Darcourt had long known that he was a man fated to do much of the world’s work when other people took the credit for it, but he was not without self-esteem.
No Merlin? Was that how Geraint bach saw the story of Arthur? Not if he, Simon Darcourt, was to play the role of Merlin in private life. He’d show ‘em!
But for the moment, crime must be given his best energies.
2
No time like the present. Darcourt made a phone call to the librarian in charge of special collections, an old friend. A man whom he would not, for the world, deceive, except when his book was at stake.
“Archie? Simon here. Look—I’ve run into a little matter in connection with my book. My life of Francis Cornish, you know. I want to verify something about his Oxford life. Would there be any objection to my taking a look among the papers we sent to you?”
No objection whatever. Come when you please. This afternoon? Certainly. Would you like to use my office? No, no need to disturb you. I’ll just look at them in the storage, or wherever they are.
That was the worry. Where were they? Would he have to look at them in a room with a lot of sub-librarians and other snoops hanging around? Not likely, but not impossible. With luck he might be able to use one of those little cubicles near a window, in which some favoured graduate students were occasionally allowed to spread their papers about.
Into the Library with a light step. Nod to right and left with the assurance of a well-known, greatly trusted member of faculty. Stop at Archie’s room and pass the time of day. Listen to Archie’s groans about the lack of funds for cataloguing. The Cornish stuff he would find just as he had bundled it up for the Library. But have no fear; it would be properly catalogued as soon as funds could be found. Might the Cornish Foundation be interested in funding that project? Darcourt assured Archie that he thought the Cornish Foundation would certainly be interested, and he would put the matter before them himself. Oh, by the way, would Archie like him to leave his briefcase in the office? Yes, yes, he knew that he was not a likely suspect—ha ha—but one should not expect other people to observe rules that one did not observe oneself. To which Archie agreed, and with each man somewhat sanctimoniously respecting the other’s high principle, the briefcase was left in a chair.
Thus, cloaked in righteousness, Darcourt went into the large room, filled with steel racks, in which the Cornish papers, among many others, were stored. A young woman who was working at the slow task of cataloguing showed him where they were, and whispered—why whispered? there was nobody else in the room, but it was a place that seemed to call for whispering—that there was a nice quiet spot at the back of the room, with a big table where he could spread out the papers he wished to examine. He knew that this was not regular, that he should declare what he wanted even though it might be difficult to find; but after all, it was he who had brought the papers to the Library in the first place, and he was a generous member of the Friends of the Library, and he should be shown all possible courtesy. Nothing like a good reputation when you are about to commit a crime.
The crime took no time at all. Darcourt knew precisely which of the big bundles he was looking for, and in a moment he had opened it, and found the group of drawings he wanted.
They were drawings Francis Cornish had done in his Oxford days, and most of them were copies of minor Old Masters he had made when learning the technique which had been one of his chief sources of pride. By the most laborious and greatly talented practice, he had found the way to draw with the costly silver pencil on the carefully prepared paper. As works of art, the drawings were of little interest. Fine student work, no more.
There were some, however, which were in the old silver-point technique, but differently labelled—for Francis had labelled every copy of an Old Master with great care, naming the master, or that prodigiously productive artist Ignotus, and the date upon which the copy had been made. But several were labelled more simply: “Ismay, November 14, 1935”, or some date reaching into the spring of 1936.
Several of them were heads, or half-lengths, of a girl not precisely beautiful, but of a distinguished cast of feature. Others were of the same girl, nude, lying on a sofa, or leaning on a mantelpiece. There was something about them that made it abundantly clear that they had been drawn by a loving hand. The curves of neck and shoulder, waist and breasts, hips, thighs and calves, were rendered with an exquisite care that set them apart from the work of an art student faced with a good model. Nor had the technique the Old Master remoteness: it spoke of desire, here and now. But the face of Ismay did not speak of love. In a few of the drawings it was petulant, but in most it wore a look of amusement, as though the model felt something like pity, and a measure of superiority, toward the artist. In these there was nothing of the accomplished deadness of the Old Master copies. They were alive, and they were the work of a man who had ceased to be a student.
