‘But you shan’t have it.’ Winter glanced up and down the corridor. ‘As a matter of fact, it’s this. You remember how you were affirming that the theft of the Renoir must be the most inside of jobs? That made me run over all the other pranks I’ve heard of and consider their insideness or outsideness. And I’ve just been talking to Timmy about it from the heart of a cold shower. After all, I did come down to probe, and I might as well make some show. What I’ve gathered is simply that everything might have been done from the outside. As in the matter of the picture, knowledge of the household and its ways is implied. But as far as physical considerations go the joker may stand entirely outside Rust. The crux, of course, is the business of the manuscripts.’
‘Quite so.’
‘You know about their being kept in a cupboard, unlocked. Well, the house is kept unlocked too. Eliot is accustomed to keep late hours, and none of the servants waits up. Any shutting up of the house he does himself; and according to Timmy that’s just none at all. Even during the period that the manuscripts were misbehaving nobody thought to impose any sort of check and control.’ Winter paused. ‘The first thing I felt about Rust was that nobody would ever solve a mystery here.’
‘You were wrong. Not that special difficulties don’t exist. For instance Eliot’s secretary, who might have been particularly useful, has been inconveniently eliminated. And Eliot himself makes a classical little problem in approach. I badly want a little family history and Eliot is the proper person to get it from. But can I do it?’
Winter shrugged his shoulders. ‘Search me.’
‘I will – and everybody else in the household, in a metaphorical way. But at the moment I want the family ghosts and skeletons.’
‘I should try the servants. Talking of the classics, I’ve always understood that to be the classical method.’
Perpetually about Winter there hovered this suggestion of challenge. ‘Very well’, said Appleby briefly; ‘I will.’
Miss Cavey nibbled a pen and contemplated her dangling puppies. She had on the table before her books explaining reflex actions, rigor mortis, and the anatomy of canis vulgaris, or the dog. Nevertheless the thing was not going too well. The fourth puppy, unskilfully strung up by her heroine, was making heartrending noises. The noises were a difficulty. Indicated by conventional collocations of the consonants g and r the effect was trite and unmoving. But anything phonetically more accurate proved both elusive to catch and complicated to render. Miss Cavey strained her inward ear – that organ which is at once the bliss and the agony of the novelist in her solitude – and shut her inward eye, even meditating for a moment the transposing of her whole great scene into darkness. This, however, would introduce great technical difficulties of its own; Miss Cavey retained daylight and in despair cut down the fourth puppy and began again. This time she must remember to put in copious salivation. And a slowly glazing eye. The tail would twitch rhythmically – and there would be abundant pathos in the thought that it seemed almost to be wagging for its cruel little mistress… Miss Cavey discovered that she was hungry. Laying aside her manuscript, she descended to breakfast.
On the staircase – disastrously, for her peace of mind – she overtook Archie Eliot and slapped him heartily on the back. For Miss Cavey, once more in full reaction from her tragic theme and with the prospect of an ample material recruitment awaiting her below, was filled with jollity. ‘My dear old superannuated Watson,’ she said robustly, ‘you look no whit the worse for your spot of dope.’
Archie turned round with placid courtesy. ‘My five grey hairs’, he murmured, ‘and ruined fortune flout.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing, my dear lady; nothing at all. I happened just to be thinking of an old curse.’ Archie momentarily opened his heavy eyes in an innocent and dangerous stare. ‘And how nice that we have met. I shall be your guide through the maze of Richard’s sumptuous chafing-dishes and then we shall have a little chat. As it happens I particularly want your advice. And here is André. Perhaps we shall let him make a third.’ The little translator had come pattering downstairs after them.
Breakfast during the Rust parties was a straggling affair. The chafing-dishes, if not sumptuous, were numerous, and there was an intermittent attendance on them by Mr Eliot’s butler, Bowles, and his assistant – a youth whose baptismal name had been forgotten, for he was prescriptively known as Joseph. Archie obtained a kipper from Joseph and André coffee from Bowles; these were set solicitously before Miss Cavey, and her attendants took their places on each side of her. Wedge was a little way down the table, casting an appreciative eye over his own advertisements in a pile of newspapers; a group of half-a-dozen people was chattering animatedly at the far end of the room.
