| SECTION ONE | |
| Synthesis | | page 11 |
| SECTION TWO | |
| Analysis | | page 129 |
THE DOCUMENTS
IN THE CASE
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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.]
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.]
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
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
[Endorsed on the above.]
Dear Jack,
What on earth is all this about? Is the woman mad?
Yours, in all confidence and love,
E
A little mad and quite mistaken. Do not worry. Am
starting North to-night.
Jack
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.]
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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
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) C5H15NO3.”
“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.
[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.
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.