A Night of Errors Read online

  Mrs Gollifer sighed. Unfortunately there was no possibility of that.

  The little silver clock on the mantelpiece struck half past nine. Lady Dromio looked at it and then at the empty hearth beneath. ‘I had rather hoped,’ she said, ‘that we might have a fire. But Swindle advised against it. And no doubt it is rather warm.’

  Kate Dromio, Mrs Gollifer thought, increasingly liked conversation of a comfortable inanity. She liked the convention that life was comfortable and unexacting – not merely on its surfaces, but basically as well. That woman in Jane Austen – or was it the Brontës? Mrs Gollifer wondered – who just sat on a sofa with a pug: Kate liked to suggest that for her life was like that. But it was not, nor probably would Kate have found it tolerable if it were so. For in her old friend there was something lurking and unassuaged, something that Mrs Gollifer by no means understood.

  ‘Then for once Swindle was right in his notion of what would be comfortable.’ Lucy had opened a pack of patience cards and now came to sit down beside Mrs Gollifer. ‘It’s one of those close nights that seem to go on getting warmer until midnight. And I’m sure there is only one fire in the house, Swindle’s own. He sits before it, you know, all the year round, drinking port. If we ever see the end of Swindle, which I doubt, it will surely be as the result of spontaneous combustion. He is much too wary just to tumble into the fire–’

  ‘Good gracious!’ Lady Dromio was alarmed. ‘Swindle is getting rather old. And they say he walks about in his sleep. It would be dreadful if–’

  ‘No,’ Lucy shook her head. ‘It will be spontaneous combustion like the man who drank too much gin.’

  ‘I don’t think I heard of him. No doubt it comes of not reading the newspapers carefully. Such odd things, Mary dear, Lucy knows about, clever girl. Not that I don’t do a great deal of reading myself, particularly when Oliver is away and we hardly entertain at all. Or only as we are doing tonight, which is the nicest way, I think. Mary, I wonder if you have read a novel, a most unusual novel, about a big–’ Lady Dromio paused, frowned and looked about her. Apparently the book itself was necessary if she was to be quite sure of what it was that was big in it. ‘Lucy, can I possibly have mislaid that absorbing story? The one old Mrs Rundle recommended to Mr Greengrave’s niece on that dreadful ship. They had storms all the way, you know. And although Mr Greengrave himself – not that he was on board – is an excellent sailor – indeed, he was in the navy as a chaplain, I believe, when he was a young man…or was that old Canon Newton at Sherris Magna?’ Lady Dromio paused, herself rather at sea. ‘Well, Mr Greengrave has a niece–’

  ‘Talking of ships,’ said Mrs Gollifer, ‘is there any news of Oliver returning? When I drove up and saw Sebastian on the terrace, I thought for a moment that it was he. I was quite disappointed.’

  ‘Were you?’ Lady Dromio was surprised and vague. ‘But of course. Oliver has really been away for quite a long time.’

  Mrs Gollifer was silent. This was surely a company far too intimate for such ghastly insincerities. Or it ought to be that. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive. Indeed the web can eventually become a noose. Or an ulcer. Or a secret wound through which one may be bled to death… There were only the three of them in the room and Sebastian was unlikely for some time to abandon such port as Swindle resigned to him. Mrs Gollifer stubbed out her cigarette, and knew as she did so that a resolve had formed in her mind like a suddenly precipitated crystal. ‘Lucy–’ she began.

  Lady Dromio dropped her embroidery.

  Down below, Swindle stoked his own fire. He had locked the door – a very definite indication that the household was to expect no further directions or services from him that night. He poured himself out a glass of port and put on his carpet slippers. But his expression held no suggestion of a desire for slumber. Perhaps he was by nature nocturnal; certainly his complexion suggested a creature habituated to emerge from a hole after dark.

