The New Sonia Wayward (15 page)

And it did look as if it would come to that, unless Petticate gave in. If the Hennwifes were really calculating and practised crooks, they were also for some reason – Petticate could have no doubt of it – malignant enemies. If they were denied their spoils, if he didn’t in fact consent to be bled white, they would find means to bring him down with no risk to themselves. And this was a fact that upset all Petticate’s calculations. For these calculations had been based on the premise that as criminals the Hennwifes were operating on an amateur basis, and would be controlled in everything they did by the likely repercussions on their career as respectable domestic servants.

But something else – it couldn’t be denied – had upset Petticate’s previous calculations too. He had sadly misfired as the man in control of the situation. He had come within an inch of accepting a ridiculous reversal of roles as between his servant and himself. He had really almost got the fellow that brandy!

Petticate shuddered at this as he positively wouldn’t have shuddered in the shadow of the gallows. Indeed his mind now leant reality to this image by proposing to itself, quite firmly, that the Hennwifes must go. And not, of course, in the mere sense that he had previously intended. In
that
way, the Hennwifes had left no doubt that they had no intention of going. Well, so much the worse for them. They must
go
.

As Colonel Petticate turned this proposition over in his mind he was comforted to discover that it afforded him no qualms of conscience. His innate humanity had always revolted against the horror of long prison sentences – sentences such as convicted blackmailers always receive. And for the Hennwifes, whatever the issue of his own encounter with them, there could only be one fate waiting in the end. Sooner or later they would be caught out and locked up. Far kinder than this, surely, would be an act of more summary justice: some stroke of just retribution so swift that they would scarcely be conscious that it had overtaken them.

Having arrived at this enlightened view of the matter, Petticate went out to take a turn in his garden. The air was now autumnal and the sunshine bleak. Nevertheless there was much to gratify both the disinterested aesthetic sense and that enhanced feeling of proprietorship which he had begun to enjoy since the tragically sudden death of his wife.

The house itself was modern, but the grounds – and ‘grounds’ was indubitably the correct word for policies so extensive in their modest fashion – had originally been those of a manor house and an adjacent manor farm. The buildings had for the most part vanished long ago. But there was still a dovecot to mark the ancient rank of the place, and a stone-roofed barn which, although much in disrepair, gave a mellow effect to the view through the small orchard.

All this made the Wayward’s place enviable among the upper classes of Snigg’s Green; and nothing marred Petticate’s own pleasure in it except a certain injudicious fussiness of cultivation and embellishment indulged in by the former owner and not yet eradicated. Petticate was accustomed to speak disparagingly of these efforts as being suitable to what he called (in his high, old-world style) a citizen’s box. There was, for instance, the fish-pond. A fish-pond is a delightful thing to have. But its dimensions – according to some canon which Petticate had discovered in his polite reading – ought to approximate to not less than half the area occupied by the mansion to which it belongs. His fish-pond was a mere glorified affair for goldfish.

Nevertheless he walked round it with some interest now. He found himself considering it in its practical rather than its artistic or social implications. There was some two feet of water in it. And that was quite enough to drown in. The dramatist Webster – his well-stored memory informed him – presents in one of his plays the pleasing spectacle of a half-crazed cardinal who enters in the last scene muttering:

When I looke into the Fish-ponds, in my Garden,

Me thinkes I see a thing, armed with a Rake,

That seemes to strike at me…

What if, here by this fish-pond, he, Petticate, struck at them, the Hennwifes, with a rake? And then left them face downwards in the water?

The image thus formed before his mind brought a smile of simple pleasure to Petticate’s face for a moment. But then he frowned. Of course it wouldn’t do. One person may conceivably be accidentally drowned in a fish-pond, even if it is only two feet deep. But not two persons. And the rake, although it would be so pleasant to use, would leave undesirable tokens of its application.

