The Paperchase (16 page)

The second thing that struck me was the pungent aroma of exotic spices. This was not fully explained until we took our seats at the supper table.

The two floors which the Mundys had to themselves were furnished comfortably, but not lavishly. We sat until the meal was ready in the overheated drawing room, where the air was made more oppressive by the fumes of Mundy’s cheroots. He offered one to me which I declined.

Finally, Mrs Mundy bid us to table. It was my first sight of her, and I was surprised to see that she was as dark as a lascar, with ebony hair and skin the colour of horse chestnuts. She was a handsome woman, of some elegance, thin; silent, of course – and in all things so attentive and
deferential to her husband that I felt uncomfortable on her behalf, recalling his harsh words as we stood on the threshold of his house: ‘Fucking, cooking and bearing children.’

The two Mundy children were of a colour somewhere in between that of their parents, as though the hue had been formed by the admixture of her skin to his. The younger, a boy, was three years of age; the elder, a girl of thirteen or so. Mundy did not bother introducing me to any of his family, and communicated only sporadically with his wife in gestures that sent her scurrying from the table for a dish of pickle or more ale.

The food Mrs Mundy had prepared was unlike anything I had ever eaten. It was an array of meat and vegetables in sauces served with rice, and all of such barbarous hotness that I felt as though each mouthful was taking off the skin of my tongue. It was far more highly spiced than the mild
karhi
served at tiffin during my time in Madras. Since there was no possibility of conversation during the meal, the chief diversion was supplied by my
discomfort
with the highly spiced food, which entertained Mr Mundy so much that he roared with laughter until tears ran down his cheeks.

All the way through our meal, Mrs Mundy and the two children ate silently and watchfully, their attention fixed on Mr Mundy with a
keenness
that seemed slightly unhealthy.

It was nearing nine o’clock when I got up to leave. Abel Mundy had retired from the table to sit by the fire and smoke another of his infernal cheroots. I told him not to trouble himself to see me out. The daughter lit me to the door with a candlestick – the staircase by that time being as black as pitch. I looked up from the street to the lighted windows of their home. Naturally, I could see nothing from where I stood on the
pavement
, but I imagined Abel Mundy with his glittering eyes and his deaf family around him, breathing smoke from his nostrils as though the
sea-coal
fire burned within him, instead of in his hearth. I swore from that moment to have nothing more to do with him, and I turned my back on that house and set off towards my own home with a shudder.

The reader will very likely wonder what on earth could bring me to such a drastic resolution after what must seem like a comical encounter
with a family more remarkable for its oddness than its viciousness. But the short time I had spent observing the Mundys had been enough to inform me of the real state of marital relations in the household. It was quite clear that Abel Mundy was a wife beater.

For a number of reasons, this would not have been apparent to most visitors to the house. The style of Mrs Mundy’s dress concealed all but her face and hands, and these were unmarked. The outward signs of the abuse were very few, though apparent enough to me.

I had noticed, when she was carrying dishes between the table and the kitchen, that, while she had the use of both arms, her left elbow was carried very close to her chest, and that she winced from the effort of lifting a heavy pile of plates. This disability would at least have
occasioned
comment in any normal house, but here it passed without remark. Secondly, though she was, I concluded, in some pain, it struck me forcibly that she was endeavouring to conceal it from me. It occurred to me that my presence was a kind of added torment for her – but whether this was her husband’s motive for inviting me there, I could not say. The show of fortitude was a necessary charade, and I could easily guess the consequences for her if she let it slip for a moment. There is no victim more cowed than the one who conspires with her persecutor.

The final proof was in the eyes of her children. Even the younger, the boy, displayed an anxious wariness that was entirely in advance of his years, and which increased whenever Mr Mundy gestured to his wife, or when, in response to a gesture, she had to gather or fetch articles from the kitchen, all the time in pain, and all the time concealing it.