  And yet Swindle in his solitude was looking rather more human than usual. Signs of doubt, of uneasiness, of an obscure internal debate were apparent in him. He sat down at his table and brought out a sheaf of papers from a drawer. These he fell to studying with concentration, occasionally making a pencil jotting in a notebook at his side. He shook his head peevishly, dolefully; at the same time the gesture suggested resolution. He made more jottings, sifted the papers with care into three piles, produced a column of figures relating to each. They represented (an observer might have guessed) bills of various degrees of urgency. Swindle turned to the drawer again and brought out three rubber bands. Whatever were the affairs in hand it was evident that he had no power to achieve more than a preliminary ordering of them now.

  Again Swindle looked uneasy. He pushed away the papers, hesitated and looked round his room as if to make quite sure that he was unobserved. He drew from the pocket of his ancient tail-coat an orange-coloured envelope and with fumbling fingers drew out the telegram inside. He read this through, frowned in indignation or protest, thrust it away again, eased himself into his armchair and drew the glass of port to his side. The fire was blazing, the little room stifling, everything invited to sleep. But Swindle sat wide-eyed, staring at the toes of his slippers. The house was silent. The only sound was the ticking of a watch and this watch Swindle presently produced and eyed with hostility – a handsome half-hunter on a gold chain, such as elderly and valued retainers sometimes receive from their employers. He shook his head once more, muttered some protest and rose painfully from his chair. He reached for shoes, thought better of this, and in his old slippers shuffled noiselessly to the door. Softly, he turned the lock, cautiously he put his head out and looked to right and left. Reassured, he stepped into the corridor and made his way silently, like a burglar, to the service stairs.

  The time by the half-hunter had been ten minutes to ten.

  Mr Greengrave had dined with old Canon Newton at Sherris Magna and now he was on his way home. If he had excused himself a little earlier than his host would have wished – perhaps, a shade earlier than was civil, indeed – it was the innate caution of his nature that was responsible. The Canon was a lover of good talk, and in an age in which it is unusual to be able to converse at all this accomplishment had made his society much prized throughout the diocese. But the Canon was also a lover of good wine, and he was equally esteemed because of this. The Bishop and he, it was averred by the irreverent, bartered spiritual for spirituous advice; there were few considerable cellars in the county in the replenishing of which Canon Newton did not have a say; he even enjoyed the unstinted confidence and regard of Mr Swindle of Sherris Hall.

  It would be cruel to boil this down to the statement that Canon Newton drank. Nevertheless this was how Mr Greengrave secretly regarded the matter. Mr Greengrave had no head for liquor. It quickly made him argumentative rather than merely talkative, and this was an embarrassment when one’s host expected – as Canon Newton did – an unfaltering standard of polished Landorian prose. And if wine made Mr Greengrave argumentative (so that he was uneasily aware, as he talked, of the image of some rather quarrelsome and quite unrefined person emerging volubly from a pub) it by no means left him there. The painful fact was that even Canon Newton’s good wine rapidly produced the sort of consequences exploited in comic papers – in those less seemly comic papers that do not ban drunkenness as a staple of humour. Upon Mr Greengrave after a party the tangible and visible surfaces of life were liable alarmingly to advance and recede, tilt and rock. And although rats, mice and dogs invariably, so far as he could remember, retained the hues with which Providence had endowed them, their number was liable to become variable and uncertain, much as if they had ceased to be the creatures of God’s hand and become symbols of the higher physics. All this Mr Greengrave disliked, and particularly when he had to drive himself through the little watering-place of Sherris Magna on the way home to his country rectory.

  So he had left early and Canon Newton, after amiable farewells, had returned to the gold
en cadences with which he was entertaining his other guests.

  The night was pleasant, although a shade close and surprisingly warm. Mr Greengrave let down the hood of his lumbering old car and decided that fifteen miles an hour represented what it would be judicious to attempt. He also decided that although much attention must be given to the road it would be advantageous to choose some substantial but not too difficult theme for meditation. This, he felt, would assist him to maintain the higher brain centres in operation and minimize the risk of an untimely nap. He might, for instance, plan out the heads of a sermon for the Sunday after next. There had been some heavy drinking at the cricket club; he might well choose a text which would enable him to take glancing notice of that. But then again an orchard had been robbed and, even more serious, a good deal of poultry had been disappearing in Sherris Parva. Only two days ago Mrs Marple had missed two Khaki Campbells. And although it was likely enough that toughs from Sherris Magna were responsible Mr Greengrave had by no means liked the look of young Ted Morrow when the matter bad been mentioned in his presence that very morning…

