Pages

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Clouds of Witness Ch 4 cont

Drat this stain! It's regular dried in. She and his grace could never get on, and when she was away in London during the war she had a rare old time, nursing officers, and going about with all kinds of queer people his grace didn't approve of. Then she had some sort of a love-affair with some quite low-down sort of fellow, so cook says; I think he was one of them dirty Russians as wants to blow us all to smithereens—as if there hadn't been enough people blown up in the war already!

After WWI, the Bolsheviks and Anarchists in Russia vied for power. Both movements also spread to other countries (Sacco and Vanzetti in the US advocated anarchism, for example.)

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relation. Proponents of anarchism, known as "anarchists", advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations.

There are many types and traditions of anarchism, not all of which are mutually exclusive.[13] Anarchist schools of thought can differ fundamentally, supporting anything from extreme individualism to complete collectivism. Strains of anarchism have been divided into the categories of social and individualist anarchism or similar dual classifications. Anarchism is often considered to be a radical left-wing ideology, and much of anarchist economics and anarchist legal philosophy reflect anti-statist interpretations of communism, collectivism, syndicalism or participatory economics. However, anarchism has always included an individualist strain supporting a market economy and private property, or morally unrestrained egoism. Some individualist anarchists are also socialists or communists while some anarcho-communists are also individualists.

Anarchism as a social movement has regularly endured fluctuations in popularity. The central tendency of anarchism as a mass social movement has been represented by anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism, with individualist anarchism being primarily a literary phenomenon which nevertheless did have an impact on the bigger currents and individualists also participated in large anarchist organizations. Most anarchists oppose all forms of aggression, supporting self-defense or non-violence (anarcho-pacifism), while others have supported the use of some coercive measures, including violent revolution and propaganda of the deed, on the path to an anarchist society

Anyhow, his grace made a dreadful fuss, and stopped supplies, and sent for her ladyship home, and ever since then she's been just mad to be off with somebody. Full of notions, she is. Makes me tired, I can tell you. Now, I'm sorry for his grace. I can see what he thinks. Poor gentleman! And then to be taken up for murder and put in gaol, just like one of them nasty tramps. Fancy!”

Ellen, having exhausted her breath and finished cleaning off the bloodstains, paused and straightened her back.

“Hard work it is,” she said, “rubbing; I quite ache.”

“If you would allow me to help you,” said Mr. Bunter, appropriating the hot water, the benzine bottle, and the sponge.

He turned up another breadth of the skirt.

“Have you got a brush handy,” he asked, “to take this mud off?”

“You're as blind as a bat, Mr. Bunter,” said Ellen, giggling. “Can't you see it just in front of you?”

“Ah yes,” said the valet. “But that's not as hard a one as I'd like. Just you run and get me a real hard one, there's a dear good girl, and I'll fix this for you.”

“Cheek!” said Ellen. “But,” she added, relenting before the admiring gleam in Mr. Bunter's eye, “I'll get the clothes-brush out of the hall for you. That's as hard as a brick-bat, that is.”
In England, a brick that has been cut to various shapes is called a bat.

No sooner was she out of the room than Mr. Bunter produced a pocket-knife and two more pill-boxes. In a twinkling of an eye he had scraped the surface of the skirt in two places and written two fresh labels:

“Gravel from Lady Mary's skirt, about 6 in. from hem.”
“Silver sand from hem of Lady Mary's skirt.”

He added the date, and had hardly pocketed the boxes when Ellen returned with the clothes-brush. The cleaning process continued for some time, to the accompaniment of desultory conversation. A third stain on the skirt caused Mr. Bunter to stare critically.

“Hullo!” he said. “Her ladyship's been trying her hand at cleaning this herself.”

“What?” cried Ellen. She peered closely at the mark, which at one edge was smeared and whitened, and had a slightly greasy appearance.

“Well, I never,” she exclaimed, “so she has! Whatever's that for, I wonder? And her pretending to be so ill, she couldn't raise her head off the pillow. She's a sly one, she is.”

“Couldn't it have been done before?” suggested Mr. Bunter.

“Well, she might have been at it between the day the Captain was killed and the inquest,” agreed Ellen, “though you wouldn't think that was a time to choose to begin learning domestic work. She ain't much hand at it, anyhow, for all her nursing. I never believed that came to anything.”

“She's used soap,” said Mr. Bunter, benzining away resolutely. “Can she boil water in her bedroom?”
In other words, does she have a gas ring, and a kettle to go with it, for example if she wanted to heat cocoa in the middle of the night without having to ring for it.

“Now, whatever should she do that for, Mr. Bunter?” exclaimed Ellen, amazed. “You don't think she keeps a kettle? I bring up her morning tea. Ladyships don't want to boil water.”

“No,” said Mr. Bunter, “and why didn't she get it from the bathroom?” He scrutinized the stain more carefully still. “Very amateurish,” he said; “distinctly amateurish. Interrupted, I fancy. An energetic young lady, but not ingenious.”

The last remarks were addressed in confidence to the benzine bottle. Ellen had put her head out of the window to talk to the gamekeeper.

No comments:

Post a Comment