Chapter 13 Chapter Thirteen

They had cold duck for dinner.After the duck, a caramel custard.Mrs Angkatell said this just showed Mrs Medway's sound judgment. Cooking, she says, does offer a wonderful opportunity to develop an appreciation for good food. "We just, as she knows, like caramel custard in moderation. It's kind of vulgar to eat your favorite pudding right after a friend just died. But caramel custard is so soft-slippery, if you See what I mean—keep a little on your own plate, then." She sighed, then said she hoped they had done a good job of getting Gerda back to London. "But at least Henry was quite right to go back with her."

Because Henry insisted on driving Gerda back to Harley Street. "She'll be back here for trial, of course," continued Mrs Angkatell, meditating on the caramel custard. "But naturally, she'd tell the children—they'd probably seen it in the papers, and that there was only one French woman in the house—how agitated they were—acrisedenerfs .), but Henry will take care of her, and I really think Gerda will be all right. She may send for some relatives—sisters, perhaps. Gerda is the kind of person who is sure to have sisters— Three or four, I can envision, perhaps living in Tunbridge Wells."

"What an extraordinary thing you're talking about, Lucy," said Mitch. "Oh, my dear, it's Torquay, if you agree - no, not Torquay. They're at least sixty-five, if they live in Torquay. Eastbourne, perhaps, or St. Leonards .” Mrs Angkatell looked at the last spoonful of caramel custard, seemed to sympathize with it, and put it down very gently without eating. David, who only likes appetizers, looks down gloomily at his empty plate. Mrs. Angkatell got up. "I think we'd all like to go to bed early tonight," she said. "There's so much going on, isn't it? One doesn't know much about such things from reading the papers, how tedious they are. I feel, you You know, it's like walking about fifteen miles. Not actually doing anything, just sitting - but that's also tedious, and one doesn't want to read a book or a newspaper, which seems to be How ruthless. Even though I think the Observer editorial may be good - but not the News of the World. Do you agree with me, David? I like to know the minds of young people, it enables one to relate to Keep in touch with the outside world.”

David said in a gruff voice that he never read the News of the World. "I've always liked to read these papers," said Mrs. Angkatell. "We pretended to have ordered it for the servants, but Gjen was so clever that he never took it after tea. That was One of the funniest newspapers ever written about women sticking their heads in gas stoves - unbelievable numbers!" "Will they do something in the electrified house of the future?" Edward Angkatell asked with a slight smile. "I think they'll make the most of that stuff — and be a lot wiser." "I disagree with you, sir," said Davy, "about the electrified house of the future. There could be common heating, hooked up to central heating. The house of every working class would be thoroughly relieved of labor."

Edward Angkatell hastened to say that he feared it was a subject he was not very good at.David's lips curled contemptuously. Gjeon brought the coffee on a tray, moving a little slower than usual to express his condolences. "Oh, Gagen," said Mrs. Angkatell, "I'm going to pencil the date on them as usual about the eggs. Will you ask Mrs. Medway to take care of them?" "I think you will find, ma'am, that everything has been taken care of very satisfactorily." He cleared his throat. "I have taken care of these things myself." "Oh, thank you, Gazeon."

As Gjen walked out, she murmured: "Yes, Gdjen is wonderful, these servants are very good. And how pitiful they are, because the police are here - it must be terrible for them .By the way, did they leave?" "Police, what do you mean?" Mitch asked. "Yes. Don't they often leave a man standing in the hall? Or maybe he's out in the bushes watching the front door." "Why is he spying on the front door?" "I don't know, but I'm sure they were in the book. And then someone else was murdered in the night." "Oh, Lucy, don't say that," Mickey called.

Mrs Angkatell looked at her strangely. "My dear, I'm so sorry. I'm so stupid! Of course no one else will be murdered. Gerda has gone home - I mean - oh, Henrietta, dear, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that Said." But Henrietta made no answer.She was standing at the round table, staring down at the bridge score she had kept last night. Pulling herself together, she said, "Excuse me, Lucy, what are you talking about?" "I wonder if there are any police left." "Like odds and ends when selling something? I don't think so. They've all gone back to the police precinct and recorded what we said in proper police language."

"What are you looking at, Henrietta?" "I didn't see anything." Henrietta moved to the mantelpiece. "What do you think Veronica Clay is doing tonight?" she asked. A look of panic swept across Mrs. Angkatell's face. "My dear! You don't think she'll come here again, do you? She must have heard by now." "Yes," said Henrietta thoughtfully, "I think she's heard." "It reminded me," Mrs Angkatell said, "that I really had to call the Careys. We can't have them for lunch tomorrow like nothing happened."

