A MEDITERRANEAN MYSTERY

A MEDITERRANEAN MYSTERY

BY FRED E. WYNNE

NEW YORK DUFFIELD & COMPANY 1923

Copyright, 1923, by FRED. E. WYNNE Printed in U. S. A.

TO ANNIE E. JOHNSON A TRIBUTE TO OLD AND LASTING FRIENDSHIP

CHAPTER I IN WHICH I ORDER CHAMPAGNE

I HATE the sight of those terra-cotta envelopes that telegrams come in. They have often announced ill news to me, and even in the absence of ill news they bear with them an atmosphere of emergency, suggestions of sudden action, which is always detestable to me.

Bates stood by while I read the ugly puce form which announced, had I known it, the opening of the curious chapter in my otherwise quiet life which I am now trying to recall and to record in its incredible details.

Incredible I mean from my then point of view, for a life and circumstances more remote from adventure than mine were then, it would be hard to imagine.

“There is no reply,” I said to Bates, who stood awaiting instructions. “It’s Mr. Edmund coming for a few nights. Tell Mrs. Rattray he will be here for dinner, and see that a room is ready.”

“Yes, sir. And if he comes without luggage again?”

[10]A little pang of a kind of jealousy shot through me.

It was two years since I or Bates had seen this ne’er-do-well brother of mine, a year since I had even heard from him, and yet the circumstances of his coming without luggage was fresh in this man’s mind, there was a lightening of his countenance at the mention of his name, and I knew well that my dinner would be one of unwonted luxury.

“He can wear some of my evening things, and give him pyjamas, and—one of your own razors, Bates.”

I will not have other people using my razors or my fountain pen.

Edmund had always been an anxiety and an expense to me. He was now the only incalculable element left in my ordered life. But Bates seemed to be waiting for something, and it was as though a gleam of Edmund’s endearing eyes, the crisp curl above his forehead, the flash of his teeth between merrily curved lips, were faintly reflected from the expectant look in Bates’s face.

“Oh, and, Bates, you can bring up a bottle of the ’47 port, and decant it carefully.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else from the cellar?”

“No,” I said. “I suppose there’s whisky and claret in the dining-room.”

“Very well, sir,” said Bates reproachfully as he closed the door.

“No,” I thought. “I’m hanged if I’m going to have champagne up. He’d only expect it every night, and he hasn’t even written for a year. Now of course he’s only coming for more money.”

Then I rang the bell and Bates returned with suspicious alacrity. “You’d better bring up a bottle of the ’93 Pommery,” I said.

[11]It was one of those delightful days in March when there is real daylight in the late afternoon, with a white gleam in the sky, and a wind keen enough to make possible the indoor joys of winter.

The aspect of my study in my Sussex vicarage was extraordinarily peaceful to me. When I looked over the top of my book, as I often did, I looked into the bright friendly eyes of a fire of mingled coal and drift-wood. When I turned my face half round to the left, as I also often did, I looked across the familiar, discreet harmonies of my room, to a long French window which framed a view of my lawn whose grass was now smoothing and renewing itself after the winter ruffling, of the red footpath and the border already gilt with crocuses; of stately trees beyond my frontier, their bare branches showing the faint pubescence of early spring. Among these trees were the red tiled roofs of the village, and beyond it the Channel, eye-grey to-day under the silver sky, and covered with rushing “white horses” whipped up by the steady East wind.

There was one long banner of smoke on the horizon, and a few miles from shore the brown sails of a couple of trawlers going close-hauled to windward with the flood-tide under them.

All this peacefulness and beauty was, I say, particularly grateful to me. It was like a gentle accompaniment to the book which I was reading with no less attention on account of this consciousness of my surroundings.

I had attended a clerical meeting in the morning and had, I suppose unwisely, said what I really thought about some of the topics under discussion.

