‘Poor thing,’ Mrs Pope said, pouring her boiling water on to the coffee she had ground, and for a moment Tindall thought the reference was to her.
‘Yes,’ Miss Bell whispered, ‘poor old thing.’ She spoke in a kind way, but her words, sincerely meant, did not sound so in the kitchen. Somewhere in the atmosphere that the death had engendered there was resentment, a reflection of the bitterness it had engendered in Plunkett. There was a feeling that Mrs Abercrombie, so considerate in her lifetime, had let them down by dying. Even while she called her a poor old thing, Miss Bell wondered what she should do now. Many employers might consider the idea of a woman gardener eccentric, and certainly other men, more set in their ways than Mr Apse, mightn’t welcome a female assistant.
Mrs Pope thought along similar lines. You became used to a place, she was reflecting as she poured the coffee into cups, and there’d be few other places where you could cook so grandly for a single palate, where you were appreciated every day of your life. ‘Bloody inedible,’ she’d heard a girl exclaim in a corridor of the YWCA, referring to carefully poached haddock in a cream sauce.
‘The doctor’ll be here at twelve,’ Plunkett sombrely announced, re-entering the kitchen from the back hall. ‘I left a message; I didn’t say she’d died.’
He sat down at the table and waited while Mrs Pope filled his coffee-cup. Tindall placed the jug of hot milk beside him and for a moment the image of her fingers on the flowered surface of the china caused him to remember the caressing of those fingers the night before. He added two lumps of sugar and poured the milk. He felt quite urgent about Tindall, which he never usually did at half past eleven on a morning after. He put it down to the upset of the death, and the fact that he was idle when normally on a Friday morning he’d be going through the stores with Mrs Pope.
‘Doctor’ll sign a death warrant,’ Mrs Pope said. ‘There’ll be the funeral.’
Plunkett nodded. Mrs Abercrombie had a cousin in Lincolnshire and another in London, two old men who once, twelve years ago, had spent a weekend in Rews Manor. Mrs Abercrombie hadn’t corresponded with them after that, not caring for them, Plunkett imagined. The chances were they were dead by now.
‘No one much to tell,’ Mrs Pope said, and Miss Bell mentioned the two cousins. He’d see if they were alive, Plunkett said.
It was while saying that, and realizing as he said it the pointlessness of summoning these two ancient men to a funeral, that he had his idea: why should not Mrs Abercrombie’s last wishes be honoured, even if she hadn’t managed to make them legal? The idea occurred quickly and vividly to him, and immediately he regretted his telephoning of Dr Ripley. But as soon as he regretted it he realized that the telephoning had been essential. Dr Ripley was a line of communication with the outside world and had been one for so long that it would seem strange to other people if a woman, designated a hypochondriac, failed to demand as regularly as before the attentions of her doctor. It would seem stranger still to Dr Ripley.
Yet there was no reason why Mrs Abercrombie should not be quietly buried beside the husband she had loved, where she was scheduled to be buried anyway. There was no reason that Plunkett could see why the household should not then proceed as it had in the past. The curtains of the drawing room would be drawn when next the window-cleaner came, Dr Ripley would play his part because he’d have no option.
‘I see no harm in it,’ Plunkett said.
‘In what?’ Mrs Pope inquired, and then, speaking slowly to break the shock of his idea, he told them. He told them about the letter Mrs Abercrombie had received that morning from her solicitors. He took it from an inside pocket and showed it to them. They at first thought it strange that he should be carrying Mrs Abercrombie’s correspondence on his person, but as the letter passed among them, they understood.
‘Oh no,’ Miss Bell murmured, her small brown face screwed up in distaste. Mrs Pope shook her head and said she couldn’t be a party to deception. Mr Apse did not say anything. Tindall half shook her head.
‘It was what she clearly wished,’ Plunkett explained. ‘She had no intention of dying until she’d made this stipulation.’
‘Death waits for no one’s wishes,’ Mr Apse pointed out in a ponderous voice.
‘All we are doing,’ Plunkett said, ‘is to make it wait.’
‘But there’s Dr Ripley,’ Tindall said, and Mrs Pope added that a doctor couldn’t ever lend himself to anything shady. It surprised Mrs Pope that Plunkett had made such an extraordinary suggestion, just as it surprised Miss Bell. Tindall and Mr Apse were surprised also, but more at themselves for thinking that what Plunkett was suggesting was only a postponement of the facts, not a suppression.
‘But, Plunkett, what exactly are you wanting to do?’ Mrs Pope cried out, suddenly shrill.
‘She must be buried as she said. She spoke to us all of it, that she wished to be laid down by Mr Abercrombie in the garden.’
‘But you have to inform the authorities,’ Miss Bell whispered, and Mrs Pope, still shrill, said there had to be a coffin and a funeral.
‘I’d make a coffin,’ Plunkett replied swiftly. ‘There’s the timber left over from the drawing-room floorboards. Beautiful oak, plenty of it.’
They knew he could. They’d seen him making other things, a step-ladder and bird-boxes, and shelves for the store-room.
‘I was with her one day,’ Plunkett said, not telling the truth now. ‘We were standing in the garage looking at the timber. “You could make a coffin out of that,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever made a coffin, Plunkett.” Those were her exact words. Then she turned and went away: I knew what she meant.’
They believed this lie because to their knowledge he had never lied before. They believed that Mrs Abercrombie had spoken of a coffin, but Miss Bell and Mrs Pope considered that she had only spoken in passing, without significance. Mr Apse and Tindall, wishing to believe that the old woman had been giving a hint to Plunkett, saw no reason to doubt that she had.
‘I really couldn’t,’ Miss Bell said, ‘be a party to anything like that.’
For the first time in their association Plunkett disliked Miss Bell. He’d always thought her a little field-mouse of a thing, all brown creases he imagined her body would be, like her face. Mrs Abercrombie had asked him what he’d thought when Miss Bell had answered the advertisement for an assistant gardener. ‘She’s been a teacher,’ Mrs Abercrombie had said, handing him Miss Bell’s letter, in which it was stated that Miss Bell was qualified to teach geography but had been medically advised to seek outdoor work. ‘No harm in seeing her,’ he’d said, and had promised to give Mrs Abercrombie his own opinion after he’d opened the hall door to the applicant and received her into the hall.
‘You would not be here, Miss Bell,’ he said now, ‘if I hadn’t urged Mrs Abercrombie that it wasn’t peculiar to employ a woman in the garden. She was dead against it.’
‘But that’s no reason to go against the law,’ Mrs Pope cried, shrill again. ‘Just because she took a woman into the garden doesn’t mean anything.’
‘You would not be here yourself, Mrs Pope. She was extremely reluctant to have a woman whose only experience in the cooking line was in a hostel. It was I who had an instinct about your letter, Mrs Pope.’
‘There’s still Dr Ripley,’ Miss Bell said, feeling that all the protestation and argument were anyway in vain because Dr Ripley was shortly due in the house and would put an end to all this absurdity. Dr Ripley would issue a death certificate and would probably himself inform a firm of undertakers. The death of Mrs Abercrombie had temporarily affected Plunkett, Miss Bell considered. She’d once read in the Daily Telegraph of a woman who’d wished to keep the dead body of her husband under glass.