Mist on the Saltings

by Henry Wade

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Hilary and John Pansel have muddled along in their cottage in the small community of Bryde-by-the-Sea for ten years, hopeful that John's paintings will ignite a flame of interest in the art world. Now Hilary is being pursued by a successful writer from London, Dallas Fiennes, who has retreated to Norfolk to write another bestseller to replenish his bank account. For Dallas, Hilary is no more than an amusement - one of many - but when John becomes jealous of Dallas's attentions, Hilary is driven into the writer's arms. Then Fiennes is found dead, and John Pansel is the prime suspect . . .

Release date: July 28, 2016

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 340

Sample

HILARY PANSEL straightened her back and stretched her arms in an attempt to get rid of the little gnawing pain that always
attacked the middle of her spine when she was washing up or ironing—anything that involved bending for more than ten minutes at a time. It was nothing that mattered, of course—only one
more small addition to the burden of single-handed domestic drudgery.

It had seemed such fun when she and her big, adorable John had bought the little cottage at Bryde-by-the-Sea, and started on their venture of living and becoming famous entirely by their own
efforts—no rich relations, no staff of hired servants, practically no money, to help them on their way. They would do it all themselves, quietly, with no advertising; there would be hard
times, of course; they would have to ‘go without’ while the foundations were being laid, but that would be all part of the fun. It was John, of course, who was to be famous, was to
make, in time, the fortune that would compensate them for the quietness and simplicity of their start, but she, Hilary, was to have an equal share in the building up of his fame, by feeding him and
nursing him and keeping him happy and cheerful so that no worries or silly little domestic troubles should interfere with his work. It would be John’s name that would be famous, but people
who knew would say: ‘Ah, he would never have done it without her. She has been his inspiration—his good angel. Their life together has been so idyllic that he could hardly help
becoming a great artist.’ Then they would sigh and wish that they had done as much for their husbands—for it would be women, of course, who talked like that—men were too
unimaginative to think of it.

It would take a little time, of course; they had realised that from the first. There was not much money in painting till you were famous, or at any rate till some art gallery had taken
you up. John would have to be content with fifteen or twenty guineas for canvases that in a few years’ time would be changing hands at three-figure prices—for other people. But by then
he would be earning big money himself. Vayle was getting three hundred for his oils and forty or fifty for the smallest water-colours—mere scraps of paper with a few quick, inspired strokes
of the brush dashed on to them. “Vayle”, some wag had said, “has only to blow his nose on a handkerchief and frame it and there’s forty guineas”. Of course that was an
exaggeration, and not very kind, but it was a great compliment in a way—that people should be willing to pay such prices for what were (to Hilary) little more than suggestions of pictures.
There were painters, of course, who got even bigger prices—a thousand guineas was not unheard of, even for a landscape—but they were mostly men who caught the popular fancy with work
which (John said) would be out of fashion and dead in a generation. John would not be like that—his work would last and become greater and more admired long after he was dead—as was the
case with all great artists.

It was not only the money that mattered, of course; that would be nice for what it would enable them to do. What would be so lovely would be meeting celebrated and brilliant people, not only
painters but artists of every kind and actors and authors and everybody worth meeting—people who had made their names and their fortunes by their own talents and not by just inheriting what
other people had done for them—the ‘parasites’, as Hilary in her healthy young scorn had called them. Hilary was herself the daughter of a younger son of an obscurer—and
poorer—branch of a good family, and the sting of being neglected by the higher branches of the family tree had left its mark upon her young and sensitive spirit. So that it was with
enthusiasm not unmixed with bravado that, at the age of twenty two, she had married John Pansel, eight years older than herself and of no family at all—just a painter who had got badly hurt
in the war and whom she had nursed back to health in the hospital which Lady Waterley—one of the ‘higher branches’—had established, with lavish display of patriotism and
womanly feeling, in the ancestral home at Glynde Park. Hilary was welcome enough then; she was young, enthusiastic, and didn’t mind what, or how much, hard work she did, and was quite ready
to attend to the obscurer patients while Lady Waterley and her plain daughters fussed round the ones whose mothers might be useful ‘after the war’.

