“Thank you very much, Mr. Lathom. I’m sorry to have troubled you. I am
very glad to have your assurance. Mr. Munting is in town, I suppose?”
“You’re not going to rake it all up with him?”
“I should feel more satisfied if I had had a word with him,” I answered.
“I wouldn’t. You can take my word for it. I mean to say, there’s Mrs.
Munting to be considered.”
“I shouldn’t say anything to her. After all, it’s surely natural enough
that I should wish to have Mr. Munting’s account of the business.”
“Yes—oh yes, I suppose it is.” He still looked worried and
dissatisfied. “Well, good-bye. If you really must see Munting, here’s
his address.”
As I opened the door of the studio, I nearly tripped over Mrs. Cutts,
who was washing the linoleum. She came and let me out at the house-door.
“Puttin’ yer money on the wrong horse, young man, ain’t you?” she
whispered.
“Look here,” I said, “you know something about this.”
“That’s as may be,” said she, slyly. “Mrs. Cutts knows ’ow to govern ’er
tongue. An unruly member, ain’t it, sir? That’s wot the Bible says.”
“I’ve no time to waste,” I answered; “if you have anything to say to me,
you will find me at my hotel.” I mentioned the name, and then, with a
certain disgust at the business, slipped half a crown into her hand.
She curtseyed, and I left her bobbing and dipping on the doorstep.
I cursed myself for a fool as I set off to find Munting. Undoubtedly
Lathom would have warned him by telephone of what to expect. I was sure
of it when I saw him. He struck me as conceited and pretentious—the
usual type of modern literary man.
He was perfectly polite, however; assured me in a tone of the utmost
sincerity that the story about himself and Margaret Harrison was
entirely unfounded, and referred me back to Lathom for evidence as to my
father’s state of mind in the week preceding his death.
Finding myself quite unable to penetrate this polished surface of
propriety, I took my leave. The manner of both men left me in no doubt
that there was something to conceal, but I could get no farther than a
moral certainty.
Mrs. Cutts seemed to offer the best hope of information, but I could not
as yet reconcile myself to handling so dirty a tool. It occurred to me
that it might possibly be worth while to get hold of Miss Milsom. I was
not at all clear in my mind that her madness might not have some method
in it.
At first I could not think how to trace her. I could have asked Margaret
Harrison, of course, but I did not want to do that. Finally, I decided
to call on the local padre, the Rev. Theodore Perry, and see if he knew
where his lost sheep had strayed to.
I knew him well, of course, and it did not seem unnatural that I should
ask after the welfare of a woman who had been for some time in my
father’s employment. I sandwiched the question in, in the course of a
casual conversation, and he told me at once what he knew.
“Poor woman, I’m afraid she is not altogether normal. One hopes it is
only a passing phase. I don’t quite know where she is—one of these
nursing-homes of the modern sort, I think. Her sister, Mrs. Farebrother,
would be able to tell you. No, I don’t suppose they are very well off.
The fees in these places are high. In the days of faith—or
superstition, if you like—a convent or a béguinage would have provided
the proper asylum for such a case, with some honest work to do and a
harmless emotional outlet—but nowadays they make you pay for
everything, not only your pleasures.”
He gave me Mrs. Farebrother’s address, and I said I would see what could
be done. He smiled at me in a futile, clerical way, and said it would be
a work of charity.
I left him, feeling anything but charitable, and went to see Mrs.
Farebrother. She seemed to be a good, honest, sensible woman, worried by
family and financial cares, and accepted gratefully my suggestion of a
small pension, during the period that her sister might be requiring
medical care.
The interview with Agatha Milsom was a painful one to me. The woman is
undoubtedly quite unbalanced, with a disagreeable sex-antagonism at the
bottom of her mania. According to her, my father had treated his wife
with abominable cruelty, and I was obliged to listen for a long time to
her rambling accusations. The name of John Munting roused her to such
excitement that I was afraid she would make herself ill; unfortunately,
I could get nothing reliable out of her. For one thing, she was obsessed
with the idea that he had had designs upon her maiden modesty, and for
another, many of her statements were so ludicrous that they cast
suspicion over the rest.
As regards my father, however, I obtained one thing. I suggested that
her memory of certain domestic incidents might be at fault, and in proof
of her assertions she promised to get back from her sister, and send to
me, all the letters she had written home during the previous two years.
It seemed to me that, since her mental deterioration had come on only
gradually, the letters written at the time might possibly be considered
to attain a reasonable level of accuracy. She kept her promise, and from
this correspondence I selected the letters of relevant date, and these
are the documents included in this dossier. It will be seen that great
allowance must be made for bias; that much conceded, the statements may,
I think, be accepted as having a basis in fact.
