“Edward?” Henrietta was vague. Her forehead was puckered. She seemed to be thinking of something a long way away.
“Yes, Edward. He came in looking dreadful—so cold and grey.”
“If you care about Edward so much, Midge, why don’t you do something about him?”
“Do something? What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Stand on a chair and shout! Draw attention to yourself. Don’t you know that’s the only hope with a man like Edward?”
“Edward will never care about anyone but you, Henrietta. He never has.”
“Then it’s very unintelligent of him.” She threw a quick glance at Midge’s white face. “I’ve hurt you. I’m sorry. But I hate Edward tonight.”
“Hate Edward? You can’t.”
“Oh, yes, I can! You don’t know—”
“What?”
Henrietta said slowly:
“He reminds me of such a lot of things I would like to forget.”
“What things?”
“Well, Ainswick, for instance.”
“Ainswick? You want to forget Ainswick?”
Midge’s tone was incredulous.
“Yes, yes, yes! I was happy there. I can’t stand, just now, being reminded of happiness. Don’t you understand? A time when one didn’t know what was coming. When one said confidently, everything is going to be lovely! Some people are wise—they never expect to be happy. I did.”
She said abruptly:
“I shall never go back to Ainswick.”
Midge said slowly:
“I wonder.”
Fourteen
Midge woke up abruptly on Monday morning.
For a moment she lay there bemused, her eyes going confusedly towards the door, for she half-expected Lady Angkatell to appear. What was it Lucy had said when she came drifting in that first morning?
A difficult weekend? She had been worried—had thought that something unpleasant might happen.
Yes, and something unpleasant had happened—something that was lying now upon Midge’s heart and spirits like a thick black cloud. Something that she didn’t want to think about—didn’t want to remember. Something, surely, that frightened her. Something to do with Edward.
Memory came with a rush. One ugly stark word—Murder!
“Oh, no,” thought Midge, “it can’t be true. It’s a dream I’ve been having. John Christow, murdered, shot—lying there by the pool. Blood and blue water—like a jacket of a detective story. Fantastic, unreal. The sort of thing that doesn’t happen to oneself. If we were at Ainswick now. It couldn’t have happened at Ainswick.”
The black weight moved from her forehead. It settled in the pit of her stomach, making her feel slightly sick.
It was not a dream. It was a real happening—a News of the World happening—and she and Edward and Lucy and Henry and Henrietta were all mixed up with it.
Unfair—surely unfair—since it was nothing to do with them if Gerda had shot her husband.
Midge stirred uneasily.
Quiet, stupid, slightly pathetic Gerda—you couldn’t associate Gerda with melodrama—with violence.
Gerda, surely, couldn’t shoot anybody.
Again that inward uneasiness rose. No, no, one mustn’t think like that. Because who else could have shot John? And Gerda had been standing there by his body with the revolver in her hand. The revolver she had taken from Henry’s study.
Gerda had said that she had found John dead and picked up the revolver. Well, what else could she say? She’d have to say something, poor thing.
All very well for Henrietta to defend her—to say that Gerda’s story was perfectly possible. Henrietta hadn’t considered the impossible alternatives.
Henrietta had been very odd last night.
But that, of course, had been the shock of John Christow’s death.
Poor Henrietta—who had cared so terribly for John.
But she would get over it in time—one got over everything. And then she would marry Edward and live at Ainswick—and Edward would be happy at last.
Henrietta had always loved Edward very dearly. It was only the aggressive, dominant personality of John Christow that had come in the way. He had made Edward look so—so pale by comparison.
It struck Midge when she came down to breakfast that morning that already Edward’s personality, freed from John Christow’s dominance, had begun to assert itself. He seemed more sure of himself, less hesitant and retiring.
He was talking pleasantly to the glowering and unresponsive David.
“You must come more often to Ainswick, David. I’d like you to feel at home there and to get to know all about the place.”
Helping himself to marmalade, David said coldly:
“These big estates are completely farcical. They should be split up.”
“That won’t happen in my time, I hope,” said Edward, smiling. “My tenants are a contented lot.”
“They shouldn’t be,” said David. “Nobody should be contented.”
“If apes had been content with tails—” murmured Lady Angkatell from where she was standing by the sideboard looking vaguely at a dish of kidneys. “That’s a poem I learnt in the nursery, but I simply can’t remember how it goes on. I must have a talk with you, David, and learn all the new ideas. As far as I can see, one must hate everybody, but at the same time give them free medical attention and a lot of extra education (poor things, all those helpless little children herded into schoolhouses every day)—and cod-liver oil forced down babies’ throats whether they like it or not—such nasty-smelling stuff.”
Lucy, Midge thought, was behaving very much as usual.
And Gudgeon, when she passed him in the hall, also looked just as usual. Life at The Hollow seemed to have resumed its normal course. With the departure of Gerda, the whole business seemed like a dream.
Then there was a scrunch of wheels on the gravel outside, and Sir Henry drew up in his car. He had stayed the night at his club and driven down early.
“Well, dear,” said Lucy, “was everything all right?”
