The Dog It Was That Died and Other Plays
Page 4
BLAIR:Oh yes. I’ll let you have it back, of course.
PURVIS: I’d like you to keep it. Find a place for it in your folly.
BLAIR:Most kind of you. Well, I ought to be getting back.
PURVIS: Thank you for coming.
BLAIR:Let me give you a push up the hill.
PURVIS: No, I’ll stay here for a while. I’ll manage. I like looking at the sea.
BLAIR:As for that other matter . . . You never told Rashnikov anything which Gell hadn’t told you to tell him, did you?
PURVIS: I never knew anything which Gell hadn’t told me.
BLAIR:Well, there you are.
PURVIS: And I never knew anything to tell Gell which Rashnikov hadn’t told me.
BLAIR:So the whole thing is rather academic, isn’t it?
PURVIS: Thank you for understanding, Blair.
BLAIR:Cheerio, then.
PURVIS: Goodbye, Blair.
SCENE 8
Interior. Funeral service.
A choir. Then BLAIR and HOGBIN conversing under the singing.
BLAIR:I thought I might find you here, Hogbin. Still worrying?
HOGBIN:Yes, sir.
BLAIR:Too late to worry now.
HOGBIN:Too late for Purvis, you mean.
BLAIR:Yes, poor Purvis. We were all at fault, especially me.
HOGBIN:Why?
BLAIR:Well, one asks oneself. . . with the benefit of hindsight, was Clifftops the ideal place to put a man who had a tendency to fling himself from a great height into a watery grave. Of course, one didn’t realize it was a tendency, one thought it was a one-off, but even so . . .
HOGBIN:You think he jumped?
BLAIR: (Sighs.) What now?
HOGBIN:Just asking.
BLAIR:He wheeled. He rolled.
HOGBIN:Has anyone thought of checking the brakes on that wheelchair, sir?
BLAIR:The wheelchair has not surfaced, Hogbin. Can you think of anyone who required Purvis’s death, or even stood to gain by it?
HOGBIN:He had friends in High . . .
(The organ drowns him momentarily.)
BLAIR:High places?
HOGBIN:Highgate. But then one would need to know more about that than I’m allowed to know. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what I’m doing here.
BLAIR:You’re checking out the mourners. That’s what you’re doing here, Hogbin. You smell a mystery. You’re looking for a lead. And as is often the case after sudden death, a good place to start looking is the funeral. Any interesting mourners? Anybody unusual? Unexpected? Anybody who looks wrong? Too aloof? Too engaged? Too glamorous?
HOGBIN:I spotted her. Any idea who she is?
BLAIR:None. Have you spotted Hoskins?
HOGBIN:Hoskins?
BLAIR:Third from the end with the eyelashes.
SCENE 9
Exterior. Churchyard.
The VICAR is saying goodbye to the mourners.
VICAR:Goodbye . . . goodbye . . . sad occasion . . . would have been so pleased . . . goodbye . . . goodbye..
HOGBIN:Thank you, reverend. A beautiful service. The choristers in glorious voice.
VICAR:Thank you . . . Mr . . . ?
HOGBIN:Hogbin.
VICAR:I noticed you at the back of the church, with the other gentleman. Were you colleagues of Mr Purvis’s?
HOGBIN:Mr Blair is representing the firm. I was following in Purvis’s footsteps. Perhaps I could walk along with you for a moment?
VICAR:I’m only going to the vicarage. We can take the side gate. We weren’t quite sure what exactly Mr Purvis was doing.
HOGBIN:Quite. Incidentally, that lady in the red dress with the fingernails . . .
VICAR:She lodged with Mr Purvis in Church Street. Quite innocently, of course. One has to make the point nowadays, on the rare occasions when one is able to make it. I only met her once, a Turkish lady. She’s a ballet dancer.
HOGBIN:Did you say ballet dancer or belly dancer?
VICAR:Ballet dancer. At least, I assumed she said ballet dancer. But now I come to think of it she does seem rather the wrong shape, and when I asked her where she danced she said Rotherhithe. Do you think she might possibly be a belly dancer?
HOGBIN:I’d put money on it. Let me hold the gate for you.
VICAR:Would you care for a spot of cheese?
HOGBIN:Thank you very much.
SCENE 10
Interior.
VICAR:Try this one, Mr Hogbin. This is a Caerphilly.
HOGBIN: (With mouthful!) Welsh? I was going to ask you—
VICAR:Hardly any Caerphilly made in Wales any more—mostly in Somerset. A hundred years ago every farmhouse in that part of South Wales made its own cheese. A hundred and fifty years ago—what do you think?
HOGBIN:I don’t know.
VICAR:It wasn’t made at all! It’s a newcomer, invented for the miners, makes an ideal meal underground, doesn’t dry up, very digestible, and you can make it in two or three hours using hardly more than its own weight in milk. A Cheddar needs ten times its own weight in milk.
