They Found Him Dead Read online

  ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ agreed Betty. ‘I felt the same when we were living in a flat in town. It was simply tiny – literally you couldn’t move in it – and I used to say to Clive that I felt absolutely cooped up.’

  ‘I don’t think actual space matters so much as room for one’s essential ego to expand,’ said Rosemary a trifle loftily.

  ‘Yes, I do utterly agree with you there,’ replied Betty. ‘Atmosphere means a most frightful lot to me too. I mean, I’m awfully sensitive to beauty – and funnily enough, both my children are too, even Peter, who’s only three and a half. I mean, if a picture is out of the straight, I simply can’t rest until I’ve put it right. It seems to kind of hurt me.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Rosemary, with a faint, superior smile, ‘that I shouldn’t even notice a crooked picture.’

  ‘Yes, I’m frightfully absent-minded too. I seem to go into a sort of dream, and I forget simply everything. I often think that’s where my Jennifer gets it from – it’s quite extraordinary the way that child day-dreams! I mean, everybody says so, it isn’t only just me. The children absolutely love coming down to stay with Granny and Grandpa by the sea. They simply live on the sands. Of course it’s just coming home to me, and Clive feels exactly the same, really far more so than with his own people. It’s quite a joke in the family!’

  Rosemary looked faintly disgusted by this sample of the humour prevalent in the Mansell household, and said in a voice of suppressed passion: ‘How odd that you should be glad to come here, while I would give my soul to get away! The sameness – ! Doesn’t it get on your nerves? But perhaps you don’t suffer from your nerves as I do.’

  It was not to be expected that Betty Pemble would allow so insulting a suggestion to pass unchallenged, and she replied warmly that, as a matter of fact, she was One Mass of Nerves. ‘I simply never talk about myself, because I think people who tell you about their ailments are absolutely awful; but actually I’m not frightfully strong. I get the most terrible nervous headaches for one thing. I mean, I could scream with the pain often and often. I think it’s from being terribly highly strung. Both my children are exactly like me, too. Frightfully sensitive, and easily upset. They kind of feel things inside, the same way that I do, and bottle it up.’

  Her mother, who happened to overhear this remark, said robustly: ‘Nonsense! You spoil them, my dear child; that’s all the trouble.’

  Mrs Pemble turned quite pink at this, and at once joined issue with her parent, declaring that Agatha just didn’t understand, and that everyone said she managed her children better than anyone else. As Mrs Mansell appeared to be unconvinced by this universal testimonial, Betty at once appealed to Clive to support her, interrupting him in the middle of a discussion with Jim Kane on the probable outcome of the Surrey v. Gloucester match. By the time Mrs Mansell’s stricture had been repeated to him, and various incidents illustrative of Betty’s skill in handling her progeny recalled to his mind, Joe Mansell, Mrs Kane, and Clement had all become involved in the discussion, Joe advancing as his contribution to it that he liked to see kids enjoying themselves; Clement, with a meaning glance at his wife, deploring his own lack of children, and Mrs Kane stating that in her young days children never had any nerves at all.

  This was an observation calculated to rouse the ire of the most good-tempered mother, and when it was promptly seconded by Mrs Mansell, Betty Pemble, reinforcing her own arguments by the pronouncements of a host of sages somewhat vaguely referred to by her under the general title of People, set about the formidable task of convincing two stalwarts of the Victorian age that they did not understand children’s little minds.

  While this battle raged, Rosemary relapsed into brooding silence, Jim Kane seized the opportunity to engage Miss Allison in conversation, and Joe Mansell moved across the room to where Silas was sitting, and suggested that they might have a word together.

  Silas Kane said: ‘Why, certainly, Joe!’ in his slow, courteous way, and got up out of his chair. ‘We shall be quite private in my study.’

  Joe Mansell followed his host to this apartment, a severe room looking out on to the shrubbery at the side of the house, and remarked that having Betty and the children staying at The Gables brought quite a lot of life into the place.

  ‘Ah!’ said Silas. ‘And are they with you for long?’

  ‘Oh, about a month, I expect. Betty likes the children to have a thorough change, you know. Not but what they tell me it’s very healthy at Golder’s Green – very. Still, it’s not like the sea. Between ourselves, it’s a fortunate thing that we’re able to have them, for things aren’t too good on the Stock Exchange at the moment. The wife and I suspect Clive’s finding things a bit tight – just a bit tight.’

  ‘Ah, I dare say!’ said Silas, sorrowfully surveying a post-war world. ‘The times are very unsettled.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Joe. ‘No stability, wherever you look. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about.’ He tipped the long ash of his cigar into the empty grate and cleared his throat. ‘I don’t know whether you’ve thought any more about Roberts’s proposition?’

  An inflexible expression came into Silas’s chilly grey eyes. He fixed them on his partner’s face and replied: ‘No. I am of the opinion that this is not the moment to be launching out into speculative ventures.’

  ‘I think myself there are excellent prospects. Expansion, Silas! One’s got to move with the times, and there’s no doubt – in my opinion not the slightest doubt – that if we decide to push our nets in Australia, it will not be many years before we shall be amply repaid for the initial capital outlay.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Silas, putting his finger-tips together. ‘You may be right, Joe, but I cannot say that Roberts’s scheme attracts me.’

  ‘Clement is in favour of it,’ offered Joe Mansell.

  ‘Possibly,’ said Silas rather ironically. ‘But I’m thinking that it is not Clement who would have to bear the brunt of that capital outlay you mentioned. I’m sorry to go against you, Joe, but I don’t see my way.’

  Joe Mansell looked at him resentfully, thinking that it was easy for an old bachelor with no one dependent on him to sit tight on his money bags and say that it was not the time to be launching out into speculative ventures. He was mean: that was what was wrong with Silas. Always had been, and his father and grandfather before him. Not but what old Matthew Kane had never been afraid to spend money if he saw a good return, judging from the fortune he’d left. He’d made money hand over fist, had Matthew, the founder of the business. It made Joe Mansell feel more resentful than ever when he looked about him, as now, at the evidence of Kane wealth, and thought of the Kane holding in the business, comparing it with his own share. And now, when there was a chance to expand, he’d have to watch some other firm seize the opportunity, just because Silas was too conservative to consider new ideas, and too well off to think it worth while tapping a fresh market. He’d listen to all the arguments with that damned polite smile of his; he’d agree that there might be something in the scheme; he’d say it was very interesting, no doubt; but when you got down to brass tacks with him, and it came to talking of the capital he’d have to advance to start the show, you’d find yourself up against a brick wall.

  But Silas, watching Joe with veiled eyes, was thinking that it had always been the same tale with him. He’d no judgment: he rushed into things. It was just like him to allow himself to be talked over by a plausible fellow with an American accent. He was lavish with other men’s money, was Joe. Clement, too, of whom he’d thought better, lacked judgment. All he cared for was to make more money to spend on that flimsy wife of his. Well, those weren’t the methods by which the firm had been built up. He said as much, but with his usual civility.

  ‘One must move with the times,’ Joe repeated. ‘I believe you’d get a good return on your money.’

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ Silas a