Miss Hargreaves (39 page)

‘It’s no good merely telling that squint chappie the truth,’ said Henry suddenly.

‘I’m glad you say that,’ I said. ‘Because I don’t think that’d be the slightest bit of good.’

‘We’ve got to know what we
are
going to do, haven’t we?’

‘Yes. And that’s what I don’t know–yet.’

Henry slowly drained his glass. He looked at me. He smiled suddenly. ‘What fools we are!’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Plotting and planning–like this. Tell me–did we plot and plan for hours before we created her?’

I saw daylight; I saw it as clear as you see it at four on a summer morning.

‘You mean–’ I cried. ‘Leave it–to the Spur of the Moment?’

Henry nodded and started to fill his pipe, spilling tobacco all over the table. I could tell he was excited.

‘This is what I reckon we must do,’ he said. ‘It’s just an idea. We must go to Lusk church and wait outside it as we did before. Simply that. No planning or plotting at
all
. She didn’t come into the world that way, and she mustn’t go out of the world that way. We don’t even want to
talk
about what we’re going to do any more. Just go there and–hope for the best.’

‘Or the worst,’ I said. But I could see his idea; it was a sound one.

‘We’d better go to-morrow,’ he said, ‘and put up at the hotel at Dungannon.’

‘I must see this concert through on Monday night.’

‘What the devil for?’

‘I don’t know. I–well, if it’s going to be the last time. I see her, I want to remember it. I can’t help it, Henry. Besides, she’s so looking forward to this concert. I couldn’t bear to spoil it for her.’

‘I call it damn dangerous.’

‘Perhaps it is. But I’m going to risk it.’

‘Tell me this, Norman’–Henry was knocking out the pipe he had just filled. I wondered why he was suddenly so worked up–‘tell me this. Can you remember the first actual moment when Miss Hargreaves came into your mind? Was it when you gave the sexton her name?’

I thought. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it was. I think she was in the back of my mind when we stood by the lectern and I madly said, “Dear Mr Archer”. I didn’t
know
she was there, if you get me; but I’m sure she must have been. In reserve, so to speak. The moment the sexton said, “You knew Mr Archer?” I said–do you remember–that
I
didn’t know him but that I knew somebody who did–’

‘I believe you said you’d heard a lot about him.’

‘Yes. Well. I knew then that I might have to create somebody who
had
known Mr Archer. She was in my mind then–only half visualized–but there right enough.’

‘Dear Mr Archer!’ murmured Henry. ‘So that was the dangerous moment?’

‘Yes. That was the dangerous moment.’

We were silent for a long time. Henry had completely forgotten his pipe now. I felt that there was something on his mind which he wouldn’t tell me.

‘My God!’ he said presently, ‘I don’t mind telling you that this business makes my flesh tingle.’

‘Round the back of your neck; up your spine. Yes.’

‘It’s like–murder, almost.’

‘It
is
murder.’

‘Don’t talk so loud, old boy, for God’s sake.’

‘No good calling it anything else,’ I whispered. ‘It’s murder. But if we don’t do it, then I might as well be dead.’

‘So might I,’ muttered Henry.

‘And another thing,’ I said. ‘This Major Wynne affair. She’ll get me locked up over that. But worse than that; she’ll ruin me, body and soul. I shan’t have one free moment. The situation’s reversed, don’t you see? And here’s another thing you may not have thought of. When she’s finished with me,
she’ll start on you
–’

Henry spluttered over his beer as though I had hit him on the back.

‘What’s bitten you?’ I asked. He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: ‘Norman, old boy. I’ll own up. She
has
started on me. That’s why I rang up. To tell you God’s truth well, I’m scared.’

‘Henry tell me, what’s happened?’

‘Nothing much outwardly. She gets her petrol at our place, you know. Well, there’s nothing in that. But just lately, whenever she stops, she asks for me. She won’t rest unless I fill up for her. Gedge was starting to give her ten this morning when he comes round to me I was working on that old Sunbeam of Canon Auty’s and he says to me, “Mr Henry, Lady Hargreaves wants you to fill up her tank”.’

‘Did you go?’

‘Yes. And, do you know, she kept her eyes on me all the time. When I’d finished and was giving the chauffeur the change, she leant out and said to me, “Mr Beddow, I am thinking of buying another car. Will you be good enough to call and see me about it?”’

‘Oh–not much in that,’ I said.

‘Ho–wasn’t there! It was the way she said it, my boy; the walk-into-parlour way she said it.’

‘You know’–I suddenly remembered it–‘the other night when I was there, she asked for your name. She’d forgotten it.’

‘Well, something in her manner got me, Norman. I began to understand a bit of what you must have been through. And I felt a toad–

‘Don’t talk about it, Henry. You
were
a bit off-hand. But never mind. I know I’ve been a damn bore.’

‘The trouble is–’ He paused and hesitated. ‘Well, I
like
the old witch.’

‘That,’ I said, ‘
is
the trouble. We loved her from the start. And we shall go on loving her, whatever happens.’

‘But we’ve got to do this for her own good. That’s how I see it.’

