Unnatural death
’eard. The Lord makes a few on ’em that way to suit ’Is own purposes, I
suppose. There ain’t no arguin’ with females.”
Lord Peter said “Ah!”
The ale went down in silence.
Mr. Piggin roused himself presently from contemplation to tell a story
of Miss Whittaker in the hunting-field. Mr. Cobling capped this by
another. Lord Peter said “Ah!” Parker then emerged and was introduced,
and Mr. Cobling begged the privilege of standing a round of drinks. This
ritual accomplished, Mr. Piggin begged the company would be his guests
for a third round, and then excused himself on the plea of customers to
attend to.
He went in, and Lord Peter, by skilful and maddeningly slow degrees,
began to work his way back to the history of the Dawson family.
Parker—educated at Barrow-in-Furness grammar school and with his wits
further sharpened in the London police service—endeavoured now and again
to get matters along faster by a brisk question. The result, every time,
was to make Mr. Cobling lose the thread of his remarks and start him off
into a series of interminable side-tracks. Wimsey kicked his friend
viciously on the anklebone to keep him quiet, and with endless patience
worked the conversation back to the main road again.
At the end of an hour or so, Mr. Cobling explained that his wife could
tell them a great deal more about Miss Dawson than what he could, and
invited them to visit his cottage. This invitation being accepted with
alacrity, the party started off, Mr. Cobling explaining to Parker that
he was eighty-seven come next Michaelmas, and hearty still, indeed,
stronger than he appeared, bar the rheumatics that troubled him. “I’m
not saying as I’m not bent,” said Mr. Cobling, “but that’s more the work
of the ’osses. Regular lived with ’osses all my life—”
“Don’t look so fretful, Charles,” murmured Wimsey in his ear, “it must
be the tea at breakfast—it frets the coats of the stomach.”
Mrs. Cobling turned out to be a delightful old lady, exactly like a
dried-up pippin and only two years younger than her husband. She was
entranced at getting an opportunity to talk about her darling Miss
Agatha. Parker, thinking it necessary to put forward some reason for the
inquiry, started on an involved explanation, and was kicked again. To
Mrs. Cobling, nothing could be more natural than that all the world
should be interested in the Dawsons, and she prattled gaily on without
prompting.
She had been in the Dawson family service as a girl—almost born in it as
you might say. Hadn’t her mother been housekeeper to Mr. Henry Dawson,
Miss Agatha’s papa, and to his father before him? She herself had gone
to the big house as stillroom maid when she wasn’t but fifteen. That was
when Miss Harriet was only three years old—her as afterwards married Mr.
James Whittaker. Yes, and she’d been there when the rest of the family
was born. Mr. Stephen—him as should have been the heir—ah, dear! only
the trouble came and that killed his poor father and there was nothing
left. Yes, a sad business that was. Poor Mr. Henry speculated with
something—Mrs. Cobling wasn’t clear what, but it was all very wicked and
happened in London where there were so many wicked people—and the long
and the short was, he lost it all, poor gentleman, and never held up his
head again. Only fifty-four he was when he died; such a fine upright
gentleman with a pleasant word for everybody. And his wife didn’t live
long after him, poor lamb. She was a Frenchwoman and a sweet lady, but
she was very lonely in England, having no family and her two sisters
walled up alive in one of them dreadful Romish Convents.
“And what did Mr. Stephen do when the money went?” asked Wimsey.
“Him? Oh, he went into business—a strange thing that did seem, though I
have heard tell as old Barnabas Dawson, Mr. Henry’s grandfather that
was, was nought but a grocer or something of that—and they do say, don’t
they, that from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves is three generations?
Still, it was very hard on Mr. Stephen, as had always been brought up to
have everything of the best. And engaged to be married to a beautiful
lady, too, and a very rich heiress. But it was all for the best, for
when she heard Mr. Stephen was a poor man after all, she threw him over,
and that showed she had no heart in her at all. Mr. Stephen never
married till he was over forty, and then it was a lady with no family at
all—not lawful, that is, though she was a dear, sweet girl and made Mr.
Stephen a most splendid wife—she did indeed. And Mr. John, he was their
only son. They thought the world of him. It was a terrible day when the
news came that he was killed in the War. A cruel business that was, sir,
wasn’t it?—and nobody the better for it as I can see, but all these
shocking hard taxes, and the price of everything gone up so, and so many
out of work.”
“So he was killed? That must have been a terrible grief to his parents.”
“Yes, sir, terrible. Oh, it was an awful thing altogether, sir, for poor
Mr. Stephen, as had had so much trouble all his life, he went out of his
poor mind and shot hisself. Out of his mind he must have been, sir, to
do it—and what was more dreadful still, he shot his dear lady as well.
You may remember it, sir. There was pieces in the paper about it.”
“I seem to have some vague recollection of it,” said Peter, quite
untruthfully, but anxious not to seem to belittle the local tragedy.
“And young John—he wasn’t married, I suppose.”
“No, sir. That was very sad, too. He was engaged to a young lady—a nurse
in one of the English hospitals, as we understood, and he was hoping to
get back and be married to her on his next leave. Everything did seem to
go all wrong together them terrible years.”
The old lady sighed, and wiped her eyes.
“Mr. Stephen was the only son, then?”
“Well, not exactly, sir. There was the darling twins. Such pretty
children, but they only lived two days. They come four years after Miss
Harriet—her as married Mr. James Whittaker.”
“Yes, of course. That was how the families became connected.”
