Sheiks and Adders

by Michael Innes

  ‘Certainly – and it was about a fortnight ago.’

  ‘Mr Chitfield then hit on the odd notion of tying it up with this fancy-dress affair. He persuaded a certain number of his friends to attend in the character of sheiks, with the notion that this would make your own presence less obtrusive. Incidentally, he positively forbad a young man who may be described as a family friend to assume such a character, which suggests his regarding mere business associates as curiously expendable. Mr Chitfield, you agree to that?’

  ‘You can put it that way, I suppose. I certainly didn’t want Cherry’s boy to get mixed up in the affair.’

  ‘So both you and the Emir may be said to have taken precautions. Yours included hiring a man with a gun, and his took the decidedly exotic form of bringing a spurious Emir along with him. And now we must, I think, undertake a kind of census of sheiks. The task is complicated by the substantial possibility of several people turning up thus attired in a purely coincidental fashion. But let us assume that everybody now wandering around thus habited holds, as it were, a place in the story. Does Your Excellency suppose that any of your enemies, being bent on your assassination, would be likely to turn up – conceivably for religious reasons – in what I will venture to call their native costume?’

  ‘Certainly not. They would clearly dress as unobtrusively as possible.’

  ‘Quite so. But now we come to a curious fact. I happen to have become aware that three men, who apparently turned up here in ordinary dress, changed into Arab costume during the afternoon.’

  ‘How on earth could they do that?’ McIlwraith asked.

  ‘Simply by hiring the stuff at the entrance to the fête. They had, one may suppose, tumbled to the existence of Mr Chitfield’s pseudo-sheiks, and seen that by dressing up that way themselves they would place themselves within an essentially harmless group of persons. It would be quite a neat deception. The Emir, having heard about Mr Chitfield’s dressing up of a number of his friends, would regard any person so dressed up as necessarily entirely harmless. He would not be on his guard if approached by one or more of them.’ Appleby turned to the Emir. ‘Your Excellency follows me?’ he asked urbanely.

  ‘Of course I follow you. But for how much longer am I to be constrained to do so?’

  ‘Well, there are one or two further points. Those of the pseudo- sheiks who have the happiness of being our host’s colleagues’ – and Appleby glanced rather grimly at Mr Chitfield – ‘are probably known to one another, and are likely to meet, converse, and perhaps stroll around in couples or groups. But you, Your Excellency, must be described as unique. There is only one of you at Drool, and not much observation would be required to pick you out were you walking through the place either accompanied by a European, such as the Professor here, or alone. This is a fact which may assist us later. Meantime, another inquiry occurs to me. We hear frequently enough of some shooting or bombing or other murderous achievement being claimed not merely as the action of a single group of terrorists but actually by two or more. It is like children at school, you know. The teacher asks, “Who threw that pellet?” and immediately two or three hands go proudly up in different corners of the room. Your Excellency will forgive the homeliness of the analogy. What I am concerned to know is whether there may be such rivals or competitors thirsting for your blood.’

  ‘You phrase it a trifle crudely, perhaps. But it may well be so.’ The Emir Hafrait paused for a moment. ‘Might it be permissible to enquire at this rather late stage,’ he asked, ‘the more exact standing of the person by whom I am being addressed?’

  ‘He is Sir John Appleby,’ McIlwraith said – hastily, and as if here there had been a decided slip-up in protocol. ‘Sir John may be described as having held, until his recent retirement, the position of highest authority in the English police force. Our system is difficult to describe with brevity. But that is more or less the fact of the matter.’

  ‘Then let us proceed.’ The Emir had bowed gravely, but scarcely with the air of a man notably impressed by what he had just heard. ‘As for competitors – yes, indeed. I have enemies who are each other’s enemies, too. Here again is something not to be described with brevity. But Sir John will be well acquainted with such situations. Amusing facts will filter through to him from your intelligence people, and from your Foreign Office. It is a state of affairs gossiped about in the clubs, is it not?’ Achieving this stroke of sophistication appeared to put the Emir momentarily in good humour. ‘Let us continue,’ he said, ‘this perhaps premature inquest over my corpse.’

