going to say? “Mr Morgan took more than his share of the intoxicant. All hell broke loose.” Are you going to say that, Miss Winton?’
‘The truth is better than lies.’
‘What’s the matter with saying the dog done it?’
‘You would be far better off out of this flat, Mr Morgan. No good will come of your raving on like that.’
‘You have always respected me, madam. You have never been familiar.’
‘Well –’
‘I might strike them dead. They might enter that door and I might hit them with a hammer.’
Miss Winton began to protest, but Mr Morgan waved a hand at her. He sniffed and said: ‘A caretaker sees a lot, I’ll tell you that. Fellows bringing women in, hypocrisy all over the place. There’s those that slips me a coin, madam, and those that doesn’t bother, and I’m not to know which is the worse. Some of them’s miserable and some’s boozing all night, having sex and laughing their heads off. The Runcas isn’t human in any way whatsoever. The Runcas is saying I was a beast that might offend their eyes.’ Mr Morgan ceased to speak, and glared angrily at Miss Winton.
‘Come now,’ she said.
‘A dirty caretaker, they’ve said, who’s not fit to be alive–’
‘They’ve never said any such thing, Mr Morgan. I’m sure of it.’
‘They should have moved away from the flats if they hated the caretaker. They’re a psychological case.’
There was a silence in the room, while Miss Winton trembled and tried not to show it, aware that Mr Morgan had reached a condition in which he was capable of all he mentioned.
‘What I need,’ he said after a time, speaking more calmly from the sofa on which he was relaxing, ‘is a cold bath.’
‘Mr Morgan,’ said Miss Winton. She thought that he was at last about to go away, down to his basement and his angry wife, in order to immerse his large body in cold water. ‘Mr Morgan, I’m sorry that you should think badly of me –’
‘I’ll have a quick one,’ said Mr Morgan, walking towards the Runcas’ bathroom. ‘Who’ll know the difference?’
‘No,’ cried Miss Winton. ‘No, please, Mr Morgan.’
But with his glass in his hand Mr Morgan entered the bathroom and locked the door.
When the photographers arrived at half past two to prepare their apparatus Mr Morgan was still in the bathroom. Miss Winton waited with Bianca, reassuring her from time to time, repeating that she would not leave until she herself had explained to the Runcas what had happened. The photographers worked silently, moving none of the furniture because they had been told that the furniture was on no account to be displaced.
For an hour and twenty minutes Mr Morgan had been in the bathroom. It was clear to Miss Winton that he had thrown the vase of flowers to the ground deliberately and in anger, and that he had placed the fire closer to the carpet. In his crazy and spiteful condition Miss Winton imagined that he was capable of anything: of drowning himself in the bath maybe, so that the Runcas’ penthouse might sordidly feature in the newspapers. Bianca had been concerned about his continued presence in the bathroom, but Miss Winton had explained that Mr Morgan was simply being unpleasant since he was made like that. ‘It is quite disgraceful,’ she said, well aware that Mr Morgan realized she was the kind of woman who would not report him to the authorities, and was taking advantage of her nature while involving her in his own. She felt that the Runcas were the victims of circumstance, and thought that she might use that very expression when she made her explanation to them. She would speak slowly and quietly, breaking it to them in the end that Mr Morgan was still in the bathroom and had probably fallen asleep. ‘It is not his fault,’ she heard herself saying. ‘We must try to understand.’ And she felt that the Runcas would nod their heads in agreement and would know what to do next.
‘Will they sack me?’ said Bianca, and Miss Winton shook her head, repeating again that nothing that had happened had been Bianca’s fault.
At three o’clock the Runcas arrived. They came together, having met in the hallway downstairs. ‘The flowers came, did they?’ Mr Runca had inquired of his wife in the lift, and she had replied that the flowers had safely been delivered and that she had arranged them to her satisfaction. ‘Good,’ said Mr Runca, and reported to his wife some facts about the morning he had spent.
When they entered their penthouse apartment the Runcas noted the presence of the photographers and the photographers’ apparatus. They saw as well that an elderly woman with a dog was there, standing beside Bianca, that a chair had been moved, that the Afghanistan carpet was stained, and that some flowers had been loosely thrust into a vase. Mr Runca wondered about the latter because his wife had just informed him that she herself had arranged the flowers; Mrs Runca thought that something peculiar was going on. The elderly woman stepped forward to greet them, announcing that her name was Miss Winton, and at that moment a man in a brown overall whom the Runcas recognized as a Mr Morgan, caretaker and odd-job man, entered the room from the direction of the bathroom. He strode towards them and coughed.
‘You had trouble with the pipes,’ said Mr Morgan. He spoke urgently and it seemed to Mr and Mrs Runca that the elderly woman with the dog was affected by his speaking. Her mouth was actually open, as though she had been about to speak herself. Hearing Mr Morgan’s voice, she closed it.
‘What has happened here?’ said Mrs Runca, moving forward from her husband’s side. ‘Has there been an accident?’
‘I was called up to the flat,’ said Mr Morgan, ‘on account of noise in the pipes. Clogged pipes was on the point of bursting, a trouble I’ve been dealing with since eleven-thirty. You’ll discover the bath is full of water. Release it, sir, at five o’clock tonight, and then I think you’ll find everything OK. Your drain-away was out of order.’
Mrs Runca removed her gaze from Mr Morgan’s face and passed it on to the face of Miss Winton and then on to the bowed head of Bianca. Her husband examined the silent photographers, sensing something in the atmosphere. He said to himself that he did not yet know the full story: what, for instance, was this woman with a dog doing there? A bell rang, and Bianca moved automatically from Miss Winton’s side to answer the door. She admitted the woman from the magazine, the woman who was in charge of everything and was to write the article.
