your questions earlier, but before I close up like a clam let me just say a little more about Loretta so that you can see why for her sake I prefer to treat the incident as closed. She and I first met in 1917 but I’d heard about her for years because my mother, who was American, had been friends with her mother in childhood and they’d always kept in touch. When Loretta finally came to England she was in a terrible mess. She’d been married young to this man Staviski who was a diplomatist; when America entered the War he was transferred from Washington to London, and almost as soon as he and Loretta arrived in England the marriage went to pieces.’
‘He left her?’
‘She left him. But she was the innocent party – he’d made life quite impossible for her, so I had no hesitation in coming to her rescue. She stayed with us while she recovered, and of course she soon met Alex. Well, to cut a long story short I’ll just say that she was so successful at concealing her true feelings that for a long time neither Alex nor I had any idea she was in love with him, but eventually the truth surfaced and Alex was obliged to end the friendship. Loretta was dreadfully upset. I felt so sorry for her. It was all horribly awkward and pathetic, just as any unreciprocated attachment always is, and later we agreed never to speak of it again.’
‘What happened to her afterwards?’
‘When she returned to America she embarked on an academic career and now she teaches history at some college on the Eastern Seaboard. She’s never remarried but I still wonder if she might one day. She’s much younger than me, perhaps only a few years older than you, and although by fashionable standards she’s plain she’s by no means unattractive … However a lot of men don’t like a woman to be too clever.’
But I thought of Jardine, enjoying with Loretta Staviski all the intelligent conversation he was unlikely to encounter at home, and I was unable to resist saying: ‘Dr Jardine must have been sorry to lose her friendship – was he never tempted to see her again during her later visits to England?’
‘How could he? How could he possibly have renewed a friendship which had been so painful to her and so potentially dangerous for him?’
‘But was she herself never tempted to –’
‘This is an interrogation, isn’t it! My dear Dr Ashworth, aren’t you taking rather too much advantage of your very considerable charm?’
I privately cursed my recklessness and attempted to beat a smooth retreat. ‘I’m so sorry, Lady Starmouth, but many a clergyman has to deal occasionally with the sort of difficulty Dr Jardine faced here, and I’m afraid my personal interest in the subject got the better of me. I do apologize.’
She gave me a searching look but decided to be indulgent. ‘I’ve no objection to a sympathetic interest,’ she said, ‘but perhaps it’s lucky for you that I have a soft spot for clergymen … Heavens, here’s Mrs Cobden-Smith!’ Rising to her feet she folded the stool and picked up her artist’s satchel. ‘For your penance, Dr Ashworth, you can listen with an expression of rapturous attention to the stories of how she and the Colonel civilized India.’
‘You two seem to be having a very cosy little tête-à-tête!’ called Mrs Cobden-Smith as she approached us. ‘I’ve just been urging Carrie to get dressed. It’s no good lying in bed after a touch of insomnia – I told her to get up and have a busy day so that she’d be thoroughly tired by bed-time. I remember when I was in India –’
‘I was only saying to Dr Ashworth how interesting you were about India – but do excuse me, I must go and see Carrie myself,’ said Lady Starmouth, and escaped adroitly across the lawn.
My next witness had delivered herself to me with an admirable sense of timing. Fighting my reluctance I smiled at Mrs Cobden-Smith and suggested that we might sit on the garden bench to enjoy the sunshine.
III
‘It’s nice to sit down for a minute,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith. ‘I’ve been rushing around the town trying to buy horsemeat for the dog and the right cough-syrup for Willy. If Willy doesn’t have a dose of cough-syrup every night he coughs like a chimney-sweep and if George doesn’t have horsemeat three times a week he gets lazy – and talking of laziness, it seems you’ve been shirking your work, young man! I thought you were supposed to be closeted in the Cathedral library, not dancing attendance on Lady Starmouth! You’re as bad as Alex – he likes to dance attendance too, but of course in his case he’s just savouring the fact that Adam Jardine from Putney is now the clerical pet of a peeress. Did you know Alex spent the first thirty-seven years of his life being called Adam? It’s his first name. But when Carrie fell in love with him we said’ to her: “My dear,” we said, “you simply can’t marry a man called Adam Jardine – it sounds like a jobbing gardener!” So she found out his second name was Alexander and we rechristened him Alex. His stepmother was livid, I can’t think why.’
I finally had the chance to speak and I thought I had been offered a promising opening. ‘What a coincidence!’ I said. ‘Lady Starmouth was just telling me about Dr Jardine’s stepmother.’
‘Everyone was always rather appalled by the old girl,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith comfortably, quite uninhibited by any desire to be discreet about a dead relative of her husband’s brother-in-law. ‘She was a very strange woman – Swedish, and of course we all know the Scandinavians are peculiar. Look at their plays.’
I ignored this dismissal of the giants of the modern theatre. ‘But I’m told the Bishop was very fond of his stepmother.’
‘Devoted. Very odd. Carrie hated her, but when Alex’s sister died something had to be done about the old girl, who was by then confined to a wheelchair with arthritis and so of course Alex announced: “She’s coming to live with us!” Ghastly. Poor Carrie. I can’t tell you the havoc that decision caused.’
‘How did Mrs Jardine cope?’
‘You may well ask,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith, using a phrase which I was soon to realize was a favourite of hers. ‘It was five years ago, just after the move to Starbridge from Radbury, and Carrie was going through the – well, it was an awkward time for her – and everything was at sixes and sevens. I said to Willy, “Carrie will have a nervous breakdown, I know she will”, but of course I’d reckoned without Miss Christie. The old girl took to Miss Christie in the biggest possible way, gave Carrie no trouble and died good as gold six months later. I said to Willy, “That girl Christie’s a miracle-worker”.’
‘Is there any problem Miss Christie can’t solve?’
‘You may well ask,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith a second time. ‘It was strange how she tamed the old girl, I must say. I remember it occurred to me once that there was a curious resemblance between them – not a resemblance in looks, of course – the old girl weighed a ton while Miss Christie’s so small and slim – but there was some odd resemblance of the personality. I suspect that the old girl, when she was young, had that same cool competence which Miss Christie now displays so noticeably. Alex’s real mother died when he was six, the father was left with eight children under twelve, or something frightful, and the stepmother restored order to the home – rather as Miss Christie pulled the Deanery together when she first came to Radbury.’
I was now offered a choice of two openings; I was tempted to ask about Radbury, but I was also curious to discover more about Jardine’s obscure background. Finally I said: ‘What happened to all the other little Jardines?’
‘One sister went mad and died in an asylum,
