Dead Water

II

Miss Emily

“The trouble with my family,” said Miss Emily Pride, speaking in exquisite French and transferring her gaze from Superintendent Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard to some distant object, “is that they go too far.”

Her voice was pitched on the high didactic note she liked to employ for sustained narrative. The sound of it carried Alleyn back through time on a wave of nostalgia. Here he had sat, in this very room that was so much less changed than he or Miss Emily — here, a candidate for the Diplomatic Service, he had pounded away at French irregular verbs and listened to entrancing scandals of the days when Miss Emily’s papa had been chaplain at “our Embassy” in Paris. How old could she be now? Eighty? He pulled himself together and gave her his full attention.

“My sister, Fa

Miss Emily recalled her distant gaze and focussed it upon Alleyn. “We are none of us free from this wild strain,” she said, “but in my sister Fa

“Miss Emily, I don’t quite see what you mean.”

“Then you are duller than your early promise led me to expect. Let me elaborate.” This had always been an ominous threat from Miss Emily. She resumed her narrative style.

“My sister Fa

“Portcarrow?”

“Precisely. You ca

“No, indeed.”

“In that case I shall not elaborate. Suffice it to remind you that within the last two years there has arisen, fructified and flourished a cult of which I entirely disapprove and which is the cause of my present concern and of my calling upon your advice.” She paused.

“Anything I can do, of course—” Alleyn said.

“Thank you. Your accent has deteriorated. To continue, Fa

“I should imagine so.”

“Very well. My sister Fa

“You propose to sell the place?”

“Certainly not. Do,” said Miss Emily sharply, “pull yourself together, Rodrigue. This is not what I expect of you.”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Emily.”

She waved her hand. “To sell would be to profit by its spurious fame and allow this nonsense full play. No, I intend to restore the Island to its former state. I have instructed my solicitors to acquaint the persons concerned.”

“I see,” said Alleyn. He got up and stood looking down at his old tutoress. How completely Miss Emily had taken on the character of a certain type of elderly Frenchwoman. Her black clothes seemed to disclaim, clear-sightedly, all pretense to allure. Her complexion was grey; her jewelry of jet and gold. She wore a general air of disassociated fustiness. Her composure was absolute. The setting was perfectly consonant with the person: pieces of buhl; formal, upholstered, and therefore dingy, chairs; yellowing photographs, among which his own young, thin face stared back at him, and an unalterable arrangement of dyed pampas plumes in an elaborate vase. For Miss Emily, her room was absolutely comme il faut. Yes, after all, she must be…

“At the age of eighty-three,” she said, with unca

“I’m much too frightened of you, Miss Emily, to attempt any such task.”

“Ah, no!” she said in English. “Don’t say that! I hope not.”

He kissed her dry little hand as she had taught him to do. “Well,” he said, “tell me more about it. What is your plan?”

Miss Emily reverted to the French language. “In effect, as I have told you, to restore the status quo. Ultimately I shall remove the enclosure, shut the shop and issue a general a

Alleyn said: “I’ve never been able to make up my mind about these matters. The cure of warts by apparently irrational means is too well established to be questioned. And even when you admit the vast number of failures, there is a pretty substantial case to be made out for certain types of faith healing. Or so I understand. I can’t help wondering why you are so fierce about it all, Miss Emily. If you are repelled by the inevitable vulgarities, of course—”

“As, of course, I am. Still more, by the exploitation of the spring as a business concern. But most of all by personal experience of a case that failed: a very dear friend who suffered from a malignancy and who was absolutely — but, I assure you, absolutely—persuaded it would be cured by such means. The utter cruelty of her disillusionment, her incredulity, her agonized disappointment and her death — these made a bitter impression upon me. I would sooner die myself,” Miss Emily said with the utmost vigour, “than profit in the smallest degree from such another tragedy.”

There was a brief silence. “Yes,” Alleyn said. “That does, indeed, explain your attitude.”

“But not my reason for soliciting your help. I must tell you that I have written to Major Barrimore, who is the incumbent of the i

“Major Barrimore and Miss Cost must have been startled by your letters.”

“So much so, perhaps, that they have lost the power of communication. I wrote a week ago. There has been no formal acknowledgment.”

She said this with such a meaning air that he felt he was expected to take it up. “Has there been an informal one?” he ventured,

“Judge for yourself,” said Miss Emily, crisply.

She went to her desk and returned with several sheets of paper which she handed to him.

Alleyn glanced at the first, paused, and then laid them all in a row on an occasional table. There were five…Hell! he thought. This means a go with Miss Emily…They were in the familiar form of newsprint pasted on ruled paper which had been wrenched from an exercise book. The first presented an account of several cures effected by the springs and was headed, with unintentional ambiguity, Pixie Falls Again. It was, he recognized, from the London Sun. Underneath the cutting was an irregular assembled sentence of separated words, all in newsprint: