Part 14

“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.