Death Knocks Three Times (14 page)

J
OHN, on the other hand, greeted the advent of tea with a spinsterish delight. His excellent Mrs. Pringle, he said, always brought him a pot of tea last thing. Indeed, his acceptance of the offer would have done credit to a Victorian curate. He became quite playful about his landlady, describing her as a good soul come down in the world through marriage and kindred misfortunes.

Miss Bond, who had already recovered from her brief amiability, said he must miss these attentions at the inn where he was putting up. John startled them both by saying that though he didn’t imagine he and the Major would have much in common, he did emphatically agree with his view that there were occasions when murder was the only way out.

“What occasions?” asked Miss Bond.

John became a little flustered. “Where the death of the victim is of general benefit to the community,” he suggested.

“And you are to be the sole judge of that knotty point, my dear John?”

John, thus goaded, turned to Miss Pettigrew. “The first time I saw you,” he said, “you were explaining to the assistant at Garrods that there were occasions on which you would consider yourself a benefactor—benefactress—if you committed a murder.”

“Indeed!” said Miss Pettigrew. “I have seen no reason to alter my opinion.”

Miss Bond was pouring out the tea; she looked with real regret at the empty cup. She knew that she would be charged for four teas, and it went to her frugal heart to think that one would be wasted. Then happened one of those things you can’t account for but that change the whole shape of a pattern. The door opened softly and Roger Marlowe came in.

There were very few people in the small drawing room. A certain Commander Potter and his wife had come in after a brisk turn on the front and sunk themselves into a couple of chairs a little distance from the bridge players. There was a rousing play on the wireless this evening and practically all the residents, equipped with their knitting, were ensconced, some with hands cupped round their ears, in the big drawing room, shuddering delightfully as scream after scream of maniacal laughter rang out over the ether.

Marlowe came quite close by the bridge table, bowed slightly to Miss Bond, and said he had been told there was a Bradshaw in the adjacent bookshelf. He had to make sure about his train the next day. Miss Bond did an astonishing thing.

“Won’t you join us for a cup of tea, Mr. Marlowe?” she said, cordially. “Meet my nephew. Did you know I had a nephew, a very advanced novelist, far too advanced for an old woman like me to know what he’s talking about? Oh—but I forgot—1 don’t think you’ve met my friend. Miss Pettigrew. She was dear Isabel’s main confidante. I expect Isabel often mentioned her.”

Her bold action took the wind out of everyone’s sails. Even Marlowe seemed momentarily taken aback. What’s she up to now? he tliought. He didn’t for an instant believe it was anything but a trick to get the letters away from him somehow without paying for them, but he’d left them locked in his room, where they should be safe enough. And since he was accustomed to take whatever offered, even a cup of tea, he said in the voice of the experienced lady-killer: “That’s uncommonly kind of you, Miss Bond. I won’t say no.” He moved over into the Major’s vacant seat. “Good luck, I hope,” he continued, genially.

“Speaking for myself,” said Miss Pettigrew, “I played with Major Atkins. He had some most interesting stories to tell us of his hairbreadth experiences abroad, but I wonder if he has ever been nearer death than he was tonight when he trumped my last trick.”

“I always say you need to be lucky or exceptionally brainy to win at cards,” Marlowe went on, taking the cup Miss Bond offered him, and handing it on to Miss Pettigrew as if he were giving her a bouquet. “A poor man like myself …”

“Surely you gamble, Mr. Marlowe?” suggested Miss Bond. “You have the air of a most reckless player.”

“Perhaps,” murmured Miss Pettigrew, “Mr. Marlowe prefers to bet on certainties.” (Oh, the snakes’ cage would have been green with jealousy to hear the old women baiting their unfortunate male companions.) “So much safer.”

Marlowe sent her the sort of glance to which she must have long since become accustomed; at all events it didn’t produce the smallest crack in her composure. John provided a distraction by saying as he took his cup: “No sugar? And yet one understands the warehouses are bursting with it. All being kept for the General Election, I suppose.” He exchanged a man-of-the-world glance with Marlowe. “They’re very niggardly at the Railway Hotel, too. Now, Mrs. Pringle always contrives to give me sugar with my tea and coffee.”

“Perhaps it would be better for you if she didn’t,” said Miss Bond. “Short men shouldn’t be fat. It doesn’t suit them.”

John pretended not to have heard. “Fortunately I have some saccharine,” he said.

“There is no need to be so aggressive about it,” snapped Miss

Bond. “We are all provided, except Frances, who never takes sugar or milk in her tea. Mr. Marlowe, I am sure you like yours sweet.”

