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Fourteen
Midge 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.
“Dear Edward,” said Lucy with complete appreciation.
She smiled at Midge and went out again.
“Seriously, Midge,” said Edward, “I am worried.”
She interrupted him:
“The damned woman pays me four pounds a week. That’s all that matters.”
She brushed past him and went out into the garden.
Sir Henry was sitting in his usual place on the low wall, but Midge turned away and walked up
towards the flower walk.
Her relations were charming, but she had no use for their charm this morning.
David Angkatell was sitting on the seat at the top of the path.
There was no overdone charm about David, and Midge made straight for him and sat down by
him, noting with malicious pleasure his look of dismay.
How extraordinarily difficult it was, thought David, to get away from people.
He had been driven from his bedroom by the brisk incursion of housemaids, purposeful with
mops and dusters.
The library (and the Encyclopædia Britannica) had not been the sanctuary he had hoped
optimistically it might be. Twice Lady Angkatell had drifted in and out, addressing him kindly
with remarks to which there seemed no possible intelligent reply.
He had come out here to brood upon his position. The mere weekend to which he had
unwillingly committed himself had now lengthened out owing to the exigencies connected with
sudden and violent death.
David, who preferred the contemplation of an Academic past or the earnest discussion of a Left
Wing future, had no aptitude for dealing with a violent and realistic present. As he had told Lady
Angkatell, he did not read the News of the World. But now the News of the World seemed to have
come to The Hollow.
Murder! David shuddered distastefully. What would his friends think? How did one, so to
speak, take murder? What was one’s attitude? Bored? Disgusted? Lightly amused?
Trying to settle these problems in his mind, he was by no means pleased to be disturbed by
Midge. He looked at her uneasily as she sat beside him.
He was rather startled by the defiant stare with which she returned his look. A disagreeable girl
of no intellectual value.
She said, “How do you like your relations?”
David shrugged his shoulders. He said:
“Does one really think about relations?”
Midge said:
“Does one really think about anything?”
Doubtless, David thought, she didn’t. He said almost graciously:
“I was analysing my reactions to murder.”
“It is certainly odd,” said Midge, “to be in one.”
David sighed and said:
“Wearisome.” That was quite the best attitude. “All the clichés that one thought only existed in
the pages of detective fiction!”
“You must be sorry you came,” said Midge.
David sighed.
“Yes, I might have been staying with a friend of mine in London.” He added, “He keeps a Left
Wing bookshop.”
“I expect it’s more comfortable here,” said Midge.
“Does one really care about being comfortable?” David asked scornfully.
“There are times,” said Midge, “when I feel I don’t care about anything else.”
“The pampered attitude to life,” said David. “If you were a worker—”
Midge interrupted him.
“I am a worker. That’s just why being comfortable is so attractive. Box beds, down pillows—
early-morning tea softly deposited beside the bed—a porcelain bath with lashings of hot water—
and delicious bath salts. The kind of easy chair you really sink into….”
Midge paused in her catalogue.
“The workers,” said David, “should have all these things.”
But he was a little doubtful about the softly deposited early- morning tea, which sounded
impossibly sybaritic for an earnestly organized world.
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Midge heartily.
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