Stop Press

by Michael Innes

  And nobody else could be called definitely out. During the vital half-hour round midnight a surprising number of people had slipped from observation; there had been a sort of smoke-screen of stormy stones. Never a case, thought Appleby, needing so much patient digging around on the spot; never a case in which there was so little chance of anything of the sort. Back at Rust the majority of Mr Eliot’s party was preparing to disperse on the morrow; and here meantime were others punctiliously fulfilling an engagement to visit Shoon Abbey. From every concrete evidence of the mystery he was now being hurtled rapidly away.

  Nevertheless to Shoon Abbey certain dubious filaments stretched out. The first act of the joker had been to burgle Mrs Birdwire and news of this burglary had upset a certain Horace Benton, once disreputably employed by Jasper Shoon himself. At the Abbey was Benton’s colleague Bussenschutt, who had been prompted by these events to an ingenious cultivation of the burgled lady. Here in the car was Gerald Winter, who had communicated Timmy’s story of the burglary to the others, and who had become so laudably anxious to investigate the troublesome incidents at the home of his pupil Timmy Eliot. The connexion between these facts was obscure, but could scarcely be illusory.

  They were off to the Abbey now in fulfilment of a visit which had been in the air for some days. Appleby wondered how the project had originated. Belinda worked at the Abbey, but until yesterday its owner and Mr Eliot had been only slightly acquainted. Yesterday Shoon had appeared, flanked by Bussenschutt and Mrs Birdwire, and had presented something between an invitation and a summons to the Rust party at large. By what had this been prompted? There was, it seemed, a considerable party at the Abbey already: nothing less than a gathering of that dubious organization to which Shoon, with unamiable but sufficient irony, had given the title of Friends of the Venerable Bede. With these were now to be mingled the servants of the Spider. Who had engineered this fusion? And for what purpose? For Appleby found himself convinced that the plot was still thickening and that this expansive expedition was not mere drift. The mystery which lay behind lay in front as well.

  Mrs Moule had come to a different conclusion. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I am looking forward to seeing the Abbey too. But I would be just a shade happier if these horrid jokes had been cleared up first. We do a little seem to be running away. And they have been so confusing as well as horrid that they tend to go round and round in one’s head.’

  ‘A mighty maze,’ said Mr Eliot, ‘but not without a plan… Has anyone got a match?’

  Appleby, supplying matches, wondered what way the wind was wont to be blowing when his host turned from pigs to Pope.

  ‘And after all,’ said Winter, ‘nearly everybody is coming across. I shouldn’t be surprised if we make considerable headway at the Abbey.’

  ‘I agree.’ Mr Eliot, without turning round, spoke with brisk decision. ‘And curiously enough Rupert – who has, you know, great knowledge of the world – made exactly the same remark before we set out. John, what do you think?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem at all unlikely that we are carrying our domestic incubus with us.’

  Mrs Moule, impressed by this mysterious unanimity, peered rather anxiously ahead. ‘You really think so? I’m sure Mr Shoon’s home is a most dangerous place for jokers. All those guns and explosives and things. Belinda’ – Belinda and Timmy were on the little seats in front of her – ‘does he keep his sinister wares on the premises?’

  Belinda laughed. ‘I’ve never seen any. But it’s a big place and there are mysterious doings sometimes in the ruins. I think they do a little quiet research.’

  ‘It seems to me in rather bad taste’, said Mrs Moule, ‘to construct what is almost a religious setting for that sort of thing… Of course I don’t mean anything that Sir Archibald had to do with.’

  ‘Sir Archibald?’ Appleby stiffened abruptly against luxurious upholstery.

  ‘It’s the only thing’, explained Timmy – he had scarcely spoken since they set out – ‘that Archie has done since his bridge. Shoon knew Archie long before Belinda went to the Abbey. And he called him in over the west tower. Ruined towers, it seems, are uncommonly tricky. You have to get permission from county authorities before you put up that sort of thing. Shoon got Archie to make quite an engineering job of it. They were quite thick, one gathers, for a while.’

  Belinda nodded. ‘And the tower really is a triumph. A single wall supporting an impending mass of masonry. Actually it’s an affair of steel girders anchored in the bowels of the earth.’

