Gay Phoenix

by Michael Innes

  ‘I’m sure you won’t do that, sir. It wasn’t your style, anything of that sort.’ Butter showed no sign of budging. ‘And quite thick we were, in an earlier time.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Povey, who had a martini in front of him, allowed himself an unhurried sip. But his mind wasn’t equally leisured, since the situation was developing in a manner that made rapid thinking necessary. It was perfectly true about his hair. The point, although extremely trivial, was one he ought to have attended to. What ought he to do now? The discreet thing would be to have one more shot at simply shaking Butter off.

  ‘I’ve no doubt you’ve made an honest mistake,’ he said, with a return to a benevolent manner. ‘Quite an amusing mistake, really. All that about hair, and so on.’ He finished his drink, and then pointed to the empty glass. ‘Just ask them to bring me another of those, will you?’ He put his hand in a pocket. ‘And here’s for your trouble.’

  Butter picked up the glass obediently, and accepted the coin. But he stayed put, with that wicked grin on his face again.

  ‘The name’s Butter,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t recall it, sir?’

  What Povey recalled was that Butter was a man of guile. At any moment he might manoeuvre his adversary into a false position. Blank denials, if they had later to be retracted, might prove very awkward indeed.

  ‘Butter?’ Povey repeated. ‘Not so common as Butterfield or Butterworth. But I may well have come across the name.’

  ‘And your own name, sir. It wouldn’t be Povey?’

  This had been a masterly pounce. Blankly to deny one’s true name on challenge seemed a more drastic deception than simply registering in a hotel under a false one. Or so, whether logically or not, it seemed to Arthur Povey now. The result was a moment’s hesitation; and this, in turn, had the effect of somehow giving the game away. He saw that he must fall back on what might be called his second line of defence.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ he said briskly. ‘I’m here incognito, if you know what that means. But my name is certainly Povey. And your own, for that matter, does now come back to me. You had a job at Brockholes as a lad, hadn’t you? And we did get on together quite well. Only you’ve got your Povey boys sadly muddled, I must say. Perhaps it’s not surprising after all those years.’ As he said this, Povey put both his hands on the little table in front of him and drummed on it gently. ‘I’m Charles Povey, not Arthur.’

  ‘Charles Povey?’ Butter repeated the name slowly. It was as if he had been taken aback and was playing for time.

  ‘Your employer’s elder son, not his younger one. I suppose you remember that? My brother Arthur is dead, Butter. He lost his life at sea.’

  ‘I remember Master Charles, all right. And I’ve heard a bit about him since. Became uncommonly wealthy, they say.’

  ‘Not all that wealthy, Butter. But certainly I’m quite prosperous as business people go.’ Povey managed an unconstrained smile. ‘At least I can run to this sort of hotel – and a decent tip to an old acquaintance.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Povey’s smile had brought back Butter’s wicked grin. Or perhaps the reference to a tip had done that; its hint of more cash possibly passing had been a confession of weakness and a mistake. Butter was discernibly baffled, all the same. His gaze had passed from Povey’s face to Povey’s hands; had passed to his mutilated left hand.

  Povey allowed a couple of seconds for the penny to drop.

  ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘I can see you’ve remembered something. And about the right man this time, I hope.’

  ‘Master Charles’ hand was like that. Happened when he was quite a grown lad, it did.’

  ‘It did, indeed. And that clears things up, I think.’

  ‘It must have taken nerve, that must.’

  ‘What’s that?’ It had been less Butter’s words that startled Povey than the sudden respect of the tone in which they had been uttered.

  ‘But nerve you always had, Master Arthur. It looks as if it won’t do to lose it now.’

  ‘Butter, you are talking complete rubbish – and offensive rubbish at that. I am prepared to treat it as that, and let the matter drop if you go away at once. But I warn you that a magistrate might take a much more serious view of your behaviour. It could look very like an attempt to extort money under threat.’

