Scales of Justice

Nurse Kettle chuckled obligingly. ‘No nonsense about her, at least,’ she said. ‘Pity some human mums I could name haven’t got the same idea,’ she added, with an air of professional candour. ‘Clever Pussy!’

‘The name,’ Mr Phinn corrected tartly, ‘is Thomasina Twitchett, Thomasina modulating from Thomas and arising out of the usual mistake and Twitchett …’ He bared his crazy-looking head. ‘Hommage à la Divine Potter. The boy children are Ptolemy and Alexis. The girl-child who suffers from a marked mother-fixation is Edie.’

‘Edie?’ Nurse Kettle repeated doubtfully.

‘Edie Puss, of course,’ Mr Phinn rejoined and looked fixedly at her.

Nurse Kettle, who knew that one must cry out against puns, ejaculated: ‘How you dare! Honestly!’

Mr Phinn gave a short cackle of laughter and changed the subject.

‘What errand of therapeutic mercy,’ he asked, ‘has set you darkling in the saddle? What pain and anguish wring which brow?’

‘Well, I’ve one or two calls,’ said Nurse Kettle, ‘but the long and the short of me is that I’m on my way to spend the night at the big house. Relieving with the old gentleman, you know.’

She looked across the valley to Nunspardon Manor.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Mr Phinn softly. ‘Dear me! May one inquire …? Is Sir Harold –?’

‘He’s seventy-five,’ said Nurse Kettle briskly, ‘and he’s very tired. Still, you never know with cardiacs. He may perk up again.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Oh, yes. We’ve got a day-nurse for him but there’s no nightnurse to be had anywhere so I’m stop-gapping. To help Dr Mark out, really.’

‘Dr Mark Lacklander is attending his grandfather?’

‘Yes. He had a second opinion but more for his own satisfaction than anything else. But there! Talking out of school! I’m ashamed of you, Kettle.’

‘I’m very discreet,’ said Mr Phinn.

‘So’m I, really. Well, I suppose I had better go on me way rejoicing.’

Nurse Kettle did a tentative back-pedal and started to wriggle her foot out of one of the interstices in Mr Phinn’s garden gate. He disengaged a sated kitten from its mother and rubbed it against his illshaven cheek.

‘Is he conscious?’ he asked.

‘Off and on. Bit confused. There now! Gossiping again! Talking of gossip,’ said Nurse Kettle, with a twinkle, ‘I see the Colonel’s out for the evening rise.’

An extraordinary change at once took place in Mr Phinn. His face became suffused with purple, his eyes glittered and he bared his teeth in a canine grin.

‘A hideous curse upon his sport,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’

‘Just below the bridge.’

‘Let him venture a handspan above it and I’ll report him to the authorities. What fly has he mounted? Has he caught anything?’

‘I couldn’t see,’ said Nurse Kettle, already regretting her part in the conversation, ‘from the top of Watt’s Hill.’

Mr Phinn replaced the kitten.

‘It is a dreadful thing to say about a fellow-creature,’ he said, ‘a shocking thing. But I do say advisedly and deliberately that I suspect Colonel Cartarette of having recourse to improper practices.’

It was Nurse Kettle’s turn to blush.

‘I am sure I don’t know to what you refer,’ she said.

‘Bread! Worms!’ said Mr Phinn, spreading his arms. ‘Anything! Tickling, even! I’d put it as low as that.’

‘I’m sure you’re mistaken.’

‘It is not my habit, Miss Kettle, to mistake the wanton extravagances of infatuated humankind. Look, if you will, at Cartarette’s associates. Look, if your stomach is strong enough to sustain the experience, at Commander Syce.’

‘Good gracious me, what has the poor Commander done!’

‘That man,’ Mr Phinn said, turning pale and pointing with one hand to the mother-cat and with the other in the direction of the valley; ‘that intemperate filibuster, who divides his leisure between alcohol and the idiotic pursuit of archery, that wardroom cupid, my God, murdered the mother of Thomasina Twitchett.’

‘Not deliberately, I’m sure.’

‘How can you be sure?’

Mr Phinn leant over his garden gate and grasped the handlebars of Nurse Kettle’s bicycle. The tassel of his smoking-cap fell over his face and he blew it impatiently aside. His voice began to trace the pattern of a much-repeated, highly relished narrative.

‘In the cool of the evening Madame Thorns, for such was her name, was wont to promenade in the bottom meadow. Being great with kit she presented a considerable target. Syce, flushed no doubt with wine, and flattering himself he cut the devil of a figure, is to be pictured upon his archery lawn. The instrument of destruction, a bow with the drawing power, I am told, of sixty pounds, is in his grip and the lust of blood in his heart. He shot an arrow in the air,’ Mr Phinn concluded, ‘and if you tell me that it fell to earth he knew not where I shall flatly refuse to believe you. His target, his deliberate mark, I am persuaded, was my exquisite cat. Thomasina, my fur of furs, I am speaking of your mamma.’

The mother-cat blinked at Mr Phinn and so did Nurse Kettle.

‘I must say,’ she thought, ‘he really is a little off.’ And since she had a kind heart she was filled with a vague pity for him.

‘Living alone,’ she thought, ‘with only those cats. It’s not to be wondered at, really.’

She gave him her brightest professional smile and one of her standard valedictions.

‘Ah, well,’ said Nurse Kettle, letting go her anchorage on the gate, ‘be good, and if you can’t be good be careful.’

‘Care,’ Mr Danberry-Phinn countered with a look of real intemperance in his eye, ‘killed the Cat. I am not likely to forget it. Good evening to you, Nurse Kettle.’

II

Mr Phinn was a widower but Commander Syce was a bachelor. He lived next to Mr Phinn, in a Georgian house called Uplands, small and yet too big for Commander Syce, who had inherited it from an uncle. He was looked after by an ex-naval rating and his wife. The greater part of the grounds had been allowed to run to seed, but the kitchen garden was kept up by the married couple and the archery lawn by Commander Syce himself. It overlooked the valley of the Chyne and was, apparently, his only interest. At one end in fine weather stood a target on an easel and at the other on summer evenings from as far away as Nunspardon, Commander Syce could be observed, in the classic pose, shooting a round from his sixty-pound bow. He was reputed to be a fine marksman and it was noticed that however much his gait might waver, his stance, once he had opened his chest and stretched his bow, was that of a rock. He lived a solitary and aimless life. People would have inclined to be sorry for him if he had made any sign that he would welcome their sympathy. He did not do so and indeed at the smallest attempt at friendliness would sheer off, go about and make away as fast as possible. Although never seen in the bar, Commander Syce was a heroic supporter of the pub. Indeed, as Nurse Kettle pedalled up his overgrown drive, she encountered the lad from the Boy and Donkey pedalling down it with his bottle-carrier empty before him.

‘There’s the Boy,’ thought Nurse Kettle, rather pleased with herself for putting it that way, ‘and I’m very much afraid he’s just paid a visit to the Donkey.’

She, herself, had a bottle for Commander Syce, but it came from the chemist at Chyning. As she approached the house she heard the sound of steps on the gravel and saw him limping away round the far end, his bow in his hand and his quiver girt about his waist. Nurse Kettle pedalled after him.

‘Hi!’ she called out brightly. ‘Good evening, Commander!’

Her bicycle wobbled and she dismounted.