Kitabı oku: «Bodies from the Library 2», sayfa 3
Protesting, they were led below. Inspector Swallow came up to the old man and held his hand out.
‘Many congratulations, Mr Verity. I should never have guessed.’
‘Nonsense, my dear fellow,’ he replied, pumping the other’s hand. ‘No guesswork was required. You would have got there if you had thought about it long enough … Perhaps you will lunch with me so that we may talk of other and pleasanter things? I suggest you join me at “The Stag” at one o’clock. I must first pay a brief visit to your local museum. I have heard they possess a quite excellent bronze of Antonio Rizzo; a Venetian youth, I believe. See you at lunch.’
Inspector Swallow watched him go down the street, still gesticulating wildly, his small beard and the smoke from his cigar being blown about by the wind, and disappear round the corner into the High Street. With a shake of his head he returned inside to the comparative calm of the police-station.
PART II
Mr Verity had gone. Inspector Swallow mopped his brow as he climbed the steps of the police-station.
‘Say, Inspector—’
‘Why, Harry!’ Swallow positively beamed at the local reporter. ‘I want some information from you.’
‘Me? I just came for the latest—’
‘I know, I’ll give you something later. Look, you’re in the newspaper business. Supposing an advertising agency wanted to insert an advertisement in a national newspaper, how long before publication would they have to get the pictures and things ready?’
‘The way clients change their minds and alter the ads, I’d say a month or so.’
‘No, seriously. What’s the shortest time?’
‘Well, let’s see. The national papers close for press for advertisements the evening of the second day previous to publication—earlier, some of them. Then the agency would need a day for their layout men to draw the ad out and so on, another for making the illustrations, especially if they’re half-tones, another for casting the block. About four days. It has been done in less time, of course, in emergencies and with top-level pushing.’
‘The photo of the old woman was posted at six,’ Swallow was murmuring to himself, ‘to reach London next morning. I say, Harry, could it be done in under a day?’
‘Not on your life. Now, Inspector—’
But Swallow had hurried in.
Robert Carmichael and Nurse Stephens were still very angry and considerably on their dignity. Swallow beamed at them a little nervously.
‘I’m terribly sorry about all this.’
‘We want—’
‘Oh, Carmichael,’ said the Inspector hurriedly, ‘that photo you took of Mrs Carmichael the afternoon of the tragedy, what was it for?’
‘I tried to tell you. Mrs Carmichael is—was—being featured in a “Toneup” advertisement, “Before and After”—you know the sort of thing.’
‘Yes, I’ve seen it.’
‘Have you? Then you’ll have noticed how terrible she looks in the “After” shot. The “Toneup” people wanted to use the advertisement again next month, and they asked for a more cheerful photograph. I was taking it, that’s all.’
‘Quite. Sergeant, have you got those interviews with the servants at Delver Park? Can’t think why Verity ignored them so completely.’
‘Yes, sir; it’s all sorted out now. The person you suspected is inside here.’
‘Confession?’
The sergeant nodded.
‘Nurse Wimple, the night-nurse,’ he said, ‘confirms now that the maid came up about 10.30. Very tired she was and complained about running up and down stairs for invalids all day. “There now,” said the maid, “I’m so tired I’ve been and forgotten your cocoa, Nurse. And the water’s all on the boil.” Nurse Wimple said she looked so done in that she offered to go down and get it herself. I quote: “I’ll go down, dearie. You just stay here a minute.”’
‘Time enough,’ Swallow commented.
‘See, where my slave, the ugly monster Death,
Shaking and quivering, pale and wan for fear,
Stands aiming at me with his murdering dart.’
‘Verity would appreciate that. Persepolis, indeed!’ Inspector Swallow snorted.
‘Yes, sir. And we’ve got the motive. Neurotic hatred of the invalid, built up over the years—’
Nurse Stephens nodded in sympathy: ‘She could be hard. Look at her treatment of Sandra, Logan’s a good man.’
‘—and there was a good fat legacy. She knew—at least, it was common gossip according to the cook. But we didn’t get anything on the burn.’
‘On Mrs Carmichael’s hand?’
‘I know about that,’ said Nurse Stephens. ‘She used to sit in her room sometimes in her chair. She tried to poke the fire a day or so ago and nearly fell in it—caught her finger on a coal.’
The sergeant looked a little worried. ‘I thought Verity said it showed in the photograph in the paper?’
‘Verity’s imagination,’ Swallow smiled. ‘The fingers had come out dark, the nicotine stains probably—you could never identify that burn smudge on a newspaper reproduction. Coincidence, though.’ Inspector Swallow sighed. ‘So it was just another simple tragedy, after all.’
