Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“Good morning, Mrs. Gargery,” greeted Antonia. “You are looking quite blooming this morning.”

“I feel very well indeed, Miss Bocker. I do not sleep as soundly as I should like — I suppose this is one of the customary drawbacks of advanced age — but otherwise I am rather enjoying my twilight years. I believe that you know my good friend Miss Milvey.”

Antonia nodded. “Yes. Georgianna and I are well acquainted.”

“And what brings you to Park Lane of a morning?” asked Mrs. Gargery, languidly stretching herself upon her chaise as if she were an elderly Cleopatra luxuriously awaiting her grapes.

Antonia interchanged a look with Georgianna. The admonitory expression of the latter said everything to Antonia that needed to be said without words. Antonia acquiesced: “You were on my way, my dear, and I thought I should stop to see how you are. I have been meaning to do it for some time. You do not venture out to the shops as a rule, so we must come to you for the pleasance of your society.”

Antonia now settled herself into a chair and Georgianna did the same with a bit of a groan.

“Who am I? I am no one,” replied Mrs. Gargery. “Nothing more than an old woman in an old house with an old dog that farts.” Bethinking herself of her dog, she looked upon the creature lying drowsily at her feet and smiled. “Oh, but you have lost your little bow, Mr. Toddles. We must go out and get you another.” Turning to her two guests: “You must not look upon him when he is so woefully underdrest. It mortifies him.”

The mortified creature began to snore most nasally.

“Shall I ring for tea?” asked the old woman. “I am so sorry that Miss Milvey made you stand for so long rapping upon the door. She told me that you were that young deputy sheriff Boldwig. And that he was come to ask another round of questions. And I simply cannot endure another session of his impertinence. He is a most rude young man.”

Antonia glared at her fellow Euphemia Trimmers Memorial Society compeer. “She told you that I was Deputy Boldwig? My dear Georgianna, perhaps to-day is the day that you should finally have yourself fitted for spectacles!”

Georgianna turned away, one hand surreptitiously searching about her person for her secreted flask of gin — the elixir that made life for her slightly more bearable.

“And as for Deputy Boldwig,” Antonia continued, “I was not aware that there was an official investigation into the death of Mrs. Pyegrave. I was given to believe, as I think we all were, that the cause of death had already been determined and the book closed.”

“Perhaps Sheriff Muntle pursues it nonetheless,” said Mrs. Gargery. “And in a decidedly un -official manner.”

Antonia was poised to say, “I think not.” Or even: “I know not. For our good sheriff could not take such independent action without incurring the displeasure of the Petit-Parliament, and so I must conclude that this is either a rogue investigation by a rather roguish novice deputy, or the young man has been so directed by an agent unaffiliated with the offices of his shrieval employer.”

But Antonia said none of these things. In fact, she could not give voice to so much as a single musing from those thoughts of intrigue that now accosted her. What she said instead was put in the form of a query: “If you do not mind my asking it, Mrs. Gargery, what sort of enquiry has the young man been making?”

Here, Georgianna struck in with a stentorian “But she does mind! She minds it very much. I mind it, too. Must we fill our lives with questions, Antonia — always questions! I have done with it. And I know that Mrs. Gargery has had her fill as well. Now we were sitting here, Mrs. Gargery and myself, having ourselves a quiet, a most lovely little chat about hyacinths and forget-me-nots and…”

Mrs. Gargery completed the statement with “jessamine and peonies. And there was also brief mention of hollyhocks.”

Georgianna affected to smile. “Yes, there was. You said how much you adored them and how easy they are to grow when the soil is properly composed. And I added that one must also be patient, for hollyhocks are biannuals and do nothing the first year but sit small and unblooming within the bed and one is tempted to rip them up for their impertinence and thrash them against the houseside.” Georgianna checked herself. “At least this is what I hear that some gardeners will do.”

Georgianna now averted her eyes to Antonia and formed her look into a reproving glower. “A perfectly civilised and perfectly quiet and delightful exchange — that is what we had before you arrived, Antonia. And Mrs. Gargery was calm then, whilst she is decidedly not calm now. And you are to blame. You and the deputy and everyone else who wishes that a poor dead woman should not be permitted to rest in peace but must be conversationally exhumed upon a daily basis so that her death should be anatomised for some sort of ghoulish pleasure.”

Antonia rose from her chair. “Georgianna, it is difficult to engage you when you drink.”

Georgianna Milvey seemed not to know just how to marshal a defence, for the flask was in her hand and her lips were moist.

Antonia continued: “Now a young man who purports to be asking questions on behalf of the sheriff ’s office has come here. He may have no right to do so. However, I believe that I have the right, on behalf of the deceased, to find out — if only to put my own restless thoughts upon the matter to bed — what it was that was seen by you on that fateful night, Mrs. Gargery, and what it was that you have told the stupid boy who struts about as if he were sheriff himself.”

Mrs. Gargery made her reply to Antonia’s exclamatory explanation of herself not in words but in the singular gesture of placing the back of one hand to her brow, as if she would faint.

“Sarah!” called Georgianna. “Sarah! Quickly! Your mistress is crapping out!”

“I most certainly am not crapping out!” declared Mrs. Gargery in a sharp, corrective tone. “I have a headache.” To her personal maid, who had just stepped into the room from her station just outside the door:“Sarah. Get me a headache powder if you will. I am being assaulted by loud voices. Miss Milvey’s voice grows especially noisy and shrill when she takes to the flask.”

Georgianna shrunk into her chair, mortified to the point of instantaneous muteness.

“Here is what I told the young man,” said Mrs. Gargery, turning her gaze to Antonia as the comely maid Sarah withdrew from the room. “I said that I heard a scream. It did not wake me for I was already awake and reading. I do not sleep well at night — perhaps I have already said this — and was reading a book. I believe that it was Oliver Twist: The Man. He grows up to become a cheese-monger, you know. But that is neither here nor there. I was reading my book and I heard a scream which coincided with the sound of breaking glass. And I went immediately to my window…” and then gesturing toward the window of reference,“… this window right here, in fact, for I often spend the night here in this room and upon this very couch, not wishing to climb the many steep stairs to my bedchamber. And there she was — lying not so far from my very own house, her limbs moving a little to tell me that she was not dead — but oh such a horrible, ghastly sight! Poor Mrs. Pyegrave, all bent and broken and so severely lacerated by all the broken glass. And such a pool of blood there was, expanding from beneath every corner of her!

“For a brief moment I knew not just what I should do. Surely, thought I, there will be others who will come — others who heard the breaking glass and her terrible plummeting scream and will hasten to her aid.”