  ‘Come, now, Povey – who has talked about money? Nobody but yourself with your bloody tip. And it’s a fair cop, you know. That hair, that finger, Charles Povey being up to the neck in the lolly, and somebody’s brother lost at sea. It adds up only one way.’

  ‘And just what does it add up to?’ Arthur Povey had turned very pale. He was angry, but he also had to acknowledge to himself that he was thoroughly frightened as well. The feeling came to him chiefly as a sense of isolation and loneliness. Those first moments on board the Gay Phoenix when he had realized his brother was dead and that his only companion was the ocean came back to him vividly as he braced himself to look challengingly at Butter now.

  ‘Partnership, Povey.’

  ‘Partnership! What the devil do you mean?’

  ‘Your partner, I am. That’s what the sum adds up to. And not your sleeping partner, mind you. I’m not that sort – prepared to sit back and collect regular. A bit dull, straight blackmail, if you ask me. I wouldn’t care for it. Scope – that’s what I need. I’ve always known it. Just give me scope, I used to say. But nobody listened. “He’s a damn sight too clever,” they’d say. “I don’t trust him.” Silly of them. Even when they weren’t fools themselves. I wouldn’t call you a fool, you know. But there were times when your wits were the better for having mine added to them. Like when you stole your brother’s money box and couldn’t think who to put the blame on. I got you clear of that one, didn’t I? Coming events, Povey. Coming events casting their shadows before.’

  These remarks considerably impressed Arthur Povey. His recollection of the unfortunate affair of Charles’ money box was not particularly vivid, perhaps because his boyhood had been fairly prolific in episodes involving the irregular transfer of private property. But he did remember, on that occasion as on others, calling Butter to his aid. And if Butter had been clever then, this interview was affording striking testimony that he wasn’t other than clever now. His reasoning had been as sharp as his observation. Within ten minutes of spotting that small idiosyncrasy on the crown of the head of a hotel guest casually remarked, he had cracked Arthur Povey’s secret and possessed himself alike of the basic facts and of the motive of his imposture. The missing index finger hadn’t stumbled him for a moment. He had simply opined (what was perfectly true) that it had taken nerve to mutilate oneself in that way.

  Arthur Povey had got thus far in weighing up these unexpected and alarming facts when it occurred to him that his conversation with Butter had already become injudiciously prolonged. In a hotel of this kind a guest is no doubt privileged to chat affably to a passing servant for as long as he chooses, regardless of the extent to which he is thus keeping that servant from his proper occasions. But in the present colloquy any close observer might already have sensed something a little odd. Indeed, a solitary man a little way down the terrace, although ostensibly dividing his attention between a drink and a newspaper, seemed to Povey to have been sending a searching glance in his direction from time to time. Povey had become very sensitive to anything of this sort. Since his brother’s death, he had achieved what he had set out to do. But as that achievement would be judged highly nefarious if brought within the knowledge of the law, it followed that for Povey, in a strictly literal sense, the price of liberty was eternal vigilance. It was a condition from which he was coming increasingly to feel that it would be agreeable to take occasional time off.

  ‘I think,’ Povey said, ‘we had better continue this discussion elsewhere.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Butter picked up an ashtray from the table, tipped its c
ontents into a bucket he carried, and restored it after a perfunctory rub. ‘But don’t fancy you can cut and run, mate. Not so that it will do you any good. I have my resources, I have. Be up with you in no time.’

  ‘I have no intention of cutting and running. And I’ll meet you as soon as you finish work.’ Povey had regained a measure of confidence. ‘Anywhere you like.’

  ‘Much obliged, I’m sure, sir. And spoken like a perfect gentleman, if the expression may be allowed me.’ Butter accompanied this ironic obsequiousness with his most malicious grin. ‘Cock and Bottle, then, at nine sharp. Opposite the bandstand, it is. So facing the music you’ll be, in a manner of speaking, Mr Charles I-don’t-think Povey.’

