AFTER breakfast the next morning Alec and Roger strolled out to smoke their pipes in the delightful old garden at the back of the house, with its two mulberry trees, its medlar tree, its green fig tree, its peach border, quaintly shaped flower-beds and thick, springy lawn to whose making a couple of centuries of assiduous rolling and mowing had gone.
‘Well, what’s the programme today?’ Alec asked.
‘As far as you’re concerned, nothing. We can’t get on a step now ’til I’ve tackled this Saunderson woman successfully, And the dismissal of that servant; I shall have to include that in my pumping operations too.’
‘How are you going about it? Getting her to talk, I mean?’
Roger looked at his friend a little quizzically. ‘I’m going to make love to her, Alexander,’ he said frankly.
‘Humph!’ Alec grunted with patent disapproval.
‘Rather a curious reversal of the ordinary procedure in this kind of circumstances, isn’t it?’ Roger mused. ‘The best detectives, I understand, the pukka article, make love to the servant in order to find out things about the mistress. I with my usual contempt for convention make love to a mistress to find out about a servant. And of the two, I must say that I think my method is vastly to be preferred.’
They paced up and down the lawn for a few moments in silence.
‘Look here,’ Alec said suddenly. ‘I don’t like this.’
‘I knew it, I knew it,’ Roger sighed. ‘I’ve been expecting some such remark as that, my excellent Alexander. I haven’t forgotten the enormous trouble you gave me at Layton Court over this very same thing, or something very like it. Though I did hope that marriage might have at least modified your views. All right, go on; get it off your chest.’
‘Oh, it’s all very well for you to laugh,’ Alec growled. ‘You make fun of everything. But I’m hanged if it’s playing the game, making a cat’s-paw of a woman like this just to get information out of her.’
‘It isn’t you who’d be hanged, Alec,’ Roger retorted crudely. ‘It’d be Mrs Bentley. Is that what you’re driving at—that it would be better to let Mrs Bentley be hanged than trifle with the other lady’s innocent affections?’
‘Don’t be such an ass! You know very well it isn’t. But what I do say is that there’s no need to go about getting your information in that particular way. Why don’t you go to her and tell her the whole story just as you told Sheila?’
‘Because, my well-meaning but completely dunderheaded friend, the only result of that would be to shut the lady up tighter than seven clams. I tell you there’s one way and one way only to get what I want out of her, and that is to make love to her.’
‘Now how the deuce do you make that out?’
‘Oh, well, I’ll try and explain, though I quite despair of ever making you see it. The only thing on Mrs Saunderson’s horizon is Mrs Saunderson; the only way of getting Mrs Saunderson to talk about anything is by keeping continually in the foreground of the conversation that thing’s particular relation to Mrs Saunderson; the only way of getting into Mrs Saunderson’s head the idea that one is not more interested in any other thing than her and thereby loosening her tongue upon matters is to make love to Mrs Saunderson. Good Lord, you talk as if the woman didn’t want love made to her! Holy smoke, that’s the only thing in the world she does want. Not to make love to Mrs Saunderson is, in Mrs Saunderson’s opinion, an open insult to Mrs Saunderson; it would mean that one didn’t find her attractive. Can you understand that?’
‘You’re not going to tell me,’ Alec said obstinately, ‘that any woman in this world is going to want love made to her by any chance man who happens to come along.’
Roger groaned. ‘Alec, you’re hopeless! Hasn’t even marriage taught you that women do not live on the top of pedestals, leading good, pure, blameless little lives in a white cloud of superhumanity? Women, dear Alec, were sent upon this earth for just one purpose, the bearing of children; that’s their job in life, and a damned big job too, and for that end solely and entirely have they been designed. I don’t want to have to give you a lecture about women, but I do think you ought to know as much about them as an ordinary child of ten does. Nearly all women, then, Alexander, are idiots—mentally a trifle deficient, if you like; charming idiots, delightful idiots, adorable idiots, if you like, but always idiots, and mostly damnable idiots at that. Frequently devilish idiots as well; most women are potential devils, you know. They live entirely by their emotions, both in thought and deed, they are fundamentally incapable of reason and their one idea in life is to appear attractive to men. That’s about all there is to women.
