The Hollow (13 page)

“After all, Edward, you and I have known Henrietta all our lives.”

“She has changed.”

“Not really. I don't think one changes.”

“Henrietta has changed.”

Midge looked at him curiously.

“More than we have, you and I?”

“Oh, I have stood still, I know that well enough. And you—”

His eyes, suddenly focusing, looked at her where she knelt by the fender. It was as though he was looking at her from a long way away, taking in the square chin, the dark eyes, the resolute mouth. He said:

“I wish I saw you more often, Midge, my dear.”

She smiled up at him. She said:

“I know. It isn't easy, these days, to keep in touch.”

There was a sound outside and Edward got up.

“Lucy was right,” he said. “It has been a tiring day—one's first introduction to murder. I shall go to bed. Good night.”

He had left the room when Henrietta came through the window.

Midge turned on her.

“What have you done to Edward?”

“Edward?” Henrietta was vague. Her forehead was puckered. She seemed to be thinking of something a long way away.

“Yes, Edward. He came in looking dreadful—so cold and grey.”

“If you care about Edward so much, Midge, why don't you do something about him?”

“Do something? What do you mean?”

“I don't know. Stand on a chair and shout! Draw attention to yourself. Don't you know that's the only hope with a man like Edward?”

“Edward will never care about anyone but you, Henrietta. He never has.”

“Then it's very unintelligent of him.” She threw a quick glance at Midge's white face. “I've hurt you. I'm sorry. But I hate Edward tonight.”

“Hate Edward? You
can't.
”

“Oh, yes, I can! You don't know—”

“What?”

Henrietta said slowly:

“He reminds me of such a lot of things I would like to forget.”

“What things?”

“Well, Ainswick, for instance.”

“Ainswick? You want to forget Ainswick?”

Midge's tone was incredulous.

“Yes, yes,
yes!
I was happy there. I can't stand, just now, being reminded of happiness. Don't you understand? A time when one didn't know what was coming. When one said confidently, eve
rything is going to be lovely! Some people are wise—they never expect to be happy. I did.”

She said abruptly:

“I shall never go back to Ainswick.”

Midge said slowly:

“I wonder.”

M
idge woke up abruptly on Monday morning.

For a moment she lay there bemused, her eyes going confusedly towards the door, for she half-expected Lady Angkatell to appear. What was it Lucy had said when she came drifting in that first morning?

A difficult weekend? She had been worried—had thought that something unpleasant might happen.

Yes, and something unpleasant had happened—something that was lying now upon Midge's heart and spirits like a thick black cloud. Something that she didn't want to think about—didn't want to remember. Something, surely, that
frightened
her. Something to do with Edward.

Memory came with a rush. One ugly stark word—
Murder!

“Oh, no,” thought Midge, “it can't be true. It's a dream I've been having. John Christow, murdered, shot—lying there by the pool. Blood and blue water—like a jacket of a detective story.
Fantastic, unreal. The sort of thing that doesn't happen to oneself. If we were at Ainswick now. It couldn't have happened at Ainswick.”

The black weight moved from her forehead. It settled in the pit of her stomach, making her feel slightly sick.

It was not a dream. It was a real happening—a
News of the World
happening—and she and Edward and Lucy and Henry and Henrietta were all mixed up with it.

Unfair—surely unfair—since it was nothing to do with them if Gerda had shot her husband.

Midge stirred uneasily.

Quiet, stupid, slightly pathetic Gerda—you couldn't associate Gerda with melodrama—with violence.

Gerda, surely, couldn't shoot
anybody.

Again that inward uneasiness rose. No, no, one mustn't think like that. Because who else
could
have shot John? And Gerda had been standing there by his body with the revolver in her hand. The revolver she had taken from Henry's study.

Gerda had said that she had found John dead and picked up the revolver. Well, what else could she say? She'd have to say
something,
poor thing.

All very well for Henrietta to defend her—to say that Gerda's story was perfectly possible. Henrietta hadn't considered the impossible alternatives.

Henrietta had been very odd last night.

But that, of course, had been the shock of John Christow's death.

Poor Henrietta—who had cared so terribly for John.

But she would get over it in time—one got over everything.
And then she would marry Edward and live at Ainswick—and Edward would be happy at last.

Henrietta had always loved Edward very dearly. It was only the aggressive, dominant personality of John Christow that had come in the way. He had made Edward look so—so
pale
by comparison.

It struck Midge when she came down to breakfast that morning that already Edward's personality, freed from John Christow's dominance, had begun to assert itself. He seemed more sure of himself, less hesitant and retiring.

