‘Alas!’ said Bussenschutt. ‘Such a decision will eclipse the gaiety of nations.’
‘It will be relief to the children. And I believe to myself. These jokes in which we have all been involved affected me for a time very oddly. They would not have done so, I am convinced, if I had been quite happy about the books – about their whole tenor. I confess to you, Dr Bussenschutt, that I have come to be uneasy about their morality. They are full of violence and of ingeniously contrived and concealed crimes. I am brought to ask, in your own phrase: “To what does this conduce?” Certainly not to edification.’
‘My dear sir,’ interrupted Bussenschutt, ‘this is too–’
‘I know that they may be held to be innocently recreative. But can one be certain that they are only that? May they not conduce to actual violence and ruthlessness – which are already the nightmares of the modern world?’
‘Chown–’ Appleby began.
‘Yes, John, I know.’ Mr Eliot had interrupted with an impatient gesture. ‘Such yarns as mine help people to indulge impulses of violence and destructiveness in a vicarious and harmless fashion. But I have reasons – I have the most intimate reasons – for supposing that the thing may act in a directly contrary way…’ He looked thoughtfully at his companions. ‘Archie’s conduct’, he added quickly, ‘has disturbed me very much.’
Bussenschutt got decorously but reluctantly to his feet. ‘I must see if my colleague Benton has returned from his mysterious dash to town.’
‘My dear Bussenschutt, please do not go. As one who professes moral science you must expect from time to time to be burdened with other people’s ethical problems. I was merely going to remark that my cousin Archie – who is one of the best fellows in the world – has been – if only in the most trivial way – directly corrupted by my imaginings. It so happens that Archie’s character is not quite so strong as is his taste for claret.’
Bussenschutt sat down again. ‘In this’, he said, ‘which of us can be sure of escaping judgement.’
‘And he actually learnt from one of my books the technique for picking the lock of my own cellar. I abundantly agree’ – for Bussenschutt was evincing dignified amusement – ‘that the incident it best viewed in a humorous light. But consider what it suggests. My stories are full of laborously thought-out criminal expedients. Can I be certain – can I be any more certain than our host Shoon – that I am not placing weapons in dangerous hands? John, do you not agree?’
Appleby reflected. ‘I remember just two instances of an actual criminal attempting to use methods drawn from your sort of book. And in each case the attempt was his undoing. Had he gone about his job in his own way he might have pulled it off. As it was, he came a cropper. Your fears seem to me greatly exaggerated.’
‘But they cannot but have some basis. And I have been so conscious of this for some years that I have been pitching my crimes of violence in more and more unlikely spots. Wedge begins to complain of it. The Trapdoor, for instance. There is murder in that, but the technique would be feasible only within the Antarctic circle. If anyone were to get a hint for murder out of my more recent books he would first have to get his victim into an uncommonly unlikely environment. But the truth is that I have learnt enough from Chown to believe that these scruples are really the product of boredom. I am really feeling disposed – indeed I have already made my dispositions – for a big mop up. And then I shall develop other interests which twenty years of authorship have rather starved.’ Mr Eliot stretched himself with a luxurious gesture reminiscent of Timmy and stared with a good deal of complacency into the fire.
‘Perhaps’, said Bussenschutt idly, ‘you will turn bibliophil like our friend Shoon?’
Mr Eliot looked oddly startled. ‘Dear me, no. I am thinking of nothing like that.’ He got to his feet. ‘Contrariwise, as Tweedledum said.’
The incident of the Shoon Press, effective in itself, was rendered additionally striking by the setting in which it took place. There was something funereal about the descent into the bowels of the Abbey which the inspection entailed; there was something more than funereal in the sequence of underground chambers and passages through which the party had to pass. For it was here that the Gothic side of Jasper Shoon’s fancy had played most at large, and all those devices of terror and astonishment with which the writers of horrid fiction in the eighteenth century had equipped their catacombs and caves and castles were here ranged for the delectation of visitors to the Abbey. Unwittingly as one passed down the gloomy corridors one’s feet pressed on hidden springs – with the result that chains clanked, gaunt hands thrust themselves from dungeon-like apertures, skeletons erected themselves and made mystic gestures with their arms or a forbidding champing with their jaws, sheeted ghosts flitted amid the shadows ahead, panels opened in the living rock from which the passages were hewn and subjected one to the scrutiny of unnaturally glaring eyes, voices piteously groaned from grated pits beneath the feet, or cried out in a dismal and surprising manner as from the recesses of a labyrinth.
