect
a jury to accept a vague possibility like that. If there was any
analysable difference between natural and synthetic muscarine, then, of
course, you would have something genuine to go upon. Because it would be
quite impossible to eat synthetic muscarine by accident—except in a
laboratory. But apparently there is no difference.”
This sobered me. I had been feeling that we were well on the way to
solve the problem. But now I saw very clearly that we were just as far
away as ever. No jury in the world would accept this involved and
unsubstantiated theory. True, people are ready enough to believe that an
adulterer is very likely a murderer as well. But if it comes to the
question of probability, which will they rather believe? That a man
elaborately stole a rare and incomprehensible laboratory product which
none of them have ever heard of, and elaborately administered it under
involved and peculiar circumstances? Or that an eccentric experimenter
with “unnatural” foods accidentally poisoned himself with toadstools?
The answer is obvious.
Moreover, to obtain a conviction, there must be no doubt possible. The
murder theory must be overwhelmingly _more_ likely than the accident
theory. Judges are careful to point this out.
I was as certain that Lathom had poisoned my father with synthetic
muscarine as that I was alive. But I began to be equally certain that
Lathom had hit upon a method of murder that was utterly and completely
proof against proof.
52. _Statement of John Munting_
[Additional and concluding portion.]
This damned business of Lathom’s.
People write books about murders, and the nice young men and women in
them enjoy the job of detecting. It is a good game and I like reading
the books. But the emotions of the nice young people are so
well-regulated, or so perfunctory, or something. They don’t feel like
worms and get put off their dinners when they have succeeded in
squeezing a damaging admission out of a friend. They don’t seem to
suffer from fits of retching terror for fear they should find out
something definite. Nor, while struggling with these complicated
miseries, do they ever have to fulfil contracts with publishers.
Sometimes they are filled with a stern sorrow—a nice, Brutus-like
sentiment. I envy their nerves.
My nerves went back on me about the time of our visit to St. Anthony’s.
I took a kind of hysterical pleasure in pointing out that we had no
proof of the murder. I didn’t want proof. I didn’t want to know. It was
like writing one of those horrible letters which call for a decisive
answer one way or another. You post it and wait, and you know that one
morning you will see your correspondent’s handwriting on an envelope,
and feel as hollow as a piece of bamboo. And you wait. Nothing comes.
And after a time you say, “It’s been lost in the post. Now I need not
know. Not now, at any rate. I can still pretend that it’s all right.
Nothing will happen to-day. I can eat my dinner and listen to the
wireless—and perhaps it will go on like that for ever.”
The answer to the Lathom problem seemed to have been lost in the post.
We did not talk about it at home. My wife knew that I winced from it. It
made other subjects impossible, too. Women, for instance, and the way
they influence their lovers—we would start as far off as Gordon Craig’s
theatre-masks or _Gryll Grange_ and Lord Curryfin’s _echeia_, and before
we had gone far, the figure of Clytemnestra would come bobbing over the
horizon, and I would be talking hurriedly, dismissing it, rushing into
technicalities about epode and stasimen, or about the chorus or the
machines—anything. Or if Elizabeth merely asked what we should have for
dinner, it seemed difficult to think of anything that was not flavoured
with mushrooms or founded on beef-stock. We lived for a whole week on
fish once, so sensitive did our minds become.
I got over it, more or less, after a time and, mercifully, Lathom let me
alone. It was not till March that a faint reminding echo of the thing
sounded faintly over the breakfast-table. I got a note from Mr. Perry,
the parson to whom I had once lent a volume of Eddington. At the sight
of his name I got a kind of painful twitching in the sore place.
The note was to invite me to dinner. An old college friend of his, the
extremely celebrated Professor Hoskyns, was coming over to spend the
evening with him. Hoskyns is, of course, a very brilliant physicist, and
Perry thought it would interest me to meet him. One or two other people
were coming as well. If I could put up with a very simple meal, he
thought we should enjoy a really enjoyable talk.
My first instinct was to refuse. I hated the idea of going into the
district and of seeing anybody even remotely connected with the
Harrisons. But the idea of meeting Hoskyns was fascinating. I have that
kind of vaguely inquiring mind that likes to be told what is going on,
even though I could not be troubled to make a single experiment myself,
and should not have the vaguest idea what experiment to make. A pap-fed,
negative, twentieth-century mind, open on all sides and wind-swept by
every passing gust. Elizabeth thought that a chat with a bunch of
scientific men would do me good. We need not, she said, mention the
Harrisons. In the end, I accepted, and I rather think Elizabeth must
have conveyed some sort of warning to Perry, for the Harrisons were not
mentioned.
Perry’s shabby little sitting-room seemed crowded with men and smoke
when I arrived. Professor Hoskyns, long, thin, bald, and much more
human-looking than his Press photographs, was installed in a
broken-springed leather armchair and called Perry “Jim.” There was also
a swarthy little man in spectacles, whom they both called “Stingo,” and
who turned out to be Professor Matthews, the biologist, the man who has
done so much work on heredity. A large, stout, red-faced person with a
boisterous manner was introduced as Waters. He was younger than the
rest, but they all treated him with deference, and it presently appeared
that he was the coming man in chemistry. Desultory conversation made it
clear that Matthews, Hoskyns and Perry had been contemporaries at
Oxford, and that Waters had been brought by Matthews, with whom he was
on terms of the heartiest friendship and disagreement. A thin youth,
with an eager manner and an irrepressible forelock, completed the party.