And ‘after the war’ Hilary had been dropped like a hot potato; she was far too attractive to have at Glynde while her plain cousins were trying to harvest the seeds that had been
sown in those grim years. Hilary had received a photograph of the group taken when the Queen had visited Glynde with Lady Waterley in flowing coif and two medals on her right, and Sir Patrick
Boynton, the great consultant, on her left, framed—the photograph was—in silver, together with an autograph letter of thanks and a vague invitation to ‘come and see us again at
Glynde some day’. That had been the end of it for Hilary, but the beginning of her real love for big, good-tempered John Pansel, who had laughed at her anger and shown her what real life was
like and drawn for her visons of a future of which the little cottage at Bryde was to be but the first stage.

The very name of the place had fascinated her—Bryde-by-the-Sea. It was so deliriously appropriate to their honeymoon—for they spent their honeymoon in preparing the little house that
was to be their home till fame came to John. It was bound to come, because John’s reputation as a painter had been firmly established before the war came to smash everything that was
beautiful and of good repute in the world. He had won a travelling scholarship at the Lambeth Art School, that wonderful training ground for the real working artist which one of the great City
Companies had established and endowed. The scholarship had taken him to Paris and Rome and in 1914 he had won the Prix du Louvre, second only in importance to the Prix de Rome. Sir Otto Geisberg,
the great collector, had sent for him and encouraged and advised him, offered to finance him for a further two years of study in Rome. The ball had been at John Pansel’s feet, fame beckoned
to him with golden finger, the glory and wonder of his art and his opportunity dazzled him—and a group of young firebrands in Sarajevo threw a bomb which shattered the whole firmament of
creation into a million fragments and turned all the thoughts and efforts of men for years to destruction, destruction, destruction . . .

For a year after the war John Pansel’s spirit had remained in a state of torpor—stunned by the shock and horror of its experience. The agony and beastliness of his wound—a
severe abdominal laceration—had hurt more than his body; the years of merciless destruction had killed—so he thought—the power, even the desire, to create; the possession of
money, his war gratuity, encouraged the evil lethargy which was stifling him. A war friend had lent him a small cottage in a drab part of Essex, where no beauty of scenery or surrounding beckoned
to his dormant muse; he was content to lounge through the days, smoking his pipe, feeding a few stupid chickens, digging the stiff, grudging soil of a rectangular patch of garden. No doubt it was
good for his body, this absolute rest after the years of strain, but his spirit might well have sunk for ever into obscurity.

Then a chance meeting at an Oxford Street teashop, on one of his rare visits to London for a Medical Board, had revived his acquaintance with the attractive young nurse whom he had been too ill
and tired to do more than like and be grateful to at Glynde. To his surprise, John Pansel had felt, during this short half-hour’s talk, a stirring of youth and interest. He was thirty now and
had come to think of himself as a middle-aged man. Women and the thought of marriage had not entered his mind during the last five years; even before that he had been too deeply immersed in his
budding career to do more than play with the lighter fringes of love. Now, as he travelled back to his lonely Essex hovel, he found himself thinking with eager affection of Nurse Keston, who had
been kind to him in that hellish hospital—Glynde, to him, was a nightmare of draining-tubes and ether—and who, this afternoon, had smiled and talked to him as if he were a human being
and not a ‘case’ whom the Medical Board had that afternoon scheduled as ‘cured’.

That had been the first of many meetings, half-surreptitious at first on the part of John, almost shame-faced at the idea of having anything to do with a girl. Gradually Hilary’s vigorous
enthusiasm and healthy scorn had stirred a response in John’s dormant spirit; he had begun to talk of his ambitions, his early life—a hard, bitter struggle till the beneficent City
Company had given him his chance, but a life which taught Hilary the smallness of her own angers and ambitions. Spurred on by Hilary—no longer now ‘Nurse Keston’—John had
dug his ‘outfit’ and his old canvases out of the studio in which he had been allowed to store them during the war, had taken a small studio for himself in the purlieus of Hammersmith,
had sold his chickens and thanked his Essex friend, and established himself with a bed and a gas stove and a frying pan under the north light that of itself stirred the spirit of his genius back
into eager life.