Through all this Shoon conducted his variously startled guests, with a leisure and a complacency from which it might have been guessed that the expedition to the press was but an expedient for displaying these more curious possessions. The visitors showed suitable amusement and curiosity. Miss Cavey, who had been steadily regaining nervous tone, ran hither and thither in a distressing convention of boyish glee. Herbert Chown had the appearance of making careful mental notes of what he evidently regarded as a highly pathological exhibition. Peter Holme, prowling in the rear of the party, was diverting himself by registering extreme terror according to the conventions of the screen. Only Mr Eliot seemed to be unimpressed by the novelty of what he saw about him; he might have been strolling out to keep an unimportant appointment at the end of a familiar street.
The press, when reached, proved deserted; Shoon was proposing to do all the manipulating and explaining himself. There was a great deal of machinery, and a great deal of miscellaneous material evidently laid out for inspection. The visitors, who were cold, hungry, and mindful that their host’s expository style was leisured and detailed, looked about them with misgiving; then, conscious of a slightly dismal pause, they hastened to premature and uncomprehending murmurs of appreciation.
Patricia, glancing round the group of conscientiously intelligent faces, was arrested by something odd in the bearing of Timmy. She edged over to him. ‘Whatever is the matter? You look more distraught than Peter Holme, who seems to be having frightful pains inside.’
‘Peter?’ Timmy started and answered evasively. ‘He’s just having fun practising for the coast – that’s what they call Hollywood. He thinks that he’s booked for a new Spider film there in May, which is apparently the last straw.’ Timmy hesitated. ‘I say, Patricia, I’ve made an awful fool of myself – childish impulse – rather like the joker really…it was those trifles.’
‘Jasper’s complimentary verses? You wrote them?’
‘Yes – when we came in. Just what was wanted. And then I came down here with an old party who is a sort of compositor and watched him set them up. And then – well – the old party went away and I stopped.’
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘Something very awful. It seemed amusing at the time, but now I’m appalled. I took the things to pieces and set up something else. Rather ribald. I’m afraid Shoon’s delighted exclamations won’t come off.’
‘Timmy – you couldn’t!’
‘But I did. We have a little press at home and it was technically easy. I have such impulses at times.’ Timmy was all dismay – a dismay which Patricia realized in sudden consternation to be the merest reflection of the art of Peter Holme. And even as she looked Timmy slowly grinned. ‘I hope’, he said, ‘that Shoon’s so angry that he bundles us all out, and that you and Belinda lose your jobs. I never realized what an awful racket this Abbey is. It should be liquidated. And as for the Collection, poor Gib was quite right. It smells. If you took your nose out
of your medieval manuscripts and what-not you would be aware of that at once.’
‘You unspeakable–’
‘I blame Belinda more than you.’ Timmy was speaking, amazingly, with a mild decision oddly reminiscent of his father. ‘She’s a writer’s daughter and ought to know. English Erotic Correspondence…lord, lord, lord! It’s like a hareem fantasy in a bad case of anaesthesia sexualis. You had both much better snap out of it.’
‘It doesn’t perhaps occur to you that I have a living to earn?’
‘Rubbish.’
They glared at each other wrathfully. ‘I suppose’, said Patricia, raising her voice recklessly above the hum of some piece of machinery which Shoon had set in motion, ‘that this is a proposal of marriage?’
‘But yes. Patricia, you are a smart girl.’
‘Kids, kitchen, and church?’
‘Church as you please. Kids yes. And a chap must eat.’
