The Crozier Pharaohs (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  “No, but they will have puppies now and then for sale. I shall bespeak a couple from the next litter if all goes well and the family are keen to have them—not that I think there is any doubt about that.”

  “I wonder when we shall see the sisters again? Like you, I find them interesting.”

  “It sounds as though they are better off without that selfish father of theirs, but, for their own sakes, I wish they would take down his brass plate. They complain that the summer visitors are always bothering them because they think one of them is a doctor.”

  “Family sentiment dies hard. Perhaps that is why Bryony leaves their father’s brass plate in position.”

  “I can’t believe she cared tuppence for that conceited, selfish old man.”

  “We have only her word for it that he was either conceited or selfish, and he has left his daughters well provided for.”

  “Oh, well, RIP then, Dr. Rant,” said Laura, closing her notebook and putting it aside. “All the same, I’m glad he wasn’t my father. He’d have died earlier if he had been, the bullying old so-and-so. Talk about Daughters and Sons!”

  “I thought we were talking only about daughters.”

  “Don’t be so difficult. You know perfectly well that I meant the book by Ivy Compton-Burnett, the one about the father who made his living as an author and then found out that one of his daughters was a better writer than he was.”

  “Perhaps Morpeth or Bryony would have turned out to be a better doctor than their father. Is that what you mean?”

  “Neither had the chance, as far as I can make out. Bryony’s chief grievance seems to be that, once they left school, their father kept them at home and never allowed them to train for anything because he needed their services.”

  “When we had made their acquaintance I was sufficiently interested in them to look the family up in much the same painstaking way as you appear to have followed in the case of the Pharaoh hounds. Dr. Rant seems to have died suddenly and under somewhat mysterious circumstances.”

  “They have never referred to anything of that sort. Was there an inquest?”

  “Yes, indeed. A verdict of accidental death was brought in. It was decided (largely on Bryony’s evidence) that on his wife’s death Dr. Rant had attempted to drown his sorrows by indulging rather too freely in alcoholic beverages. These did not mix very well with the various tranquillising drugs he was administering to himself. The inference was that he inadvertently took a fatal combination of the two.”

  “Sounds thin to me. Much more likely to have been a deliberate suicide, don’t you think?”

  “There was probably a kindly determination on the part of the coroner and his jury to spare the girls’ feelings. Nobody likes to have a suicide in the family. It reflects on the rest of the group.”

  “Well, I wish the rest of that particular group would come over here and let me talk to them about Pharaoh hound puppies. There is plenty of time before Christmas, but I should like to get my word in before somebody else wants to have the pick of the litter. Can’t we invite Bryony and Morpeth to lunch pretty soon?”

  Hearing sounds outside, Dame Beatrice went to the window. She was in time to see a car turn into the drive, an old car and rather a noisy one.

  “We may not need to issue an invitation on behalf of the project you have in mind,” she said. “There is only one car among those owned by our more frequent visitors which makes quite the complaining noise which I hear.”

  “Well, I hope you’re right and that it is Bryony and Morpeth. We’re not expecting anybody, are we? Should it chance to be a patient, there’s nothing in the book, so he or she hasn’t an appointment. I’ll go along and see, shall I?” She joined Dame Beatrice at the window and they saw the car as it turned a bend in the drive. “Yes, it’s the Rants’ car, but there is only one woman in it. Looks like Bryony. The passenger is a man. Bit of a cheek of her to bring a stranger here without warning. Oh, dear! I think she is bringing a patient. He makes me think of La Belle Dame Sans Merci.”

  “He looks masculine enough to me,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “All I meant was that his hair is long and, while there’s no telling at present whether his foot is light, there’s not much doubt that his eyes are wild, although I admit I can’t see them from here. However, I can see that he is making strange gestures.”

  “Are your Dobermanns loose? I see that there is a dog in the back of that car. Your pets may not like to have another animal on their territory.”

