Dorothy Sayers - The Documents in the Case

She sidled away again, grinning unpleasantly. I heard her talking and a man’s voice replying, and presently she shuffled back again.

‘Mr Lathom says ’e’ll be with you in five minutes, sir, if you will be so good as to wait. ’E’ll come fast enough, sir, don’t you be afraid. A very agreeable gentleman is Mr Lathom, sir. I been doin’ ’im over three months, now, ever since ’e come over from France. Some time in October that would be, sir, before this ’ere sad accident ’appened. Mr Lathom was very much upset about it, sir. You’d ’ardly ’ave known ’im for the same gentleman w’en ’e came back after the inquest. Looked as if ’e’d been seein’ a ghost — that white and strange ’e was. A terrible sight the pore gentleman must ’a’ been. A crool way to die. But there! We must all die once, sir, mustn’t we? And if it ain‘t one way it’s another, and if it ain’t sooner it’s later. Only some folks is misfortunit more than others. Would you care for a cup of tea, sir, while you’re waitin’?’

I accepted the tea, to get rid of her. The stove, however, turned out to be in a corner of the studio, and having lit the gas and put the kettle on, she returned. All the time she was speaking, she rubbed one skinny hand over the other with a curious, greedy action.

‘Very strange ’ow things turns out, ain’t it, sir? There was a gentleman lived down our street, a cats-meat man ’e was, and the best cats’-meat in the neighbourhood — thought very ’ighly of by all, ’e was. ’E married a girl out of one of them shops w’ere they sells costooms on ’ire purchase. They ain’t no good to nobody, them places, if you asks me. Well, ’e died sudden.’

‘Did he?’

‘Ho, yes! very sudden, ’e died. A very ’ot summer it was, and they brought it in ’e’d got the dissenter, with eatin’ somethink as didn’t agree with ’im. So it may ’a’ bin, far be it from me to say otherwise. But afore the year was up she’d gone and married the young man wot was manager of the clothes-shop. A good marriage it was for ’er, too. Ho, yes! She didn’t lost nothink by ’er ’usband dyin’ w’en ’e died, if you understand me, sir.’

I made no answer. She took the kettle off and filled the teapot.

‘Now, that’s a nice cup o’ tea, sir. You won’t find nothink wrong with that . That’s ’olesome, that is. I knows ’ow to make the sort of tea that gentlemen like. Cutts is my name, Mrs Cutts. They all knows me about ’ere. I been doin’ for the artists this thirty year, and I’m up to all their goin’s-on. I knows ’ow to cook their breakfisses and look after their bits of paintings and sich, an’ w’en to speak an’ w’en to ’old my tongue, sir. That’s wot they pays me for.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘it’s an excellent cup of tea.’

‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir. My name is Cutts, if you should ever be a-wantin’ me. Anybody in these studios will tell you w’ere to find Mrs Cutts. ’Ere’s Mr Lathom a’comin’, sir.’

She lurched away as Lathom emerged from his bedroom.

I will admit that the first impression he made upon me was a good one. His appearance was clean, and his manners were pleasant.

‘I see Mrs Cutts has given you a cup of tea,’ he said, when he had shaken hands. ‘Won’t you have a spot of breakfast with me?’

I thanked him, and said I had already breakfasted.

‘Oh, I suppose you have,’ he answered, smiling. ‘We’re rather a late crowd in these parts, you know. You won’t mind if I carry on with my eggs and bacon?’

I begged him to use no ceremony, and he produced some eatables from a cupboard.

‘It’s all right, Mrs Cutts,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll do the cooking. This gentleman wants to talk business.’

The noise of a broom in the passage was the only answer.

‘Well now, Mr Harrison,’ said Lathom, dropping his breezy manner, ‘I expect you have come to hear anything I can tell you about your father. I can’t say, of course, how damned sorry I am about it. As you know, I wasn’t there at the time—’

‘No,’ I said, ‘and I don’t want to distress you by going into details and all that. It must have been a great shock to you.’

‘It certainly was.’

‘I can see that,’ I added, noticing how white and strained his face looked. ‘I only wanted to ask you — after all, you were the last person to see him—’

‘Not the last,’ he interrupted, rather hastily. ‘That man Coffin saw him, you know, gathering the — wretched fungi — and the carrier saw him later still, after I had left the place.’

‘Oh, yes — I didn’t mean quite that. I mean, you were the last friend to see and talk to him intimately.’

‘Quite, quite — just so.’

‘I wanted to hear from you whether you were, yourself, quite satisfied about it — satisfied that it really was an accident, that is?’

He put the bacon into the pan, where it sputtered a good deal.

‘What’s that? I didn’t quite catch.’

‘Were you satisfied it was an accident?’

‘Why, of course. What else could it have been? You know, Mr Harrison, I hate to say anything about your father that might seem — to blame him in any way, that is — but, of course, I mean it is a very dangerous thing to experiment with wild fungi. Anybody would tell you the same thing. Unless you are a very great expert — and even then one is liable to make mistakes.’

‘That is what is troubling me,’ I said. ‘My father was a very great expert, and he was not at all a man to make mistakes.’

‘None of us are infallible.’

‘Quite so. But still. And it was odd that it should have happened just at the very time you were away.’

‘It was very unfortunate, certainly.’ He kept his eyes on the bacon, while he prodded it about with a fork. ‘Damnably unfortunate.’

‘So odd and so unfortunate that I cannot help thinking there may have been a reason for it!’

Lathom took two eggs and cracked them carefully. ‘How so?’

‘You are aware, perhaps, that my father was — not altogether happy in his married life.’

He gave an exclamation under his breath.

‘Did you speak?’

‘No — I have broken the yolk, that’s all. I beg your pardon. You are asking me rather a delicate question.’

‘You may speak frankly to me, Mr Lathom. If you saw much of my father’s family life, you must have noticed that there were — misfits.’

‘Well, of course — one sees and hears little things occasionally. But many happily married people spar at times, don’t they? And — well — there was a difference of age and all that.’

‘That is the point, Mr Lathom. Without necessarily saying anything harsh about my father’s wife, it is a fact that a young woman, married to an older man, may, not unnaturally, tend to turn to someone more of her own age.’

He muttered something.

‘In such a case my father, who was the most unself-regarding man who ever breathed, might have thought it his duty to give her back her liberty.’

He turned round swiftly.

‘Oh, no!’ he said, ‘surely not! That’s a dreadful idea, Mr Harrison. It never occurred to me. I am sure you can put it out of your mind.’ He hesitated. ‘I think —’ he went on, with a troubled look, ‘oh, yes, I am sure you need not think that.’

‘Are you quite sure? Did he never say anything?’

‘He never spoke of his wife except in terms of the deepest affection. He thought very highly of her.’

‘I know. More highly than she — more highly than any woman perhaps could deserve?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘But,’ I said, ‘that very affection would have been all the more reason for him to — to take himself out of her life in the most complete and unanswerable way.’