My story would be a short one if this single evening were the whole extent of my involvement in the lives of the Mundys. Even a
determined
rescuer would have had a difficult time overcoming the double isolation that afflicted them on account of their deafness and the
strictness
of their keeper. They could not have been more isolated were Mr Mundy their gaoler in fact, as indeed he was in all other respects, or were they living in solitude on an island, like Crusoe, in the South Seas.
But as it fell out, my curiosity pricked me on to discover more about their situation, and Providence – or whatever we may call it – had marked me down for their Friday, and the means of their deliverance.

I did not box the following week, and from this moment I date my inconsistent attendance and eventual abandonment of the regime. Instead, I took some pains in composing an invitation, ostensibly to reciprocate the hospitality the Mundys had shown me, which I delivered in person at the hour when I knew Abel Mundy would be occupied at Fernshaw’s school of arms.

I guessed, rightly as it fell out, that there was no chance of my invitation being accepted, but that was hardly my purpose in extending it. I wanted the opportunity to test my impressions of the household in Mr Mundy’s absence and, by passing on my name and address to the family, to offer Mrs Mundy my confidence. I gambled that the slim hope of deliverance might prompt her to communicate with me herself. My only misgiving was that her husband might hold her responsible in some way for my unexpected arrival and the consequence for her would be another beating.

This fear was confirmed by her behaviour on my return. My
appearance
seemed to cause her alarm at first, and it was a minute or two before I was able to convey to her the reason for my visit, and before she remembered her manners and gave me a cup of tea, brewed, as she
indicated
with gestures, in an Indian style with sugar and pods of cardamom.

The younger child having been set down for a nap, we were a party of three. Conversation on all sides was naturally limited, and though I consoled myself that I had accomplished my task simply by visiting, I knew that I would need to approach the subject more directly in order to assure her that I was an ally. Though I did not allude to it, it was immediately apparent that Mr Mundy had been less careful with his attentions since my previous visit, because his wife was marked with a black eye that was very noticeable in spite of her dark skin. It was a shocking detail, all the more so because I had seen what he was capable of in a boxing ring against a grown man his size and weight. I wondered then – I wonder still – that he had not blinded her.

Chance accomplished what my calculations had been unable to. The fire (much smaller in the absence of Mr Mundy) burning very low in the grate, the daughter was dispatched to the cellar to fill the scuttle. As soon as I heard her footsteps descending the stairs, I seized a pen and wrote on a piece of paper:

‘How came you by your injury?’

To this, Mrs Mundy responded, smiling, with a well-rehearsed mime of a domestic accident.

With my heart pounding in case we were discovered by the
daughter
, I decided then to take an approach that would give her some idea of how much I already suspected. I took up the pen again and wrote: ‘It is not right that your husband beats you.’

Mrs Mundy stared at it for a full minute without responding, until I was sure she found it illegible (my nerves had rendered the penmanship less clear than on the previous inscription). Then, surely anticipating her daughter’s return, she threw the note into the fire of a sudden and fled from the room. When she returned, she had composed herself for her daughter’s sake, but it was clear to me that she had shed tears in the interval. As, very often, a hardship that seems supportable during its infliction grieves us most painfully when someone aims to relieve it with tenderness, so I believe the mere thought of hope was enough to plunge her into fresh despair.

I took my leave of the Mundys shortly thereafter, with no very great expectation of seeing the mother and children again. I received by post Mr Mundy’s regrets that he was unable to accept my kind invitation.

The following week I boxed as usual. I had a slight trepidation of seeing Mr Mundy, and had prepared an elaborate explanation for my having delivered the letter myself, which involved several unexpected errands across the city that had taken me into the vicinity of his home. As it happened, my explanations were unnecessary. Mundy was curt but civil, beat hell out of his opponent, and then left the gymnasium to do the same to his wife.