Petticate prowled on. He came to the dovecot. What if the Hennwifes, finding themselves about to be unmasked in their criminal courses, simultaneously hanged themselves here? The structure, after all, was admirably adapted to the purpose. It simply cried out – Petticate reflected as he looked up at the narrowing roof – for the spectacle of those two evil people with their toes dangling in air. And they would, of course, leave behind them some sort of confession of wrong-doing – one, naturally, that had nothing to do with Colonel and Mrs Ffolliot Petticate.

But again, clearly, it wouldn’t do. Or rather, it just couldn’t be managed. Hennwife was tough. To overpower him and his foul associate severally, and then to string them up here, would be virtually impossible in itself. And moreover some act of forgery would be required which in these circumstances, could scarcely fail to be questioned and detected.

Once more, Petticate walked on.

Dusk had fallen when he got back to the house. His limbs were aching from unaccustomed exercise, and his mouth and throat felt parched with dust. He was convinced, however, that he had found the solution of his problem.

There was still a big job ahead – particularly since he must not on any account use a saw. Of course nothing in the nature of foul play was going to be suspected. But it was not unlikely that the Hennwifes were involved in some small way with life assurance, and if an insurance company, sent down some sort of investigating expert there must be absolutely nothing in the debris that might set him thinking. Parts of the massive roof of the barn had already fallen in. But most of it was intact although approaching a condition that was dangerous; and it was still entirely supported by the original structure of tie-beam, king-post, and struts. He had often studied it with some care, so that he had a very good idea of the points at which he must go unobtrusively to work.

Within a week, he reckoned, and without staying in the place long enough at a time to attract suspicion, he could turn the barn into a death trap. As a boy he had evolved, out of cardboard boxes, sticks and a roll of string, a contraption which would come down neatly enough, at a single twitch of the hand, upon an unsuspecting blackbird or sparrow. It was something of just this sort – but this time at the pull of a stout rope – that was going to come down upon the unsuspecting Hennwifes. That he could effectively construct his trap he now had no doubt. It remained to think out some means of baiting it. Meantime he must put as much dignity and fortitude as he could into the business of sharing another and less physically threatening roof with his prospective victims.

The Hennwifes were not the less intolerable because they did, for some inscrutable reason, continue to perform their normal menial functions with a reasonable approach to efficiency. Whether this proceeded from some sense of irony entirely inappropriate to persons in their station of life, or whether it had its occasion in some motive of policy, Petticate was unable to determine. But the fact remained that his meals appeared, his rooms were dusted, and his clothes were valeted. In Mrs Hennwife’s manner there was almost nothing out of the way to be remarked. Hennwife himself, on the other hand, alternated between his normal stage-manservant’s turn and savage and outrageous flights of insolence. Probably – Petticate thought – the idea was further to soften him up and utterly break him down; to keep him guessing in the sort of fashion that had proved so inimical to the nervous stability of the celebrated Professor Pavlov’s dogs. There was nothing to do but resist as best he could this peculiar variety of torture until his trap was ready to spring.

And it would have been ready the sooner but for an unexpected distraction. With an altogether unexpected celerity, the proofs of
What Youth Desires
turned up from Wedge.

Petticate had much looked forward to this event. And, at a first glance, the proofs pleased him very much. There was evidence that unusual care was being given to the production and appearance of the book. And it was, after all,
his
book. Although the circumstances in which he was commencing authorship were admittedly peculiar, there seemed no reason why he should not obtain from them that sort of satisfaction which commonly proceeds from going into print in a big way. Moreover it was to be a recurrent pleasure. Definitely, although perhaps with rather less intensity, this sense of satisfaction was to renew itself year by year as the roll of Sonia Wayward increased.

It was with astonishment and dismay, therefore, that Petticate now found all these expectations betrayed. He hadn’t read the first chapter of
What Youth Desires
before he was undeniably disliking the thing. Halfway through, he was loathing it.

What was the occasion of this extraordinary volte-face? He asked himself the question in dismay. And the answer seemed to lie in a consideration of his own wonderfully complex, and therefore absorbingly interesting, personality. Like some other outstanding men, he carried about with him a divided mind.

