Jardine obviously had a miraculous survival!’
‘It was the hand of God,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith with that matchless confidence of the layman who always knows exactly what God has in mind. ‘Of course none of us knows for certain what went on in that family, but I’ve pieced a few lurid details together over the years and there’s no doubt the background was a nightmare. I used to talk to Alex’s sister Edith – a nice woman she was, terribly common but a nice woman – and she occasionally let slip the odd piece of information which made my hair stand on end.’
‘Lady Starmouth liked her too, said she’d had an awful life –’
‘Unspeakable. The father was a lunatic – never certified, unfortunately, but quite obviously potty. He suffered from religious mania and saw sin everywhere so he wouldn’t let his children go to school for fear they’d be corrupted.’
‘But how on earth did Dr Jardine get to Oxford?’
‘You may well ask,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith once more, enjoying her attentive audience. ‘It was the stepmother. She finally got him to school when he was fourteen and kept his nose to the grindstone until he’d won the scholarship.’
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘since Dr Jardine owed her so much, wasn’t it a rare and splendid piece of justice that she should spend her final days with him in his episcopal palace?’
‘I dare say it was,’ conceded Mrs Cobden-Smith with reluctance, ‘although Carrie didn’t see it that way at the time. Thank God Miss Christie tamed the old girl before poor Carrie could have another nervous breakdown!’
‘Another nervous breakdown? You mean – ?’
‘Dash, I shouldn’t have said that, should I, Willy would be cross. But on the other hand it’s an open secret that Carrie’s a prey to her nerves. I’ve often said to her in the past, “Carrie, you must make more effort – you simply can’t go to bed and give up!”. But I’m afraid she’s not the fighting kind. I’m quite different, I’m glad to say – I’m always fighting away and making efforts! When I was in India …’
I let her talk about India while I waited for the opening which would lead us back to the subject of Mrs Jardine’s nervous breakdown. The characters in Jardine’s past were revolving in my mind: the eccentric father, the doomed siblings, the surviving sister who had had ‘a ghastly way with a teacup’, the mysterious Swedish stepmother who had exerted such a vital influence – and then after the years of darkness, the years of light and a new world with new people: Carrie and the Cobden-Smiths, the subtle charming Lady Starmouth, the clever American girl struggling from the ruins of a disastrous marriage –
‘– disastrous marriage,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith, remarking how fortunate it was that Carrie had avoided marrying an officer in the Indian Army. ‘She would never have survived the climate.’
‘No, probably not. Mrs Cobden-Smith, talking of survival –’
‘Of course, Carrie’s had a hard time surviving marriage to a clergyman,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith, playing into my hands before I could risk a direct question about Mrs Jardine’s difficulties at Radbury, ‘although the ironic part is that in many ways she’s cut out to be a clergyman’s wife – everyone likes her and she’s a very good, devout, friendly little person, but she should have been the wife of an ordinary parson, not the wife of a fire-breathing adventurer who periodically runs amok through the Church of England. It’s a terrible tragedy there are no children. Of course children can drive one up the wall, I’m not sentimental about children, but they do give a marriage a focal point, and although Alex and Carrie are devoted to each other any stranger can see they don’t have much in common. How ghastly it was when that baby was born dead in 1918! No wonder Carrie went to pieces, poor thing.’
‘Was that when she had her nervous –’
‘Well, it wasn’t really a nervous breakdown,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith fluently. ‘I was exaggerating. A nervous breakdown means someone climbing the walls, doesn’t it, and having to be whisked away to a private nursing home, but Carrie’s collapse was quite different. She just lay weeping on a chaise longue all day and when she finally had the strength to leave it she started consulting spiritualists to see if she could get in touch with the dead child – terribly embarrassing for Alex, of course, to be a clergyman whose wife consulted spiritualists, so it was arranged that Carrie should have a little holiday with her parents in the country. That did her the world of good, thank God, and afterwards she was fine until they moved to Radbury.’
‘Someone did mention that she found the move a little difficult –’
‘Poor Carrie! If only Alex had been made vicar of some quiet little parish in the back of beyond! But no, off he went to Radbury to run that hulking great Cathedral, and Carrie found herself put on public display as Mrs Dean – hundreds of new people to meet, all the residents of the Cathedral Close watching critically to see if she made a mistake, new committees to master, endless dinner parties to organize, Mrs Bishop looking down her nose from the palace, all the Canons’ wives trying to interfere –’
‘When did Mrs Jardine make the decision to engage a companion?’
‘Alex made the decision, not Carrie. Carrie was soon in such a state that she couldn’t make any decisions at all – although of course,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith, ‘she wasn’t having a nervous breakdown. Not really. She just went shopping every day to buy things she didn’t need – I think it took her mind off her troubles – and when she wasn’t shopping she was always so tired that she had to stay in bed. However finally she bought some really frightful wallpaper – the last word in extravagance – and Alex decided she needed someone to keep an eye on her during her little shopping sprees. Miss Christie turned up and was an immediate success. Alex used to refer to her simply as “The Godsend”.’
‘The Bishop must have been concerned about his wife,’ I murmured, selecting an understatement in the hope of luring her into further indiscretions, but Mrs Cobden-Smith merely said: ‘Yes, he was,’ and shifted restlessly as if aware for the first time that a stranger might read into her frank comments rather more than she had intended to reveal. I suspected that like most people of little imagination she found it difficult to picture what was going on in any mind other than her own.
‘Where does Miss Christie come from?’ I said, changing the subject to soothe her uneasiness.
‘Rural Norfolk – one of those places where there’s lots of inbreeding and everyone talks in grunts. She has a clerical family background, of course.’
‘How suitable. But Mrs Cobden-Smith, one thing does puzzle me about Miss Christie: why has she never married?’
‘Ah!’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith. ‘That’s what we’d all like to know! There’s a rumour that she was once badly jilted, but I think she put that story in circulation to cover up a far less respectable reason for staying single.’
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘And what would that be?’
‘I strongly suspect,’ said Mrs Cobden-Smith, lowering her voice confidentially, ‘that Miss Christie has a lust for power.’
IV
The sense of an absurd anti-climax was so strong that I had to fight a desire to laugh but fortunately Mrs Cobden-Smith was more anxious to explain her theory than to see if I kept a straight face.