  ‘Competing groups of terrorists or activists or whatever they may call themselves,’ Appleby said, ‘may have different methods and different aims. One group may want a corpse, while another wants a hostage. And our own police, by collaring one group and locking them up or deporting them, may simply be clearing the field for another group to close in on its quarry. So we have to be a little careful, you will see. For example, I know nothing whatever about Your Excellency, except what you have told me yourself, and what Mr Chitfield here knows or believes he knows. For instance – and I hope you will not be offended at my offering it – that dead man may perfectly well be your own brother, and a little family feud have been taken one stage further by yourself this afternoon.’

  ‘Dear me!’ The Emir had merely raised his eyebrows. ‘Your suggestion has at least ingenuity, although scarcely civility, to commend it.’

  ‘And we must consider our own situation at the moment as a small group gathered in Mr Chitfield’s library. From any evidence I have seen we may be in an entirely deserted house, lacking even the company of our host’s friend with the gun. And outside is a congeries of fantastically garbed pleasure-seekers a quarter of a mile thick around us. There are also two policemen in plain clothes, and by this time perhaps several more in uniform as well. I am bound to say that I see a variety of undesirable possibilities, any one of which must be coped with as best we may. But ah! Here is the Chief Constable arrived to help us.’

  15

  Colonel Pride had entered the library without knocking. Framed in the doorway, he stood silent for some moments, apparently viewing without much approval the room’s owner and his two guests. He had abandoned his long-bow, but not his coat or even his hat of Lincoln green. It was the Emir who first spoke – and after glancing from Appleby to Pride and back again.

  ‘Dear me!’ he said. ‘I do not recall seeing members of the English constabulary thus garbed before. No doubt it is full-dress uniform, and assumed in compliment to Mr Chitfield here – or even conceivably to myself.’

  Colonel Pride, who was distinctly unprepared to be entertained by nonsense, took two steps into the room.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I presume you to be the Emir Hafrait. And Sir John Appleby will no doubt have informed you that a man “garbed”, as you would have it, precisely like yourself, and presumably a compatriot and perhaps retainer of your own, has met a violent death here not half an hour ago. His body was discovered in the deserted archery ground, transfixed by an arrow which had been discharged into his back. I can see no possibility of the fatality’s having been any sort of accident. We are dealing with a crime, and one to be seen as only superficially bizarre. The assassin – to choose a term which may be faintly less disagreeable to you than “murderer” – may well have had a firearm in his pocket. But he seized an opportunity of going silently to work. And, of course, necessarily from behind. A close scrutiny from the front might have told him he had the wrong man.’

  ‘My dear Chief Constable, sad as it must seem, I am by no means astounded. Attempts upon my life, or at the seizing of my person, are at present quite the order of the day. And I take such precautions as I can.’

  ‘That, sir, is precisely what I intend to do myself. I have sent for a suitable conveyance – it may be called of the armour-plated sort – to convey you back to London and to your Embassy, or whatever it may be. It wi
ll be here within half an hour. Meanwhile, if you have any information to give, I am prepared to receive it.’

  Appleby, although he had listened to this speech with considerable satisfaction, found it necessary to intervene.

  ‘I certainly agree,’ he said, ‘that Drool Court and its owner will be well advised to dispense with His Excellency’s company as briskly as may be. Indeed, I don’t much like the sound of that half-hour. The murderer and his confederates – for the minimum number of them is three – will certainly know by now that they got the wrong man. And we have to face the fact that we are in an uncommonly vulnerable situation. I know, Tommy, that you may have something in your own pocket. But here we are, in this oddly depopulated mansion, and in a ground-floor room with a door and four windows. A suitable kind of bomb, pitched through any of these apertures, could despatch all four of us in an instant. And I gather that your own couple of men are unarmed – not to speak of their being pretty well lost in the crowd. So there’s absolutely no possibility of quickly throwing any sort of cordon round this uncommonly large house.’

