Stop Press

by Michael Innes

  ‘The circumstances’, said Bussenschutt, ‘were favourable and your true nature unfolded.’

  ‘No doubt. But so did Mrs Birdwire’s. Why she should have made such a confidant of a casual acquaintance I don’t know. There was a further dish of miscellaneous reminiscence – this time of the less publishable sort – and then as our precipitate friendship grew the conversation became more intimate. Drains.’

  ‘To be sure – drains.’ Bussenschutt sighed as one who has himself suffered all that another can recount.

  ‘Mrs Birdwire has many interests, but her master-interest is drains. On this subject her travels have enabled her to make a great number of curious observations. For myself it has no appeal. Doubtless owing wholly to some accident of my nursery environment which Chown would wholly deplore, my attitude to the science of sewerage is entirely negative. Mrs Birdwire on this hobbyhorse bored me, and as I listened I began to wish myself where I was planning to be on the morrow: over that waste of limestone hills by which we were surrounded and on my way to Iskanderoon.… But, as you yourself, Master, recently remarked, how oddly one thing leads to another!’

  Bussenschutt frowned rather as if he had been set a puzzle. ‘The essential fact about drains is that we dig them. The link is in that.’ His frown changed to a complacent smile at his own perspicacity.

  ‘You are very right. Mrs Birdwire, though abundantly learned in every system of sewage-disposal primitive and refined, holds inflexible views on the subject as it may affect herself. Briefly, she believes in the septic tank. The Aleppo house had been equipped in this way: we made an inspection. In Greece a similar convenience had been arranged. And while the tank was being dug in something else – she perfectly casually told me – was dug up. We viewed this too – on my petition. It was’ – a childlike gravity, Appleby noted with interest, had descended on Gerald Winter – ‘a small antique marble.’

  Bussenschutt looked mildly interested. ‘Graeco-Roman, no doubt,’ he said.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Hellenic?’

  ‘A small archaic marble. And the patina – lord knows where the thing had lain – was more perfect than you have ever seen. Mrs Birdwire liked it; she thought it had a nice smile.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Bussenschutt. ‘Oh, dear, dear.’

  ‘It had popped up unexpectedly in the course of laying her beastly little drain, and she regarded it as one might regard a lucky sixpence. People bore holes in lucky sixpences. Mrs Birdwire proposed to bore a hole in her marble.’

  ‘This is bad,’ said Bussenschutt; ‘very bad indeed. I once saw a Venus of Milo with a clock let into the stomach. But that was only a copy, after all… For what purpose – ?’

  ‘A fishpond. She was planning a little fishpond here at home and she thought that with a good clean-up–’

  Bussenschutt, completely at one with his colleague, softly groaned.

  ‘…and a sort of spout put through for a fountain–’

  ‘Enough, Winter! Mr Appleby and I appreciate the situation. You took the marble into your own keeping.’

  ‘Delicately expressed, Master. I stole it. I laid hands on the woman and stole it. Everything conspired to prompt and assist me. She proposed tea and summoned servants. Nobody came. I don’t doubt that she had taken half Aleppo into her service as soon as she arrived, but – what I couldn’t feel to be other than a dispensation – not a soul was about to answer her bawls. We made tea ourselves and she explained that it was no doubt the wireless. In those days at least five governments were bombarding that part of the world with the most beguiling programmes money could contrive, and the people of Aleppo are far too courteous to reject such princely free entertainment. So we drank tea and then – for everything, I say, conspired with or against me – nothing would satisfy her but that I should inspect her cellars. I won’t swear that in the interest of that marble I wouldn’t have consigned the woman to the dankest dungeon. As it happened, nothing of the sort was necessary. Her friend Lady Pike was arriving next day; Lady Pike dislikes heat; Mrs Birdwire had therefore rigged up a very comfortable sitting-room in the heart of the cellarage. I paused only to see that there was a stout door with a bolt on the outside. Then I gave the lady a push.’

  ‘A push?’ asked Appleby mildly.

