Hamlet Revenge!

by Michael Innes

  ‘An impossible question. Almost anyone might murder. Ten to one against might be a rough assessment of my feelings. But if, as you say, we shelve the long chance of Gervase doing spy work and still look for spy work somewhere it seems to me we are up against the Sandys as a last chance? But the situation’s safe. The evidence suggests that she contrived to scribble an abstract of the document – a desperately difficult thing to manage, I should imagine – and was then forced to destroy it under threat of search.’

  ‘That’s the story. But – without knowing the Sandys – I’m inclined to see her less as a possible principal than as a possible inspiration.’

  ‘Possible what?’

  ‘Inspiration,’ repeated Appleby innocently. ‘And that would, of course, lead us back to recasting the odds.’

  Gott sighed. ‘I think’, he said, ‘I’ll go and have a bath.’

  ‘You’ll be the brighter for it,’ said Appleby cheerily.

  8

  Resolved but apprehensive, Noel paused for respite at the first turning of the stair. He flung up a window and surveyed the world. It was undeniably the familiar world – the world on which, rising early to canter on Horton Down, he had flung up his own bedroom window just twenty-four hours before. In the farther park two textures of moving grey were sorting themselves out: mist drifting, eddying, dispersing; sheep beginning to move in the dewy feed. Already the day declared its season; already the scent of the syringas, heavy as orange blossom, was blowing up from the gardens. The hubbub dawn chorus had thinned to distinguishable notes: willow-warblers monotonously tumbling downstairs, chaffinches as unvaryingly revving-up, and suspense provided only by the wrens, who pleased themselves as to whether or not they should add answer to question. And dominating and insistent, as if he were aware that a fortnight, a week now might command him to silence, the cuckoo called from the oak woods. To Noel, who associated birds – a few moorland varieties apart – with clerkly nature lovers and girl-guides, these effects came confusedly. But as mere massive sensation their familiarity disturbed him and he looked round almost anxiously for sign of change.

  It was there. It was there in a curl of smoke rising – a full hour early – in the middle distance: Mrs Manley at the south lodge, aware that the skies had fallen and determined to face the unknown with the day’s routine well forward. It was there – more obviously – in patrolling policemen. It was there in a little group of people toiling hastily up the brow of Horton Hill: a gesticulating person in front and behind a knot of persons with impedimenta – cameras, this time, of the cinematographic and telescopic sort. And it was there – had Noel known it – in the couple of cars that flashed over the visible rise of the Horton road: the press making hell-for-leather for Scamnum Court. And it was there – again if he had known it – in the farthest puff of white on the horizon. For that was the express hurtling the London dailies south and west, all with the Scamnum story in two inches of smeared red – or all save the Despatch-Record, whose news editor, having pushed his stop-press button with some extra minutes to spare before going to bed, had built in a flaming streamer that became Fleet Street talk for days.

  Noel leant out further inches, automatically estimated the possibility of spitting on a policeman’s helmet below, and then turned his eyes sharp right along the east façade. In the remote distance he could just discern a fugitive line of blue. ‘The sea’, he chanted, ‘lay laughing at a distance…’ He waved to the astonished constable below. ‘And in the meadows and the lower grounds was all the sweetness of a common dawn.’ And having keyed himself up in this fashion Noel slammed down the window, bounded up the remaining stairs and knocked briskly at Diana Sandys’ door.

  ‘’Llo,’ said Diana. She was sitting up in bed with a gold pencil behind her ear, and eating chocolates. ‘Come in.’ She looked rather uncertainly at her visitor. ‘You can climb on the bed,’ she said firmly.

  Noel climbed on the foot of the bed. There was a pause that would have been embarrassing if both Noel and Diana had not known that one was not embarrassed. ‘I’ll call it a night,’ said Noel presently.

  ‘One helluva night.’ Diana’s idiom was at times affected. The Terborgs would have disliked it.

  ‘Hasn’t etiolated you, though,’ said Noel politely.

  ‘Hasn’t what? Have a chocolate.’