“Yes, sir. Miss Agatha and Miss Harriet and Miss Clara Whittaker was all
at the same school together, and Mrs. Whittaker asked the two young
ladies to go and spend their holidays with Miss Clara, and that was when
Mr. James fell in love with Miss Harriet. She wasn’t as pretty as Miss
Agatha, to my thinking, but she was livelier and quicker—and then, of
course, Miss Agatha was never one for flirting and foolishness. Often
she used to say to me, ‘Betty,’ she said, ‘I mean to be an old maid and
so does Miss Clara, and we’re going to live together and be ever so
happy, without any stupid, tiresome gentlemen.’ And so it turned out,
sir, as you know, for Miss Agatha, for all she was so quiet, was very
determined. Once she’d said a thing, you couldn’t turn her from it—not
with reasons, nor with threats, nor with coaxings—nothing! Many’s the
time I’ve tried when she was a child—for I used to give a little help in
the nursery sometimes, sir. You might drive her into a temper or into
the sulks, but you couldn’t make her change her little mind, even then.”
There came to Wimsey’s mind the picture of the stricken, helpless old
woman, holding to her own way in spite of her lawyer’s reasoning and her
niece’s subterfuge. A remarkable old lady, certainly, in her way.
“I suppose the Dawson family has practically died out, then,” he said.
“Oh, yes, sir. There’s only Miss Mary now—and she’s a Whittaker, of
course. She is Miss Harriet’s grand-daughter, Mr. Charles Whittaker’s
only child. She was left all alone, too, when she went to live with Miss
Dawson. Mr. Charles and his wife was killed in one of these dreadful
motors—dear, dear—it seemed we was fated to have nothing but one tragedy
after another. Just to think of Ben and me outliving them all.”
“Cheer up, Mother,” said Ben, laying his hand on hers. “The Lord have
been wonderful good to us.”
“That He have. Three sons we have, sir, and two daughters, and fourteen
grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Maybe you’d like to see
their pictures, sir.”
Lord Peter said he should like to very much, and Parker made
confirmatory noises. The life-histories of all the children and
descendants were detailed at suitable length. Whenever a pause seemed
discernible, Parker would mutter hopefully in Wimsey’s car, “How about
Cousin Hallelujah?” but before a question could be put, the interminable
family chronicle was resumed.
“And for God’s sake, Charles,” whispered Peter, savagely, when Mrs.
Cobling had risen to hunt for the shawl which Grandson William had sent
home from the Dardanelles, “don’t keep saying Hallelujah at me! I’m not
a revival meeting.”
The shawl being duly admired, the conversation turned upon foreign
parts, natives and black people generally, following on which, Lord
Peter added carelessly:
“By the way, hasn’t the Dawson family got some sort of connections in
those foreign countries, somewhere?”
Well, yes, said Mrs. Cobling, in rather a shocked tone. There had been
Mr. Paul, Mr. Henry’s brother. But he was not mentioned much. He had
been a terrible shock to his family. In fact—a gasp here, and a lowering
of the voice—he had _turned Papist_ and become—a monk! (Had he become a
murderer, apparently, he could hardly have done worse.) Mr. Henry had
always blamed himself very much in the matter.
“How was it his fault?”
“Well, of course, Mr. Henry’s wife—my dear mistress, you see, sir—she
was French, as I told you, and of course, _she_ was a Papist. Being
brought up that way, she wouldn’t know any better, naturally, and she
was very young when she was married. But Mr. Henry soon taught her to be
a Christian, and she put away her idolatrous ideas and went to the
parish church. But Mr. Paul, _he_ fell in love with one of her sisters,
and the sister had been vowed to religion, as they called it, and had
shut herself up in a nunnery.” And then Mr. Paul had broken his heart
and “gone over” to the Scarlet Woman and—again the pause and the
hush—become a monk. A terrible to-do it made. And he’d lived to be a
very old man, and for all Mrs. Cobling knew was living yet, still in the
error of his ways.
“If he’s alive,” murmured Parker, “he’s probably the real heir. He’d be
Agatha Dawson’s uncle and her nearest relation.”
Wimsey frowned and returned to the charge.
“Well, it couldn’t have been Mr. Paul I had in mind,” he said, “because
this sort of relation of Miss Agatha Dawson’s that I heard about was a
real foreigner—in fact, a very dark-complexioned man—almost a black man
or so I was told.”
“Black?” cried the old lady—“oh, no, sir—that couldn’t be. Unless—dear
Lord a’ mercy, it couldn’t be that, surely! Ben, do you think it could
be that?—Old Simon, you know?”
Ben shook his head. “I never heard tell much about him.”
“Nor nobody did,” replied Mrs. Cobling, energetically. “He was a long
way back, but they had tales of him in the family. ‘Wicked Simon,’ they
called him. He sailed away to the Indies, many years ago, and nobody
knew what became of him. Wouldn’t it be a queer thing, like, if he was
to have married a black wife out in them parts, and this was his—oh,
dear—his grandson it ’ud have to be, if not his great-grandson, for he
was Mr. Henry’s uncle, and that’s a long time ago.”
This was disappointing. A grandson of “old Simon’s” would surely be too
distant a relative to dispute Mary Whittaker’s title. However:
“That’s very interesting,” said Wimsey. “Was it the East Indies or the
West Indies he went to, I wonder?”
Mrs. Cobling didn’t know, but she believed it was something to do with
America.
“It’s a pity as Mr. Probyn ain’t in England any longer. He could have
told you more about the family than what I can. But he retired last year
and went away to Italy or some such place.”
“Who was he?”