He sported a clerical collar and informed me that he was the new curate,
and that it was “a wonderful opportunity” to start his ministry under a
man like Mr. Perry.
The dinner was satisfying. A vast beef-steak pudding, an apple-pie of
corresponding size, and tankards of beer, quaffed from Perry’s old
rowing-cups, put us all into a mellow humour. Perry’s asceticism did
not, I am thankful to say, take the form of tough hash and lemonade, in
spite of the presence on his walls of a series of melancholy Arundel
prints, portraying brown and skinny anchorites, apparently nourished on
cabbage-water. It rather tended to the idea of: “Beef, noise, the
Church, vulgarity and beer,” and I judged that in their younger days, my
fellow-guests had kept the progs busy. However, the somewhat wearisome
flood of undergraduate reminiscence was stemmed after a time with
suitable apologies, and Matthews said, a little provocatively:
“So here we all are. I never thought you’d stick to it, Perry. Which has
made your job hardest—the War or people like us?”
“The War,” said Perry, immediately. “It has taken the heart out of
people.”
“Yes. It showed things up a bit,” said Matthews. “Made it hard to
believe in anything.”
“No,” replied the priest. “Made it easy to believe and difficult not to
believe—in anything. Just anything. They believe in everything in a
languid sort of way—in you, in me, in Waters, in Hoskyns, in mascots,
in spiritualism, in education, in the daily papers—why not? It’s
easier, and the various things cancel out and so make it unnecessary to
take any definite steps in any direction.”
“Damn the daily papers,” said Hoskyns. “And damn education. All these
get-clever-quick articles and sixpenny text-books. Before one has time
to verify an experiment, they’re all at you, shrieking to have it
formulated into a theory. And if you do formulate it, they misunderstand
it, or misapply it. If anybody says there are vitamins in tomatoes, they
rush out with a tomato-theory. If somebody says that gamma-rays are
found to have an action on cancer-cells in mice, they proclaim
gamma-rays as a cure-all for everything from old age to a cold in the
head. And if anybody goes quietly away into a corner to experiment with
high-voltage electric currents, they start a lot of ill-informed rubbish
about splitting the atom.”
“Yes,” said Matthews, “I thought I saw some odd remarks attributed to
you the other day about that.”
“Wasting my time,” said Hoskyns. “I told them exactly what they put into
my mouth. You’re right, Jim, they’d believe anything. The elixir of
life—that’s what they really want to get hold of. It would look well in
a headline. If you can’t give ’em a simple formula to cure all human
ills and explain creation, they say you don’t know your business.”
“Ah!” said Perry, with a twinkle of the eye, “but if the Church gives
them a set of formulæ for the same purpose, they say they don’t want
formulæ or dogmas, but just a loving wistfulness.”
“You’re not up-to-date enough,” said Waters. “They like their formulæ to
be red-hot, up-to-the-minute discoveries.”
“Why, so they are,” said Perry. “Look at Stingo here. He tells them that
if two unfit people marry, their unfitness will be visited on their
children unto the third and fourth generation, after which they will
probably die out through mere degeneration. We’ve been telling them that
for three or four thousand years, and Matthews has only just caught up
to us. As a matter of fact, you people are on our side. If _you_ tell
them the things, they may perhaps come to believe in them.”
“And possibly act on them, you think?” said Matthews. “But we have to do
all the work for them, just as you have to do the godly living.”
“That’s not altogether true,” said Perry.
“Near enough. But we do get on a bit faster, because we can give reasons
for things. Show me a germ, and I’ll tell you how to get rid of plague
or cholera. Call it Heaven’s judgment for sin, and all you can do is to
sit down under it.”
“But surely,” struck in the curate, “we are expressly warned in
Scripture against calling things judgments for sin. How about those
eighteen on whom the Tower of Siloam fell?”
“If it was anybody’s sin,” said Perry, “it was probably the carelessness
of the people who built the tower.”
“And that’s usually a sin that finds somebody out,” added Waters.
“Unfortunately, the sinner isn’t always the victim.”
“Why should it be?” said Matthews. “Nature does not work by a scheme of
poetical justice.”
“Nor does God,” said Perry. “We suffer for one another, as, indeed, we
must, being all members one of another. Can you separate the child from
the father, the man from the brute, or even the man from the vegetable
cell, Stingo?”
“No,” said Matthews. “It is you that have tried to keep up that story
about Man in the image of God and lord of nature and so on. But trace
the chain back and you will find every link hold—you yourself,
compounded from your father and mother by the mechanical chemistry of
the chromosomes. Back to your ancestors, back to prehistoric Neanderthal
Man and his cousin, Aurignacian. Neanderthal was a mistake, he wouldn’t
work properly and died out, but the line goes on back, dropping the
misfits, leaving the stabilised forms on the way—back to Arboreal Man,
to the common ancestor Tarsius, to the first Mammal, to the ancestral
bird-form, back to the Reptiles, the Trilobites, back to the queer,
shapeless jellies of life that divide and subdivide eternally in the
waters. The things that found some kind of balance with their
environment persisted, the things that didn’t, died out; and here and
there some freak found its freakishness of advantage and started a new
kind of life with a new equilibrium. At what point, Perry, will you
place your image of God?”