Robert Carmichael had simmered down now. He smoothed back his thinning hair.
‘There’s just one thing, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Why did you let that Verity fool make such a nuisance of himself, upsetting everyone?’
Swallow paused a moment. ‘I feel I owe you some sort of apology, but it’s strictly in confidence. We had orders from the Yard to let him have his head—they’re suspicious because he happens to be around when so many murders crop up. But he had nothing to do with this one.’
‘Nothing at all. Ah!’ said the sergeant as a constable brought in a tray of tea mugs.
PETER ANTONY
‘Peter Antony’ was an alias adopted by the Shaffer twins, Anthony and Peter, both of whom became rather more famous under their own names. The twins were born in Liverpool in 1926 and, after the family moved to London, they attended St Paul’s School and then spent three years as Bevin boys in the Kent coalfields. At the age of 21, under the name ‘Peter Antony’, the brothers collaborated on what would be the first of three mysteries, The Woman in the Wardrobe (1951), How Doth the Little Crocodile? (1952) and Withered Murder (1955). The novels feature Mr Verity, a detective cast very much in the mould of the sleuths of the Golden Age of crime and detective fiction.
On his release from the mines, Anthony Shaffer went up to Cambridge where he read Law at Trinity. In the early 1950s, he worked as a barrister and in 1954 he married his first wife, Henrietta Glaskie. The marriage ended four years later and Glaskie named the actress Fenella Fielding and two other women in her divorce suit.
Considerably more at home with the written word than the spoken one, Anthony did not enjoy the life of a barrister and moved into reviewing books and copy-writing for advertising company Pearl & Dean. In 1963, he produced his first play The Savage Parade, which had its roots in the abduction and trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann. The play was criticised by some for taking an insufficiently serious approach to the Holocaust and by others because, in the words of one critic, it included ‘so many cases of mistaken identity as to be laughable were the subject not so serious and the author so obviously well intentioned’. The young writer learned from the criticism but nonetheless carried some elements of his first play into his next, Sleuth (1970), in which he celebrated the work of John Dickson Carr and other Golden Age writers while accurately skewering the more unpleasant tropes of the genre. Described by one critic as a ‘who-dun-what-to-whom’, Sleuth was an enormous success, playing for some years in London’s West End and in New York on Broadway.
While other stage thrillers would follow—including the over-elaborate Murderer (1975) and the unwisely titled The Case of the Oily Levantine (1977)—none would achieve the same success as Sleuth. He also wrote for the cinema, beginning with the charming Mr Forbush and the Penguins (1971) and the thriller Frenzy (1972) for Hitchcock before adapting his own play into Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s memorable film of Sleuth (1972) with Michael Caine amd Laurence Olivier. His next screenplay—for the cult mystery The Wicker Man (1973)—would eventually bring him almost as much fame as Sleuth, and he had begun his first of three high-profile Agatha Christie film adaptations, Death on the Nile (1978), before returning to his own work with another twisted mystery, Absolution (1978), directed by Anthony Page. He also worked with the director Nicholas Meyer on Sommersby (1993), which relocated a sixteenth-century mystery of imposture to the American Civil War.
Towards the end of his life, Anthony Shaffer lived in Australia with his third wife, the actress Diane Cilento, and it was here that his final two plays were performed, Widow’s Weeds (1977) and The Thing in the Wheelchair (1996), a ‘melodrama’ adapted from ‘The Case of the Talking Eyes’, a short story by Cornell Woolrich.
After his stint as a Bevin boy, Peter Shaffer also went up to Cambridge, on a scholarship, to read history. He graduated in 1950 and moved to America where he worked in the New York Public Library and then in a bookshop. It was while living in New York that he wrote his first script, The Salt Land (1955), a television play about the formation of the state of Israel. On returning to London, he worked for the classical music publisher Boosey and Hawkes on catalogues and publicity, specialising in the symphonic section, and he also reviewed books for the magazine Truth. As well as writing the libretto for a comic opera, he wrote a television play Balance of Terror (1957), a spy thriller about the theft of plans for an intercontinental missile by an unspecified foreign power, and a radio ‘parable’ called The Prodigal Father. His first major theatrical success was Five Finger Exercise (1958), a play about a warring family. Though it seemed to some critics rather old-fashioned, others praised the play for the way it explored sensitive issues without the strident tone of other playwrights of the new wave. Either way, the play won him recognition as the Most Promising British Playwright of the Year in the Evening Standard’s prestigious theatre awards.
