Patricia Wentworth - The Case of William Smith

Katharine looked at her for a full long minute. Then she said,

‘Yes.’

They drove down to Ledstow on the grey Saturday afternoon. Katharine need not have troubled herself to find excuses for starting late. William brought the car up to the Mews and spent considerably more than an hour in going over everything that could be gone over. She didn’t want to arrive in daylight, and by the time’they started it was quite certain that if they made Ledstow before nightfall they would be fortunate. They talked a little until they were clear of the London belt. William had thought it quite a good plan to let the local police know that the car had been tampered with. He had gone round to the police station before fetching it. He talked about his interview with a monumental sergeant.

‘He made me feel about ten years old – ’ he branched off suddenly – ‘I wonder what I was doing when I was ten. You’d think you’d get used to not remembering anything, but you don’t. It’s running into a blank wall when you know there ought to be a window there. Sometimes it makes me feel as if I was going to bang my head.’

‘Does it?’

He gave a quick nod. After a moment he said,

‘You wouldn’t think I’d mind so much now. I mean you wouldn’t think I could mind anything now I’ve got you. But I do – I mind worse. It’s idiotic, isn’t it?’

‘No, I don’t think so. You mean you mind because of me?’

‘Yes. You’ve got a sort of pig in a poke, haven’t you? And then if we had children, I’d mind awfully for them.’

She said, ‘You’ll remember.’

He turned a momentary look on her, and she saw the trouble in his eyes.

‘Remember – what?’ he said. ‘Perhaps I oughtn’t to have married you.’

Katharine put her hand on his knee.

‘Don’t be stupid, darling – you’ll remember all right. And it won’t be anything to worry about, you’ll see.’

They came clear of the houses and the traffic and drove on.

Afterwards Katharine looked back and thought what a strange drive; it had been – the air mild and full of moisture, mist rising from the fields, and cloud hanging low – the world like a silver-point drawing, no colour anywhere, grey cloud and leafless trees, hedgerows hung with drops like crystal beads, a river streaked with silver and lead, mist on the fields like smoke rising.

William said once, ‘It won’t turn to fog till after dark,’ but for most of the way neither of them spoke. There was a curious sense of being cut off, not from one another, but from the familiar shape of things. Presently there was no distance. Outlines began to blur. The damp in the air frosted the windscreen and had to be wiped away. The road which Katharine knew so well took on a strangeness, like something remembered but not quite real. She had stopped planning what to do and what to say. It wasn’t any use. The road would take them to the house, and when she got there she would know what to say and what to do. She remembered driving down to the Cedar House with William after their July wedding – July 1939, and everyone thinking and talking of war – a bright, clear day and the July sun sloping to the west over fields almost ripe for harvesting. ‘Thrust in thy sickle and reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.’ That was in the Bible, in the Book of Revelations. It had been a bitter and a bloody reaping. She looked back. There had been an agony of love, an agony of parting, a long-drawn agony of slowly fading hope. Now they were here together in a mist, travelling the old road to the old house on a January afternoon.

They came through Ledlington with the last of the daylight and the lamps shining in the streets. William drove right through the town and out on the other side without a check, and when they were clear of the straggle of new houses which has sprung up all round the old town he drove straight on over the seven miles of lonely road into the middle of the village street and stopped there, the headlights of the car making a straight shining beam in which the mist dazzled like motes in the sun.

Katharine said, ‘We’re here.’

He didn’t answer her. He got down and opened the door. His arm came round her. Then he said,

‘I’ll just put the car away. I won’t be long.’

Her heart stood still. A July evening – confetti in her hat – sunlight slanting down the village street-the new, shining car – William opening the door and putting his arm round her as she got out – ‘I’ll just put the car away. I won’t be long’…

The garage was across the street, the doors open, waiting not for the new shining Alvis but for William’s old tin kettle assembled bit by bit from the scrap-heap. She smiled in the dark, held his arm for a moment, and went up the three steps to the Cedar House. She saw William back the car and turn in as he had done a hundred times.

She lifted the latch of the door and went into the house. The lights were on in the hall. She turned them out, to leave only one. Then she crossed to a door at the far end and went down a stone-paved passage to the kitchen.

Mrs. Perkins, stout and rosy in a blue dress and a white apron, turned round from the range.

‘Oh, Miss Kathy – and I never heard you come!’

Katharine kissed her and stood holding both her hands.

‘Perky darling, I told you I’d got a big surprise for you, and I’ve only got about half a minute to tell you what it is. You won’t faint, will you?’

Mrs. Perkins chuckled.

‘I’m not the fainting kind. It don’t do when you’re as stout as me. Who’s going to pick you up when you weigh as much as what I do?’ Then, with a sudden change of voice, Oh, Miss Kathy, what is it?’

Katharine said, ‘William – ’

‘Oh, my dear – you’ve heard something?’

Katharine nodded. She had stared dry-eyed at the telegram which told her William was missing. Now the tears sprang unchecked. Her eyes shone with them. They ran down and were salt on her quivering lips. ‘He’s come back – ’

Katharine was in the hall again. She dropped her fur coat on a black and gold lacquer chair under the portrait of great-great-uncle Ambrose Talbot in the uniform he had worn at Waterloo – tight white breeches, scarlet coat, high stock, and a fair, almost girlish face – not quite eighteen when the picture was painted, after Napoleon had gone to St. Helena and his shadow had passed from the world. The Cedar House had belonged to Talbots ever since William Talbot built it for a country lodging nearly four hundred years ago. It took its name from the great cedar he had planted at the end of the lawn, and from the panelling which kept moth away and to this day diffused its own faint sweetness everywhere.

William’s grandmother was the last of the long Talbot line. He himself had the name of its founder. He was William Talbot Eversley. The house, and its portraits, and its memories were his. There were a lot of portraits, a lot of memories – a judge in scarlet robe and a portentous Georgian wig – an admiral with a pig-tail and a brown crumpled face, holding a spy-glass in his hand and looking out of the picture with William’s eyes. The girl in the pink dress of the middle eighteenth century was Amanda Talbot who made a romantic runaway marriage with a black-browed Highland Jacobite and lived with him in exile after the ’45. She had lovely, arch eyes and a sweet smiling mouth. Her portrait hung above the fireplace. A log fire burned there. Katharine stood by it and waited. The door was latched but not locked. Presently it would swing in. It was all very quiet, very familiar – the stairway going up on the other side of the hall, the door to the dining-room just beyond the stair foot. On the other side, behind the wall with the chimney-breast, the drawing-room, where the panelling had been painted ivory-white and the china which Gran used to show them when they were children was ranged against it in cabinets of Amanda’s date.