She leaves the room. David, who loathed his relatives, muttered that he wanted to look up something in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.The study is a quiet place, he thought. Henrietta went to the French windows, opened them, and stepped out.After a moment of hesitation, Edward followed. He found her standing outside, looking up at the sky.she says: "Not as warm as last night, is it?" The voice was very pleasant, and Edward said, "Yes, obviously cold." She was standing looking at the house.Her eyes scanned the window.Then she turned and faced the woods.He had no idea what was going on in her head.

He walked to the open window. "Better go in, it's cold." She shook her head. "I'm going for a walk, to the pool." "Oh, my dear." He walked quickly towards her. "I'll go with you." "No, thank you, Edward." Her voice pierced the chill in the air sharply. "I want to be alone with my dead love." "Henrietta! My dear—I didn't say anything, but you know how sorry I am." "Sad? For John Crystal's death?" There was still that stinging sharpness in her voice. "I mean—sorry for you, Henrietta. I understand it must be a great shock to you."

"Shock! Oh, but I'm strong. I can take a shock, Edward. Was it a shock to you too? How did you feel when you saw him lying there? Happy? I think so." Yes. You don't like John Crystal." Edward whispered, "He and I—have nothing in common." "How well you handle things! In such a measured way. But actually you do have one thing in common. Me! You both like me, don't you? That alone doesn't make you friends and you're very much at odds .” The moon flickers through a cloud.He was shocked when he suddenly saw her face looking at him.Unconsciously, he always saw Henrietta as a projection of the Henrietta he had known in Answick.To him, she was always a smiling girl with dancing eyes full of eager anticipation.The woman he saw now seemed to be a stranger to him, her eyes were bright but cold, and she was staring at him maliciously. He said seriously: "Henrietta, my dearest, this must be believed—I do sympathize with you—for—for your grief, your loss." "Is it grief?" The question shocked him.When she asked this question, it seemed that she was not asking him, but herself. She said in a low voice, "So fast—it happened so fast. One moment was alive, breathing, and the next—dead—gone—empty. Oh, empty! But here we are, all of us man, eating caramel custard and calling ourselves alive—but John, a man more alive than any of us, is dead. I say that word, you know, over and over To himself all over. Death-death-death-death-death. Soon it meant nothing.--no meaning. It was just a ridiculously tiny word, like a rotting twig The break. Death-death-death-death. It's like a Tangtang drum (Annotation: A kind of drum beat by hand in Africa and India etc.) Isn't it? Beating in the jungle. Death—death—death—death—death—” "Henrietta, shut up! For God's sake, shut up!" She looked at him strangely. "Don't you know how I feel? What do you think? When you take my hand, I shall sit and weep softly, covering my face with a pretty little handkerchief? This Is it just a big shock and I'm going to recover before long? And will you be very considerate to comfort me? You are very considerate, Edward. You are very considerate, but you are so—so out of place." He took a step back.His face hardened.He said in a dry voice: "Yes, I have always understood." She continued bitterly: "What do you think of a whole evening like this? Sitting around, John's dead and no one but me and Gerda cares! You're happy, Davy is embarrassed, Mitch is distressed, and Lucy is graciously admiring Reading the News of the World, and seeing real life in print! Don't you think it all looks like a queer nightmare?" Edward didn't speak.He took a step back, into the shadows. Henrietta looked at him and said: "Tonight—nothing seems real to me, no one else—except John!" Edward said quietly, "I understand...I'm very unreal." "What a cruel man I am, Edward. But I can't help it, I can't help resenting this, John, who was so alive and then died." "And I, a half-dead man, am alive." "That's not what I meant, Edward." "I think you mean that, Henrietta. I think, perhaps, you are right." But as she was talking, she returned thoughtfully to an earlier thought: "But it's not grief, maybe I don't feel grief. Maybe I never will. Yet — I'm willing to grieve for John." Her words seemed magical to him.But he was even more shocked when she suddenly added, in an almost methodical tone, "I have to go to the pool." She walked away quietly and went into the woods. Edward walked stiffly out of the house. Mickey looked up at him as Edward walked through the French windows with blind eyes.His face was ashen, contorted with pain, and looked bloodless. He missed Mitch's low gasps of breathlessness in time. Almost