  Communing thus with himself, Mr Greengrave drove sedately on his way. The landscape, he noted with satisfaction, was behaving tolerably well. He looked up at the moon – a trifle apprehensively, recalling Shakespeare’s words:

  My Lord, they say five moons were seen tonight…

  But the heavens too were behaving well; the mild luminary shone single in its element; nor did certain stars shoot madly from their spheres, a disconcerting phenomenon which Mr Greengrave had on certain previous occasions observed.

  Mr Greengrave was so pleased by this that he forgot about his sermon – whether on pilfering or drunkenness – and began to sing. Mr Greengrave sang loudly. The words were those of ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers,’ so that nothing but edification could have resulted had he at this time been encountered by any of his flock. Nevertheless under the inspiriting influence of this war-song Mr Greengrave’s foot pressed imperceptibly down on the accelerator, and fifteen miles an hour was very soon exchanged for thirty. He pulled himself up with a jerk. Jollity, even of a robustly clerical sort, plainly would not do. A more chastening – nay, depressing – theme had better be sought. It was thus that Mr Greengrave, with results unpredictable at this juncture although already imminent, turned his thoughts to the people at Sherris Hall.

  From the point of view of pastoral care the view in that quarter was commonly bleak enough. But even here Mr Greengrave, thanks to Canon Newton’s vintages, found cause for mild satisfaction now. Lucy Dromio, Lady Dromio’s adopted daughter, was a young person open to much pastoral censure, and he had himself spoken to her with some severity that afternoon. And Lucy’s reply had been to say something flattering – flattering because obscurely true. Mr Greengrave liked finding out about people. Well, there was perhaps nothing particularly gratifying to self-esteem in a diagnosis such as that. But Mr Greengrave – Lucy had added – had the sort of brain that pieces people together and sees what a thing is all about…

  Now, in a way this was outrageously untrue. Mr Greengrave was not really at all clever (he had only to think of himself in colloquy with Canon Newton to realize this) and therefore it was impossible that he should have the marked powers of analysis and synthesis that such an opinion suggested. But in a way Lucy was right – because often Mr Greengrave did successfully piece people together and see what a thing was about; only he did this in a substantially intuitive way. From time to time he would see, and in doing so would leave more abstractly perceptive people standing.

  He had seen that in the Sherris hinterland some enigma of mystery reposed. And Lucy saw this too – or perhaps Lucy had less an intuition than some positive if fragmentary knowledge. It was a bond between them. And she had actually asked him to investigate – to tackle some ill-defined problem of family relationship troubling the awareness of each. That in a situation so nebulous the two of them might have quite different notions of where the mystery lay was an intellectual conception which did not occur to Mr Greengrave. Now, driving carefully through the deepening summer dusk, he was about to let his mind play upon the Dromios with whatever result might come. But this never happened. For, quite suddenly he saw.

  Really saw. For it was a revelation as purely visual as it was spontaneous, and it was won sheerly from the void, without preparation or labour, like some line that precipitates a great poem. And this vivid and revealing appearance, astounding in itself, of course rendered much more disconcerting what was to happen to Mr Greengrave a few minutes later.

  He continued to see the winding road to Sherris Parva, familiar in the lengthening shadows. But floating upon this he saw two faces – faces which were also familiar enough, but which had the superior reality of images compelled upon one by powerful forces deep in the mind. The two faces floated before him more or less at opposite ends of the windscreen. And then they coalesced, drifting together rather like complementary pictures viewed through a stereoscope. And at the moment of their coming together Mr Greengrave exclaimed aloud. ‘Well, I’m damned!’ he said.

