Voices in a Haunted Room

I was silent and he went on: “It would have been ideal. You know it, don’t you? You and I ... loving ... really loving.”

“I would want a faithful husband, and you would never be that.”

“I might. Who knows?”

“No,” I said. “It is not in your nature.”

“Look at my father. He had adventures far and wide. Now there is not a more faithful husband in the country.”

“He has matured and grown wise. You are young yet.”

“My dear Claudine, are you wishing that we were old?”

“I wish...”

“Come tell me what you wish. You wish that you had not hastily married my brother. You know that I am the one for you. You long for the kind of life you could have shared with me ... exciting, adventurous.”

“Your wife would not be very happy.”

“Oh, she would. There would be the reunions after my absences. It would be like starting all over again ... the honeymoon, the perpetual honeymoon.”

“No,” I said firmly. “I am happier as I am.”

“You merely accept life, Claudine.”

“You seem to have forgotten that you will soon be a husband yourself.”

“It has not escaped my memory.”

“Oh, Jonathan, do you feel no shame at all! You would deceive Millicent, and what we did, you and I ... you don’t regret that ...”

“How could I regret the most exciting experience of my life?”

“Save such talk for your gullible victims.”

“On this occasion I speak the truth. I love you, Claudine. I did, right from the first moment I saw you. You remember ... a little girl who spoke such quaint English. I thought, She’s mine. From the moment I saw you I thought that.”

“We did a terrible thing, Jonathan.”

“Is it so terrible to love?”

“In the circumstances, yes. I deceived my husband. You deceived your brother. Surely you see how despicable that is. I cannot understand why you do not feel shame. You don’t, do you?”

“No,” he replied coolly.

“You think we did no wrong?”

“We shall only have done wrong if we are discovered.” He laughed at me. “You are shocked. Listen, Claudine, this is the way I see it.” He picked up a stone and threw it in the river. “Sin ... wickedness is hurting others. If others are not hurt by what one has done, then one has done no wrong.”

“But we know that we did.”

“We do indeed ... and I shall never forget. Constantly I long to be with you ...

as we were in that room. I shall never forget it. I can’t regret ... As long as David does not know, what harm have we done?”

“You are amoral ... as well as immoral.”

“Perhaps you are right. We were happy, you and I, and happiness is a rare and wonderful gift. Could it be a sin not to take it when it is offered to you?”

“When it is a sin against one’s marriage vows and duty towards one’s brother?”

“I repeat that if no one is hurt there is no need to regret. The trouble with you, Claudine, is that you have been brought up to observe a set of conventions. You believe they are unalterable. They are the Right and the Wrong, and to offend against them is to incur the wrath of God ... or at least the wrath of your relations. That is too simple. It is not as easy as that. The rules are flexible. Take my simple one: Do not hurt anyone. Keep people happy. That is as good a doctrine as any.”

“But don’t you see how bitterly you and I have sinned against David?”

“Only if David discovers. Then we shall have hurt him. If he does not know, what harm is there? I can tell you I have rarely seen David as happy as he is now.”

“It is impossible to make you see reason.”

“Your reason, Claudine. I am trying to make you see mine.”

“Yours is trimmed to suit yourself.”

”Perhaps yours is too.”

“And,” I said, “there is something else I have to say to you. Someone knows about us.”

“What? Who?”

“I don’t know. You laughed at my voices. They were not fantasy. Jeanne discovered some sort of speaking tube, which extends from that room to the kitchens. So ...

someone was in the Enderby kitchens when we were there. It was that person’s voice I heard.”

“Is that really so?”

“It is. It surprises you, doesn’t it? You see, if someone knows, we could find your theories thrust aside. If that someone told David, what then?”

“Who can it be?” he said.

“I don’t know. I suspect Mrs. Trent.”

“That wicked old woman!”

“She has not said anything to me, but she did try to blackmail me ... well, that’s hardly the word ... persuade me to help Evie along with Harry Farringdon. She said that her son Richard was Dickon’s son.”

“I know there was a suspicion of that. My father has helped her quite a bit. Grasslands was doing very badly and he put money into it. Richard Mather was a gambler and he drank too much. He almost ruined the family. My father has helped them out of various difficulties.”

“So you think she is right about Richard’s being your father’s son.”

“I daresay. There were always women with him, and what happened between them must have been when he was very young. It would give her a feeling that she had certain rights, I suppose ... or at least Richard’s daughter had.”