But that life, though eager, was at first but a feeble flame. John got easily tired and easily depressed. Hilary saw that, if his revival was to be permanent and progressive, she must be
constantly at his side to help and encourage him. That meant marriage, because John was far too conservative and respectable, for all his early life, even to think of any less permanent
arrangement, and in any case there was no reason why they should not marry. Hilary was entirely her own mistress now; after the war she had been unable—after a brief and unhappy
experiment—to settle down in the dull little provincial town where Dr. and Mrs. Keston divided their time between routine work and little parties and ‘the wireless’. Hilary, with
a hundred a year of her own, left to her by a thoughtful and accommodating aunt, had struck out for herself and found work as a receptionist to a Brook Street milliner. She had no training but she
was nice to look at and had a friendly manner that made customers think that they were really welcome in the shop and not mere tiresome intruders, as was the curious custom in most millinery
establishments.

But after a year the work had begun to pall and Madame Vertigot, to whom at her engagement Hilary had rashly mentioned the name of Lady Waterley, had for some time been complaining that she did
not bring enough custom to the shop. It had dawned on her that she was expected to tout round among her friends, and that she was emphatically not going to do—even if she had had the
friends who could afford Madame Vertigot’s prices.

So marriage would be a solution for her as well as for John and as John was temperamentally incapable of suggesting it, Hilary had proposed to him herself, and—after an interval of
astonishment amounting almost to consternation on John’s part—had been rapturously and gratefully accepted and they had been married at a registry office because John certainly could
not have afforded the clothes for the sort of wedding that Mrs. Keston would have insisted on if it had been in church.

They had intended at first to live in the Hammersmith studio, under the north light and with the help of the gas stove and the frying pan, but London—even the humblest part of
Hammersmith—was desperately expensive to live in—lettuces cost five-pence and Hilary couldn’t live without lettuces if she was to do her own housekeeping, which would consist of
them and bread and butter and eggs and oranges—so they had begun to talk about living in the country until John’s name had become established and his work was selling steadily. Then
they would move to Chelsea, or at any rate Earl’s Court, and have a small garden with a frame for their own lettuces and a little car to run them out into the country when they felt inclined,
for Hilary loved the country and John at that time loved everything that Hilary loved—and even everything she touched.

And then another war friend of John’s had told them about the fascinating little village on the Norfolk coast which he had found on a walking tour, and especially about its wonderful
lights—he was by way of being a painter himself in an amateur way—its greys and mauves, and pale yellows and quiet greens. And food there—the friend had said—cost nothing; a
flounder was a penny—even if you didn’t catch it yourself, which you easily could with a thing called a butt-prick, something like Britannia’s trident, only a net was easier,
though more expensive to buy. So Hilary and John had rushed down to Bryde-by-the-Sea on a week-end excursion ticket and fallen in love with it and found exactly the right little house with a
bedroom with a skylight on the sea-ward side that provided the right light for painting, though a lot of draught as well, and Hilary and John could sleep in the other two bedrooms which were
smaller but would do quite well till they could afford to build on a wing or go back to London.

So they had spent the last two hundred odd pounds of John’s war gratuity in buying the little house—it was a cottage really—and had spent their honeymoon getting it ready,
because they hadn’t been able to afford a honeymoon when they were married—and then they had got rid of the Hammersmith lease for quite a good premium, sold their sticks of furniture
which were not worth the cost of moving, and transplanted themselves to Bryde with two trunks and a suit case and John’s big easel and canvases.

For the first three months Bryde-by-the-Sea had given them a happiness that had seemed almost impossible except in a book by Gene Stratton-Porter. Then the winter and the storms and the cold and
the perpetual wind had come and they had still been ideally happy but not quite so comfortable, and single-handed domestic life had seemed to Hilary not quite such fun as at first. But
things were going pretty well and before long they would be able to afford a woman to come in and do the rougher work and give Hilary more time for amusement. John’s early patron, Sir Otto
Geisberg, had died during the war—died in an internment camp, of unhappiness and horrible food and loneliness and the ugly side of a life that till then had been, for him, nearly all beauty.
But one or two galleries had remembered about the Prix du Louvre and had taken some of John’s work and sold it and asked for more and John had suggested twenty-five guineas this time without
being snubbed.

