Patricia Wentworth - The Case of William Smith

‘What is your name?’

Her colour went again quite suddenly, and then came back in a flood.

‘Katharine Eversley.’

He turned to Miss Cole.

‘It seems to me that Miss Eversley is just what we are wanting.’

‘Really, Mr. Smith-’

He had a sudden and attractive smile. Miss Cole was not impervious to its charm.

‘you will be dreadfully overworked with Mr. Tattlecombe away. What on earth should we do if you knocked up?’

‘I have no intention of knocking up.’

William said, ‘Mr. Tattlecombe would never forgive me. You’ve really got to have some help. So if Miss Eversley – ’

It was no good, he meant to have her, Miss Cole could see that. And he was in charge – she couldn’t do anything about it. The soft, silly fools men were the minute a pretty face came along – and no notice taken of those that would make a good home and have everything comfortable! No good crying over spilt milk – that’s the way they were, and you just had to put up with them. She suppressed a sniff and said abruptly,

‘What about references?’

Looking back on it afterwards, William always found it so much easier to recall Katharine than to remember anything else. He had only to open the least little chink in his mind and she came in and filled it. She gave two references. Miss Cole talked to her, and she to Miss Cole, while he stood by. ‘As you have no experience, you will not expect a high salary. Would thirty-five shillings a week-’ He remembered that because of the way Katharine’s colour rose as she said, ‘Oh, yes.’ And just at the end Miss Cole enraged him by saying in her firmest voice, ‘No rouge, and no lipstick, Miss Eversley – no make-up of any kind. Mr. Tattlecombe is very strict indeed about that.’

Katharine didn’t blush this time. She smiled.

‘Oh, of course – I don’t mind a bit. It’s just a fashion, isn’t it?’

Then she went away. They were to take up her references, and if they were satisfactory, she was to start work on Monday morning.

William walked on air.

Abel Tattlecombe sat propped up in bed with a cushion and two pillows at his back and a grey and white knitted shawl about his shoulders. The cushion had been brought up by his sister, Mrs. Salt, from the parlour where it belonged. If it had been anyone but Abel, they might have whistled for it. Not that Mrs. Salt would have demeaned herself to use such an expression, but the cushion would have remained on the parlour sofa. Being Abel, it formed, as you might say, a foundation for her two largest feather pillows, and a very solid foundation at that. Constructed of strong canvas, and worked all over in cross-stitch in a pattern of enormous red roses on a purple ground, it had retained to an almost aggressive degree its robust colouring and its even robuster form. Plump, cheerful, and compact, it held the pillows in place and made a comfortable back for Mr. Tattlecombe.

He looked out of his very blue eyes at his assistant, William Smith, and said,

‘I’ve been making my will.’

William didn’t quite know what to say. If he didn’t say anything at all, Mr. Tattlecombe would jump to the conclusion that William thought he was dying. If he said, ‘Oh, yes,’ or words to that effect, it would amount to very much the same thing. If he said, ‘Oh, I’m sure there’s no need to do that,’ he would be going against his principles. Because of course people ought to make their wills, if they have anyone to provide for and anything to leave. William hadn’t. He returned Mr. Tattlecombe’s gaze, thought he had never seen him looking better, and said,

‘Well, I daresay it’s a good thing to get it off your mind.’

Abel shook his head solemnly, not intending any disagreement, but imparting a shade of philosophic doubt. He was an old man with a fresh complexion, a thatch of curly grey hair, and those very blue eyes. He said with a pleasant country accent,

‘That’s as may be, but I’ve done it.’

There didn’t seem to be any more to be said.

Abel heaved a sigh.

‘If the Lord wants me He’ll call me. Such things as the making of wills or not making them, ’tisn’t in reason they’d make any difference to Him.’

The solemnity of the tone was embarrassing. William said,

‘No, of course not.’

Mr. Tattlecombe went through another slow motion of shaking his head.

‘I didn’t see it that way, but it’s come to me. There’s not so much time for thinking in the shop, but lying here with nothing else to do, it came over me powerful that I’d be called upon to give an account of my stewardship. It was a nice little business till the war came along, and I looked forward to leaving it to Ernie, but it wasn’t to be. When I got the news he’d died in the prison camp I lost heart. What with the bombing, and everything so scarce and no turnover to speak of, I couldn’t seem to take any interest. And when the war stopped I couldn’t seem to get going. It isn’t so easy to start again when everything’s different and you’re getting on in years. Well, you know how it was, that day you came along and told me you’d been with Ernie in the camp – it meant a lot to me to hear how he’d talked about me and about the shop. And then you brought out those toys of yours and asked me what I thought of ’em. Do you remember what I said?’

William gave the wide, attractive grin which showed how strong and white his teeth were.

‘You said, “It isn’t what I think about them, young man, it’s what the public thinks. Put ’em in the window and see.” ’

‘And they were all sold out in half an hour. That’s what the public thought of them, and that’s what they’ve gone on thinking of ’em, haven’t they? The Wurzel Dog, and the Boomalong Bird – they was the first. I tell you, if ever I saw the hand of the Lord I saw it then. Ernie was gone – the only grandson I ever had – the only bit of my flesh and blood except Abby. And the business gone downhill to such an extent that you might say it had got to the bottom. And then there was you, and there was the Wurzel Dogs and the Boomalong Birds, and the business getting up and, as you might say, beginning to boom along too. Well, if it wasn’t the Lord’s hand, what was it?’

William said, ‘We’re doing very nicely, sir.’

Abel nodded.

‘ “Out of my stony griefs, Bethel I’ll raise.” I’ve told the Lord how grateful I am, and now I’m telling you. I made my will yesterday, and I’ve left the business and what’s in the bank to you. Abby’s provided for, and she’s agreeable. If Matthew Salt did leave his sister Emily hung round her neck for good and all, as you may say, he made up for it as well as he could by providing very comfortably for Abby. He was a warm man was Matthew, and the chapel missed him very much when he went. Being a builder and contractor, they got their Ebenezer built for not much more than cost price. I didn’t always see eye to eye with him – he was too fond of his own way – but he was a good brother and a good husband, and he left Abby well provided for. Not that to my mind any amount of providing would make up for having to live with Emily Salt.’

‘No, sir.’

‘I couldn’t have done it,’ said Abel Tattlecombe. A blue spark gleamed in his eye. ‘There was some talk of Abby coming to keep house for me when my poor wife died, but I couldn’t have done it – not if it meant Emily along with her, and I said so without any beating about the bush. “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away,” I said, but He didn’t give me Emily Salt, and I’m not flying in his face by taking her. Let alone that she thinks any man is something that oughtn’t to be going around off the chain, there’s something about the look of her that’d turn me from my food. I don’t know how Abby’s put up with her all these years, but she’s done it, and I’m sure it’s a credit to her. She’s a good woman, and as I started out to say, I’ve told her my intentions, and she’s agreeable.’