Dorothy Sayers - The Documents in the Case

I replied that I preferred to live at an hotel for the present, because it was more convenient for business.

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘you will have a lot of things to see about. I quite understand. I kept the house on, because I didn’t know what your plans would be. But perhaps you think it would be better to give it up?’

‘Do just as you like,’ I answered. ‘The furniture is yours, I believe?’

‘Yes; but this place is really more than I want when I am by myself. Besides’ — here she gave an affected shudder — ‘it seems, well, haunted, rather. If you are not coming here, I think I shall give it up and take a couple of rooms somewhere. I can look after your things till you get settled.’

I thanked her, and asked if she had made any plans for the future.

‘None at all,’ she said. ‘I feel rather stunned, just at the moment. It has been such a shock. I shall wait for a little time, anyhow, and see how things turn out. I shall be rather lost at first. We saw so few people — I have rather lost touch.’

‘You have all my father’s friends,’ I said.

‘Oh, but they are not my friends. They only used to come to tea and dinner and so on. They wouldn’t want me. I should only be an intruder. And, of course, they are all much older than I am. We should have really nothing in common.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you are a young woman, Margaret. You will probably marry again before very long.’

She made a great display of indignation.

‘Paul! How can you say such a heartless thing, and your poor father only just passed away! Anybody would think you don’t care for him at all. But I suppose a father isn’t the same thing as a husband.’

I was nauseated.

‘You need not trouble to display all this feeling on my account,’ I said. ‘It was quite enough to make him as unhappy as you did while he was alive, without playing the broken-hearted widow.’

‘You are very like him, you know,’ she observed. ‘You have just his way of snubbing and repressing people. You don’t seem to understand that everybody can’t keep their feelings bottled up as you do. It was not my fault that he was unhappy. I think he had an unhappy nature.’

‘That is nonsense,’ I said, ‘and you know it. My father was a most simple, friendly, companionable man — only you never would be a real wife to him.’

‘He wouldn’t let me,’ she said. ‘I know we didn’t hit it off very well, at the end, but I did try, Paul. I did indeed. In the beginning I was ready to give him all the love and affection that was in me. But he didn’t like it. He dried me up. He broke my spirit, Paul.’

‘My father was not a demonstrative man,’ I said, ‘but you know quite well that he was proud of you and devoted to you. If you had heard him speak of you as I have heard him—’

‘Ah!’ she said, quickly, ‘but I never did. That was the trouble. What is the good of being praised behind one’s back if one is always being scolded and snubbed to one’s face? It only makes it worse. Everyone thinks one has such a good husband, and that one ought to be so happy and grateful — and all the time they never know what one is suffering from unkind words and cold looks at home.’

‘Many women would envy you,’ I said. ‘Would you rather have had a husband who was all charming manners at home and unfaithful the minute your back was turned?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I would.’

‘I can’t understand you,’ I said. ‘You ought to be ashamed to speak like this.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘you can’t understand. That’s it. Neither could he.’

‘All I understand is that you ruined his life, and drove him to a dreadful death,’ I burst out. I had not meant to go so far, but I was too angry to think what I was saying.

‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘Oh, no — you can’t think that he — But why should he?’

I had gone too far now to retreat, and I told her what I thought.

‘You are quite wrong,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t have done that.’

‘He would have done anything for you,’ I cried angrily, ‘anything. Even to laying down his life to set you free—’

‘Even to sacrificing his reputation as a connoisseur of fungi?’ she interrupted, with an unpleasant smile.

‘Even that,’ I answered. ‘It’s all very well for you to sneer — you never cared for his interests — you didn’t understand them — you understand nothing at all, and you care for nothing except your twopenny ha’penny emotions.’

‘I do know this,’ she said steadily, ‘that if your father had thought that I wanted to be free of him — which he didn’t, because he had too good an opinion of himself — but if he had, he would have taken care I didn’t get rid of him without a row. He loved making rows. He wouldn’t have made things easy for me. He wouldn’t have missed the opportunity of rubbing it in.’

Her expression was as ugly and common as her words. I felt that I could not control myself much longer and had much better go.

‘I repeat,’ said I, ‘that you never understood my father, and you never will. It isn’t in you. I don’t think it’s any good prolonging this discussion. I had better be going. Can you give me Mr Munting’s address?’

I hoped to have frightened her by the sudden question, but she only looked mildly astonished.

‘Mr Munting? I’m sure I don’t know. I’ve only seen him once since he was married, and that was at the Royal Academy. And at the — the inquest, of course. I think he lives in Bloomsbury somewhere. I expect he’s in the telephone-book.’

I thanked her, and took my leave. Married! My father had never thought to mention that. It upset all my ideas. Because, if Munting was married, then what object could there have been in my father’s suicide — or murder, whichever it was? His death would have left Margaret no nearer to marrying Munting. And any other relation could have been carried on perfectly well, whether my father was alive or not. Certainly, he might simply have destroyed himself in sheer despair and misery, unable to bear the dishonour. But it did not seem so likely.

This news made me alter my plans. I determined not to go and see Munting at once. It would be better, I thought, to get hold of Lathom, and see if I could obtain any light on the question from him.

A little inquiry among the dealers produced Lathom’s address. He was living in a studio in Chelsea. I presented myself at the place the next morning, and was received by a vinegary-looking elderly woman in a man’s cap, who informed me that Mr Lathom was still in bed.

As it was already eleven o’clock, I handed her my card and said I would wait. She ushered me into as extremely untidy studio, full of oil-paint tubes and half-finished canvases, and waddled away with the card towards an inner door.

Before reaching it, however, she turned back, sidled up to me and said in a glutinous whisper:

‘Begging your pardon, Mr ’Arrison, but was you any relation to the pore gentleman wot died so mysterious?’

‘What business is that of yours?’ I snapped. She nodded with ghoulish enjoyment.

‘Oh, no offence, sir, no offence. There ain’t no need to take a person up so sharp. That was a funny thing, sir, wasn’t it? You’d be ’is son, per’aps?’

‘Never you mind who I am,’ I said. ‘Take my card to Mr Lathom and say I should be glad if he could spare me a few minutes.’

‘Oh, ’e’ll spare you a few minutes, sir, I shouldn’t wonder. Look funny if ’e didn’t, sir, wouldn’t it? There’s lots of things as ’ud look funny, I daresay, if we knew the rights on ’em.’

‘What are you getting at?’ I said, uneasily.

‘Ho, nothink, sir! Nothink! If you ain’t a relation it ain’t nothink to you, is it, sir? People do go off sudden-like, sometimes, and nobody to blame. There’s lots of things ’appen every day more than ever gets into the papers. But there! That ain’t nothink to you, sir.’