Stop Press

by Michael Innes

  The many talents well employed.’

  ‘The last line’, said Bussenschutt encyclopedically, ‘is an adaptation. But one really doubts the propriety of carrying such reconstructions of a past age so far. The altar has so evidently been quarried within the last decade. One would not care to hint anything of the sort to Shoon, but there is undeniably a suggestion of extravagance about the whole conception of his Abbey. It does not altogether join with his scholarly professions.’ He stood up, moved on a few paces, leant over the balustrade. ‘And you will agree with me that scholarship and extravagance singularly ill accord.’

  Perhaps, thought Appleby, Bussenschutt was addressing Winter, Perhaps he was apostrophizing his own uncertain image in the pool below.

  2

  Landscape gardening is the art of imposing upon the substance of Nature those principles of composition and balance which painters impose upon her shadow on canvas. The more elaborate sort of landscape gardening aims at the creation of a whole peripatetic picture-gallery. The spectator stolls from view-point to view-point and is rewarded by a series of prospects each of which obey the strictest prescriptions of graphic art. It is a point of elegance if the paths by which this perambulation is made wind through ravines, or between mossy banks or screens of greenery: the sudden vistas and abrupt transitions from shadow to light and light to shadow which it is thus possible to contrive giving the whole experience the added pleasures of contrast and surprise. Of this refined delight the modern world has contrived its own adaptation in those scenic railways or waterways which wind from tableau to tableau through forbidding papiermâché tunnels. In Mr Jasper Shoon’s eighteenth century the art was polite and involved: it is recorded of the poet Shenstone that he so assiduously landscape-gardened his grounds as to create, within the limits of an almost miniature estate, many miles of these purposefully wandering paths – the whole being so cunningly planned that one was unaware of the circumscribed character of the territory about which one walked.

  Appleby, conducted by Dr Bussenschutt through a similar but more extensive system in the grounds of Shoon Abbey, reflected that the proceeding bore a symbolical relationship to the curious enquiry in which he was engaged. In the affair of the Spider he had just this sense of a path, itself involved and obscure, affording periodical glimpses now of one and now of another aspect of a single central position. He had a sense, too, that the field was more circumscribed than it seemed; that fragments of the path which appeared remote from one another in the exploring were, in fact, separated only by some impalpable screen, and ready to reveal their neighbourliness at a first inspired application of a good detective’s axe. And always in this progress with Bussenschutt and Winter it was the Abbey on which the prospect opened; picture after picture as it presented itself had a growing bulk of fantastically conceived masonry at its core. Appleby, who did not think it necessary always to turn down extralogical processes of mind, felt a growing conviction that the key to what had taken place amid the decencies of Rust would be found to lie in the monstrous creation which was now declaring itself before him.

  ‘I am confirmed’, said Bussenschutt, ‘in the view that we are making an irregular approach. This aspect of the building – if building be not too prosaic a word for our friend’s achievement – is unfamiliar to me. The point would be immaterial did Shoon not seem curiously nervous about the wandering of his guests. It would appear that his benevolence has led him to settle about the estate several unfortunate persons of nervously excitable temper. He is solicitous for our security should we encounter them in an unfortunate mood. But since what lies before us is clearly a wing of the mansion itself I fancy that we may proceed without apprehension.’

  With a deliberation which matched his speech Bussenschutt waved threateningly at an inquisitive peacock and led his companions up a broad gravel path which ended in a flight of steps and an aggressively venerable ivy-covered porch. ‘The Gothic’, said Bussenschutt, ‘looks solemn – an observation made long ago by Keats. One is tempted to add that the pseudo-Gothic looks sinister. Regard that row of traceried windows to the left of the porch. The stained glass will be abominable and the carving wholly without delicacy. But the whole repels me on other, I conceive, than aesthetic grounds. Though not medieval, it is eminently moyenâgeux. Or to use an expressive popular meiosis, I don’t half like it.’

  ‘It is partly the ivy,’ said Winter. ‘A building massively overgrown evokes mental traces of witches, robbers, and similar terrors of childhood. And partly it is the singularly deserted appearance of his part of the house.’

  ‘Perhaps’, interpolated Appleby, who shared the impression of something forbidding in the scene but who was growing tired of this academic conversational tempo, ‘we had better find our way round to the front.’