  ‘In half an hour, yes; immediately, no.’ Colonel Pride paused for a moment on this. ‘So just what had we better do?’

  ‘One thing you shall not do.’ It was the Emir who took up the Colonel’s question. ‘And that is to persuade me to leave this house other than in my own motor car.’

  ‘Which is now in the temporary car park?’ Appleby asked.

  ‘Certainly it is.’

  ‘And with a chauffeur waiting in it?’

  ‘Unhappily not. It was the man they have killed who drove me down. But I can very well drive it myself – and in the circumstances I consider that to be the suitable thing. I always carry a key with me.’

  ‘In that case, and as you appear to regard the Chief Constable’s suggestion as demeaning, your own car it will have to be – and as quickly as possible.’

  ‘We’ll send a fellow down with your key,’ Colonel Pride said, ‘and he will bring the car up to the house at once. CD, no doubt; and with a little flag on it as well. It shouldn’t be hard to spot.’

  ‘Just so, Tommy. And spotting is precisely what we don’t want. The Emir must make his way to his car, and not the other way round. Mohammed must go, to the mountain, in fact.’ Appleby paused, glanced at the Emir, and saw that this little quip had been received with extreme disfavour. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘But I hope you take my point. You must be got to your car – and invisibly, so to speak, if it can be managed. Would you consent to quit this house as Robin Hood? I hasten to add that, according to one school of thought, he is believed to have been a great English nobleman. It would leave either the Chief Constable or myself a little bare to the winds for a time. But that would scarcely signify.’

  ‘Certainly not.’ The Emir spoke with decided hauteur. ‘I regard your suggestion as wholly unacceptable.’

  ‘In that case you must go exactly as you are. But – only for a couple of minutes – you must excuse me.’ As he said this, Appleby turned round, strode rapidly across the library, and disappeared through the door by which he had entered it. The three gentlemen thus abruptly abandoned had scarcely time to recover from their surprise at this odd behaviour before Appleby was back with them again. For Appleby it certainly was, although he was now fully attired in Arab costume, and regarding them through out-size dark glasses.

  ‘I hope,’ he asked, ‘that I don’t look too convincing?’

  ‘I can’t say that you do, John.’ Colonel Pride appeared to feel that the occasion required candour. ‘But, even so, how the dickens–’

  ‘A not unengaging young man called Tibby Fancroft abandoned this rig-out in the corridor before proposing to present himself to Mr Chitfield for the purpose of making him an apology. The things seem to fit me not too badly. But I have to look unconvincing, all the same. Let me explain.’

  ‘Perhaps you, too, ought to apologize,’ the Emir said icily. The taking of liberties with his national costume seemed to be invariably a sore point with him.

  ‘It’s like this,’ Appleby said briskly. ‘The would-be assassins became aware quite early in the afternoon that Mr Chitfield’s pseudo-sheiks – as I’ve ventured to call them – were in abundant supply. And they concluded, quite correctly, that they had been persuaded to dress themselves up in this way simply to confuse matters. Moreover they took it for granted – and quite erroneously – that the Emir himself was privy to what was going on. So three of them – and we must always bear in mind that there may be more – hired three Arab costumes, which they are no doubt still wearing now. In this way they thought to make themselves seem particularly harmless. They were adding themselves to the number of those whom the Emir, and anybody concerned for the Emir’s safety, would be entirely off their guard about. And now here is the crucial point. The unfortunate man whom the Emir brought to Drool Court with him having been murdered, the Emir is left, we may say, sui generis. And the last thing he is likely to do is to attach himself to, and converse with, any pseudo-sheik about the place. They are now looking out for an Emir who is decidedly a loner. Which is why he and I are now going to take a ramble together down to the car park. It is also why I hope that I myself look patently bogus. And if Your Excellency will consent to looking a little bogus yourself – shambling along, say, in a distinctly unimpressive manner – I have little doubt that we shall reach your car without anything undesirable happening to us.’

