Gay Phoenix

by Michael Innes

  ‘Thank you for nothing, ma’am.’ Mrs Corp, it was plain, was still in a shockingly disaffected mood. ‘Sammy, my poor lamb, you come with me.’ And Mrs Corp grabbed her rejected son – actually reached up, indeed, and took him by the ear – and marched firmly off down the avenue.

  Judith watched them go, and then took another look at Brockholes. She found she wanted to have nothing more to do with the place. She would impress upon John how right he had been in his pious reflection that the new situation there was no business of theirs. The Warren Hastings de nos jours, clearly, had miscalculated in any supposition that the rural populace of Daylesford would turn out with banners to welcome the restored fortunes of his house. It looked as if he was going to prove a most undesirable influence in the district at large.

  And now she had better go home. But Mrs Corp, or more probably Mrs Corp’s son, had upset her slightly. And the house was still glaring at her in what appeared a malign way. She found she didn’t want to retreat down the avenue, with this phenomenon behind her and the possibility of again encountering the pausing Corps ahead. She decided on a small detour through the seclusion of the park.

  The park was untended and untidy – and had never, indeed, been a very impressive specimen of its kind. There were a few large trees of the isolated and splendid sort, but in the main it was an affair of small clumps and spinneys. She covered this terrain briskly, and found that the house, although she was presently viewing it in flank, was still intermittently very much in evidence. Then she spotted a kestrel, a more satisfactory sight, and followed its flight. It hovered, swooped, and disappeared behind one of the spinneys. On the edge of this she remarked something else: the stump of what must have been a large tree, standing in a cleared space. Its girth was considerable, and it was about six feet high. Trees are not commonly felled at that inconvenient height, and as she walked towards it she was faintly puzzled. She was a good deal more puzzled when the stump bestirred itself and moved on.

  Trees don’t commonly take constitutionals – or only, she told herself, in The Lord of the Rings. Perhaps she was in the presence of an Ent.

  It was, of course, what is called a hide. It was a hide of the portable sort, such as lovers of wild nature are solicited by their manufacturers to acquire in the interest of birdwatching. There was presumably a birdwatcher inside. Judith, although sceptical about the merits of these particular contraptions, was a birdwatcher herself, and having come up fairly close to the thing before identifying it, she now stood still so as not to disturb anything that the concealed student might be in process of observing. But now the truncated tree took another and quite bustling toddle, so positioning itself that she could distinctly see the aperture behind which a pair of field glasses glinted. There didn’t seem to be anything much to reward their scrutiny; in fact there demonstrably wasn’t a bird in sight. Then an odd thing happened; from somewhere on the drive came the sound of a motor car, and the headless Ent immediately swung round in that direction. When nothing became visible, it swung back again. Judith suddenly realized that what was under scrutiny was not the feathered songsters of the grove but Brockholes Abbey. The oddity of this prompted her, in turn, to odd and thoroughly reprehensible conduct on her own part. She picked up a stone and hurled it at the hide as hard as she possibly could.

  Since Judith was a sculptress by profession, the musculature of her arms was commonly in very fair trim. Moreover, her aim was good. The impact of the stone upon the fabric of which the hide was constructed must have been considerable: quite enough to make the person tightly encased in it wonder whether he had been hit by a bullet or charged by a bull. The sides of the hide were shoved apart from within, and the flimsy structure fell to the ground. Judith found herself confronted by a justifiably angry middle-aged man.

  But not by a birdwatcher. The man’s mere attire confirmed Judith in this conviction, since he was dressed in rather seedy city clothes of the black jacket and pinstripe order. One felt that the effect ought to have been crowned by a bowler hat. Alternatively, he might have been wearing a soft hat with the brim snapped down well over his eyes, together with a raincoat of which the collar was raised well above his ears. He suggested either a member of the criminal classes or a person professionally obliged to consort with such. Judith didn’t take to him. She addressed him, however, in a tone of marked sympathy.