‘I hope’, said Archie earnestly, ‘that you slept well after the Birthday Party. We are all very much upset that our guests should have had so disturbed an evening.’
‘Very upset indeed,’ corroborated André. During his sojourns at Rust he liked to identify himself thoroughly with the household.
‘Thank you; after a time I slept very well.’ Light – as often happens – had come to Miss Cavey hard upon the first mouthful of kipper. She would have a storm outside and the noises emanating from the fourth puppy would be described as a sort of feeble echo of the elements. She took another bite. ‘That young man over there’, she said suddenly, ‘is looking at me in a very odd way.’
Archie turned round. ‘Joseph? It is just his rather uncouth manner. I am afraid that my cousin is unexacting about the menservants. And Belinda is now much away from home.’ Archie paused and looked at Miss Cavey with the most friendly anxiety. ‘When ignorance is bliss’, he murmured, ‘’tis folly to be wise.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I was reflecting’, said Archie. ‘that you ought to be told. Perhaps you will be able to advise us. André, do you not agree?’
‘Agree?’ For a moment André looked blank. ‘Oh, decidedly, my dear Eliot; very decidedly indeed. I would go as far as to say that Miss Cavey must know.’ André, with no idea of what he was talking, looked very solemn indeed.
Or perhaps outside there might be a dry, autumnal heath and the rustling of the wind in the withered harebells might be echoed in little, dry, horrid gasps from all the puppies in a row. But Miss Cavey’s mind was now only half on her stark creation; her eye was once more on Joseph. ‘Really,’ she said, ‘there is something very curious indeed about the manner of that young man by the sideboard. He appears to be quite fascinated by me.’
‘Perhaps’, said Archie soothingly, ‘he is feeling unwell.’ He turned round and glanced at Joseph. ‘He is certainly paying you a good deal of attention.’ For a moment Archie transferred his gaze thoughtfully to the ceiling. ‘When I come to think of it’, he continued, ‘Joseph is a remarkable lad. He came to us as a boy from somewhere in the Hebrides; as you may know, my cousin’s late wife was the daughter of a proprietor there.’ Archie paused again in order that this piece of territorial information might have proper acknowledgement. ‘And Joseph is said to be gifted with the second sight.’
‘The second sight?’ Miss Cavey’s attention was fully caught. ‘How very interesting! I am particularly keen on all that sort of thing. In my new novel–’
‘It is curious,’ pursued Archie musingly, ‘that Joseph should suddenly become interested in you. André, are you not inclined to take the same view?’
‘Decidedly.’ André spoke with the ready confidence of one who has fallen into a role. ‘It strikes me at once as being peculiar – more than peculiar, indeed.’
Miss Cavey looked a shade uncertainly at her companions. ‘I really don’t see–’
‘But this quite extraneous topic’, pursued Archie, ‘must not divert me from what I was going to tell you. Last night we had the Birthday Party. And it is impossible not to ask: what shall we have next?’
‘It is impossible’, said André formally, ‘not to put this question to oneself with the gravest anxie
ty.’
‘I don’t pretend’ – Archie placidly sipped coffee – ‘to say what agency is at work in the peculiar manifestations which are going on around us. Rupert believes that some low scoundrel is at work; but, of course, Rupert’s mind would turn that way naturally enough. Others feel that something preternatural is involved. And certainly the affair has one very strange aspect; the phenomena seem to tap my cousin’s most secret mind. Last night we had a species of enactment of a story he never committed to paper. What may we look for now? It is here that I have disturbing news.’ Archie stopped off and favoured Miss Cavey with a hard, blue, calculating stare. ‘If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.’
‘Cry aloud’ – André threw sudden genius into his task as chorus – ‘with a long lamentation; cry aloud for an end is at hand!’
Under these minatory citations Miss Cavey abandoned her kipper. ‘You mean’, she asked, ‘that there is some danger ahead?’
