understand.’
‘Very well, Godfrey.’
‘And you too, Mrs Anthony.’
‘O.K., Mr Colston.’
‘On principle,’ said Godfrey.
‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Anthony and disappeared.
Godfrey poured himself a stout whisky and soda. He took from a drawer a box of matches and a razor blade and set to work, carefully splitting the slim length of each match, so that from one box of matches he would eventually make two boxfuls. And while he worked he sipped his drink with satisfaction.
FOUR
The reason Lisa Brooke’s family arranged her post-funeral party at a tea-shop rather than at her small brick studio-house at Hampstead was this. Mrs Pettigrew, her housekeeper, was still in residence there. The family had meanwhile discovered that Lisa had bequeathed most of her fortune to Mrs Pettigrew whom they had long conceived as an unfortunate element in Lisa’s life. They held this idea in the way that people often are obscurely right, though the suspicions that lead up to their conclusions are faulty. Whatever they suspected was the form that Mrs Pettigrew’s influence over Lisa took, they hoped to contest Lisa’s will if possible, on the grounds that Lisa, when she made it, was not in her right mind, and probably under undue influence of Mrs Pettigrew.
The very form of the will, they argued, proved that Lisa had been unbalanced when she made it. The will had not been drafted by a lawyer. It was a mere sheet of writing paper, witnessed by the charwoman and her daughter a year before Lisa’s death, bequeathing her entire fortune ‘to my husband if he survives me and thereafter to my housekeeper, Mabel Pettigrew’. Now Lisa, so her relatives believed, had no husband alive. Old Brooke was long dead, and moreover Lisa had been divorced from him during the Great War. She must have been dotty, they argued, even to mention a husband. The sheet of paper, they insisted, must be invalid. Alarmingly, their lawyers saw nothing invalid on the face of it; Mrs Pettigrew was apparently the sole beneficiary.
Tempest Sidebottome was furious. ‘Ronald and Janet,’ she said, ‘should inherit by rights. We’ll fight it. Lisa would never have mentioned a husband had she been in her right mind. Mrs Pettigrew must have had a hold on Lisa.’
‘Lisa was always liable to say foolish things,’ Ronald Sidebottome remarked.
‘You’re a born obstructionist,’ Tempest said.
Hence, they had felt it cautious to avoid the threshold of Harmony Studio for the time being, and had felt it equally cautious to invite Mrs Pettigrew to the tea-shop.
Dame Lettie was explaining this to Miss Taylor, who had seen much in her long service with Charmian. Dame Lettie had, unawares, in the past few months, slipped into the habit of confiding in Miss Taylor. So many of Lettie’s contemporaries, those who knew her world and its past, had lost their memories or their lives, or were away in private homes in the country; it was handy having Miss Taylor available in London to discuss things with.
‘You see, Taylor,’ said Dame Lettie, ‘they never did like Mrs Pettigrew. Now, Mrs Pettigrew is an admirable woman. I was hoping to persuade her to take on Charmian. But of course with Lisa’s money in prospect, she does not intend to work any longer. She must be over seventy, although of course she says … Well, you see, with Lisa’s money —’She would never do for Charmian,’ said Miss Taylor.
‘Oh really, I feel Charmian needs a firm hand if we are to keep her at home. Otherwise she will have to go into a nursing home. Taylor, you have no conception how irritated poor Godfrey gets. He tries his best.’ Dame Lettie lowered her voice. ‘And then, Taylor, there is the lavatory question. Mrs Anthony can’t be expected to take her every time. As it is, Godfrey attends to the chamber pots in the morning. He isn’t used to it, Taylor, he’s not used to that sort of thing.’
In view of the warm September afternoon Miss Taylor had been put out on the balcony of the Maud Long Ward where she sat with a blanket round her knees.
‘Poor Charmian,’ she said, ‘darling Charmian. As we get older these affairs of the bladder and kidneys do become so important to us. I hope she has a commode by her bedside, you know how difficult it is for old bones to manage a pot.’
‘She has a commode,’ said Dame Lettie. ‘But that doesn’t solve the daytime problem. Now Mrs Pettigrew would have been admirable in that respect. Think what she did for poor Lisa after the first stroke. However, Mrs Pettigrew is out of the question because of this inheritance from Lisa. It was ridiculous of Lisa.’
Miss Taylor looked distressed. ‘It would be tragic,’ she said, ‘for Mrs Pettigrew to go to the Colstons. Charmian would be most unhappy with the woman. You must not think of such a thing, Dame Lettie. You don’t know Mrs Pettigrew as I do.’
Dame Lettie’s yellow-brown eyes focused as upon an exciting scene as she bent close to Miss Taylor. ‘Do you think,’ she inquired, ‘there was anything peculiar, I mean not right, between Mrs Pettigrew and Lisa Brooke?’
Miss Taylor did not pretend not to know what she meant. ‘I cannot say,’ she said, ‘what were the habits of their relationship in former years. I only know this, and you yourself know, Dame Lettie, Mrs Pettigrew was very domineering towards Mrs Brooke in the last eight or nine years. She is not suitable for Charmian.’
‘It is precisely because she is domineering,’ said Lettie, ‘that I wanted her for Charmian. Charmian
‘I would not be sure that Mrs Pettigrew will in fact inherit,’ insisted Miss Taylor.
‘No, Taylor,’ said Dame Lettie, ‘I’m afraid Lisa’s family do not stand a chance. I doubt if their advisers will let them take it to court. There is no case. Lisa was perfectly sane to the day she died. It is true Mrs Pettigrew had an undesirable influence over Lisa, but Lisa was in her right mind to the end.’
‘Yes, it is true Mrs Pettigrew had a hold on her.’
‘I wouldn’t say a hold, I would say an influence. If Lisa was fool enough —’
‘Quite, Dame Lettie. Was Mr Leet at the funeral, by any chance?’