  ‘Did the bird peck you?’ she asked.

  ‘The bird?’ The man glared round him indignantly. ‘I don’t see any bloody bird.’

  ‘Oh, what a pity! It was a twite. A great twite, of course. They’re extremely rare in this country, and you may never have a chance to see one again. In Venezuela it’s called the bomber bird. Because it dive bombs – just as it did you.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. There’s no such bird as a twite. You’ve made it up.’ The man glared at Judith, unconscious that he had thus totally exploded his pretensions as an ornithologist. ‘You’ve assaulted me. You might have caused me grievous bodily harm. I’ll have you summonsed.’

  ‘If you do, you’ll have to explain what you were up to, skulking inside that idiotic thing in this park.’

  ‘I was watching birds. That’s lawful, that is.’

  ‘That story wouldn’t stand up for five minutes. You don’t know a wren from an owl. I think you’d better explain yourself.’

  ‘It’s no business of yours. You’re not the owner here – nor his agent either. So you can clear out.’

  ‘I’m a citizen,’ Judith said. ‘Or is it a citizenness? Anyway, it’s my duty to take notice of any breach of the law. And what you are about, my man, is clear enough. Loitering with intent to commit a felony. No experienced magistrate could have a doubt of it. You are in the grounds of Brockholes Abbey, a house into which a great deal of valuable property has just been moved. And your job is to case the joint for a break in.’

  ‘It’s nothing of the kind!’ The angry man was now alarmed as well. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I ought to. I’m the wife of a policeman.’

  ‘In those clothes? You’re as likely to be the wife of a rat-catcher.’

  ‘You may even have heard of him. John Appleby.’ Judith saw that this announcement had created an effect. ‘And I shall drop in at the local police station and report this on my way home,’ she said. ‘Good afternoon.’

  ‘Here, wait a minute!’ The spurious ornithologist was fumbling in a pocket. ‘I got to give you my card, I have. The firm’s card. That’s our instructions when risk of misunderstanding occurs in the course of our legitimate employment. Here it is, Mrs Appleby – Lady Appleby, as it must be. You’ll have heard of us, I hope. A highly reputable and ethical concern, I need hardly say.’

  ‘I don’t think I want your card.’ Judith had glanced at it and handed it back. ‘And it still doesn’t explain just what you’re up to.’

  ‘Ah, Lady Appleby, that’s another matter. We have very strict instructions there. Authenticate ourselves on demand – demand by a responsible person like yourself, that is. But everything beyond that is confidential. Confidentiality is our keyword, Lady Appleby. It has to be, I’m sure you will understand, in all high-class private investigation. And ours is very high-class, very high-class indeed. Crowned Heads have come to us, Lady Appleby, to say nothing of Cabinet Ministers and people of that sort. Should you ever require our services, it will be our most sincere endeavour to give every satisfaction. Satisfaction is the firm’s motto, I need hardly say. So contact us at any time, Lady Appleby, without hesitation. Perhaps I might mention that matrimonial difficulties are our special line. Elegance, taste, economy are our watchwords for the way we go about things. Our professional standards are rigid, and our results rapid and reliable. It may truly be said of my colleagues that they come as a boon and a blessing to men.’

  The unmasked private eye (as he must be called) now laughed easily – possibly
to indicate that these ancient slogans were facetiously intended. But he laughed to empty air. Lady Appleby had turned and walked away.

