‘How was she when you left the hospital?’ Fen demanded.
‘Virtually out of danger, I gathered.’ Humbleby poured the tepid dregs of the coffee-pot into his cup and drank them noisily. ‘They’re expecting her to recover consciousness at almost any time now – though even when she does they won’t be encouraging her to talk for a few days.’
‘The attempt on her life,’ said Fen. ‘Can that be linked up in any way with what we’ve just learned?’
‘I don’t see that it can,’ Humbleby answered, ‘because there’s still no motive. If she were the rightful heir to the Sanford estates, or some rubbish of that sort, Lord Sanford might want her out of the way. But she clearly isn’t. . . . No, what I’m worried about is what we’re going to do.’
‘Do?’
‘About this knowledge we’ve acquired.’ Wolfe contemplated Fen in a slightly baleful fashion, as though it were he who had contrived this testing and involuted problem of discretion. ‘The fact that someone attacked this girl obviously doesn’t entitle us to communicate to Lord Sanford facts of such an intimate and personal nature. On the other hand, since she was obviously going to tell him ultimately, it might be . . . well, humane, for us to do so.’
‘How is he likely to take it?’ Fen inquired.
‘From what I’ve seen of him,’ said Wolfe, ‘he seems a very decent young man.’
‘Then I’m for taking these letters and showing them to him.’
‘So, unofficially, am I,’ said Humbleby.
‘So, as a human being, am I,’ said Wolfe. ‘But as a police officer I know damned well I oughtn’t to do anything of the kind. If anyone chose to make a stink about it, it would probably mean demotion for me.’
‘Lord Sanford would have reason to be grateful to you,’ Fen pointed out, ‘and the girl isn’t the sort who raises a pother about things that are irrevocable.’
Wolfe sighed. ‘All right, then. I’ll risk it, and hope for the best. But I can’t say,’ he added, ‘that it’s a job I look forward to, subsequent repercussions apart.’
‘Then let me do it,’ said Fen.
‘You, sir?’ Wolfe spoke rather dubiously. ‘I’m not sure that that would improve matters – since by rights you, as an outsider, oughtn’t to know anything about it at all.’
But Humbleby supported Fen. ‘If the thing is going to be done,’ he said, ‘I suspect that Professor Fen would probably do it more tactfully than either you or I, Wolfe.’ Fen, who had a high opinion of his own tact but seldom heard it spontaneously recommended, made sounds of concurrence and gratification. ‘And I’m quite willing to take the entire responsibility on my own shoulders, since if a fuss were made the consequences would be less serious for me than for you. The Police Force, after all, isn’t quite inhuman, and although one might be officially reproved, one would almost be privately applauded. . . . Besides, there’s nothing to stop us saying, in the upshot, that we thought this business might be connected with the attack on the girl, and that therefore it had to be probed. And for all we know’ – Humbleby leered at them with manifest disingenuousness – ‘such a connexion may. in fact, exist.’
‘Is that settled, then?’ Fen asked; and they nodded. ‘Good. I’ll deal with it immediately.’ He took the steel box from Wolfe. ‘Oh, but before I go you’d better hear about the Rector’s field-glasses.’ He briefly expounded these.
‘Oh, come, sir,’ said Wolfe reproachfully. ‘It’s a bit odd, I grant you, but I don’t see how it can possibly link up with any of the other things.’
‘Nor, at the moment, do I,’ Fen admitted. ‘And quite possibly it doesn’t. But I thought you might as well know.’
Wolfe thanked him with the civil insincerity of a small boy who has anticipated an aeroplane for Christmas and been given a copy of the Bible, and Fen departed to inform Captain Watkyn that he would not be available for canvassing till after tea. Captain Watkyn received this information with a disapproval which was perceptibly enhanced when Mr Judd, who was still with him, insisted on taking Fen’s place. He watched Fen’s departure with the mingled piteousness and exasperation of a marooned sailor who sees the ship which might have salvaged him disappearing inexorably over the horizon.
Fen got into his car and drove to the dower-house of Sanford Hall.
CHAPTER 18
DIANA MERRION applied a layer of polish to the off front mudguard of her car, picked up a soft cloth from the mudguard, and began to rub vehemently. An observer – of that dispassionate sort which novelists summon to their assistance when direct description begins to pall – would have attributed her vehemence, on this uncommonly hot day, to a pride in workmanship. But such an observer, like the majority of his spectral and deluded kind, would have been seriously mistaken. It is true that in the normal way Diana bestowed a great deal of care on her Daimler, for she was a young woman to whom slovenliness was abhorrent; today, however, her energy derived not from devotion to good appearances, but from a simultaneous mental and physical discomfort. Her labours were the issue of exasperation; the gleaming chassis of the car bore witness to an unconquerable dissatisfaction.