He was talking pleasantly to the glowering and unresponsive David.

“You must come more often to Ainswick, David. I'd like you to feel at home there and to get to know all about the place.”

Helping himself to marmalade, David said coldly:

“These big estates are completely farcical. They should be split up.”

“That won't happen in my time, I hope,” said Edward, smiling. “My tenants are a contented lot.”

“They shouldn't be,” said David. “Nobody should be contented.”

“If apes had been content with tails—” murmured Lady Angkatell from where she was standing by the sideboard looking vaguely at a dish of kidneys. “That's a poem I learnt in the nursery, but I simply can't remember how it goes on. I must have a talk with you, David, and learn all the new ideas. As far as I can see, one must hate everybody, but at the same time give them free medical attention and a lot of extra education (poor things, all those helpless little children herded into schoolhouses every day)—and cod-liver
oil forced down babies' throats whether they like it or not—such nasty-smelling stuff.”

Lucy, Midge thought, was behaving very much as usual.

And Gudgeon, when she passed him in the hall, also looked just as usual. Life at The Hollow seemed to have resumed its normal course. With the departure of Gerda, the whole business seemed like a dream.

Then there was a scrunch of wheels on the gravel outside, and Sir Henry drew up in his car. He had stayed the night at his club and driven down early.

“Well, dear,” said Lucy, “was everything all right?”

“Yes. The secretary was there—competent sort of girl. She took charge of things. There's a sister, it seems. The secretary telegraphed to her.”

“I knew there would be,” said Lady Angkatell. “At Tunbridge Wells?”

“Bexhill, I think,” said Sir Henry, looking puzzled.

“I daresay”—Lucy considered Bexhill. “Yes—quite probably.”

Gudgeon approached.

“Inspector Grange telephoned, Sir Henry. The inquest will be at eleven o'clock on Wednesday.”

Sir Henry nodded. Lady Angkatell said:

“Midge, you'd better ring up your shop.”

Midge went slowly to the telephone.

Her life had always been so entirely normal and commonplace that she felt she lacked the phraseology to explain to her employers that after four days' holiday she was unable to return to work owing to the fact that she was mixed up in a murder case.

It did not sound credible. It did not even feel credible.

And Madame Alfrege was not a very easy person to explain things to at any time.

Midge set her chin resolutely and picked up the receiver.

It was all just as unpleasant as she had imagined it would be. The raucous voice of the vitriolic little Jewess came angrily over the wires.

“What wath that, Mith Hardcathle? A death? A funeral? Do you not know very well I am shorthanded? Do you think I am going to stand for these excutheth? Oh, yeth, you are having a good time, I darethay!”

Midge interrupted, speaking sharply and distinctly.

“The poleeth? The poleeth, you thay?” It was almost a scream. “You are mixed up with the poleeth?”

Setting her teeth, Midge continued to explain. Strange how sordid that woman at the other end made the whole thing seem. A vulgar police case. What alchemy there was in human beings!

Edward opened the door and came in, then seeing that Midge was telephoning, he was about to go out. She stopped him.

“Do stay, Edward. Please. Oh, I want you to.”

The presence of Edward in the room gave her strength—counteracted the poison.

She took her hand from where she had laid it over the mouthpiece.

“What? Yes. I am sorry, Madame. But after all, it is hardly my fault—”

The ugly raucous voice was screaming angrily.

“Who are thethe friendth of yourth? What thort of people are they to have the poleeth there and a man shot? I've a good mind
not to have you back at all! I can't have the tone of my ethtablishment lowered.”

Midge made a few submissive noncommittal replies. She replaced the receiver at last, with a sigh of relief. She felt sick and shaken.

“It's the place I work,” she explained. “I had to let them know that I wouldn't be back until Thursday because of the inquest and the—the police.”

“I hope they were decent about it? What is it like, this dress shop of yours? Is the woman who runs it pleasant and sympathetic to work for?”

“I should hardly describe her as that! She's a Whitechapel Jewess with dyed hair and a voice like a corncrake.”

“But my dear Midge—”

Edward's face of consternation almost made Midge laugh. He was so concerned.

“But my dear child—you can't put up with that sort of thing. If you must have a job, you must take one where the surroundings are harmonious and where you like the people you are working with.”

Midge looked at him for a moment without answering.

How explain, she thought, to a person like Edward? What did Edward know of the labour market, of jobs?

And suddenly a tide of bitterness rose in her. Lucy, Henry, Edward—yes, even Henrietta—they were all divided from her by an impassable gulf—the gulf that separates the leisured from the working.