  ‘Give sickly hue to person.’ Noel took a large chocolate and bit into it. ‘I say, Diana–’ Then he changed his mind and returned to the chocolates. ‘I’ve always been told that women devoured these things in secret – particularly the ethereal kind that shudders away from the honest thrice-daily public trough. But wenches naturally tending to plump out–’

  ‘They’re nauseous things!’ said Diana fretfully. With her right hand she stretched out for another; with her left she beat out a tattoo on the soles of Noel’s beautiful green slippers. ‘It’s only that I’ve got to sell them.’

  ‘Sell them?’

  ‘They’re coming out in August and I’ve got to sell them. And I’ve got three boxes here and before the rumpus I meant to get one of those Terborg girls in a sunny corner and eat them all with her. To get the feel of it.’

  Noel stared at her blankly. ‘Feel of it – and wouldn’t I do?’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said Diana, becoming animated. ‘Not the way I’m analysing it out. Do you know the chief difference between chocolates and tobacco?’

  ‘If it’s a riddle I give it up. But look here, Diana. Something frightfully–’

  ‘It’s like this. Tobacco – except snob-cigarettes – is nearly always sold homosexually – Chaps Together, you know. Or occasionally one builds on the over-compensated Oedipus – Dad Advises Sonny-boy. But chocolates are quite invariably sold heterosexually – Boy Brings Girl Box. But with these I’m going to try Women Together. Women stuffing them after tête-à-tête teas, women clutching half-pounds at chummy matinees. And I’m going to have them called the Sappho Assortment. A good name, I think; splashy and prodigal associations, exotic word, and yet difficult to mispronounce–’

  ‘First rate,’ said Noel with dubious heartiness. Noel thought Diana wonderful. Part of him thought the wonder to consist specifically in her adherence to the Newer Womanhood; but part of him – the part representing, perhaps, the tutelage of Mr Gott – sometimes saw this as being on the contrary the snag And, finding this business-as-usual attitude disturbing, he canalized his dubieties into a minor channel and said: ‘But I don’t know about pronouncing. I rather think you’ll have female dons – all tense and arm in arm, no doubt, as you want – going to their favourite sweet-shop and asking for Sap-foh.’

  Diana made a note. ‘I’ll go into it. But there will have to be snob-appeal too. Boy Brings Girl Box runs much further down the income-levels than Women Stuff Box Together. I shall be going for the eight-room-upwards public, which means they must sell at a higher price than they intended. Have one of the twirly ones.’

  ‘If they charge more will they improve the quality?’ Noel was interested in this irrelevant business of the Sappho Assortment despite himself.

  ‘Cut down on it, possibly.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Noel – and added: ‘Not very honest?’

  ‘Most contrariwise. And not good policy. Half our troubles come from pious Victorian-minded manufacturers who think they can take the quality out of the product if they’re putting it into the advertising. But that sort eliminates itself. It’s inefficient.’

  ‘Good,’ said Noel. It sounded like a sort of feeble moral fervour. There was an awkward pause, during which Diana ceased fiddling with the slippers. ‘Sleep well after the shambles?’ Noel asked.

  ‘Didn’t have a shot at it. I’ve been trying to remember something and get it down on paper…what are you jumping at?’

  ‘Jumping? Dunno. Pretty awful end to the play, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Bloody. I can’t bear to thin
k of it. And I can’t even get my mind to planning out these dam’ chocolates.’

  Diana, it occurred to Noel, was in her present phase remarkably a person of one idea. And suddenly he seemed to see, very far away, possible light. Carefully, he located Diana’s big-toe beneath the blanket and secured it firmly between finger and thumb. ‘I say,’ he said, ‘how do you really like it?’

  ‘Nix – it’s marzipan. And I’ve told you they’re all nauseous. But one has to discover what it feels like to be full of Sappho Assortment–’

  ‘I don’t mean that. I mean all the racket; the lone girl’s career.’

  ‘Oh!’ Diana turned up a childlike but resolute chin. ‘It’s no sort of Sweet Seventeen affair. And it’s not like being a duke or a don or a black-beetle; you don’t stretch down comfortable roots into the job. And the line of talk you deal in wouldn’t make the best illustrative matter for a treatise on the Beautiful and the True. In fact it would be a poor life if the pace weren’t so snappy; that’s what makes it fun. It’s a dog-fight and you’re on top only as long as you produce tip-top copy six days a week. No room for amiable inefficiency in national advertising – it costs too much per inch. If you go stale and your copy turns lousy – out you go.’ Diana scrutinized Noel’s face and was prompted to add: ‘I’m not out yet. And remember I was kept in hygienic wrappers at expensive schools until I was twenty and now I’m twenty-two and pulling twelve pounds a week. While you’re a twenty-three-year-old caterpillar on the commonwealth still. So there.’

  Noel after some search found the companion big-toe. ‘Get on top of you ever?’ he asked cautiously. ‘Ruling passion, fixed idea – that sort of thing?’

  Diana regarded him apprehensively. ‘Please stop playing at being a crab – two crabs,’ she said; ‘I suspect it of being a morbid form of Bedside Manner. And why this indecorous visit at all?’

  Unhappily, Noel let go the toes. ‘Well, you see, I thought I’d better tell you. You know there was something missing – or thought missing – or tapped or something? And that that’s why there was a search? Well, there’s a story got about – the police have it – that you–’

  ‘Noel,’ said Diana abruptly, ‘draw the curtains and let in Sol.’

  Noel did as he was told and returned chanting with unreal ease:

  ‘Busy old fool, unruly Sun,

  Why dost thou thus,

  Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

  Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons…’

  ‘Why, Diana!’

  Diana was crying. And Noel was as alarmed as if he had been confronted with a woman in process of cutting her throat, or one fallen suddenly into childbirth. ‘Oh, I say…’ he mumbled.

  Between sobs Diana said: ‘Such a helluva show-down up…down. I wish I was beastly dead!’

  ‘Diana – Diana darling…’

  But Diana’s extravagant woe had to spend itself. Presently she stopped and without pausing for handkerchief or powderpuff asked: ‘Noel, will these awful policemen know about my job…will they?’

  ‘Well, I expect so. You see Appleby – that’s the man from London – is getting case-histories and thumb-nail sketches from Grandpa Gott.’

  ‘And they’ll want to know…what it was?’

  ‘Perhaps – in general terms. It was suspicious, you see. Writing and then consigning to flames when search impended. Quite à la manière de la main noire. And the police mind–’ He floundered unhappily. ‘Let me wipe your eyes… Perhaps if you told me – vaguely, I mean – and I passed it on quietly. This Appleby’s a decent chap – gentleman – and it appears quite a familiar of Gott’s. And, for that matter, he’s, likely enough to have guessed. Alpha brain.’

  Diana took no comfort in the quality of Mr Appleby’s breeding or brain. But she said: ‘Yes, I’ll tell you, Noel…emetic process…probably good for the system. Get a bit of scribbling-paper from the table.’

  Diana scribbled. And as the scribble grew Noel firmly improved on the toes. ‘I see,’ he said at last. ‘Quite enormously ingenious – Diana, you’re frightfully clever! But certainly not comfortable to be found with amid the sorrowing friends afterwards… Never mind.’

  ‘You see,’ said Diana miserably, ‘one learns to squeeze an idea out of everything. It’s a rule that just everything that happens must be squeezed… Of course that poor old man doesn’t come into it. It was just the general idea of violent death that gave me the notion…and it is a new tie-up…with gangster magazines, action fiction…just the public for the product, too! And I felt I just had to get it down. But of all foul inspirations to be caught having–’ She paused at the sound of footsteps in the corridor. ‘Noel, is that the flatties?’

  ‘I expect it is.’

  ‘Lock the door.’

  Noel obeyed. A moment later there was a knock and Diana called out: ‘Is that the policeman?’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘You can’t come in. It’s indecorous. Besides’ – Diana felt Noel’s arm about her and her spirits rose outrageously – ‘I have a gentleman here already.’

  ‘Madam, I would not presume. One question only: last night – did you happen to engage in any abortive professional activity?’

  Diana gritted her teeth. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I certainly did.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The footsteps retreated. ‘He’s gone!’ said Diana.

  Noel scrambled to the floor. He crumpled up the scribbling-paper. ‘Must be pushing too. No hacking about today, I’m afraid; looks like being prisoners within the moated grange. But there’s always squash.’