  “George has taken them out for a run in the forest. He’ll have them belted up and under control as soon as he reaches the outskirts of the village. Anyway, they wouldn’t attack anybody unless the situation looked threatening. This visitor is putting on quite a bit of an act, though. I think I had better loiter in the vicinity, as it were, when he’s shown in. He now looks to me less like what I said than something out of the mad-house scene in The Rake’s Progress, by the way he’s mopping and mowing in that front seat.”

  “As Lady Boxe said of the Provincial Lady, you are always so well informed,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “All very well to laugh. I feel in my bones that this one spells trouble,” said Laura. Dame Beatrice looked thoughtful. She respected Laura’s almost uncanny knowledge of what the future might hold and the behaviour of the man in the car had certainly been of a kind to cause remark. It would not be the first time that an ill-wisher had attempted to pass himself off as a patient for psychiatric treatment.

  The car was lost to sight as it took the curve which led to the front door but not before both watchers had confirmed their impression that not only was there a dog on the back seat, but that beside the man whose strange gestures had caused Laura so much misgiving was the older of the Rant sisters, who was driving. Of the younger sister there was no sign. It was the first time Dame Beatrice and Laura had not seen them together.

  “I’ll tell you another thing,” said Laura before she slipped out into the hall. “I think the Rants are taking big chances by naming those hounds of theirs after the gods and goddesses of Ancient Egypt. That can’t bring them anything but bad luck. What is worse, they have even given that Labrador bitch of theirs the name of the goddess of Sekhmet, so that she shan’t feel at a disadvantage compared with the hounds. Goodness knows, I’m pretty soft in the head myself where dogs and horses are concerned, but I call that maudlin, don’t you?—besides being so utterly unsuitable.”

  Before Dame Beatrice could answer, the front-door bell pealed and pealed throughout the fine old house.

  “Here we go!” said Laura. She crossed to the door, opened and closed it quietly, and walked down the hall away from the front door, which one of the maids was preparing to open.

  2

  Eccentric Patient

  Out in the hall, but hidden in the shadow cast by the staircase, Laura listened to the exchanges between the caller and the maid.

  “Good afternoon, sir. Are you expected?” This was the formula which Laura had impressed upon the servants that they were to use unless they knew and recognised the caller. Dame Beatrice’s incursions into cases of murder were ever in Laura’s mind, and precautions, in her watch-dog opinion, were always necessary and had more than once been justified.

  The caller, who had removed his hat, although he had not yet crossed the threshold, flourished the headgear and then held it over his heart in the way male Olympic athletes do in salute when they pass in the opening procession in front of the seats of honour. He said, handing her the hat, and stepping inside, “The honourable lady of the house, which is she?”

  “I expect you mean Dame Beatrice, sir. Shall I take your stick?”

  “No, no, not Beatrice. Wrong play, wrong play! The lady of the house was called Olivia.” He gave the maid his hat, but retained the stick.

  “There’s no one of that name here, sir.”

  “Why, then, I pray you, sweet creature,” he said, “tell me your own name, that in my orisons it may be remembered.”

&
nbsp; “My name is Polly, sir.”

  “Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell

  Why thy canoniz’d bones, hearséd in death,

  Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre

  Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urned,

  Have oped his ponderous and marble jaws

  To cast thee up again.”

  “What name shall I say, sir?”

  Instead of answering, the visitor began to carol. He had a resonant, not unpleasing voice. He sang, “O, pretty, pretty, pretty Poll! Without disguise, breathing sighs, doting eyes, my constant heart discover.”

  Laura decided that it was high time she came forward.

  “All right, Polly,” she said. She then addressed the visitor. “Name, please.”

  “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, but, in this unenlightened day and age, my contemporaries call me Robin Goodfellow.”

  “And sweet Puck?” asked Laura sardonically.

  “You jump to erroneous conclusions. My paternal name is Goodfellow. A misguided mother insisted on having me named Robin.”

  “Very well, Mr. Goodfellow. Address?”

  “Oh, dear me! I am staying at a hotel in a place called Abbots Crozier, but I forget the name of it.”

  “Do you want to consult Dame Beatrice? You have no appointment, you know.”