HOGBIN:I like toasted cheese. Welsh rarebit. Incidentally, Purvis mentioned—
VICAR:Now your cheese for Welsh rarebit is red Leicester. It’ll never be so fine as a Cheshire because it doesn’t go on maturing the same way, it’s ready at three months, good for nine, finished at a year. But it’s the best English cheese for melting. The orange colour is a tint, of course—carrot juice originally, but since the eighteenth century tinted with annatto, an extract from the Bixa orellana tree from the West Indies. You need one dram to every two and a half gallons of milk.
HOGBIN:Amazing.
VICAR:I’m always glad to meet a man who appreciates cheese.
HOGBIN:Did Purvis appreciate cheese . . . on toast perhaps?
VICAR:One doesn’t like to speak ill of the dead, but I tell you now that Purvis may have liked the odd piece of cheese but he knew nothing about it, nothing at all. Purvis was a man who would melt an Epoisses on a slice of Mother’s Pride as soon as look at you.
HOGBIN:An Epoisses?
VICAR:Purvis blamed the choir, but I’m not convinced. You would have really liked my Epoisses. I brought it back from Dijon. I chose one which had been renneted with fennel. The curd is milled, salted and then refined on rye straw. As soon as the mould starts forming the cheese is soaked in Marc de Bourgogne, an eau-de-vie distilled from local grape pulp. A beautiful thing, brick red on the outside, of course.
HOGBIN:Of course.
VICAR:I put it in the vestry because it can’t abide central heating. That was a Wednesday.
HOGBIN:Don’t tell me Purvis . . . ?
VICAR:Cut a great wedge out of it. The electric grill was still warm. I held up Matins for ten minutes while I searched the vestry for evidence.
HOGBIN:Did you find any?
VICAR:A half-eaten rarebit in Purvis’s hymn book.
HOGBIN:An unsavoury business.
SCENE 11
Interior.
BLAIR’S chiming and striking clocks signal one o’clock. They require a spread of several seconds between them.
PAMELA: Come and sit down, Giles. Soup’s getting cold.
(BLAIR grunts.)
Are you going back to the office after lunch?
BLAIR:I suppose so.
PAMELA: Your funeral seems to have got you down.
BLAIR:It wasn’t exactly my funeral.
PAMELA: Well, don’t stand there brooding and looking out at the rain. What’s worrying you?
BLAIR:Just thinking . . . I could have had a rustic pagoda.
(A late clock strikes the hour.)
The Graham bracket isn’t itself, it’s sickening for something. I’m pretty sure I know what it is. I’ll have a look at it at the weekend. I think I’ve run out of copper sheeting
. . . if I write down what I need could you pick some up for me from that place in Pimlico?
BLAIR:It would be quite convenient for you, if you are in the vicinity, it’s practically next door to Eaton Square.
PAMELA: Proximity and convenience aren’t necessarily the same thing. Well, I’ll try to fit it in.
(Doorbell.)
Are you expecting someone?
BLAIR:Half expecting. I’ll go and see.
(He goes through a door.)
Don’t worry Mrs Ryan, I’ll get it!
(He opens the front door.)
Come in, Hogbin.
HOGBIN:I’m sorry to . . .
BLAIR:It’s all right, I was half expecting you.
HOGBIN:Only half?
BLAIR:I was half expecting you to come here and half expecting you to telephone me to meet you in the park.
(He closes the door.)
Come in.
HOGBIN:Thank you, sir.
(BLAIR closes a second door.)
BLAIR:An interesting little funeral.
HOGBIN:Yes. I hardly know where to begin.
BLAIR:You talked to the vicar, of course.
HOGBIN:Yes.
BLAIR:A parochial scandal, as scandals go. I don’t think for a moment that Purvis was guilty.
HOGBIN:Of what, exactly, Mr Blair?
BLAIR:Purvis wasn’t your left-wing book-club type who would do down his vicar.
HOGBIN:What type was Purvis?
BLAIR:I would say he was loyal.
HOGBIN:Did you know he had an invitation to Buckingham Palace? To a garden party?
BLAIR:Yes. As a matter of fact I rather put it his way. The Department was due for one and, speaking for myself, I don’t get much of a thrill any more from queueing up for a cup of tea and a fancy cake.
HOGBIN:He was going to take his lodger. She was most disappointed that the invitation was not transferable.
BLAIR:The belly dancer?
HOGBIN:Exactly. I said there was something funny about Purvis’s letter. And that’s what it was—it’s all true.
BLAIR:Well, of course.
(Door opens.)
PAMELA: Giles—
BLAIR:Darling, this is Mr Hogbin, a policeman. My wife, Pamela . . .
HOGBIN: (Overcome with embarrassment) Oh . . . how do you do . . . Mrs Blair . . .
PAMELA: How do you do, Mr Hogbin—please sit down.
HOGBIN:Thank you—oh! Sorry! I’m terribly sorry! I sat on your parrot.