Now I was re-reading with especial interest the chapter on “Persecution” in Lecky’s Rise[12] and Influence of Rationalism in Europe. Only a few hours before I had seen among my colleagues the faces of the persecutor and the heresy-hunter, and I was undoubtedly heretical. It was difficult to reflect that if all this had happened but a short time ago, say in the time of my own great-great-grandfather, these same men would have rejoiced to see my live body roasted; that even now, given the power and the custom, the spirit of Calvin and Torquemada was not dead, that it still lit the eyes of living men who could believe in “Exclusive Salvation.”

After the fret, the prejudice, and the spluttering of modern theological controversy there was healing for my soul in the calm intellectual austerity of Lecky.

Such were my preoccupations then. The academic interests of a scholarly, well-to-do, bachelor parson of forty-five with a hobby for homing pigeons.

I had just looked at the clock and realised with another glow of satisfaction that my afternoon tea was almost due, when my man Bates came in with this disturbing telegram.

This Edmund who was about to burst again into the quiet routine of my life was my only brother, now practically my only relative, and some fifteen years younger than myself. At the time of his first appearance in the world I was old enough to regard the news of his arrival as an indiscretion on the part of my parents. My father was a younger son of our old and once-distinguished Irish family. He was one of those soldiers who are always doing the hard rough work of the Empire and seeing the other men in the comfortable positions getting the “Honours and Rewards.” I[13] was born in India, and thanks to my mother’s moderate fortune had been sent home in childhood to receive an expensive and perfectly respectable education.

At the time of Edmund’s birth my father was at home, railing at the Indian Government and the War Office, earning, I fear, the reputation of a bore with a grievance in the Service Clubs, and certainly blasting any prospects of a further career he might have had, by his frank and perfectly just criticism of important persons.

I was at Wellington, destined for Sandhurst and the Army, for in spite of my father’s atrocious experiences it never occurred to either of us that the world held any other career for me.

Looking back I don’t think I really had any desire to be a soldier or knew at all what was implied in it. It just seemed inevitable, and I suppose I had up to then as much part in shaping my destinies as most people. I suppose that is how the ranks of the pawn-broking, cheese-mongering, grave-digging, and other apparently undesirable callings are kept filled.

But I knew enough to resent quite definitely the halving of my patrimony with this younger brother, concerning whose intrusion I had been in no way consulted.

I bitterly resented also the continued illness of my mother after this event.

During the greater part of my short life, which then seemed so long, she had been but a memory of infancy, repainted during one long summer when she had been home, and then her gracious, lovely presence had utterly outshone even the ideal of memory.

I had for her a boy’s romantic devotion, and[14] her death when the child was a year old and I almost a man, overwhelmed me with the force of a man’s passionate grief abrading the exquisitely tender sensorium of a child.

And then the baby Edmund began to grow like her. From the first his eyes and mouth were hers. As he learned to speak he spoke with her voice, and innumerable little gestures reminded me of her. This was my first solace; and my early, selfish, boyish resentment died down and warmed into something else, transmuted by grief into the second great attachment of my adolescence.

Nothing could quite kill this, and I suppose that is why, at forty-five, I ordered the champagne for him.

Edmund was of course intended for the Navy, and as he grew older it seemed as if this were Nature’s arrangement as well as the family’s. There was no mere acquiescence in this case, as in mine.

But all these family dispositions were shattered just about the time I should have entered Sandhurst.

The whole of my mother’s property consisted of her interest in certain estates in the Straits Settlements, and by some mysterious fluctuation of trade these suddenly became almost valueless. Relying on the stability of this property my father had invested the whole of his patrimony in an annuity, so that the family might live with more dignity during his and her lifetime.

With this we still could make ends meet, and even overlap, while he lived. But at his death there would be only a pittance for Edmund and myself. It would be utterly impossible for either of us to maintain the family tradition in the Services.

For a youth in my position it was considered[15] that there was only one respectable alternative—the Church.

It was agreed by everyone, including myself, that I had not sufficient brains for the Bar. We were that simple kind of folk that really believe that a high order of intellect is necessary for success at the Bar. I am told that this carefully fostered superstition is not yet quite dead. I was accordingly entered at one of the less expensive colleges at Oxford, where I followed all the fashions, social, mental and moral; acquired the usual affectations; had my mind rendered as far as possible inaccessible to ideas; and otherwise enjoyed the advantages of what is called a “University Education.”