  “ ‘What needs complaints, when she a place has with the race of saints?’ ”

  “ ‘She sees no tears, or any tone of thy deep groan she hears,’ ” returned Laura. “Well, if you’ve come all the way from Abbots Crozier, you had better come along to the waiting-room and I will find out whether Dame Beatrice has time to attend to you. Oh, I had better take your walking-stick.”

  “No, I need it.”

  “Not in here,” said Laura firmly. “You should have given it to Polly when she took your hat. You came in the Rants’ car, I think, and we know them, so perhaps Dame Beatrice will make an exception in your favour and see you without an appointment. This way, then.”

  Laura had left Dame Beatrice in the library, but when she returned to it after having removed his stick and parked Goodfellow in the waiting-room, she found the library empty, so she went into the consulting-room. Here she found her employer arranging some roses in a glass vase.

  “Name of Goodfellow,” announced Laura. “Staying in a hotel at Abbots Crozier, but doesn’t remember the name of it. Nothing much in that, I suppose. Did the same thing myself once in Paris. Are you willing to see him? He’s either a complete crackpot or else he’s trying to pose as one, but with what object I can’t imagine. I think he’s playing some game. I don’t think the Rant sisters, who seem to have wished him on to us, know a hawk from a handsaw, thanks to a father who wouldn’t let them out of his sight, so what about it?”

  “By all means show him in. We must not disoblige Bryony and Morpeth.”

  “You’ll be careful, won’t you? I think we may have caught a right one this time. Besides, he wanted to cling on to a stick with a heavy knob at the top. I had to take it away from him.”

  “Take it away from him?”

  “Just a slight bit of wrist-work. He seemed a bit surprised. Said he only kept it by him to scotch snakes.”

  “Ah,” said Dame Beatrice, with her reptilian smile, “and the remark aroused your suspicions. Send him in.”

  “I am always seeing angels,” said the caller.

  “Well, that is better than seeing devils,” said Dame Beatrice cheerfully.

  “I’m not so sure. I think I would feel more at home with devils. Angels have harps. Twang! Twang! Twang! And all those hallelujahs!”

  “And all that garlic!” said Dame Beatrice in an absent-minded way.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I was quoting from D.W. Lucas’s and F.J.A. Cruso’s translation of The Frogs of Aristophanes. Do please forgive me. I understand that you are apt at quotations yourself. Please be seated.”

  She was accustomed to patients who suffered from delusions, sometimes of grandeur, sometimes of persecution. She was also accustomed to pseudo-patients who had sought a consultation only with the express (although not expressed) intention of murdering her. Time would indicate to which category her present visitor belonged. He had gone into silent communion with himself, it seemed, for, although his lips moved, no sound emerged. She asked solemnly whether it was easy to sing hallelujahs to harp accompaniment and at this he roused himself from his meditations.

  “Well, I suppose organ notes would be better,” he said, “although the Salvation Army do it with tambourines.”

  “I thought it was with brass bands. They have some very fine musicians.”

  “But not harpists,” he said quickly. “Harps of gold. It says so in the carol. ‘From angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold.’ Well, I wish they would go and bend somewhere else. I’m sure I don’t want them twanging at me. Talking of gold, what are your fees?”

  “I have no idea. You must ask my secretary. She will know.”

  “Is that the tall woman who showed me in?”

  “Yes. Her name is Laura Gavin.”

  “Petrarch loved Laura.”

  “So we are told.”

  “She was too young for love.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. There used to be a song. I believe it went, ‘They said we were too young to love. We were not too young at all.’ Something like that.”

  “Angels are ageless and sexless. They tell me they can scarcely be expected to love—not, at any rate, in our sense of the word. Have you ever loved, not one, but many men, passionately, wholeheartedly, spiritually, and physically, time and time and time again?”

  “I feel I hardly give that impression,” said Dame Beatrice, “but then, of course, I am a psychiatrist, not a nymphomaniac.”

  At this the visitor gave a loud whoop, ran to the door, flung it open and called loudly, “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  Laura, who had made it a habit to remain close at hand when Dame Beatrice entertained a more than usually eccentric patient, knocked and came into the room.