  In the corridor outside the hall Murdo Macdonald had sat, motionless and vigilant, for a space of hours. Now he stiffened. The door had opened from within; the constable on guard stood aside; a little procession emerged – stretcher-bearers, under the directions of a sergeant, bringing out the body of Lord Auldearn. Macdonald stood up, drew into what remained of early-morning shadow in an alcove and bent his head as bearers and burden went slowly past. His lowered eyes were watchful beneath their heavy brows. Some yards down the corridor the sergeant halted and called back to the constable by the door; the constable moved towards him as if to receive a message. Macdonald glided into noiseless and rapid motion. Though elderly he was spare and agile; in a moment he had darted from shadow to shadow and gained the hall. He looked rapidly round. No one was visible; only the constable outside, returning to the door, might look inside as he closed it. Macdonald ran to the front stage, clambered up, and had gone to earth down the Ghost’s trap before he heard the door shut on the apparently untenanted hall. So far – good.

  For a full minute Macdonald crouched unmoving in the darkness beneath the low stage. Then he began to make the laborious progress which Dr Crump had rejected – subterraneously behind-scenes. He emerged close by the back curtains of the rear stage – again undetected – and slipped within the double folds. ‘Dinna fash,’ he murmured to himself. ‘A wee bittock luck an’ ye’ll get awa’ wi’ it in a’ preevacy!’ He tiptoed to a parting of the curtains and peered through to the rear stage. A constable was standing guard, wearily but efficiently. Macdonald’s eye roved over the little stage. Then he retreated and looked out the other way. There appeared to be a clear field to the green-room – a rectangular, match-boarded structure a dozen paces away. He emerged, stepped out towards it boldly and was presently surveying it from the somewhat precarious shelter of a curtained doorway. The green-room too was guarded by a constable. Macdonald eyed him warily and then once more began to cast about, scanning the litter of properties and effects scattered around the room. Presently his gaze concentrated itself in a corner, and then turned to the guardian policeman again with something like desperation. ‘Ten to yin it’s either that or the Assize,’ he muttered in perplexity – and felt a tap on the shoulder.

  ‘Now then, what are you afte
r and how did you get here?’

  Macdonald turned round to confront a highly suspicious Sergeant Trumpet. But he seemed at no loss. ‘Get here? I walkit in by the faur door.’

  ‘The far door…nonsense! It’s guarded.’

  Macdonald shook his impressive head. ‘Yin o’ you laddies was clacking wi’ your sairgint up the corridor a wee. But the door was open and I walkit in. I’m for my horrn.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘I’m for my snuff-horrn. Somebody coupt a cup of coffee when I had the horrn in my haun’ and I put the horrn by tae tak up the coupit cup and disremembered it.’

  Sergeant Trumpet was incensed. ‘And you think you can come skulking about after a peck of snuff as though there hadn’t been murder done? Don’t you know that murder–’

  ‘Laddie,’ said Macdonald, ‘Murdo Macdonald needs no sairmon frae you on the weight o’ the Sixth Commaun’ment. But twa’ oonces o’ Kendal Broon bides twa’ oonces o’ Kendal Broon. And in my graun’-faither’s horrn foreby! We’ll look th’gither.’

  They looked together. But no snuff-horn was found.

  Charles Piper, towelling after an early shower, had retreated hastily from the bathroom on hearing the approaching footsteps of Giles Gott. Now he was doing his exercises in the security of his own room and feeling – as active young novelists must often feel – the want of several brains to pursue simultaneously the variety of thoughts which battled for the single organ he possessed. Pursue one idea with concentration and you so easily lose all the others for good – hundreds of potential words, proper for elegant embodiment in Timothy Tucker’s characteristic fount, whirled fatally into limbo.

  First, he had a thought – a chronic thought this – about thinking during the exercises. If you don’t (he thought) concentrate on the exercises they don’t work. Labourers, though they exercise their muscles all day, fail to develop beautiful bodies because they don’t concentrate their minds on the idea of harmonious muscular development. Then stop thinking (thought Piper to himself) during the deep breathing; concentrate on the breathing qua breathing; picture, perhaps, the mysterious cavities of the lungs – spongy, soot-lined, slowly filling out, slowly sinking. Perhaps one could really see them if one tried very hard; hysterical people could see their insides…and the surrealists. But let the mind rest. Simply contemplate through the open window the fluid line of Horton Hill – itself rhythmical as a good exercise – and count: one – two – three.