Peter Shaffer believed that theatre ‘should lead people into mystery and magic. It should give them a sense of wonderment and, while entertaining, reveal a vision of life.’ His many plays include The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1964), which explored Spain’s genocide of the Incas, the ‘farce in the dark’ Black Comedy (1965), Lettice and Lovage (1987) and Amadeus (1979), which probed the death of Mozart and the possible involvement of the composer Salieri. For many, Amadeus is Peter Shaffer’s finest play and it was filmed by Milos Forman in 1984, winning eight Oscars including one for Shaffer’s screenplay. But there is also Equus (1973), an ingenious whydunnit in which a psychiatrist explores the motives and meaning behind a case of horse-mutilation. The play was a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, although, as the playwright observed, ‘In London, Equus caused a sensation because it displayed cruelty to horses; in New York because it allegedly displayed cruelty to psychiatrists.’
Anthony Shaffer died in London in 2001, the year in which his brother was knighted; Peter Shaffer died in 2016 while on a family visit to Ireland.
‘Before and After’, the only short story to feature Mr Verity, was published in London Mystery Magazine (Issue 16) in 1953, and ‘Part II: Mr Verity’s Investigation’ appeared in the following issue, credited to ‘J. M. Caffyn’, the name of a surgeon in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
HOTEL EVIDENCE
Helen Simpson
Henry Brodribb was engaged in an argument with his wife; or, rather, he was pacing the room, wordless, trying to take in the sense of her final proposal. His wife, calmly stitching an undergarment, watching him, was aware of his throes, and allowed time to elapse before she continued:
‘It’s no good our going on living together when there’s no reason for it and we don’t suit each other.’
‘Don’t we?’ interjected Mr Brodribb ironically.
‘No,’ said his wife, disregarding the irony, ‘we don’t. Now, Arthur and I do. We like the same sort of plays, and there’s bridge, and he’s ever so good-looking. But, as I said to him, I won’t have anything underhand.’
‘Nothing underhand,’ Mr Brodribb repeated, ‘only a pack of lies for me to tell in court. Only perjury and collusion. What about the King’s Proctor?’
‘People can’t be expected to tell the truth,’ said his wife comfortably, ‘with the silly way the law is. I’m sure if there was any other reason they’d let you have, I’d have no objection to your divorcing me. But there’s only infidelity for a woman. As I said, there’s never been anything of that between me and Arthur. Besides, it wouldn’t be good for him in his business.’
‘And what about my business?’ Mr Brodribb inquired, sarcastically.
‘You’ll be all right,’ his wife replied, disregarding the sarcasm. ‘Nobody’d ever dream of your doing anything wrong. It ’ud be a change for both of us.’
To this Mr Brodribb’s imagination gave involuntary assent. He pictured home without Cissie, a life free from comment, in charge of a good cook-housekeeper. It was alluring. Also, he could move from the country into the town. But he sounded a protest, as was right.
‘I never heard of such a thing. I won’t listen to another word about it.’
And he sat down in the chair opposite hers and shook out his evening paper. Mrs Brodribb, biting off a length of yellow silk. resumed:
‘Nobody thinks anything of it, nowadays. Look at these countesses, and Lady This and Lady That; always in and out of the divorce courts.’
Mr Brodribb beat the paper into more convenient folds and replied severely:
‘We’re not countesses.’
It was a shot fired in flight, at random, which could not give pause for an instant to the victorious advance of his wife. She had made up her mind.
Mr Brodribb realised this, and was appalled. Only once before had he known her to make up her mind. She had not argued with him then, but she had used other methods without scruple, and he had turned up at the church on the day she named. Having secured him by this display of resolution she had laid decision aside until now, when all the slow force of her will was once more arrayed to be rid of him. Cowering behind his paper, Mr Brodribb sank deeper into his chair and prepared to offer such resistance as pride demanded.
‘I was afraid,’ said Mrs Brodribb calmly, ‘that it might be expensive. But it’s not so very, Arthur says, if the case isn’t defended. Arthur’s been finding out about it. Of course, he’d share expenses. Arthur—’
‘How dare you mention that fellow’s name to me?’ Mr Brodribb inquired. ‘It’s bare-faced. You don’t seem to have any sense of what’s right and proper.’
‘I’ve told you,’ Mrs Brodribb answered with dignity, ‘there’s nothing wrong at all between me and Arthur. And won’t be.’
