“Had to get out to the fishpond,” the Colonel said, harrumphing. “Check on things. Can’t just leave my Japanese demekins out there with that cat about. Stopped on my way out by that silly girl—can never remember her name—the maid—”
“Colleen,” Verity said automatically.
“Jane.” Mrs. Mering glared at Verity.
“Told me I had to come in here immediately,” Colonel Mering said. “Made a huge fuss. What’s it all about?”
He turned to Jane, who swallowed, took a deep, sobbing breath, and stuck out a letter on a silver salver.
“Harrumph, what’s this?” the Colonel said.
“The mail, sorr,” Jane said.
“Why didn’t Baine bring it?” Mrs. Mering demanded. She took the letter off the salver. “No doubt it is from Madame Iritosky,” she said, opening it, “explaining why she had to leave so suddenly.” She turned to Jane. “Tell Mr. Baine to come here. And tell Tossie to come down. She will want to hear this letter.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jane said, and fled.
“I do hope she has enclosed her address,” Mrs. Mering said, unfolding several closely written pages, “so that I can write and tell her of our experience with the spirits at Coventry.” She frowned. “Why, it is not from Madame—” she stopped, reading the letter silently.
“Who is the letter from, my dear?” the Colonel said.
“O,” Mrs. Mering said, and fainted dead away.
It was a real faint this time. Mrs. Mering crashed into the credenza, decapitated the potted palm, broke the glass dome over the feather arrangement, and ended up with her head on the velvet footstool. The pages of the letter fluttered down around her.
Terence and I dived for her. “Baine!” the Colonel thundered, yanking on the bellpull. “Baine!” Verity stuck a cushion under her head and began fanning her with the letter.
“Baine!” the Colonel bellowed.
Jane appeared in the door, looking terrified.
“Tell Baine to come here immediately,” he shouted.
“I can’t, sorr,” she said, twisting her apron.
“Why not?” he bellowed.
She cringed away from him. “He’s gone, sir.”
“What do you mean, gone?” the Colonel demanded. “Gone where?”
She’d twisted her apron completely into a knot. “The letter,” she said, wringing the ends of it.
“What do you mean, that he’s gone to the postal office? Well, go and fetch him.” He waved her out of the room. “Damn Madame Iritosky! Upsetting my wife even when she isn’t here! Damned spiritist nonsense!”
“Our daughter,” Mrs. Mering said, her eyelids fluttering. She focused on the letter Verity was fanning her with. “O, the letter! The fated letter . . .” and went out again.
Jane ran in with the smelling salts.
“Where’s Baine?” Colonel Mering thundered. “Didn’t you fetch him? And go tell Tossie to come down immediately. Her mother needs her.”
Jane sat down on the gilt chair, flung her apron over her head, and began to bawl.
“Here, here, what’s this?” Colonel Mering harrumphed. “Get up, girl.”
“Verity,” Mrs. Mering said, clutching weakly at Verity’s arm. “The letter. Read it. I cannot bear—”
Verity obediently stopped fanning and held the letter up. “‘Dearest Papa and Darling Mumsy,’” she said, and looked like she was going to faint.
I started toward her, and she shook her head wordlessly at me and read on. “‘Dearest Papa and Darling Mumsy, By the time you read this I shall be a married woman.’”
“Married?” Colonel Mering said. “What does she mean, married?”
“‘ . . . and I shall be happier than I have ever been or ever thought of being,’” Verity read on. “‘I am very sorry to have deceived you in this way, especially Papa, who is ill, but I feared if you knew of our intentions, you would forbid my marrying, and I know that when you come to know dear Baine as I do,’” Verity’s voice caught, and then she went on, pale as death, “‘as I do, you will see him not as a servant but as the dearest, kindest, best man in the world, and will forgive us both.’”
“Baine?” Colonel Mering said blankly.
“Baine,” Verity breathed. She let the letter fall to her lap and looked up desperately at me, shaking her head. “No. She can’t have.”
“She’s eloped with the butler?” Terence said.
“Oh, Mr. St. Trewes, my poor boy!” Mrs. Mering cried, clutching her bosom. “Are you quite destroyed?”
He didn’t look destroyed. What he looked was blank, with that vague, undecided look soldiers get when they’ve just lost a leg or been told they’re being shipped home and haven’t yet taken it in.
“Baine?” Colonel Mering said, glowering at Jane. “How did a thing like this happen?”
“Read on, Verity,” Mrs. Mering said. “We must know the worst.”
“The worst,” Verity murmured and picked up the letter. “‘No doubt you are curious as to how this all came about so quickly.’”
Which was putting it mildly.
“‘It all began with our trip to Coventry.’” She stopped, unable to go on.
Mrs. Mering snatched the letter from her impatiently. “‘ . . . our trip to Coventry,’” she read,“‘a trip I know now the spirits were guiding us to that I might find my true love.’ Lady Godiva! I hold her entirely responsible for this!” She took the letter up again.“‘While we were there I admired a cast-iron footed pedestal firugeal urn which I know now to be in execrable taste, completely lacking in simplicity of form and design, but I had never been properly trained in matters of Artistic Sensibility or educated in Literature and Poetry, and was only an ignorant, thoughtless spoilt girl.
“‘I asked Baine, for that is how I still think of him, though now I must learn to call him William and beloved husband! Husband! How sweet the sound of that precious word! I asked him to concur in my praise of the footed firugeal urn. He would not. Not only would he not, but he called it hideous and told me that my taste in liking it was ignorant.
“‘No one had ever contradicted me before. Everyone around me had always indulged me in all my opinions and agreed with everything I said, except for Cousin Verity, who had corrected me once or twice, but I put that down to her not being married and having no prospects. I tried to help her to wear her hair in a more attractive way, but was unable to do much for her, poor thing.’”
“What is known as burning your bridges,” I murmured.
“‘Perhaps now that I am wed, Mr. Henry will notice her,’” Mrs. Mering read. “‘I tried to promote her to him, but, alas, he had eyes only for me. They would make a good couple, not handsome or clever, but well-suited nonetheless.’”
“All her bridges.”
“‘I was not at all used to being contradicted, and at first I was angry, but when you swooned on the train on the way home, Mama, and I went to fetch him, he was so strong and quickwitted and helpful in assisting you, Mama, that it was as if I saw him with new eyes, and I fell in love with him right there in the railway carriage.’”
“It’s all my fault,” Verity murmured. “If I hadn’t insisted we go to Coventry—”
“‘But I was too stubborn to admit my feelings,’” Mrs. Mering read, “‘and the next day I confronted him and demanded he apologize. He refused, we quarreled, and he threw me in the river, and then he kissed me, and oh, Mama, it was so romantic! Just like Shakespeare, whose plays my beloved husband is having me read, beginning with The Taming of the Shrew.’ ”
Mrs. Mering flung the letter down. “Reading books! That is the cause of all this! Mesiel, you should never have hired a servant who read books! I blame you entirely for this. Always reading Ruskin and Darwin and Trollope. Trollope! What sort of name is that for an author? And his name. Servants should have solid English names. ‘I used it when I worked for Lord Dunsany,’ he said. ‘Well, you’re certainly not using it here,’ I said. Of course what can one expect from a
man who refused to dress for dinner? He read books, too. Dreadful socialist things. Bentham and Samuel Butler.”
“Who?” the Colonel said, confused.
“Lord Dunsany. Dreadful man, but he has a nephew who will inherit half of Hertfordshire and Tossie could have been received at Court, and now . . . now . . .”
She swayed and Terence reached for the smelling salts, but she waved them irritatedly away. “Mesiel! Don’t just sit there! Do something! There must be some way to stop them before it’s too late!”
“It’s too late,” Verity murmured.
“Perhaps not. Perhaps they only left this morning,” I said, gathering up the pages of the letter and scanning them. They were covered with Tossie’s flowery hand and dozens of exclamation points and underlinings and badly blotted in places. She should have bought a penwiper at the jumble sale, I thought irrelevantly.
