Agatha Christie - Murder is Easy

"You must miss her," said Luke awkwardly.

Major Horton shook his head darkly.

"Fellow needs a wife to keep him up to scratch," he said. "Otherwise he gets slack — yes, slack. He lets himself go."

"But surely –"

"My boy, I know what I'm talking about. Mind you, I'm not saying marriage doesn't come hard on a fellow at first. It does. Fellow says to himself, 'Damn it all,' he says, 'I can't call my soul my own!' But he gets broken in. It's all discipline."

Luke thought that Major Horton's married life must have been more like a military campaign than an idyll of domestic bliss.

"Women," soliloquized the Major, "are a rum lot. It seems sometimes that there's no pleasing them. But, by jove, they keep a man up to the mark." Luke preserved a respectful silence. "You married?" inquired the Major.

"No."

"Ah, well, you'll come to it. And mind you, my boy, there's nothing like it."

"It's always cheering," said Luke, "to hear someone speak well of the marriage state. Especially in these days of easy divorce."

"Pah!" said the Major. "Young people make me sick. No stamina, no endurance. They can't stand anything. No fortitude!"

Luke itched to ask why such exceptional fortitude should be needed, but he controlled himself.

"Mind you," said the major, " Lydia was a woman in a thousand — in a thousand! Everyone here respected and looked up to her."

"Yes?"

"She wouldn't stand any nonsense. She'd got a way of fixing a person with her eye, and the person wilted — just wilted. Some of these half-baked girls who call themselves servants nowadays. They think you'll put up with any insolence. Lydia soon showed them! Do you know, we had fifteen cooks and house-parlormaids in one year. Fifteen!"

Luke felt that this was hardly a tribute to Mrs. Norton's domestic management, but since it seemed to strike his host differently, he merely murmured some vague remark.

"Turned 'em out neck and crop, she did, if they didn't suit."

"Was it always that way about?" asked Luke.

"Well, of course, a lot of them walked out on us. A good riddance — that's what Lydia used to say!"

"A fine spirit," said Luke. "But wasn't it sometimes rather awkward?"

"Oh, I didn't mind turning to and putting my hand to things," said Horton. "I'm a pretty fair cook and I can lay a fire with anyone. I've never cared for washing up, but of course it's got to be done; you can't get away from that."

Luke agreed that you couldn't. He asked whether Mrs. Horton had been good at domestic work. "I'm not the sort of fellow to let his wife wait on him," said Major Horton. "And anyway, Lydia was far too delicate to do any housework."

"She wasn't strong then?"

Major Horton shook his head. "She had wonderful spirit. She wouldn't give in. But what the woman suffered! And no sympathy from the doctors either. Doctors are callous brutes. They only understand downright physical pain. Anything out of the ordinary is beyond most of them. Humbleby, for instance; everyone seemed to think he was a good doctor."

"You don't agree?"

"The man was an absolute ignoramus. Knew nothing of modern discoveries. Doubt if he'd ever heard of a neurosis! He understands measles and mumps and broken bones, all right, I suppose. But nothing else. Had a row with him in the end. He didn't understand Lydia 's case at all. I gave it to him straight from the shoulder and he didn't like it. Got huffed and backed right out. Said I could send for any other doctor I chose. After that, we had Thomas."

"You liked him better?"

"Altogether a much cleverer man. If anyone could have pulled her through her last illness, Thomas would have done it. As a matter of fact, she was getting better, but she had a sudden relapse."

"Was it painful?"

"H'm, yes. Gastritis. Acute pain, sickness, all the rest of it. How that poor woman suffered! She was a martyr, if there ever was one. And a couple of hospital nurses in the house who were about as sympathetic as a brace of grandfather clocks. 'The patient this' and 'the patient that.'" The Major shook his head and drained his glass. "Can't stand hospital nurses! So smug. Lydia insisted they were poisoning her. That wasn't true, of course — a regular sick fancy; lots of people have it, so Thomas said — but there was this much truth behind it — those women disliked her. That's the worst of women — always down on their own sex."

"I suppose," said Luke, feeling that he was putting it awkwardly, but not seeing how to put it better, "that Mrs. Horton had a lot of devoted friends in Wychwood?"

"People were very kind," said the Major, somewhat grudgingly. "Easterfield sent down grapes and peaches from his hothouses. And the old tabbies used to come and sit with her. Honoria Waynflete and Lavinia Fullerton."

"Miss Fullerton came often, did she?"

"Yes. Regular old maid, but a kind creature! Very worried about Lydia , she was. Used to inquire into the diet and the medicines. All kindly meant, you know, but what I call a lot of fuss."

Luke nodded comprehendingly.

"Can't stand fuss," said the Major. "Too many women in this place. Difficult to get a decent game of golf."

"What about the young fellow at the antique shop?" said Luke.

The Major snorted. "He doesn't play golf."

"Has he been in Wychwood long?"

"About two years. Nasty sort of fellow. Hate those long-haired, purring chaps. Funnily enough, Lydia liked him. You can't trust women's judgment about men. They cotton to some amazing bounders. She even insisted on taking some patent quack nostrum of his. Stuff in a purple glass jar with signs of the Zodiac all over it! Supposed to be certain herbs picked at the full of the moon. Lot of tom-foolery, but women swallow that stuff — swallow it literally, too — ha-ha!"

Luke said, feeling that he was changing the subject rather abruptly, but correctly judging that Major Horton would not be aware of the fact, "What sort of a fellow is Abbot, the local solicitor? Pretty sound on the law? I've got to have some legal advice about something and I thought I might go to him."

"They say he's pretty shrewd," acknowledged Major Horton. "I don't know. Matter of fact, I've had a row with him. Not seen him since he came out here to make Lydia 's will for her just before she died. In my opinion, the man's a cad. But of course," he added, "that doesn't affect his ability as a lawyer."

"No, of course not," said Luke. "He seems a quarrelsome sort of man, though. Seems to have fallen out with a good many people, from what I hear."

"Trouble with him is that he's so confoundedly touchy," said Major Horton. "Seems to think he's God Almighty and that anyone who disagrees with him is committing lese-majeste. Heard of his row with Humbleby?"

"They had a row, did they?"

"First-class row. Mind you, that doesn't surprise me. Humbleby was an opinionated ass. Still, there it is."

"His death was very sad."

"Humbleby's? Yes, I suppose it was. Lack of ordinary care. Blood poisoning's a damned dangerous thing. Always put iodine on a cut, I do! Simple precaution. Humbleby, who's a doctor, doesn't do anything of the sort. It just shows." Luke was not quite sure what it showed, but he let that pass. Glancing at his watch, he got up. Major Horton said, "Getting on for lunchtime? So it is. Well, glad to have had a chat with you. Does me good to see a man who's been about a bit. We must have a yarn some other time. Where was your show? Mayang Straits? Never been there. Hear you're writing a book. Superstitions and all that."

"Yes, I –"

But Major Horton swept on, "I can tell you several very interesting things. When I was in India , my boy –"

Luke escaped some ten minutes later, after enduring the usual histories of fakirs, rope and mango tricks, dear to the retired Anglo-Indian. As he stepped out into the open air and heard the Major's voice bellowing to Nero behind him, he marveled at the miracle of married life. Major Horton seemed genuinely to regret a wife who, by all accounts, not excluding his own, must have been nearly allied to a man-eating tiger. Or was it, Luke asked himself the question suddenly — was it an exceedingly clever bluff?