‘Here and there, of course, one does meet with exceptions—thank Heaven! And invariably these exceptions make themselves felt, either in their own immediate circle or in business, if they happen to have no artistic abilities; or else as novelists (mostly), painters (occasionally) or musicians (very rarely)—strange about the last, by the way, music being decidedly the most emotional form of self-expression. And stranger still that music should so often go with mathematics; it does, you know. Strange thing altogether, music; the scale, for instance … But I’m wandering; I’ll lecture to you about music another time. Meanwhile, about women, just one thing more. There’s a terrible lot of poppycock talked about the impossibility of understanding women, the eternal mystery of woman and all that junk (would you believe it—I once saw an article in one of the dear old Sunday papers which began like this, “Whenever two or three men are gathered together, the conversation always turns before long upon the eternal mystery of woman.” Would you believe it? I’ve never forgotten that. Written by a woman, of course). Where was I? Oh, yes.
‘Well, that idea was put about by woman herself, of course; they like to make their dear little silly empty-headed selves out as mysterious and deep and sphinx-like and all the rest of it; makes ’em important, you see, and Heaven knows they need all the importance they can fake up. Whereas the real truth of the matter is that any man with more than half a brain, combined with a modicum of sympathy and emotion and an understanding mind, can understand any woman backwards, from the heels of her fatuous little shoes to the crown of her artificially waved head; there’s nothing to understand. But the woman was never yet born of woman who has really understood one single man. And that will be all about women.’
‘My Lord!’ sighed Alec, but not without a touch of admiration. ‘How you can yap! And do you mean to tell me that you really believe all that stuff?’
Roger laughed. ‘Candidly, Alexander, no! It’s the kind of cheap and easy cynical drivel that a fourth-rate writer stuffs his books with in the hope that the undiscerning may mistake him for a third-rate one. But you go too far in the direction of the penny novelette, you know, so I thought it might be a little tonic. Nobody knows better than I that a man without his woman is only half an entity and that a woman (the right woman for him, needless to say) can not only make her man twice the fellow he was before, but she can turn his life, however drab, into something really rather staggeringly wonderful—too wonderful sometimes for a determined bachelor like me to contemplate with equanimity. And now I’m talking like a penny novelette myself.’
‘Then if nobody knows that better than you,’ remarked Alec curiously, ‘why are you still a determined bachelor?’
‘Because the right woman in my case, Alexander,’ Roger replied lightly enough, ‘happens unfortunately to be married to someone else.’
Alec coughed gruffly. With the Englishman’s almost morbid aversion from sentiment in the presence of his own sex, he was unable to frame a suitable reply; but under his silence he was deeply touched. It was the first time that Roger had ever even hinted at any such tragedy in his life, and that it was by way of being a tragedy Alec instinctively knew. In its light a good many things became plain to him which had been before obscure.
‘Still,’ Roger was continuing thoughtfully, ‘there is a modicum of truth at the bottom of that diatribe I treated you to just now. The average woman is not over-burdened with brains, and she does consider herself a bit of a mystery, which of course she isn’t. Anyhow there’s quite enough truth in it to show you why I’ve got to make love to the excellent Saunderson; as no doubt you now quite understand?’
‘No, I’m damned if I do.’
‘I thought you wouldn’t,’ Roger replied, quite cheerfully.
‘Still, apparently you think you’ve got to, so it’s no use me saying anything one way or the other.’
‘Ah, now that’s more like it,’ Roger approved.
They left it, and women, at that.
Before lunch Sheila sought out Roger where he was reading by the fire in the drawing-room.
‘I say, you asked me to get you a photograph of Mrs Bentley yesterday, Roger, and I forgot clean about it. I’ve just been down the town and bought one. Here you are.’
‘Thanks, Sheila,’ Roger said, unwrapping the paper. ‘Are they on sale in the shops, then?’
‘Lord, yes! Everywhere. I only wonder they haven’t got A Present from Wychford printed across the bottom.’
‘Local industries, vamping respectable novelists and murdering husbands. Ah, well! So this is the lady, is she? Let’s study her for a minute.’
