Not to Disturb

I

The other servants fall silent as Lister enters the
room.

‘Their life,' says Lister, ‘a general mist of error.
Their death, a hideous storm of terror. — I quote from
The Duchess of Malfi
by John Webster, an English dramatist of old.'

‘When you say a thing is not impossible, that isn't quite
as if to say it's possible,' says Eleanor who, although younger than Lister, is
his aunt. She is taking off her outdoor clothes. ‘Only technically is the not
impossible, possible.'

‘We are not discussing possibilities today,' Lister says.
‘Today we speak of facts. This is not the time for inconsequential talk.'

‘Of facts accomplished,' says Pablo the handyman.

Eleanor hangs her winter coat on a hanger.

‘The whole of Geneva will be talking,' she says.

‘What about him in the attic?' says Heloise, the youngest
maid whose hands fold over her round stomach as she speaks. The stomach moves of
its own accord and she pats it. ‘What about him in the attic?' she says. ‘Shall
we let him loose?'

Eleanor looks at the girl's stomach. ‘You better get out
of the way when the journalists come,' she says. ‘Never mind him in the attic.
They'll be making inquiries of you. Wanting to know.'

‘Oh,' says Heloise, holding her stomach. ‘It's the
quickening. I could faint.' But she stands tall, placid and unfainting, gazing
out of the window of the servants' sitting-room.

‘He was a very fine man in his way. The whole of Geneva
got a great surprise.'

‘Will get a surprise,' Eleanor says.

‘Let us not split hairs,' says Lister, ‘between the past,
present and future tenses. I am agog for word from the porter's lodge. They
should be arriving. Watch from the window.' And to the pregnant maid he says,
‘Have you got out all the luggage?'

‘Pablo has packed his bags already,' says Heloise,
swivelling her big eyes over to the handyman with a slight turn of her body.

‘Sensible,' says Lister.

‘Pablo is the father,' Heloise declares, patting her
stomach which quivers under her apron.

‘I wouldn't be so sure of that,' Lister says. ‘And
neither would you.'

‘Well it isn't the Baron,' says Heloise.

‘No, it isn't the Baron,' says Lister.

‘It isn't the Baron, that's for sure,' says Eleanor.

‘The poor late Baron,' says Heloise.

‘Precisely,' says Lister. ‘He'll be turning up soon. In
the Buick, I should imagine.'

Eleanor is putting on an apron. ‘Where's my carrot juice?
Go and ask Monsieur Clovis for my carrot juice. My eyes have improved since I
went on carrot juice.'

‘Clovis is busy with his contract,' Lister says. ‘He left
it rather late. I made mine with
Stern
and
Paris-Match
over a
month ago. Now of course there's still the movie deal to consider, but you want
to play it cool. Don't forget. Play it cool and sell to the highest bidder.'

Clovis looks up, irritably, from his papers. ‘France,
Germany, Italy, bid high. But don't forget in the long run that English is the
higher-income language. We ought to co-ordinate on that point.' He continues his
scrutiny of documents.

‘Surely Monsieur Clovis is going to prepare a meal
tonight isn't he?' says Eleanor. She goes through the door to the kitchen.
‘Clovis!' she calls. ‘Don't forget my carrot juice, will you?'

‘Quiet!' says Clovis. ‘I'm reading the small print. The
small print in a contract is the important part. You can get your own damn
carrot juice. There's carrots in the vegetable store and there's the blender in
front of you. You all get your own supper tonight.'

‘What about them?'

‘They won't be needing supper.'

Lister stands in the doorway, now, watching his young
aunt routing among the vegetables for a few carrots which she presses between
her fingers disapprovingly.

‘Supper, never again,' says Lister. ‘For them, supper no
more.'

‘These carrots are soft,' says Eleanor. ‘Heloise doesn't
know how to market. She's out of place in a house this style.'

‘The poor Baroness used to like her,' says Clovis,
looking up from the table where he is sitting studying the fine print. ‘The poor
Baroness could see no wrong in Heloise.'

‘I see no wrong in her, either,' Eleanor says. ‘I only
say she doesn't know how to buy carrots.'

Heloise comes to join them at the kitchen door.