  Instantly the vision vanished. Mr Greengrave was astounded and shocked at what he had seen, but he was perhaps even more distressed at what he had said. What would Canon Newton think of an ejaculation so little pious – so profane, indeed? And it was the more offensive in that what was untrue of himself had been revealed to him as a painful approximation to plain fact in the case of certain other persons. People among whom such things happened must surely feel like lost souls… Mr Greengrave drew into the side of the road and stopped his car. The thing needed thinking out. Moreover the shock of his discovery – for he never doubted that it was that – had upset whatever precarious control he had achieved over the physical world about him. The ditch was in motion; it was behaving less like a ditch than a reptile. The poplars undulated like great dark flames. The road flowed as if it were water.

  Mr Greengrave closed his eyes and laid his head on his arms, the better to cope with the situation which had started upon him. His discovery, he knew, imposed some duty, but for the moment he could by no means discern what that duty was. He was not a policeman, nor was he yet assured that there was matter in which the law would interest itself. For instance, questions of inheritance might be involved. Supposing there had been a marriage –

  At this moment Mr Greengrave’s interior counsels were interrupted by the sound of an approaching motor car. He looked up, turned round and saw that it was about to overtake him. Twilight had barely fallen; the moon was still mere tissue-paper in the sky; at close range visibility was scarcely affected. Nevertheless the shades of evening lent something insubstantial to the scene, and would have done so even were that scene not faintly gyrating under the influence of Canon Newton’s wines. The car approached. And once more Mr Greengrave saw two faces. Once more they were familiar. But this time they did not drift together; rather it was as if by some monstrous alchemy they had been torn apart. Moreover this was no vision, no mere retinal image. To what he now saw something in the external world did after some fashion correspond.

  The car passed on. To Mr Greengrave what had happened was at once clear and humiliating. There was still only one moon in the sky and he himself (for he investigated this) had four fingers and a thumb on each hand. Nevertheless, and like any bibulous person in a vulgar print –

  And then Mr Greengrave wondered. Did not this plain betrayal by the senses cast very substantial doubt upon the reliability of that earlier and purely inward vision?

  At least it would be necessary to go carefully. In every sense to go carefully, thought Mr Greengrave. And he drove on in third gear.

  4

  There was silence among the three ladies in the drawing-room. It had lasted for some time. Lucy played patience, her head bent as if she were listening to a whispered message from the cards. Mrs Gollifer was lost in reverie. Lady Dromio stirred uneasily, rose and walked to the window. ‘It must be put an end to somehow,’ she said.

 
Mrs Gollifer laughed. Beneath the standard lamp where she sat she looked old and ill. ‘The evening?’ she asked. ‘It is true that I must certainly be getting home.’

  ‘Perhaps Lucy would like the drive and a tramp home by moonlight. It is quite her sort of thing.’ Lady Dromio had tossed her embroidery into a corner, much as if whatever purpose it had served was over. ‘Lucy, would you care–?’

  ‘It is so complicated.’ Lucy spoke quietly, but both ladies turned to her at once. They looked hopeful, relieved.

  ‘So many points to consider. One doesn’t know where to begin.’

  Lady Dromio nodded. ‘If only Oliver–’

  ‘For instance, here are two five of Spades, and I know what is under each.’

  Mrs Gollifer sank back in her chair. Lady Dromio uttered a sound which might have been merely exasperation, or might have been desperation of a very different quality. Lucy glanced briefly at each of them in turn. Her face was pale and expressionless. ‘I wonder why Sebastian didn’t come in,’ she said. ‘Possibly he might be able to help.’

  Lady Dromio turned round. ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘Since he is a capital bridge player and must have an eye for cards in general.’

  ‘Really, Lucy, this is most–’

  ‘Unfilial, mama? Queen on King and here is the Knave.’

  Lady Dromio was silent. She may have been reflecting on the sundry small ways in which she had found an obscure nervous release in plaguing her adopted daughter in former years. But now she turned back to the window and with an agitated gesture threw it open. ‘It is insufferably close tonight. There must be a storm coming.’

  ‘Assuredly there is that.’ And Lucy nodded. ‘It is the wind and the rain for all of us, I am afraid. As for Oliver’ – she paused – ‘I think it is likely that I shall kill him.’