Patricia Wentworth: Latter End

Miss Silver – #11, 1947

The room had seemed dark to Mrs. Latter when she came in, but that was because everything in it was black. The carpet on the floor, the hangings covering the walls, the long straight curtains were all of the same even velvety blackness. But it was not as dark as she had thought. Through the one unscreened window, light shone in. She found herself facing this light, as she faced the man who called himself “Memnon” across the table which stood between them. It was quite a small table, covered with a black velvet spread, and seeming smaller because the old man in the chair was so large.

As she took the seat he indicated she looked at him curiously. If he thought he could impress or frighten her by all this jiggery-pokery he could think again. She was a fool to have come. But when all your friends were doing something you did it too. If you didn’t-well, what was there to talk about? Everybody was talking about Memnon. He told you the most thrilling things. He told the past, and he told the future. He managed to make the present seem important and interesting instead of rather flat and dull, with the war over and everyone too hard up for words.

She gazed across at him and could see very little more than his shape and the shape of the chair against the light. The chair stood symmetrically to the window, outlined against it-high-arched back, strong spreading arms. Rising above the back, an old man’s head covered with a velvet cap. She didn’t know why she was sure that he was old. It wasn’t his voice or anything she could see. It wasn’t that anyone had spoken of him as old. It was just an impression. With the light in her eyes like this she couldn’t distinguish his features, only a pale, blurred oval, so much higher up than one expected. He must be very tall to sit so high. And he must have very long arms. It was a long way to where two pale hands rested upon the jutting arms of the chair.

As these thoughts passed through her mind, she was settling herself, laying her bag across her knees, folding her hands upon it, leaning back, smiling easily. It wasn’t every woman of her age who could face the light with so much equanimity. Thirty-seven years had taken nothing from the smooth brilliance of her skin. They had only refined tint, features, and outline, leaving her a good deal more attractive than she had been at twenty. Mistress of herself, of her thoughts, of her life. Very much mistress of Jimmy Latter, Jimmy Latter’s thoughts, and Jimmy Latter’s life.

The continuing silence gave her a slightly contemptuous feeling. It would take more than a dark room and an old man looking at her to disturb her poise. The situation or the circumstances which she could not dominate were as yet an unknown quantity. She had sailed easily through her life and her two marriages. James Doubleday had left her his money. The unpleasantness about his will had been triumphantly surmounted. She had chosen Jimmy Latter to succeed him, and she was prepared to maintain that she had chosen well. You can’t have everything, and the will had been still in doubt. Antony was very charming-when he liked. But you don’t take the poor cousin when you can have the rich one- not at thirty-five, when you are old enough to realize that if you are clever you can both eat your cake and have it.

Not that Jimmy was rich-he had far less than she had imagined. But fortunately James Doubleday’s will had turned out all right, and Latter End was really the setting of her dreams-small and lovely, untouched by the war, needing only the money she would be able to spend on it now.

If it had only been Antony ’s… It might be yet… The thought passed through her mind like a breath. Antony – she was lunching with him when all this mumbo jumbo was over. Her smile became a perfectly natural one.

All at once she saw Memnon looking at her. With her eyes more accustomed to the curious lighting, she could see that his were very deeply set. They looked at her from overarching caves of bone. She could see heavy eyebrows blurring the arch. And then she could only see his eyes. She thought they were dark. He said in a deep, whispering voice,

“Give me your hand-both hands.”

Lois Latter hesitated. The voice was a whispering bass. It set up curious reverberations in the room. There was a crystal ball on the table between them. The light from the window struck on one side of it, making it shine like a moon half full. Lois dropped her eyes to it.

“Don’t you look in the crystal? I thought you did. That’s what I came for.”

He put up a hand and took the crystal away. She didn’t see what happened to it. The half-moon went out. When he moved she thought the drapery of a cloak moved too. The crystal ball had gone. He said in that whispering voice,

“Give me your hands.”

She put them out as if she were pushing something away, and he met them with his own, palm to palm, finger to finger, stiffly upright, like hands conjoined in prayer. His hands and hers. Two pairs of hands. There was a tingling contact. It ran up her arms and down through all her body to her feet. Her breathing quickened. She wanted to speak, to draw away. But for once in her life she didn’t do what she wanted to do.

She sat still and suffered the contact and the tingling. Her eyes were held by his. There was a sense of contact there too, a sense of being probed and searched.

Then all at once it was over. He dropped his lids, withdrew his hands, leaned back, and said,

“You will have to be very careful.”

Something startled her-something in the way he said it, the very deep voice muted to the verge of inaudibility. She lifted her hands from the table and folded them in her lap before she spoke.

“What have I got to be careful about?”

He said,

“Poison.”

The word came whispering into the air. Mrs. Latter felt it vibrate somewhere deep in her mind. She waited for the vibration to die away. Then she said,

“What do you mean?”

“That you must be careful.”

“Of poison?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mean that someone is going to try and poison me? Is that what you mean?”

His voice was rather louder as he said, “It might be-” There was a considering note in it.

She thought, “He doesn’t know anything really-he’s guessing. It’s nothing.” Aloud she asked,

“Is that all? What is the good of telling me to be careful if you don’t tell me any more than that?”

He took a long time to answer.

“Each of us has to guard his own house of life. I cannot tell you how to guard yours. I can only tell you it is threatened.”

“By poison?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of poison?”

“That is more than I can say. There are many kinds. Some threaten the mind, and some the body. You must guard yourself. I can only warn you.”

Lois sat up straight. Her voice was tinged with contempt, but under the contempt something jerked. She kept her tone steady, but she could feel fear twitching at it under the control.

“You must tell me a little more, I think. Who is threatening me?”

“Someone very near.”

“Man, or woman?”

“Man-woman-I think-I am not sure. It might be you yourself. It is very near-you are mixed up in it.”

Lois laughed. Her laugh had always been admired. It rippled sweetly through the room now.

“I assure you I have no intention of poisoning myself.”

He said, so low that she could only just catch the words,

“There is more than one kind of poison.”