It was the fashion then for superior persons to be patronisingly enthusiastic about what they called the “Working Man.” I accordingly obtained a curacy in an extremely unpleasant industrial district, and entered Holy Orders without so much as suspecting that I had a mind or a character of my own.

From the “Working Man” I learned a little about the technique of pigeon flying and breeding. This information has been invaluable to me ever since. It has provided me with one of the principal interests in my life, and even a little very precious distinction, when one of my birds came home fourth in a great cross-channel event. I also learned that the “Working Man” has no use whatever for gentlemanly young curates from Oxford, or their quaint little fistful of prejudices. I had the good sense to get out of his way as soon as I could and begin my education.

In the meantime Edmund had developed on rather startling lines. Two preparatory schools had refused to keep him after a single term. The[16] first on the grounds that he had “corrupted the entire establishment,” the second because he was “destitute of the moral faculty.” My father said the case was much more serious, that “he had not the instincts of a gentleman.”

My father thrashed him well and hard. When this was over Edmund said, “I’m afraid, daddy, this hurts you much more than it does me.”

Then my father consulted a doctor who said that “a certain insensibility to pain was a frequent accompaniment of the criminal diathesis.” He recommended a low diet and bromides. Edmund promptly broke out in spots. Thus he got his way, which was to enter the mercantile marine, as the Navy was debarred by circumstance.

This was grievous to my father’s old-fashioned prejudices, but anything was better than living with an insoluble problem with whom everyone fell in love.

The reports received from the training ship went far to reconcile him. These invariably described Edmund as “obedient and keen.”

I am always glad to reflect that my poor father’s anxiety and perplexity about this well-beloved child were thus allayed before he very unexpectedly died, and Edmund and I were left alone as regards relatives.

For of our cousins of the senior branch in Ireland we knew hardly anything. They wrote kindly and respectfully about my father, but did not offer to come to the funeral.

Shortly after this Edmund went to sea as a gentleman apprentice. He was away some five months and returned “in irons.” I learned that he had broached cargo in order to obtain extra rum for his mess. He explained to me that “everybody[17] was in it, and a fellow couldn’t stand out. I should have been horribly ragged if I had, and it would have been a damned unsporting thing to do. We drew lots for who was to get the stuff, and of course it fell to me. Just the damned family luck. I didn’t want the beastly stuff myself, for the simple reason that I don’t drink rum—anything else you like, but not rum. It makes your breath smell beastly.”

I was convinced that his tale was true and felt that on the whole he had behaved well.

Of course one could not expect the magistrate to take the same view. This old gentleman enjoyed himself tremendously with such an unusual text to preach about. However, when he had worked off the last of his platitudes, he announced that he had decided to give Edmund the benefit of the First Offender’s Act. He said he was influenced largely by the fact of the punishment already undergone by the prisoner through his having come home “in irons.” I believe the poor old thing imagined that this expression involved actual fetters.

As a matter of fact Edmund’s colleagues and the cook had combined to ensure his having a fairly comfortable time. He said himself “they didn’t even get ratty about my having no work.”

So Edmund left the Court not without a stain on his character, and saddled with certain responsibilities as to reporting to the police which he described in terms so blasphemous that even to hear him made me feel unfrocked, like Stevenson’s maiden lady when she overheard the Jongleurs’ repartee.

Of course Edmund’s indentures were cancelled, and the problem of his future became to me a very anxious one.

[18]It did not at all worry Edmund. He regarded the world as his oyster.

Shortly before this catastrophe I had been presented to a small “living” in Warwickshire by one of our distant and grandiose relatives who had the iniquitous right of advowson. I took Edmund down there in order that we might “discuss the situation.”

My parlour-maid at once fell in love with him, and he trod on one of the best pigeons in my modest loft.

I pointed out that our joint income, including my stipend, was likely to be less than £400 a year.

Edmund said that seemed a good lot for two unmarried blokes.

As his own share was less than £50, I thought this was cool.

“But you can’t stop on here indefinitely doing nothing.”