PAMELA: It’s not as bad as it looks, he was already dead. Giles, do remove him. I’ve given up on lunch. I’m off to see Don Juan—he hasn’t been getting his oats. See you later perhaps, Mr Hogbin.
(She leaves, closing the door.)
BLAIR:You were saying.
HOGBIN:Yes. I’m awfully sorry.
BLAIR:What about? Oh, I see, yes. Would you like to give me the parrot? Thank you.
HOGBIN:Look, sir, if everything in Purvis’s letter is true . . .
BLAIR:Oh, it’s true all right.
HOGBIN:It’s a situation. A bit of a bombshell.
BLAIR:Oh, come now. What sort of fool do you take me for?
HOGBIN:You mean you knew it was true?
BLAIR:Of course. One mustn’t get over-dramatic about these things. One must try to be civilized about them. Keep them in the family.
HOGBIN:But surely, sir . . . the head of Q6 . . . an opium den in his own house. . .
BLAIR:Oh, that. That’s a different matter. On that subject I would be inclined to say . . . that one mustn’t get overdramatic about these things.
HOGBIN:Over-dramatic? I don’t see how one can be overdramatic. You asked me a few days ago who might want Purvis out of the way. It looks as if the answer is your Chief.
BLAIR:Why? I don’t follow.
HOGBIN:An opium den in Eaton Square?!
BLAIR:Hogbin, you’re in danger of making yourself look foolish. Too many tuppenny dreadfuls in your childhood reading. You and Purvis. A shiver of delicious horror runs right through your Farnham Royal morality. Opium den! The quintessence of moral depravity combined with dubious foreign habits. The Chief stoned to the eyeballs in a brocade dressing-gown, beating a gong when he is ready for the other half. Look, I’ve been in his den. TV, hi-fi, books, writing desk, dead animals poking their heads out of the wall, Axminster on the floor. It’s not an opium den, it’s a den. And to him, enjoying an occasional pipe would be simply a souvenir of a Far Eastern posting. Something brought home in the baggage like a carved ivory elephant. It isn’t some ghastly secret for which you drive all the way to Cromer in order to tamper with the brakes of a wheel-chair. You really are absurd, Hogbin.
HOGBIN:Are you trying to tell me to forget all about it?
BLAIR:Certainly not. You must make your report and give it to your Chief.
HOGBIN:That’s what I intend to do. Mr Wren may have a different attitude.
BLAIR:I doubt it. In any case, if I were you I wouldn’t bother Mr Wren with your murder theory.
HOGBIN:Why?
BLAIR:Because I had another farewell letter from Purvis.
SCENE 12
Purvis letter.
PIJRVIS: Dear Blair. Well, goodbye again, assuming that I don’t fall into a fishing boat. Please don’t feel badly. Suicide is no more than a trick played on the calendar. You may like to know that whether or not I left the fold all those years ago when my intellect aspired to rule my actions, I found at the end that my remaining affinity was with the English character, a curious bloom which at Clifftops merely appears in its overblown form. Looking around at the people I’ve rubbed up against, I see that with the significant exception of my friend in Highgate they all inhabit a sort of Clifftops catchment area; if we lowered our entry qualifications we would be inundated. I find this reassuring. I realize I am where I belong, at last, even though, in common with all the other inmates, I have the impression that I am here by mistake while understanding perfectly why everybody else should be here. In this respect Clifftops has an effect precisely opposite to being in a Marxist discussion group. I’m grateful to you for our chat. It led me to think about Gell and the way he used to wear hunting pink to the office in the season, and the way he used to complain about not being able to eat asparagus without dripping the butter after the first time he broke his neck, and I thought I couldn’t have lied to Gell, not to Gell, not for a mere conviction. The man was so much himself that one would have been betraying him instead of the system. I hope I’m right, though I would settle for knowing that I’m wrong. Oddly enough, my friend from Highgate came to visit me, or rather to meet me at the boundary of the fence, and he tells me that the reason Rashnikov disappeared was that he had been recalled under suspicion of having been duped by Gell and me. Rashnikov said there was a logical reason why this should have been the impression given, but unfortunately he died of a brainstorm while trying to work it out. You might say that the same happened to me. My regards to your good lady. Yours sincerely, Rupert Purvis.
SCENE 13
Interior.
A cosy atmosphere. All three men, the CHIEF, WREN and BLAIR are smoking pipes.
BLAIR:There is something else, sir.
CHIEF: Yes. This dog. Now let’s be reasonable about this, Wren. Quite unexpectedly the bargee has sent in a bill for three hundred pounds, claiming that his wretched dog was a member of the Kennel Club and runner up in his class in the South of England Show. Is that correct, Blair?
BLAIR:Quite correct, sir, but . . .
WREN: I don’t dispute any of that. I’m only saying that the dog was killed, in effect, by Q6, not by Q9.
CHIEF: We killed him but your man Hogbin filed the report confirming the dog’s death as an incident during his own case. All the paper work is Q9, and, crucially, the bill for the dog was sent to Q9.