“Well,” said Perry, “I should not attempt to deny that Adam was formed
of the dust of the earth. And your ape-and-tiger ancestry at least
provides me with a scientific authority for original sin. What a mercy
the Church stuck to that dogma, in spite of Rousseau and the noble
savage. If she hadn’t, you scientists would have forced it back on her,
and how silly we should all have looked then.”
“But it was all guess-work,” retorted Matthews, “unless you call it
inspiration, and very inaccurate at that. If the author of Genesis had
said that man was made of sea-water, he would have been nearer the
truth.”
“Well,” said Waters, “he put the beginnings of life on the face of the
waters, which wasn’t so very far off.”
“But how did life begin?” I asked. “After all, there is a difference
between the Organic and the Inorganic. Or there appears to be.”
“That’s for Waters to say,” said Matthews.
“I can’t be very didactic about that,” said the chemist. “But it appears
possible that there was an evolution from Inorganic to Organic through
the Colloids. We can’t say much more, and we haven’t—so far—succeeded
in producing it in the laboratory. Matthews probably still believes that
Mind is a function of Matter, but if he asks me to demonstrate it for
him, I must beg to be excused. I can’t even show that Life is a function
of Matter.”
“The Behaviourists seem to think that what looks like Intelligence and
Freewill are merely mechanical responses to material stimuli,” I
suggested.
“That’s all very well,” said Hoskyns, emerging with a grin from a cloud
of tobacco-smoke, “but all you people talk so cheerfully about Matter,
as if you knew what it was. I don’t, and it’s more or less my job to
know. Go back again, go past your colloids and your sea-water. Go back
to the dust of the earth and the mass of rotating cinders which was
before the ocean even began. Go back to the sun, which threw the planets
off so unexpectedly, owing to a rare accident which might not happen in
a million light-years. Go back to the nebula. Go back to the atom. Do
some of the famous splitting we hear so much about. Where is your
Matter? It isn’t. It is a series of pushes or pulls or vortices in
nothingness. And as for your train of mechanical causation, Matthews,
when you come down to it, it resolves itself into a series of purely
fortuitous movements of something we can’t define in a medium that
doesn’t exist. Even your heredity-business is fortuitous. Why one set of
chromosomes more than any other? Your chain of causation would only be a
real one if all possible combinations and permutations were worked out
in practice. Something is going on, that is as certain as anything can
be—that is, I mean, it is the fundamental assumption we are bound to
make in order to reason at all—but how it started or why it started is
just as mysterious as it was when the first thoughtful savage invented a
god to explain it.”
“Why should it ever have started at all?” said Matthews. “As Matter
passes from one form to another, so forces change from one to another.
Why should we suppose a beginning—or an end if it comes to that? Why
not a perpetually shifting kaleidoscope, going through all its
transformations and starting again?”
“Why, my lad,” replied Hoskyns, “because in that case you will come slap
up against the second law of thermo-dynamics, and that will be the end
of you.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Perry, “the formula that starts so charmingly about
‘Nothing in the statistics of an assemblage’—that appears to be all the
Law and the Prophets nowadays.”
“Yes,” said Hoskyns. “Its general meaning is that Time only works in one
direction, and that when all the permutations and combinations have been
run through, Time will stop, because there will be nothing further by
which we can distinguish its direction. All the possibilities will have
been worked out, all the electrons will have been annihilated, and there
will be nothing more for them to do and no radiant energy left for them
to do it with. That is why there must be an end. And if an end,
presumably a beginning.”
“And the end is implicit in the beginning?” said I.
“Yes; but the intermediate stages are not inevitable in detail, only
overwhelmingly probable in the gross. There, Perry, if you like, you can
reconcile Foreknowledge with Freewill.”
“Life, then, I suppose, is but one more element of randomness,” said I,
“in the randomness of things.”
“Presumably,” said Hoskyns.
There was a pause.
“What is Life?” I asked, suddenly.
“Well, Pontius,” said Waters, “if we could answer that question we
should probably not need to ask the others. At present—chemically
speaking—the nearest definition I can produce is that it is a kind of
bias—a lop-sidedness, so to speak. Possibly that accounts for its
oddness.”
“I’ve said that kind of thing myself,” I said, rather astonished, “just
as a sort of feeble witticism. Have I hit on something true by
accident?”
“More or less. That is to say, it is true that, up to the present, it is
only living substance that has found the trick of transforming a
symmetric, optically inactive compound into a single, asymmetric,
optically active compound. At the moment that Life appeared on this
planet, something happened to the molecular structure of things. They
got a twist, which nobody has ever succeeded in reproducing
mechanically—at least, not without an exercise of deliberate selective
intelligence, which is also, as I suppose you’ll allow, a manifestation
of Life.”
“Thank you,” said Perry. “Do you mind saying the first part over again,
in words that a child could understand?”
“Well, it’s like this,” said Waters. “When the planet cooled, the
molecules of that original inorganic planetary matter were symmetric—if
crystallised, the crystals were symmetric also. That is, they were alike
on both sides, like a geometrical cube, and their reversed or
mirror-images would be identical with themselves. Substances of this
kind are said to be optically inactive; that is to say, if viewed
through the polariscope, they have no power to rotate the beam of
polarised light.”