Bodily unease was to be expected. The sun was beating down on the asphalt runway outside the small garage; the smallest movement raised clouds of weeks-old dust whose impact on the flesh was like the impact of itching-powder; and mosquitoes swooped predatorily whenever a reasonably safe and succulent bite was in prospect. Wasps, gorged and intoxicated with plums from the neighbouring orchard, crawled laboriously but menacingly about, ready to ply their stings at the slightest touch. Diana’s hair kept falling over one eye like a hot blanket; and every garment she wore felt soiled and scratchy. It was undeniably an idiotic day, and an idiotic time of the day, for exacting manual work.
Diana straightened up and sombrely contemplated her distorted reflection in the polished metal of the mudguard. There were the door-handles and the windscreen still to do, but the door-handles and windscreen, she decided, could wait. Dirty, sweating, and exhausted, she sat down on the running-board and began groping in the pocket of her slacks for a cigarette. But the pockets of one’s slacks, when one is seated, tend to be tightly stretched against one’s thighs and hence impermeable. With a little scream of impatience, Diana stood up and dragged the cigarettes out. She had sat down again and gingerly extracted a cigarette with grubby fingers before she remembered that the matches were in the other pocket of her slacks. She bounded up again and produced the box. It was empty. There were no matches in the cubby-holes of the car. There were no matches nearer at hand than the cottage where she lived, five hundred yards away. It was not worth walking that distance for the sake of a cigarette, however much one longed for one. . . . Diana slumped down again on the running-board. It was now, she found, physically impossible to return the cigarettes to her pocket. She put the carton on the running-board of the car, and, since she had not closed it properly, all the cigarettes fell out on to the ground, and most of them rolled about under the car until they got settled in positions where it was impossible to reach them except by lying on one’s stomach and rubbing one’s hair – carefully washed only last night – against the mud on the underside of the running-board.
Diana made no attempt to retrieve them. Chin in hands, she sat ruminating moodily. Like most people, she laboured under the delusion that mental afflictions are always more unendurable than physical (though whether those who live in this faith would in the event choose a month’s acute rheumatism rather than a month’s serious anxiety is open to doubt); and therefore she blamed her present surliness not on her own folly in polishing a car under a torrid sun, but on the inexplicable erotic dilatoriness of Robert, seventeenth Earl of Sanford. The local people, she knew, anticipated an early marriage; but in this they were disastrously over-sanguine. Not only was there no question of a marriage. There was no question even of an affair. And this it was that irked Diana, for with Robert, seventeenth Earl of Sanford, she was deeply in love, and had been ever since the day when he had first summoned
her to drive him from Sanford Hall to the railway station. They had on that occasion talked indifferently about indifferent topics. Sporadically, and at long intervals, they had repeated this innocuous exercise. Then she had happened to mention that there wasn’t a good place to bathe in the neighbourhood, and he had invited her to use the lake in the grounds of Sanford Hall whenever she felt inclined. And then one day he had come down and bathed with her, and while they dried themselves in the sun they had ceased talking indifferently about indifferent topics and started to quarrel fiercely about politics. And then they had taken to inviting one another to tea, and had continued to quarrel fiercely about politics. And that was absolutely all that had happened. For all she could tell, Robert was prepared to go on quarrelling fiercely about politics to all eternity. He had never put his arm round her; he had certainly never kissed her; he had never, as far as she was aware, even been human enough to glance at her legs – and they were worth more than a glance. . . . So what in Hades was the matter with the man? She was sure (a little naively sure) that there wasn’t another girl; vanity rebelled at believing that she didn’t attract him in any way, even the merely physical; and he was clearly not the sort of man who is temperamentally antagonistic to women. The only conclusion she could reach, therefore, was that something in his upbringing had made him abnormally shy of the opposite sex. And if so, what ought she to do about it? She could not bear the thought of breaking with him altogether, but to go on as they were doing would be almost a worse martyrdom. And it seemed that a miracle would be required to make him regard her as anything more or other than a taxi-driver with Conservative views. Diana frowned anxiously. Should she take the initiative in some way? Well-bred young women do not throw themselves at the heads of young men – but that, of course, didn’t matter a twopenny damn. The question was, whether such action would scare him off once and for all. And:
‘Oh, hell,’ sighed Diana. ‘Damned if I know what to do. Why do I have to go so moronic as to fall in love with him, of all people? Just seeing him in the distance makes me feel as groggy as a schoolgirl at a James Mason picture.’
Over this humiliating analogy, and the obscure but piercing shame of an unrequited affection, she brooded despondently and resentfully. Every second the sun seemed to grow hotter and more intolerable. Soon her thoughts reverted to the lake, and she decided that it would be a great deal more sensible to go and have a bathe rather than to continue to sit uncomfortably here indulging in the shabby pleasures of self-pity. She had no commissions until after tea, and if anyone wanted the car for an emergency they’d just have to do without it. . . . Diana roused herself, and being a provident girl, grovelled for the scattered cigarettes. Then she drove along the quiet, deserted village street to her eighteenth-century cottage.