  ‘But the Collection’ – Mr Eliot broke in as if to defend his daughter’s association with all this wantonness – ‘must be quite without extravagance. The Shoon Catalogues are recognized by scholars everywhere.’

  So there, thought Appleby, was another link. Archie and Shoon; perhaps it was Archie who was behind the present expedition. ‘Will Sir Archibald’, he asked, ‘be fit to come over today?’

  Mr Eliot shook his head. ‘I think not. Chown declares the wound to be not serious, but he advises rest. I am really rather anxious–’

  A hoot – the discreet but commanding hoot of a well-considered siren – drowned the rest of the sentence. Patricia drew to the side; a cream car even larger than that in which they were travelling drew level and passed; the figure at the wheel with grave courtesy took off his hat and displayed a profusely bandaged head; beside him could be glimpsed the unengaging grin of Rupert Eliot; amid a huddle of forms behind were Miss Cavey and Wedge. Loudly above the purr of their own engine Timmy sighed. ‘Who could say’, he asked, ‘that Eliots don’t stick together? The whole lot of us on each other’s heels.’

  It was an overstatement. And Appleby was to remember the sense of cloudy illumination with which he noted the fact.

  ‘By the way,’ said Belinda, ‘the guns and bombs are taboo. Jasper doesn’t like them brought up. Merchant, he says, are a useful and respectable class of men, but he doesn’t care to be thought of in that light. He is just a curioso – and, of course, a virtuoso too.’

  Mr Eliot nodded sympathetically. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘John will agree with me that it is nice to get away from the atmosphere of one’s profession when one can.’ He smiled cheerfully at the appositeness of this reflection. ‘And armament people particularly must find their job weighing on them at times. There is so much public opprobrium. They are condemned even by many who still support the traditional view that the soldier’s is the most honourable of callings. I have never quite satisfied myself that it is fair. We don’t, after all, approve surgeons and condemn instrument-makers.’ Mr Eliot – this time that determinedly liberal Mr Eliot who insisted on what capital fellows Rupert and Archie really were – looked about him for support and received none. ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘I know that these people sometimes foment trouble for the sake of profits. But I am sure that a person with Shoon’s scholarly interests would not do that.’ He sighed, appeared to make some reluctant reference to the book of human nature as it was known to him. ‘Or almost sure… Patricia, my dear, there is somebody signalling to us.’

  It was Dr Bussenschutt. Surprisingly dressed in knickerbockers and an ancient leather-trimmed shooting jacket, he was gesturing with mingled affability and command from a tump of grass by the roadside. As the car drew to a halt he advanced and removed a tweed cap in which were entangled several dry-fly of a type popular, a connoisseur would have remarked, in the eighteen-nineties. His face, massively benevolent, thrust itself through a window. There are those’, said Dr Bussenschutt – and his speech had the too-considered tempo of something which has been framed seconds before – ‘who delight in the flying wheels, the supercharged engine, and the Olympian dust. But I’ – he gestured vaguely in the direction from which he had come – ‘have loved the rural walk through ways of grassy swarth.’

  Mr Eliot was delighted. ‘I am myself’, he said, ‘a devotee of Cowper. And now Horace and he go hand and hand in song.’

  As Mr Eliot had thus contrived at once to identify B
ussenschutt’s quotations and to say so in a single line of Pope’s it might be supposed, Appleby felt, that the honours of this wantonly belletristic engagement were all with him. It was a pity that Archie was not present to cap them both, and well might the lot of them be gravitating round the virtuoso and curioso of Shoon Abbey. Timmy, Belinda, and Patricia alone looked severe; what are graces to one generation will always appear slightly shameful inanities to the next. But Bussenschutt’s speech now revealed itself as not without design; having offered some further facetiae on the theme of automobilism and pedestrianism he proceeded to solicit converts; those who had a nose for what is in November air should dismount and walk back to the Abbey with himself. He was particularly sure that Winter would be eager to do this.

  This evidences of Winter’s eagerness were tenuous. He looked at Bussenschutt, it seemed to Appleby, with the economical wariness of one familiar with an antagonist’s points and calculting on what hand attack will come.

