“Oh, I suppose you have,” he answered, smiling. “We’re rather a late
crowd in these parts, you know. You won’t mind if I carry on with my
eggs and bacon?”
I begged him to use no ceremony, and he produced some eatables from a
cupboard.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Cutts,” he shouted. “I’ll do the cooking. This
gentleman wants to talk business.”
The noise of a broom in the passage was the only answer.
“Well now, Mr. Harrison,” said Lathom, dropping his breezy manner, “I
expect you have come to hear anything I can tell you about your father.
I can’t say, of course, how damned sorry I am about it. As you know, I
wasn’t there at the time——”
“No,” I said, “and I don’t want to distress you by going into details
and all that. It must have been a great shock to you.”
“It certainly was.”
“I can see that,” I added, noticing how white and strained his face
looked. “I only wanted to ask you—after all, you were the last person
to see him——”
“Not the last,” he interrupted, rather hastily. “That man Coffin saw
him, you know, gathering the—the wretched fungi—and the carrier saw
him later still, after I had left the place.”
“Oh, yes—I didn’t mean quite that. I mean, you were the last friend to
see and talk to him intimately.”
“Quite, quite—just so.”
“I wanted to hear from you whether you were, yourself, quite satisfied
about it—satisfied that it really was an accident, that is?”
He put the bacon into the pan, where it sputtered a good deal.
“What’s that? I didn’t quite catch.”
“Were you satisfied it was an accident?”
“Why, of course. What else could it have been? You know, Mr. Harrison, I
hate to say anything about your father that might seem—to blame him in
any way, that is—but, of course, I mean it is a very dangerous thing to
experiment with wild fungi. Anybody would tell you the same thing.
Unless you are a very great expert—and even then one is liable to make
mistakes.”
“That is what is troubling me,” I said. “My father _was_ a very great
expert, and he was not at all a man to make mistakes.”
“None of us are infallible.”
“Quite so. But still. And it was odd that it should have happened just
at the very time you were away.”
“It was very unfortunate, certainly.” He kept his eyes on the bacon,
while he prodded it about with a fork. “Damnably unfortunate.”
“So odd and so unfortunate that I cannot help thinking there may have
been a reason for it!”
Lathom took two eggs and cracked them carefully. “How so?”
“You are aware, perhaps, that my father was—not altogether happy in his
married life.”
He gave an exclamation under his breath.
“Did you speak?”
“No—I have broken the yolk, that’s all. I beg your pardon. You are
asking me rather a delicate question.”
“You may speak frankly to me, Mr. Lathom. If you saw much of my father’s
family life, you must have noticed that there were—misfits.”
“Well, of course—one sees and hears little things occasionally. But
many happily-married people spar at times, don’t they? And—well—there
was a difference of age and all that.”
“That is the point, Mr. Lathom. Without necessarily saying anything
harsh about my father’s wife, it is a fact that a young woman, married
to an older man, may, not unnaturally, tend to turn to someone more of
her own age.”
He muttered something.
“In such a case my father, who was the most unself-regarding man who
ever breathed, might have thought it his duty to give her back her
liberty.”
He turned round swiftly.
“Oh, no!” he said, “surely not! That’s a dreadful idea, Mr. Harrison. It
never occurred to me. I am sure you can put it out of your mind.” He
hesitated. “I think—” he went on, with a troubled look, “oh, yes, I am
sure you need not think that.”
“Are you quite sure? Did he never say anything?”
“He never spoke of his wife except in terms of the deepest affection. He
thought very highly of her.”
“I know. More highly than she—more highly than any woman perhaps could
deserve.”
“Perhaps.”
“But,” I said, “that very affection would have been all the more reason
for him to—to take himself out of her life in the most complete and
unanswerable way.”
“I suppose so—from that point of view.”
“And, if it was so, I should like to know it. Will you tell me, Mr.
Lathom, on your honour and without concealment, whether there was
anything between my father’s wife and your friend Mr. Munting?”
“Good Lord, no!” he said, taking the pan off the fire and shovelling the
eggs and bacon out into a plate. “Nothing of the sort.”
“Just a minute,” said I. “Mr. Munting is your friend, and you want to be
loyal to him. That’s obvious. And I’m aware I’m asking you to do one of
those things which people with public-school educations don’t do. I am
not a public-school man myself, and you must excuse me if I suggest that
just for once you should come down to brass tacks and cut out the
Eton-and-Harrow business. My father has died, and I want your personal
assurance that he did not kill himself on your friend Munting’s account.
Can you give it to me?”
“On my word of honour, there was not the very slightest attachment or
understanding of any kind between Mrs. Harrison and Jack Munting. They
rather disliked each other, if anything. Jack was married last Easter to
a very charming woman, with whom he is much in love. He never gave a
thought to Mrs. Harrison, or she to him.”