‘You must not be alarmed – not unduly alarmed. For some years, as your delightful fun on the staircase tells me you are aware, I have been lucky enough to afford my cousin a fragment of his inspiration – a humorous fragment.’ Archie’s placid smile spread momentarily to the display of two yellow canine teeth. ‘In his books there is an engineer – an unsuccessful engineer, of somewhat obtuse mind perhaps, but fond of books – with whom Richard’s literary and – ah – commercial friends’ – and Archie made a gesture round the now populous dining-room – ‘are accustomed, no doubt on good grounds, to identify me.’ At this embarrassing point Archie amiably paused and Miss Cavey, though her creative absorptions left her little energy for random sensitiveness, looked quite uncomfortable. ‘But in return for this slight service I have my privileges. Not only am I hospitably maintained at Rust; I have occasionally the pleasure of hearing or seeing something of my talented cousin’s plans. And I can tell you that he has for some time been working on a romance called Murder at Midnight. An exciting title, is it not? By the way, which room have they given you this year?’
Miss Cavey jumped. ‘Which room? Why, the little one by itself under the tower.’
André, who had been exploring after kidneys, returned in time to say, ‘Ah!’
‘Now,’ continued Archie with quiet reasonableness, ‘what we are afraid of is this. We have had the Birthday Party; may we not have Murder at Midnight too? Our apprehensions, my dear André, are of that, are they not?’
‘Of just that. We are afraid that some poor woman may really be murdered.’
‘A woman?’ Miss Cavey had pushed her unfinished kipper nervously away.
Archie nodded seriously. ‘A woman,’ he corroborated. ‘Dear me, there is Joseph looking at you in that peculiar way again.’
Miss Cavey made a last effort after self-control. ‘I don’t believe he’s looking at me in – in the way you seem to suggest. It’s much more as if he were stripping me of my clothes.’
‘My dear lady, pray keep calm. If we are calm we have a much better chance of facing the thing out. To begin with: who is the woman likely to be?’ Archie deliberately scanned Mr Eliot’s guests. ‘We have only a slight description.’
‘A description?’
‘The body is described as that of a well-nourished woman in middle life.’
Miss Cavey rose abruptly. ‘I have something’, she said with resolution, ‘to look up in a time-table.’
‘Of course my knowledge of my cousin’s story is slight. I believe that at present there are alternative versions. In one the unfortunate woman dies in her bedroom – rather an isolated room. In the other nemesis overtakes her as she is endeavouring to fly from her persecutors.’
Miss Cavey sat down again. ‘Do you know’, she asked in a strained voice, ‘how she dies? Is it something – something painful?’
André rose brilliantly to the occasion. ‘She is strung up’, he said, ‘with a window cord. They rush in and discover her just as she gives her last wriggle; her last dry horrid gasp.’
‘And here’, said Archie, ‘is Richard. Richard, old fellow, I fear Miss Cavey is a little unwell. She has been annoyed by Joseph.’
2
Saturday was full of incident, as befitted the crowning day of the Spider’s party. But it opened with abundant talk – particularly for Appleby, who found himself at breakfast once more in the company of Winter. His sister and Timmy Eliot were opposite, and in this Winter found material for mild amusement. He offered Patricia an appreciative analysis of the personality of Hugo Toplady, appealing to Timmy for corroboration point by point and concluding with a mysterious exhortation to scorn not the sonnet and the yet more mysterious verdict that if only Toplady were chocolate-coloured he would be perfect. In vain Timmy offered his tutor a virgin copy of The Times. No sooner did the theme of Toplady verge on the tedious than Winter was off on another tack.
‘You and I, Miss Appleby, are committed to professions, but Timmy still has the delight of choosing. We were consulting about it in the train yesterday.’ He addressed himself to a Timmy who was endeavouring gallantly enough not to turn sulky. ‘I had an idea which I forgot to put to you. It was suggested by those seducing photographs which they fasten above the seats; there was Bridlington’ – he turned to Appleby and threw him a phrase like a biscuit – ‘a sickle of sand on which departed holidaymakers palely loitered in bleaching sepias: and why, I thought, should Timmy not come unto those sepia sands? There was Ludlow Castle’ – he spoke again to his pupil – ‘and it was Ludlow Castle that really put the thing in my head. Why, Timmy, should you not buy a bus and conduct superior literary tours?’ He glanced at Patricia. ‘You know, he has the instinct of showmanship.’