  ‘Moreover,’ said Bussenschutt, ‘I have intelligence with which to beguile the way. Intelligence of our colleague Benton.’ Bussenschutt, although his remarks were directed to Winter, here beamed with particular geniality on Timmy, as if whimsically admitting this young man to a glimpse of the innocent gossiping of senior common-rooms. ‘I fear’, he continued, ‘that nobody else will be interested’ – his glance fell fleetingly on Appleby – ‘but perhaps we can raise a third hiker’ – he paused to let everyone admire this bold colloquialism – ‘all the same.’ He opened a door at the back of the car – a masterly stroke the social indecency of which he contrived to cloak by appearing to aim at readier communication with Mrs Moule. ‘I trust, my dear lady, that you have good news of your brother in his magnificent diocese? How much, at Oxford, the Bishop of Udonga is missed by all!’ And at this display of his own superb staff work – as well perhaps as at the sight of Winter and Appleby scrambling from the car – the learned Bussenschutt horridly and triumphantly beamed. ‘Au revoir,’ he cried, ‘arrivederci, auf wiedersehen!’ He stood with his fishy cap held stiffly in the air – Appleby incongruously saw a uniformed Dethleps demanding cheers for royalty – until the car had swept round a bend.

  Like one who thinks to get over what is not well begun, Winter made for a stile and field-path across the road. ‘About three miles to go,’ he said. ‘Time even for you, Master, to communicate an item of intelligence.’

  ‘I have had’, said Bussenschutt consequentially, ‘an adventure.’

  The victims of his rape looked at him expectantly.

  ‘But what’, asked Bussenschutt theoretically – and he carefully negotiated a cowpat – ‘do we imply by adventure? And may we not pause to inquire whether the idea – the idea of the adventure per se – is not something new, and a symptom indeed of our modern malady?’

  Appleby saw the point of Winter’s last remark. There was too much reason to apprehend that in the art of gentle talk the younger don was but an imperfect pupil of the elder.

  ‘And this thought’, pursued Bussenschutt, ‘is suggested to me by the Benton affair. Adventure of the mind too – the intellectual curiosity on which we pride ourselves: what is this but a product of our inability to live richly in the common context, to seize and exploit the moment that naturally comes? That satisfaction lies away ahead or far round the corner: this conviction, surely, is a sign of our poverty here and now, our ineptitude’ – he waved at the landscape rather as a blind man might gesture round a picture gallery – ‘in face of the streaming present… Dear me, I fear I have forgotten by what this interesting train of thought was occasioned.’

  ‘Benton,’ said Winter gloomily.

  ‘To be sure, Benton. My point is that the mystery intrigues us because it is something at which we peer from a distance. Solve it – as, by the way, I have done – and one immediately asks; was the effort worth while? One becomes aware, as our friend Eliot must so acutely do in fabricating his romances, that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.’

  Appleby felt disposed to award Bussenschutt the higher mark. In this infuriating accomplishment he had an altogether superior command of tenterhooks.

  ‘You have solved’, Winter was saying cautiously, ‘a mystery connected with Benton? You are sure you haven’t invented it?’

  Bussenschutt ignored this. ‘I take it, Mr Appleby, that you are not acquainted with Horace Benton?’

  ‘He is a scholar’, said Appleby discreetly, ‘with whose name I am familiar.’

  ‘Ah, yes; the Codex, no doubt. An unhappy business. But the little problem on which I have been engaged will explain itself to you sufficiently in the solution. Winter, would the solution be of interest to you?… Ah, here we are.’

  They had attained a slight eminence from which they now looked down upon Shoon Abbey. Mr Jasper Shoon, as his numerous benefactions emphasized, was a lover of sacred antiquity – and of all that is comprehended in the term it was the eighteenth century, the century of virtuosi and curiosi, that he loved best. And this dictated the form of the imposing seat the contemplation of which had interrrupted Bussenschutt’s proposed revelation.

  Shoon Abbey was instinct of the eighteenth century – not the Nabob, purse-proud eighteenth century of Palladian façades and broad terraces bespattered with classical statuary à la mode Winckelmann, but the polite and lettered eighteenth century of the nascent romantic revival. The enormously costly ruins, the great house with its learned confusion of periods composing a sort of dream-Gothic, the Gardens of Idea – gloomy groves, murmuring streams, sequestered grots, root-houses, urns, dells, denes, dingles – all these revealed themselves from this height in one extensive, costly, and subtle statement: a yearning after a past age which had yearned after a past age. Bussenschutt’s companions surveyed it with an absorbed if somewhat depressed astonishment.