  Bussenschutt held up a decisive hand. ‘Witches, robbers, and – you might have added – ferocious animals. But we are children no longer. Before retreating we will at least try the door. A passage may very well communicate with the more familiar apartments.’

  They climbed the steps and were swallowed by damp gloom in the porch; a massive nail-studded door beyond yielded to Bussenschutt’s hand. They found themselves in a small lobby with before them a door yet more massive, like something in an illustration to a novel of Scott’s. This too opened at a touch and they entered a long raftered hall. There was indeed abominable stained glass, but at each end were large plain windows which flooded the hall with cold, clear light. What was revealed by this could be very concisely described. It was a medieval chapter-house converted to the purposes of a modern boardroom.

  Down the stone-flagged floor – which had all the appearance of having been worn smooth by generations of sandalled feet – ran a long solid shiny table, with thirty solid shiny and leathery chairs and thirty leathery blotting-pads and thirty shiny brass ink-pots made out of shell-cases and thirty dull copper ashtrays made out of fifteen neatly bisected hand-grenades. The whole, though it positively suggested nothing more than some modern temple of usury, yet contrived to convey the strongest sense of anticipation, like a curtain rung up upon an empty set or an interior precisely described at the beginning of a fairy-tale.

  Their gaze travelled from the long table to the walls. Directly before them, and startlingly set off by the low tones of the stone, was a harshly brilliant picture of the Angels of Mons engaged in Feeding the Guns. Flanking this was a series of enormous aerial photographs of ruined cities, each with a column of technical memoranda attached. And at each end were similar photographs of two buildings still in their original state: one was the British Museum and the other the Library of Congress.

  Appleby was contemplating this display with a good deal of satisfaction when he was summoned by Winter to the other end of the room. He found his companions studying an oil-painting by an eminent Royal Academician. It was called ‘The Venerable Bede presiding over the building of Shoon Abbey.’ One wing of the Abbey was represented as completed – a highly romantic and mouldering affair, with weeds already pushing out from crannies in the ruined cloisters. The other wing was still unfinished – a sketetal structure of steel girders in naked ferro-concrete foundations. In the top left-hand corner was the Venerable Bede in a nimbus, one hand clasping his pioneer work De Natura Rerum and the other upheld in a gesture which combined benediction and admiring surprise. Bottom right was Mr Shoon himself, kneeling – by some pardonable confusion of thought – in the attitude of a Donor.

  ‘I suppose’, said Winter, ‘that if one likes to imagine one’s gardens as having been perambulated by Dr Johnson it is logical to go on to believe in the friendly interest of a seventh-century historian in one’s bogus thirteenth-century house. But as Bussenschutt has so acutely hinted, one has an uneasy feeling of contact with a dangerously extravagant mind. This next picture is interesting. It appears to be a German equivalent of the Angels of Mons. No doubt the Friends of the Venerable Bede are catholic in their mythological interests. An interesting instance, Master, of sy
ncretism at work.’

  It was on this excessively learned note that a door opened and admitted Mr Shoon. The moment was not without embarrassment for his visitors. But Shoon himself was not at all embarrassed. With a sort of friendly dignity eminently becoming in the owner of a great house he advanced upon Winter and Appleby and exclaimed, ‘Welcome to Shoon Abbey!’

  ‘I am afraid’, said Winter, ‘that we lost our way.’

  ‘And coming in by this door’, said Appleby, ‘we have been venturing to interest ourselves in the pictures.’

  Shoon, nodding in benign approval, contrived to swing himself round towards the photograph of the British Museum. ‘What a capital job of work, one must admit, the modern camera can do. At once soothing and inspiring, is it not?’ His hand hovered over the foreshortened vista of Smirke’s colonnades in a gesture which seemed to gather the whole contents of the Museum into its grasp. ‘The brain of England, my dear Mr Appleby; the very cerebral cortex of our culture. Strike at it and what a paralysis would you not effect!’ His eye, fixed on certain dots which were perhaps ladies feeding the Museum pigeons, grew abstracted. He turned to the group at large. ‘And have you ever reflected on the extent to which the complicated mechanism of our civilization depends upon a few such nerve-centres – is controlled, moreover, by a mere handful of experts? Consider the Imperial Institute of Entomology.’

