A variation on these thoughts he decided to exploit for the purpose of adding his own necessary contribution to the hubbub. He turned to the meringue. ‘Like most fundamentally childish people’, he said gravely, ‘I have a lurking conviction that they should never have let me leave school – and a resulting terror that they may send me back. Did you ever read Storer Clourston’s The Prodigal Father? It’s about a very respectable Edinburgh lawyer who begins to grow younger instead of older. A finely macabre conception. To be Peter Pan and never to grow up – that is a state of affairs we see about us everywhere. But to be receding slowly and helplessly towards the indignity of the cradle…the thought would have done credit to the author of the Inferno. Don’t you think?’ Having delivered himself of this address Winter glanced at the meringue’s destination. He saw a silvery old lady, wearing a hat rather like a stoutly-made bird’s nest high on her head, and round her neck a lace net of the sort which has to be supported on a series of miniature bone fencing-posts. The old lady nodded vigorously – so vigorously that Winter almost expected a startled flight of birds to issue from the hat – and as she nodded she faintly blushed. For a moment she seemed to search for some verbal sequel to her gesture of agreement; then she took refuge instead in a quite unsuitably large chunk of meringue. Apparently she was not one of the talkers and Winter turned to the sweet omelette. This time he tried something simpler. ‘It is’, he said, ‘a most animated party.’ The point of the chatter in his dream, he remembered, was the distraction it presented to the task of getting a problem straight. And looking round him now he felt convinced that the millieu of Rust Hall would not be all congenial to the thoughtful elucidation of mysteries. ‘I’m afraid’, he added, ‘I know hardly any of them.’
‘The gathering’, said the man who was eating a sweet omelette, ‘is unique. It represents one of the great romances of modern publishing enterprise.’ He was a large man dressed in loose-fitting lovat tweed and from beneath oddly mischievous eyes he spoke with a large pomposity. ‘Consider’, he went on – and it was plain to Winter that he was of the talking kind – ‘consider any twenty books sold in England. Lamentable though the confession be, it is most certain that six are merely bad. And six, without being bad, are openly dull. It is only the remaining eight which can be said to give pleasure to their readers, and of these–’ the large man made a dramatic gesture up the table – ‘two are by our host.’
Winter said that this was a remarkable thing.
‘It is a remarkable thing,’ said the large man. ‘The more so in that the commodity has been perfectly steady on the market for a considerable term of years.’ He puffed himself out as he spoke with a frog-like effect which was enhanced by his hanging green tweeds. ‘It is a labour of beneficence with which I am proud to be associated.’ He made another gesture – this time of the weighty sort which Winter conjecturally associated with company directors at shareholders’ meetings. And then, unaccountably, he broke into a rumbling guffaw and turned away to his farther neighbour.
The old lady, fortified by her meringue, now summoned up courage to speak. ‘I’m afraid’, she said. ‘that introductions are never thought necessary at this party. You don’t know Mr Wedge? His imitations are most amusing, don’t you think?’
‘His imitations?’
‘Of all the other publishers. That was Sir Richard Fell whom he was imitating just now. I’ve never met Sir Richard, but I’m sure it was done to the life. May I be very unconventional and say that I am Mrs Moule? You will sometimes see my name in teeny letters on the playbills.’
Winter made sounds suggesting that the teeny letters had often been very much in his eye. ‘My name is Winter,’ he added.
Mrs Moule spent some seconds evidently trying to place a Winter somewhere among the myrmidons of the Spider. Failing, she asked, ‘And you don’t know many people here?’ She hesitated, blushed faintly, and added in a burst of resolution, ‘Are you the detective?’
Startled, Winter swallowed a bolus of fish. ‘I am afraid not. If long life is granted me I shall be called a classical archaeologist. It is a poking about sort of business which might help me to turn detective if need was. May I ask why–’
Mrs Moule was covered with faintly pink confusion. ‘I am so sorry. You must forgive me. I believe that some policemen now are quite – But it was most stupid. You see I know that a detective is being brought down’ – she sank her voice to a whisper – ‘quietly.’