  ‘How much’, said Winter – and it was almost the first time Appleby had heard him say a simple thing, ‘one prefers Rust.’ His gaze settled on Sir Archibald Eliot’s great west tower. ‘Lord,’ he said, adopting the idiom of Rust, ‘lord, lord, lord.’ He turned to Bussenschutt in a gloom which seemed to dispose him to some annihilating stroke. ‘You were about to reveal, when Shoon’s Folly interrupted us, your startling discovery that Benton used to traffic in arms.’

  The stroke wholly miscarried of its effect. ‘Arms?’ murmured Bussenschutt; ‘dear me, no. My discovery concerns nothing of that sort.’

  ‘Then’, said Winter with something of the appearance of capitulation, ‘what does it concern?’

  ‘It is really very subtle.’ Bussenschutt paused and once more his companions waited in suspense. He raised his arm and pointed; it became clear that he was referring to the architectural monstrosity before them. ‘Antiquarianism within antiquarianism, like Chinese boxes – not an easy thing to achieve. Shoon tells me that he had great difficulty with the architect. The architect knew about Gothic. He was reluctant to shed his knowledge and return to the ignorant enthusiasm of the pioneers. But Shoon insistent. And so we have before us a mélange of Early English and Perpendicular, of monastic, ecclesiastical, and domestic… Let me see, was not I about to tell you of my discovery with regard to Benton?’

  This time Winter strode forward in resolute silence. Appleby kept pace – entertained, but with diminishing hopes of instruction.

  ‘The solution’, announced Bussenschutt abruptly, ‘is Warter, Wing, Little Limber, Snug.’

  Winter stared. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘To the approximate rectangle thus demarcated the thing may with fair confidence be pinned down. To narrow it further seems not possible on the purely phonological evidences. But this is very satisfactory. The truth, as you know, has eluded me for years.’ Bussenschutt turned in genial explanation to Appleby. ‘My concern has been with this Benton’s origins. He has a peculiar accent. On Friday I detected almost identical articulations – unglossed, of course, by a spurious refinement – in a local cab-driver. Subsequent investigation has confirmed me in my convi
ction. We are tramping Benton’s native soil now. But, as I have earlier confessed, the elucidation of mysteries of this sort leaves one a little flat… Stay a moment, gentlemen. I fear we have missed the path.’

  There was no need to invite Winter to stay; he had stopped dead in his tracks. ‘And is this’, he demanded, ‘the discovery about Benton with which you undertook to beguile this muddy and boring perambulation?’

  Bussenschutt opened eyes of bland astonishment. ‘My dear fellow, what other discovery could there be?’

  Appleby, meditating the implications of this academic hide-and-seek, again surveyed the scene. They had descended almost to the level of the park and the Abbey was presenting itself, according to the best prescriptions of the Picturesque, in a series of calculated glimpes variously framed. Now to the left was an ornamental water half-circled by an elegant balustrade, with the portico of a little Doric temple nestling in greenery beyond. To the right a waterfall tumbled over a miniature precipice into a deep brown pool; and faintly in the air was the throb of the petrol engine which did the necessary pumping. In the foreground a single gnarled oak had been preserved as a repoussoir to the composition beyond; beneath was a crumbling druidic altar with an inscription deeply engraved; a rustic seat was provided for those who wished to pause and read. Bussenschutt sat down. ‘We are certainly somewhat out of our way. That’ – he pointed to the altar – ‘is an effect wholly unfamiliar to me.’

  They read:

  THIS SPOT WAS OFTEN

  DIGNIFIED BY THE PRESENCE OF

  SAMUEL JOHNSON

  LL. D.

  WHOSE WRITINGS

  EXACTLY CONFORMABLE TO THE NICEST

  TENETS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

  GAVE ARDOUR TO VIRTUE AND

  CONFIDENCE TO TRUTH

  ‘And sure th’Eternal Master found