They had no conception of the difficulties of getting a job, and once you had got it, of keeping it! One might say, perhaps, that there was no need, actually, for her to earn her living. Lucy
and Henry would gladly give her a home—they would with equal gladness have made her an allowance. Edward would also willingly have done the latter.

But something in Midge rebelled against the acceptance of ease offered her by her well-to-do relations. To come on rare occasions and sink into the well-ordered luxury of Lucy's life was delightful. She could revel in that. But some sturdy independence of spirit held her back from accepting that life as a gift. The same feeling had prevented her from starting a business on her own with money borrowed from relations and friends. She had seen too much of that.

She would borrow no money—use no influence. She had found a job for herself at four pounds a week, and if she had actually been given the job because Madame Alfrege hoped that Midge would bring her “smart” friends to buy, Madame Alfrege was disappointed. Midge discouraged any such notion sternly on the part of her friends.

She had no particular illusions about working. She disliked the shop, she disliked Madame Alfrege, she disliked the eternal subservience to ill-tempered and impolite customers, but she doubted very much whether she could obtain any other job which she would like better since she had none of the necessary qualifications.

Edward's assumption that a wide range of choice was open to her was simply unbearably irritating this morning. What right had Edward to live in a world so divorced from reality?

They were Angkatells, all of them. And she—was only half an Angkatell! And sometimes, like this morning, she did not feel like an Angkatell at all! She was all her father's daughter.

She thought of her father with the usual pang of love and compunction, a grey-haired, middle-aged man with a tired face. A man
who had struggled for years running a small family business that was bound, for all his care and efforts, to go slowly down the hill. It was not incapacity on his part—it was the march of progress.

Strangely enough, it was not to her brilliant Angkatell mother but to her quiet, tired father that Midge's devotion had always been given. Each time, when she came back from those visits to Ainswick, which were the wild delight of her life, she would answer the faint deprecating questions in her father's tired face by flinging her arms round his neck and saying: “I'm
glad
to be home—I'm glad to be
home.
”

Her mother had died when Midge was thirteen. Sometimes Midge realized that she knew very little about her mother. She had been vague, charming, gay. Had she regretted her marriage, the marriage that had taken her outside the circle of the Angkatell clan? Midge had no idea. Her father had grown greyer and quieter after his wife's death. His struggles against the extinction of his business had grown more unavailing. He had died quietly and inconspicuously when Midge was eighteen.

Midge had stayed with various Angkatell relations, had accepted presents from the Angkatells, had had good times with the Angkatells, but she had refused to be financially dependent on their goodwill. And much as she loved them, there were times, such as these, when she felt suddenly and violently divergent from them.

She thought with rancour: “They don't know
anything!
”

Edward, sensitive as always, was looking at her with a puzzled face. He asked gently:

“I've upset you? Why?”

Lucy drifted into the room. She was in the middle of one of her conversations.

“—you see, one doesn't really know whether she'd
prefer
the White Hart to us or not?”

Midge looked at her blankly—then at Edward.

“It's no use looking at Edward,” said Lady Angkatell. “Edward simply wouldn't know; you, Midge, are always so practical.”

“I don't know what you are talking about, Lucy.”

Lucy looked surprised.

“The
inquest,
darling. Gerda has to come down for it. Should she stay here? Or go to the White Hart? The associations here are painful, of course—but then at the White Hart there will be people who will stare and quantities of reporters. Wednesday, you know, at eleven, or is it eleven thirty?” A smile lit up Lady Angkatell's face. “I have never been to an inquest! I thought my grey—and a hat, of course, like church—but
not
gloves.

“You know,” went on Lady Angkatell, crossing the room and picking up the telephone receiver and gazing down at it earnestly, “I don't believe I've
got
any gloves except gardening gloves nowadays! And of course lots of long evening ones put away from the Government House days. Gloves are rather stupid, don't you think so?”

“The only use is to avoid fingerprints in crimes,” said Edward, smiling.

“Now, it's very interesting that you should say that, Edward—very interesting. What am I doing with this thing?” Lady Angkatell looked at the telephone receiver with faint distaste.

“Were you going to ring up someone?”

“I don't think so.” Lady Angkatell shook her head vaguely and put the receiver back on its stand very gingerly.

She looked from Edward to Midge.

“I don't think, Edward, that you ought to upset Midge. Midge minds sudden deaths more than we do.”

“My dear Lucy,” exclaimed Edward. “I was only worrying about this place where Midge works. It sounds all wrong to me.”

“Edward thinks I ought to have a delightful sympathetic employer who would appreciate me,” said Midge dryly.