Mr Brodribb dashed down his paper, rose, and retired to the only refuge that owned him for master, the tool shed. Mrs Brodribb showed no emotion at his exit, did not lift her eyes from her sewing; but some minutes later she smiled.
This was the first of a series of encounters whereby, at the end of a fortnight, Mr Brodribb was finally brought to reason. Towards the result his wife’s arguments contributed in some degree; but in the main she owed her victory to that unknown ally, Mr Brodribb’s imagination, which displayed him to himself a free man. Only that wicked preliminary, the necessary infidelity, alarmed him. He made guarded inquiries, confirmed Arthur’s estimate of the expense, and admitted one evening that he might think it over. His wife kissed him, and telephoned to Arthur to come round at once.
The meeting passed off without awkwardness, owing to Arthur’s tactful praise of Mr Brodribb’s generosity. Indeed, the evening ended with a kind of impromptu supper, during which healths were drunk in whisky and water. After all, as Mrs Brodribb pointed out, it was not as if they had any of them anything to be ashamed of. It was she who steered the men towards action, with:
‘All very fine, but what do we do first? You can’t sit with your hands folded and expect a judge to come to you.’
Mr Brodribb involuntarily consulted Arthur with his eyes.
‘Restitution of conjugal rights,’ said Arthur, responding. ‘That’s the first step.’ Mr Brodribb cleared his throat.
‘No question of that, old man. Restitution, I mean. She’s never been deprived.’
‘Well, you’ve got to deprive her,’ said Arthur.
Mr Brodribb looked helplessly about the comfortable room; at the ferns he had tended all the winter long; at the black marble clock, shaped like a tomb, that the firm had given him on his marriage; finally, at his wife.
‘You don’t have to do it for long. You go to some nice boarding-house—there’s a little place in north London I could give you the address of, a private hotel—well, you go off, and you write Cissie a letter, saying you’re gone for good. Then off she goes to a solicitor and shows him the letter, and he sues you.’
‘What for?’
‘Restitution. You don’t answer him. He sues you two or three times more—’
‘Who’s going to pay for all this?’
Arthur waved the question from him.
‘And that’s all, as far as that goes.’ He coughed, and went on delicately: ‘There’s one or two other things. But you’d better get a solicitor to put you up to all the dodges.’
Mrs Brodribb, with healthy feminine contempt of delicacy, said:
‘Yes, the infidelity; what about that? I don’t know that I like the idea of Henry going off with goodness knows who.’
‘I think you’ll find,’ Mr Brodribb ventured at last, ‘that it’s only a form.’
‘That’s it,’ Arthur agreed, relieved; ‘that’s all. A form.’
Mrs Brodribb, with feminine bad taste, laughed.
‘Fancy, Henry!’ said she.
They separated, and Mr Brodribb, making his way to the spare bedroom, felt that he had taken that night another step towards freedom. Next morning, at breakfast, it was arranged that he should leave home on the following Monday.
‘It’s always nicer,’ said Mrs Brodribb, ‘to start the week clear.’
The intervening days went smoothly by. Mr Brodribb secured a room in the little place in north London at a reasonable figure. During the Friday lunch hour he was measured for a new suit. At home Mrs Brodribb passed his underclothing in review, darned, packed, and began to look younger. With the near prospect of escape, home became tolerable to both. They were considerate and friendly.
On Sunday night, as he knelt by his suitcase, affixing the label, Mrs Brodribb entered the spare room. In her right hand was a brown paper parcel. She held it out timidly and said:
‘Got any room in your case?’
‘Plenty,’ said Mr Brodribb. ‘Hello, what’s this?’
‘Hot water bottle,’ his wife answered. ‘Extra strong, guaranteed. You know what your feet are, and I thought, perhaps now—’
Mr Brodribb unwrapped the parcel, revealing the gift, whose outer cover appeared to be made of tiger skin. His wife went on, justifying her display of sentiment:
‘If it leaks any time in the next six months, Prosser’s’ll give you a new one. Only don’t let them fill it with boiling, whatever you do. If you fill it with boiling, they won’t guarantee.’
‘Right,’ said Mr Brodribb. ‘I’ll tell them. Thanks, Cis.’
He was touched, and uneasy. Still on his knees, he wrapped the bottle again in its paper and stowed it with care in a corner of the suitcase. When he lifted his head his wife was at the door.
‘All aboard,’ said Mr Brodribb, to lighten the tension. ‘You be off.’
He made a threatening gesture, in play. His wife lingered.
‘Is that place comfortable you’re going to?’ she asked.