mechanically, he walked to a chair and sat down.Sensing something awaiting him, he said: "The weather is cold." "Are you cold, Edward? Can we—can I—light the fire?" "what?" Mitch took a box of matches from the mantelpiece.She knelt down, lit a match and reached for the stove.She watched Edward carefully from the side.He paid no attention to anything. "It's nice to have a fire, it keeps a person warm," she said. "How cold he looks," she thought, "but it can't be as cold here as it is outside? It's Henrietta! What did she say to him?" "Bring your chair closer, Edward, to the fire." "what?" "Oh, nothing, it's just a stove." She was talking to him now, loudly and slowly, as if to a deaf person. Suddenly, her heart turned over with relief.Edward, the real Edward, was there again, smiling softly at her: "Are you talking to me, Mitch? Excuse me, I'm afraid I was thinking--thinking of something." "Oh, nothing, it's just a stove." The logs were crackling, and some fir-berries were burning with bright, clean flames.Edward looked at them.He said: "It's a beautiful fire." He stretched out his long thin hands, pointing at the flames, feeling relieved from the tension. Mitch said: "We burn fir berries all the time at Ainswick." "I'm still like this. I pick a basket every day and put it by the fireplace." Edward at Ainswick, Mickey half-closed her eyes, imagining.He would sit, she thought, in the study on the west side of the house.There was a magnolia nearly covering one of the windows, and in the afternoon it filled the room with a green-gold radiance.From the other windows you could look out on the lawn, and a tall Wellington tree standing upright like a guardian.On the right is a copper chrysanthemum. Oh, Answick--Answick. She could smell the soft scent in the moist air from the magnolia, which still produced some lovely sweet-scented white flowers with waxy surfaces in September.Pine cones were burning in the stove.There was also a faint musty smell from the books Edward was sure to read.He would sit in that saddle chair, and now and then, perhaps, his eyes would turn from the book to the fire, and he would think, just for a moment, of Henrietta. Mitch moved and asked: "Where's Henrietta?" "She went to the pool." Mitch stared at him. "why?" Her voice, abrupt and deep, woke Edward a little. "My dear Mickey, of course you understand—oh, um—guess it. She and Crystal are very on good terms." "Oh, of course people know that. But I don't understand why she would walk away by moonlight, to where he shot him. It's not like Henrietta at all, she never acts like a melodrama." "Do any of us know what the others are like? Henrietta, for example." Mitch frowned.she says: "After all, Edward, you and I have known her all our lives." "But she has changed." "Not really, I don't think a person changes." "But Henrietta has changed." Mitch looked at him strangely. "More than us, more than you and me?" "Oh, I've stood still, and I know that all too well. And you—" His eyes, suddenly concentrated, looked at her kneeling by the fender of the fire.He seemed to be looking at her from a great distance, seeing the square jaw, the dark eyes, and the resolute mouth.He said: "I wish I could see you more often, Mitch dear." She smiled at him.she says: "I get it. It's not easy to keep in touch these days." There was a noise outside.Edward stood up. "Lucy is right," he said. "It's been a dull day—one's first knowledge of murder. I'm going to bed. Good night." He left the room just as Henrietta entered through the French windows. Mitch confronted her. "What did you do to Edward?" "Edward?" Henrietta was at a loss.Her forehead twisted into a ball.She seemed to be thinking about something far away. "Yes, it's Edward. He looked terrible when he walked in--so cold, what?" "Do something? What do you mean?" "I don't know, stand in a chair, and yell! Get his attention. Don't you see that's the only hope for a man like Edward?" "Edward never cared about anybody but you, Henrietta. He never cared about anybody." "Then he's not smart." She cast a quick glance at Mitch's pale face. "I hurt you, sorry. But I hate Edward tonight." "Hate Edward? You can't." "Oh yes, I can! You don't understand—" "what?" Henrietta said slowly: "He reminded me of a lot of things I wanted to forget." "whats the matter?" "Oh, Ainswick, for example." "Ainswick? You want to forget about Ainswick?" Mitch's tone of voice is unbelievable. "Yes, yes, yes! I had a great time there, but now, I can't bear it, thinking back on those good times. Don't you understand? In a time when you don't know what's coming, when When one says with confidence that everything will be lovely! Some people are wise—they never expect to have a good time. That's me." She said abruptly: "I shall never return to Ainswick." Mitch said slowly: "I doubt it."