Mr Eliot nodded emphatically, plainly pleased with the simile with which Winter had adorned his theory. He was about to continue when Appleby interposed. ‘So the Birthday Party is a former imaginative creation which has somehow come to enact itself about us tonight? A story you once wrote?’
Everybody was quiet, variously feeling that this was a critical question. And Mr Eliot’s response was immediate. ‘Not at all!’ he cried. ‘It is just here that the really absorbing point comes in. I never did write that story. I only projected it.’
There would have been another and chilled silence but for Winter. Perhaps because he thought to mitigate the embarrassment of the moment, perhaps because this sort of verbal conjuring was irresistible to him. He raised a debater’s finger and rushed into speech. ‘Then I don’t think you can claim to have created or originated the story. It seems much more likely that the story is something existing independently elsewhere, and that your projecting it, as you call it, represented your mind coming into some groping contact with it. It looks to me like one of those tricks which we are coming to believe can be played us by time. Perhaps this, here and now, is really the Birthday Party, and when you thought of it as a story your mind was taking a brief dip into the future. Perhaps all imaginative creation is no more than that. Perhaps all your stories will come true one day.’
At this Mr Eliot, who had been standing dominating the hall, suddenly sat down and passed a hand across his brow. His chosen defence against the bewildering turn his world had taken was in what Belinda had called philosophic chat. But philosophic chat was not his real line. Winter’s practised turning of his idea inside-out, coupled maybe with the mere fancy of his thirty-seven romances lurking in a pregnant future, appeared to have had the effect of bowling him over once more. ‘At least’, he said rather desperately, ‘I see what I had better do… It may stop it.’
Chown, frowning disapprovingly – seemingly at Timmy’s whisky but perhaps at the trend of things in general – and tapping a small table with an impatient finger, took advantage of the silence. ‘This metaphysical talk’, he said, ‘no doubt has its charms. Unfortunately, it is both out of place and so much damned nonsense.’
‘Hear, hear!’ A new voice broke in; it was that of Rupert Eliot, roused to sympathy by a little mild swearing. ‘Damned college nonsense. And all the time there is some low blackguard round the corner waiting to be laid by the heels.’
Appleby, who felt that the talk was liable to proceed with a positively Russian indefiniteness, sprang to his feet. ‘I suggest that perhaps we are wasting time. It seems very likely that this second failure of the lighting has been accompanied by some further demonstration. Mr Eliot believes that a picture will prove to be involved, and Sir Rupert Eliot is concerned about a low blackguard. I suggest we have a look round. Perhaps the blackguard has made off with the picture. Let us suppose him to be either a connoisseur or an astute commercial man; that suggests a reassuring glance at the most valuable picture in the house. What would that be?’
The gathering in the hall breathed more freely, relieved at having scrambled down to the prosaic level of burglars and policemen. Belinda stood up. ‘Far the most valuable picture is the El Greco in the library.’
‘The El Greco!’ When staying in a modest country house it is permissible to be mildly startled at the news that there is an El Greco round the corner.
‘Daddy bought it last year from the man who discovered it. It’s almost our secret. But it has been abundantly authenticated. And it’s a big one.’
‘A big one?’ Appleby, who had envisaged a small head on a panel, was past astonishment. ‘Well, I think we had better visit it.’
They trooped to the library – Mr Eliot, who still seemed able to feel that the possible theft of a valuable picture might be a purely metaphysical matter, leading the way composedly enough. The lights flicked on; the company performed a jostling manoeuvre round a bay of books; Mr Eliot sighed; everybody stopped dead. For seconds there was complete silence: an El Greco is doubly quieting when one has hurried excitedly up in the apprehension that it may not be there. And it was certainly big: a whole bevy of saints and fathers undulating upwards like flame. Appleby blessed Mr Eliot and his tribulations for having brought him in front of the thing; when he had finished doing so he became aware that everybody else had drifted away. Presumably they were making a tour of other valuable pictures in the house; Appleby had another look at the El Greco – good states of mind had just as well to be seized when they came – and followed at his leisure. Voices guided him to the living-room; they rose in exclamation as he entered.