  ‘A push. It is quite remarkable how strong one’s gentleman-like prejudices are. I tried to manoeuvre her so that I could simply cut and run, but in the end an unchivalrous push was needed. There is little more to relate. I bagged the marble, went to my hotel and packed, and was on my way to Alexandretta within an hour. There I caught a coasting steamer; I was in Split within three days and in Zagreb the night after. The marble and its unknown purloiner had vanished into Europe.’

  ‘And only now’, said Bussenschutt, ‘is the criminal unmasked. Unlike Mr Appleby, I have never mingled with the criminal classes before – unless our present host be judged on the fringes of that category – and I confess to finding a good deal of interest in the whole affair. How, Winter, did you feel afterwards? Was the sight of a policeman in the street not without its alarms? Were there moral compunctions? Did the incident come between you and the aesthetic contemplation of the object of which you had possessed yourself? If the like circumstances arose, would you do it again?’

  Winter laughed – a trifle shortly. ‘It was a mistake,’ he said. ‘I admit it.’ He turned towards the window by which Appleby had been standing. ‘You must understand–’

  But Appleby was by the window no longer; he had drifted silently to the door. Even as Winter spoke his hand went to the knob, the door swung briskly open, and Sir Archibald Eliot tumbled into the room.

  ‘Always’, said Appleby, ‘lean back on your heels and face the knob. You can then spot it beginning to turn. If it does, don’t attempt to retreat; you will merely overbalance. Straighten up, knock at the door as it opens, and leave the rest to bluff.’

  ‘But’, said Archie Eliot – and of those in Bussenschutt’s bedroom it was his equanimity that was least disturbed – ‘I don’t listen at keyholes. I peer. It’s a mild compulsion neurosis. There’s a learned name for it. Troubled me since my angel infancy. Exceedingly sorry, of course.’

  ‘Do you mean’ – Winter spoke sharply – ‘that you are generally known to suffer from this – ah – nervous infirmity?’

  ‘Just that. Can’t be very well hidden, you know; quite often caught out. Embarrassing.’ Archie smiled easily. ‘Humilating would scarcely be too strong a word, I dare say. But nowadays there is a more sympathetic understanding of that sort of thing. Somebody did the wrong thing when one was a kid, and here one is. Let’s all go and find a drink.’

  ‘Let us rather’, said Appleby, ‘have a talk.’

  Archie sat down on the bed and sighed. ‘About the Spider? We’ll find no end, in wandering mazes lost.’

  ‘On the contrary’ – Appleby was grave – ‘the end is substantially in sight. I know, in general terms, why these jokes have taken place.’

  ‘My dear sir, we all know that.’ Archie was courteously contemptuous. ‘Richard was to be harried out of his wits. Only the joker mistook his man.’

  ‘Richard Eliot’, interposed Bussenschutt, ‘does appear to be unexpectedly rocky. If this persecution, now, had been directed against a creature like Horace Benton–’

  ‘And I know, again in general terms, why are we all visiting this bogus Abbey. And I am interested in Jasper Shoon; more interested in Shoon that I have been in anyone at Rust Hall – even yourself, Sir Archibald. Now, I believe you have some previous acquaintance with Shoon? Perhaps you can give us an estimate of the man?’

  Archie’s eye, so recently – if he was to be believed – morbidly exercising itself upon a keyhole, narrowed defensively. ‘Acquaintance? I built him a loonie tower.’

  ‘And quarrelled with him afterwards.’

  ‘Yes. But I took care to make it up pretty quick when I found out about him. Mildly put, I grovelled. I’ve wandered about, you know, and I have pa
ls in some queer trades. I got the tip that Shoon is a dangerous man to cross.’

  ‘Oh, come,’ Winter was at the window, staring out at the costly ruins. ‘Sinister, perhaps. But dangerous–?’ He gave a wave which comprehended all the laborious eccentricity of Shoon Abbey.

  Archie turned to Appleby and Bussenschutt. ‘Winter’, he said, ‘believes that one cannot be dangerous if one has piled up about oneself a few literary and antiquarian effects. I wonder.’ His face lit up with placid malice. ‘For instance, there is that engineer in my cousin’s books. You couldn’t have a more persistent culture-hound. And yet it is always he who uses a pistol effectively in a tight place. But that’s by the way. I was saying that Shoon is dangerous. Behind all his attitudinizing is a powerful, unsrupulous, and able mind. One knows that well enough. But the man is also – it appears – pertinaciously and methodically vengeful… In short, I became friendly again on his own terms.’

