Police at the Funeral (9 page)

Uncle William, in carpet slippers, seemed a shabbier, less bounding figure in the morning light, and his military air had almost entirely vanished.

‘Here's Kitty,' he said, adding in a bellowed whisper: ‘I've been trying to comfort her, poor creature.'

Aunt Kitty, quite as much flustered by the thought of meeting strangers red-eyed as by her tragic experience of the morning, rose from a low chair by the fire. She was a pathetic little woman, much older than her years, which were less than sixty. She was a fussy little person, fussily clothed in a black frock with tiny ruffles at the neck and sleeves. She was, too, the only woman Campion had ever seen in his life who wore a large gold watch attached by a bow-shaped gold brooch to her hollow bosom. Her eyes were red, as also was the tip of her nose, the only part of her face which was not wrinkled. She exuded an air of down-trodden virtue, an example of one who has carried gentleness to excess.

She shook hands with Campion without looking at him and turned to Marcus, her handkerchief much in evidence.

‘My dear boy, this is terrible,' she said. ‘Poor Julia, last night so full of strength and vigour, so dominant, such a tower of strength to us all, and today lying on her bed upstairs—' She swallowed noisily and the little lace handkerchief went to her eyes again.

The situation, although an awkward one, could have been handled perfectly by Marcus had it not been for the untimely attitude adopted by Uncle William.

‘Come, come, Kitty,' he said, planting himself squarely in front of the fire and resuming some of his erstwhile bluster. ‘We all know that Julia's death has been a bit of a shock, but we
don't want to be hypocritical. I won't say I'm not shaken, and I'm sorry, too. Damn it all, she was my sister. Julia had too much of a dominant personality not to be missed. But she was an infernally bad-tempered old woman. Let's face the facts.'

Aunt Kitty took her handkerchief from her eyes and turned upon her brother. She looked distressingly like a rabbit at bay. Her pale cheeks were faintly flushed with pink, and her red-rimmed blue eyes gleamed with righteous indignation as she dragged up the last ounce of spirit in her composition to meet this outrage upon the decencies.

‘Willie!' she said. ‘Your own sister! Lying dead on her bed upstairs, and you speaking of her as you never would have dared to have spoken of her had she been alive to hear you!'

Uncle William had the grace to look discomforted, but his was not the temperament to accept these reproaches with dignity or even politeness. He blew out his cheeks, therefore, raised himself once or twice on his toes, and blared at Kitty, who was already more than a little astonished at her own temerity.

‘I'd say anything to Julia's face,' he said. ‘Always have done. She was a damned bad-tempered old harpy! And so was Andrew – they were a pair. This house will be a sight quieter without the two of 'em. Answer that if you can. And don't call me “Willie”.'

Marcus, who was acutely embarrassed by this display of nerves and that offensive lack of consideration for others which one so often finds in family emergencies, turned away and contemplated the faded water-colour of the old gateway at Ignatius, but Mr Campion remained looking at the brother and sister with his usual expression of friendly stupidity.

Aunt Kitty wavered, but having defied her brother once, she seemed unable to stop.

‘Julia was a
good
woman,' she said. ‘Better than you'll ever be, William. And I won't listen to you befouling her dear memory. It isn't as though she'd been buried. What you'll come to,
Willie,
with no religion to help you, I don't like to think.'

Uncle William exploded. He was liverish, his nerves were on edge, and like so many men of his type he regarded his immortal soul as something physical and indecent.

‘Call me what you like, Kitty,' he blared, ‘but I won't stand hypocrisy. You can't deny the sort of life Julia led you. You can't deny that she went out of her way to annoy Andrew and myself with a venomous tongue and darned greedy habits. Who used to have
The Times
sent straight up to her room and kept it there until three o'clock in the afternoon? She never shut a door after her in her life, and if there was any kind of offensive muck-raking to be done, she did it.'

Aunt Kitty summoned all her frail forces for one last retort.

‘Well,' she said, her little body shaking with wrath at this outrage to all her instincts, ‘at least she never got secretly –
inebriated
.'