Who was Ismay? She was Mrs. Francis Cornish, one of the many figures in his biography about whom Darcourt could discover nothing. Or very little. The daughter of Roderick and Prudence Glasson of St. Columb Hall, in Cornwall; a girl who had left Oxford (Lady Margaret Hall) without a degree after a single year; a girl who had married Francis Cornish in St. Columb’s Church on September 17, 1936; a girl who thenceforward seemed to have no existence, so far as documents or other evidence was concerned. A girl whom Darcourt had come upon by accident, and identified by research, for Francis had never spoken of her.
The biographer had done his scholarly best. He had written to Sir Roderick Glasson at the Foreign Office in London, asking for details about his sister, and had received a cold reply saying that so far as Sir Roderick knew, his sister Ismay had died in the Blitz, in a northern city, probably Manchester, and that nothing was known of her, as it was impossible to identify many bodies found in that destruction, and many had never been recovered.
So this was Francis Cornish’s wife as she appeared before their marriage. A girl born to fascinate, and doubtless to be loved by a man of romantic disposition. But what had happened to Ismay? She was part of the gap in the middle of Francis Cornish’s life that tormented Darcourt and made his task as a biographer a nagging burden.
Darcourt could not stop long to admire. He did not want the friendly sub-librarian to approach him with offers of help, or a cup of coffee. Which to take? The heads, obviously. The nudes were too compelling to escape notice even by a hasty examiner. Darcourt, who had a weakness tor female beauty that was not wholly rooted in the feelings of an amateur connoisseur, would greatly have liked to take one of them for himself, but that would be dangerous. The Clerical Cracksman must show self-denial and austerity in what he was doing. Only the heads.
So, with a rapidity that he had practised that morning as he dressed, he took off his jacket and his waistcoat—he was in clerical garb and the waistcoat was one of those broad black expanses of ribbed silk that Anglicans call an M.B. waistcoat, meaning Mark of the Beast because of its High Church and Romanist implications—and lowered his trousers. From under his shirt at the back he took a transparent plastic envelope measuring eighteen inches by twelve, slipped the drawings into it, and shoved it under his shirt again. Up with the trousers, on with the M.B., which had a convenient back strap that held the envelope firmly in place, on with the jacket, and all was completed.
“Thank you very much,” he said to the sub-librarian; “I’ve bundled everything up ready to go back on the shelf.” And he smiled in answer to her smile as he left the room.
“Many thanks, Archie,” he called to his friend, as he picked up his briefcase.
“Not at all, Simon. Any time.”
Out of the Library, step as light as ever, went the Clerical Cracksman, half of his crime completed. But not wholly completed. He must not go tearing back to his rooms at Ploughwright, like a guilty thing, to hide away his swag. No; he went to the Faculty Club, seated himself in the reading-room, and called for a beer. There was only one other member in the reading-room, and that member was to
be his alibi, if one should be needed. The person who had seen him come there on his way back from the Library, as innocent as a new-laid egg.
The other member also had a beer, for it was a warm day. He lifted his glass to Darcourt.
“Cheers,” said he.
“Here’s to crime,” said the Clerical Cracksman, and the other member, a simple soul, sniggered at such a jest from a clergyman.
3
“I look upon you as a daring group, a party of adventurers of extraordinary courage, set upon great risk. Perhaps the word for you is doom-eager,” said Dr. Gunilla Dahl-Soot, as the Cornish Foundation sat down to dinner at the Round Table.
“That’s a fine Scandinavian word, but surely rather negative, Doctor?” said Arthur, at whose right hand the guest of honour was seated.
“No, not in the least. It is realistic. You must know that never has any opera or play about King Arthur succeeded with the public, or with the world of art. Never. Not one.”
“Didn’t Purcell write a pretty good opera about Arthur?” said Maria.
