‘No. Anthony Wotton asked her to come.’
‘You’ve got the story wrong.’
‘I never get stories wrong.’ I thought of Rubens and the portrait in the old house and said nothing. Encouraged or else irritated by my silence, she went on, ‘She came to blackmail him on the strength of the baby.’
I said sternly, ‘You really must not tell these awful whoppers, Madame Eglantine.’
‘Chaucer spelt it with an “e” and a “y”, whereas my misguided parents preferred Shakespeare’s rendering. What kind of flower is eglantine? Did your teachers tell you that?’
‘Eglantine is the old word for the sweetbrier. That’s why Oberon connected it with musk roses, I suppose,’ I told her.
‘I must remember to spell it Shakespeare’s way in my will. I shall leave you a competence. I am a very wealthy woman. Write both spellings down for me. Underline the one and run a light stroke neatly through the other.’
I took up the writing-pad which was on her bedside locker and printed in my best capitals EGLENTYNE and EGLANTINE.
‘Which is to be underlined and which is to have a line drawn through it?’ I asked.
‘Don’t ask stupid questions!’ she snapped at me. I drew a faint line through the first name and underlined more thickly the other. I deduced that she was getting tired, so I rose to go. She was having none of that, and ordered me to sit down again. She drew the writing-pad towards her and smiled.
‘I shall never get out of here alive, you know,’ she said. ‘They are witches and they meet at Hetty Pegler’s Tump.’
‘I’ve been there,’ I said, anxious to avoid the discussion of the Malleus Maleficarum which seemed imminent, ‘but I didn’t crawl inside.’
‘The Neoliths must have lacked stature,’ said Aunt Eglantine. ‘Did you ever visit Grime’s Graves?’
This subject lasted us for the remainder of my visit. A warning bell sounded and a nurse came in and told me that visiting hours were up. I bent over and kissed Aunt Eglantine.
‘You must come again,’ she said, ‘before they finish me off.’
I left the hospital and crossed the road to where Anthony had parked the car. He lowered the book he was reading and then tossed it on to the back seat.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you stayed a lot longer than I thought you would.’
‘I did make one attempt to leave because I thought I was tiring her, but she wouldn’t have it. I suppose she gets bloody bored in there.’
‘Did she mention Gloria?’
‘Yes. She told me two things about her, both of them sheer invention, I feel sure.’
‘Did she get on to the Malleus?’
‘No. Hetty Pegler intervened and we also talked about Grime’s Graves.’
He started the engine. I stared out through the windscreen and hoped he would not ask what Aunt Eglantine had said about Gloria’s hair and her child, not that I believed either story. When the remark came, it was not a question but a simple assertion.
‘She has a bee in her bonnet about my having given Gloria a child,’ he said. ‘Sooner or later she tells everybody so. I suppose you got it, too.’
‘Yes, she did rather throw the information at me. I took it for what it was worth — sheer balderdash.’
To my astonishment he said he would tell me the truth, as he might need the help of a true friend later on. I realised, not for the first time, that he was desperately afraid of what Detective-Inspector Rouse might ferret out concerning his former relationship with Gloria and I realised, too, that he was far more concerned with the effect which possible revelations would have on his marriage than fears for his own personal safety.
The last thing on earth that I wanted was to become any more deeply involved in his affairs than I already was, but noblesse oblige, as, in its blackmailing way, it usually does, so I said something trite about doing anything I could. There was a long silence until I remarked that surely we were going rather a long way round to get back to Beeches Lawn.
‘Oh, Celia won’t be expecting us just yet,’ he said. ‘I told her you would probably need a pick-me-up in a pub after spending an hour solo with Aunt Eglantine. Anyway, I was going to tell you about the baby.’
‘Good Lord! So the story was true! I thought she was making it up because she dislikes you,’ I said.
‘She doesn’t dislike me personally. She simply thinks that I’m not good enough for Celia. That may be so, but Celia accepted me of her own free will, so our marriage is our business and not the business of that frustrated old demonologist.’
‘Did you know Aunt Eglantine before your marriage?’
‘No, thank goodness. She had to be invited to the wedding, but that was the first time I had met her.’
‘She told me some cock and bull story — ’
‘About that baby? It wasn’t mine, of course, and, to give you some idea of what Gloria was like, I must tell you the whole story. It happened while I was still having this damn silly affair with her and, of course, before I began to rumble her. She had this friend who had got herself mixed up with some extraordinary sect in America and desperately wanted to free herself from them and come to England. The scheme was for me to take Gloria to meet her at the airport and motor them both back to Gloria’s flat.
‘I couldn’t see any harm in that, so I did it. The friend turned out to be a waif-like creature with (what had not been told me, although I don’t suppose it would have made any difference at the time I agreed to meet her) a two-month-old baby. Well, now, Corin, the next bit is a blur in my memory, but when we got to the car I found the baby dumped in my arms, Gloria with an arm over my shoulders and the skinny Lizzie taking the photograph, complete with giggles.’
‘What photograph?’
‘My photograph holding the baby, of course, with Gloria’s arm round both of us and the two girls laughing their heads off. I took it as a joke at the time, fool that I was.’
‘Sounds like the makings of a promising farce,’ I said. ‘Stock situation, what?’
‘May sound like that to you, but to me it’s been a nightmare. I’ve lived on the edge of a volcano these last years, and when she turned up here I was scared out of my wits and I’ll tell you this, old man: I never had a better moment in my life than when we both identified that dead girl as Gloria Mundy. What other rubbish did old Eg hand out to you?’
‘That Gloria’s red and black hair was a wig.’
We covered the miles between the hospital and the house before we spoke again. He turned in at the lane which led up to his garage, parked the car, locked the shed behind us and then, as we walked through the kitchen garden, I said, ‘That puzzles me, you know. It was the only thing we had to go by in recognising Gloria. Why wasn’t it destroyed in the fire along with the rest of her?’
‘I would rather not think about it. That awful body is something I want to forget.’
‘Yes, I know. Strange, though, that Miss Brockworth should have made such a remark.’
‘Very strange,’ he agreed. ‘Please don’t let Celia pump you too much about the visit to the hospital. She’s a devil at worming things out of people. I convinced her long ago that there was nothing but the mildest of shipboard flirtations between Gloria and me — at least, I thought I had — but Gloria’s death has stirred up old doubts in Celia’s heart, so, for my sake, watch your step, if you don’t mind, old man.’
‘Fear nothing,’ I said. ‘You are walking beside the man who lied himself black in the face to the magistrates in Pontyprydd after that rugger match. Remember?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘Oh, come on now! Don’t you realise that I sacrificed my immortal soul on your behalf on that auspicious occasion?’
‘Oh, well, thanks,’ he said, and we were both cheerful when Celia herself opened the door to us.
‘So Aunt Eglantine didn’t treat you to a dissertation on the Malleus, or you wouldn’t be so happy,’ she said. ‘Marigold Coberley’s here, but she won’t stay for dinner.’