Here she undressed, energetically washed, put on a backless white bathing-dress with a clean white muslin frock on top of it, stuffed some underclothes and a bathing-cap into a handbag, hung a towel over one arm, emerged from the front door, re-entered it hurriedly to obtain matches, emerged again and drove to the grounds of Sanford Hall. The dower-house, a commodious place, stands some way away from the Hall itself, and Diana had to drive in through its gates to get to the lake. With a quickened pulse she looked about her to see if Robert might be visible somewhere out of doors, but he was not, and she drove on in slight though unacknowledged disappointment, the gravel drive taking her right through the gardens, where a courteous old gardener touched his cap as she passed, and out on to the rise of rough turf which overlooked the lake. Here she parked the car, and walked the remaining distance.
The lake was a small one, but ideal for bathing, since it was fed by a clean spring and discharged all its waste into a small tributary which issued in the river Spoor. Also, being out of sight of both the dower-house and the Hall, it was blissfully secluded – and if there was one type of humanity which Diana detested more than another, it was the type which stands or sits complacently and often concupiscently watching others swimming. The cool water sparkled in the sunlight. An unserviceable-looking rowboat with water in it slopped about in the ripples at the margin. And Diana, slipping off her frock and shoes and donning her bathing-cap, stood for a moment poised on the bank near it and then dived in.
The coolness of the water was sensual luxury of the most depraved kind. Savouring it, Diana swam slowly out to the centre of the lake and there lay on her back and floated, her eyes closed against the glaring afternoon light, From a confused but not unpleasant reverie she was roused by a cheerful shout from the bank, and twisting over, opening her eyes, and starting to swim again, she observed the seventeenth Earl of Sanford standing there, slim and delightful as an Adonis, his shirt open at the neck and his hands thrust into the pockets of shabby grey flannel trousers. A really determined girl, Diana reflected, would at this juncture pretend to be drowning, and by exhibiting maidenly gratitude after rescue make a subsequent romance inevitable. But really determined girls were presumably more practised than she in simulating aquatic disasters, and she had the feeling that as performed by her the manoeuvre would not carry much conviction. So she swam to the bank instead, clambered out, took off her bathing-cap, and groped in her bag for a comb.
‘Hello, Robert,’ she said. ‘You look as pleased as a dog with two tails. What’s happened?’
He smiled charmingly at her. ‘It is nice to see you, Diana. I was rather hoping you’d turn up.’ With his unvarying courtesy he picked up her towel and handed it to her. ‘Something rather pleasant has happened, and I’ve been wanting all day to tell someone about it.’
Diana experienced a stab of apprehension and misgiving; he wasn’t – for heaven’s sake! – going to tell her he was engaged to someone . . . ? She rubbed her face determinedly with the towel. ‘Oh, what is it?’ she asked, keeping her voice light and clear.
‘It’s my Finals at Oxford. I’ve just heard the result. I’ve got a First.’
Diana looked up at his finely drawn, sunburnt face and with the utmost difficulty suppressed an impulse to burst into tears of thankfulness and relief. ‘But of course you have, Robert,’ she said. ‘I always knew you would.’
He laughed, and she thought that she had never seen him so happy. ‘Then you knew more than I did.’
‘Many congratulations, Robert.’
‘Thank you, Diana. . . . Look here, you’re not doing anything this evening, are you?’
‘I’m afraid I am. I’ve got several calls.’
‘Cancel them.’
‘But, Robert– –’
‘Cancel them and come on a pub crawl with me. I want to celebrate, and I want to be thoroughly vulgar and conventional about it, and I want you with me. That is’ – he hesitated, reddening a little – ‘if it wouldn’t bore you.’
Diana gulped, and only regained control of her voice by reminding herself that schoolgirls gulped at photographs of James Mason. ‘Oh, Robert, I’d love to,’ she said.
‘Good. That’s settled, then.’
‘Where and when do we meet?’
‘I’ll pick you up at your cottage about six-thirty. All right?’
‘Lovely.’ And Diana, watching him, saw that almost imperceptibly his ebullience was beginning to subside. ‘Heavens, I know what’s going to happen,’ she thought, suddenly panicky. ‘As soon as he cools down, he’s going to start regretting the impulse that made him invite me out; and he’s far too courteous to cancel the arrangement on that account, so we shall spend the whole evening drearily arguing about the Government, like a couple of strangers in a railway compartment. . . . Oh, Lord, am I really so unattractive?’
But all she said was: ‘I – I think I’d better get dressed new.’
‘Yes, of course you’d better,’ Robert assented, with as much haste as if he had suddenly perceived her to be completely nude. ‘I’ll go away.’
‘No, you needn’t do that. Just turn your back for a minute.’
For the time being, however, there was to be no opportunity of getting
dressed. As Diana spoke, a liveried butler of great stateliness appeared over the rise from the direction of the dower-house and glided up to them, bearing a visiting-card on a salver. This he presented with impassive ceremony to Lord Sanford, who earnestly thanked him for his trouble.
‘And you know, Houghton,’ he added, ‘there’s no need, when you bring me a thing like this, to put it on a salver. That’s only a relic of the days when the upper classes considered that things were soiled by servants touching them. . . . There’s a most interesting book’ – Lord Sanford eyed his butler dubiously – ‘which tells you all about things like that.’
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