  PART THREE

  Povey at Bay

  8

  Arthur Povey (now Charles Povey) and Butter (now Bread) eyed one another across the dinner table without much cordiality. They commonly dined together, and this was an index of the degree of control which Povey’s secretary had come to exercise over his life and affairs. Butter – Povey had freely to acknowledge it – was a very smart chap. Although prone at times to regress upon the racy idiom of the folk, he could now put up (or so Povey judged) a very credible appearance as a minor associate of important persons. He talked a kind of modified posh which, although impure to Povey’s authentic U-type ear, was perfectly adequate to his own middling station. But what was chiefly remarkable about him was his flair as a psychologist. ‘You’ve got to take them the way they tick’ was his constant advice to his employer – and he would then explain how they did tick. This ability was not, indeed, a wholly adequate substitute for any sort of knowledge of how Big Business is run. At least in the narrower technical sense, his ignorance here exceeded even that of Arthur Povey himself. On the other hand, Butter’s former criminal career had for many years transacted itself at least within hail of robberies, frauds, forgeries and protection rackets on a very large scale, and he seemed not to find any very different climate obtaining in the world of high finance to which he had now been introduced. The City and the East End, it had to be supposed, although exhibiting to a superficial gaze markedly contrasting styles of life, were both inclined to smile upon persons who ticked after a more or less identical fashion.

  An impostor who has expected to find himself in the enjoyment of a large yet compassable competence, but who instead of this is obliged to boss, or seem to boss, a ramifying financial empire, is patently in need of the sharpest wits that he can summon to his elbow. And Butter could scarcely be faulted here. His skill in getting his principal out of tight corners – once so famously exemplified in the matter of Charles Povey’s money box – had been demonstrably on several occasions the sole means of smothering suspicions which, had they been allowed air, must infallibly have resulted in putting Arthur Povey in jail.

  Where Butter had disappointed Povey had been on what may be termed the romantic side of his nature. Butter had rejected outright the achieving of an easy affluence in the form of a suitcase stuffed with ten-pound notes. He had done so in the spirit of an active adventurer, for whom a bizarre impersonation was to be but the stepping stone to further hazardous conquests. If he had hitherto failed here (and the whole project, after all, was nebulous), the fault had not been entirely his. Povey, a fair-minded man, was constrained to admit this. Almost from the first, he and his associate had been thrown on the defensive, and this on several fronts. It is fortunately unnecessary (since it would be tedious) to enter into a detailed examination of the deceased Charles Povey’s affairs. The simple fact is that they had proved perplexed in a degree not anticipated by his hopeful brother (and supplanter) when weighing his future chances amid the solitude of the Pacific Ocean. A blessed innocence, he now knew, had been his companion on board the Gay Phoenix.

  He had never, it was true, thought of Charles as other than a bit of a rascal. Rascality, after all, ran in the Povey blood. Even the musical Povey, founder of the family’s fortunes, had distinguishably had his shady aspect. Arthur had been acute enough to scent that. Nevertheless Povey Senior had kept on the right side of the law. He had been an Alderman; he had been the Master of a Livery Company; his name had been much in demand as a director of the most respectable concerns. But Charles was different. Even at the height of his success (so tragically cut short by that clout on the head) such accolades had somehow eluded him. For years – to put it brutally – he couldn’t have known quite what was going to catch up on him. And then he had died – and Arthur had stepped into his increasingly pinching shoes. Butter, equally with his patron, had found himself accepting this inheritance. Their joint lives had become, in the main, a succession of holding operations, each tumbling on the other. Butter – to his credit be it said – seemed to enjoy this posture of affairs more than Povey did.

  ‘That damned ring fence,’ Povey said when his butler had withdrawn from the dining-room, ‘–I don’t see the sense of it. It’s going up in absurd patches; it’s grotesquely obtrusive; and it wouldn’t keep out a cat.’

  ‘It isn’t meant to, old cock.’ Butter – or Bread – had preserved the very bad habit of offensively familiar address to his employer as soon as they were alone. ‘It’s the image that counts. For you have to face it, you know. Your honeymoon period is over. The money’s there – or in a short-term way it’s there – but you’ll revel in it only in remote corners of the globe. A dash to your private jet and a month’s riotous living at Montego Bay: that’s you now, my boy. Otherwise, it’s the recluse, and with the accent on a dash of dottiness behind it. The remote control going yet remoter still. Become a legend in that way, and you may survive into a green old age. Muck around, run into somebody who suspects something, and you’re a goner, my lad. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘Then you’ll be a goner too.’

