Ngaio Marsh - Dead Water

“Very proper.”

“Thing is, as I said when I told you about it: we ought to arrive at some sort of agreement among ourselves. She gives your names as the people she wants to see. Well, we’ve all had a week to think it over. What’s our line going to be? Better be consistent, hadn’t we?”

“But can we be consistent?” the Rector asked. “I think you all know my views. I’ve never attempted to disguise them. In the pulpit or anywhere else.”

“But you don’t,” said Miss Cost, who alone had heard the Rector from the pulpit, “you don’t deny the truth of the cures, now do you?”

“No,” he said. “I thank God for them, but I deplore the — excessive publicity.”

“Naow, naow, naow,” said the Mayor excitedly. “Didn’t we ought to take a wider view? Didn’t we ought to think of the community as a whole? In my opinion, sir, the remarkable properties of our spring has brought nothing but good to Portcarrow — nothing but good. And didn’t the public at large ought to be made aware of the benefits we offer? I say it did and it ought which is what it has and should continue to be.”

“Jolly good, Mr. Mayor,” said Barrimore. “Hear, hear!”

“Hear!” said Miss Cost.

“Would she sell?” Dr. Mayne asked suddenly.

“I don’t think she would, Bob.”

“Ah well, naow,” said the Mayor, “naow! Suppose — and mind, gentlemen, I speak unofficially. Private — But, suppose she would. There might be a possibility that the borough itself would be interested. As a spec—” He caught himself up and looked sideways at the Rector. “As a civic duty. Or maybe a select group of right-minded residents…”

Dr. Mayne said drily: “They’d find themselves competing in pretty hot company, I fancy, if the Island came on the open market.”

“Which it won’t,” said Major Barrimore. “If I’m any judge. She’s hell-bent on wrecking the whole show.”

Mr. Nankivell allowed himself a speculative grin. “Happen she don’t know the value, however,” he insinuated.

“Perhaps she’s concerned with other values,” the Rector murmured.

At this point Mrs. Barrimore returned.

“Don’t move,” she said and sat down in a chair near the door. “I don’t know if I’m still…?”

Mr. Nankivell embarked on a gallantry but Barrimore cut across it. “You’d better listen, Margaret,” he said, with a restless glance at his wife. “After all, she may talk to you.”

“Surely, surely!” the Mayor exclaimed. “The ladies understand each other in a fashion that’s above the heads of us mere chaps, bean’t it, Miss Cost?”

Miss Cost said: “I’m sure I don’t know,” and looked very fixedly at Mrs. Barrimore.

“We don’t seem to be getting anywhere,” Dr. Mayne observed.

The Mayor cleared his throat. “This bean’t what you’d call a formal committee,” he began, “but if it was, and if I was in occupation of the chair, I’d move we took the temper of the meeting.”

“Very good,” Barrimore said. “Excellent suggestion. I propose His Worship be elected chairman. Those in favour?” The others muttered a disjointed assent, and the Mayor expanded. He suggested that what they really had to discover was how each of them proposed to respond to Miss Pride’s onslaught. He invited them to speak in turn — beginning with the Rector, who repeated that they all knew his views and that he would abide by them.

“Does that mean,” Major Barrimore demanded, “that if she says she’s going to issue a public repudiation of the spring, remove the enclosure and stop the Festival, you’d come down on her side?”

“I shouldn’t try to dissuade her.”

The Mayor made an explosive sound and turned on him. “If you’ll pardon my frankness, Mr. Carstairs,” he began, “I’d be obliged if you’d tell the company what you reckon would have happened to your Church Restoration Fund if Portcarrow hadn’t benefited by the spring to the extent it has done. Where’d you’ve got the money to repair your tower? You wouldn’t’ve got it, no, nor anything like it.”

Mr. Carstairs’s normally sallow face reddened painfully. “No,” he said, “I don’t suppose we should.”

“Hah!” said Miss Cost. “There you are!”

“I’m a Methodist, myself,” said the Mayor in triumph.

“Quite so,” Mr. Carstairs agreed.

“Put it this way. Will you egg the woman on, sir, in her foolish notions? Will you do that?”

“No. It’s a matter of her own conscience.”

The Mayor, Major Barrimore and Miss Cost all began to expostulate. Dr. Mayne said with repressed impatience, “I really don’t think there’s any future in pressing the point.”

“Nor do I,” said Mrs. Barrimore unexpectedly.

Miss Cost, acidly smiling, looked from her to Dr. Mayne and then, fixedly, at Major Barrimore.

“Very good, Doctor,” Mr. Nankivell said. “What about yourself, then?”

Dr. Mayne stared distastefully at his own hands and said: “Paradoxically, I find myself in some sort of agreement with the Rector. I, too, haven’t disguised my views. I have an open mind about these cases. I have neither encouraged nor discouraged my patients’ making use of the spring. When there has been apparent benefit I have said nothing to undermine anyone’s faith in its permanency. I am neutral.”

“And from that impregnable position,” Major Barrimore observed, “you’ve added a dozen rooms to your bloody Convalescent Home. Beg pardon, Rector.”

“ Keith !”

Major Barrimore turned on his wife. “Well, Margaret?” he demanded. “What’s your objection?”

Miss Cost gave a shrill laugh.

Before Mrs. Barrimore could answer, Dr. Mayne said very coolly: “You’re perfectly right. I have benefited, like all the rest of you. But as far as my practice is concerned, I believe Miss Pride’s activities will make very little difference, in the long run. Either to it, or to the popular appeal of the spring. Sick people who are predisposed to the idea will still think they know better. Or hope they know better,” he added. “Which is, I suppose, much the same thing.”

“That’s all damn’ fine, but it won’t be the same thing to the community at large,” Barrimore angrily pointed out. “Tom, Dick and Harry and their friends and relations, swarming all over the place… The Island, a tripper’s shambles, and the press making a laughingstock of the whole affair.” He emptied his glass.

“And the Festival!” Miss Cost wailed. “The Festival! All our devotion! The response! The disappointment. The humiliation!” She waved her hands. A thought struck her. “And Wally! He has actually memorized! After weeks of patient endeavour, he has memorized his little verses. Only this afternoon. One trivial slip. The choir is utterly committed.”

“I’ll be bound,” said Mr. Nankivell heartily. “A credit to all concerned, and a great source of gratification to the borough if looked at in the proper spirit. We’m all waiting on the Doctor, however,” he added. “Now, Doctor, what is it to be? What’ll you say to the lady?”

“Exactly what I said two minutes ago to you,” Dr. Mayne snapped. “I’ll give my opinion if she wants it. I don’t mind pointing out to her that the thing will probably go on after a fashion, whatever she does.”

“I suppose that’s something,” said the Mayor gloomily. “Though not much, with an elderly female so deadly set on destruction.”

“ I ,” Miss Cost intervened hotly, “shall not mince my words. I shall tell her — No,” she amended with control, “I shall plead with her. I shall appeal to the nobler side. Let us hope that there is one. Let us hope so.”