Appleby allowed his thoughts to depart elsewhere; when they returned Winter was still discoursing on his new theme. ‘Shrines, Timmy! Make it an Eliot’s Luxury Pilgrimage this year. Here Gaveston, ladies and gentlemen, made the following plans for amusing the king.’
It was approaching the harangue which the man generally avoided. But Winter, unaccountably raising his voice, talked on. ‘Vividly, Miss Appleby, it rises before one! The courtyard of the ruined castle, above its crumbled silhouette rooks tossing against a chilly sky, on the drawbridge the great char-à-banc – scarlet, and blazoned in gold Miss Guinivere or perhaps The Seige Perilous – purring its gentle impatience, the little group of tourists with cameras and pamphlets and notebooks – wistful schoolmistresses plucking the barren rose of York or Lancaster, eccentric businessmen gathering material for provincial literary societies – and in the midst Timmy himself’ – Winter’s voice rose higher still – ‘declaiming amid the mouldering but yet resonant walls–’
And Winter started to declaim – something that appeared to be out of Marlowe’s Edward II. By this time, however, it was clear that he had been talking in calculated opposition to a disturbance at the other end of the table. And that he was beaten. Timmy’s proposed career as cicerone faded into silence; the group became embarrassed spectators of what was going forward.
‘A scene,’ said Timmy bitterly. ‘Of course there is always a scene or two during a party. But with a servant! Lord, lord, lord.’
‘Timmy’ – Patricia’s voice was challenging – ‘your mind glides at once to scruples. Though I agree it would have been nicer if the woman had assaulted Wedge. Your father – how cheerful he seems – is being very competent and has got the bewildered young man out of the room. And there goes old Bowles; he seems most upset of all. I wonder what it was all about?’
Timmy shook a gloomy head. ‘Archie and that little André were sitting beside the woman; I expect they were amusing themselves with some ingenious piece of baiting, so that she lost her head. But why she should go head down for Joseph I can’t imagine.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Patricia, ‘I did once or twice see Joseph looking at her in an odd way.’ She glanced ironically at Winter and her brother. ‘I’m not sure that the tale of mysteries isn’t gaining on you. And I’m all for these minor jokes and scandals; t
hey strike me as healthy.’ She cautiously whistled a couple of bars from the leitmotiv of the Spider.
Timmy looked at her doubtfully. ‘Whatever do you mean? That they keep this awful party pleasantly occupied and amused?’
‘I mean that the more petty operations, the less likelihood of any major sinister design.’
Looking up from the interrupted breakfast to which he had decorously returned, Winter gestured a vigorous intellectual dissent. ‘A most dangerous notion. A lot of foolery may easily be employed to cloak a single vital operation. Alternatively, it may give such an operation an artistic atmosphere or setting. Or alternatively again, there may be more lurking operations than one. A joke by A may give the notion of a crime or misdemeanour to B. Wheels within wheels.’
Appleby chuckled appreciatively. ‘You’ve little to learn.’ He rose. ‘Meanwhile I had better pursue my disagreeable profession. Spying telegrams about other guests.’ He took out a pencil, glanced innocently at Winter, licked it and began laboriously to write on a page torn from a notebook, his tongue following the motion of his hand.
‘John,’ said Patricia, ‘when you try to be funny you are quite awful.’
‘That, my dear, may be true of our joker too. And now I’m taking Winter’s advice and am off to sneak round the servants. It is the psychological moment.’ He turned seriously to Timmy. ‘I don’t think I’ll bother your father about it. So do you mind?’
‘Certainly not. This, as we all know, is Folly Hall. But I think you ought to take Winter, too. He said he was confident that he could solve–’
‘There are fictions’, said Winter, ‘that pall. And Miss Appleby and I are going to have another cup of coffee.’
Appleby’s sneaking began, appropriately though fortuitously, with a piece of successful eavesdropping. Going in search of Bowles and the unfortunate Joseph, he got lost; getting lost, he paused; and pausing, he heard a voice say: ‘Eliot has bounced up again; the thing’s failed.’
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