‘Seems all right,’ said Mr Brodribb, ‘there’s a nice bit of garden at the back.’
‘Oh,’ said his wife. ‘Well, good-night.’
‘Good-night, Cis,’ Mr Brodribb responded. ‘I won’t forget about that hot bottle.’
Nor did he. On Monday evening in the boarding-house bedroom, his belongings strewn about him ready to be absorbed into drawers and cupboards as yet uncharted, Mr Brodribb paused to hand on his wife’s instructions to the housemaid, who, regarding the disorder with that sympathetic mockery which is the everyday attitude of woman to man, replied:
‘I know all about that. You leave it to me. I was filling bottles before you were born.’
Mr Brodribb, who had guessed her age at about twenty-five, was flattered. He handed over the bottle, and felt in his pocket for a coin which should ensure her continued interest in him. He found two, and bestowed them. Instantly the housemaid informed him that her name was Ivy and that she never could bear to see a gentleman trying to do things for himself. On this Mr Brodribb thankfully abandoned the struggle with his belongings and went for a stroll with a cigar; retiring, he found order, and the temperature of the bottle judged to perfection.
In the kitchen Ivy sketched his portrait for the benefit of Queenie and the cook.
‘That’s a nice little feller in number four,’ said Ivy. ‘Good clothes, and not pernickety, I should say. No scent or brilliantine.’
‘Married?’ Gladys inquired.
‘Ought to be,’ Ivy responded. ‘A bit shy, though. And no photographs. No, single, I should say. But a nice little feller. The sort you can soon learn their ways.’
This prophecy was fulfilled. In a week such ways as Mr Brodribb had were learned, and the routine of ‘Melrose’ began to fit him like his waistcoat. His life appeared to the other boarders to be entirely uneventful.
They could not know, nor could the servants know, the significance of certain letters in blue envelopes which arrived for him from time to time and were immediately destroyed. These letters, which denounced Mr Brodribb as a vagabond and wife-betrayer, called upon him to return without delay to his duty, and stated in clear type what steps, in the event of non-compliance, would be taken. Each letter troubled him, not by its black and white accusations of guilt but by its wordless reminder that these were, as yet, unfounded. He knew that the step must be taken. He knew that Cissie, and Arthur, and two impeccable forms of solicitors expected it of him, and he was resigned; but, also he was afraid. He procrastinated. Time went by.
It was a chance word from Ivy that in the end, strangely, gave him courage. She appeared one evening unusually early to turn down his bed, announcing that she had the evening off.
‘Oh,’ said Mr Brodribb, ‘what’ll you do? Pictures?’
‘Pictures!’ Ivy repeated with scorn. ‘Why, last time a feller started trying to flip my suspender elastic. I had the attendant on to him, quick. No, it’s dancing I’m mad over.’
And she described the joys of the Alexandra Palais de Danse, with its twin bands, its delectable sixpenny partners.
‘You ought to go,’ said Ivy, summing up.
‘I might, some time,’ Mr Brodribb replied. ‘Good-night. Have a good time.’
‘Watch me,’ Ivy responded, and withdrew.
The next evening Mr Brodribb slipped out and took a taxi to the Palais de Danse. The exterior alarmed him; it was garish with light. But indoors, the large room into which he blundered was dim, save for a moving radiant circle in which two figures shifted to hushed music. This, he knew, must be an exhibition dance; it looked easy, artless; nevertheless Mr Brodribb’s neighbours bent forward to observe with the rapt stillness of trees and mountain tops attentive to Orpheus’ lute.
It was ended; the band, long spent, burst into a frenzy of syncopation, and Mr Brodribb, looking about him in the restored light, began to feel lonely. Couples formed the assembly, sitting, dancing, dallying: nowhere could he see a woman unattached. The couples were respectable, they danced with decorum, as a social rite, unsmiling, while above their heads the music raved and pranced, kicked high, and came slithering down on a wail from the saxophone.
At last a woman appeared in the doorway alone. She was fair, small, not so very young, not so very pretty. Her nice average face was masked with paint, and her dress was showy. Mr Brodribb wondered at her presence in that place, for he had no illusions as to her calling. Neither, it seemed, had the attendants, who watched her, questioned each other with glances, and then, nodding to each other, bore down. Calmly, civilly, they edged her towards the door. The group was almost out of sight when Mr Brodribb, stepping forward and craning to see the last of the episode, caught the woman’s eye over an attendant’s shoulder. Without hesitation she pushed the man aside and came towards him, widely smiling. Dimly he heard her greeting:
‘Well, George, wherever have you been hiding? Keeping me standing about—’
‘This lady with you, sir?’ the attendant asked, doubtfully.