  Mr Shoon’s guests, who had not come to the Abbey at all for this purpose, civilly did their best to look like persons who contemplate the institution invoked.

  ‘There we have a scattering of men engaged in the abstruse study of crop and forest pests, of disease-bearing insects. A mere scattering, I say, of unprotected scientists under a single roof! Nothing would be simpler than to eliminate them.’ Shoon’s fingers toyed with one of the handsome ink-pots on the long table. ‘There could be nothing simpler in the world. And what would be the consequence? In India, six thousand miles away, the death-roll would increase by at least half a million within a year, while the damage to property would be reckoned in hundreds of millions of pounds.’ He made a lavish gesture in the air, as if to evoke a vivid apprehension of these enormous figures. ‘Or come nearer home. Take London’s water supply.’

  Bussenschutt, Winter, and Appleby nodded intelligently. They were taking London’s water supply.

  ‘To most of us it is simply a matter of turning on a tap. But the water which we thus thoughtlessly command when in town is subjected to over thirty-five thousand laboratory tests yearly. The Eijkman test, the indole-presumptive test, the coli-aerogenes group test, the Voges-Proskauer reaction…all these are constantly necessary. Once more, the handful of experts! Liquidate these and London is at the mercy of Bacteria coli, of Eucrangonyx gracilis, and of Niphargus equilex or the eyeless shrimp.’

  Dr Bussenschutt was regarding his host with great respect. A curioso and virtuoso whose casual conversation comprehended Eucrangonyx gracilis and the menace of the eyeless shrimp was a person of extensive views and much observation. ‘Your remarks’, he said, ‘are very striking, very striking indeed.’

  The president of the Friends of the Venerable Bede smiled with a mellow brilliance. ‘And now’, he said, “let me conduct the wanderers to that part of the house at which they were aiming when so sadly led astray.’

  They moved to the door and as they did so Appleby paused firmly before the other aerial photographs. ‘It is these’, he said, ‘which I must confess have particularly interested me.’

  Shoon put on the glasses which hung by a broad black ribbon round his neck and surveyed the photograph vaguely. ‘These’, he said, ‘represent work done jointly with the Imperial Academy of Assyriology in Tokio. The Friends of the Venerable Bede have, you will understand, these connexions – the affiliations of learning! Digs, my dear Mr Appleby’ – added Shoon, taking off his glasses again and waving them at the photographs – ‘digs in Assyria, digs in central Asia. Whole civilizations coming to light.’ He paused, sighed and added with extraordinary animation: ‘Ruined cities, my dear sir, ruined cities – a wonderful thought!’

  Appleby assumed a look of perplexity. ‘But, Mr Shoon,’ he said, ‘look at this one here. There is a little building like a kiosk and the photograph is so clear that you can read the notice: Aquí se venden cigarros.’

  ‘Aquí se venden–’ murmured Shoon perplexedly.

  ‘I think it must be construed as the Spanish for Cigars sold here. Surely the Assyrians–’

  Shoon’s features expressed sudden enlightenment. ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, ‘I recollect perfectly. This particular excavation was undertaken by a group of Spanish savants. They built themselves quite a little township. But unfortunately it was overthrown by an earthquake. I remember we contributed a considerable sum in relief. And now, if you will forgive me, I shall lead the way.’

  They passed into a long corridor. ‘Interesting,’ murmured Winter into Appleby’s ear. ‘Profoundly instructive and I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds. But I still invite you to connect up the racketeer in his lair with all that about Rust being Folly Hall.’

  ‘It will link up all right. If only–’ He stopped, aware that Shoon had paused and turned round.

  ‘May I say’, said Shoon – and his cadence had become peculiarly of the century which he favoured – ‘that I cannot be unaware of the profession which has been embraced with such distinction by the brother of Miss Appleby?’ He paused with a smile which made the affectation a matter of graceful fun. ‘And I am extraordinarily pleased that you have come over today. The truth is that there has been a most unfortunate incident.’

  ‘An incident?’ exclaimed Bussenschutt. His voice held the quick suspicion of one who has to keep order among some three hundred young men.

  ‘And, most deplorably, it has been directed against another of my guests of the day. Sir Rupert Eliot. He has been threatened with physical violence.’

