The Old Contemptibles (18 page)

His name was Sorcerer. She had told Alex this as if the cat had informed her of it.

Millie had hung on to Sorcerer over the objections, though not
violent ones, of Mr. Hawkes. Hawkes didn’t really care much about anything if it did not interfere with his own business. Sorcerer did interfere, appearing as if out of nowhere when Hawkes and Mrs. Callow were having a “conference” in the butler’s pantry. He got a proper kick, of course, but kicks only made the cat more determined. And the only person Sorcerer would pay any attention to, anyway, was Millie.

Alex looked at his watch and saw he had been sleeping the entire afternoon. He looked again and saw by the tiny calendar insert that the day had changed. It was Thursday.
Thursday.
He had been sleeping the clock round. Drifting in and out of his long, long dream since yesterday evening. Sorcerer, who seemed to have stared him out of oblivion, apparently satisfied he was awake, now lay down and curled his paws beneath his chest. But he still stared.

No wonder he was hungry, Alex thought, looking in his rucksack and finding nothing but a couple of Wispa bars. He opened his mother’s black leather telephone book, the one she had always kept in the nightstand drawer because she didn’t want to carry it for fear of losing it:
all
the names and numbers of the people she knew were in this little book. The one the police had found was the one she carried with her. It had only the numbers she called most frequently. It had no history.

He considered each name. There were a few he wasn’t familiar with, probably people she’d worked with over the years. The relations were all there. The number of Castle Howe, where his great-grandfather stayed most of the time. Her friend, the doctor, Helen Viner. A Maurice Kingsley whom Alex had never met. A few unfamiliar names, unlikely to be important, acquaintances, probably. His headmaster. Oh, yes, his headmaster. Underlined twice. Names of two other masters—maths and history—who didn’t count Alex amongst their favorite students. Had they called his mother? Anyway. At the end and not under its proper letter
J
there was a new name. She had used blue ink; the others were in black. And the tiny ballpoint pen in the book contained blue ink. “R. Jury.” Who was he? “Supt.” Supt.? It was a London number.

Alex frowned. It seemed vaguely familiar. Had he heard her say it? No. Seen it? He frowned, not liking it. He thought it was probably a man, because of the initial for the surname. For a woman friend, it was the opposite. “Helen V.,” for instance. Supt.

Superintendent?

Alex shut the book and said to Sorcerer, “A
policeman?”

Melrose wondered, sitting amidst the gloom of the shadowy dining room and that of the diners, how they managed to get through this nightly ritual. For it was hard to believe, from the little conversation he’d had with at least three of these five people, that their somber mood was caused only by a fresh tragedy in their midst.

The intermittent outward and inward swing of the door between dining room and kitchen permitted him a glance now and then into the Stygian depths of the connecting passageway and butler’s pantry. Dishes were replaced with other dishes; one cheery note about this dinner was the quality of the cooking. A pie of oysters, meat, and stout! The only slight improvement that could have been made would have been the use of Old Peculier instead of Guinness.

“He’ll turn up. Bound to,” said George Holdsworth, who seemed less interested in Alex than in there being only this oyster-and-mutton pie for dinner instead of the pheasant he’d shot just that morning. George was the younger of the two brothers, but looked older, perhaps all of that time spent in the outdoors having weathered and lined a face that only slightly resembled the smooth, high-forehead one of his elder brother. “Amnesia. Shock. Something.” George went on as if he were periodically shooting at an unidentified object that had come within his line of vision.

“Don’t be absurd, George,” said Genevieve, in what sounded like a knee-jerk reaction to whatever George might suggest. “Alex never forgets anything,” further suggesting she only wished the boy would.

Crabbe was helping himself to peas and roasted potatoes served by Hawkes, who struck Melrose as sneaking up on one with his silver dishes and murmured
sirs.
“But George might have something there. Alex is like his father, a bit.” Placing the spoons in the dish so that Hawkes could retreat into the shadows again, he said, “My son, Graham, Mr. Plant—”

Quickly, Melrose looked across at Madeline Galloway to catch her expression; her head was bent over her plate, but she had stopped eating.

“—was a poet. And, I think, would have been a great one, if he’d—lived.”

Melrose could have sworn he heard coming from George, in two murmured syllables, Rub. Bish.

