They Found Him Dead Read online

  Miss Allison considered this. ‘It isn’t as bad as you might imagine,’ she said. ‘In fact, it’s really rather a pleasant life, taken all round.’

  Rosemary looked at her in wondering dismay. ‘But the utter boredom!’ she said. ‘I should go mad.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m rather placid, you know,’ replied Miss Allison apologetically.

  ‘I envy you. Cigarette?’

  Miss Allison accepted one.

  ‘It must be great to be able to take what comes, as you do,’ pursued Rosemary. ‘I wish I were like it. But it’s no good blinking facts: I’m not.’

  ‘Well, I don’t say that I should choose to be anyone’s companion,’ said Miss Allison. ‘Only I’m a fool at shorthand, and have no talents.’

  ‘I expect you have really,’ said Rosemary in an absent voice, and with her gaze fixed broodingly upon a spray of heliotrope. ‘I told you I was getting to the end of my tether, didn’t I? Well, I believe I’ve reached the end.’

  There did not seem to be anything to say in answer to this. Miss Allison tried to look sympathetic.

  ‘The ironic part of it is that having me doesn’t make Clement happy,’ said Rosemary. ‘Really he’d be better off without me. I don’t think I’m the sort of person who ought ever to marry. I’m probably a courtesan manquée. You see, I know myself so frightfully well – I think that’s my Russian blood coming out.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had any,’ remarked Miss Allison, mildly interested.

  ‘Good God, yes! My grandfather was a Russian. I say, do you mind if I call you Patricia?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Miss Allison politely.

  ‘And please call me Rosemary. You don’t know how I hate that ghastly “Mrs Kane.” There’s only one thing worse, and that’s “Mrs Clement.”’ She threw away her half-smoked cigarette, and added with a slight smile: ‘I suppose I sound a perfect brute to you? I am, of course. I know that. You mustn’t think I don’t see my own faults. I know I’m selfish, capricious, extravagant, and fatally discontented. And the worst of it is that I’m afraid that’s part of my nature, and even if I go away with Trevor, which seems to me now the only way I can ever be happy, it won’t last.’

  ‘Well, in that case you’d far better stick to your husband,’ said Miss Allison sensibly.

  Rosemary sighed. ‘You don’t understand. I wasn’t born to this humdrum life in a one-eyed town, surrounded by in-laws, with never enough money, and the parlour-maid always giving notice, and all that sort of ghastly sordidness. At least I shouldn’t have that if I went away with Trevor. We should probably live abroad, and anyway he would never make the fatal mistake of expecting me to cope with butcher’s bills. It isn’t that I won’t do it, it’s simply that I can’t. I’m not made like that. I’m the sort of person who has to have money. If Clement were rich – really rich, I mean – I dare say I shouldn’t feel in the least like this. You can say what you like, but money does ease things.’

  ‘Of course, but I was under the impression that you were pretty comfortably off,’ said Miss Allison bluntly.

  Rosemary shrugged her shoulders. ‘It depends what you call comfortable. I dare say lots of women would be perfectly happy with Clement’s income. The trouble is that I’ve got terribly extravagant tastes – I admit it freely, and I wish to God I hadn’t, but the fact remains that I have. That’s my Russian blood again. It’s an absolute curse.’

  ‘Yes, it does seem to be a bit of a pest,’ agreed Miss Allison. ‘All the same, you’ve got any amount of English blood as well. Why not concentrate on that?’

  Rosemary looked at her with a kind of melancholy interest, and said simply: ‘Of course, you’re awfully cold, aren’t you?’

  Miss Allison, realising that to deny this imputation would be a waste of breath, replied: ‘Yes, I’m afraid I am.’

  ‘I think that must be why I like you so much,’ Rosemary mused. ‘We’re so utterly, utterly dissimilar. You’re intensely practical, and I’m hopelessly impractical. You don’t feel things in the frightful way that I do, and you’re not impulsive. I shouldn’t think you’re terribly passionate either, are you?’

  ‘No, no, not at all!’ said Miss Allison.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ said Rosemary darkly. ‘Actually, of course, I suppose the root of the whole trouble is that Clement could never satisfy me emotionally. I don’t know if you can understand at all what I mean? It’s difficult to put it into words.’

  Miss Allison, hoping to avert a more precise explanation, hastened to assure her that she understood perfectly.

  ‘I don’t suppose you do really,’ said Rosemary rather thoughtfully. ‘It’s all so frightfully complex, and you despise complex people, don’t you? I mean, I’ve got that awful faculty of always being able to see the other person’s point of view. I wish I hadn’t, because it makes everything a thousand times more difficult.’

  ‘Does it? I should have thought it made things a lot easier.’

  ‘No, because, don’t you see, one gets torn to bits inside. One just suffers doubly and it doesn’t do any good. I mean, even though I’m in hell myself I can’t help seeing how rotten it is for Clement, and that makes it worse. I’m simply living on my nerves.’

  Miss Allison, who from the start of this conversation had felt herself growing steadily more earthbound, said: ‘I expect you need a change of air. You’ve got things out of focus. You must have – have cared for your husband when you married him, so –’

  ‘That’s just it,’ Rosemary interrupted. ‘I don’t think I did, really.’ She paused to light another cigarette, and said meditatively: ‘I’m not a nice sort of person, you know, but at least I am honest with myself. I thought I could get on with Clement, and I knew it was no use marrying a poor man. I mean, with the best will in the world it just wouldn’t work. I knew he was going to come into money when his cousin died, but I didn’t in the least realise that Cousin Silas would go on living for years and years. Which of course he will. Look at Great-aunt Emily! I don’t know that I actually put it all into words, but subconsciously I must have thought that Clement was going to inherit almost any day. They all say Cousin Silas has a weak heart, you know – not that I believe it.’

  ‘Would money make so much difference to you?’ asked Miss Allison curiously.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Rosemary. ‘I think it would. Not having enough of it makes me impossible to live with. I’m not a good manager. I hate everything to do with domesticity. It isn’t in my line. I can’t help getting into debt, because I see something I know I can’t live without another moment – like this bracelet, for instance – and I buy it without thinking, and then I could kill myself for having done it, because I do see how hateful it is of me.’

  ‘I suppose,’ suggested Miss Allison somewhat dryly, ‘that it doesn’t occur to you that you might send the bracelet back?’

  ‘No, because I have to have pretty things. That’s the Russian in me. C’est plus fort que moi. To do him justice Clement knows that. He doesn’t grudge it me a bit, only it worries him not being able to make both ends meet. Now he says we shall have to move into a smaller house, and do with only two maids. It’s no use pretending to myself that I don’t mind. I know I shouldn’t be able to bear it. I feel stifled enough already.’

  ‘When are you moving out of Red Lodge?’ inquired Miss Allison, with the forlorn hope of leading the conversation into less introspective channels.

  ‘On quarter-day, I suppose. I believe the people who’ve bought it would like to move in sooner, but I don’t really know. We don’t discuss it.’

  This magnificent unconcern made Miss Allison blink. She said practically: ‘But oughtn’t you to be looking for another house? It’ll be rather awkward if you don’t, surely?’

  Rosemary shrugged. ‘What’s the use?’ she said.

  Miss Allison, feeling he