“‘It is no use to try and stop us,’” I read. “‘By the time you receive this we shall already have been married in Surrey at a registrar’s office and will be on our way to our new home. My dearest husband—ah, that most precious of words!—feels that we will thrive better in a society less enslaved to the archaic class structure, a country where one can have whatever name he likes, and to that end, we sail for America, where my husband—ah, that sweet word again!—intends to earn his living as a philosopher. Princess Arjumand is accompanying us, for I could not bear to be separated from her as well as you, and Papa would probably kill her when he found out about the calico goldfish.’”
“My split-tailed nacreous ryunkin?” Colonel Mering said, starting up out of the chair. “What about it?”
“‘She ate the calico. Oh, dear, Papa, can you find it in your heart to forgive her as well as me?’”
“We must disown her,” Mrs. Mering said.
“We certainly must,” Colonel Mering said. “That ryunkin cost two hundred pounds!”
“Colleen!” Mrs. Mering said. “I mean, Jane! Stop snuffling and fetch my writing desk at once. I intend to write to her and tell her from this day forward we have no daughter.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jane said, wiping her nose on her apron. I stared after her, thinking about Colleen/Jane and Mrs. Chattisbourne calling all her maids Gladys, and trying to remember exactly what Mrs. Mering had said about Baine. “‘I used it when I worked for Lord Dunsany.’” And what had Mrs. Chattisbourne said that day we went to fetch things for the jumble sale? “I have always felt it is not the name that makes the butler, but training.”
Colleen/Jane came back into the room, carrying the writing desk and sniffling.
“Tocelyn’s name shall never be spoken again in this house,” Mrs. Mering said, sitting down at the writing table. “Henceforth her name shall never cross my lips. All of Tocelyn’s letters shall be returned unopened.” She took out a pen and ink.
“How will we know where to send the letter telling her she’s disowned if we don’t open her letters?” Colonel Mering said.
“It’s too late, isn’t it?” Verity said bleakly to me. “There’s nothing we can do.”
I wasn’t listening. I gathered up the pages of the letter and turned them over, looking for the end.
“From this day forth I shall wear mourning,” Mrs. Mering said. “Jane, go upstairs and press my black bombazine. Mesiel, when anyone asks you, you must say our daughter died.”
I located the end of the letter. Tossie had signed the letter, “Your repentant daughter, Tocelyn,” and then scratched “Tocelyn” out and signed her married name.
“Listen to this,” I said to Verity, and began reading.
“‘Please tell Terence that I know he will never get over me, but that he must try, and not to begrudge us our happiness, for Baine and I were fated to be together.’”
“If she’s truly gone and married this person,” Terence said, the light dawning, “then I’m released from my engagement.”
I ignored him. “‘My darling William does not believe in Fate,’” I persisted, “‘and says that we are creatures of Free Will, but he believes that wives should have opinions and ideas of their own, and what else can it have been but Fate? For had Princess Arjumand not disappeared, we should never have gone to Coventry—’”
“Don’t,” Verity said, “please.”
“You have to hear the rest of it,” I said, “‘—to Coventry. And had I not seen the footed firugeal urn, we should never have come together. I will write when we are settled in America.Your repentant daughter,’ ” I read, emphasizing each word, “ ‘Mrs. William Patrick Callahan.’ ”
“Look here! I’ve an idea we’ve been working this thing
from the wrong end.”
Lord Peter Wimsey
CHAPTER 26
An Anticlimax—How Mystery Novels End—Mrs. Mering Blames the Colonel—Realizing What It Means—A Happy Ending for Cyril—Mrs. Mering Blames Verity—A Séance Proposed—Packing—Premonitions—Mrs. Mering Blames Me—Finch Is Still Not at Liberty to Say—Waiting for the Train—Disappearance of the Bishop’s Bird Stump—Realizing What It Means
Well, it wasn’t exactly the ending of an Agatha Christie mystery, with Hercule Poirot gathering everyone together in the drawing room to reveal the murderer and impress everyone with his astonishing deductive powers.
And it definitely wasn’t a Dorothy Sayers, with the detective hero saying to his heroine sidekick, “I say, we make a jolly good detectin’ team. How about makin’ the partnership permanent, eh, what?” and then proposing in Latin.