  “Ah,” said Dame Beatrice, “am I wanted on the telephone?”

  “No. I thought somebody called me.”

  “I called you,” said Goodfellow, returning to his chair. “I have a complaint to make in front of a witness. Why am I restricted to a cushioned chaise when I expected to lie in luxury on a couch? But first tell me something else. Behold! I am Ozymandias, king of kings. Why did you wrest my sceptre from me?”

  “Ozymandias may have had a sceptre,” said Laura, “but it is just as likely that his symbols of royalty were a crook and a flail. None of the three would be allowed in the consulting-room, neither are walking-sticks, umbrellas, a conductor’s baton, or a Boy Scout’s staff. I could add to the list, but no doubt you get the drift.” At a nod from Dame Beatrice, she seated herself between her employer and the patient and flipped open her notebook. Goodfellow looked sadly at Dame Beatrice.

  “ ‘But, save his good broadsword, he weapons had none,’ ” he said plaintively.

  “But you don’t need weapons here,” said Dame Beatrice. “There is nothing to be afraid of—except your own sins.”

  “I am not afraid with any amazement. The angels are always talking to me about sins. What do you think?”

  “ ‘He that one sin in conscience keeps

  When he to quiet goes—’ ”

  “But I haven’t got twenty mortal foes. You need twenty mortal foes to sleep among. It says so.”

  “Poetic exaggeration.”

  “I don’t think I’ll stay any longer. I wish you well.” He rose from his chair.

  “Give our love to the angels,” murmured Laura, going to the bell to notify the maid that the visitor was leaving. She accompanied him into the hall, took his hat from Polly, resurrected his heavy walking-stick and escorted him to the front door. She watched him get into the car. The last she heard was his voice raised in song, inspired, no doubt, by t
he driver’s surname. “ ‘So we’ll rant and we’ll roar, like true British sailors. We’ll rant and we’ll roar all on the high seas.’ ”

  The woman in the driver’s seat waved to Laura. Laura waved back, closed the door, and returned to Dame Beatrice.

  “Funny sort of cuss,” she said. “I’m sorry the Rants have got themselves mixed up with him.”

  “Let us hope it is but a passing phase. If he is staying at a hotel, doubtless he is only a bird of passage. Now, it will take that car almost an hour to get back to Abbots Crozier. Get Morpeth on the telephone. Find out what she knows about our caller.”

  “Caller? Yes, he hardly turned out to be a patient, did he? I wonder what his object was in coming here and talking all that rot?”

  “You do not think that the rather inexperienced sisters sent him to us simply because they thought he was in need of my help?”

  “Could be just that, I suppose, but I think there is more to it than that. I think this Goodfellow has scared them pretty badly and that they are asking help for themselves rather than for him.”

  “An interesting conjecture. Well, find out what Morpeth has to say.”

  Morpeth was contrite and apologised several times during the telephone conversation.

  “I told Bryony we ought to have asked you before we sent you this rather awful man. He seems quite strange in the head. Bryony disagreed because she said she thought that, if we told you how crazy he is, you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him. We’ve had an awfully trying time the last few weeks. First there was Susan—you know, the woman who wished herself on us last year as unpaid kennel-maid. She asked for the job and we took her on, but now she keeps wanting us to get rid of poor Sekhmet.”

  “That Labrador you told us about?”

  “Yes, the poor, harmless, friendly creature. We wouldn’t dream of getting rid of her, but Susan won’t give up arguing.”

  “Sack her if she’s a nuisance. After all, it’s your dog, not hers.”

  “She says that, when Sekhmet comes into season, there is always the chance of a mésalliance with one of the Pharaohs, but I don’t see how that would matter. We would have to sell the puppies cheap or even give them away to good homes, that’s all, but Susan says an accidental mating could contaminate the Pharaoh stock. I can’t see how. It might be different if Isis or Nephthys had a litter by a male Labrador, but there’s no chance of that. We’re much too careful. What do you think?”