‘Can’t you see I am?’ she interrupted, and took Mr Brodribb’s arm, which he did not withhold. Reassured, the attendant moved away.
‘Well,’ said Mr Brodribb to his companion, ‘since you’re here and I’m here, suppose we have a dance?’
‘I don’t mind,’ the lady replied, surveying her face by the swift circular motion of a mirror two inches square; and without further reference to his chivalry disposed herself for him to clasp. She had a snub nose, which he liked. Her hair’s metallic refinement matched that of her voice. If her scent was pervasive, her feet kept their distance. Not a bad little woman at all, he decided. Silently they shuffled, while the music raved.
‘Often come here?’ Mr Brodribb asked.
‘Not so often,’ she replied, and was instantly in full conversational sail. ‘They don’t like a girl to come here without a gentleman. Of course I saw at once you were what I call a real gentleman, or I wouldn’t have spoken.’
‘Very glad you did,’ said Mr Brodribb, ‘I was wondering what to do for a partner.’
‘Come on your own?’ she asked.
He explained that he lived quite near.
‘Lucky!’ said she. ‘It’s a nice part.’
‘And where do you live?’ Mr Brodribb asked, with no ulterior motive; but her answering glance dismayed him, reminded him. Through the hurry of his own thoughts he heard her say:
‘Not so far. Like to come along? I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
Mr Brodribb rose.
‘That’s right,’ said his partner, ‘and there’s a nice pot of salmon paste I haven’t opened.’
During the drive she told him that her name was Edna, and asked for his. He gave it, with some reluctance; unnecessarily, since she disliked it and elected to call him George as before.
But the room into which she led the way surprised Mr Brodribb from his brooding. It was small and tidy.
Mr Brodribb watched her preparations for tea through a cloud of thought. Where, he asked himself, could he find a correspondent more suitable in every way? Impulse overcame him; and as she handed him the cup he made his suggestion.
Edna doubted, mocked, required assurance, read the ultimate letter from the solicitor, and was convinced.
‘It would have to be some hotel,’ said Mr Brodribb, ‘so as to get the servants’ evidence. I dare say you know of some place.’
‘Well, I do,’ she responded without enthusiasm, ‘but they’re not what I’d call very nice. What’s this place like you’re in?’
Mr Brodribb described ‘Melrose’ at some length. She pondered.
‘Sounds the sort of place I’d like,’ she said at last. ‘I’m sick of these flash hotels. Everybody knows what you’re there for. Now, what I’d liked be some nice quiet boarding-house, or somewhere like that, just for once in a way.’
Mr Brodribb, too, had been pondering. What, after all, was ‘Melrose’ to him? No final refuge, since he would have to leave as soon as the case came on. There was a vacant room next to his own.
‘But it would have to be as my wife,’ said he, thinking aloud.
‘Well, rings are cheap,’ she answered, unperturbed.
A week later Mr Brodribb introduced a small mouse-coloured woman to ‘Melrose’ as his wife; he let it be understood that they had been married some months ago, but that Mrs Brodribb had been nursing a sick mother in the country.
The good time ended by reason of financial pressure. Mr Brodribb, assessing his expenses for the half-year, which included two homes, a retaining fee for Edna, and a month of junketing for two, decided that the experiment could no longer continue. Edna approved.
Mr Brodribb gave notice to the proprietress that they would leave in a week’s time, and sent a letter with the same information to the solicitors. At the prospect of losing them, upper ‘Melrose’ showed tepid surprise; nether ‘Melrose’ lamented, prophesying wrath to come, boarders in their stead who would be neither tidy, civil nor generous. For the guilty couple, grateful to the establishment which had sheltered their idyll, had no way save one of showing gratitude. On the night before their departure Ivy and Queenie were summoned. Each received garments from Edna, and from Mr Brodribb largesse. Queenie and Ivy, dismissed, descended to the kitchen almost in tears, declaring to the cook that never again would ‘Melrose’ see the like of the Brodribbs, and vowing eternal regard. Upstairs, Mr Brodribb, on his knees beside his suitcase, looked up to find Edna standing by him, a parcel in her hand.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s just a little thing I got for you,’ Edna replied, ‘to look nice on your mantelpiece.’
He unwrapped the gift, revealing a brown plaster monkey six inches high, dressed in striped bathing drawers and playing the fiddle left-handed. The pedestal on which it stood was pierced with holes.