Then—in about 1921 or ’22—had come the slump, which at first had seemed to be about shipping and steel and had even made the cost of living in Bryde cheaper than ever and
seemed to be very good for John and Hilary Pansel, if not for shareholders and people who had money. But then the galleries had begun to write letters about it—generally with a capital
S—and it seemed that if things weren’t so good for the people who had money they couldn’t be so good for the people who hadn’t it—people like painters and the other
kind of painters, because the people who had money hadn’t got money any longer—at least, not enough to buy pictures and have their drawing-rooms redecorated on a new scheme every six
months. And taxes that were to have come down didn’t come down. Not that taxes affected John and Hilary much because they only had Hilary’s hundred a year and what John earned with his
brush and he got something off for that because he had earned it and when he didn’t earn it any longer he hadn’t got it to pay taxes on. But it affected the people who had money so that
more than ever they hadn’t got money with which to buy pictures and so on.

But Austen Chamberlain had said that if only the country could stand the high taxes he was asking for for another three years it would reap the benefit afterwards and prosperity would come and
people with money would be able to have their drawing-rooms redecorated on a new scheme every six months or even oftener, and so on. And now, twelve years later or more, another Chamberlain was
saying exactly the same thing, but as he didn’t wear an eyeglass, or even an orchid, perhaps he was more reliable.

Hilary—thirty-four-year-old-now Hilary—sighed heavily and wriggled her back to get rid of the pain and looked out of the window at the greys and mauves and pale yellows and quiet
greens—the same window that she had been looking out of when Austen had said it—and dried the same plates, only not so many of them. They had bought a dozen when they married, because
they would have little parties occasionally—to celebrate, perhaps, the sale of some picture at a new high-level price. That had actually happened once or twice and been very thrilling though
not the people, because, except during August, the possible guests were a dull lot and even in August, when the Anchorage Hotel was full, you could hardly go down there and look through the
visitors’ list and pick out the names you had heard of or that sounded nice and invite them up to dine with you—complete strangers—because the Old Masters Gallery had sold a
painting for you at thirty two and a half instead of thirty. And in any case the occasion had only arisen twice, and that was ten years ago or more; now you would be lucky if you didn’t have
everything thrown back at you, with a bill for carriage.

Ten years! It seemed a lifetime. It was a lifetime. Hilary had been young ten years ago and full of hope and spirits and ambition—and love. Now she was old. Or, at any rate, her
youth had gone, and with it her hope and her ambition and her . . . no, that wasn’t true. She did still love John, of course, tremendously; he was everything in the world to her—but it
was in a different way. She didn’t any longer feel a thrill each time she saw him, or tremble when he touched her. She was tremendously fond of him, and worried horribly if he got ill and
would miss him unbearably if . . . oh, but that simply couldn’t be thought about. But . . . perhaps it just was that he didn’t any longer feel like that about her; his eyes
didn’t light up as they used to and he never now picked her up in his arms and dumped her down in his lap in their one big chair and hugged her till she couldn’t breathe. Of course it
was silly to expect him to. You couldn’t expect a man to go on loving the same woman like that for ever—men weren’t monogamous by instinct as women were supposed to be (but were
they?). And of course that must make a difference to what one felt oneself.

But perhaps they would both have gone on feeling like that if life hadn’t turned out to be so different—and so hard. If they had been able to get back to London, or at any
rate to build on or buy a better house, or at least have a maid so that she, Hilary, had not had to become a complete drudge and spoil her hands and lose her looks and get tired and cross. And if
poor John could have had a little success to cheer him up and make him take a pride in himself again and have a little fun—even if it was only a fortnight in Italy or Germany every
year—how different everything would have been.

