Death and Letters

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONECrossword

There was a row of narrow casement windows across the east end of the bedroom, and a sash window, broad and high, in the north wall. The middle casement window was partly open, the sash window shut tightly and screwed down.

To the north old trees, barely in leaf, screened the view up-river; to the east the grounds were cut sharply off where the cliff ended. A pale, cold April light, subdued by grey skies, came into the room bleakly. It was a comfortable, almost a luxurious room, but it had a clumsy, cluttered look to modern eyes; it was old-fashioned in an unfashionable way. It had an oriental rug on the floor, a gilt-framed oil landscape over the chimney piece, thick silk curtains, pottery lamps with silk shades, ornate wooden furniture, a double bed. Logs burned in the fireplace—it was a cold afternoon.

A nurse in uniform sat beside the north window, doing a jigsaw puzzle. She was a squat, dark woman, and the sharp lights from her cap and dress brought out greenish tints in her sallow skin. She had the bulging forehead of obstinacy, and there was strength in every motion of her short arms. She must have known that she was not much to look at, and perhaps she thought that that was why her patient sat with her back turned; perhaps that was why she cast a sour look at the patient’s back, now and then.

The patient had moved her little bandy-legged desk from under the casement windows to the corner next to them on the right; it was now under a looking-glass in a painted velvet frame. The patient had said she got the light better that way, and certainly she must have needed all the light there was for her eternal crossword puzzles. She was doing one now, out of a little paperbound book. There were printed forms and business envelopes on the desk-flap, but she had pushed them and the ink and pentray aside.

She seemed to be making heavy work of her puzzle just now. She filled in squares, rubbed out letters, consulted other diagrams in the book, sat in thought, looked up often at the mirror, which reflected the top of the nurse’s cap.

She was perhaps forty years old, and she might once have been a beautiful woman; now she looked pale and worn. She was very thin. Undoubtedly she had had an illness. But her dark hair was carefully dressed, and she was very neat and smart in plain black, with thin black silk stockings and black suède shoes.

The nurse said: “Don’t tire yourself out, now, Mrs. Coldfield.”

“No.”

Mrs. Coldfield watched the cap in the looking-glass, but it wasn’t moving. She filled in the last blanks of her puzzle; with dots substituting for the black squares, it looked like this:

THEMA.PLESCLIFF

S.I.D.E.T.H.I.R

DFLOO.RBACKFROM

W.H.A.TCFENWAYH

ASTOLDMEITHOUGH

T.Y.O.U.M.I.…

GHTIMAGI.NESOME

W.A.Y.T.O.G.E.T.

MEOUTO.FTHISPLA

.…C.E.Q.U.I.E

TLYIDONOTSEETHE

E.N.D.A.N.D.S.H

ALLNEVERH.AVEAN

Y.O.T.H.E.R.C.H

ANCETOCOM.MUNIC

She turned the thin page, and the nurse spoke again: “You going to do another? How they coming?”

The cap in the looking-glass was rising. Mrs. Coldfield turned another page to a half-finished diagram. She said: “Not very well. They’re rather hard—for me.”

The nurse had come across the room and was looking over her shoulder. She said: “I’d go crazy.”

“They rest me.”

“Only trouble, they’re not sociable. How’d you like to help me with this jigsaw I’m doing? You can talk and do jigsaws.”

“I’d like to go on with this for a while.”

The patient spoke politely, but without expression. The nurse, disgusted, went down the long room and through a communicating bath to another bedroom beyond. The patient’s eyes followed her. She came back with an open box of candy.

“Have one?”

“Not before tea, thank you.”

The nurse went back to her jigsaw. Irritating, she thought, how she never calls a person by name; as if you didn’t have a name or weren’t there. But you couldn’t irritate her…not if you tried.

The patient turned a leaf to an untouched diagram. She worked faster now:

..ATECONSULTDRD

A.L.G.R.E.N.F.O

RCASE.HISTORYON

L.Y.M.R.S.Y.E.A.

BLAGDONFO.RBACK

G...R.O.U...N.D.