“We will take your word for it,” said Perry.
“Oh, well, that’s quite simple. Ordinarily speaking, the vibrations in
the æther—need I explain æther?”
“I wish you could,” said Hoskyns.
“We will pass æther,” said Perry.
“Thank you. Well, ordinarily the ætheric vibrations which propagate the
light takes place in all directions at right angles to the path of the
ray. If you pass the ray through a crystal of Iceland spar, these
vibrations are all brought into one plane, like a flat ribbon. That is
what is called a beam of polarised light. Very well, then. If you pass
this polarised light through a substance whose molecular structure is
symmetric, nothing happens to it; the substance is optically inactive.
But if you pass it through, say, a solution of cane sugar, the beam of
polarised light will be twisted, and you will get a spiral effect, like
twisting a strip of paper either to the right or to the left. The cane
sugar is optically active. And why? Because its molecular structure is
asymmetric. The crystals of sugar are not fully developed. There is an
irregularity on one side, and the crystal and its mirror image are
reversed, like my right hand and my left.” He laid the palm of the right
hand on the back of the left to show his meaning. We all frowned and
practised on our own hands.
“Very good,” continued Waters. “Now, we can produce in the laboratory,
by synthesis from inorganic substances, other substances which were at
one time thought to be only the products of living tissues—camphor, for
instance, and some of the alkaloids used in medicine. But what is the
difference between our process and that of Nature? What happens is this.
The substance produced by synthesis always appears in what is called a
racemic form. It consists of two sets of substances—one set having its
asymmetry right-handed and the other left-handed, so that the product as
a whole behaves like an inorganic, symmetric compound; that is, its two
asymmetrics cancel one another out, and the product is optically
inactive and has no power to rotate the beam of polarised light. To get
a substance exactly equivalent to the natural product, we have to split
it into its two asymmetric forms. We can’t do that mechanically. We can
do it by the exercise of our living intelligence, of course, by
laboriously picking out the crystals. Or we can do it by swallowing the
substance, when our bodies will absorb and digest the dextro-rotating
form of, for example, glucose, and pass the lævo-rotating form out
unchanged. Or we can get a living fungus to do it for us, such as blue
mould, which will feed on and destroy the dextro-rotatory half of the
racemic form of paratartaric acid and leave unchanged the lævo-rotatory
half, which is the artificial, laboratory-made half. But we can’t, by
one mechanical laboratory process, turn an inorganic, inactive,
symmetric compound into one single, asymmetric, optically active
compound—and that is what living matter will do cheerfully, day by
day.”
Waters finished his exposition with a smart little thump of the fist on
the table. I knew what that was. It was the postman’s knock, bringing
the answer to that letter of mine. A horrid sinking feeling at the solar
plexus warned me that in a very few minutes I should have to ask a
question. Why need I do it? The subject was remote and difficult. I
could easily pretend not to understand. If there really was a difference
between the synthetic and the natural product, it was not my business to
investigate it. Waters was changing the subject. He had gone back to the
first day of creation. Hang him! Let him stay there!
“So that, as Professor Japp said, as long ago as 1898, ‘The phenomena of
stereo-chemistry support the doctrine of vitalism as revived by the
younger physiologists, and point to the existence of a directive force,
which enters upon the scene with Life itself and which, in no way
violating the laws of the kinetics of atoms’—that ought to comfort you,
Hoskyns—‘determines the course of their operation within the living
organism. That is that at the moment when Life first arose, a directive
force came into play—a force of precisely the same character as that
which enables the intelligent operator, by the exercise of his will, to
select one crystallised enantiomorph and reject its asymmetric
opposite.’ I learnt that passage by heart once, as a safeguard against
cocksureness and a gesture of proper humility in face of my subject.”
“In other words,” said Matthews, “you believe in miracles, and something
appearing out of nowhere. I am sorry to find you on the side of the
angels.”
“It depends what you mean by miracles. I think there is an intelligence
behind it all. Else, why anything at all?”
“You have Jeans on your side anyway,” put in Hoskyns. “He says,
‘Everything points with overwhelming force to a definite event, or
series of events, of creation at some time or times, not infinitely
remote. The universe cannot have originated by chance out of its present
ingredients.’ I can’t tell you what produced the first molecules of gas,
and you can’t tell me what produced the first asymmetric molecules of
Life. The parson here may think he knows.”
“I don’t know,” said Perry, “but I give it a name. I call it God. You
don’t know what the æther is, but you give it a name, and deduce its
attributes from its behaviour. Why shouldn’t I do likewise? You people
are making it all very much easier for me.”
It was no good. I had to ask my question. I burst in, violently,
inappropriately, on this theological discussion:
“You mean to tell me,” I said, “that it is possible to differentiate a
substance produced synthetically in the laboratory from one produced by
living tissue?”
“Certainly,” said Waters, turning to me in some surprise, but apparently
accepting my tardy realisation of this truth as mere vagary of my slow
and unscientific wits. “So long, of course, as the artificial substance
remains in the first or racemic form, for this would be optically
inactive, while that from the living tissues would rotate the beam of
polarised light, when viewed in the polariscope. If, however, that
racemic form had been already split up by the intelligent operator, or
some other living agency, into its two dextro- and lævo-rotary forms, it
would be impossible to distinguish between them.”
