‘Away?’
‘I mean, had we not better all cut our visit – our very pleasant visit – short? That earlier message which you had about keeping midnight’s promise at–’
Mr Eliot was interrupted by renewed and massive activity on the part of Shoon’s Gothic contraptions. Somebody was coming rapidly down the passages leading to the cellar in which they stood. It was Appleby. He halted in the doorway. ‘I have news’, he said, ‘which will be generally disagreeable. There has been a very efficient raid upon the garages, with the result that there is not a car – or even a bicycle – in commission at the Abbey. Moreover, the telephone line has been cut. A servant has set out for Pigg, actually the nearest place from which it is possible to phone. Your secretary’ – Appleby turned to Shoon – ‘has told him to order cars for those who have to leave the Abbey tonight. But it is now a quarter past seven and it is unlikely that we can be relieved’ – he glanced at his watch – ‘until some time after nine o’clock.’
2
‘My dear Benton,’ said Bussenschutt, ‘I am not at all sure that you are not an accessory before the fact.’
Bussenschutt was cheerful – amid the depression which had settled on the Abbey cheerful to an indecent degree. He rubbed his hands and rolled himself gently on his chair.
Benton was not cheerful. His expedition had evidently frayed his nerves and shortened his temper. ‘Really, Master,’ he said, ‘everyone must wish that you spoke in less riddles. The habit is growing on you. Several of our colleagues have remarked on it.’
‘The murder,’ said Bussenschutt. ‘I am speaking of the murder – or rather of the projected murder.’
A nervous spasm gave Benton the momentary appearance of rolling too. ‘Murder? I know nothing of a murder. What murder can possibly be in question?’
‘Murder at Midnight,’ said Winter idly. ‘Or A Death in the Desert.’
A stronger spasm seized Benton. ‘Really – ’
‘Had you not’, said Bussenschutt, ‘dismissed your conveyance in parsimonious haste, the Eliots with their murdered man might have driven safely away from the Abbey. When Sir Rupert is eliminated – and everything promises that deplorable issue – you will in a sense be responsible. I am sure you will dislike the novelty of being mixed up in a murder.’
On Benton’s face apprehensiveness and bewilderment grew. ‘I thought you said their murdered man?’
‘A prolepsis, my dear Benton. The man is not murdered but fated to be so. At nine o’clock. It is perhaps an uncomfortable thought. But reflection will suggest that Sir Rupert’s situation has great spiritual advantages.’
‘Hrrmph!’
The interjection came from Mummery. Because Mummery seldom proceeded beyond interjections of this sort he had been little in evidence in the course of this disturbed day at the Abbey. But interjection was eminently called for now; Rupert Eliot himself had appeared on the fringes of the group. Bussenschutt’s mysterious high spirits, however, were not to be put down. ‘My dear Sir Rupert,’ he pursued blandly, ‘I have been venturing to remark on certain enviable aspects of your present condition. Like a condemned criminal, you know the precise moment ineluctably appointed for your dissolution. This must be a great spur to meditation and preparedness. Would it be useful to you, I wonder, if I were to mention that Shoon has an oratory? In the west wing and most comfortably appointed.’
Rupert Eliot received these outrageous pleasantries without amusement and without anger. Perhaps, Appleby thought, he scarcely heard them; he was in an incipiently distraught condition which made him oddly like Horace Benton – with whom, indeed, he seemed to be exchanging alarmed glances. For a man of the world with a long tale of tight places behind him he was putting up an unimpressive show.
‘It would be more to the point’, Winter broke in, ‘if Sir Rupert were found some place of security. I don’t believe the thing is serious; it all began in folly and in mere fantasy it is likely to end. But there’s no harm in being on the safe side.’ Winter looked gloomily from Rupert to Bussenschutt. ‘It has been literally a preposterous affair. Endless complications and a promise of murder right at the end.’ A change had come over Winter; he was both gloomy and bored. ‘High time that the curtain fell on so irregular a comedy.’
‘Fell’, asked Archie Eliot, ‘on what tableau? Shoon’s butler entering the library and finding Rupert’s corpse?’