I need not say how distressing they were to me. They cast a light upon
the miserable domestic conditions which my father had had to endure. I
regretted most bitterly that I had taken over that work in Central
Africa, thus leaving him to the undiluted companionship of a selfish,
discontented wife and a semi-demented and vulgar woman. My father was
not the man to go abroad for the sympathy he could not find at home, and
it was no wonder that he had welcomed the acquaintanceship of two young
men who could, at least, make some pretence of entering into his
interests.
But the thing which emerged from the letters with startling illumination
was the intimate footing upon which Lathom had stood with the whole
household. As may be seen by the few letters included above, my father
was by no means a gossipy correspondent, and I had not realised that
Lathom had become so much of a tame cat about the drawing-room. I had
thought of him as being my father’s friend almost entirely, and I
believe that my father himself took that view, and, wittingly or
unwittingly, gave me that impression. But it now seemed clear to me that
this was not so, and that, what with my father’s innocent pleasure in
the apparent admiration and friendliness of this brilliant young man,
and what with the perverse misconception of the wretched Agatha Milsom,
we had all been “led up the garden,” as the expression is.
I saw now why both Lathom and Munting, standing by one another in a
conspiracy of silence, had been able to deny with such obvious sincerity
that there had ever been an undue intimacy between Munting and Margaret
Harrison. Lathom had said that my father’s last days had been free from
suspicion; I saw now that this was possible. I also saw why Lathom had
been so unwilling that I should ask Munting the same question, and why
Munting had referred me back to Lathom for the answer. Munting must, I
thought, be considered cleared of any offence except a refusal to betray
his friend’s confidence; and I was obliged to confess that most people
would think he had acted rightly. Lathom, too, had kept to the code of
what is usually called honour in these matters. As for Margaret
Harrison—but from her I had never expected anything but lies.
But if this was the truth, why should my father have committed suicide?
For I still did not believe in the theory of accident. Either something
must have opened his eyes during Lathom’s visit to town, or else that
other, darker suspicion, which I had hardly liked to glance at, was only
too well-founded.
I am a business man. I have the business man’s liking for facts. To me,
an expert’s knowledge is a fact. Experts occasionally make mistakes, but
to me it appears far less probable that an expert should be mistaken
than that an artist and a woman should be unprincipled. And I cannot
make it too clear that my father’s expert knowledge in the matter of
fungi was to be trusted. I would as cheerfully stake my life on the
wholesomeness of a dish prepared by my father as on the stability of a
girder-stress calculated by my chief, Sir Maurice Berkeley. But I would
not venture a five-pound note on the honesty or virtue of such people as
Lathom and Margaret Harrison.
But to prove the truth of my suspicions, I needed more facts—the sort
of facts that a jury would accept. To them, my father’s knowledge of
fungi would not be a fact at all.
I turned the matter over in my mind, and eventually came to the
conclusion that, whether I liked it or not, I must see the woman Cutts.
I hoped that she would come to me, but several days passed and I saw
nothing of her. Either the creature had no facts to sell, or she was
holding off in the hope of securing better terms. I saw through her
artifice well enough, but I saw also that she had me at a disadvantage.
Eventually, and with great reluctance, I wrote to her as follows,
addressing the letter to Lathom’s studio.
“Mrs. Cutts—
“Madam,—When I saw you the other morning at Mr. Lathom’s
studio, you suggested that you might be in a position to do some
work for me. I shall possibly be requiring some assistance of
this kind in the near future, and shall be obliged if you would
call on me one evening at my hotel to discuss the matter.”
On the second day after dispatching this, I was informed that a lad was
waiting downstairs to see me. I went down and found a ferrety-eyed
youth, who introduced himself as Archie Cutts.
“Oh, yes,” I said, “you have come about the work I mentioned to your
mother.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied. “Mother says as she can’t bring it ’ere, not
’avin’ the tools by ’er, but if you was to come down to our place on
Friday, the party as she obliges bein’ out that night, she would be
willing to make an arrangement.”
This was disagreeable.
“If I am to take that trouble,” said I, “I shall want to know, first,
whether your mother is likely to be able to do what I want.”
He looked cunningly at me with his shifty eyes.
“Mother says she could show you letters from a lady as you know very
well, only she won’t trust ’em to me, bein’ valuable to ’er and not
wantin’ to lose ’em.”