‘Quite a number of people seem to being brought down quietly.’
The old lady looked at Winter at once apprehensively and absently; it occurred to him that she was no longer using her eyes but her ears – straining them after something beyond and apart from the loud chatter about them. ‘Have you ever’, she asked presently, ‘rifled a tomb?’
‘I’m afraid I’ve never succeeded in walking off with any substantial treasure. But I have dug about a bit here and there.’
‘Oh, dear! I know I use the wrong words. But you have explored tombs’ – Mrs Moule’s voice took on an awesome quality – ‘in Egypt?’
‘Yes – in an amateur fashion. It’s out of a classical man’s way.’
‘Have you ever come under a curse?’
‘Decidedly not.’
‘One doesn’t’, said Mrs Moule darkly, ‘always know.’
‘Dear me, I hope you haven’t yourself any experience of such a state of affairs?’ Winter looked at Mrs Moule and saw that this civil enquiry had been a mistake. Briskly accepting another meringue, she spoke of auras and astral bodies, of emanations, reincarnations and ectoplasmic manisfestations, of the Great Pyramid, and of uncanny happenings in haunted places and darkened rooms. She spoke of the Great Memory and of the Higher Thought; she spoke of the popular superstitions of the Highlands and of the esoteric knowledge of the East; she marshalled within the uncertain outlines of her argument a whole lower mythology of supernatural beings; creatures of the fire and the air, the diminished fairies and the still-potent Sidhe, the dark divinities of Mexico and the brutish gods of Nile. Mrs Moule, it seemed to Winter, had a lively, roomy, and wholly undisciplined mind. Her present line of talk was not an obsession; it represented the turning out of one of a series of untidy lumber-rooms on an impulse not yet revealed. It was a safe guess that the same obscure events which had prompted Mr Eliot’s more sophisticated mind to metaphysical discussion were behind his assistant’s dallyings with the frankly spooky.
Something of these events Winter knew, but much remained obstinately shadowy. He determined on a calculated attack. ‘The whole subject of the uncanny is certainly fascinating. And uncommonly good material for imaginative writing. When you come to think of it all the world’s great stories have an element of the supernatural. Its abandonment means the sacrifice of a great many good story-telling effects. Is Mr Eliot’s the sort of mind that is given to the supernatural? Is there anything of the true supernatural in his books?’
Mrs Moule considered. ‘There is a ghost in The Crimson Web. But he turns out to be the dismissed butler, who has been living secretly in the wine-cellar and who wanders about the house at night in an intoxicated condition. And that is the general rule. Supernatural appearances are permissible for the purpose of giving a momentary thrill but there must be a naturalistic explanation of them in the end. The essence of the thing is that the reader or playgoer has to feel safe.’
For a moment Winter forgot that he was circuitously in quest of information. The old lady was intelligent. ‘Safe?’ he said.
‘The supernatural has no known rules, and nowadays we are comfortable only with rules. If we are to play our stereotyped games or make our engines work or keep fit we must follow the rules. Mr Eliot’s later books are successful because everything is subject to rules which the reader knows. There is generally a puzzle which the reader can solve by means of the rules – and that implies that in the little universe of the book the reader is master. The books – though the reader is hardly aware of it – cater for the need of secur
ity. Real life is horribly insecure because God is capable of keeping a vital rule or two up his sleeve and giving us unpleasant surprises as a result. Mr Eliot isn’t allowed to do that. In a puzzle-book the surprises are always pleasing because it is implied that our intelligence is really superior to them. Knowing the rules, we can control them if we want to.’
More than curious, thought Winter, that this competent old person, so admirably chosen to second Mr Eliot in what Wedge called his labours of beneficence, should also be capable of talking nonsense about Higher Thought and astral bodies. ‘Those hidden rules which Eliot isn’t allowed to exploit’, he said; ‘–you think God keeps some of them in the Great Pyramid? And brings them out, perhaps, to persecute our host?’
