She thought of the possible assassins who might do the deed. Pob was useless; he was only a foolish boy who might get into serious trouble; Pink was in the House, and might find it difficult to act; Ponk in Tatchester might be induced to do something. Oh, if only Ponk had owned the paper; she would have had the Editor flung out on to the streets that evening.
Still, something she could do; she could write to that odious Mr. Harold; she could write to the paper itself; she could cause the withdrawal of some of its advertisements, and make it sorry it ever outraged a county magnate. She sat down at her desk and got busy.
Lady Bynd expresses her surprise that Mr. Harold should have printed Mr. Mansell’s letter in the current issue of the “Stubbington Gazette.” She asks that he will refrain from giving himself the trouble of calling on Sunday afternoon next, as previously arranged.
That cleared the air a little. Then she wrote to the paper:
To the Editor,
The “Stubbington Gazette.”
Sir,
As one who has read with horror and indignation your correspondent’s ill-informed and worse-natured letter about the recent concert in aid of the County Charity, I wish to point out that the concert was an amateur effort made possible by the kindness and devotion of dwellers in the district who gave their services to a most deserving cause. I fail to see how abuse of men and ladies who have done and given of their best can alter the fact that they at least gave of their best and helped the cause according to their power. Perhaps a stranger to the district, who has in more ways than one helped to bring unrest and disorder here, may henceforth make himself more of a stranger. If he dislikes us, let him consider that the feeling may be returned, with perhaps better grounds, by those responsible for the concert in question.
This helped a little further.
The withdrawal of advertisements was a more ticklish business, but she was not one to shrink. One of the big grocers in Stubbington High sued to advertise in the Gazette. His daughter had sung in a duet about a cat and a mouse, which Frampton had judged to be the worst song of the evening. Laetitia put on her fur coat and had herself driven to the grocer’s.
There had been a time, not long past, when a word from Lady Bynd would have made a Stubbington tradesman consider his policy; the time had passed, but she did not yet admit the fact. The grocer had not seen the letter; he read it, at her bidding, and expressed his indignation.
“You can show your indignation,” she said, “by withdrawing your advertisements from a paper which prints insults to your daughter.”
The grocer had lived a long life in a small country town; he was pliant as a reed while the gale blew. He temporised, by saying, that a town in the Far West an editor might be shot for printing a letter of that sort. He went on to say that he wondered at their daring to print it, and then suggested “might not the Law of Libel be invoked?” Many of those who took part in the concert were quite poor people, unable to fee lawyers, “but the Law, my lady, the Law will set them right.”
This struck Laetitia as a possible solution. She had not thought of the Law; what she longed for was a party of young men with cudgels catching Mansell in a dark lane. The time had been when a Bynd might have arranged that; but the times were now out of joint.
“I shall see my own lawyer, you may depend upon it, my lady,” the grocer said. “Fair criticism is one thing; but this is going too far.”
This was something to the good; she felt that she had done one good deed; although, later, she learned that the grocer did nothing. She moved on to the ironmonger.
The ironmonger’s daughter had danced at the concert. She felt that she had a good deal of power over an ironmonger. The Bynd Estate was big, and needed a good deal of iron-work, and many farm implements every year. The Bynd account was well worth having. If this man would not see reason, he might find his account closed. However, as it chanced, the ironmonger was away, and could not be back for two days; her schemes for the ironmonger to withdraw his advertisements would have to wait. There remained the corn and forage merchants; she would see them.
At the end of lunch, a telephone message came through from Ponk to say that he would be glad to see her if she would come in that afternoon. So away she went, with her heart full of rage, to the Ponk house near Tatchester. Ponk and his wife, Paddie, received her and poured the balm, not of wisdom but of approval, upon her anger. Ponk did not care one way or the other about a concert in Stubbington; he knew from old experience that such a thing would be pretty bad; but it had chanced that a bit of news had come into his ken; he wanted to speak to Laetitia about it.
“I wanted to see you, Letty, about this Mansell fellow,” he said. “He’s giving some bronzes by a chap called Faringdon to be put up on Stubbington Bridge; isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” she said, “he is. He attended our War Memorial meeting, as art adviser, so we were told, and was practically turned out of the meeting for the most offensive rudeness to dear Duckie Twee. Now that he finds that he can have no say in the War Memorial, he gives these two things to be put up where no one can see them.”
“Funny thing, that,” Ponk said. “Did you know that those two statues were done for the big War Memorial at Snipton, and turned down by the Snipton people?”
“No? Were they?”
“Fact. Here’s a note in the current number of the Mahlstick: ‘The two heroic bronzes, which Mr. Faringdon calls the Female Griefs, are perhaps the finest works done in the last thirty years. We are glad to think that these great works, which manufacturing Snipton has rejected, have been saved by the munificence of Mr. Frampton Mansell, who is placing them at his own cost on Stubbington Bridge in Tatshire.’”
“Why were they turned out of Snipton? Are they indecent? What is this Mahlstick?”
“Sort of art magazine,” Ponk said. “The bronzes were turned down by Snipton because they gave folk the fan-tods. I don’t know whether they are indecent. Probably only gloomy. But one of the Snipton Councillors is a friend of mine; he sent me this paper only this morning, and added that they are pretty grim; I’ll show you his letter; I felt that I might ask you about it. Did Mansell tell anybody that the bronzes had been turned down by Snipton?”
“I never heard that he did. The Stubbington people wouldn’t have accepted the leavings of any other town.”
“So I suppose,” Ponk said. “He wasn’t bound to tell them. I know nothing about art myself, I suppose he shows public spirit and so forth in giving the things. What were his motives?”
“He is making an effort to show his superiority,” Lady Bynd said. “His father was a pie-man’s boy in Stanchester, and his grandfather a baker in Condicote. Now that he’s made a lot of money by making guns, he poses as a county magnate.”
“Well, do come out to see our winter aconites,” Ponk said; “we’ve got a real show of them this year.”
They saw the aconites; presently she went away. She had meditated evil for some hours, now, by special providence, a weapon had been given to her; she had poison for her blade. Ponk let her take the copy of the Mahlstick and his friend’s letter. She went straight to Old Fist in Stubbington, good easy man, and showed him not the copy or the Mahlstick, which might have made him glad to be housing the masterpieces of art, but the letter from the Snipton Councillor giving his personal opinion of the bronzes in bitter words.