He had obtained great satisfaction from writing the book, but the process had appealed entirely to the intermittent vein of the sardonic in his composition. Now a different impulse – which a hostile criticism might term the purely self-regarding – was predominant in him. He was appalled that a person of his sensibility, cultivation, and intelligence could have produced such tripe as this: poor old Sonia’s nonsense raised to a new and higher power.

He remembered indeed that poor old Sonia herself, when she did occasionally read the proofs of one of her novels, used to surprise him by sometimes inadvertently betraying signs of a similar distaste. Not that she didn’t predominantly believe her stuff to be enormously good. Not that she had the slightest settled awareness of the chasm that yawned between it and the sort of writing which has any place within the sphere of criticism. Yet, with the print before her, she did sometimes display tokens, poor dear, of a divine discontent. It was probably something that all writers were subject to in varying degree. But its impact on Petticate himself was both unexpected and violent. And he knew, too, that he would never now get away from it. The future was going to be much more laborious than he had supposed. Apart from rare moments when the original sardonic pleasure might reassert itself, he was never again going to write a new Sonia Wayward except as a disagreeable and humiliating chore.

All this naturally didn’t contribute to Petticate’s nervous ease as he continued to work discreetly on his death-trap. But he was a resolute man, as determined that the Hennwifes would die as that Sonia Wayward – at least in a metaphorical sense – should live. He read the proofs with care, made a few corrections and alterations, and returned them to Wedge without any comment on Sonia’s supposed present whereabouts.

And then he turned to the really tough problem of the moment.

The New Sonia Wayward

All that was needed was a cat!

Petticate could hardly believe his good fortune when he realized that it was as simple as that. But there could be no doubt about it. Ambrose, the Hennwife’s revolting Pekinese, he could make a grab at at any time – a satisfactory consequence, this, of the fact that the Hennwifes now chose to regard Ambrose and himself as having about equal rights in the house at large. If Ambrose chose to settle down for the day in the study, Petticate knew that he mustn’t disturb him. Or it might be fairer to say that Petticate pretended to know this. For of course he was now playing his own game with the Hennwifes. Overtly he was giving every sign that he was rapidly breaking up before them. Secretly he was making his final preparations to crush them in the most literal and deeply satisfying sense.

It was cardinal to his design that, oddly enough, Hennwife himself was as attached to Ambrose as was his accursed spouse. Were the creature in distress or even mild discomfort, either of them equally would hasten to its aid. In anything suggesting crisis, they would undoubtedly hasten together.

So all that he needed was a cat. He couldn’t suddenly buy one, since he was resolved to do absolutely nothing that could attach to himself the shadow of a suspicion in the affair. And borrowing was similarly excluded. So he must simply grab a cat. Or rather – what was a little more difficult – he must put himself in the way of being able to grab a cat when the appropriate moment for the grand operation arrived.

Petticate began to study the habits of the local cats. Not many of them came near the place – presumably because of the strong dislike which Ambrose was accustomed to take to them if they did. But there was one exception to this in a large ginger or marmalade-coloured creature which did quite regularly prowl up and down an unfrequented lane immediately behind the barn. Discreet observation resulted in the discovery that it was the property of Mrs Gotlop – from which it had to be inferred that neither Boswell nor Johnson shared Ambrose’s extreme distaste of the feline species. And an equally discreet inquiry made of Mrs Gotlop’s cook whom Petticate had fortunately been accustomed to say a few suitable words to when they met in the Post-Office, elicited the further fact that the name of the marmalade cat was Mrs Williams. This proved not particularly useful. When addressed as Mrs Williams – and, even in the solitude of the lane, Petticate found some difficulty in saluting a cat in this way – Mrs Williams paid no attention at all. When addressed less precisely under the general style of pretty pussy or the like, Mrs Williams commonly waved her tail – which Petticate understood to be a sign of displeasure – and disdainfully moved away. He saw that the animal must be fed.