‘Dear me,’ said Mr Eliot, who, with Appleby, had been listening silently to the rather ragged talk. ‘Dear me – I once thought of writing a story with just that preposterous twist. The butler was to come in just like that – to behave in the last chapter as he commonly does in the first. I thought it over and turned it down. Rather too rule-of-thumb novelty. But that is by the way. Winter’s suggestion that Rupert be found some place of security is excellent. John, do you not agree?’
‘I think’, said Appleby, ‘that such a place can and will be found.’
‘The west tower,’ suggested Archie. ‘It has an inspection ladder right up to the top. If he climbed up there he would be as safe as houses.’
‘Houses’, said Winter, ‘are not particularly safe. The proverb is outmoded and deceptive. It seems to me that nothing is so safe as a safe. I suggest that Sir Rupert be locked up with Shakespeare in the safe we saw when viewing the Collection.’
Busseschutt nodded. ‘An excellent suggestion. It has every advantage. While waiting there Sir Rupert may apply himself to, say, Measure for Measure. The play contains reflections upon death and the fear of death which are unrivalled in the language.’
Rupert gave a wriggle which was pure Benton. ‘Look here,’ he said querulously, ‘do you really think I’m going to scramble up Archie’s damned tower or – ’
‘Talking of the tower,’ interrupted Winter, ‘I may say the inspection business is not yet over. Our host’s motto appears to be Business as Usual. In a few minutes we’re to be led in to supper, and after that we shall be taken to inspect the tower by moonlight. That will be round about half past eight. But it would be unwise to trust Sir Rupert’s executioner keeping to the minute–’
‘Even now’ – Bussenschutt gave another comfortable roll – ‘I am disposed to stare rather uneasily into those shadows.’ He waved towards the farther end of the gallery-like apartment in which this conference was taking place.
‘At least,’ pursued Winter, ‘it will be unwise for Sir Rupert to join in moonlight rambles.’
‘Most unwise’, said Mr Eliot. ‘And your suggestions, though I am afraid not entirely seriously intended, have put what may be a good idea in my head. Rupert, I think you and I ought to consult Shoon. He is in the tribune with the rest of the party. Will you come?’
For a moment Rupert looked at his cousin Richard suspiciously; then he transferred the same gaze to his cousin Archie. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ll come.’
‘I repeat,’ said Winter when he and Appleby were presently alone, ‘that it is time for the curtain. And for your own turn. Like the bodies at the end of an Elizabethan tragedy, the fragments of our mystery are strewn about the stage. Nobody seems to have any idea what to do with them until some suitably authoritative person enters and gives brief but sufficient directions for their disposal. Your role is to tidy up. But you seem reluctant to begin. I am coming to harbour a suspicion that you have lost grasp. Your attitude a few minutes ago was entirely passive – an attendant lord who shifts from foot to foot near the backdrop and is only waiting to get off-stage for a spot of beer.’
‘We all have our roles,’ said Appleby vaguely, ‘and even the supers have their uses. Mummery, for instance.’
‘Mummery?’
‘And you are quite right in supposing that the curtain is about to fall. But I think there will only be one corpse.’
‘Rupert’s?’
‘Dear me, no. You haven’t got the hang of the thing at all. It has got beyond you, Winter. And I admit that it is complicated. What a tangled web we weave when first–’
Winter started. ‘I remember saying that to Timmy some time ago.’
‘No doubt. And it’s a pity that you didn’t say it to yourself earlier still.’
Winter gave Appleby a long, surprised, calculating stare.
Appleby chuckled. ‘You know, I’m not quite so dim.’
There was a pause. ‘At this point’, said Winter slowly, ‘I believe I feel for a cigarette and murmur something about not knowing what you mean.’
‘Nothing could be more orthodox. And I make the orthodox reply. The game is up.’
There was another pause, during which Winter really felt for a cigarette. ‘It is all quite irrelevant’, he said, ‘to the present situation. The thing has indeed got right beyond me. Hamlet at the beginning, I have long since been degraded to the merest attendant lord myself.’