I saw a path of escape opening up. Surely the synthetic muscarine at St.
Anthony’s would have had this other operation performed on it. There was
no reason at all why I should interfere. I relapsed into silence, and
the conversation wandered on.
I was recalled to myself by a movement about me. Matthews was explaining
that he had to be getting home. Waters rose to accompany him. In a
minute he would be gone and the opportunity lost. I had only to sit
still.
I got up. I made my fatuous farewells. I said I had a perfectly good
wife to go home to. I thanked my host and said how much I had enjoyed
the evening. I followed the other men out into the narrow hall, with its
loaded umbrella-stand and ugly, discoloured wall-paper.
“Dr. Waters,” I said.
“Yes?” He turned smiling towards me. I must say something now or he
would think me a fool.
“May I have a word with you?”
“By all means. Which way do you go?”
“Bloomsbury,” said I, hoping desperately that he lived at Hendon or
Harringay.
“Excellent, I am going that way myself. Shall we share a taxi?”
I murmured something about Professor Matthews.
“No, no,” said he, “I’m going by tube to Earl’s Court.”
We found our taxi and got in.
“Well, now?” said Waters.
I was in for it now. I told him the whole story.
“By God,” he said, “that’s damned interesting. Fine idea for a murder.
Of course, any jury in the country would be only too ready to believe it
was accident. Tempting Providence, and all that. And unless your man was
fool enough to use the synthetic muscarine in its racemic form, you
know, I’m very much afraid he’s pulled it off. There’s a chance, of
course. They may not have gone further than that. Why didn’t you ask
Benson while you were about it?”
“I thought of doing so,” I admitted. “At least, I didn’t know about this
racemic business, but I thought there might be some way of telling the
artificial stuff from the real. But Harrison seemed satisfied——”
“He would be. I know these people. Wrapped up in their own subjects. An
engineer—_he_ ought to know something about molecular structure. But
no. He’s no occasion to study Organic, so it doesn’t occur to him that
there’s anything to know about it. The word of a first-year student at
Anthony’s is enough for him. You have more imagination. Why didn’t
you——?”
“I don’t know that I quite wanted to.”
“Let bad alone, eh? But damn it, it’s interesting. I say, what a scoop
for the papers, if it comes off! ‘First murder ever caught by the
polariscope.’ Better than Crippen and the wireless. Only they’ll have a
bit of a job explaining it. Now, look here, what are we going to do
about it? Who did the analysis?”
“Lubbock.”
“Oh, yes—Home Office man, of course. We’ll have to get on to him. It’s
chance if he’s kept the stuff by him. What? Oh, he has. That’s all right
then. We’ve only got to take a squint at it and then we shall know. I
mean, if the stuff really is racemic, we shall know. If not, we never
shall. What’s the time? Quarter-past eleven. No time like the present.
Here, driver!”
He thrust his head out of the window and gave an address in Woburn
Square.
“It’s all on our way, and Lubbock never goes to bed before midnight. I
know him well. He’ll be keen on this.”
His energy swept me up, feebly protesting, and in a few minutes’ time we
were standing on Sir James Lubbock’s doorstep, ringing the bell.
The door was opened by a manservant, of whom Waters inquired whether Sir
James was at home.
“No, sir. He is working late to-night, sir, at the Home Office. I think
it’s the arsenic case, sir.”
“Oh, of course. That’s luck for us, Munting. We’ll run down and catch
him there. You might give him a ring, Stevens, and say I’m coming down
to see him on an urgent matter. You know who I am?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Dr. Waters. Very good, sir. You’ll find him in the
laboratory, sir.”
“Right. We’d better hurry up, or we may just miss him.”
We plunged back into the taxi.
“Shall we find any difficulty in getting in?”
“Oh, no. I’ve been there before. We’re making very good time. Provided
he hadn’t started before Stevens got through to him, he’ll wait for us.
Ah! here we are.”
We drew up at a side door in the big Government building. After a short
colloquy with the man on duty, we were passed through. I stumbled at
Waters’ heels through a number of dreary corridors, till we fetched up
in a kind of small ante-room.
“I feel strongly persuaded,” I said, “that I am on a visit to the
dentist.”
“And you hope very much he’ll say there’s nothing to be done to you this
time. I, on the contrary, hope very much that it’s something malignant
and unusual. Have a fag.”
I accepted the fag. I tried to think of Harrison, perishing horribly in
his lonely shack, but instead I could only see Lathom with his hair
rumpled and his teeth set, painting with his usual careless brilliance.
I got the idea that God or Nature or Science or some other sinister and
powerful thing had set a trap for him, and that I was pushing him into
it. I thought it was ruthless of God or whoever it was. Pom, pomty; pom,
pomty; pom, pomty; pom, pomty—I was nervously humming something and I
couldn’t think what. Oh, yes— Haydn’s _Creation_—that bit, where the
kettle-drums thump so gently, so ruthlessly, on one
note—“And-the-spi-rit-of-God (pomty)
moved-upon-the-face-of-the-waters-(pom)”—only apparently it wasn’t the
Spirit of God, but an asymmetric molecule, which didn’t fit the rhythm.
Somebody was walking down the corridor, with a soft, muffled beat,
rather like kettle-drums. “Let there be light (pomty-pom) and there
was——”
The door opened.