“But I expect, living here in the Lakes, it would be difficult not to be a poet.”

On the contrary, thought Melrose, it would be difficult to
be
one without feeling a little silly. “I’m sorry.” He felt he had been spending the entire evening proclaiming his sorrow. “How did he—?”

Instead of answering, they all kept their eyes on their plates. George was about to say something, but was forestalled by his brother, who said to Melrose, “An accident.”

Given he had got this job through a policeman-friend, Melrose thought it would be best to ask as few questions as possible, hoping that amongst them they would supply information. He wondered, though, how unlucky a household could be. This one had certainly had its complement of “accidents.” He trotted out the reliable cliché, “You’ve certainly had your share of grief.” He hoped George’s insensitivity was as reliable as he thought it was.

It was. “Virginia. Don’t forget dear old Ginny.”

Melrose watched as Genevieve stabbed out a cigarette she had been impolitely smoking as the others ate. “Oh, shut up, George. Don’t you think we’ve enough on our minds?”

George ignored her. “Awful, that. Bad fall. Hawkes. Wine.” He thumped his glass.

Melrose was surprised that Crabbe Holdsworth’s complexion could pale any more than it already had. The hand that held the fork trembled.

Melrose’s appearance in the Old Contemptibles was a signal for the regulars to empty their glasses quickly.

“Hoo do, skip?” Billy Mossop called over, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

Mrs. Letterby was launching into a lengthy description of “t’wedder” as O. Bottemly came down the bar, also prepared for good custom. “Evening!”

Melrose ordered his pint of Jennings and also gave the nod to refill the others’ glasses, including one for the proprietor. O. Bottemly smiled and took his beefy self back to the beer pulls.

After the relieved sighs—what would they have done had he not appeared this night, he wondered?—Mrs. Letterby started up some largely indecipherable monologue about the family at Tarn House.

“Aye,” put in Rheumy round the phlegm in his throat as he picked up the dirge. “Unhappy place, it be.”

Melrose commented on the apparent “accident” suffered by the first Mrs. Holdsworth.

The three of them argued the fate of the first Mrs. Holdsworth: it was Mrs. Letterby who decided with assurance that she’d “went down t’gill off Scafell. Neea doot,” she added, turning, as usual, every syllable into two.

The door to the public bar opened, blowing a cloud of rain and
another customer inside. From the greetings, Melrose realized that this was the painter-cousin, Fellowes, who must have been another regular, although not a dispenser of largess as was the recently arrived Mr. Plant.

Francis Fellowes shook the rain from his coat and ordered a whiskey. For himself alone, so the others went back to their now half-full glasses.

Melrose introduced himself and, after exchanging the polite and banal remarks of the newly met, Fellowes nodded toward a table. “Let’s sit over there.”

 • • • 

“You were missed at dinner.”

“Hmm. I usually am. Did you enjoy it?”

“Well, it was a bit somber. Apparently, there’s been a recent death in the family.”

Francis Fellowes had taken out his sketchbook and pencil; Melrose had the feeling Fellowes was holding back some response that he thought inappropriate. He made some swift strokes and then said, “Jane, the son’s wife. Very unfortunate.” His tone gave no indication of just how unfortunate he thought it. “Police have been round, did they tell you?”

“Her sister did, yes.” When Fellowes merely studied his drawing and chewed on his pencil stub, Melrose went on. “Some notion that it might not be suicide.”

“They always have ‘some notion’ or other, don’t they?” He held his drawing away from him, brought it back. “Pure hell for her son, poor kid. Apparently, he went into a flap and scarpered. Expect he thought he’d wind up here otherwise.”

Melrose tried to keep his voice as matter-of-fact as he could. “His father’s dead, too, I understand.”

“Ah. Graham. Yes. Did Crabbe give you all that poet-in-his-prime stuff? Graham wasn’t much of a poet, but he was a fairly decent type. Never worked, of course, but do any of us? To listen to his father, Graham was the paradigmatic poet struck down in his youth. Except he wasn’t ‘mildly consumptive.’ That’s the only part of the stereotype that’s left out. Mildly suicidal, however.”

“What?”

