kept in touch when I was ready to pass on to the next hotel. When I handed in my key to the receptionist, she produced a letter for me.
As soon as I scanned the envelope I knew that the writing was unknown to me. As it had been re-addressed from my publishers’ London address, I took it for fan-mail, thrust it into my pocket and did not read it until I was in my room at the second Cornish hotel. This hotel was, as a building, the most interesting and unusual of all those which I had surveyed. It had begun as a monastery, had been fortified later by one of its abbots, had passed into private hands in the sixteenth century; from then onwards it had been altered and enlarged until the company of which McMaster was a director had taken it over, demolished its most grotesque and unfortunate features and left it in the form which might have been the intention of the original planners, at any rate so far as its outward appearance was concerned. Inside, like all the other McMaster hotels I had visited, it was almost boringly luxurious.
The room allotted to me was in one of the flanking-towers. It was small, but it looked straight out to sea and to the left and right there were magnificent views of the south Cornish coast. It was not until I began to undress to take a pre-dinner bath that I thought of the letter. It was from (of all people) Miss Eglantine Brockworth.
‘I take it very ill,’ the letter ran, ‘that you did not come to see me in hospital before you left Beeches Lawn. I have much to say to you and all is strictly confidential, so I can only tell it to someone I can trust. I observed you closely during the short time we were together and noted that you conducted yourself with propriety and self- restraint and this encourages me to confide in you. Come as soon as you can. The rozzers are rounding us all up and time is short.’
After dinner I rang up Beeches Lawn and got Celia.
‘I’ve had a letter from your aunt,’ I said, ‘sent on by my publishers. She wants me to visit her in hospital, but I hardly know her, so I don’t think it’s quite my scene.’
‘Meaning you hate visiting people in hospital,’ said Celia perceptively. ‘Well, don’t go. She’s a cagey old thing. She asked me to lend her that novel of yours. I thought she wanted to read it, but now I can see it was a way of getting in touch with you through your publisher without our knowing what she had in mind.’
‘Perhaps I ought to go,’ I said. ‘It seems unkind not to, now that she’s asked me. After all, she’s a very old lady.’
‘Please yourself, Corin, but I ought to warn you that they hate her at the hospital and it spills over on to her visitors. I go to see her from a sense of duty, but you don’t have to bother.’
‘I’ll write to her, then,’ I said, ‘and tell her that I’m quite tied up at present, but I’ll visit her as soon as I can.’
9
Chaucer’s Prioress
« ^ »
I was so well up to time that I decided to go and see Aunt Eglantine before I tackled the hotel in Dorset. As that was my last assignment I thought I could expect VIP treatment in the matter of a room so long as I let the manager know, some days beforehand, that he was to expect me. I felt that it was only civil to let Celia know when I proposed to visit her aunt, so I telephoned and asked when the visiting hours were. She replied with cordiality and a warmth which surprised me and invited me to lunch with them, as hospital visits were restricted to the early evenings except for patients on open order.
‘And you must come back for dinner and the night,’ she said. ‘Longer, if you can spare the time.’
‘How about Anthony?’ I asked. She understood me and replied that Anthony would also look forward to seeing me again.
‘We both took your words very much to heart,’ she said. ‘It was good of you to speak out the way you did. We were making fools of ourselves, but it’s perfectly all right now.’
‘Is Rouse bothering you again?’
‘Not for more than a week now; in fact he has only called on us once since you left and that was to ask Anthony whether he was sure he had identified the corpse correctly. We thought it was a very odd question, but, of course, in a police investigation I suppose there has to be no doubt about whose death is being looked into. From what I hear, he’s now busy harassing all the people who were staying or had stayed here at what he calls “the crucial time”. Anyway, we’ll tell you all about it when we see you. When will that be?’
‘Would a week from now be all right?’
I put in another couple of nights at the hotel in Cornwall, completed my amendments to the two Cornish brochures and sent them off to McMaster with a note to tell him that I was on the last lap of my course. Then I went back to my flat for another change of clothes and to deal with a crop of correspondence and stayed there until I went again to Beeches Lawn.
There was no doubt about the genuineness of Anthony’s welcome and Celia kissed me when I arrived, which was very pleasant. By what appeared to be mutual agreement, although it was unspoken, we avoided any reference to Gloria Mundy or Detective-Inspector Rouse and, after a lazy afternoon terminated by a cup of tea, Anthony drove me to the hospital, which was not in the town, and took me up to Aunt Eglantine’s room.
‘I don’t want
‘I’m glad you’ve got a room to yourself,’ I said, when Anthony had left us.
‘The nurses aren’t,’ she said, her plump, purple-veined old face creasing into an impish gleam of amusement. ‘I keep ’em on their toes, you know. Well, what have you come to see me about?’
‘I thought you had called me to your side by white witchcraft, dear Madame Eglantine,’ I said.
‘Ah,’ she said, looking pleased, ‘you remembered that I am named for Chaucer, not Shakespeare.’
‘Yes, but Shakespeare’s “sweet musk roses” seem to partner you well enough.’