I heard nothing more for weeks after that, by which time my zeal to
help had faded into the vague hope that my interference had not made Mrs Mundy’s life worse than it was already. Then, on the two-month anniversary of my first meeting with Mrs Mundy, I received a letter from her. As she requested, I destroyed the original, but the substance of it remains with me, almost four decades later. ‘Dear Mr Holmes,’ it began.

‘You gave me hope to suppose that you understood what kind of a man I am married to. Of whatever you believe him capable, I assure you the truth is worse. That he does not love me, I always knew; that he beats me, I must accept; but that he has forced my daughter to submit to the vilest attentions, I cannot. How you may help me, I do not know; it is more for the sake of my children than my own that I write. I am too weak to act on my own behalf, but I am fearful for my little one. I pray you to burn this letter.’

This was not the communication I had foreseen – I did not imagine that Mundy was capable of raping his own daughter – but in the months that had passed since my visit to Fenchurch Street, I had brooded on a number of outcomes; I had anticipated one that required abrupt and forceful intervention and made preparations for it.

I left my house immediately, going first to the home of the Mundys, where I found Mrs Mundy in much the state in which I had last seen her sans the black eye. Her expression was fearful but composed; I think the habit of terror was so strong with her that she never doubted but that she would spend her days in that hell until her husband killed her. She could not allow herself the possibility of hope. Her daughter made tea, but I could neither drink it, nor look her in the eye for thinking about the shame her father had inflicted on her.

I wrote quickly on a piece of paper to inquire what time her husband was expected home. She wrote down that he would not be back for some hours yet. In return, I counselled her that I would do what I could, but that, whether I succeeded or failed, she should never try to contact me again; and that, if her husband did not return home this evening, she should report his absence to the police.

‘I hope,’ she wrote in answer, ‘that I may never see him as long as I live‚’ emphasising the vehemence of the sentiment by striking herself over the heart.

Then we burned all evidence of our conversation and I left.

I remembered quite well the place where I had encountered Abel Mundy by chance those months before, and made my way there as quickly as possible in order to attempt a repetition of that encounter, this time by design. It was much past the hour when we had met before and there was still no sign of him. I began to worry that he had left
earlier
on some business, or perhaps been working in some other place that day, or that I had deceived myself as to the location of his office. I had a flask of brandy in the pocket of my coat, and took nips of it as I waited. Finally, after I had all but given up hope, the door opened and two men emerged: one, by his bulk and stoop-backed walk, Abel Mundy; the other a tall man whom I did not know.

The truth is that I was sick at the thought of what I was about to do. It is one thing to imagine killing a man, it is quite another when the living, breathing man stands before you. The two men parted, and Abel Mundy made his way along the slippery pavement towards me.

At that instant, I began walking in the opposite direction, giving no indication that I recognised him, until our shoulders bumped and he stopped and looked in my face. This was my first miscalculation, for two reasons. Firstly, I should have known better than to attempt to convince him that a second coincidence had caused our paths to cross. He was a
suspicious
man, and this put him on guard for some mischief. I would have done better to concoct a reason for seeking him out in person, and indeed, many times when I had foreseen the meeting, this had been how I
envisaged
it. But somehow, at the crunch, my sense deserted me. The second mistake was to bump shoulders with him. I needed no reminder of the
disparity
between our strengths. I knew that in any fair encounter I would be the one to come off worse, and the thought of it put fear in me.

‘Holmes?’ said he.

‘Abel Mundy!’ I replied. The surprise in my voice sounded patently
false to me. ‘Just the fellow I need! Are you in a hurry, Abel? Can you spare me a minute?’

‘I am somewhat pressed, Holmes,’ he said, and I knew he suspected a trick.

Although I was armed, confronting him seemed like desperate folly, like throwing myself against a statue or a mountainside. I saw him
pounding
me slowly senseless with his big fists, and the fear of it swallowed me up like quicksand. I staggered forward and threw up at his feet.

‘Christ, man, are you drunk?’ he said.