I recognised Sir James Lubbock at once, of course, though now, in a
white overall and pair of crimson carpet slippers, he presented an
appearance less point-devise than he had done at the inquest. He greeted
Waters cordially and received my name with a faint look of puzzledom.
“Mr. Munting? Yes—let me see, haven’t we met before?”
I reminded him of Manaton.
“Of course, of course. I knew I knew your face. Mr. Munting, the
novelist. Delighted to make your acquaintance under more pleasant
auspices.”
“I don’t know that they are much more pleasant,” said Waters. “As a
matter of fact, it’s the Harrison case we wanted to see you about.”
“Really? Has something fresh turned up? You know, the other day I had a
letter from the man’s son. Rather an odd letter. He seemed to have got
the idea that there was more in the case than met the eye. Hinted that
we might have found something else—strychnine or something. Quite
ridiculous, of course. There wasn’t the faintest doubt about the cause
of death. Muscarine poisoning. Perfectly straightforward.”
“Just so. By the way, Lubbock, did it by any chance occur to you to give
that muscarine the once-over with the polariscope?”
“With the polariscope? Good heavens, no. Why should it? That wouldn’t
tell one anything. You know all about muscarine. Dextro-rotatory.
Nothing abstruse about it.”
“Oh, quite. But we’ve been having a little discussion, and—as a matter
of fact, Lubbock, it would relieve Mr. Munting’s mind—and
mine—considerably, if you would just check up on that point.”
“Well, if you insist, there’s nothing easier. But what’s the mystery?”
“Nothing at all, probably. Just an extra bit of collateral evidence,
that’s all.”
“You’ve something at the back of your mind, Waters. Can’t I be allowed
to know?”
“I’ll tell you after you’ve done it.”
Sir James Lubbock shook his handsome grey head.
“That’s Waters all over. He’s like Sherlock Holmes. Never can resist a
touch of the dramatic.”
“No,” said Waters. “It’s just native caution. Don’t want to commit
myself and be made to look foolish.”
“Oh, well, come along and we’ll get it over.”
“Aren’t we interrupting your work?” I said. I hope this question was
prompted by politeness, but I think I spoke in a vain hope of delaying
the crisis.
“Not a bit. I’d just finished—was packing up, in fact, when I got your
message.”
We traversed some more corridors and eventually came out into a large
laboratory, faintly lit by a single electric bulb. An attendant was just
locking a cupboard. He turned as he saw us.
“It’s all right, Denis. I’ll see to things. You can trot away home.”
“Very well. Good night, Sir James.”
“Good night.”
Sir James switched on some more lights, flooding the gaunt room with
what Poe has called somewhere a “ghastly and inappropriate splendour.”
Stepping across to a tall cupboard labelled with his name, he unlocked
it with a key that hung upon his watch-chain.
“Here’s my bluebeard’s chamber,” he said, smiling. “Relics of all kinds
of crimes and tragedies. Bottled murders. Bottled suicides. Plenty of
plots for novels here, Mr. Munting.”
I said I supposed so.
“Here we are, Harrison. Extract from stomach. Extract from vomit.
Extract from dish of fungus. Which is it you particularly want, Waters?”
“Doesn’t matter. Try the extract from the dish of fungus. It’ll be less
open to—that is, it is possibly better for our purpose. What’s this,
Lubbock?”
“That? Oh, that’s a fresh solution of muscarine I made myself for
control purposes, to assist in determining the strength.”
“Made from the fungus?”
“Yes. I don’t altogether guarantee that I’ve isolated the principle. But
it’s near enough.”
“Oh, yes. I’d like to have a look at that, too, if I may.”
“By all means.”
He brought the bottles out and set them on one of the laboratory tables.
In appearance they were indistinguishable—the same white salt that I
had seen before in the laboratory at St. Anthony’s.
Sir James Lubbock unlocked another cupboard, and produced a large, heavy
instrument, rather like a telescope fixed to a stand. He put it down
beside the two bottles and departed in search of water. While he was
preparing solutions from the respective bottles of muscarine, Waters
turned to me.
“You’d better have this quite clear in your mind—I mean, you’d like to
know what you may expect to see, exactly.”
“Yes,” I said. “At present I feel rather like the good lady in _The
Moonstone_, who wanted to know when the explosion would take place.”
“I’m afraid it won’t be so exciting as that. Cheer up, man, you look as
white as a sheet. At the further end of the instrument is a thin plate
of the semi-transparent mineral, tourmaline. You’ve seen it in
jewellers’ shops. Pretty stuff, and all that, and, what is more to the
purpose, it has a very finely foliated structure. In a ray of ordinary
light, the vibrations take place in all directions, but when passed
through a slice of tourmaline they are confined to one plane, and the
light is then polarised. We talked about that at dinner—you remember.
This slice of tourmaline is called the polariser. Right. Now at this
end, near the eyepiece, is a second slice of tourmaline, which can be
rotated, and which is called the analyser. Now, when the analyser is
turned so that its foliations are parallel to those of the polariser,
light will pass through both, but if the analyser is turned so that its
foliations are at right angles to those of the polariser, then no light
will pass and there will be darkness. All clear so far?”
“Perfectly.”
“Very well. Now, if, when the analyser is thus turned to darkness, I
place the solution of an optically active substance between the two
slices of tourmaline the light will—you can tell me that yourself—it’s
a _band_ of light, remember.”
