Leslie Hartley - The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

‘But it’s true!’ cried Philip. ‘I’ve only just left him. What do the vigili say?’

‘They say that he is dead,’ said the concierge. ‘They say he is dead and his body is in your boat.’

There was a moment of silence. The vigili , like men exhausted by argument, stood apart, moody and indifferent. At last one of them spoke.

‘It is true, signori . Si è suicidato . His affairs went badly. He was a great swindler—and knew he would be arrested and condemned. Cosi si è salvato .’

‘ He may be a swindler,’ said Philip, ‘but I’m certain he’s alive. Come into the garden and see.’

Shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders, the vigili followed him out of the hotel. In a small group they trooped across the stony waste towards the tree. There was no one there.

‘You see, signori’ said one of the vigili , with an air of subdued triumph, ‘it’s as we said.’

‘Well, he must have gone away,’ said Philip, obstinately. ‘He was sitting on this chair—so. . . .’ But his effort to give point to his contention failed. The chair gave way under him and he sprawled rather ludicrously and painfully on the stony floor. When he had picked himself up one of the policemen took the chair, ran his hand over it, and remarked:

‘It’s damp.’

‘Is it?’ said Philip expressionlessly.

‘I don’t think anyone could have sat on this chair,’ pursued the policeman.

He is telling me I am a liar, thought Philip, and blushed. But the other vigile , anxious to spare his feelings, said:

‘Perhaps it was an impostor whom you saw—a confidence man. There are many such, even in Italy. He hoped to get money out of the signori .’ He looked round for confirmation; the concierge nodded.

‘Yes,’ said Philip, wearily. ‘No doubt that explains it. Will you want us again?’ he asked the vigili. ‘ Have you a card, Dickie?’

The vigili , having collected the information they required, saluted and walked off.

Dickie turned to the concierge.

‘Where’s that young whippersnapper who took a message for us?’

‘Whippersnapper?’ repeated the concierge.

‘Well, page-boy?’

‘Oh, the piccolo ? He’s gone off duty, sir, for the night.’

‘Good thing for him,’ said Dickie. ‘Hullo, who’s this? My poor nerves won’t stand any more of this Maskelyne and Devant business.’

It was the maître d’hôtel , bowing obsequiously.

‘Will there be three gentlemen, or four, for dinner?’ he asked.

Philip and Dickie exchanged glances and Dickie lit a cigarette.

‘Only two gentlemen,’ he said.

Hugh Curtis was in two minds about accepting Dick Munt’s invitation to spend Sunday at Lowlands. He knew little of Munt, who was supposed to be rich and eccentric and, like many people of that kind, a collector. Hugh dimly remembered having asked his friend Valentine Ostrop what it was that Munt collected, but he could not recall Valentine’s answer. Hugh Curtis was a vague man with an unretentive mind, and the mere thought of a collection, with its many separate challenges to the memory, fatigued him. What he required of a week-end party was to be left alone as much as possible, and to spend the remainder of his time in the society of agreeable women. Searching his mind, though with distaste, for he hated to disturb it, he remembered Ostrop telling him that parties at Lowlands were generally composed entirely of men, and rarely exceeded four in number. Valentine didn’t know who the fourth was to be, but he begged Hugh to come.

‘You will enjoy Munt,’ he said. ‘He really doesn’t pose at all. It’s his nature to be like that.’

‘Like what?’ his friend had inquired.

‘Oh, original and—and strange, if you like,’ answered Valentine. ‘He’s one of the exceptions—he’s much odder than he seems, whereas most people are more ordinary than they seem.’

Hugh Curtis agreed. ‘But I like ordinary people,’ he added. ‘So how shall I get on with Munt?’

‘Oh,’ said his friend, ‘but you’re just the type he likes. He prefers ordinary—it’s a stupid word—I mean normal, people, because their reactions are more valuable.’

‘Shall I be expected to react?’ asked Hugh, with nervous facetiousness.

‘Ha! Ha!’ laughed Valentine, poking him gently—‘we never quite know what he’ll be up to. But you will come, won’t you?’

Hugh Curtis had said he would.

All the same, when Saturday morning came he began to regret his decision and to wonder whether it might not honourably be reversed. He was a man in early middle life, rather set in his ideas, and, though not specially a snob, unable to help testing a new acquaintance by the standards of the circle to which he belonged. This circle had never warmly welcomed Valentine Ostrop; he was the most unconventional of Hugh’s friends. Hugh liked him when they were alone together, but directly Valentine fell in with kindred spirits he developed a kind of foppishness of manner that Hugh instinctively disliked. He had no curiosity about his friends, and thought it out of place in personal relationships, so he had never troubled to ask himself what this altered demeanour of Valentine’s, when surrounded by his cronies, might denote. But he had a shrewd idea that Munt would bring out Valentine’s less sympathetic side. Could he send a telegram saying he had been unexpectedly detained? Hugh turned the idea over; but partly from principle, partly from laziness (he hated the mental effort of inventing false circumstances to justify change of plans), he decided he couldn’t. His letter of acceptance had been so unconditional. He also had the fleeting notion (a totally unreasonable one) that Munt would somehow find out and be nasty about it.

So he did the best he could for himself; looked out the latest train that would get him to Lowlands in decent time for dinner, and telegraphed that he would come by that. He would arrive at the house, he calculated, soon after seven. ‘Even if dinner is as late as half-past eight,’ he thought to himself ‘they won’t be able to do me much harm in an hour and a quarter.’ This habit of mentally assuring to himself periods of comparative immunity from unknown perils had begun at school. ‘Whatever I’ve done,’ he used to say to himself, ‘they can’t kill me.’ With the war, this saving reservation had to be dropped: they could kill him, that was what they were there for. But now that peace was here the little mental amulet once more diffused its healing properties; Hugh had recourse to it more often than he would have admitted. Absurdly enough he invoked it now. But it annoyed him that he would arrive in the dusk of the September evening. He liked to get his first impression of a new place by daylight.

Hugh Curtis’s anxiety to come late had not been shared by the other two guests. They arrived at Lowlands in time for tea. Though they had not travelled together, Ostrop motoring down, they met practically on the doorstep, and each privately suspected the other of wanting to have his host for a few moments to himself.

But it seemed unlikely that their wish would have been gratified even if they had not both been struck by the same idea. Tea came in, the water bubbled in the urn, but still Munt did not present himself, and at last Ostrop asked his fellow-guest to make the tea.

‘You must be deputy-host,’ he said; ‘you know Dick so well, better than I do.’

This was true. Ostrop had long wanted to meet Tony Bettisher who, after the death of someone vaguely known to Valentine as Squarchy, ranked as Munt’s oldest and closest friend. He was a short, dark, thickset man, whose appearance gave no clue to his character or pursuits. He had, Valentine knew, a job at the British Museum, but, to look at, he might easily have been a stockbroker.