Here Lies Gloria Mundy

‘The voice that breathed o’er Eden was the voice of the serpent,’ said Anthony, red in the face. ‘Get lost, Corin! Drop dead, if you prefer it! One more crack out of you in criticism of my wife and I’ll knock you silly.’

‘Oh, Anthony!’ said Celia. Before she could add, ‘My hero!’ I slid out. My bags were already packed. I left without formal leave-taking, reflecting with some self-satisfaction that Dame Beatrice herself would have been the first to congratulate me on my handling of a domestic situation which, if Celia had been kinder and wiser, need never have arisen between her and Anthony.

I went back to my flat, left some laundry and a note for the woman who ‘did’ for me, re-packed and telephoned the first of the hotels to let the manager know that I should be along early on the following day. They had all been warned by McMaster that I could give only short notice of my visits, so that nobody could say exactly when these would be. The result was that I had been offered various types of accommodation, from an attic room in the staff quarters to a room in an annexe, to a luxurious suite on the ground floor which happened to be vacant at the time of my arrival. I had accepted what was offered without comment, regarding it as the luck of the draw so far as bedrooms were concerned. The food, drink and other amenities had always been beyond praise, so I had nothing to complain about.

The first of the Cornish hotels had been purchased from an old-established family which could no longer afford to keep it up, even by turning it into a tourist attraction. It was somewhat forbidding from the outward view, a very plain-looking Georgian house whose south façade was relieved from otherwise uncompromising austerity by a very fine pillared portico and the addition on either side of twin pavilions, light, graceful and charming.

I sub-edited the brochure for this house, finding little to add or alter, and telephoned McMaster, with whom I kept in touch when I was ready to pass on to the next hotel. When I handed in my key to the receptionist, she produced a letter for me.

As soon as I scanned the envelope I knew that the writing was unknown to me. As it had been re-addressed from my publishers’ London address, I took it for fan-mail, thrust it into my pocket and did not read it until I was in my room at the second Cornish hotel. This hotel was, as a building, the most interesting and unusual of all those which I had surveyed. It had begun as a monastery, had been fortified later by one of its abbots, had passed into private hands in the sixteenth century; from then onwards it had been altered and enlarged until the company of which McMaster was a director had taken it over, demolished its most grotesque and unfortunate features and left it in the form which might have been the intention of the original planners, at any rate so far as its outward appearance was concerned. Inside, like all the other McMaster hotels I had visited, it was almost boringly luxurious.

The room allotted to me was in one of the flanking-towers. It was small, but it looked straight out to sea and to the left and right there were magnificent views of the south Cornish coast. It was not until I began to undress to take a pre-dinner bath that I thought of the letter. It was from (of all people) Miss Eglantine Brockworth.

‘I take it very ill,’ the letter ran, ‘that you did not come to see me in hospital before you left Beeches Lawn. I have much to say to you and all is strictly confidential, so I can only tell it to someone I can trust. I observed you closely during the short time we were together and noted that you conducted yourself with propriety and self-restraint and this encourages me to confide in you. Come as soon as you can. The rozzers are rounding us all up and time is short.’

After dinner I rang up Beeches Lawn and got Celia.

‘I’ve had a letter from your aunt,’ I said, ‘sent on by my publishers. She wants me to visit her in hospital, but I hardly know her, so I don’t think it’s quite my scene.’

‘Meaning you hate visiting people in hospital,’ said Celia perceptively. ‘Well, don’t go. She’s a cagey old thing. She asked me to lend her that novel of yours. I thought she wanted to read it, but now I can see it was a way of getting in touch with you through your publisher without our knowing what she had in mind.’

‘Perhaps I ought to go,’ I said. ‘It seems unkind not to, now that she’s asked me. After all, she’s a very old lady.’

‘Please yourself, Corin, but I ought to warn you that they hate her at the hospital and it spills over on to her visitors. I go to see her from a sense of duty, but you don’t have to bother.’

‘I’ll write to her, then,’ I said, ‘and tell her that I’m quite tied up at present, but I’ll visit her as soon as I can.’

9

Chaucer’s Prioress

« ^ »