'Had you known Lady Kastellan long?' I asked.
'We didn't know her at all. She sent us a card and we went because I wanted to see what she was like,' said Mrs Low.
'She's a very able woman,' I said.
'I dare say she is. She hadn't an idea who we were when the butler man announced us, but she remembered at once. "Oh, yes," she said, "you're poor Jack's friends. Do go and find yourselves seats where you can see. You'll adore Lifar, he's too marvellous." And then she turned to say how d'you do to the next people. But she gave me a look. She wondered how much I knew and she saw at once that I knew everything.'
'Don't talk such nonsense, darling,' said Low. 'How could she know all you think she did by just looking at you, and how could you tell what she was thinking?'
'It's true, I tell you. We said everything in that one look, and unless I'm very much mistaken I spoilt her party for her.'
Low laughed and I smiled, for Mrs Low spoke in a tone of triumphant vindictiveness.
'You are terribly indiscreet, Bee.'
'Is she a great friend of yours?' Mrs Low asked me.
'Hardly. I've met her here and there for fifteen years. I've been to a good many parties at her house. She gives very good parties and she always asks you to meet the people you want to see.'
'What d'you think of her?'
'She's by way of being a considerable figure in London. She's amusing to talk to and she's nice to look at. She does a lot for art and music. What do you think of her?'
'I think she's a bitch,' said Mrs Low, with cheerful but decided frankness.
'That settles her,' I said.
'Tell him, Arthur.'
Low hesitated for a moment.
'I don't know that I ought to.'
'If you don't, I shall.'
'Bee's got her knife into her all right,' he smiled. 'It was rather a bad business really.'
He made a perfect smoke-ring and watched it with absorption.
'Go on, Arthur,' said Mrs Low.
'Oh, well. It was before we went home last time. I was D.O. in Selangor and one day they came and told me that a white man was dead in a small town a couple of hours up the river. I didn't know there was a white man living there. I thought I'd better go and see about it, so, I got in the launch and went up. I made inquiries when I got there. The police didn't know anything about him except that he'd been living there for a couple of years with a Chinese woman in the bazaar. It was rather a picturesque bazaar, tall houses on each side, with a board walk in between, built on piles on the river-bank, and there were awnings above to keep out the sun. I took a couple of policemen with me and they led me to the house. They sold brass-ware in the shop below and the rooms above were let out. The master of the shop took me up two flights of dark, rickety stairs, foul with every kind of Chinese stench, and called out when we got to the top. The door was opened by a middle-aged Chinese woman and I saw that her face was all bloated with weeping. She didn't say anything, but made way for us to pass. It wasn't much more than a cubby-hole under the roof; there was a small window that looked on the street, but the awning that stretched across it dimmed the light. There wasn't any furniture except a deal table and a kitchen chair with a broken back. On a mat against the wall a dead man was lying. The first thing I did was to have the window opened. The room was so frowsty that I retched, and the strongest smell was the smell of opium. There was a small oil-lamp on the table and a long needle, and of course I knew what they were there for. The pipe had been hidden. The dead man lay on his back with nothing on but a sarong and a dirty singlet. He had long brown hair, going grey, and a short beard. He was a white man all right. I examined him as best I could. I had to judge whether death was due to natural causes. There were no signs of violence. He was nothing but skin and bone. It looked to me as though he might very likely have died of starvation. I asked the man of the shop and the woman a number of questions. The policeman corroborated their statements. It appeared that the man coughed a great deal and brought up blood now and then, and his appearance suggested that he might very well have had T.B. The Chinaman said he'd been a confirmed opium smoker. It all seemed pretty obvious. Fortunately cases of that sort are rare, but they're not unheard of-the white man who goes under and gradually sinks to the last stage of degradation. It appeared that the Chinese woman had been fond of him. She'd kept him on her own miserable earnings for the last two years. I gave the necessary instructions. Of course I wanted to know who he was. I supposed he'd been a clerk in some English firm or an assistant in an English store at Singapore or Kuala Lumpur. I asked the Chinese woman if he'd left any effects. Considering the destitution in which they'd lived it seemed a rather absurd question, but she went to a shabby suit-case that lay in a corner, opened it, and showed me a square parcel about the size of two novels put together wrapped in an old newspaper. I had a look at the suit-case. It contained nothing of any value. I took the parcel.'
Low's cheroot had gone out and he leaned over to relight it from one of the candles on the table.
'I opened it. Inside was another wrapping, and on this, in a neat, well-educated writing: To the District Officer, me as it happened, and then the words: please deliver personally to the Viscountess Kastellan, 53 Carlton House Terrace, London, sw. That was a bit of a surprise. Of course I had to examine the contents. I cut the string and the first thing I found was a gold and platinum cigarette-case. As you can imagine I was mystified. From all I'd heard the pair of them, the dead man and the Chinese woman, had scarcely enough to eat, and the cigarette-case looked as if it had cost a packet. Besides the cigarette-case there was nothing but a bundle of letters. There were no envelopes. They were in the same neat writing as the directions and they were signed with the initial J. There were forty of fifty of them. I couldn't read them all there, but a rapid glance showed me that they were a man's love letters to a woman. I sent for the Chinese woman to ask her the name of the dead man. Either she didn't know or wouldn't tell me. I gave orders that he should be buried and got back into the launch to go home. I told Bee.'
He gave her his sweet little smile.
'I had to be rather firm with Arthur,' she said. 'At first he wouldn't let me read the letters, but of course I wasn't going to put up with any nonsense like that.'
'It was none of our business.'
'You had to find out the name if you could.'
'And where exactly did you come in?'
'Oh, don't be so silly,' she laughed. 'I should have gone mad if you hadn't let me read them.'
'And did you find out his name?' I asked. 'No.'
'Was there no address?'
'Yes, there was, and a very unexpected one. Most of the letters were written on Foreign Office paper.'
'That was funny.'
'I didn't quite know what to do. I had half a mind to write to the Viscountess Kastellan and explain the circumstances, but I didn't know what trouble I might be starting; the directions were to deliver the parcel to her personally, so I wrapped everything up again and put it in the safe. We were going home on leave in the spring and I thought the best thing was to leave everything over till then. The letters were by way of being rather compromising.'
'To put it mildly,' giggled Mrs Low. 'The truth is they gave the whole show away.'
'I don't think we need go into that,' said Low.
A slight altercation ensued; but I think on his part it was more for form's sake, since he must have known that his desire to preserve an official discretion stood small chance against his wife's determination to tell me everything. She had a down on Lady Kastellan and didn't care what she said about her. Her sympathies were with the man. Low did his best to tone down her rash assertions. He corrected her exaggerations. He told her that she'd let her imagination run away with her and had read into the letters more than was there. She would have done it. They'd evidently made a deep impression on her, and from her vivid account and Low's interruptions I gained a fairly coherent impression of them. It was plain for one thing that they were very moving.