“Yes. The secretary was there—competent sort of girl. She took charge of things. There’s a sister, it seems. The secretary telegraphed to her.”
“I knew there would be,” said Lady Angkatell. “At Tunbridge Wells?”
“Bexhill, I think,” said Sir Henry, looking puzzled.
“I daresay”—Lucy considered Bexhill. “Yes—quite probably.”
Gudgeon approached.
“Inspector Grange telephoned, Sir Henry. The inquest will be at eleven o’clock on Wednesday.”
Sir Henry nodded. Lady Angkatell said:
“Midge, you’d better ring up your shop.”
Midge went slowly to the telephone.
Her life had always been so entirely normal and commonplace that she felt she lacked the phraseology to explain to her employers that after four days’ holiday she was unable to return to work owing to the fact that she was mixed up in a murder case.
It did not sound credible. It did not even feel credible.
And Madame Alfrege was not a very easy person to explain things to at any time.
Midge set her chin resolutely and picked up the receiver.
It was all just as unpleasant as she had imagined it would be. The raucous voice of the vitriolic little Jewess came angrily over the wires.
“What wath that, Mith Hardcathle? A death? A funeral? Do you not know very well I am shorthanded? Do you think I am going to stand for these excutheth? Oh, yeth, you are having a good time, I darethay!”
Midge interrupted, speaking sharply and distinctly.
“The poleeth? The poleeth, you thay?” It was almost a scream. “You are mixed up with the poleeth?”
Setting her teeth, Midge continued to explain. Strange how sordid that woman at the other end made the whole thing seem. A vulgar police case. What alchemy there was in human beings!
Edward opened the door and came in, then seeing that Midge was telephoning
, he was about to go out. She stopped him.
“Do stay, Edward. Please. Oh, I want you to.”
The presence of Edward in the room gave her strength—counteracted the poison.
She took her hand from where she had laid it over the mouthpiece.
“What? Yes. I am sorry, Madame. But after all, it is hardly my fault—”
The ugly raucous voice was screaming angrily.
“Who are thethe friendth of yourth? What thort of people are they to have the poleeth there and a man shot? I’ve a good mind not to have you back at all! I can’t have the tone of my ethtablishment lowered.”
Midge made a few submissive noncommittal replies. She replaced the receiver at last, with a sigh of relief. She felt sick and shaken.
“It’s the place I work,” she explained. “I had to let them know that I wouldn’t be back until Thursday because of the inquest and the—the police.”
“I hope they were decent about it? What is it like, this dress shop of yours? Is the woman who runs it pleasant and sympathetic to work for?”
“I should hardly describe her as that! She’s a Whitechapel Jewess with dyed hair and a voice like a corncrake.”
“But my dear Midge—”
Edward’s face of consternation almost made Midge laugh. He was so concerned.
“But my dear child—you can’t put up with that sort of thing. If you must have a job, you must take one where the surroundings are harmonious and where you like the people you are working with.”
Midge looked at him for a moment without answering.
How explain, she thought, to a person like Edward? What did Edward know of the labour market, of jobs?
And suddenly a tide of bitterness rose in her. Lucy, Henry, Edward—yes, even Henrietta—they were all divided from her by an impassable gulf—the gulf that separates the leisured from the working.
They had no conception of the difficulties of getting a job, and once you had got it, of keeping it! One might say, perhaps, that there was no need, actually, for her to earn her living. Lucy and Henry would gladly give her a home—they would with equal gladness have made her an allowance. Edward would also willingly have done the latter.
But something in Midge rebelled against the acceptance of ease offered her by her well-to-do relations. To come on rare occasions and sink into the well-ordered luxury of Lucy’s life was delightful. She could revel in that. But some sturdy independence of spirit held her back from accepting that life as a gift. The same feeling had prevented her from starting a business on her own with money borrowed from relations and friends. She had seen too much of that.
She would borrow no money—use no influence. She had found a job for herself at four pounds a week, and if she had actually been given the job because Madame Alfrege hoped that Midge would bring her “smart” friends to buy, Madame Alfrege was disappointed. Midge discouraged any such notion sternly on the part of her friends.
She had no particular illusions about working. She disliked the shop, she disliked Madame Alfrege, she disliked the eternal subservience to ill-tempered and impolite customers, but she doubted very much whether she could obtain any other job which she would like better since she had none of the necessary qualifications.
Edward’s assumption that a wide range of choice was open to her was simply unbearably irritating this morning. What right had Edward to live in a world so divorced from reality?
They were Angkatells, all of them. And she—was only half an Angkatell! And sometimes, like this morning, she did not feel like an Angkatell at all! She was all her father’s daughter.
She thought of her father with the usual pang of love and compunction, a grey-haired, middle-aged man with a tired face. A man who had struggled for years running a small family business that was bound, for all his care and efforts, to go slowly down the hill. It was not incapacity on his part—it was the march of progress.
Strangely enough, it was not to her brilliant Angkatell mother but to her quiet, tired father that Midge’s devotion had always been given. Each time, when she came back from those visits to Ainswick, which were the wild delight of her life, she would answer the faint deprecating questions in her father’s tired face by flinging her arms round his neck and saying: “I’m glad to be home—I’m glad to be home.”
Her mother had died when Midge was thirteen. Sometimes Midge realized that she knew very little about her mother. She had been vague, charming, gay. Had she regretted her marriage, the marriage that had taken her outside the circle of the Angkatell clan? Midge had no idea. Her father had grown greyer and quieter after his wife’s death. His struggles against the extinction of his business had grown more unavailing. He had died quietly and inconspicuously when Midge was eighteen.
Midge had stayed with various Angkatell relations, had accepted presents from the Angkatells, had had good times with the Angkatells, but she had refused to be financially dependent on their goodwill. And much as she loved them, there were times, such as these, when she felt suddenly and violently divergent from them.
She thought with rancour: “They don’t know anything!”
Edward, sensitive as always, was looking at her with a puzzled face. He asked gently:
“I’ve upset you? Why?”
Lucy drifted into the room. She was in the middle of one of her conversations.
“—you see, one doesn’t really know whether she’d prefer the White Hart to us or not?”
Midge looked at her blankly—then at Edward.
“It’s no use looking at Edward,” said Lady Angkatell. “Edward simply wouldn’t know; you, Midge, are always so practical.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about, Lucy.”
Lucy looked surprised.
“The inquest, darling. Gerda has to come down for it. Should she stay here? Or go to the White Hart? The associations here are painful, of course—but then at the White Hart there will be people who will stare and quantities of reporters. Wednesday, you know, at eleven, or is it eleven thirty?” A smile lit up Lady Angkatell’s face. “I have never been to an inquest! I thought my grey—and a hat, of course, like church—but not gloves.
“You know,” went on Lady Angkatell, crossing the room and picking up the telephone receiver and gazing down at it earnestly, “I don’t believe I’ve got any gloves except gardening gloves nowadays! And of course lots of long evening ones put away from the Government House days. Gloves are rather stupid, don’t you think so?”
“The only use is to avoid fingerprints in crimes,” said Edward, smiling.
“Now, it’s very interesting that you should say that, Edward—very interesting. What am I doing with this thing?” Lady Angkatell looked at the telephone receiver with faint distaste.
“Were you going to ring up someone?”
“I don’t think so.” Lady Angkatell shook her head vaguely and put the receiver back on its stand very gingerly.
She looked from Edward to Midge.
“I don’t think, Edward, that you ought to upset Midge. Midge minds sudden deaths more than we do.”
“My dear Lucy,” exclaimed Edward. “I was only worrying about this place where Midge works. It sounds all wrong to me.”
“Edward thinks I ought to have a delightful sympathetic employer who would appreciate me,” said Midge dryly.
“Dear Edward,” said Lucy with complete appreciation.
She smiled at Midge and went out again.
“Seriously, Midge,” said Edward, “I am worried.”
She interrupted him:
“The damned woman pays me four pounds a week. That’s all that matters.”
She brushed past him and went out into the garden.
Sir Henry was sitting in his usual place on the low wall, but Midge turned away and walked up towards the flower walk.
Her relations were charming, but she had no use for their charm this morning.
David Angkatell was sitting on the seat at the top of the path.
There was
no overdone charm about David, and Midge made straight for him and sat down by him, noting with malicious pleasure his look of dismay.
How extraordinarily difficult it was, thought David, to get away from people.
He had been driven from his bedroom by the brisk incursion of housemaids, purposeful with mops and dusters.
The library (and the Encyclopædia Britannica) had not been the sanctuary he had hoped optimistically it might be. Twice Lady Angkatell had drifted in and out, addressing him kindly with remarks to which there seemed no possible intelligent reply.
He had come out here to brood upon his position. The mere weekend to which he had unwillingly committed himself had now lengthened out owing to the exigencies connected with sudden and violent death.
David, who preferred the contemplation of an Academic past or the earnest discussion of a Left Wing future, had no aptitude for dealing with a violent and realistic present. As he had told Lady Angkatell, he did not read the News of the World. But now the News of the World seemed to have come to The Hollow.
Murder! David shuddered distastefully. What would his friends think? How did one, so to speak, take murder? What was one’s attitude? Bored? Disgusted? Lightly amused?
Trying to settle these problems in his mind, he was by no means pleased to be disturbed by Midge. He looked at her uneasily as she sat beside him.
He was rather startled by the defiant stare with which she returned his look. A disagreeable girl of no intellectual value.
She said, “How do you like your relations?”
David shrugged his shoulders. He said:
“Does one really think about relations?”
Midge said:
“Does one really think about anything?”
Doubtless, David thought, she didn’t. He said almost graciously:
“I was analysing my reactions to murder.”
“It is certainly odd,” said Midge, “to be in one.”
David sighed and said:
“Wearisome.” That was quite the best attitude. “All the clichés that one thought only existed in the pages of detective fiction!”
“You must be sorry you came,” said Midge.
David sighed.
“Yes, I might have been staying with a friend of mine in London.” He added, “He keeps a Left Wing bookshop.”