‘It's quickening,' she informs Clovis.

‘Well it isn't my fault,' says the chef.

‘Nor me neither, Heloise,' says Lister severely. ‘I
always took precautions the times I went with you.'

‘It's Pablo,' says the girl, ‘I could swear to it.
Pablo's the father.'

‘It could have been one of the visitors,' Lister
says.

Clovis looks up from his papers, spread out as they are
on the kitchen table. ‘The visitors never got Heloise, never.'

‘There were one or two,' says Heloise, reflectively. ‘But
it's day and night with Pablo when he's in the mood. After breakfast, even.' She
looks at her stomach as if to discern by a kind of X-ray eye who the father
truly might be. ‘There was a visitor or two,' she says. ‘I must say, there did
happen to be a visitor or two about the time I caught on. Either a visitor of
the Baroness or a visitor of the Baron.'

‘We have serious business on hand tonight, my girl, so
shut up,' says the chef. ‘We have business to discuss and plenty to do. Quite a
vigil. Has anybody arrived yet?'

‘Eleanor, I say keep a look out of the window,' Lister
orders his aunt. ‘You never know when someone might leave their car out on the
road and slip in. They're careless down at the lodge.'

Eleanor cranes her neck towards the window, still feeling
the soft carrots with a contemptuous touch. ‘Here comes Hadrian; it's only
Hadrian coming up the drive. These carrots are past it. Terrible carrots.'

The footsteps crunch to the back of the house. Hadrian
the assistant chef comes in with a briefcase under his arm.

‘Did you get out my cabin trunk?' he asks Heloise.

‘It's too big, in my condition.'

‘Well get Pablo to fetch it, quick. I'm going to start my
packing.'

‘What about him in the attic?' says Heloise. ‘We better
take him up his supper or he might create or take one of his turns.'

‘Of course he'll get his supper. It's early yet.'

‘Suppose the Baron wants his dinner?'

‘Of course he expected his dinner,' Lister says. ‘But as
things turned out he didn't live to eat it. He'll be arriving soon.'

‘There might be an unexpected turn of events,' says
Eleanor.

‘There was sure to be something unexpected.' says Lister.
‘But what's done is about to be done and the future has come to pass. My memoirs
up to the funeral are as a matter of fact more or less complete. At all events,
it's out of our hands. I place the event at about 3 a.m. so prepare to stay
awake.'

‘I would say 6 o'clock tomorrow morning. Right on the
squeak of dawn,' says Heloise.

‘You might well be right,' says Lister. ‘Women in your
condition are unusually intuitive.'

‘How it kicks!' says Heloise with her hand on her
stomach. ‘Do you know something? I have a craving for grapes. Do we have any
grapes? A great craving. Should I get a tray ready for him in the attic?'

‘Rather early,' says Lister looking at the big moonfaced
kitchen clock. ‘It's only ten past six. Get your clothes packed.'

The large windowed wall of the servants' hall looks out on
a gravelled courtyard and beyond that, the cold mountains, already lost in the
early darkening of autumn.

A dark green, small car has parked here by the side
entrance. The servants watch. Two women sit inside, one at the wheel and one in
the back seat. They do not speak. A tall person has just left the other front
seat and has come round to the front door.

Lister waits for the bell to ring and when it does he
goes to open the door:

A long-locked young man, fair, wearing a remarkable white
fur coat which makes his pink skin somewhat radiant. The coat reaches to his
boots.

Lister acknowledges by a slight smile, in which he uses
his mouth only, that he recognizes the caller well from previous visits. ‘Sir?'
says Lister.

‘The Baroness,' says the young man, in the quiet voice of
one who does not wish to spend much of it.

‘She is not at home. Will you wait, sir?' Lister stands
aside to make way at the door.

‘Yes, she's expecting me. Is the Baron in?' sounds the
low voice of the young man.

‘We expect him back for dinner, sir. He should be in
shortly.'