“I have a weakness,” he confessed. “But look here, I don’t want to rob you.” Just as though he hadn’t made a life-work of robbing women and of far more valuable things than saccharine, too.

“I am amply supplied,” said Miss Bond, rummaging in her huge black velvet hold-all. And what didn’t it hold? John reflected. Everything but the kitchen stove. It was a joke among the chambermaids that if she could have managed it she’d have taken up the carpet every time she left her room.

Marlowe smiled. I thought she’d come round, he told himself. If I play my cards well, I ought to be settled for life. It seemed to him, sensitive, as experience had made him to atmosphere, that he wasn’t the only person present on hot bricks tonight. The novelist chap was looking jumpy, too. As for Miss Pettigrew, he wouldn’t have trusted her any further than he’d have trusted a cobra. Why, for all he knew, the stuff the old witch was putting into his tea was arsenic, not saccharine.

There was a slight commotion going on at the table. John, foiled of his good intentions where Marlowe was concerned, had found his bottle of saccharine and was heartily shaking some of the contents into his aunt’s cup of tea. When Miss Bond noticed this she was seriously annoyed.

“My dear John, there is no need to be so officious,” she snapped. “The management provides sugar—naturally—for the residents.” Out of the great black bag she brought a little blue tin with pictures of lumps of sugar painted on it. This opened revealed about a dozen lumps. It went through John’s mind that a really hospitable hostess would have handed the sugar around in the first place. Nobody could like saccharine; personally he detested it, declaring it didn’t by any means take the place of sugar.

Miss Pettigrew seemed to agree with him. “Dear me!” she said, leaning forward. “You remind me of the squirrel—or is it the ant? —storing its nuts for the winter.”

“I am sorry for the children under your care if you taught them that ants eat nuts,” was Miss Bond’s acid retort. “I believe, Frances, you do not take sugar in your tea.”

“Unfortunately not,” agreed Miss Pettigrew. She glared at John, who had courageously put out his hand and taken a piece of sugar out of the box. If he had bitten her on the nose his aunt could hardly have been more startled.

Mr. Marlowe in the meantime was making himself charming to Miss Pettigrew.

“Acidity?” he was whispering in his most coaxing tone. “I wonder if you would allow me to recommend an infallible remedy.”

“Thank you,” said the ex-governess. “There is only one and I know it.”

“You mean?”

“Six feet of earth and the conquering worm.”

Even Mr. Marlowe’s affability was dashed by that. He looked around to see if he had missed his chance of getting a lump of sugar and found that he had. Miss Pettigrew, however, had taken one, saying composedly: “I will keep this for my coffee tomorrow. The hotel is very good to residents, as Miss Bond perpetually assures me, but it is a little less generous to casual visitors like myself.”

“You must not let me detain you in Brakemouth an instant longer than is quite convenient,” suggested Miss Bond.

John, as if to defend his temerity in helping himself to sugar, was now stirring it violently into his tea, with the result that he lost control of the teaspoon and a few splashes of the dark liquid fell on his aunt’s gown. Instantly she began to upbraid him.

“Really, John, anyone could tell you were a bachelor. A wife might have civilized you. What else can you expect when you stir your tea in that plebeian fashion …” Her tone implied that though he might play cards with gentlewomen he drank his tea with landladies, which was, in fact, about the size of it.

“There is no harm done, Clara,” said Miss Pettigrew in exasperating tones. John supposed she was still smarting from her bridge losses.

“My dear Frances, you may be in a position to ruin your clothes without a second thought, but I, who do not buy coupons on the black market and have no money to throw away on new dresses, have to be more careful.”

She asked Marlowe to ring the bell, and when the waitress came, sharply demanded warm water and a cloth—a clean cloth, she amplified. The girl looked sulky and Clara Bond raised her voice.

Commander Potter, who happened to catch her eye, looked away hurriedly. He liked to boast that he had been impervious under shot and shell, but Clara Bond could cow him with a glance. John, very red in the face, began to apologize, but was quelled by Miss Pettigrew, who said: Nonsense, the sort of accident that might happen to anyone. The only member of the quartet who seemed perfectly at ease was Roger Marlowe. He took the cloth from the waitress and began to dab at the damaged dress, but Miss Bond took it out of his hands and made a thorough job of it herself.

“The tea will be quite cold,” said Miss Pettigrew in a resigned voice, lifting her cup half-heartedly to her lips, but Miss Bond, terrified that she might be expected to order another brew, said: “Nonsense. Let me taste it.”

Marlowe handed it to her in a very gallant fashion and then tasted his own. It was like treacle, but he said at once: “Just what the doctor ordered. It’s only the ladies who like their tea red-hot.”