With the frank camaraderie of the sexless young animal she still was, Sheila perched herself on the arm of Roger’s chair and leaned on his shoulder, the brim of her little felt hat brushing his cheek as she peered down at the photograph on his knees. They gazed at it in silence. The face was an attractive one, round and full-cheeked in the characteristic Latin fashion, with big, laughing eyes, a mouth full-lipped but not sensual, tilted nose, delicately drawn brows, a high forehead and very dark, almost certainly black hair; she looked, perhaps twenty-two or three when the photograph was taken, and she was smiling merrily.
‘Southern stock, I should say, from the look of her,’ Roger murmured. ‘Up towards Paris you get the Frankish type; this is pure Latin.’
‘She might be Italian almost, mightn’t she?’
‘Not almost, but quite; it’s the same race. Well, Sheila, what do you think? Can you imagine that woman poisoning her husband, or can’t you?’
‘No!’ Sheila said without hesitation. ‘Not for a minute. She’s got too jolly a smile.’
‘Don’t be deceived by her smile; try and visualise her face in repose, or in anger for that matter. She’d have a wicked temper, I’ll promise you that. And she’s as passionate as they make ’em. Imagine her wildly, overpoweringly in love with this Allen man and tied to that little middle-aged rat of a husband of hers—longing with all her passionate heart to break free from him! Can’t you imagine her killing him?’
‘Oh, yes; easily. But that isn’t what you said. I can imagine her killing him in a blind temper. But she’d stick a knife into him or shoot him—not poison him!’
Roger twisted round in his chair and looked up into her face. ‘Miss Purefoy,’ he said, and the usual mocking tone was a little faint in his voice, ‘do you know you’re a young woman of really rather remarkable acuteness?’
‘I’m not a perfect fool,’ returned Miss Purefoy equably, ‘if that’s what you mean. I never thought I was.’
‘How old are you? Eighteen, is it?’
‘Nineteen. Getting on for twenty.’
‘Nineteen. It’s amazing! And you’ve got as much sense in your little finger as five editions of the average boy of nineteen can muster between them—to say nothing of that irritating property of your own sex known as feminine intuition.’
Sheila leaned back against the back of the chair and crossed her knees. That the little tweed skirt she was wearing only projected stiffly an inch or two beyond the upper one, thereby displaying the full length of two slim calves, she either did not know or else was not in the least concerned about; one is inclined to suspect the latter.
‘Go on, Roger,’ she said comfortably ‘I like talking about me. So I’ve got more sense in my little finger than five boys, have I?’
‘You have,’ Roger agreed, ‘at present. And in a year or two you’ll have completely lost every grain of it.’
‘Oh! How do you make that out.’
‘The process is known technically, I believe, as the development of sex-consciousness. But we won’t go into that.’
‘I know a hell of a lot about sex,’ observed Miss Purefoy with candour.
‘I’ve no doubt about that,’ Roger said mildly. ‘And when I want a little instruction in the subject, it’s probably you or somebody like you I should go to. Still, as I said, we won’t go into that for the moment. We were talking about sense. Yes, you’re going to lose every atom you’ve got. But don’t let that distress you. You’ll get it all back again. Possibly after you’ve turned thirty, certainly by the time you’re forty.’
‘Fat lot of use that’s going to be,’ commented Miss Purefoy.
‘Not much, certainly,’ Roger admitted; ‘considering that it’s precisely during the time you want it most that you won’t have it. Still, console yourself, my dear; every other member of your sex passes through the same process. Except perhaps the vast majority.’
‘Now, what are you driving at? Why not the vast majority?’
‘Because they haven’t got any sense at all. Never had, poor dears, and never will have. For further remarks on this subject, apply to Cousin Alexander.’
‘Now then,’ said Miss Purefoy, swinging an unhampered leg, ‘if you’ve finished being clever about women, shall I tell you something about men?’
‘No, please don’t. I know all about them. Let me tell you instead something about Miss Sheila Purefoy.’
‘Rather! Go ahead!’
Roger twisted still further round in his chair. The photograph fell to the floor unheeded.