“I remember. Yes. The band of light will be rotated as it passes
through.”
“That’s right. It will come round into line with the foliations of the
analyser, and——”
“Come through!” said I, triumphantly.
“Thank God for a man of intelligent mind. As you rightly say, it will
come through. And therefore you will see——”
“Light!” said I.
(Pom, pomty; pom, pomty—if I could have got rid of that relentless
drum-beat. My heart seemed to be going very heavily too.)
“But if,” went on Waters, with his eye on Sir James, who was stirring
his solutions with a glass rod over the sink, “if the substance should
be optically inactive—if, for example, it should turn out to be a
synthetic product, prepared from inorganic substances in the
laboratory—then it will not rotate the beam of polarised light. The
darkness will persist.”
I saw that.
“Well, now you perfectly understand. If, when we put the muscarine
solution in the polariscope, we get light, it proves nothing. Either the
stuff is natural, or else the synthetic preparation has already been
split up into its two active forms, and we can make no pronouncement
about it. But if we get darkness—then it’s a pretty dark business, Mr.
Munting.”
I nodded.
“Well, Waters,” said Sir James, cheerfully “finished your lecture?”
“Quite. The pupil is highly commended.”
“Good. Now, I’m in your hands, Waters. What do you want me to do?”
“I think we’ll have the control solution first, if you don’t mind. Now,
Mr. Munting, you will see how this substance, prepared from the living
tissue of a fungus, rotates the beam of polarised light. Right you are,
sir.”
Sir James handed me a glass cylinder, filled with a colourless solution.
I sniffed at it, but it had no smell.
“I shouldn’t taste it if I were you,” said Sir James, a little grimly.
He struck a match and lit a Bunsen burner, the flame of which played
upon a small mass of something held above it by a platinum projection.
“Sodium chloride,” said Waters; “in fact, not to make unnecessary
mystery about it, common salt. Shall I switch off?”
He snapped off the lights, and we were left with only the sodium flame.
In that green, sick glare a face floated close to mine—a
corpse-face—livid, waxen, stamped with decay—sharp-shadowed in the
nostrils and under the orbits—Harrison’s face, as I had seen it in “The
Shack,” opening a black mouth of complaint.
“Spectacular, isn’t it?” said Sir James, pleasantly, and I pulled myself
together and realised that I must look just as ghastly to him as he to
me. But for the moment the face had been Harrison’s, and from that
moment Lathom was nothing to me any more.
Sir James settled down to his experiment with comfortable deliberation.
He placed the cylinder containing the solution in the polariscope,
adjusted the eyepiece and looked. Then he turned to Waters.
“So far,” he said, dryly, “the laws of Nature appear to hold good. Do
you want to see?”
“I should like Mr. Munting to see,” said Waters. “Here you are. Wait a
minute. We’ll take the cylinder out for a moment. Come along. You shall
do it yourself.”
My heart _was_ thumping. To my excited imagination it seemed to shake
the table as I took Sir James’s place before the polariscope.
“We’ll start,” said Waters, “with the analyser parallel to the
polariser. Right you are. You see your beam of light? Now here’s the
adjustment. Turn it yourself.”
I turned it, and the light vanished.
“Hold on to it,” said Waters, cheerfully, “so that you can be sure
there’s no hanky-panky. I’m putting the muscarine solution in again. Now
then!”
As he slipped the glass cylinder into place the circle of light
returned.
“Yes,” I said, “I see it.”
“Convincing demonstration of a miracle,” said Waters, “and the
lop-sidedness of things in general. That’s all right, then. Now we’ll
have a look at the stuff that killed Harrison. No. Respect for our
governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters. We’ll let Sir James
have a go first.”
Sir James, with a shrug, took my place at the instrument. Waters put his
hand on my arm.
With maddening deliberation, the analyst set the first cylinder
carefully on one side and took up the other. My mouth was dry as I
watched him. He put the cylinder into the polariscope and looked. There
was a pause. Then a grunt. Then his hand came up, feeling for the
adjustment. There was another pause and an exclamation of impatience.
Then his eyes was jerked back from the eyepiece and his head peered
round to examine the exterior of the instrument. Waters’ grip on my arm
became painful in its tightness. Sir James’s hand came round again,
feeling, this time, for the cylinder. He took it out, held it up, looked
at it and replaced it with very great care. He looked again, and there
was a long silence.
Then came Sir James’s voice, queer and puzzled.
“I say, Waters. There’s something funny here. Just have a look, will
you?”
With a final squeeze, Waters loosened his grip of me and took Sir
James’s place before the instrument. He moved the cylinder back and
forth once or twice and said, in a judicial tone, “Well!”
“What do you make of that?” said Sir James.
“One of two things,” said Waters, briskly, “either it’s a suspension of
the law of Nature, or this muscarine of yours is optically inactive.”
“What _do_ you suggest?” demanded Sir James.
“I suggest,” said Waters, “that this is a synthetic preparation in
racemic form.”
“But how could——?” Sir James broke off, and in the corpse-light I
watched his face as he revolved the possibilities in his mind. “You know
what that means, Waters.”
“I might hazard a guess.”
“Murder.”
“Yes, murder.”