“Purcell? No. It is not an opera. I would call it almost a Posse mit Gesang, a sort of vaudeville or fairy-piece. It has some interesting pages, but it has not travelled,” said the Doctor, with immovable gloomy conviction.
“Perhaps we shall succeed where others have failed,” said Arthur.
“Ah, I admire your courage. That is in part what has brought me here. But courage alone is not enough. Certainly not if you follow Purcell. His Arthur is too full of talk. All the action is in speech, not in music. The music is mere decoration. That is not opera. An opera is not talk. Indeed, there should be no talk. Music throughout.”
“Well, isn’t that very much under your control?” said Arthur.
“It may be so. Only time will tell,” said the Doctor and drained her glass of wine at a draught. She had had her full share of the martinis before dinner; she had three at least but appeared to be thirsty still.
“Let’s not begin the evening in a spirit of defeat,” said Maria. “I’ve prepared a very special dinner. It’s an Arthurian dinner. You are going to get what Arthur’s court might have eaten—making necessary allowances.”
“Thank God for necessary allowances,” said Hollier. “I doubt if I could get through a sixth-century meal. What are we having?”
“What a question! Don’t you trust me?” said Maria. “You are beginning with poached salmon, and I’m sure Arthur had excellent salmon.”
“Yes, but this Hochheimer—do you call that Arthurian?” said the Doctor. “I thought King Arthur drank beer.”
“You forget that Arthur was a Cambro-Briton, with five centuries of Roman civilization behind him,” said Maria. “I’ll bet he drank very good wine, and took enormous care about having it transported to Camelot.”
“It may be,” said the Doctor, draining another large glass. “This is a good wine.” She spoke as if uncertain about what might follow.
Dr. Gunilla Dahl-Soot was not an easy guest. She seemed to bring an atmosphere of deep autumn into the penthouse, though it was still no more than early September. The dinner party felt uneasily that it might decline into a hard winter if the Doctor did not cheer up.
The Round Table had not known what to expect, and nobody had foreseen anything in the least like the Doctor. It was not that she was eccentric in any of the ways that might be expected in an academic who was also a distinguished musician. She was beautifully dressed, her figure was a marvel of slim elegance, and her face was undeniably handsome. What made her strange was that she seemed to have stepped out of a past age. She wore a finely designed version of male dress; her jacket was in appearance a man’s tight-waisted blue frock coat, and her tapering green velvet trousers descended toward elegant patent leather boots; she wore a very high, soft collar bound with a flowing cravat, and on her hands were a number of big, masculine rings. Her thick, straight brown hair was parted in the middle and hung to her shoulders, framing a long, distinguished, deeply melancholy face. She’s got herself up as Franz Liszt before he put on his abbé’s cassock, thought Darcourt. Does she get her clothes from a theatrical costumer? But odd as she is, she’s dead right for what she is. Who is she modelled on? George Sand? No, she’s much too elegant. Darcourt, who was interested in women’s clothes, and what went under them, was prepared to be fascinated by the Doctor, but her first ventures in conversation made it clear that the fascination might be a depressing experience.
“I’m glad you like our wine,” said Arthur. “Let Simon fill your glass. Do you like Canada? That’s a silly question, of course, but you must forgive me; we always ask visitors if they like Canada as soon as they step off the plane. Don’t answer.”
“But I will answer,” said the Doctor. “I like what I have seen. It is not strange at all. It is like Sweden. Why not? We are geographical near neighbours. I look out of my window and what do I see? Fir trees. Maple trees already turning to red. Big outcroppings of bare rock. It is not like New York. I have been in New York. It is not like Princeton, where I have also been. It has the smell. It smells like a northern land. Do you have terrible winters?”
“They can be difficult,” said Arthur.
“Ah,” said the Doctor, smiling for the first time. “Difficult winters make very great people, and great music. I do not, generally speaking, like the music of lands that are too far south. I will have another glass of the Hochheimer, if I may.”
