‘You’re mad!’ Miss Bell suddenly cried. ‘The whole thing has affected you, Plunkett. It’s ridiculous what you’re saying.’ The blood had gone to her face and neck, and showed in dark blotches beneath her weathered skin. Her eyes, usually so tranquil, shone fierily in her anger. She didn’t move, but continued to stand at the corner of the kitchen table, just behind Mr Apse, who was looking up at her, astonished.
‘How can we possibly do such a thing?’ Miss Bell shrieked. ‘It’s a disgusting, filthy kind of thing to suggest. Her body’s still warm and you can stand, there saying that everything should be falsified. You don’t care tuppence for Dr Ripley, it’s not Dr Ripley who matters to you. They could hang him for murder –’
‘I did not say Dr Ripley would be hanged.’
‘You implied it. You implied the most terrible things.’
The power left her voice as she uttered the last three words. Her eyes closed for a moment and when she opened them again she was weeping.
‘Now, now, my dear,’ Mrs Pope said, going to her and putting a hand on her arm.
‘I am only thinking of Mrs Abercrombie’s wishes,’ Plunkett said, unmoved and still severe. ‘Her wishes didn’t say the old doctor should be hounded.’
Mrs Pope continued to murmur consolation. She sat Miss Bell down at the table. Tindall went to a drawer in the dresser and took from it a number of household tissues which she placed in front of Miss Bell. Mr Apse pressed the shredded tobacco into his pipe.
‘I see no reason at all not to have a private household funeral,’ Plunkett said. He spoke slowly, emphasizing the repetition in his statement, summing everything up. What right had the stupid little creature to create a ridiculous fuss when the other three would easily now have left everything in his hands? It wasn’t she who mattered, or she who had the casting vote: it was old Ripley, still standing on the doorstep.
‘No,’ Miss Bell whispered. ‘No, no.’
It was a nightmare. It was a nightmare to be crouched over the kitchen table, with Mrs Pope’s hand on her shoulder and tissues laid out in front of her. It was a nightmare to think that Mr Apse wouldn’t have cared what they did with Mrs Abercrombie, that Tindall wouldn’t have cared, that Mrs Pope was coming round to Plunkett’s horrible suggestions. It was a nightmare to think of the doctor being blackmailed by Plunkett’s oily tongue. Plunkett was like an animal, some creature out of which a devil of hell had come.
‘Best maybe to have a chat with the doctor,’ Miss Bell heard Mrs Pope’s voice say, and heard the agreement of Tindall, soothing, like a murmur. She was aware of Mr Apse nodding his head. Plunkett said:
‘I think that’s fair.’
‘No. No, no,’ Miss Bell cried.
‘Then what is fair, Miss Bell?’ Mrs Pope, quite sharply, asked.
‘Mrs Abercrombie is dead. It must be reported.’
‘That’s the doctor’s job,’ Plunkett pointed out. ‘It don’t concern us.’
‘The doctor’ll know,’ Tindall said, considering it odd that Plunkett had all of a sudden used bad grammar, a lapse she had never before heard from him.
Without saying anything else, Plunkett left the kitchen.
Dr Ripley, who had pulled the bell four times, was pulling it again when Plunkett opened the hall door. The butler, Dr Ripley thought, was looking dishevelled and somewhat flushed. Blood pressure, he automatically said to himself, while commenting on the weather.
‘She died,’ Plunkett said. ‘I wanted to tell you in person, Doctor.’
They stood for a moment while Plunkett explained the circumstances, giving the time of death as nine thirty or thereabouts.
‘I’m really sorry,’ Dr Ripley said. ‘Poor dear.’
He mounted the stairs, with Plunkett behind him. Never again would he do so, he said to himself, since he, too, knew that the house was to pass into the possession of an organization which studied grasses. In the bedroom he examined the body and noted that death was due to simple heart failure, a brief little attack, he reckoned, judging by her countenance and the unflustered arrangement of her body. He sighed over the corpse, although he was used to corpses. It seemed a lifetime, and indeed it was, since he had attended her for a throat infection when she was a bride.
‘Heart,’ Dr Ripley said on the landing outside the bedroom. ‘She was very beautiful, you know. In her day, Plunkett.’
Plunkett nodded. He stood aside to allow the doctor to precede him downstairs.
‘She’ll be happy,’ Dr Ripley said. ‘Being still in love with her husband.’
Again Plunkett nodded, even though the doctor couldn’t see him. ‘We wondered what best to do,’ he said.
‘Do?’
‘You’ll be issuing a certificate?’
‘Well yes, of course.’
‘It was that we were wondering about. The others and myself.’
‘Wondering?’
‘I’d like a chat with you, Doctor.’
Dr Ripley, who hadn’t turned his head while having this conversation, reached the hall. Plunkett stepped round him and led the way to the drawing-room.
‘A glass of sherry?’ Plunkett suggested.
‘Well, that’s most kind of you, Plunkett. In the circumstances –’
‘I think she’d have wished you to have one, sir.’
‘Yes, maybe she would.’
Plunkett poured from a decanter and handed Dr Ripley the glass. He waited for the doctor to sip before he spoke.
‘She sent a message to you, Doctor. Late last night she rang her bell and asked for me. She said she had a feeling she might die in the night. “If I do,” she said, “I don’t want him blamed.” ’
‘Blamed? Who blamed? I don’t understand you, Plunkett.’
‘I asked her that myself. “Who blamed?” I said, and she said: “Dr Ripley.” ’
Plunkett watched while a mouthful of sherry was consumed. He moved to the decanter and carried it to Dr Ripley’s glass. Mrs Abercrombie had had a heart attack, Dr Ripley said. He couldn’t have saved her even if he’d been called in time.
‘Naturally, we didn’t send for you last night, sir, even though she said that. On account of your attitude, Doctor.’
‘Attitude?’
‘You considered her a hypochondriac, sir.’
‘Mrs Abercrombie was.’
‘No, sir. She was a sick woman.’
Dr Ripley finished his second glass of sherry and crossed the drawing-room to the decanter. He poured some more, filling the glass to the brim.
‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Plunkett.’
It the kitchen they did not speak. Mrs Pope made more coffee and put pieces of shortbread on a plate. No one ate the shortbread, and Miss Bell shook her head when Mrs Pope began to refill her coffee-cup.
‘Bovril, dear?’ Mrs Pope suggested, but Miss Bell rejected Bovril also.
The garden had an atmosphere, different scents came out at different times of year, varying also from season to season. It was in the garden that she’d realized how unhappy she’d been, for eleven years, teaching geography. Yet even if the garden were Paradise itself you couldn’t just bury a dead woman in it and pretend she hadn’t died. Every day of your life you’d pass the mound, your whole existence would be a lie.
‘I’ll go away,’ Miss Bell said shakily, in a whisper. ‘I’ll pack and go. I promise you, I’ll never tell a thing.’
To Dr Ripley’s astonishment, Mrs Abercrombie’s butler accused him of negligence and added that it would have been Mrs Abercrombie’s desire to hush the matter up. He said that Mrs Abercrombie would never have wished to disgrace an old man.
‘What I’m suggesting,’ Plunkett said, ‘is that you give the cause of death to suit yourself and then become forgetful.’