‘Gerald Winter, don’t be so sure. How can you be sure? The thing, as you agree, has got beyond you. And there is to be a corpse on the mat before the evening is out. Not Rupert’s. What if it is to be your own?’
Winter shook his head impatiently. ‘This is mere obfuscation and darkening counsel. I don’t come into the picture at all.’
‘But does Shoon know that?’
‘Shoon?’ Winter stared at Appleby in complete bewilderment. ‘What on earth has Shoon–’
Appleby gave an odd pleasurable sigh. ‘It is very complicated,’ he said; ‘very complicated and very closely knit. It is a long time since I enjoyed anything so much. Let me keep quite clear of overstatement. As corpse you are a street ahead of Rupert Eliot. But I don’t say you mayn’t be beaten at the post by–’
‘By whom, in heaven’s name?’
Appleby sighed once more. ‘The game – your game – is up; isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Bussenschutt has got the Codex?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well,’ said Appleby, ‘there you are.’
‘As I remarked in my earlier confessions’, said Winter, ‘snooping the Birdwire’s archaic marble and locking her up in a cellar was a mistake. I was tolerably safe from her, because she had never learnt my name. But, by the same token, she was tolerably safe from me. On no conceivable occasion could I ever approach her again. And a very little reflection after the excitement of my theft showed me what a pity that was.
‘During our brief acquaintance, as I told you, she contrived to favour me with a good deal of scandal. With scandal and the promise of scandal. I was a generation her junior, she said, and among the pleasures I might look forward to in middle age was that of reading her posthumous memoirs. She showed me two sets of notebooks – red and black. In the black she collected scandalous materal which she could fairly safely publish in her current books; in the red she collected material which must wait until the people concerned were dead and unable to sue for libel. I suppose I showed decent aptitude for the subject – I live out my life in an Oxford college, after all – and she let me in on a fragment or two or what was in store. A few names, even, were mentioned, and among them – would you believe it? that of Horace Benton. She had gathered, I suppose, that I was in the academic way, and thought that I might be intrigued to know she had a line on a respectable classical scholar. Whatever it was, it was something pretty steep; but I didn’t succeed in getting any particulars. I suppose now, of course, that what she must have known about friend Horace was his gun-running or whatever it may have been for Shoon.’
‘A reasonable hypothesis,’ said Appleby.
‘A cloistered life makes one deplorably guileless. Serious scandal about Benton intrigued me enormously. Nevertheless it wasn’t until I got to Split, and had unpacked my marble in a capital inn called the Grand Hotel of the Universe, that I saw what an opportunity I had missed.
‘Mummery, I suppose, has put you on the business of Benton’s Codex. It was a terrific find and he behaved over it quite atrociously. He never let the thing out of his hands. There was a whopping great meeting of the learned in Paris and the Codex was duly authenticated by the essential people – Horace brooding over it meanwhile like a child fearing the theft of its favourite toy. The scene has become legendary; the annals of scholarship hold probably nothing quite like it. And hard upon that he locked his find up. He has published fragments from time to time, complete with facsimiles and so on. But he continued to this day – to this evening as ever was, to be exact – to sit on the Codex as a whole. You would have to imagine an attempt to sit on some important contribution to clinical medicine if you were attempting to gauge the indignation roused among the people concerned with such things – among them myself. And sitting there in Split, staring out at the ruins of Diocletian’s palace, I saw what an ass I had been. For the sake of this wretched marble I had missed the chance of my career.’
Appleby nodded. ‘And opportunities for really considerable blackmail so seldom occur. One sympathizes with your distress of mind.’
‘I brooded on the business off and on for years. Then it happened that I began to read Eliot’s books.’
‘Oh, dear – this is bad. It is just what Eliot fears. I have been endeavouring to assure him that criminals are not attracted by his sort of stuff. But I hadn’t in mind pertinaciously fantastical people like yourself.’ Appleby shook his head. ‘Didn’t I say talk was the key to this mystery? One has only to listen to yours to feel that you are a strong candidate for any really extravagant role. When I listened to you on the art of Labrador I said to myself: “This is my man.”’