Lister takes the white fur coat glancing at the quality
and kind of mink, and at its lining and label as he does so. Lister, with the
coat over his arm, turns to the left, crosses the oval hall, followed by the
young man. Lister treads across the
trompe-l'œil
chequered paving of
the hall and the young man follows. He wears a coat of deep blue satin with
darker blue watered silk lapels, trousers of dark blue velvet, a pale mauve
satin shirt with a very large high collar and a white cravat fixed with an
amethyst pin. Lister opens a door and stands aside. The young man, as he enters,
says politely to Lister, ‘In the left-hand outer pocket, this time, Lister.'

‘Thank you, sir,' says Lister, as he withdraws. He closes
the door again and crosses the oval hall to another door. He opens it, hangs the
white mink coat gently on one of a long line of coat-hangers which are placed
expectantly in order on a carved rack. Lister then feels in the outer left-hand
pocket of the coat, withdraws a fat, squat, brown envelope, opens it with a
forefinger, half-pulls out a bundle of bank-notes, calculates them with his
eyes, stuffs them back into the envelope, and places the envelope in one of his
own pockets, somewhere beneath his white jacket, at heart-level. Lister looks at
himself in the glass above the wash-basin and looks away. He arranges the neat
unused hand-towels with the crested ‘K' even more neatly, and leaves the
cloak-room.

The other servants fall silent as Lister returns.

‘Number One,' says Lister. ‘He walked to his death most
gingerly.'

‘Sex,' muses Heloise.

Lister shudders, ‘The forbidden word,' he says. ‘Let me
not hear you say it again.'

‘It's Victor Passerat, waiting there in the library,'
says Heloise.

‘Mister Fair-locks,' says Eleanor, looking at the carrot
juice which she has prepared with the blender.

‘I never went with him,' says Heloise. ‘I had the chance,
though.'

‘Didn't we all?' says Pablo.

‘Speak for yourself,' says Clovis.

‘Less talk,' says Lister.

‘Victor Passerat isn't the dad,' says Heloise.

‘He'd never have had it in him,' says Pablo.

‘Are you aware,' says Eleanor to her nephew, ‘that two
ladies are waiting outside in the car that brought the visitor?'

Lister glances towards the window but next he goes to a
large cupboard and, drawing up a chair, mounts it. He carefully, one by one,
removes the neat jars of preserved fruit that are stacked there, ginger in gin,
cherries in cognac, apple and pineapple, marmalades of several types, some of
them capped and bottled with a home-made look, others, according to their shapes
and labels, fetched in from as far as Fortnum & Mason in London and
Charles's in New York. All these Lister carefully places on a side-table,
assisted by Eleanor and watched by the others in a grave silence evidently due
to the occasion. Lister removes a plank shelf, now bare of bottles. At the back
of the cupboard is a wall-safe, the lock of which Lister slowly and respectfully
opens, although not yet the door. He demands a pen, and while waiting for
Hadrian the assistant cook to fetch it, he takes the envelope from his inner
pocket, and counts the bank-notes in full view of the rest.

‘Small change,' he says, ‘compared with what is to come,
or has already come, according as one's philosophy is temporal or eternal. To
all intents and purposes, they're already dead although as a matter of banal
fact, the night's business has still to accomplish itself.'

‘Lister's in good vein tonight,' says Clovis, who has
left the perusal of his contract to join the group. Meanwhile Hadrian returns,
handing up the simple ballpoint pen to Lister.

Upstairs the shutters bang.

‘The wind is high tonight,' Lister says. ‘We might not
hear the shots.' He takes the pen and marks a sum on the envelope, followed by
the date. He then opens wide the safe which is neatly stacked with various
envelopes and boxes, some of metal, some of leather. He places the new package
among the rest, closes the safe, replaces the wooden shelf, and, assisted by
Eleanor and Heloise, puts the preserve-bottles back in their places. He descends
from his chair, hands the chair to Hadrian, closes the cupboard door, and goes
to the window. ‘Yes,' he says, ‘two ladies waiting in the car, as well they
might. Good night, ladies. Good night, sweet, sweet, ladies.'

‘Why did they pull up round the side instead of waiting
in the drive?' says Heloise.

‘The answer,' says Lister, ‘is that they know their
place. They had the courage to accompany their kinsman on his errand, but at the
last little moment, lacked the style which alone was necessary to save him. The
Baron will arrive, and not see them, not inquire. Likewise the Baroness. No
sense, for all their millions.'