The Documents in the Case

Thank you very much for your letter and kind inquiries after my health. I like my new doctor very much indeed. I think he understands me a great deal better than Dr. Coombs, and he has put me on quite a different treatment. He says I am just going through a “difficult phase” at present, and that if only I can hold on and not let things get on top of me for the next year or two I shall come out of it quite all right. But I am not to have a rest-cure! It seems Dr. Coombs was all wrong about that⁠—of course he didn’t exactly say she was wrong, it wouldn’t be professional, but I could see that he thought it! Dr. Trevor says that rest-cures only “turn you in upon yourself,” and that makes things worse. He says I must get right away from myself and my feelings, so as to “sublimate” all these repressed urges and turn them into some other sort of energy. He says it was quite all right to start with to have my dreams and subconscious betrayals analysed, so as to know exactly what was the matter with me, but that now the time has come when I must learn to throw all these bottled-up desires outwards, and give them something to do. He explained it all most clearly. I said, “I suppose it is sex, doctor, isn’t it?” (Of course, one gets quite used to asking things perfectly frankly, and one doesn’t mind it a bit.) And he said, well, largely; and, of course, that was a thing most people suffered from one way and another, and in these days one couldn’t always take the obvious and direct way out of a condition of sex-repression, because it would often be socially and economically inconvenient.

We were just starting off to dine with Lambert the other night, and were waiting in the hall for a taxi, when Mrs. H. came in, rather flurried and very wet. She was hanging up her waterproof, when Harrison came charging out on the landing and called down:

“Is that you, Margaret? Do you know what time it is?”

“I’m sorry⁠—I won’t be a moment.”

“Where on earth have you been?”

“That’s a secret” (in the tone of voice of someone who wants to have the secret teased out of her. She was laughing to herself, and had a fattish parcel tucked under her arm).

“Oh! I suppose it’s all the same to you if the dinner’s uneatable.”

Evidently no interest was to be taken in the “secret.” The next effort was along the lines of cheerful common sense.

“Why didn’t you begin without me?”

“I don’t choose to. This is my home⁠—or supposed to be⁠—not a hotel” (in a tone of peevish protest).

She had gone past us up to the first-floor landing, and, like the Wedding-Guest, we could not choose but hear.

“I’m sorry, dear. I was getting something for tomorrow.”

“That’s no excuse. You’ve been chattering to some of your office friends in some teashop or other and forgetting all about what you were supposed to be doing. No, I don’t want any dinner now.”

“Oh, very well.”

He came running downstairs then and saw us. I think it gave him a shock, because he pulled himself up and smiled and said something vague. Then he turned and called up the stairs again:

“All right, my dear, I’ll be up in a minute.” His eyes were unhappy. There’s something wrong in this house⁠—something more than a little misunderstanding about dinner time.

Harrison had the brilliant idea of inviting Lathom and me to dinner to taste his special way of frying chicken. Well, there we all were⁠—Miss Milsom frightfully kittenish in a garment she had embroidered herself with Persian arabesques. (“I don’t know what they mean, you know, Mr. Munting. Probably something frightfully improper! I copied them off a rug.”) Harrison who allows nobody to penetrate into “his” kitchen when he’s working out a masterpiece, was frying away amid a powerful odour of garlic. No Mrs. Harrison! We furiously make conversation⁠—enter H.⁠—gives a black look round, and disappears again. I count the things on the mantelpiece⁠—two brass candlesticks, brass doorknocker representing the Lincoln imp⁠—two imitation brass mulling-cones⁠—ill-balanced pottery nude⁠—quaint clock and pair of Liberty nondescripts. Front door goes. Kitchen door in the distance heard to burst open. “Well, where have you been?” Awful realisation creeps over us all that the sitting-room door has been left open. I say hurriedly: “Have you read the new Michael Arlen, Miss Milsom?” We are all aware that a prolonged cross-examination is proceeding. Lathom fidgets. Voice rises to appalling distinctness: “Don’t talk nonsense! How long were you at the hairdresser’s?⁠—Well, what were you doing?⁠—Yes, but what kept you?⁠—Yes, of course, you met somebody. You seem to be meeting a lot of people lately!⁠—I don’t care who it ‘only’ was⁠—one of the men from the office, I suppose⁠—Carrie Mortimer? nonsense!⁠—I shall not be quiet⁠—I shall talk as loudly as I like⁠—Did you or did you not remember⁠—?” Here I grow desperate and turn on the gramophone. In comes Harrison, putting a good face on it. “Here’s the wife, late as usual!” We sit down to dinner in embarrassed silence. I murmur eulogies on the chicken. “Overcooked,” says Harrison, shovelling it all aside and savagely picking at the vegetables. After this, everybody is afraid to eat it, for fear of not seeming to know good food from bad.

At Newton Abbot we changed into the local, and dawdled through Teigngrace, Heathfield and Brimley Halt, taking over half an hour about it, till we were turned out, twenty minutes late, on the platform at Bovey Tracey. It was a quarter-past ten and dark, but the smell of the earth came up pleasantly, with a welcome suggestion of rain in the air. I stood on the platform, clutching an attaché case in one hand and the bag with the beef and sausages in the other, while Lathom transacted some occult business with a man outside. Then he came back, saying briefly, “I’ve got a man to take us,” and we stumbled out to where an aged taxi thrummed mournfully in the gloom. Lathom bundled in, and I parked my bags at his feet.

“What the devil’s that?” he said crossly.

“The grub, fathead,” said I, following him in.

“Oh, yes, of course, I’d forgotten,” he said. “Come on, let’s get going, for God’s sake!”

Being used to Lathom, I ignored his irritability. We jolted off.

The taxi had a churchyard smell about it, and I mentioned the fact. Lathom slammed the window down with an impatient grunt. I remarked, foolishly, that he didn’t seem very enthusiastic about the trip. He said:

“Oh, don’t talk so much.”

It seemed to me that the prospect of seeing Harrison again had rather got on his nerves, and I looked forward to an exasperating weekend.

The inner room was in a sordid confusion. My hurrying footsteps tripped over some bedclothes. There were two beds in the room, and Lathom was standing by the farther of the two. He stepped aside, and his hand shook so that the candle-flame danced. I thought at first that the man on the bed had moved, but it was only the dancing candle.

The bed was broken and tilted grotesquely sideways. Harrison was sprawled over it in a huddle of soiled blankets. His face was twisted and white and his eyeballs rolled up so that only the whites showed. I stooped over him and felt for his wrist. It was cold and heavy, and when I released it it fell back on the bed like deadweight. I did not like the look of the nostrils⁠—black caverns, scooped in wax⁠—not flesh, anyway⁠—and the mouth, twisted unpleasantly upwards from the teeth, with the pale tongue sticking through.

“My God!” I cried, but softly⁠—and turned to look at Lathom, “the man’s dead!”

“Dead?” He was looking at me, not at Harrison. “Are you sure?”

“Sure?” I put a finger beneath the fallen jaw, which woodenly resisted me. “Why, he must have been dead for hours. He’s stiff, man, stiff!”

“So he is, poor old b⁠⸺” said Lathom.

He began to laugh.

“Stop that,” I said, snatching the candle away from him, and dumping him roughly down on to the other bed. “Pull yourself together. You want a drink.”