At this question Mrs Moule, who had been talking briskly and with spirit, raised a nervous hand to the little palisade round her throat. Involuntarily, or by policy, she was once more a timorously tongue-tied old lady – a schoolmistress who had made her way into the world without ever quite gaining confidence in the face of it. And once more she appeared to be listening for something which was no part of a common luncheon party: so powerful was the suggestion of this that Winter found his own ear straining for he knew not what.
‘You see,’ prompted Winter presently, ‘though not a detective I have been brought down to be introduced to a mystery. The tip of it keeps appearing and disappearing in rather an annoying way. Timmy Eliot, though he seems seriously concerned, enjoys wrapping the mystery in mystification. Eliot himself hitches it to metaphysics and you seem to hitch it to magic. As a newcomer with more or less an objective view I see an elaborate and possibly purposeful practical joke. If only the thing were brought forward and inspected, so to speak, we might be able to decide who was right.’
Mrs Moule was looking increasingly nervous. ‘Mr Winter, you have heard – ?’
‘Part of the story – yes.’
‘Oh – the story.’ The old lady seemed slightly relieved. She considered; braced herself. ‘Mr Winter,’ she said solemnly, ‘there have been manifestations.’ The bird’s nest nodded resolutely. ‘The whole truth is in that. If you are incapable of believing in such things – and I know very well that nowadays many of the best minds are – the whole truth will elude you. You might as well not have come down. A spirit, a spirit connected with – with the books, is abroad in this house. I know.’
‘Dear me, you sound most positive. You mean you have seen–’
‘I have seen’, said Mrs Moule with faint emphasis, ‘nothing.’ She paused, slightly changed the subject. ‘You have heard about the manuscripts? Certain of Mr Eliot’s manuscripts have been–’
‘Rewriting themselves. I know. But really rewriting themselves in holograph? Or just retyping themselves? It is that sort of thing that is important. And before I acknowledge that there was a spirit at work I should want to know quite a lot about locks and keys.’
For a moment Mrs Moule appeared to be endeavouring to take this commonplace point of view. Then she laid her hand on Winter’s sleeve. ‘I know’, she said, ‘that there is danger, real danger, in this house. Something is being prepared. Disaster. A trap.’ Her blush came and went. ‘I know this is the language I spend my days throwing into stage dialogue. But that is the point. It is our own imaginings, our own stock-in-trade, being brought to bear against us. The subtlety is in that.’
‘I agree. But the subtlety, surely, of an idle flesh-and-blood joker – and one probably with no very sinister ends in view.’
‘Mr Winter, do you know just how the manuscripts have been rewriting themselves?’
‘According to Timmy the effect has been of this chief character – the Spider – changing his mind and determining to go his own way.’
Mrs Moule nodded. ‘That is the outline.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t really know if I’m entitled to tell you more.’ She looked at him so sharply that for a moment he felt positively uncomfortable. ‘But I will. I feel I must justify what I have said: that there is peril at Rust Hall.’
‘Peril,’ said a cheerful voice. ‘That reminds me.’
It was not, Winter repeated to himself, a milieu for the thoughtful elucidation of mysteries. He looked glumly at the publisher Wedge.
‘It reminds me’, said Wedge, ‘of how I must hold myself accountable for all this mass of political publishing. Mrs Moule, did I ever tell you about that?’
Mrs Moule, who was perhaps glad of a respite, assured him that he had not.
‘It was like this. I never do anything of that sort myself; nevertheless I set the ball rolling. It was with a series of scissors-and-paste poetry books in awful neo-Victorian plush bindings. I called them Gems and they were a great success.’ He gave Winter a quick appraising glance. ‘I don’t expect that at Oxford or Cambridge the demand was exactly heavy, but in the great world the sales were all that I could wish. You know Andrew Urchart?’
Without cordiality Winter acknowledged having met Andrew Urchart at a party.
‘Andrew is smart enough. He knows’ – Wedge grinned complacently – ‘where and for how long to follow. He rang up one of his young men and told him to get busy on a series of Pearls. Only Andrew is Scotch.’