It was the Renoir. Where it had hung the wall was a blank – or would have been blank had there not been splashed on it the black silhouette of an enormous spider.
The voice of Dr Chown rose above half-a-dozen surprised and indignant murmurs. ‘Those telephones wires’, he said dryly, ‘appear to have got crossed to uncommonly good purpose. We are to suppose that the picture – to say nothing of a large and solid gilt frame – has been wafted away to the autonomous world of imaginative creation. Well, well, well.’ He glanced at Mr Eliot and changed his tone. ‘Come, Eliot; I for one won’t say you are wrong. The first business of science is to admit our absolute human ignorance. And I doubt if we can do much more tonight. We want bed and sleep, and to talk it over in the morning.’ Chown had become the competent physician, his tones confident and his mind on bromide.
Appleby stepped forward and touched the black paint. It was quite dry. Behind the picture this sprawling signature had been lurking for an indefinite period, awaiting its moment. A voice spoke in Appleby’s ear – Timmy’s carefully lowered. ‘The Renoir was daddy’s present to Belinda on her twenty-firster. It’s a bit thick.’
It was a bit thick, Appleby could see. It was, indeed, more than ingeniously wounding. Belinda, pale and determinedly practical, was holding her father’s hand. Appleby looked curiously at Mr Eliot. It was, he felt, another critical moment. Chown had just beaten a precipitate retreat; had admitted, in effect, that the notions which Mr Eliot had been developing must be treated gently – must be respected as a protective fantasy built up by an overstrained mind. But in face of this calculated stroke of malice – the pitching of a crude and public creation against the symbol of a private relationship – Mr Eliot’s only same reaction must be resentment. On the morrow and when the shock was over the matter would be different, but did Mr Eliot now and at this moment continue to talk desperately of philosophic interest he would indeed be far on the way to becoming a case for a psychiatrist.
For a strained moment Mr Eliot kept silence. When he spoke it was to say little. ‘Belinda, I think we have had enough excitement for tonight and that Chown does well to counsel us to bed. I confess I am bewildered and cannot think usefully about what has happened. And’ – Mr Eliot’s expression held a sudden odd surprise – ‘I am angry too.’ He stopped, and his appearance changed again: it was as if he were unexpectedly confronted with a vista down a long dark corridor. ‘There is something that I cannot quite remember…something altogether different from what I have been saying.’ His glance went round the company – searching, it seemed, for a face. He shook his head, perplexed and dejected. Holding Belinda’s hand he moved across the room, patted Timmy on a shoulder, murmured goodnights to the others, and was gone.
A diffused sigh – the long expiration of several breaths – hovered in the air. Evidently, there had been a theft. But, far more palpably, there had been outrage – and those who were left in the room were uneasily conscious of indefinable trepass. There was a general retreat – to bed or to decently private discussion; in a couple of minutes Appleby – tacitly left as the professional in charge – found himself alone in the contemplation of a purposive splash of black paint.
He studied the wall and the carpet beneath it; turned from that to an open window at the far end of the room. His eye ran from window to wall and then, more slowly, back again; he checked his gaze halfway and strode
behind a sofa. This procedure appeared to afford him enlightenment; he nodded absently, went on to the window, and passed through curtains which were stirring gently in the nighI breeze. The majority of the windows in this wall ran to floor level and opened outwards on the terrace; but this was a common sash window, now thrown wide open from the bottom. He peered out. It was quite dark. He climbed to the sill, dropped cautiously down, bent to the ground, and lit his solitary match. It went out. A voice from above said, ‘I’ve collared one of the torches from that bag.’
‘Hand it down.’ Appleby knew that the voice was Gerald Winter’s. ‘And, if you don’t mind, just sit still. I’m coming to have another look at that floor.’
‘I hope I’m not thrusting myself on you?’
‘Not at all.’ Appleby’s voice floated in from the darkness. ‘You begin to interest me.’
‘I’m flattered.’