Miss Bond completed John’s discomfiture by saying that if he insisted on giving her saccharine he might at least make a proper job of it, and took another lump of sugar.

“You must like your tea like syrup,” said Miss Pettigrew, but Miss Bond said that at her time of life she was entitled to a little luxury.

“Are you staying here long, Mr. Marlowe?” Miss Pettigrew continued.

“Only until tomorrow, I fear. Then I must return to town on business.”

“Perhaps you’ll be going up by the same train as my nephew. He also has to return tomorrow.”

“I go by a very early train,” put in John, hastily.

“Have you your family in London, Mr. Marlowe?” asked Miss Pettigrew.

He dropped his absurdly long lashes. “Unhappily I am a widower. I had hoped at one time—I don’t think you know I was a great friend of Isabel’s. I was terribly shocked to hear of her death.”

“Isabel was a very sympathetic character. I am sure you realized that.”

“Exactly. We had a great deal in common.”

“But not so much,” reflected John vulgarly, “as you’d have liked.”

“I don’t seem to remember her mentioning you in her letters,” continued Miss Pettigrew.

“Perhaps,” said Mr. Marlowe in gentler tones, “experience had made her wise.” ‘

“Nothing,” contradicted Miss Bond crisply, “could have done that.”

Even Miss Pettigrew, even Marlowe, were momentarily put out of countenance, and before John could pour his well-meaning oil on the waters, Commander Potter got to his feet, saying heartily: “All aboard the lugger for the last trip tonight. It’s almost ten-thirty when these land-lubbers go off duty.”

By this he meant that after half-past ten the porter. Hart, retired to his own quarters, and anybody who wanted to go up after that had to manipulate the old-fashioned elevator for himself. Martinets like Commander Potter, however, couldn’t see why the porter shouldn’t do the job for which he was engaged, and he always beetled off as the hands of the clock drew towards 10.30. Tonight, as soon as he had spoken. Miss Pettigrew, finding some reason for his existence for once, rose smartly to her feet.

“Unless you wish to bring yourself up, Clara,” she said ominously, but Miss Bond brushed aside her suggestion with an impatient wave of the hand.

“My nephew will bring me up when I am ready,” she said. “Or possibly Mr. Marlowe …”

But Marlowe had no desire to find himself alone with her at this juncture, so he echoed old Mrs. Potter’s inane remark about it being time for Bedfordshire, and went forward to open the door for the ladies with what the acid Miss Pettigrew thought a quite ridiculous amount of bowing and scraping.

“Are you sure Mr. Sherren understands the working of the elevator?” asked Frances dourly.

“If not, he can presumably learn.”

Mrs. Potter teetered out, saying something about “We oldsters not being as young as we were,” and Miss Bond scarcely waited for the door to close before she remarked: “Nevertheless, some of us still retain possession of our senses.”

Then the door really did close, leaving John feeling like a very unprotected rabbit in the presence of a completely unscrupulous boa-constrictor. But he hoped no one guessed this. He reminded himself this was the last time, the last time, the last time …

H
E MUST have started saying the words aloud for he became aware of his aunt looking at him in a most peculiar manner.

“Really, John,” she said, “you are exhibiting the worst traits of the elderly maiden gentleman.”

“I don’t agree in the least,” said John. “Writers are perpetually involved in conversations which I have no doubt sound quite meaningless—to any one who happens to overhear them.” He thought he had dealt with that with admirable firmness. “What was it you wished to say to me. Aunt Clara?”

“Nothing in particular,” retorted his spirited companion, “but I don’t choose to have Frances Pettigrew giving me orders when she’s my guest. However, since you yourself have raised the point, and since this may be my last opportunity of giving you advice— no, John, do not contradict me, if you please. At my age one must be prepared for emergencies, and if you weren’t thinking of that, why were you mouthing that phrase—‘The last time, the last time’ —so feverishly a moment ago? Since, as I say, this may be my last opportunity, I propose to say a few plain words. After your mother died and your father so foolishly threw himself into the jaws of the heathen, I did my best to bring you up as I would a son of my own. As you know, I consider life is intended for some particular purpose, and even you can hardly suggest you have fulfilled such a purpose by writing a handful of novels that, if we are to be candid, can have made no difference to humanity in the mass, and little, I fear, to your own finances. You are still no more than middle-aged. In these days forty is regarded almost as a young man. It is not too late to make something of your life. I don’t, of course, suggest you should enlist for the mines or anything drastic like that. You would naturally be more of a liability than an asset, but there must be some useful service you could render to the community. It is not enough to claim that you live within your income unless-you do something to merit that income.”