Henry walked slowly to the bar and came back with two noggins of rum which he poured into our glasses.

‘Do you remember,’ he said, ‘how we drank her health on the boat coming over?’

‘I said “Long may she live”. I meant it.’

‘Silly of us.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘If only we had known! And yet–’

We raised our glasses, looked at each other solemnly, and drank in silence.

9

T
HE next day, a Sunday, the judge of assize attended Matins in the Cathedral. Anybody who happened to be there that day is not likely to forget the remarkable and queerly touching little ceremony which marked the visit of Mr Justice Hurlstone as different from any other judicial visits.

More people than usual filled the chancel. A little before eleven the choir filed in; the Doctor honoured the occasion with all five Great Open Diapasons; the Dean and the canons lined up on either side of the choir gates, facing each other in two rows by their stalls. The tenor bell tolled eleven. The group of civic dignitaries assembled by the south door stiffened to attention as a car drew up outside. The Doctor, warmly improvising in B major, and warned by his assistant, who kept running along the loft, that Justice was imminent, enriched the firm prose of the Diapasons with the drama of the Full Swell. Everybody in the chancel turned their eyes to the nave. Only one familiar figure was absent. Constance Lady Hargreaves, for some reason, was not in her customary seat.

Walking up the nave very slowly, the Mayor, Aldermen, Sheriffs, Clerks and Magistrates crossed the dais. The Doctor, his eyes glued to the little mirror which gave him a view of what went on below, made a sudden dramatic modulation to C major. The Dean and the canons pulled themselves up sharply, preparing for their ceremonial bow to the Judge. Finally, at the end of the procession, his lordship himself reached the choir gates. He was a small man with a nut-like, acid countenance that bore even less expression than the wig which fell round his shoulders. A slight, a very slight inclination of his head was his acknowledgment of the homage paid to Justice by the low bows of the Dean and Chapter. The next moment he ascended sharply to his seat in the Residentiary Canon’s stall. The canons and the Dean found their places; the Precentor hurriedly swallowed a lozenge; the Doctor quickly fell to B major and the choir Lieblich Gedacht. Meakins went to close the gates.

At that sacred moment, Lady Hargreaves appeared upon the dais.

Limping across the dais she reached the gates as Meakins was on the point of closing them. She did not hurry, neither did she linger; obviously, it never crossed her mind that Meakins might close the gates upon her, as he had been known to do upon many a bishop’s wife. A thousand eyes that had, a second before, been fixed upon the Judge, now swivelled to her. It was seen that she was carrying a miniature posy of autumn rosebuds, exquisitely woven together with white silk ribbon. ‘Too bad of me–too bad of me!’ we heard her murmur to Meakins. For the first time in his life, and I dare say the last, he admitted a person into the Choir at the precise moment when the wicked man, via the Precentor, was about to turn away from his wickedness and direct his attention to Morning Prayer–and that on a Sunday morning when His Majesty’s Justice was present. Never in the history of Cornford Cathedral had tradition been so gracefully violated.

But what did she do with her posy? What thunderbolt descended upon her as, stopping under the Judge’s stall, she curtsied slightly and reaching up to the desk placed the rosebuds gently upon the embroidered desk-cushion?

No thunderbolt descended. Not one single eyebrow flickered its displeasure. In other words, she got away with it. The lady who had been accused of conspiring with anarchists had made what all silently interpreted as a declaration of her innocence. Almost imperceptibly, Mr Justice Hurlstone was seen to smile; taking the rosebuds he raised them towards his nose, then laid them down a little to one side of the massive Prayer Book before him. Enough. Justice had smiled; openly, the Dean smiled; the Suffragan Bishop of Maidenhead whispered something to the Archdeacon of Wycombe; both smiled and nodded. The lay-clerks grinned; an unfortunate probationer giggled, and was frowned upon by Baker. The Precentor, instead of turning the wicked man away, dared to bid God not to enter into judgment with His servant. Lady Hargreaves, her mission accomplished, walked peacefully to her stall, pausing for a moment to lift a page of an anthem book which had fluttered down upon King John’s tomb. ‘Your anthem, I imagine?’ she murmured to Baker, at the top of Decani. Baker took the page from her, flushing crimson. ‘Thank you, Lady Hargreaves,’ he said, making a gallant attempt to show his juniors that he was accustomed to the society of the great ones of the earth.

The Lord Justice, his sallow face again a mask, sank to his knees. Lady Hargreaves took off her gloves, glanced round her, adjusted her horn spectacles, and opened her white ivory Prayer Book. A thousand knees nested on five hundred hassocks. Matins began.

I watched her, half proudly, half uneasily, during the singing of Stanford’s
Te Deum
in B flat. ‘We praise thee, O Hargreaves!’ I sang to myself. To-morrow night, after the concert, I proposed to travel to Lusk. Could I hope to do anything? Did I want to do anything? Pride flooded up in me. Who else in the world had been able to create an old lady with the courage to present roses to the Judge on Assize Sunday?

My eyes turned to the wrinkled little Judge. Would he one day apply the black cap for my benefit, supposing that . . .