‘And so does nearly everybody else. One of you in this house has a remarkable and unengaging mind.’
Winter raised a troubled face from the contemplation of his empty glass and took another look at Appleby moving carefully about the room. ‘For that matter,’ he said, picking up the thread of their scanty conversation, ‘you interest me. Gentlemen’s embarrassments waited on in their own homes. It’s most beguiling. They say you’re a real detective-officer from Scotland Yard; is that true?’
‘Quite true. My presence is mysterious. But then so is yours; I don’t think you came down to meet Miss Cavey or play eight varieties of hide-and-seek?’ Appleby, lying flat on his stomach on the carpet, cocked up at Winter a quick speculative eye.
‘I came, as a matter of fact, to probe the mystery. But faced by professional competition’ – Winter gestured at the other’s prone form – ‘I regress. I regress – like this tedious Spider – on my true role and simply talk. But I also like to listen.’ He became quite serious and it was evident that he was really disturbed. ‘Particularly to you.’
Appleby got up. ‘I don’t generally run a commentary as I go along, but I’ll do my best. By the way, are you what that fellow Chown calls a disinterested mind? Is there anybody in the household that you love or hate? Your pupil, for instance?’
‘Timmy? He’s all right; I certainly don’t hate him, nor love him either.’ Winter shook a weary head. ‘Too many Timmys have flowed under my bridges in the past twelve years, and I grow more and more bored with personal relationships, especially with the young. The young are touching and beautiful, but charity itself cannot call them intellectually exciting. I prefer the impersonality of Greek vases. You can put me down as a mind of the disengaged sort.’ He stared frowningly into the ashes of a dead fire. ‘But this rum business has got me all the same. I’m scared.’
It was an odd termination to a discursive speech. Appleby, preoccupied with a long low stool, looked briefly up. ‘Scared? I’m coming to think we’re all meant to be that.’
‘You think that in all this there’s an element of danger?’
‘If nothing is lost except a Renoir – even an El Greco – I’ll be pleased.’
Winter sprang to his feet. ‘Look here–’ He stopped and appeared to think better of what he was going to say. ‘Are we sure it’s not a simple theft with a few whimsicalities thrown in? After all, an exceedingly valuable painting has been pretty efficiently made off with.’
‘You mean another Birdwire affair – and that the picture may turn up again?’
Winter shook his head emphatically. ‘I wasn’t thinking of that. The two affairs have only a superficial resemblance. As far as I can gather, the Birdwire affair was more amusing – in its broad fashion – than wounding. This is the other way round. My idea is that this may be a real theft, done for gain, but with a rather horrid malice thrown in.’
‘I don’t think it has been done for gain.’ Appleby was staring once more at the black spider. ‘I should be more cheerful if I did. The heart of the thing – so far, at least – appears to be an elaborate and sustained attack on Eliot; on Eliot’s tranquillity, his sanity, his relations with his children, perhaps his fortune. Consider this incident – it is only that – of the picture. The public rooms were empty and the thief could have gone anywhere. The Renoir is valuable, but the El Greco far more so. The Renoir is pretty well unsaleable; there isn’t a dealer in Europe who wouldn’t look it up in a catalogue and find that it ought to be the property of Miss Eliot, of Rust Hall. But the El Greco, it seems, has recently turned up – and turned up quietly. Eliot got it from the man who discovered it, and got it without any shouting; you can imagine his being shy of advertising the buying of a very costly picture. In fact a thief, if he knew the ropes and was uncommonly lucky, might just possibly make something considerable out of it. All of which is almost superfluous. We know well enough why the Renoir was chosen. It was a matter of striking – striking with remarkable nicety – at a sentiment.’
They were both silent. Appleby stretched out a hand and scratched at the black paint with a finger-nail. ‘When’, he asked suddenly, ‘did you get to Rust?’
‘Time for a late luncheon today.’
Appleby tapped the wall. ‘Then it seems unlikely that you did this.’ He smiled fleetingly. ‘We do make progress.’ He walked to the sofa and thrust thoughtfully with his foot at the long stool he had been examining. ‘The picture was yanked off the wall none too gently and trailed along the carpet to that far window. It was done by somebody thoroughly familiar with this room.’