  It might have been expected that this extraordinary speech would be followed by silence, at least for an appreciable space. But what did follow was more extraordinary still. The Emir Hafrait was amused. He was even condescending to laugh. Richard Chitfield, clearly alarmed by something wholly outside his experience of his haughty and severely-mannered guest, gaped rather as if there were suddenly being revealed to him some natural monstrosity such as a two-headed calf. Colonel Pride was merely looking thoughtful and dubious, perhaps estimating how the proposed prank would stand up, if anything untoward happened, before a judge of the High Court.

  ‘A prince,’ the Emir said, ‘pretending to be a plebeian pretending to be a prince. It is a fitting end to the very great piece of nonsense perpetrated here this afternoon. Sir John, I am with you. Let us go.’

  At this moment, however, there came a knock on the library door.

  In fact there came three knocks – the second by no means hurrying after the first, nor the third after the second. The effect was curiously ominous. Colonel Pride’s hand moved towards Robin Hood’s pocket. Sir John Appleby momentarily indulged the thought that if Fate had the habit of knocking on people’s doors other than in a merely metaphorical way this would be just the manner of it. Then the door opened and a tall figure robed in white stood revealed. The tall figure took two solemn paces forward and then raised a solemn arm in the air.

  ‘Grace to Maleldil,’ the intruder said in a deep voice.

  ‘And who the devil are you?’ It was with some difficulty that Mr Chitfield, already somewhat overwrought by the recent turn of events, managed to produce this brusque challenge.

  ‘Grace to Maleldil,’ the mysterious visitant reiterated in a yet deeper tone.

  ‘Grace to Maleldil,’ Appleby said. It was clear to him that here was one of the Basingstoke Druids – perhaps, indeed, the Archdruid, if a hierarchical system existed among them. And he recalled the Order of the Golden Dawn. Certainly the Basingstoke Druids borrowed whatever took their fancy. This peculiar salutation came, he happened to know, from a rather high-toned work of space fiction. But echoing it produced an immediate emollient effect.

  ‘Well, this is it,’ the druid said on a relaxed and colloquial note. ‘Everybody has to be out of the house in twenty minutes. That’s for the Perlustration. It’s only in an empty house that we can do the Perlustration – particularly when it’s with the Asperges. The Asperges don’t work, they don’t, with outsiders around
.’

  ‘Go away. Go away at once.’ Mr Chitfield did his best to assume a commanding manner. ‘We have serious matters to discuss here, and want none of your nonsense. So clear out.’

  ‘It’s your missus we have our contract with.’ The druid’s tone had changed yet again, and verged upon the truculent. ‘“See there’s nobody left in the house,” she said. And that’s why I’m speaking to you now.’

  ‘Oh, very well.’ Mr Chitfield spoke resignedly. It was evident that in domestic matters – and this was in an odd fashion domestic – he was habituated to letting his wife have her way. ‘But I understood there was to be an audience for your event.’

  ‘That’s outside. Chairs and benches are being arranged there now. It’s the candles and torches and the like showing through the windows that your crowd will see. And then the procession to our vehicle. With the Grand Chant, that will be. We’ve made it clear, you know, that the Grand Chant’s another extra.’

  ‘No doubt – and you’re welcome to your imbecile extras. But go away now, and leave us to our affairs.’

  ‘Grace to Maleldil,’ the druid said – and retired with dignity from the library.

  ‘And now we’ll get going,’ Appleby said briskly. ‘But, Tommy, just how is it with this extraordinary fête? Have you simply let it go ahead, despite what has happened to the Emir’s unfortunate follower?’

  ‘Yes.’ The Chief Constable nodded emphatically. ‘It’s known there’s been some sort of accident on that archery field. But I’ve given instruction that what’s actually happened shouldn’t get spread around. If there’s diplomatic dynamite lurking in the affair it’s probably wise to keep a low profile until we get a word from the FO.’