There was another pause, in which the silence seemed to become
absolutely solid. Then Sir James said, very slowly:
“The man was murdered. My God, this is a lesson to me, Waters. Never to
overlook anything. Who would ever have thought——? But that’s no
excuse. I shall have to—I must verify it first, though. Do the
preparations again. But—what put you on to this?”
“Let’s go and get a drink,” said Waters, “and we’ll tell you all about
it. You’d better have a look at this first, Mr. Munting.”
I looked through the instrument. Dead blackness. But if the thing had
shown all the colours of the rainbow, I should have been in no state to
draw any conclusions from it. I sat stunned while somebody switched on
the lights, extinguished the Bunsen burner and locked all the apparatus
up again.
Then I found myself straggling after the other two, while they talked
about something or the other. I had an idea that I came into it, and
presently Waters turned back and thrust his arm into mine.
“What you want,” he said, “is a double Scotch, and no soda.”
I don’t very well remember getting home, but that, I think, was not due
to the double Scotch, but to bewilderment of mind. I do remember waking
my wife up and blurting out my story in a kind of confused misery, which
must have perplexed and alarmed her. And I remember saying that it was
quite useless to think of going to bed, because I should never sleep.
And I remember waking this morning very late, with the feeling that
someone was dead.
* * * * *
I have written all this down. I don’t know whether it is necessary,
because, of course, Sir James will be doing something about it by now.
But I promised a statement, and here it is.
One other thing has happened. As I was reading it through to see if it
was coherent, the telephone rang. My wife answered it. I heard her say:
“Yes?—Yes?—Yes?—who is it speaking, please? —Oh, yes—I’m not
sure—I’ll go and see—Will you hold the line a minute?”
She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said, almost in a whisper:
“It’s Mr. Lathom, asking to speak to you.”
“Oh, God!” I said.
If I warned him now—there would still be time—and the man had been at
school with me—and we had lived in the same rooms—and he was a great
painter—something would be lost to the world if they hanged Lathom.
Elizabeth did nothing. She stood with the receiver in her hand.
“Tell him——”
“Yes?”
“Tell him I am out.”
She turned back to the instrument.
“I am so sorry, my husband is out. Can I give any message? No, very
well. You’ll ring up again. Good night.”
She came over and stood by me.
“Elizabeth, tell me, am I an unutterable sweep?”
“No. There was nothing else you could do.”
* * * * *
I want to know whether Lathom knows the sort of woman he did it for. I
want to know how much she really knows or suspects. I want to know
whether, when she wrote that letter which drove him to do it, she was
deceiving him or herself. I want to know whether, in all these months,
he has been thinking that she was worth it, or whether, in a ghastly
disillusionment, he has realised that the only real part of her was
vulgar and bad, and the rest merely the brilliant refraction of himself.
What is the good? Whatever he realised, he must have gone on telling
himself she was worth it, or he would have gone mad.
Perry would say that this was God’s judgment. Life, outraged,
vindicating itself against the powers of death and hell. Or no, Perry
expressly refuses to recognise judgments. Besides, if Lathom had known
just a little more about chemistry, he could have defeated the judgment.
Ignorance is no excuse in law. Nor in the law of Nature. Well, we know
that. All the same, if I were in Lathom’s place, I would hate to have
been tripped up by a miserable asymmetric molecule.
I hope Lathom will not ring up again.
53. _Note by Paul Harrison_
This statement concludes the evidence, which I have to lay before you.
You have already, I understand, received a brief communication from Sir
James Lubbock, confirming the account of his experiment with the
synthetic muscarine. Munting’s narrative is of some value as indicating
the lines on which such an experimental proof, though unusual and
somewhat technical in character, might be presented to a jury of
reasonably intelligent persons.
The unsatisfactory part of the case is, as you will see, that which
concerns the woman, Margaret Harrison. As the letter No. 46 shows, she
has taken pains to protect herself against any suspicion of complicity.
Although, morally, she is quite equally guilty with Lathom, and though I
have personally no doubt that the letter is an impudent hypocrisy, it
will probably be difficult to bring home to her a guilty knowledge of
the actual commission of the crime. That she instigated and inspired it
is, to my mind, certain; but Lathom will strenuously deny this, and I
have failed to secure any reliable evidence against her. I trust that
you will use every possible endeavour to prevent this abominable woman
from getting off scot-free.
* * * * *
I re-open this parcel to add that I have received a message from Mrs.
Cutts. Lathom, she tells me, has given a week’s notice to his landlord.
This may mean everything or nothing, but prompt action seems advisable.
* * * * *
_Sir Gilbert Pugh, Director of Public Prosecutions, turned the last page
of the manuscript, and sat for a few minutes in silence. Mentally he
watched his expert witnesses displaying an asymmetric molecule to a jury
of honest tradesmen, under a withering fire of commentary by the counsel
for the defence._
_He sighed. This sort of case always meant a lot of work and bother._
“_Simmons!_”
“_Yes, sir._”
“_Get me the Chief Commissioner on the ’phone._”
* * * * *
[Pinned to the portfolio at some subsequent date.]
* * * * *
_Extract from the “Morning Express” of November 30th, 1930_
MANATON MURDERER HANGED
The execution took place in Exeter Gaol, at 8 a.m. to-day, of Harwood
Lathom, who was convicted in October of the murder of George Harrison at
“The Shack,” Manaton, by poisoning him with muscarine.
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.
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