Uncle William stood petrified. There was a hunted expression in his little blue eyes as they glared at her balefully from his flaming face. When his complete suffocation appeared to be no longer probable, he recovered his voice on a note clearly louder and higher than he had intended.

‘That's a damned lie!' he said. ‘A damned ill-natured lie! A prejudicial lie. You've got a poisoned mind, my girl. Haven't we got enough trouble as it is without trying to saddle me with a trumped-up charge—' His voice cracked and was silent.

Before this tirade Aunt Kitty suddenly crumpled. Sitting down abruptly in one of the high-backed chairs by the table, her eyes turned up and her mouth opening, she emitted the horrible pain-filled laugh of hysteria and sat there rocking to and fro, the tears streaming down her face, while Uncle William, forgetting himself entirely, shouted at her in a lunatic attempt to silence her.

It was Mr Campion who stepped forward, and seizing one of the old lady's hands, smacked it hard; at the same time admonishing her in a tone utterly unlike his usual inconsequential murmur.

Marcus advanced upon Uncle William with no very clear plan in his mind, while Joyce assisted Mr Campion.

It was at this psychological moment when the noise was at its height that the door swept open and Great-aunt Faraday appeared upon the threshold.

One cannot have an imperious personality for over eighty years without developing at least traces of the grand manner.
Mrs Caroline Faraday, widow of Dr John Faraday, Master of Ignatius, had the grand manner itself.

She was an old woman of striking appearance without any of the ugliness which great age so often brings to a masterful countenance.

It is worthy of note that two seconds after her appearance the room was in complete silence. She was very small, but surprisingly upright. It seemed to Mr Campion's fascinated gaze that the major portion of her body was composed of some sort of complicated structure of whale-bone beneath her stiff black silk gown. Around her tiny shoulders she wore a cape of cream rose point, and the soft web was caught at her throat by a large cornelian brooch. Her serene old face, in which black eyes gleamed as brightly as ever they had done, was surrounded by a short scarf of the same lace worn coif-fashion and held in place by a broad black velvet ribbon.

This display of lace was perhaps her only weakness. She possessed a vast collection and wore examples from it perpetually. During the whole of the terrible time which was to follow, Mr Campion, who had an eye for such things, never saw her wear the same piece twice.

At the moment she held a thin black walking-stick in one hand and a large blue cup and saucer in the other.

She looked like a small eagle as she stood in the doorway glancing from one to the other of them standing before her like the naughty children she considered them.

‘Good morning,' she said in a voice which Campion found surprisingly youthful. ‘Tell me, is it necessary to make so much noise defending yourself, William? I heard you as I came downstairs. Must I remind you that there is death in the house?'

After an uncomfortable pause Marcus stepped forward. To his relief Mrs Faraday smiled at him.

‘I'm glad you came,' she said. ‘Your father is still away, I suppose? Did you bring Mr Campion?'

There was no wavering. Here was a woman completely in possession of her faculties.

Marcus ushered Mr Campion forward and the introduction was made. Since Mrs Faraday had her stick in one hand and the cup and saucer in the other, she made no attempt to shake
hands, but bowed graciously, granting the young man one of her rare smiles.

‘In a minute,' she said, ‘I want you both to come into my writing-room. But before that there is just this matter of the tea-cup. We are all here, so perhaps it were better if it were made clear now. I have already spoken to the servants. Will you shut the door, Marcus?'

She advanced into the room, a frail but completely commanding figure.

‘Joyce,' she said, ‘give me one of the little mats, will you?'

The girl opened a drawer in the sideboard and took out a small circle of embroidered canvas. When this had been placed over the polished surface of the table, Great-aunt Caroline put the cup and saucer down upon it.

‘That,' she said quietly, but with a distinct touch of reproof in her tone, ‘I found myself in Julia's room. It was just under the bed valance. I found it with my cane and Alice picked it up. It appears to have contained tea.'

They were all still upon their feet, and from his position on the old lady's right Mr Campion was able to see a few dregs and tea-leaves in the bottom of the cup. The inquisitorial atmosphere rather surprised him, and he did not at first understand the air of domestic friction, the hint of a breach in the household routine. Still less was he prepared for the immediate results of Mrs Faraday's inquiry.