But they had not had a penny to do anything with. After the first year John’s pictures had stopped selling, except very occasionally and at very poor prices, hardly enough—he
said—to pay for the canvas and the paints and the carriage and the gallery fees. They had lived almost entirely on her hundred a year. John had absolutely refused to allow her to realise one
penny of the capital. She had wanted to realise some and live on it as income till times got better and his work became established and his pictures sold properly. But he had put his foot down on
that, and lucky that he had, because times had got no better—worse, if anything, and if they had lived on capital there would have been no hundred a year now. But it had been, naturally, a
bitter blow to John, to have to live on his wife’s money. He had become very touchy about it, even morbid, and that hadn’t made things any happier between them.

They were lucky, of course—in a way—not to have had any children. They simply couldn’t have afforded them. They had decided at the very beginning not to have any until their
income had risen to a thousand a year and they could afford a nurse. (How shocked Hilary’s mother and father would have been if they had known of that decision—a ‘judgment’,
they would have said all the subsequent troubles were.) Hilary would have loved to have a child—a daughter; John, of course, wanted a son. But as things had turned out, it would of course
have been madness—the end of everything. Sometimes, even now, Hilary regretted it. A child would have given them something to think of, to talk about, besides just money and the sale or
non-sale of pictures and domestic worries. They might even have gone on loving each other properly if . . . but it was no good thinking about it, it was utterly impossible.

They must just go struggling on till something happened. Things must get better some day everyone said that. But when? Thank God, they couldn’t get worse for Hilary and John Pansel. Income
Tax didn’t affect them. It was inconceivable that the Funding Loan should pass a dividend. The cost of living was going down—that seemed to be a bad thing in some mysterious
way—the fall in prices. No, things couldn’t get worse; they would almost certainly get better, but oh, it was dull, dreary work, waiting. Dull, dull, dull . . .

AS she looked out of her kitchen-scullery window, Hilary Pansel could see practically the whole setting that had so fascinated her and John at their
first sight of this remote corner of England. 1Bryde-by-the-Sea, though nominally a harbour, lies nearly a mile back from the ocean which surges invisibly
against the line of low sand dunes limiting the northern horizon. In between lies a wide expanse of weed-grown mud, intersected by a maze of channels which at high tide are full to the brim of salt
water and at low are mere trenches of black and treacherous ooze. These are the Saltings; the home of a hundred varieties of sea-birds, of countless sea-plants, of insects, reptiles, fishes,
animals—according to the state of the tides and the time of year; at one time a silvery dazzle of southernwood, at another green with samphire, at another brown with sea-churned mud, and
sometimes—at the highest of the ‘springs’—completely submerged under the smooth, swirling waters of the flowing tide. Dreary and desolate though they are, the Saltings have
for those who love them a fascination which no written word can describe, a beauty which defies the most skilful brush.

So, at least, thought John Pansel as he sat on a three-legged stool at the mouth of the creek, by which the tide crept in twice in the twenty-four hours to fill the inland harbour, and tried to
commit to cartridge paper the utterly baffling and illusive colours of a scene which never changed but, to his artist’s eye, was never twice the same. The silvery-yellow of the sands, the
green and lavender of the saltings, the grey and purple of the skies, all these, if you studied them, became flat and colourless, but if you shut your eyes a minute and then opened them you were
dazzled by the beauty of their tones, bewildered by their changing values; you dashed for your brush and palette, mixed up your colour wash, looked again—and behold, the sand had become grey,
the saltings yellow, the sea purple; it was baffling, humiliating, impossible—and utterly fascinating. Only with water-colours could you hope to catch the fleeting effects; with breathless
speed you might convey to paper your impression of the morning’s light—an impression which might be transferred later, at your studio leisure, to the richer medium of oil or
tempera.

It was waste of time, of course; not once, in all his hundred and more attempts, had John Pansel produced a painting which satisfied himself, which reproduced, even measurably, the beauty that
his eyes saw; as for the public, the art-fanciers, not one in another hundred was attracted by pictures of a scene which, on paper or canvas, was either desolate, featur. . .