  ‘In a different sense, I hope.’ And Butter produced his irritating wicked grin. ‘Over the hills and far away: that will be yours truly.’

  Povey allowed himself a snarl. It was becoming his answer to the grin. Intermittently at least, he was inclined to recall with resentment the manner in which Butter had first imposed their partnership upon him. On the other hand, their curious nocturnal adventure, and the change of heart which had accompanied it on his own part, seemed to have produced a genuine affection of sorts in Butter. Should a crash come, it was certainly true that Butter would bolt if he could. But Povey accepted this as quite in line with his own vision of things, and on the whole their failures in accord didn’t last long. It was in what might be termed no more than a key of minor discontent that Povey spoke next.

  ‘That woman you told me about,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you should have set the dogs on her.’

  ‘I didn’t. I just had them accompany us to the front door. You wouldn’t have had me waste time on her and her idiot son, would you?’

  ‘He really is an idiot?’

  ‘Completely moronic. His attempts at talk don’t come to more than a kind of slobbering.’

  ‘There was never anything of that sort in the family.’

  ‘Well, that’s a confession, that is.’ Butter was amused. ‘Ought I to have welcomed him home? Or turned over the family jewels to his ma?’

  ‘Of course not. But it’s devilish awkward, people remembering that sort of thing about Charles. And I expect others will turn up. This whole plan has been a mistake, if you ask me. It’s running my head into a noose, coming back to Brockholes.’

  ‘It’s nothing of the kind. It’s good psychology, my boy, or I’d never have thought it up. Buying the old Povey home and settling in is the one thing no impostor would ever dream of. And it’s good for your ego, too.’

  ‘I can’t say I feel it that way.’ Arthur Povey brooded darkly, and for several minutes, indeed, seemed to lose himself in a deep absence of mind. ‘And he’s not my child!’ he suddenly shouted strangely.

  ‘What’s that?’ Butter (now Bread) sat up abruptly on his chair.

  ‘I say there’s no real reason to suppose this Corp woman’s imbecile is Charles’ son at all.’ Povey had looked momentarily bewildered. ‘It’s an impudent imposture.’

  ‘Well, you’re an authority on that.’ Butter eyed his employer narrowly. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I’m all right. And then there was this man you say called himself Appleby. I don’t like the sound of him.’

  ‘That’s a different matter. No more do I.’

  ‘Some sort of local squire, you say
. But I don’t remember any Applebys in these parts. And I would, if they were really in that walk of life.’

  ‘No reason why you should. He’s a newcomer, comparatively speaking. But I remembered him. Recognized him at once.’ Butter paused warily; he had a stiff new fence to get over in vindicating his competent handling of things. ‘He ran the London fuzz, old boy. When he retired he was their bloody top man.’

  ‘Good God, that Appleby!’ Povey was aghast. ‘I’ve heard of him, all right. What’s he doing, nosing round here?’

  ‘Nothing very much, I’d say. But I looked him up as soon as he went away. Long ago, he married a woman who inherited a place called Long Dream Manor. Name of Raven.’

  ‘Well, I’m damned!’ Povey was as astonished as alarmed. ‘I remember them, although we didn’t know them very well. All as mad as hatters. And they ran to morons quite often, people said. It was a Raven father that boy had, if you ask me! What the hell was this fellow doing, poking in pretty well the moment we’ve arrived? And what the hell did you mean yattering to him? He was the one to set the dogs at.’

  ‘Come, come – no panic, old cock.’ Butter, if not quite at ease, spoke in easy tones. ‘He’s the very man to feed the story to. The last man anybody would think could have any wool pulled over his eyes. So just pull it, good and hearty, and you’ve played a trump card.’

  ‘Which is more psychology, I suppose.’ Povey, before whom stood a decanter of port, applied himself nervously to this refreshment. ‘You spotted Appleby. What about Appleby spotting you?’