Aunt Kitty, who until now had remained quietly sniffing into her handkerchief, suddenly burst into piteous and embarrassing tears. She came forward and stood fidgeting before her mother.

‘I did it,' she said tragically. ‘I made the tea.'

Great-aunt Caroline remained silent; no third person in the room would have dared to have spoken, and Aunt Kitty continued humbly.

‘Julia liked her cup of tea in the morning,' she said pathetically, ‘and so do I. I got used to it when my poor Robert was alive. He liked it, too. Julia suggested – no, well, perhaps it wasn't she – but one of us thought that although morning tea isn't served here we shouldn't be doing any harm if I bought a little kettle and a small spirit stove from Boots, and made the
tea in my room every morning before Alice brought in the hot water. We've done this for two years now. Every morning I made the tea and took a cup in to Julia in my dressing-gown and bedroom slippers. I took it in to Julia this morning. She – she was quite well then. Oh, Mamma! if she put anything in her tea and drank it up I never shall forgive myself, I never shall.'

At the end of this remarkable revelation there was another outburst of sobbing, in which Joyce vainly tried to comfort her. Great-aunt Caroline regarded her daughter with a mixture of disapproval, astonishment and scorn. At last she turned to Joyce.

‘My dear,' she said quietly, ‘take your aunt up to her room, and if Dr Lavrock is still in the house, ask him to give her a sedative.'

But Aunt Kitty had not plumbed the depths of her self-abasement yet. Like many down-trodden people she had a strong, if somewhat misguided, sense of the dramatic.

‘Mother,' she said, ‘forgive me. You must say you forgive me. I shan't be myself again until I know that.'

If old Mrs Faraday had been physically capable of blushing, doubtless she would have done so. As it was, her finely crumbled skin took on a deeper shade of ivory and her bright black eyes were embarrassed.

‘Catherine, my dear,' she said, ‘you are evidently not at all well. Surreptitious early morning tea is not the matter which is worrying Dr Lavrock or myself at the moment.' She turned away. ‘Marcus, I want you to carry that cup very carefully for me. Mr Campion, your arm, if you please. William, you will oblige me by remaining here until I send for you.'

THE STRANGE PROCESSION
wended slowly down the short corridor which led off the hall to the tiny sun-trap on the south side
of the building which was Mrs Faraday's own private apartment.

Mr Campion seemed fully conscious of the honour which was being conferred upon him by the old lady, whose yellow-white fingers rested so lightly upon his arm. Marcus stalked behind them with the tea-cup. Mrs Faraday raised her stick. ‘In here,' she said.

Campion opened the door and stood aside to let her pass. The room they entered was a perfect Queen Anne sitting-room, totally unexpected in this Victorian stronghold. The walls were white panelled and hung with delicate mezzotints. The old rose of the Chinese carpet was echoed in the brocaded hangings which framed the gentle bow of the window. The old walnut furniture reflected softly the bright fire in the grate. The candlesticks were silver and the upholstery covered with needlework. A beautiful room expressing a taste in direct opposition to the ostentatious solidity of the rest of the house.

Great-aunt Caroline in her laces seemed the natural owner of such a period gem. She sat down at the open bureau and turned to face them, one small ivory hand resting on the fine Italian blotter within.

‘I'll have that cup on my desk, Marcus,' she said, ‘if you don't mind. Thank you. Put it here on this piece of notepaper. It takes three years of polishing to remove a damp ring from walnut. You may sit down, gentlemen.'

They took up their places obediently on wide Sheraton chairs designed for a more ample generation.

‘And now,' she continued, turning to Campion, ‘let me look at you, Rudolph. You're not much like your dear grandmother, but I can see the first family in you.'

Mr Campion flushed. The thrust had gone home and there was a faint air of amusement in the old lady's face when next she spoke.

‘My dear boy,' she murmured, ‘very old ladies only gossip among themselves. I shall not expose you. I may say I quite agree with your people in theory, but, after all, as long as that impossible brother of yours is alive the family responsibilities are being shouldered, and I see no reason why you shouldn't call yourself what you like. Emily, the dowager, and I have
corresponded regularly – why, for the last forty-five years – so I have heard all about you from her.'