  4

  Arthur Povey went in to dinner in a mood of some discouragement. The head waiter was solicitous in his attentions and suggestions, since he had somehow divined this guest’s outstanding financial rating. Povey, however, found he wanted to eat very little. The wine waiter had to hover at his side for a full five minutes – a circumstance extremely irritating to other and thirstier diners – while he scanned the establishment’s entire vinous resources with his attention really wandering elsewhere. He then ordered a bottle of the most expensive claret on the list. This was an unsophisticated act, which lowered him considerably in the wine waiter’s estimation. It was also injudicious, since the further conference with Butter that lay ahead of him eminently called for a clear head. A waiter of inferior consequence wheeled up a trolley of elaborately bedizened scraps, orts and broken meats. Povey eyed these starters with gloom, and plumped for the simplicity of a small pallid chilly fish masquerading as a trout. The waiter evinced a disposition to throw in some mushed-up cauliflower and a spoonful of olives which appeared to aspire to the condition of dried peas. Povey rejected these otiose delights so sharply that several people looked round at him. Then he began his gloomy meal.

  He found, oddly enough, that what at present chiefly rankled with him was the disrespectful character of Butter’s parting words half an hour before. If this horrible man was indeed to become his partner – he told himself – he would at least insist that he keep a civil tongue in his head. But was he really going to put up with Butter? That was the question.

  The simple course with Butter was to make away with him. There was a great deal to be said for this, and Povey considered the possibilities with no strong sensation of novelty. He had quite often evolved vague plans for murdering somebody (particularly his brother Charles), and if he had never got round to the actual deed this was perhaps because of a distracting plurality of candidates at any one time. As in certain sorts of reprehensible reverie, one victim tended to melt into another as the daydream wandered about. But the present actual situation was quite different from any he had ever been implicated in before. Butter stood in a unique relationship to him, unshared by anybody else in the world. Into the mind of no other living soul whatever had there come so much as a suspicion that Arthur Povey was alive and Charles Povey dead.

  Side by side with this perception there must be placed another all-important fact. The annals of fraud no doubt contain the names of impostors and pretenders whose identity had been challenged in one way or another and who had yet successfully maintained their impersonation. Given a little more luck, the celebrated Tichborne Claimant himself might have emerged triumphant from one of the longest trials in English legal history. The vast majority of such hopefuls, however, are virtually done for the moment any responsible person urges a serious doubt about them. Povey was quite clear that he was in this category. Hard as he had worked on the subject, he knew far too little about far too much of Charles’ life to stand the faintest chance with a judge and jury.

  It was true that Butter was a person of very slender consideration. Indeed, it wouldn’t at all surprise Povey to learn that the man had a criminal record. Supposing Butter did try to expose the imposture, he wouldn’t at first find it easy to gain a hearing. But he was quite cunning enough to take this into account, and to frame his plans accordingly. He would set the press on the scent. He would probably even make money out of the thing, and be revelling on the strength of it amid fleshpots and harlots while Povey himself was languishing in jail.

  This was an intolerable picture, which swung Povey strongly in the direction of ingeniously contrived homicide. And at once a further thought sprang up. If to be done at all, twere well it were done quickly. Povey told himself this with rather more cogency, indeed, than Macbeth did. King Duncan had been, as it were, without beans to spill, whereas it was in Butter’s power to upset a whole sizable applecart at any moment. More than this; Butter might at any moment communicate the information which was at present uniquely his, if not to the police, then to some low crony or confederate of his own. Butter would, in fact, be prudent to do something of the sort pretty quickly – or at least to make some arrangement for the future extreme discomfort of Arthur Povey should anything unfortunate happen to Butter himself. It would not escape a man of Butter’s acuteness that he, Povey, was by now harbouring lethal intentions towards him.

  Was it already, perhaps, too late? Povey asked himself this question judicially as he watched the wine waiter replenish his glass with Lafite. Could Butter by now be in a position truthfully to assert that, should ill befall him, the wicked and impudent imposture of Arthur Povey would at once, through some agency impossible to identify or circumvent, be revealed to the yet unknowing world?