  ‘And it was you’, asked Appleby casually, ‘who arranged this visit?’

  Archie grinned. ‘I understood you to say that you knew all about the wherefore of this already.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Presently we are to see the Collection. I am afraid we must break off our little talk. You see’ – he moved towards the door – ‘I have one or two things’ – his finger flicked at the keyhole before he turned the knob – ‘to give an eye to before that.’

  He was gone.

  'A cool card’, said Bussenchutt. He considered, appeared to find the colloquialism felicitious. ‘A cool card,’ he repeated. There was silence in the bedroom. ‘Winter, you seem singularly absorbed in Sir Archibald’s keyhole.’

  Winter smiled. ‘It has its interest,’ he admitted and walked slowly to the window. ‘Appleby, isn’t he your man?’

  ‘Archie? So Rupert would persuade me. But my man for what? What is it all about?’

  ‘Malice. The malice of a dependant, developed to a pathological degree. Archie had the instinct for malicious tricks. The trick he played on the Cavey at breakfast. And then André’s dogs: you may bet it was Archie who was behind that. And Archie is the only person who hadn’t an alibi when the Renoir was removed. And he was seen to drug himself – you’ve never answered that. Then consider the literary flavour of the jokes – Love’s Usury, for instance. Isn’t that at least a pointer? And we know that Archie has already lifted from his cousin’s books; that he had the cheek to read up skeleton keys in them and pick Richard’s cellar. We know too that Archie alone commonly had a peep at the manuscripts–’

  Appleby was looking faintly bewildered. ‘It is true’, he said, ‘that to these unconvincing and obvious reflections one or two slightly more congent may be added. But, even so–’

  ‘What can be added?’

  ‘Well, two points which put Archie ahead of the equally malicious Rupert. If Eliot cracked up and the books stopped Rupert would lose money and Archie not. Or so Rupert tells me, and he is unlikely to be lying. Again, Rupert has an alibi for the first affair of all: the Birdwire burglary. He was in Scotland, or so he says. I’m having that checked up on now, and once more he’s probably telling the truth. Archie has no alibi for the burglary. But let me repeat that even adding these points to your indictment this case with which you have burst out is singularly weak.’

  ‘I conjecture’, said Bussenschutt, ‘that what has so excited Winter is the keyhole.’

  ‘Exactly! When I have been confronted with puzzles in my own work I have always found that the simplest solution is the likeliest. Now, the real puzzle here is the puzzle of the joker’s clairvoyance. Appleby, do you know what was my first vision of Eliot? It was in the train on the way to Rust. He was wandering down a corridor chattering to himself. He talks aloud – and is probably quite unaware of the fact.’

  ‘And so the keyhole’s the place for secrets. It is certainly simple. Kermode thought of it first, by the way. Kermode and I had a cryptic but obscurely significant conversation. He as good as told me that he was giving me the essential clue if I had the wit to take it. And he told me that the keyhole was the place for secrets. The particular circumstances of our chat made the remark ambiguous, but I needn’t go into that. So Eliot murmured his plots and what-not while Archie listened at the door?’

  ‘Just that. It was Archie’s guilty conscience, his sense that the incident of a few minutes ago might put us on the track, which made him put across that stuff about his habit being not to listen but to peer… Then go back to Archie’s drugged condition after the Renoir affair. Mrs Moule saw him drug himself. You maintain that her evidence is not particularly important. Why?’

  ‘Why?’ Appleby had turned to Bussenschutt rather as one turns with a conundrum to a deserving child.

  Bussenschutt beamed. ‘I have no knowledge of what you are discussing. But I gather that the terms of the problem are these: a man is found drugged; it is later discovered that he performed this act himself; nevertheless it is maintained that the discovery has little significance. The answer can only be that he is a man who habitually drugs himself.’

