Here Lies Gloria Mundy

It seemed to me that there was nothing more that I could do. My foolish impulse to attempt to whitewash a double murderess had vanished long before I received Dame Beatrice’s letter and there appeared only two minor points to be cleared up, neither of them my business. The ownership of the burnt-out car had not been established and nobody so far had suggested how the elderly cleaner’s charred and disfigured body had been conveyed to the old house.

I put these points to Dame Beatrice in another letter and she in her reply invited me to bring Imogen to stay for a weekend at the Stone House. Imogen, who was staying with her sister and finding the children charming but distracting, responded warmly to the invitation, so on a cold autumn Friday afternoon we drove to the New Forest.

I had met the children when I picked Imogen up at her sister’s house and, as we were leaving the Downs behind us and I was taking the road to Chichester and then to Romsey to avoid Southampton, she mentioned that she would have to move, in order to get enough peace in which to write her book; I suggested that her next move should be into my pad.

‘Then, as soon as the winter is over, we’ll go house-hunting in London and in the summer we’ll move into the Cotswold cottage,’ I said.

‘Marriage lines or no marriage lines?’

‘We might as well regularise the union, I suppose,’ I said, as I kissed her cheek.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That remark might have been more happiry phrased, but it indicates honourable intentions. Make it before Christmas and then I shan’t need to join in the family festivities.’

‘I’ve never made love to you properly,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘When do I repair the omission?’

‘Well, it would be most improper to do it under Dame Beatrice’s roof,’ she answered with mocking primness.

‘She would only cackle and wish us well. Do a few lines on a bit of paper matter so much?’

‘Yes, if they mean that you have to maintain me in sickness and in health, whether you like it or not.’

‘Oh, Lord! Not a church wedding?’

‘With you complete in sponge-bag trousers and a buttonhole. Besides, just in case you thought differently, I am entitled to be married in white.’

‘I’ve never thought about it. I have to confess that I myself am a spotted and inconstant man.’

‘Just as well that one of us has had some experience.’

‘This is the most unromantic conversation I ever took part in!’

‘It is nothing to the boring dialogues we shall have when we are married.’

‘Then there’s no time like the present.’ I pulled into a lay-by which fortunately was empty.

Breathless at the end of the next ten minutes, she said, ‘Perhaps it won’t be so boring after all. Where did you learn your technique?’

‘Not from Gloria Mundy,’ I said.

‘Stop at Romsey Abbey. There’s a stone carving outside the south door,’ she said. It was a crucifix. Unbidden to my mind came the Celtic warrior at Kilpeck. I banished his image and gently took Imogen’s hand. The figure on the crucifix was not quite life-size, but, unlike most such portrayals, the eyes were open and the head was raised. It was a representation of Christus Dominans and may have been brought back from the Middle East by crusaders, or so I had read. It seemed very likely, for the figure was too anatomically correct to be of Saxon origin, as some claimed, and it was a figure of victory, not of death.

‘This place was built for a convent of nuns,’ I said, as we walked back to the car.

‘And the carving was outside the abbess’s door,’ remarked Imogen. Nothing more was said until we reached Lyndhurst and even then all I said was, ‘Not far now.’

It was growing dusk. The road between Lyndhurst and Brockenhurst is one of the most beautiful major routes through the New Forest and in the dim evening light the majestic trees gave cathedral solemnity to the scene. I drove slowly and we did not talk.

Once over the little river, the Stone House soon came into view. Dame Beatrice and Laura Gavin received us kindly, George, the chauffeur and general handyman, carried our suitcases upstairs and Laura and Imogen followed so that Laura could show Imogen our rooms. I was left downstairs with Dame Beatrice.

‘We are going to be married sooner than I thought,’ I said.

‘The sooner the better,’ she responded, ‘once minds are made up. Has Imogen parents living?’

‘No. I expect she will be married from her sister’s house. As for me, I expect old Hara-kiri will arrange to put me up the night before. He doesn’t live all that far from where she will be.’

The next two days were crisp and cold. Imogen and I walked in the forest, chaperoned by Laura’s two mighty Dobermanns, and returned to eat Lucullan meals prepared by Henri, the French cook, and served by Celestine, his wife, who regarded Imogen and me with a dewy, sentimental eye and on one occasion said, ‘Ah, the poor children! What suffering comes after les noces!’

When we had left the Stone House I went to visit Aunt Eglantine to tell her of my approaching nuptials.