Memento Mori

‘Oh, Guy Leet was there. I shouldn’t think he will last long. Rheumatoid arthritis with complications.’ Dame Lettie recalled, as she spoke, that rheumatoid arthritis was one of Miss Taylor’s afflictions, but, she thought, after all she must face the facts. ‘Very advanced case,’ said Dame Lettie, ‘he was managing with great difficulty on two sticks.’

‘It is like wartime,’ Miss Taylor remarked.

‘What do you say?’

‘Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.’

She is wandering in her mind and becoming morbid, thought Dame Lettie.

‘Or suffering from war nerves,’ Miss Taylor said.

Dame Lettie was annoyed, because she had intended to gain some advice from Miss Taylor.

‘Come now, Taylor,’ she said. ‘You are talking like Charmian.’

‘I must,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘have caught a lot of her ways of thought and speech.’

‘Taylor,’ Lettie said, ‘I want to ask your advice.’ She looked at the other woman to see if she was alert. ‘Four months ago,’ she said, ‘I began to receive anonymous telephone calls from a man. I have been receiving them ever since. On one occasion when I was staying with Godfrey, the man, who must have traced me there, gave a message for me to Godfrey.’

‘What does he say?’ said Miss Taylor.

Dame Lettie leant to Miss Taylor’s ear and, in a low tone, informed her.

‘Have you told the police?’

‘Of course we have told the police. They are useless. Godfrey had an interview with them too. Useless. They seem to think we are making it up.’

‘You will have thought of consulting Chief Inspector Mortimer who was such a fan of Charmian’s?’

‘Of course I have not consulted Mortimer. Mortimer is retired, he is close on seventy. Time passes, you know. You are living in the past, Taylor.’

‘I only thought,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘that Inspector Mortimer might act privately. He might at least be helpful in some way. He always struck me as a most unusual —’

‘Mortimer is out of the question. We want a young, active detective on the job. There is a dangerous lunatic at large. I know not how many people besides myself are endangered.’

‘I should not answer the telephone, Dame Lettie, if I were you.’

‘My dear Taylor, one can’t be cut off perpetually. I still have my Homes to consider, I am not entirely a back number, Taylor. One must be on the phone. But I confess, I am feeling the strain. Imagine for yourself every time one answers the telephone. One never knows if one is going to hear that distressing sentence. It is distressing.’

‘Remember you must die,’ said Miss Taylor.

‘Hush,’ said Dame Lettie, looking warily over her shoulder.

‘Can you not ignore it, Dame Lettie?’

‘No, I can not. I have tried, but it troubles me deeply. It is a troublesome remark.’

‘Perhaps you might obey it,’ said Miss Taylor.

‘What’s that you say?’

‘You might, perhaps, try to remember you must die.’

She is wandering again, thought Lettie. ‘Taylor,’ she said, ‘I do not wish to be advised how to think. What I hoped you could suggest is some way of apprehending the criminal, for I see that I must take matters into my own hands. Do you understand telephone wires? Can you follow the system of calls made from private telephone boxes?’

‘It’s difficult,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘for people of advanced years to start remembering they must die. It is best to form the habit while young. I shall think of some plan, Dame Lettie, for tracing the man. I did once know something about the telephone system, I will try to recall what I knew.’

‘I must go.’ Lettie rose, and added, ‘I expect you are keeping pretty well, Taylor?’

‘We have a new ward sister here,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘She is not so pleasant as the last. I have no complaint personally, but some of my companions are inclined to be touchy, to imagine things.’

Lettie cast her eye along the sunny veranda of the Maud Long Ward where a row of old women sat out in their chairs.

‘They are fortunate,’ said Dame Lettie and uttered a sigh.

‘I know it,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘But they are discontented and afraid.’

‘Afraid of what?’

‘The sister in charge,’ said Miss Taylor.

‘But what’s wrong with her?’

‘Nothing,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘except that she is afraid of these old people.’

‘She is afraid? I thought you said the patients were afraid of