“No,” he agreed, “not indefinitely. I think there’s just time for a cigarette before dinner.”

It was impossible to get him to talk seriously about the future. When I tried I was always whirled away on the wings of his stories of places he had seen and men he had met. He talked so vividly and had so fully the artist trick of setting a character before one, in the round and alive in a sentence, that I once suggested writing as a possible career. His whole being radiated scorn.

“Quill-driving be damned,” he said. “Even if I knew how to do it, I’m not the sort of man. I’m the sort of man, at least I shall lead the sort of life, for other people to write about.”

I was actually, without consulting him, humbling myself to try a jerk at the strings of the “Family Influence” on his behalf, when he disappeared.

[19]After three days he wrote:

“Dear Old Man,—I’m back to the sea, so no need to worry. I’ve got just the chance I wanted, a first-rate sailing-ship wanting another deck-hand. I made a lucky purchase of a very drunken old sailor-man’s papers. No questions were asked as they were short of hands, and I soon convinced them I knew my job. Naturally I have dropped the family name pro tem. and won’t be sporting our coat-of-arms at present. I’ve sent a line to Scotland Yard to tell them I’ve got a nice opening in the haberdashery line in the Midlands, and so won’t be looking them up for a bit. I’ll send you a name and address to write to as soon as there is any chance of knowing a port of call in advance. Tell Louisa not to fret too much, and I’ll try to bring you home a nice parrot instead of the pigeon I damaged. This time I’m going to be a real good, sensible boy, and get on and all the rest of it. Honestly, dry land seems to burn the soles of my feet after a few days.

“Very many thanks to you for all you’ve done. This is bound to be a long trip, and though I mayn’t see you again for a year or two, you may be sure of my real honest love. I shall make a bee line for your place whenever I do come home.”

This parting was a wrench to me, and my home seemed very dull and miserable for a time. I had had my second sentimental tragedy, for I had loved, and for a short time had been happy in my love. It had all ended in disillusion and suffering for me, and again Edmund had been my solace. Until he had gone I did not know how much I was dependent on him.

[20]Nevertheless I had again the feeling that he had behaved well. The incident of the papers purchased from the drunken sailor troubled my conscience a little, but I really scarcely knew what was involved in this, or to what extent it might have been a fair bargain. I trusted Edmund not to have done anything mean, and his sailing under a false name was to me nothing but the breach of a social convention. I had come to look upon most conventions as things made for the guidance of fools, to be disregarded by sensible men as soon as they became inconvenient.

I know it may be argued that this theory of mine is exactly that of the criminal. It is; but the criminal is only a fool with some independence of judgment—an exception.

The majority of fools walk between the clipped hedges. The wise minority wanders in safety and at large, being careful that the fools do not witness their excursions. We have our own boundaries which we do not transgress.

In the meantime the deaths of two of our Irish cousins from diphtheria had placed me quite near succession to the entailed portion of the family estate, but the present incumbent being a young vigorous man about to marry an heiress, I had never regarded the possibility of my inheriting.

It was only a few months after Edmund’s departure that this youth went fishing in waders when he should have been in bed, and died very suddenly of appendicitis. I was amazed and rather horrified to find myself an Irish landlord.

I resigned my living and went over to Ireland, but neither the place nor the prospect of that life attracted me. I did not understand it, and felt a stranger and usurper. Everything was in the[21] hands of a most capable firm of land-agents in Dublin.

There was a revenue that to me represented great wealth.

The place, though very large, could easily be let for the fishing and shooting. I deliberately ran away, and became that accursed thing—an absentee landlord. I salved my conscience by insisting on a policy of foolish generosity to my tenants and found myself equally abused by the Press of all parties in Ireland.

After some rather distracted wanderings I settled down in the Sussex vicarage in which this chapter opens. My researches in Byzantine history which shared my energies with pigeon flying had attracted a little attention from some of the learned, and thus I had met the Bishop at the Athenæum. He was patron of my present living, and as no clergyman in his diocese could afford the upkeep of the large and beautiful vicarage to which a stipend of £200 a year was attached, he gladly offered it to me and I as gladly accepted it.