This woman must have a hollow leg, thought Darcourt. A boozer? Surely not, with that ascetic appearance. Let’s tank her up and see what happens. As an old friend of the family he had made the martinis, and his was the task of serving the wine at dinner; he went to the sideboard and opened another bottle of the Hochheimer and handed it to Arthur.
“Let us hope that you can charm some fine northern music out of the fragments of Hoffmann’s score,” said Arthur.
“Let us hope. Yes, hope is the thing upon which we shall build,” said the Doctor, and down went the Hochheimer—not at a gulp, for the Doctor was too elegant to gulp—but without a pause.
“I hope you don’t think it rude of us to speak of the opera so soon,” said Maria. “It is so much on our minds, you see.”
“One should always speak of what is uppermost in one’s mind,” said the Doctor. “I want to talk about this opera, and it is uppermost in my mind.”
“You’ve looked at the music?” said Arthur.
“Yes. It is sketches and indications of the orchestration, and themes that Hoffmann wanted used to suggest important things in the plot. He seems somewhat to have anticipated Wagner, but his themes are prettier. But it is not an opera. Not yet. This student was too enthusiastic when she told you it was an opera. It is very pretty music, but not foolish. Some of it could be Weber. Some could be Schumann. I like all that. I love those wonderful failed operas by Schumann and Schubert.”
“I hope you don’t see this as another failed opera.”
“Who can say?”
“But you aren’t going to set to work with failure as your goal?” said Maria.
“Much may be learned from failure. Of course that is the theme of the opera, so far as I can see. The Magnificent Cookold, he called it. Am I right to think a cookold is a deceived husband?”
“You are. The word is pronounced cuckold, by the way.”
“As I said. Cookold.—Ah, thank you. This Hochheimer is really very good.—But, now—a cookold; why is it a man? Why not a woman?”
“You are just as right to say cookold as cuckold,” said Professor Hollier, who had also been getting into the Hochheimer with quiet determination. “That was a Middle English form. The French was, and still is, cocu. Because of the notorious goings-on of that bird.” He bowed to Dr. Dahl-Soot over his raised glass.
“Ah, you are a man who knows language? Very good. Then why is it masculine? A person deceived in marriage. Are not women also deceived in marriage? Again and again and again? So why no word for that, eh?”
“I do not kno
w how you would form a feminine from cuckold. Cuckoldess? Clumsy. Or how about she-cuckold?”
“Not good,” said the Doctor.
“Does it matter? It is Arthur who is the cuckold in the Arthurian legends,” said Penny Raven.
“So it is. This Arthur was a fool,” said the Doctor.
“Oh, come on! I won’t have that,” said Maria. “He was a noble man, bent on lifting the whole moral tone of his kingdom.”
“But still a cookold. He did not pay enough attention to his wife. So she gave him a big pair of horns.”
“Perhaps there is no feminine of cuckold because the female of the species does not grow horns, however much she is deceived,” said Hollier, solemnly.
“She knows a better trick than that,” said the Doctor. “She gives him the ambiguous baby, eh? He looks in the cradle and he says. What the hell; this is a funny-looking baby. By God, I am a cookold.”
“But in the Arthurian legends there is no child of the adultery of Guenevere and Lancelot. So he could not have exclaimed what you have just exclaimed, madam.”
“Not madam. I prefer to be called Doctor. Unless after a long time we get on close terms; then perhaps you will call me Nilla.”
“Not Gunny?” said Powell.
“I despise Gunny. But this Arthur—this stupid king—he does not need a baby to tell him. His wife and his very good friend tell him straight out. We have been in the bed while you have been lifting the moral tone. It could be a comedy. It could be by Ibsen. He was often funny like that.”
Maria thought the time had come to change the direction of the conversation at the Round Table. “My next course is truly Arthurian. Roast pork, and with apple sauce. Very popular dish at Camelot, I am certain.”
“Pork? No, never pork! It must be roast boar,” said the Doctor.
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