‘But I’m not your man. The yarn you are making me spin has nothing to do with the case. If, as you seem to feel, this is a pearl of a mystery I must plead guilty to being the original irritant in the oyster: no more than that. But to resume. I began to read Eliot’s books and I liked the Spider. I liked particularly the fact that he had been a crook and was now a pillar of law and order.’
‘Ah,’ said Appleby, ‘that is very interesting indeed. It makes your conduct rather less wanton and rather more intelligent. I like the idea there.’
Winter looked soberly at his companion. ‘Your brain’, he said, ‘is as good as Bussenschutt’s. And his is one of the better brains in England. Lord help the nasty little burglars among whom you spend your life.’
‘Burglars’, said Appleby, ‘brings us back to the point.’
‘Yes. My problem was not simple. The Birdwire had the facts about Benton – some years ago had the facts committed to paper in one of a number of little red notebooks. I had to get the facts. I had to apply them. And here I admit to a tortuous mind. Take the applying of them. You can see what Bussenschutt has done. Having pocketed the facts he has simply marched up to Benton and done a deal. To me that didn’t seem possible. I considered that if I simply attempted to blackmail Benton in my own person he would call my bluff. He would challenge me to make my accusations or whatever they were public and in all probability I wouldn’t have the guts – or the blackguardism – to do it. I doubt if Bussenschutt would either. But Bussenschutt is the better psychologist. He knew that Benton would crumple at once, and he attempted nothing elaborate. My weakness is no doubt elaboration.’
‘Quite so.’
‘Go back to the problem of getting the facts. I disliked finding an accomplice to cultivate and wheedle the Birdwire. I couldn’t approach her myself. Only burglary was left.
‘The burglary – its motive – must be mysterious. If it became known that the woman had simply been robbed of scandalous memoirs my object might be defeated. So I thought of a large-scale burglary which should have the evident character of a broad joke or burleque. I discovered something of the Birdwire’s circumstances – the legend of a husband in the city, her strained relations with the Eliots. I prospected the ground. I set the key of rather crude jesting by ringing up Eliot and making a coarse joke about the lady and himself. And then I burgled. I thought it likely that I should have to carry off a good deal of material for subsequent search. So I went down in a car, spent a late afternoon drugging a great many dogs, broke in at night, co
llared a mass of curios and all the papers I could find, painted my rude painting–’
‘You have more than once’, interrupted Appleby, ‘shown a tendency to defend the humour involved, and to assert that the affair hurt nobody.’
‘No more it did. My next business was to emphasize the character of the whole affair as a freakish joke by returning everything I had nobbled. You know how I contrived that. The Spider qua crook stole the stuff; the Spider qua detective recovered it. Here was the first place in which the double character of Eliot’s creature was to help me.
‘It is a thousand pities that I really have no more to tell. I failed to get what I wanted. When at home, the Birdwire no doubt keeps her more scandalous material at a bank. So I was dished and there an end of it. But you have guessed how I meant to carry on. Armed with the deadly facts, I was going to turn not myself but the Spider loose on Benton. I felt that Benton would be peculiarly vulnerable to a sort of hanky-panky attack – to something, in fact, of the sort that has been attempted at Rust.’
‘Bussenschutt this afternoon said very much the same thing.’
‘The Spider’s double character might have been brought into play again: the crook who blackmailed; the detective who exposed. I never formulated anything precise, but if I had only got my facts it would all have come, I don’t doubt.
‘And that is the end of my part of the affair. The rest of the Codex story is Bussenschutt’s. I was a bit thrown off my balance – as you can imagine – by Timmy’s story and appeal. And that night I rashly pitched the Birdwire at Benton’s head in the presence of Bussenschutt. As one might imagine, he was on it like a flash. He simply stormed La Hacienda, put the silly woman in his pocket, got whatever the horrid truth may have been, walked in on Benton and ordered him up to town to fetch and deliver the Codex. Bussenschutt has a grand simplicity and I give him best. But after the Birdwire burglary the Spider business passes out of our hands, and whatever the mystery may be our academic tragi-comedy is irrelevant to it.’
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