‘I see Mrs Travers is dead,’ I said to Primrose, passing her the evening paper as we sat in the lounge of the White Hart.
‘Drink?’
‘No, not as such, but you’re pretty close,’ I replied.
‘How close?’ she asked.
‘By a number of waves, I should say.’
Primrose said that she had no idea what I was talking about and that given the lady’s liberal consumption of vodka she was surprised she had been spared for so long.
‘Oh no,’ I explained, ‘she didn’t die of drink, she was in it; drowned in the sea while bathing at Birling Gap. It can get awfully rough there.’
Primrose set down her own glass and stared. ‘You have obviously got it wrong, Charles; that can’t be the same Travers woman who lives here in Lewes. I know for a fact she hates the sea. One only has to mention the word and she starts to go all green and peculiar.’
Primrose knows a lot of things for a fact but this was clearly not one of them. ‘It’s definitely the same,’ I said. ‘You can see for yourself.’ And I pointed to the newspaper and its brief account of a Mrs Elspeth Travers of Needham Court, Lewes, having the misfortune to be found washed up on the beach a week previously. She was reported to have been wearing a black ruched swimming costume and pink floral cap.
My companion scanned the report with a sceptical frown. She sniffed. ‘Well, all I can say is that she has been keeping that pretty quiet; always swore she couldn’t swim a stroke and thought the seaside was greatly overrated. It is extraordinary the lengths some people will go to conceal their hidden vices.’
I remarked mildly that I couldn’t quite see why sea bathing should be thought a vice; to which Primrose replied that presumably Mrs Travers considered it so, otherwise why should she have put up such a smokescreen? She also observed rather tartly that for one with such pasty features the choice of a pink swimming cap was clearly a mistake.
Not being au fait with these sartorial niceties and not wishing to sound contentious, I nodded and said that all the same it was rather bad luck and that I feared her twin sister, Alice, would feel the loss.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Primrose said. ‘Shock perhaps but not much loss; they were never especially close. Besides, they weren’t real twins, I mean not the identical sort; just the same age and a passing resemblance, that’s all – except that Elspeth was much slimmer and with better hair. They had little in common, neither character nor tastes.’
I was surprised at this, having always assumed the two had enjoyed a moderate sisterly affection and that like many twins shared some special bond. But Primrose informed me otherwise and said that this was yet another smokescreen. ‘Oh yes,’ she insisted darkly, ‘reading between the lines you could see there was a fair bit of sibling rivalry going on there. One can always tell.’
I told Primrose that I bowed to her superior judgement in such matters; and then turning the conversation, enquired how she had got on in her recent visit to Baden-Baden.
‘Baden-Baden?’ she asked vaguely.
‘Yes – where you were going to take the waters for your lumbago. How long were you there – a month or more? I hope it’s done the trick.’
‘Ah yes, absolutely,’ she assured me. ‘A complete cure.’ She drained her glass and bent to disentangle Bouncer’s lead from the table leg.
I congratulated her on the speed of her recovery but also expressed surprise at the problem’s rapid onset: ‘In my experience lumbago is one of those dreary pains that operate stealthily; it sort of creeps up on you slowly.’
She replied firmly that there are several varieties and that hers was not of the creeping kind; it had been the type to suddenly flare without hint or warning. She did not enlarge, and sensing this to be the end of the topic I took my cue and escorted her and the dog to the foyer whence we went our separate ways.
In the car driving home to Podmore Place (the ruined ancestral manor which Agnes and I are foolishly trying to renovate) I reflected on our conversation.
Two things puzzled me: firstly Primrose’s obvious reluctance to elaborate either on her sojourn in Baden-Baden or indeed the lumbago attack which had prompted her visit there. Most people seem to take a sadistic relish in apprising one of the finer details of their back troubles, but in this respect Primrose had been mercifully reticent. But I could have done with less reticence about the charming German spa town that I had known before the war, and would have been intrigued to hear if it was still as I remembered. Yet she had been resolutely quiet on both topics. Strange really, as Primrose is a good raconteur and one might have expected more.
I was also curious about her assertion that poor Elspeth Travers had hated swimming. If that really were the case it did seem rather odd that the lady should have donned costume and cap (flattering or not) to sport among pounding breakers. As I had observed to Primrose, Birling Gap is not the safest of bathing places; and while dogs and wayward children may relish flinging themselves into the churning waters, it is not something one would have expected of a staid adult female – unless she happened to be a strong swimmer.
When I mentioned this to Agnes during supper, she immediately mooted the idea of suicide. (My wife has a lurid imagination which, linked to a ready tongue, can sometimes embarrass.) I objected that if that had been her intention she would hardly have needed the headgear. Agnes retorted that old habits die hard, and that anyway if I knew anything about women I would realize that whatever the occasion they like to be properly attired. And after all, she added, Mrs Travers might have changed her mind in media res, in which case she would have been only too glad to be thus equipped as it would save a visit to the hairdresser to rescue the perm.
Other than making some fatuous comment about such foresight being a credit to the Girl Guide movement, I said nothing. Alas, there were more testing matters to confront than the sad fate of Mrs Travers or her regard for contingency: the cistern in the downstairs lavatory had collapsed, more woodworm had been found in the east wing and the workmen had announced they were taking yet another of their several holidays. Thus I drowned my sorrows in coffee and in taking Duster for his evening scamper … Actually this is not quite accurate, for the cairn was not in scampering mood and wore the pinched expression of one baulked of a more urgent pursuit: sleep. However, he deigned to clamp a small stick between his jaws and we set off at a somnolent pace.