  ‘Just that.’ Appleby chuckled at Winter’s sigh of exasperation. ‘Mrs Moule wasn’t quite observant enough. Archie is constantly taking furtive little doses of lord knows what – the latest elixir of perpetual youth, maybe. It is this that would make it possible for someone else to drug him in the particular circumstances of a couple of nights ago. Archie will not take the principal part in a game without fortifying himself with a drink. He will not take a drink without fortifying himself against old age or whatever it may be. Hence any tolerably light-fingered person’s chance – a matter of filching one phial, say, and substituting another.’

  Winter shook his head. ‘That doesn’t prove that he was drugged by someone else. That he habitually gives himself one sort of pill is no indication at all that he didn’t on this occasion give himself another. And now come back to the joker’s clairvoyance. The keyhole theory fails to impress you. Is that because you have a more convincing theory of your own?’

  Appleby, who for some time had been making all the running, seemed halted by this. ‘I have a theory,’ he said; ‘a difficult theory which I don’t yet at all trust. I’d much prefer yours if I could believe it – as, incidentally, I can imagine Belinda doing. She maintains that her father works at his books in a trance-like state – one in which it is easy to picture him murmuring away and being tapped by an eavesdropper. But it’s too simple. Eliot is certainly acute enough in his normal state. I mean that if the thing could be solved on your lines he would have solved it himself. For instance, he thought of and rejected your paramnesia notion. If he talks to himself I don’t believe he can be ignorant of the fact. And that means that when confronted by this puzzle he would try the adequacy of eavesdropping as a solution. No, I prefer my own line of thought, somewhat tortuous though it be.’

  ‘And it is?’

  Appleby grinned. ‘I would disappoint you’, he said discreetly, ‘by bringing it forward at this point. It is too tentative as yet. My picture of the whole case – if case it can be called – is inchoate.’ He paused with faint irony on this solemnly learned word. ‘And is building itself up in a most irregular way – mostly on impressions of the way people talk.’ He began to walk restlessly up and down. ‘It’s an approach for which there’s certainly no lack of material. Shoon’s chatter about the eyeless shrimp: it’s significant, you know. One sees so clearly the fantasies of destruction which have controlled his career. And so with other people. They are what they are. But when they talk at large one sees what they see themselves as being.’

  ‘These’, said Bussenschutt, ‘are instructive psychological observations. But they do not quite compensate for your keeping your theory in the dark. As a mere observer of these untoward events I would dearly like to know whom you consider they involve.’

  ‘Possibly someone you haven’t met: a man called André I-don’t-know-what.’

  ‘André?’ said Winter sharply. ‘He’s malicious enough, at any rate.’

/>   Appleby stood still and decisively shook his head. ‘That’s where you go wrong at the start. Malice is not essentially in question. We are dealing with a practical joker.’

  ‘Of course we are. But surely–’

  ‘A practical joker.’

  4

  Horace Benton paced his bedroom.

  Like all the bedrooms at the Abbey, this was a period piece. It was lofty, and in whatever direction Benton turned he was confronted with darkly glowing tapestries on the panelled walls. He walked east and faced the story of Procne; he turned on his heel and saw the god coming to Danae in a shower of gold; to his left Europa was being carried off on her bull and on his right stretched a writhing Rape of the Sabines. But by none of these pleasing aids to reflection was Benton at present held. He glowered for a moment at the log fire burning between massive fire-dogs on a spacious hearth. He plumped down on a bed – a resplendent affair carved with hippogriffs and hung with sarcenet – and incontinently rose to pace about once more. In silver candelabra were white lights and yellow lights of three sizes of wax; there was a ewer of silver in a silver basin parcel-gilt; beside the bed were a little collection of illuminated missals, silver pots of beer and wine, manchets, and a chet-loaf of bread. But Benton ignored these minutiae of antiquarian reconstruction. He strode to the window and contemplated the rambling masonry of Jasper Shoon’s folly. From his features it might have been conjectured that he would be only too pleased could he believe those proud towers to swift destruction doomed. ‘I wish–’ said Benton aloud, and checked himself upon a tap at the door.