Finding myself quite unable to penetrate this polished surface of propriety, I took my leave. The manner of both men left me in no doubt that there was something to conceal, but I could get no farther than a moral certainty.
Mrs Cutts seemed to offer the best hope of information, but I could not as yet reconcile myself to handling so dirty a tool. It occurred to me that it might possibly be worth while to get hold of Miss Milsom. I was not at all clear in my mind that her madness might not have some method in it.
At first I could not think how to trace her. I could have asked Margaret Harrison, of course, but I did not want to do that. Finally, I decided to call on the local padre, the Rev. Theodore Perry, and see if he knew where his lost sheep had strayed to.
I knew him well, of course, and it did not seem unnatural that I should ask after the welfare of a woman who had been for some time in my father’s employment. I sandwiched the question in, in the course of a casual conversation, and he told me at once what he knew.
‘Poor woman, I’m afraid she is not altogether normal. One hopes it is only a passing phase. I don’t quite know where she is — one of these nursing-homes of the modern sort, I think. Her sister, Mrs Farebrother, would be able to tell you. No, I don’t suppose they are very well off. The fees in these places are high. In the days of faith — or superstition, if you like — a convent or a béguinage would have provided the proper asylum for such a case, with some honest work to do and a harmless emotional outlet — but nowadays they make you pay for everything, not only your pleasures.’
He gave me Mrs Farebrother’s address, and I said I would see what could be done. He smiled at me in a futile, clerical way, and said it would be a work of charity.
I left him, feeling anything but charitable, and went to see Mrs Farebrother. She seemed to be a good, honest, sensible woman, worried by family and financial cares, and accepted gratefully my suggestion of a small pension, during the period that her sister might be requiring medical care.
The interview with Agatha Milsom was a painful one to me. The woman is undoubtedly quite unbalanced, with a disagreeable sex-antagonism at the bottom of her mania. According to her, my father had treated his wife with abominable cruelty, and I was obliged to listen for a long time to her rambling accusations. The name of John Munting roused her to such excitement that I was afraid she would make herself ill; unfortunately, I could get nothing reliable out of her. For one thing, she was obsessed with the idea that he had designs upon her maiden modesty, and for another, many of her statements were so ludicrous that they cast suspicion over the rest.
As regards my father, however, I obtained one thing. I suggested that her memory of certain domestic incidents might be at fault, and in proof of her assertions she promised to get back from her sister, and send to me, all the letters she had written home during the previous two years.
It seemed to me that, since her mental deterioration had come on only gradually, the letters written at the time might possibly be considered to attain a reasonable level of accuracy. She kept her promise, and from this correspondence I selected the letters of relevant date, and these are the documents included in this dossier. It will be seen that great allowance must be made for bias; that much conceded, the statements may, I think, be accepted as having a basis in fact.
I need not say how distressing they were to me. They cast a light upon the miserable domestic conditions which my father had had to endure. I regretted most bitterly that I had taken over that work in Central Africa, thus leaving him to the undiluted companionship of a selfish, discontented wife and a semi-demented and vulgar woman. My father was not a man to go abroad for the sympathy he could not find at home, and it was no wonder that he had welcomed the acquaintanceship of two young men who could, at least, make some pretence of entering into his interests.
But the thing which emerged from the letters with startling illumination was the intimate footing upon which Lathom had stood with the whole household. As may be seen by the few letters included above, my father was by no means a gossipy correspondent, and I had not realised that Lathom had become so much of a tame cat about the drawing-room. I had thought of him as being my father’s friend almost entirely, and I believe that my father himself took that view, and, wittingly or unwittingly, gave me that impression. But it now seemed clear to me that this was not so, and that, what with my father’s innocent pleasure in the apparent admiration and friendliness of this brilliant young man, and what with the perverse misconception of the wretched Agatha Milsom, we had all been ‘led up the garden’, as the expression is.
I saw now why both Lathom and Munting, standing by one another in a conspiracy of silence, had been able to deny with such obvious sincerity that there had ever been an undue intimacy between Munting and Margaret Harrison. Lathom had said that my father’s last days had been free from suspicion; I saw now that this was possible. I also saw why Lathom had been so unwilling that I should ask Munting the same question, and why Munting had referred me back to Lathom for the answer. Munting must, I thought, be considered clear of any offence except a refusal to betray his friend’s confidence; and I was obliged to confess that most people would think he had acted rightly. Lathom, too, had kept to the code of what is usually called honour in these matters. As for Margaret Harrison — but from her I had never expected anything but lies.
But if this was the truth, why should my father have committed suicide? For I still do not believe in the theory of accident. Either something must have opened his eyes during Lathom’s visit to town, or else that other, darker suspicion, which I had hardly liked to glance at, was only too well-founded.
I am a business man. I have the business man’s liking for facts. To me, an expert’s knowledge is a fact. Experts occasionally make mistakes, but to me it appears far less probable that an expert should be mistaken than that an artist and a woman should be unprincipled. And I cannot make it too clear that my father’s expert knowledge in the matter of fungi was to be trusted. I would as cheerfully stake my life on the wholesomeness of a dish prepared by my father as on the stability of a girder-stress calculated by my chief, Sir Maurice Berkeley. But I would not venture a five-pound note on the honesty and virtue of such people as Lathom and Margaret Harrison.
But to prove the truth of my suspicions, I needed more facts — the sort of facts that a jury would accept. To them, my father’s knowledge of fungi would not be a fact at all.
I turned the matter over in my mind, and eventually came to the conclusion that, whether I liked it or not, I must see the woman Cutts. I hoped that she would come to me, but several days passed and I saw nothing of her. Either the creature had no facts to sell, or she was holding off in the hope of securing better terms. I saw through her artifice well enough, but I saw also that she had me at a disadvantage. Eventually, and with great reluctance, I wrote to her as follows, addressing the letter to Lathom’s studio.
‘Mrs Cutts — Madam, — When I saw you the other morning at Mr Lathom’s studio, you suggested you might be in a position to do some work for me. I shall possibly be requiring some assistance of this kind in the near future, and shall be obliged if you would call on me one evening at my hotel to discuss the matter.’
On the second day after dispatching this, I was informed that a lad was waiting downstairs to see me. I went down and found a ferrety-eyed youth, who introduced himself as Archie Cutts.