Patricia took one fleeting glance at the setting which Timmy had chosen for this colloquy. Miss Cavey was being shown how to ink a plate; she had messed her fingers and was just opening her mouth to yelp. Hugo Toplady was looking furtively at his watch. Adrian Kermode was munching a macaroon which he had secreted at tea. At the door by which they had entered something had gone wrong with the Gothic machinery and amid a rattling of chains a skeleton was behaving like a crazy cuckoo-clock. In the middle of the cellar Shoon, with eyes flickering oddly at Rupert Eliot, was suavely expatiating on the ancient craft of printing. And hard by was the elegant power-operated flat-pressure machine designed presently to elicit delighted exclamations. All these, though with the remoteness of a scene viewed through the wrong end of a telescope, sharply etched themselves on Patricia’s mind. She managed to nod towards the press. ‘Timmy, if what you have set up is stupid–’
‘My finals’ – Timmy had the sudden confidence of a god – ‘end on the fifteenth of June. Choose any day in the fortnight following.’
Patricia, seeking words to pierce this bubble, saw Belinda across the cellar. And Belinda was infinitely far away. Between them she saw her own hand floating; it was pointing at the press. ‘Your finals’, she heard herself saying, ‘are there. The sixteenth of June if you get past that. John says there’s just one rule for a woman: don’t marry a fool.’
Timmy sighed luxuriously. ‘Brother-fixated,’ he said, ‘but we’ll soon settle that. Dear, dear, dear Patricia–’
He stopped. Shoon had contrived to command silence in the cellar and the clanking of the chain outside the party was disposing itself like a grotesque ballet about the printing-press. And silvery and distinguished as his person the voice of their host addressed them.
‘And now’, Shoon was saying, ‘let me imitate a pleasant habit of Horace Walpole’s which abundantly deserves to be imitated. Let me invite Miss Eliot’ – Shoon paused for a moment as if to hint, with the ghost of an apologetic bow to Miss Cavey, the extreme good-breeding of this choice – ‘let me invite’ – he turned and bowed to Mr Eliot – ‘your daughter to set our press in motion.’ Shoon paused again to receive the charmed murmurs of his guest. ‘At the moment I will say no more than this. Commonly I myself compose – in Latin. The trifles go out e typographeo Shooniano. But on this occasion, and in the presence of Latinists so distinguished’ – Shoon’s graceful inclination went this time to Bussenschutt and Winter – ‘the words of Mercury would indeed be harsh after the songs of Apollo. May I invite Mrs Moule and Miss Cavey to prepare to receive what may come from the machine.’
It was impossible, Patricia unhappily reflected as she looked round the circle of expectant faces, that Timmy’s joke could appear other than stupid; it was impossible to conceive any witticism, any savagery which in the circumstances could quite come off. The demonstration would have surprise; it would not have – as Gib Overall’s demonstration had had – spontaneity; and ribaldry ought to be spontaneous. If only –
Belinda flicked a lever; there was a little hum of machinery; the visitors fell silent. Mr Eliot had a thoughtful eye on the deranged skeleton; Timmy was peering with cheerful innocence at the ceiling; everyone else attended to the business on hand. Patricia wondered if she ought to intervene by falling down and simulating a fit. Even as the thought occurred to her the machine gave a final whirr, the platen rose, the carriage slid out, the visitors once more murmured their interest, Shoon lifted off a boldly printed sheet and handed it to the ladies who were to receive it. Only the delighted exclamations were wanting to complete the ceremony.
Mrs Moule, thought Patricia, will blush; the Cavey will give tongue – and after that the deluge. But Mrs Moule was not blushing; she was frowning and laying an unobtrusively restraining hand on Miss Cavey’s arm. ‘How very nicely printed,’ said Mrs Moule briskly; ‘how very nicely printed indeed.’ And without haste she began to fold up the sheet of paper with the evident intention of stowing it away in her bag.
This masterly stroke of presence of mind almost succeeded as it deserved. The visitors, attuned to embarrassment, realized that something was wrong; Miss Cavey, by mere silence, achieved a superhuman effort of tact; only Shoon was disastrously obtuse. ‘Perhaps’, he said blandly in the uneasy silence, ‘Mrs Moule will favour us by reading the trifle aloud?’
Mrs Moule shot him a significant look which was unfortunately lost in the dim lighting of the cellar. ‘Later,’ she replied. ‘I would rather leave it till later, if you don’t mind.’