“Oh, I see,” said I, loudly, “testimonials, eh? Letters of
recommendation. I see. And your mother thinks she understands what is
required and would be able to give satisfaction?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did she say anything about terms?”
“She says she’ll leave that to you, sir, w’en you see the work.”
“Very well.” There was nothing to be got by argument. “Tell your mother
I will try and find time to call on her on Friday evening.”
“Yes, sir. Nine o’clock would suit mother best.”
I made the appointment for nine, and gave the lad a shilling for his
trouble. At nine o’clock on the Friday evening I found myself knocking
at a dilapidated door in a long drab street of very squalid houses. The
ferret-eyed lad let me in, and I saw, with considerable repulsion, my
former acquaintance, seated in some pomp at a round table, containing a
lamp, a wool mat and a family Bible.
She greeted me with a condescending nod, and the youth withdrew.
“Well, now,” I said, “Mrs. Cutts, you have asked me to come and see you,
and I hope you are not wasting my time, because I am a very busy man.”
This forlorn effort to establish my dignity made no impression on her.
“That’s for you to say, sir,” said she. “I wasn’t for intrudin’ on you.
I am a respectable woman, thank God, and can maintain myself in my
station by ’ard work, and never ’ad no complaints. Not but wot I’d be
willin’ to oblige a gentleman if ’e was requirin’ my services, not bein’
too proud to do a favour.”
“Quite so,” said I, “and if you can do the work I want, I will see that
it is made worth your while.”
“Wot sort of work was you thinkin’ of, sir?”
“I gathered from what you said to me,” I answered, “that you thought you
might be able to throw some light on the circumstances of my father’s
death.”
“That’s as may be. There’s ways and ways of dyin’. Some is took, and
some takes French leave, and others is ’elped out of life, ain’t they,
sir?”
“Have you got any information to show that my father was helped out of
life?”
“Well, there, sir. I wouldn’t go for to say sech a thing—nor yet for to
deny it, ’uman nature bein’ that wicked as you can see for yourself any
Sunday in the _News of the World_. But wot I says is, w’en persons is
wicked enough to ’ave goin’s on be’ind a gentleman’s back, there’s no
knowin’ wot may come of it, is there?”
“You said you had letters to show me.”
“Ah!” she nodded. “There’s good readin’ in letters sometimes, sir.
There’s letters as would be worth ’undreds of pounds in a court of law,
to some people as one might name.”
“Come, come, Mrs. Cutts,” said I, “very few letters are worth anything
like that.”
“That’s not for me to judge, sir. If letters should turn out not to be
worth nothin’, why, they’re easy destroyed, ain’t they, sir? There’s
many a person I daresay wishes that ’e, or it might be she, sir, ’ad
destroyed the letters wot they ’ad written. I was never one for writin’
letters myself. A word’s as good, and leaves nothin’ but air be’ind it,
that’s wot I say. And them as leaves letters about casual-like, might
often be grateful for a word of warnin’ from them as is wiser’n
themselves.”
Her screwed-up eyes twinkled with consciousness of power.
“A word of warnin’ is soon given, and may be worth ’undreds. I ain’t got
no call to press you, sir. I ain’t dependent on anybody, thank God.”
“Look here,” I said, briskly, “it’s no use beating about the bush. I
must see these letters before I know what they’re worth to me. For all I
know they’re not worth twopence.”
“Well, I ain’t unreasonable,” said the hag. “Fair and square is my
motter. Ef I was to show you dockyments ter prove as your pa’s missis
was sweet on my young gentleman there, would that be worth anything to
you, sir?”
“That’s rather vague,” I fenced. “People may be fond of one another and
no great harm done.”
“Wot may seem no ’arm to some may be great ’arm to a right-thinking
person,” said Mrs. Cutts, unctuously. “You can ask all about this
neighbour’ood, sir, and they’ll tell you Mrs. Cutts is a lawful married
woman, as works ’ard and keeps ’erself to ’erself as the sayin’ is. Not
but wot there’s a-many things as a ’ard-workin’ woman in these parts ’as
to shet her eyes to, and can’t be blamed for wot is not ’er business.
But there is limits, and w’en people is writin’ to people as isn’t their
own lawful ’usbands about bein’ in the fambly way and about others as
_is_ their lawful ’usbands not ’avin’ the right to exist, and w’en them
lawful ’usbands dies sudden not so very long arter, then wot I ses is,
it might be worth while for them as is right-thinkin’ and ’ose place it
is to interfere, to ’ave them there dockyments kep’ in a safe place.”