We weren’t even a halfway decent detectin’ team. We hadn’t solved the case. The case had been solved in spite of us. Worse, we had been such an impediment, we’d had to be packed off out of the way before the course of history could correct itself. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but an elopement.
Not that there wasn’t whimpering. Mrs. Mering was doing a good deal of that, not to mention weeping, wailing, and clutching the letter to her bosom.
“O, my precious daughter!” she sobbed. “Mesiel, don’t just stand there. Do something.”
The Colonel looked around uneasily. “What can I do, my dear? According to Tossie’s letter, they are already afloat.”
“I don’t know. Stop them. Have the marriage annulled. Wire the Royal Navy!” She stopped, grabbed her heart, and cried, “Madame Iritosky tried to warn me! She said, ‘Beware of the sea!’”
“Pah! Seems to me if she’d truly had any contact with the Other Side, she could have given a better warning than that!” Colonel Mering said.
But Mrs. Mering wasn’t listening. “That day at Coventry. I had a premonition—oh, if I had only realized what it meant, I might have saved her!” She let the letter flutter to the floor.
Verity stooped and picked it up. “‘I will write when we are settled in America,’” she said softly. “‘Your repentant daughter, Mrs. William Patrick Callahan.’ William Patrick Callahan.” She shook her head.
“What do you know?” she said softly. “The butler did it.”
As she said it, I had the oddest sensation, like one of Mrs. Mering’s premonitions, or a sudden shifting underfoot, and I thought suddenly of anti-cathedral protesters and Merton’s pedestrian gate.
“The butler did it.” And then something else. Something important. Who had said that? Verity, explaining the mystery novels? “It was always the least likely suspect,” she had said in my bedroom that first night. “For the first hundred books or so, the butler did it, and after that he was the most likely, and they had to switch to unlikely criminals, you know, the harmless old lady or the vicar’s devoted wife, that sort of thing, but it didn’t take the reader long to catch on to that, and they had to resort to having the detective be the murderer, and the narrator, and . . .”
But that wasn’t it. Someone else had said, “The butler did it.” But who? Not anyone here. Mystery novels hadn’t even been invented, except for The Moonstone. The Moonstone. Something Tossie had said about The Moonstone, about being unaware you were c
ommitting a crime. And something else. Something about disappearing into thin air.
“And the neighbors!” Mrs. Mering wailed. “What will Mrs.Chattisbourne say when she finds out? And the Reverend Mr. Arbitage!”
There was a long moment during which only the sound of her sobbing could be heard, and then Terence turned to me and said, “Do you realize what this means?”
“Oh, Terence, you poor, poor boy!” Mrs. Mering sobbed. “And you would have had five thousand pounds a year!” and allowed herself to be led weeping from the room by Colonel Mering.
We watched them climb the stairs. Halfway up, Mrs. Mering swayed in her husband’s arms. “We shall have to hire a new butler!” she said despairingly. “Where shall I ever find a new butler? I blame you entirely for this, Mesiel. If you had let me hire English servants instead of Irish—” She broke down, weeping.
Colonel Mering handed her his handkerchief. “There, there, my dear,” he said, “don’t take on so.”
As soon as they were out of sight, Terence said, “Do you Realize What This Means? I’m not engaged. I’m free to marry Maud. ‘Oh, frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’”
Cyril clearly Realized What It Meant. He sat up alertly and began to wag his entire body.
“You do know, don’t you, old fellow?” Terence said. “No more sleeping in the stable for you.”
And no more baby talk, I thought. No more putting up with Princess Arjumand.
“It’s the soft life for you from now on,” Terence said. “Sleeping in the house and riding on trains and all the butcher’s bones you like! Maud adores bulldogs!”
Cyril smiled a wide, drooling smile of pure happiness.
“I must go up to Oxford immediately. When’s the next train? Pity Baine’s not here. He’d know.” He leaped up the stairs. At the top, he leaned down over the railing and said, “You do think she’ll forgive me, don’t you?”
“For being engaged to the wrong girl?” I said. “A minor infraction. Happens all the time. Look at Romeo. He’d been in love with some Rosalind person. It never seemed to bother Juliet.”