‘Dear lady’ – Shoon, perhaps because he was under the impression that only Mrs Moule’s modesty was preventing her from reading what was a complimentary effusion, was fatally insistent – ‘I must beg you not to keep from us the singularly felicitous composition’ – he made a charming gesture at Timmy – ‘of our very talented young friend.’
Worse, thought Patricia, and worse. Mrs Moule looked at Timmy first with surprise and then with a severity which long ago must have made innumerable schoolgirls quail. ‘Very well,’ said Mrs Moule, ‘I will read exactly what is printed here.’ And she unfolded the paper. Its crisp texture made a dry rustle in her hands; the sound was echoed in the rattle of the bones of the skeleton and in the faint clanking of chains down the corridor.
Timmy, Patricia saw, was looking less uncomfortable than obscurely perplexed. But Timmy too now seemed a long way off, and as from a long way off she heard the voice, firm and level, of Mrs Moule.
‘Sacred to the memory of Rupert Mervyn Bevis Eliot, of Crossgarth, in the county of Cumberland, Baronet, born at Rust Hall, Hampshire on the third of April, eighteen-hundred and eighty, died’ – Mrs Moule paused. ‘Isn’t this’, she asked, ‘the thirteenth of November?’
There was silence. The chain rattled, the skeleton creaked, far down the corridor yet another of Shoon’s devices resumed its activity in a series of ebbing groans.
‘Died’, read Mrs Moule, ‘on the thirteenth of November, nineteen- hundred and thirty-eight, at Shoon Abbey, Sussex.’
There were cries of indignation, little eddies of excited talk. Under cover of these Patricia seized Timmy’s hand. ‘Timmy, you couldn’t–’
‘I didn’t.’ Timmy was looking utterly blank. ‘That’s not what I set up at all.’ He grinned fleetingly. ‘What I did, you’ll never know. Lord, lord, lord – if it hasn’t got Rupert. The bomb and the middle black were poor things to this. He’s cracking.’
Even as Patricia looked Rupert Eliot’s voice rose harsh and unsteady – rose not in anger but in urgent question. ‘Is that all?’ he cried. Everybody turned towards him. Pale as any of Shoon’s Gothic exhibits, he was leaning heavily on a table. ‘Is that’, he cried, ‘all?’
Mrs Moule hesitated. ‘There is just one more line – a sort of epitaph.’
‘Read it.’
‘He was a nuisance.’
The little sentence, oddly final, ebbed into the shadows around them. The skeleton had run down and gone limp in its corner, the chain had stopped clanking, the groans – as if their clockwork too was failing – were fainter and more prol
onged. And once more everybody was uncomfortably silent.
‘I cannot say’, said Shoon presently, ‘how much I regret–’
He was interrupted by Mr Eliot. Mr Eliot took two paces forward and – as subtly but as definitely as after the theft of the Renoir – held the centre of the stage. ‘This’, he said in a tone at once of decent gravity and speculative interest, ‘was entirely my idea.’
‘Of course,’ said Mr Eliot, ‘there is something not dissimilar in – I think – Poe. The man who found his own name, with the date of his death, mysteriously carved on what ought to have been a blank tombstone in a mason’s yard. Sure enough he died – rather heroically – on the very day. But the printing of such an intimation I have believed to be entirely my own idea – and one I have never divulged. It is, of course, a matter of telepathy; I have explained that’ – Mr Eliot smiled placidly at Patricia – ‘to your brother – who, incidentally, doesn’t appear to be here.’ He looked round in a leisurely way; Appleby was certainly missing. ‘My dear Rupert, you know how much cause I have to sympathize with you. For I am afraid that this is another manifestation. As Pope wrote of another spider – the creature’s at his dirty work again.’
‘Throned’, said a thick voice from a corner, ‘in the centre of his thin designs.’
‘Exactly, my dear Archie. And proud’ – Mr Eliot waved at the paper still held by Mrs Moule – ‘of a small extent of flimsy lines.’ Mr Eliot, taking time to evince a calm pleasure at this fantastic cross-talk, turned again to Rupert, ‘Rupert, I don’t want to make any unnerving suggestion – but would it not be wiser, perhaps, if you went away?’
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