  Appleby was grinning cheerfully at Winter. ‘Dear me,’ he murmured.

  The owner of Shoon Abbey made to proceed on his way. ‘I abhor violence in every form,’ he said. ‘So you will forgive me if I am a little upset.’

  For the purpose of persecuting Rupert the Spider had fallen back on a device unexploited for some time. He had intimated that he Knew All. As everyone was aware that Rupert had a past – that a past, indeed, was his one unchallengeable possession – this was no doubt the obvious line of attack. But the attack contained elements which were far from obvious; which were, on the contrary, oblique and allusive to a pedantic degree.

  The two cars – those driven by Archie and Patricia respectively – arrived at the Abbey within five minutes of each other. The visitors were received by their host in a species of entrance hall known for learned reasons as the tribune; in the ceremony Shoon was supported by several Friends of the Venerable Bede, by the now romantically mysterious Horace Benton, and by Horace Benton’s colleague Mummery. After formal introductinos the women were conducted upstairs by Shoon and recommended to the good offices of a housekeeper; the men were put in charge of Benton and led to a cloakroom. Standards of hospitality at the Abbey were generous; it was understood that the visit was for both luncheon and dinner; settling in was therefore quite an affair. The men discarded coats, hats, scarves, gloves, sticks, umbrellas; the cleanly washed; the vain made passes with hair brushes and straightened ties; everyone then trooped back to the tribune. It was at this point that somebody noticed Sir Rupert Eliot as having emerged apparently equipped for a problematical parlour game. Pinned to his back was an irregular circle of white paper.

  Mr Eliot, who in this particular might be supposed to have more acute apprehensions than others present, was the first to observe that the thing was undoubtedly a spider; Archie Eliot was the first to turn it over and discover the message. It was the message that was so allusive. There was but a single line of typescript, and it read:

  Love’s Usury, lines 10–11.

  On this there was some moments’ debate. Mr Eliot rather thought that
Love’s Usury was a play by Farquhar; Sir Archibald Eliot stoutly maintained it to be a poem by Donne. Their host, although a little haziness on a merely seventeenth-century matter could not have been counted to his discredit, appeared slightly vexed at not being able to give a convinced verdict. There was nothing for it but to send for the books.

  At Shoon Abbey this was unfortunately a matter of some little difficulty, and in fact most of the time which Bussenschutt, Winter, and Appleby spent wandering through the grounds was employed by the other visitors in the rather awkward business of awaiting light on this latest enigma of the joker’s. Donne and Farquhar were available, but contriving an interview was a matter of ceremony. Shoon retired to his study, opened a safe, extracted a bunch of keys, retired to another quarter of the house for the purpose of switching off a burglar-proof device, returned to the tribune, entered a lift, and disappeared. Some ten minutes later he reappeared with a library trolley on which was a little pile of elaborately tooled leather boxes. These opened on elaborately tooled books. The company set to exploring Donne and Farquhar in their rarest and most ancient forms. It was probably at this juncture that Mr Eliot felt his first misgivings about the Shoon Collection. When scholars have occasion to make references of this kind they commonly do so in unpretentious standard editions; Mr Eliot, a scholar manqué, had the nicest sense of such small points of decorum, and it was doubtless this prodigal display of his host’s which began in his mind a revolution which was to have the most fateful consequences.

  Meanwhile Archie had found Love’s Usury in Donne without any difficulty. The relevant lines read:

  And at next nine

  Keep midnight’s promise.

  This revelation introduced a further awkwardness. Midnight’s promise had certainly been murder. And what had been promised for midnight, since it had certainly not occurred at nine o’clock on this the succeeding morning, might fairly be regarded as in store for nine o’clock at night. But all this must be presumed as having no meaning for Shoon, Benton, and anyone else who had not come from Rust. Thus hard upon their arrival at the Abbey the visitors were compelled to offer some account of the disturbances by which they had recently been surrounded. It was while these explanations were in progress that the Spider, whose pace seemed to be briskening, spoke again. And if his first action at the Abbey had been reminiscent of that literary badinage which he had come in his later years to indulge in with his friend the engineer his second action was much more in the spirit of his earlier and violent days. It was also appropriate to the new environment in which he was operating. The Spider, in fact, loosed off a bomb.