Winter and Mrs Moule stared blankly.
‘Andrew being Scotch, it came about that the young man set to work on a series of Perils. He began, naturally, with the Red Peril and then he did the Yellow Peril and the Brown Peril. Andrew thought he might as well put them out and the Perils beat the Gems hollow.’
Mrs Moule laughed with unexpected robustness. Winter agreed to be moderately amused.
‘And that’, continued Wedge seriously, ‘set the fashion and we have this spate of political stuff. The Perils were such a success that when Andrew’s young man ran out of more or less authentic material he took to inventing. For instance, there was the Gamboge Peril – some frightfully reactionary movement in Monaco. And the Ultra-Violet Peril…hullo, people appear to be moving.’ He stood up. ‘Cultured Perils, as you might say.’
A wise-crack the richer, thought Winter, but otherwise not much forwarder.
In an indeterminate room, which might have suggested to an observer sufficiently acute that its owner was both a widower and a widower with a favourite daughter, he took fuller stock of the party. Mrs Moule had been snatched away from him – possibly at the point of revelation; in a deep window recess which looked chilly but was actually nicely warmed by electric pipes she was listening to a small man with a beard. The beard was of the convoluted and incredible kind with which the French are familiar in advertisements of aids to beardedness; it agitated itself rapidly in close proximity to Mrs Moule’s face; and across that face the blushes came and went with the regularity of the less complicated species of neon sign. Winter conjectured that the monologue was scandalous and refrained from breaking in. His second neighbour at the luncheon table was in the centre of a little crowd by a fireplace at the far end of the room; Winter could just see him rubbing his hands together and intermittently standing on one leg: presumably he was engaged in another of his celebrated imitations. Securing a cup of coffee from Belinda Eliot, Winter retired comfortably to a corner.
There were the Eliots. Belinda, with whom he had exchanged only a word, had a tip-tilted nose dwarfed by large round glasses which were in turn overshadowed by a high and bumpy forehead. To this appearance, which accorded with early printers’ devices substantially enough, she joined an air of practical calculation which seemed at the moment to be directed at her brother. Timmy was still clinging to his Hugo, and his Hugo’s cautiously wandering glance could be interpreted as searching the room for the right sort of old school tie. The human species is absurdly dependent on the eye, a fact which creates the subtle hierachy of tailors and milliners. What Toplady stood really in need of in this unfamiliar environment was the primitive simplicity of a nose.
Winter looked for his host. Mr Eliot was moving about among his guests with the meticulous but unconvincing cordiality of one whose person would fain fo
llow his thoughts elsewhere. At the moment he was shaking hands with Dr Chown in what Winter conjectured to be only the most evanescent surprise; no doubt he had a kindly feeling for even an unaccountable guest who had no stake in the fortunes of the Spider. An agreeable little man, Mr Eliot – as those who carry something of their childhood with them commonly are. Winter was glad to be unconvinced by Mrs Moule’s presagement of traps and disasters to come. It occurred to him to wonder who could be responsible for the project – mentioned by Mrs Moule – of bringing down a detective. Mr Eliot himself, though clearly disturbed, appeared to be thinking along lines not altogether different from his assistant’s – only he talked about metaphysical problems where the old lady talked of astral planes. He had shown no consciousness that he was simply being played a troublesome joke; and, besides, Timmy had explained that from real-life detectors of crime his father had a comprehensible if nice-minded aversion. Perhaps Timmy, with Herbert Chown safely at Rust, was adding yet another string to his bow. Or perhaps Belinda –
‘Excuse me,’ said a voice. ‘I don’t think I know you.’
The voice had made an observation; it had also – if with disarming naivety – passed judgement. Winter bowed. ‘I am Gerald Winter, an archaeologist.’
‘I’, said the stranger, ‘am Peter Holme’ – he appeared to hesitate for a moment between the definite and indefinite article – ‘an actor. I just wanted to ask if you are interested in amateur theatricals.’
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