‘However do you know that?’
‘Because in what was probably a tolerably hurried manoeuvre the thief steered a course that allowed for unseen obstacles. He began rounding this sofa in such a way as to make one clean arc round both it and this long stool – which he couldn’t possibly see – beyond. Information which is again superfluous.’
‘Superfluous?’ Winter looked doubtful. ‘Well, I suppose we know that as this party has been held regularly for years, most of the people must be familiar with the room.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of that. I meant that we can be certain anyway that this is the most inside of jobs. Anyone must be familiar with this room who is so thoroughly familiar with Eliot’s mind.’
They were silent again. ‘As you say’, said Winter presently, ‘it struck with odd nicety at a sentiment. Eliot pleases himself, really, with his Spider; he couldn’t otherwise had made such a success of him. But cherishing frustrated scholarly ambitions – Pope and all that – he likes to feel that Belinda inhabits a more serious world–’
‘In Shoon Abbey, of all places,’ interrupted Appleby.
Winter hesitated, looked curiously at his companion. ‘No doubt Shoon has a rummy side. But that’s by the way. Eliot has this notion of Belinda, and to have his own melodramatic creation appear to do that’ – and Winter jerked a thumb at the wall – ‘to his very beautiful birthday present was intensely humiliating. Far worse than the Birdwire affair; a shrewder, a more informed, blow. Much more likely to disgust him with his precious invention. Indeed, one gathers that the Spider – the Spider of the stories – is booked for oblivion. There will be no episode thirty-eight.’
‘Birthday presents and birthday parties.’ Gently Appleby thumped the sofa beside him. ‘Winter, the crux is there! The Birthday Party. If we are to believe all that, then this joker has access to Eliot’s very mind. Solve that riddle and one solves everything. I’m not sure that the problem mightn’t afford you what you call intellectual excitement… Where do you think the picture is.’
‘You suggest that it has been yanked out of that window.’
‘And I’ll suggest too that it has been yanked in again at another. There’s something that conceivably squares with the Birdwire incident here; a sort of childish burlesque of crook and detective stuff. Why ever should the picture be hauled over a sill when it could be taken straight through a french window? The answer seems to be for the sake of leaving clues. The french windows open straight on the terrace; that sash window at the end has a flower-bed beneath
it. And the flower-bed has quite comically exquisite footprints. It’s just like the dust-wrapper of a story. And the wheels of a car have been backed on the bed too – of course they’ll lose themselves on the terrace. It’ll all be very Spidery. Or rather sub-Spidery – for I believe Eliot’s yarns are now a good deal more sophisticated than that.’
‘But if the picture has been brought in again we have only to hunt for it?’
‘Spiderismus again. It appears that Rust is honeycombed with secret chambers. I’ve been in one. Quite comfy too.’
For the first time Winter looked not so much dejected as bewildered. ‘I think’, he said, ‘I’ll be going be going to bed. Before I came here I was warned not to walk into the parlour. I don’t know that I want to walk down the secret passages.’ He paused, apparently viewing this feeble joke with distaste. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think I’ll be going.’
‘Then goodnight.’ Appleby chuckled. ‘I had hoped the intellectual excitement wouldn’t be beneath your notice. I’ll struggle along.’
It was a challenge. Winter swung round. ‘Is it really so absorbing?’
Appleby’s smile had gone; he was looking thoughtfully at the floor. ‘Winter, it appears ragged – an untidy series of annoyances directed with malice and some knowledge. But I think it will knit up.’
‘Knit up?’
‘I don’t think’ – Appleby’s response was oblique – ‘that the joker is being wholly slapdash and lavish; on the contrary, his operations are probably economical enough. He’s working steadily to gain some single end. But he may succumb to the lure of dissipation later. There hasn’t, by the way, been any trouble at your college?’
Winter, who had paused in the act of going out, let his hand drop from the door-knob. ‘Trouble in college – whatever do you mean?’
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