ONLYNUR.SEHASSU

P.P.E.….R.A.T

EIGHTSY.LVIACOL

D.F.…I.E.L..D

She glanced up at the mirror, carefully removed the two pages from the book, folded them once, and slipped a stamped, addressed envelope out from under the business papers on the desk. She put the crossword pages in the envelope, sealed it, folded it into one of the printed forms, and fitted both into a long envelope which was addressed in bold type to an industrial company in New York. Then she looked at her wrist watch. Still looking at it, she said in her quiet, expressionless way, “I had no idea it was so late.”

“Late?” The nurse looked at her wrist watch. “Late for what?” she asked comically.

“The postman will be coming. I must sign these proxies and get them off. Date them, too; it says so.” She picked up a card. “Date them. What’s the date, I wonder?”

“It’s Easter Monday,” said the nurse, “April the eighteenth.” She got up and came over. “You shouldn’t be bothered with business.”

“You heard my brother-in-law ask me to do them.” The patient was signing busily.

“Is there any rush?”

“There is, by what they say.”

The nurse was not likely to read the fine print on those mysterious cards and letter-sheets, and she accepted the probability that rush was a part of business. She stood while her patient blotted the forms and put them in their envelopes. When they were ready she picked them up and licked the flaps. The patient sat without looking at her, motionless—entirely motionless; she was holding her breath.

When they were all sealed, Mrs. Coldfield suddenly leaned forward with her elbows on the desk-flap and her head in her hands. The nurse stood looking at her sharply.

“You tired yourself out, just like I said. Now don’t do another thing before tea.”

“I hear him on the gravel.”

“Such ears I never—you can’t hear him all the way around to the front.”

The nurse walked over to the door, was about to push the button of a bell, glanced back at the figure bowed over the desk, and raised and dropped her shoulders in a skeptical kind of shrug. She looked at the casement—a cat could get through that half-opening, nothing much bigger would make it. She went out, locked the bedroom door behind her, and descended two flights of stairs. When she came back the patient was sitting in an armchair, her head back, her eyes closed. She looked quite peaceful.

“Mustn’t brood, you know,” said the nurse brightly.

The patient opened her eyes slowly and looked at the other woman.

“Have to be cheerful to get well.” The nurse switched on two of the lamps. “Tea’s coming.”

“Doctor Dalgren said I was well.”

The nurse frowned heavily. “It’s Doctor Smyth’s case now.”

“Of course. Silly of me.”

“How about tea downstairs? Make a change.” She added: “They’re all out, every last one of ’em.”

The patient smiled. “Yes, I know.”

“That party at the Watertons’, that ought to be something! Too bad you had to miss that.”

“In any case I couldn’t have gone. I’m in mourning.”

The nurse, taken aback a little, said after a pause: “Well, it’s only a family party after all. It’s all right for them to go to that.”

“It’s all right to go to anything, if you feel like going.”

“That’s what I say. Come on now, take an interest; let’s go downstairs for tea, and then out for a walk.”

Mrs. Coldfield said as if in slight surprise: “But what if callers came?”

This was in bad taste, execrable taste. The nurse said stiffly: “They won’t come in the library—Mr. Ira’s little library.” She added: “You’re not well enough to see strangers.”

“I can see that it wouldn’t do.”

“Now don’t be naughty. I want to tell the doctor that you’re ever so much better.”

Mrs. Coldfield turned to look at the nurse steadily. She asked: “Well enough to travel?”

The nurse returned the look. There was a question in her eyes, too. But after a moment she said loudly: “Doctor Smyth is a very experienced man, he has a big reputation in this vicinity. All the big people have him, and he has ten times the medical knowledge of these psychiatrists.”

Mrs. Coldfield leaned back again. She said: “I’ll have tea upstairs, if you don’t mind.”

“I won’t take hold of your arm.”

There was a long silence. Then Mrs. Coldfield turned her head again, met the nurse’s eyes, and smiled. She said: “If you did I should understand.”

The nurse thought: She’s a smart one. It’s none of my business, Smyth knows his job. But what did she do?