‘Well, Miss Sheila Purefoy is sitting on the arm of my chair in an attitude which, in any other member of her sex, I should be inclined to call deliberately provocative. In fact, if I were not a person of admirable self-restraint and ascetic disposition, I should probably have been tempted to put my arm round her waist.’
‘Well, carry on if you want to,’ said Miss Purefoy kindly.
Roger closed his hand over the small brown one that was lying in Sheila’s lap. ‘I might even have been tempted to kiss her!’
‘Roger!’ exclaimed Miss Purefoy in high delight. ‘I do believe you’re trying to flirt with me!’
Roger withdrew his hand from Sheila’s. ‘Of course I was!’ he said in pained tones. ‘But that’s not what you ought to have said. Run away and play with your dolls, Sheila. I’ll come back and flirt with you when you’re a big girl.’
‘Oh, no, Roger!’ implored Miss Purefoy pathetically. ‘Do flirt with me now. I’ll be good; I will really. I’ll make goo-goo eyes at you like anything. Please flirt with me, Roger!’
‘Go away, woman!’ returned Roger with dignity. He turned round in his chair again, picked up and opened his book, and began to read with considerable ostentation.
‘Roger!’ said a small voice behind his left shoulder.
‘Go away, woman!’ Roger repeated sternly.
There was a moment’s stillness; then Sheila slowly uncrossed her legs and sat up. ‘All right, Roger,’ she said in a curiously sober voice. ‘I’ll go.’ She bent forward swiftly, kissed his cheek and ran to the door.
Roger’s book fell off his knees and he did not pick it up. He stared at the door through which Sheila had vanished.
‘Oh, hell!’ he said softly.
A few minutes later Alec came in. He had been keeping Dr Purefoy company in the car on his morning round and he was cold.
‘You frowsty blighter!’ he observed pleasantly, pulling a chair up to the fire. ‘Been reading in here all the morning?’
‘Alec,’ said Roger irrelevantly, ‘we were talking about women this morning, weren’t we?’
‘Oh Lord! You’re not going to start on that again, are you?’
‘I think I mentioned, in passing, that they were idiots, didn’t I?’
‘You did!’ agreed Alec with feeling.
‘Well, so they are. Most consummate idiots, poor little devils; and the tragedy of it is, that they can’t help it. But they’re not such consummate idiots, such unutterable, thoughtless, careless, ineffable, altogether damned idiots as men are!’
‘Good Lord!’ Alec exclaimed, genuinely startled. ‘Meaning me?’
‘No, you ass!’ Roger snapped. ‘Meaning me!’
‘Well, I’ll be hanged!’ gasped the astonished Alec. It was the first word of self-disparagement he had ever heard pass his distinguished friend’s lips.
At lunch Mrs Purefoy was seriously perturbed about Sheila; that young lady’s violent and hectic ragging of Alec not only passed all bounds of decorum, but almost those of decency as well. Roger, on the contrary, provided a pleasant contrast with his usual manner in the unwonted restraint and taciturnity of his behaviour.
After lunch he followed Alec upstairs and into his bedroom.
‘Alec, come for a walk somewhere,’ he said shortly.
Alec scrutinised his friend with exaggerated concern. ‘I’m going to ask Jim to have a look at you, Roger,’ he said. ‘You must be ill. At lunch you sat there looking like a dead cow’—Roger’s animal impersonations appeared to be singularly versatile—‘and hardly opened your mouth, and now you want to go for a walk! Let me feel your pulse.’
‘Don’t try to be funnier than nature made you, Alec,’ observed Roger wearily.
‘Well, do cheer up!’ Alec exhorted. ‘Think of tea-time. That ought to buck you up.’
Roger rounded on him in sudden exasperation. ‘Good Lord, you don’t think I’m looking forward to it, do you? The thought of the wretched woman makes me feel ill. I tell you, Alec, I’ve a dam’ good mind to go back with you to Dorsetshire and chuck the whole thing! In fact, if I weren’t almost sure we’re on the right tack, I certainly would.’
Alec stared at him with open mouth. ‘Well I’ll be jiggered!’ he said blankly.