“No wonder no one mentioned it. Hanged himself right there in the gatehouse. By his belt from a crossbeam in the parlor. I live there
now. You look shocked. My goodness, do you think it ends there? The ‘li’l berran’ they were speaking of,”—he nodded toward the huddled group at the bar who occasionally cast glances over their shoulders to see when these two would stop their infernal crack and buy some more drinks—“Millie. It was her mum who found him. Graham, I mean. After which—” His eyes were still on the people at the bar, his pencil still moving. “—she apparently jumped from a sort of little cliff at the edge of the wood. Her body ended up down at the edge of Wast Water. It was given out as an ‘accident.’ ”

“My God.”

Connie Fish was behind the bar now, making a theoretical stab at calling Time, but her heart wasn’t in it. Fellowes held up their glasses. When the drinks came, he reached for some change, but Melrose was quicker.

“Ah, thank you. I’m the stereotypical starving artist, distant cousin. I should feel grateful to them, letting me have that gatehouse for my use, but somehow I don’t.” Fellowes held up his glass. “I wonder why one of them doesn’t just pass round the cup of poison and do us all in at one go instead of this piecemeal stuff. Cheers.”

He had to see Millie.

Perhaps it was cold comfort, but Millie would understand how he felt since the same thing had happened to her.

Not exactly, of course, for he knew his own mother hadn’t killed herself. Annie Thale had. Although no one had ever talked to Millie about it, not even the police, as anything other than an accident.

Millie knew differently.

It was too much. His father’s suicide, Millie’s mum only three weeks later, and now the police obviously believed his own mother had done the same thing. It was just too much.

Alex remembered five years back to when they had told her, Millie, that her mother was dead. Such a confusion of people, coming and going, of hushed voices and raised voices. He could still see Millie, standing in a far corner of the kitchen, six years old and with an apron on, shaking. Her mother had been cook to the Holdsworths and taught Millie. Millie had the wooden tasting spoon in her small
hand, for stirring the soup. No one had wanted to go near her, as if her shaking presaged, like a flawed foundation, the collapse of the house. Alex had not reacted nearly so strongly to the death of his father, whom he had loved but never been terribly close to. He had felt that death at a distance, as if his own feelings had filtered through his mother’s. She had shielded him against the worst of it.

Millie had had no such shield. She had had no father, no other relations except for an “Aunt Tom” whom (she had told everyone) she didn’t want to live with. She had told Adam Holdsworth (when the others were secretly planning her quick removal to London and Aunt Tom) that this woman was dreadful and would beat her. That was the end of Millie’s leaving. His great-grandfather was very fond of Millie. When he’d heard Hawkes make snide references to Millie’s being illegitimate, Adam had snapped that he’d never seen Hawkes perform one legitimate pursuit, and to shut up!

Annie Thale had been depressed for weeks after his father had died. She had (his mother had told Alex) been very fond of his father and it had been Annie who had found him—that terrible “accident.”

The family, the servants, everyone seemed actually frightened of Millie’s reaction. One would have thought the little girl was capable of visiting some horrendous doom upon the people there, blaming them for the death of her mother. It was Wast Water. That horrible lake. It had been deep summer and the lake then had been very blue, as blue as Coniston and Ennerdale, almost. Millie had come to hate
all
of the lakes.

And she had (like Alex) disappeared. Two days later they had found her at the bottom of the trod, a poor rutted path leading downward, there near the lake, her hands, her face, that same white apron stained with yellow. Millie had pulled up all of the daffodils she could find, pulled them up and apart, torn them to shreds. It had been George who had found her.

With that,
he’d said, pointing to the black cat.
Feral animal, it must be.
The cat had rushed at him (he claimed) and then gone to sit silent as a statue beside Millie, who herself sat on a carpet of crushed daffodils.

Millie would know how he felt.

It was past eleven o’clock, dark as ink, and he could make his way to the house. The problem was Hawkes, who stayed up drinking
until early morning sometimes. Pebbles tossed against windows would do no good.

But he had to see Millie.

Alex opened his eyes and looked in the corner. Sorcerer was gone.

Melrose tried to contain his shock at this unexpected revelation of Francis Fellowes’. He forgot himself and offered the painter a cigarette from his solid silver case. “What in heaven’s name are you suggesting? It sounds as if you think somebody is trying to pick off the family one by one.”