On this day, Jolyon Carstairs went into his study and was surprised to find in the middle of his desk an African carving of heavy brownstone which he had brought back from one of his researching trips to Benin, or Dahomey as it had been when he was there. And which normally lived with other similar artifacts in the lounge on a special low table. He picked up the sculpture, which was an idealised representation of a lanky mother and child. It was an ugly old thing, he had privately always thought, but you had to bring something back from Africa, didn’t you, and he had always told people that it had been presented to him by a shaman and that it had curative powers. He had actually bought it with others in a street market in Porto Novo for three shillings.
“Mrs. Hoskins,” he called.
Ethel appeared at the door in pinafore and turban. She was carrying a mop and was wearing pink Marigold gloves.
“Yes, sir?” she said.
Jolyon Carstairs held out the carving.
“What on earth was this doing on my desk?”
“I’ve no idea, I’m sure,” she said. “Perhaps I was dusting it and carried it to your study in an absent-minded moment. I’ll put it back in the lounge, shall I?” She took it from him, handling it very carefully.
“A place for everything, Mrs. Hoskins, and everything in its place,” he said.
“To be sure, Mr. Carstairs. My mother always said as much. It was her motto.”
“Was it,” he said with total disinterest, and sat down at his desk and fired up his computer, not wondering why Mrs. Hoskins had gone straight back into the kitchen with the carving.
“Everything in its place,” she said as she wrapped the carving carefully in newspaper and put it in her bag. “I’ll give him everything in its place.” Then she attacked the floor with her mop and with ferocious concentration.
Later that morning, Jolyon Carstairs looked round the living room door where Ethel was dusting the mantelpiece.
“Mrs. Hoskins,” he said, rather hesitantly, though not knowing why; for heaven’s sake, she was the cleaning lady.
“Yes, sir,” said Ethel, turning.
“You wouldn’t have any idea — that is, can you explain what has happened to a pair of shoes of mine? Brown brogues they are, in fact. And I can’t seem to lay my hands on them.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know, sir. I never touch your private things, as you know. Perhaps you’ve mislaid them. Left them at a friend’s house or something.”
Jolyon Carstairs frowned.
“Left them at a friend’s house? Why on earth would I do that?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure, sir,” said Ethel in a tone that indicated that she was very clear that some people had peculiar habits that were none of her business. “They’ll turn up, I’m sure they will, Mr. Carstairs, don’t you worry your head about them.”
He stared at her for a moment. “No,” he said, “very well. But it’s very mysterious.”
“Mysterious as may be,” said Ethel, “but my mother always said that there were more things in heaven and earth. And she was right.”
Mr. Carstairs considered the dictum offered by Ethel’s mother and traipsed despondently off.
The following day, Ethel was pleased to see that Mervyn Fincham had written another ten pages of Double Space since her last reading.
“Good boy,” she said, reading busily, “that’s it. You hammer on.”
The she went through the contents of the other folders in Fincham’s desk.
“He’s got the touch, has the boy,” she told herself, “this is good stuff. Bert would have liked this one.”
One of the pages in one of the folders interested her particularly. It was apparently a piece of dialogue which Fincham was trying out. It read:
“You utter bastard. It’s people like you that give the human race a bad name. You are a pretentious, untalented, unprincipled little swine and my only hope is that someday someone will give you the thrashing that you so richly deserve.”
Interesting.
On Saturday, Mr. Jolyon Carstairs began to feel he was losing his wits. He went into the lounge, where Ethel was up on a stepladder, cleaning the high windows, a task she always left for Saturdays, because Mr. Carstairs was often out on a Saturday afternoon watching cricket, or involved in other gentlemanly pursuits, and she could spread herself.
“Mrs. Hoskins,” he said, cursing himself for the diffident tone Mrs. Hoskins always produced in him, “I’m sorry to trouble you, but I wonder if you have seen my light overcoat. It’s beige, perhaps you know the one I mean, and I can’t seem to find it anywhere.”
“An overcoat, is it now?” she said, looking down at him from the stepladder. “Well, dearie me, I can’t say, I’m sure. It was shoes the other day, wasn’t it? And today, it’s an overcoat. Well, I can’t help you, sir, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, and the shoes never reappeared, either,” Mr. Carstairs said petulantly. “I don’t know what’s happening.”
“Well, if you don’t, then neither do I, Mr. Carstairs,” Ethel said in a voice that conveyed pity and wariness, as though she was wondering whether some people were quite right in the head, which was precisely what Mr. Carstairs was beginning to wonder. He wondered what life was coming to. He wondered if he was starting premature Alzheimer’s.
At five o’clock Ethel went home and prepared to rest on the seventh day, as prescribed. God had rested on the seventh day, and Ethel followed his example meticulously, if not religiously. What was good enough for God was good enough for her, she was fond of saying. We do not know if God played bingo on His seventh day, but that was what Ethel did anyway, winning four pounds and a blue washing-up bowl, very useful. She spent the four pounds on port and lemon, which she drank alone because Vera was still in Margate.
On Monday, she spent a pleasant morning at Mervyn Fincham’s, getting up-to-date with Double Space. He’d done a lot of work over the weekend, she was pleased to see, adding at least twenty pages. And he was setting himself up for the ending, she could tell.
And so was she. But there were still a few wrinkles to iron out.
One of them ironed itself out with no help from her. On Tuesday afternoon, on arriving at Carstairs’s, she was pleased to learn that Mr. Jolyon Carstairs had a meeting with his publishers, which couldn’t have suited her better. As soon as he had gone, she went to her capacious bag in the kitchen and took out a sheet of paper, and took it to the study where she crumpled it and placed it in the wastepaper basket. Then, donning her pink Marigolds, she set to work on Mr. Carstairs’s computer. Happily, Carstairs himself had put paper in the printer only that morning. Mr. Carstairs’s absence gave her a clear two hours in his study, which is all she had been hoping for.
She left at six, after preparing his herbal infusion this time with extra special care.
Vera was not called to give evidence, which offended her not a little. After all, she had been the permanent cleaning lady for Mervyn Fincham, even if her friend Ethel had been her replacement during the crucial period. On her precipitous return from Margate, after reading the horrid news in the Daily Mirror, she offered herself up at the police station, was perfunctorily interviewed by a police inspector, and was then shown the door with no ceremony, with the promise that the authorities would be in touch if it proved necessary. It had evidently not proved necessary. It was Ethel who was the star, and Vera was merely the understudy waiting vainly in the wings for the call to come.
Still, she had a little reflected glory — after all, she was on the sidelines, even if she wasn’t playing in the match — and even this tiny touch of fame earned her the right to several Gin and Its in the Ring O’ Bells.