  On the whole, this seemed improbable. Butter’s calamitous discovery was scarcely an hour old; scarcely a further hour would pass before the renewed encounter at the Cock and Bottle. The interval was surely insufficient for Butter to decide with any deliberation upon his best means of ensuring his own safety; moreover the secret upon which he had stumbled was potentially so valuable that he would be unlikely to share it with anybody in any haste; he would be more likely to think in terms of depositing in safe keeping of some sort a sealed letter to be opened in the event of his disappearance or death. Whether veraciously or not, he would almost certainly intimate the existence of such an arrangement to Povey in the near future. But nothing of the kind could have happened yet, and it would be implausible in Butter to assert that it had. Moreover Butter could scarcely apprehend the slightest danger to attend the forthcoming business meeting in a respectable public house.

  Could matters be so contrived, however, that this confidence on Butter’s part would turn out to have been misplaced? Was there some neat and safe way of ensuring that the undertakers would be running their tape measure over an obscure hotel employee before the night was out?

  This large question was still with Povey as he drank his third glass. He had some quite wild and desperate thoughts. If in the wretched pub opposite the bandstand he contrived the appearance of a drunken quarrel with Butter and bashed his skull in with a pint pot he would probably get off with a stiff sentence for manslaughter. But would it be any less stiff than what came one’s way for forgery, embezzlement and whatever other crimes and misdemeanours were incidental, in the eyes of the law, to the perfectly rational expedient of taking on the identity of a wealthy elder brother?

  Povey tried again. Could he suggest to Butter that a desirable privacy for their discussion could be obtained by taking a late evening stroll along the virtually deserted pier, and then at a suitable opportunity simply topple his victim into the sea? Unfortunately Butter wasn’t a fool, and if he agreed to such an expedition – which was unlikely in itself – he would take damned good care of himself in the course of it. In fact any proposal which involved taking Butter unawares was a dead duck from the start.

  Another inferior waiter had wheeled up another trolley. Povey stared in a mild nausea at the sticky or glazed or glutinous concoctions it displayed. Some looked so effectively poisonous that he would have given half his fortune to be able to ram Butter’s snout hard into one or other of them. Gloomily, he waved the thing away, and called for Stilton instead. It
was just after this had been scooped out for him that he became aware he was being observed.

  Often enough in a large restaurant, of course, you are conscious of something of the kind. Another guest – usually a solitary one – finds himself with nothing better to do than to take a perfectly idle interest in you. He studies your feeding habits, or speculates on your bank balance or your sexual tastes. Perhaps the man a few tables away was doing no more than this. Povey was disturbed, all the same, and in a moment he realized why; here was the same person who had appeared to be taking an unnecessary and covert interest in Butter and himself earlier in the evening.

  It was possible that the man’s scrutiny proceeded merely from the fact that he believed himself to have recognized, behind the dark glasses, the elusive and mildly interesting Charles Povey. Although extremely wealthy (far wealthier than Arthur in his most sanguine moments had anticipated), Charles had been in no sense a prominent public figure, and identifying him would scarcely be a matter for major excitement. Still, over the past year or so he had been getting increasingly into the press – for the simple reason that, not being Charles but Arthur, he had been obliged rather to play up the elusiveness. It was one of the increasing difficulties of the situation that this reputation for major eccentricity was almost bound to grow. It was already turning up in the gossip columns from time to time. So here was a tolerably familiar and unalarming explanation of why this fellow was intermittently staring at him.

  Povey was alarmed, nevertheless. His new and shocking situation vis-à-vis the abominable Butter was quite enough to account for this; it was a state of affairs that would render anybody jumpy. But some other and obscure factor was at work, and presently it came to him. That afternoon, and while all-unconscious of what impended over him, Arthur Povey had been feeling not only carefree but positively gay, and he had signalized a state of mind not now very familiar to him by entering a flower shop, buying a rose, and causing the young person who sold it to him to arrange it in his buttonhole. It was a pale lemon-yellow rose, perfect in shape, and the young person had named it as a Sir Henry Segrave. Sir Henry Segraves, she added, were rather hard to come by at the moment.