Operation Pax

by Michael Innes

  ‘I see.’ Jane was impressed by this professional clarity.

  ‘So it looks as if our best course will be simply to inquire for it when we get into the neighbourhood you think it’s making for.’

  ‘That’s what I think.’ Jane was relieved. Roger Remnant appeared disposed to take it as all in a day’s work.

  ‘Is it really an ambulance, or is there something queer about it?’

  Jane jumped on her swaying seat. She hadn’t expected this swift perspicacity. ‘It – it’s something queer.’

  ‘I expect we’ll find it. Do you know the country?’

  ‘Not very well.’

  ‘There are some maps in the pocket on the door on your left. You’d better sit back and do a bit of work on them.’

  The map that looked most hopeful was an ancient one on a scale of eight miles to an inch. Jane learnt what she could from it. Finding the area involved, she ran to earth, despite the jolting of the car, a small black point marked ‘Milton’. Towards this, and from a secondary road some miles away, an unobtrusive scratch moved indecisively before petering out. The place must be decidedly in what is called the heart of the countryside. She looked about her and saw that they were already in rural solitude. There was an empty road before them, with nobody in sight except two trudging women with rucksacks. It was good walking weather. The autumn day was like a great cup of sunlight. She thought of the wretched little man shut up in the near-darkness of the bogus ambulance, of the sinister power that had edged him out of the security of the upper reading-room, of the alarming efficiency with which he had then been dealt with in what could have been no more than a few seconds free from public observation. And she suddenly felt cold. The Cotswold air, perhaps, was chilly despite the clear sunshine.

  The drive seemed endless. But eventually she was aware that they had left the high road, and were plunging down what was no more than a lane between high hedges. The proximity of these magnified her sense of the speed at which the car was travelling; sometimes a projecting branch whipped its sides with the effect of a momentary hailstorm; she wondered what would happen if they met a farm wagon, or a straying horse or cow. Roger took a right-angled turn almost without slackening pace, so that the racing wheels and strained chassis gave a squeal of protest. ‘No call for alarm,’ he said. ‘Tyres just a trifle in need of air… Here’s another one.’ They cornered again by a small half-obliterated signpost that Jane failed to decipher. It had a look of local enterprise, and suggested recesses of the region so obscure as to be beyond the interest of any county authority. They rounded a bend and a scattering of cottages appeared before them. ‘My guess,’ Roger Remnant said, ‘is that this is it.’ And he brought the car to a halt.

  The place consisted of no more than six or eight cottages. Jane jumped out. The car had been travelling so fast that her feet for a moment felt unsteady under her.

  ‘There doesn’t seem to be much life.’ Roger Remnant too had got out and was surveying the hamlet. ‘And we’re too early for tea – or too late by about twenty years.’ He pointed to a board, depending by one remaining nail from the side of the nearest cottage, which forlornly announced the presence of this facility. ‘Not a tourist centre. Nothing ye olde. But there’s a school farther down the lane. That means there are probably other little places like this round about.’ He sniffed. ‘It smells of pigs.’

  Jane moved to the side of the lane and peered into the garden of the cottage with the superannuated sign. It was a wilderness of weeds from which protruded, like wrecks in a fabled Sargasso sea, the rotting remains of a few home-made tables and benches. ‘It’s a sort of shop,’ she said. ‘And a post office as well. I’ll go in.’

  ‘Give a shout if you want help.’ Remnant spoke humorously – but Jane, looking at his eyes for the first time, saw that they were grey and serious. ‘Now or later.’

  ‘I will.’ She walked to the front of the cottage and pushed open the door. A small cracked bell feebly tinkled. There was a little room with a counter, and a surprising variety of wares exposed for sale. These latter all contrived to look thoroughly dreary. The place was so dismal that it was possible to feel the dismalness seeping even inside the tins. And there was still a smell of pigs.

  The bell had been without effect. The little shop was untenanted. Jane tapped on the counter. Presently there was a response to this from some interior recess: the sound of an unwieldy body moving low on the ground, accompanied by a loud and displeasing snuffling.

  Jane had a moment of panic. Milton Porcorum… Perhaps she was really in the middle of a nightmare, and it had brought her to the land of the pigs. The whole hamlet would prove to be veritably inhabited only by Pigling Blands – by little pigs going to market, and little pigs staying at home. She would find nothing but a dumb and bestial rout…mute inglorious Miltons with trotters and curly tails. Or perhaps she had come to the land of Circe and her swine…

  ‘Yes?’ The old woman who had appeared in a doorway was lumbering and stout; she snuffled; and she had a mottled and unwholesome complexion, definitely suggestive of a Gloucester Old Spot. But at least she was endowed with speech.

  ‘Is this Milton Porcorum?’

  ‘It be.’ Any faint suggestion of cordiality that might have been read in the old woman’s expression decidedly faded. ‘You’ll have lost your way.’ She spoke with sombre conviction, born, no doubt, of many similarly unremunerative tinklings at her bell and tappings on her counter. ‘Just go straight on.’

  ‘But,’ said Jane, ‘if you don’t know where I want to go–’

  ‘Go straight on.’

  It was like something particularly exasperating in Alice in Wonderland. Jane tried again. ‘I’m not quite sure of the place I want. But it’s where the ambulances go.’

  ‘I never heard of any ambulances. We’re all healthy here.’

  ‘I’m sure you are.’ Jane hastened to declaim any reflection upon the salubrity of the Milton Porcorum air.

  ‘It’s at Canonicorum you’ll find folk going sick. They’ve an ill wind at Canonicorum.’

  ‘Canonicorum?’

  ‘Milton Canonicorum.’ The old woman enunciated the words with perceptible distaste.

  ‘I see. But I’m thinking of ambulances that bring people – patients from quite a long way off. Is there some hospital–’

  ‘There’s nothing of the sort here. Canonicorum’s the place for carryings on. There’s talk of a cinema.’

  ‘You don’t happen, in the last hour or so, to have seen an ambulance? An ambulance with–’

  ‘You’d better try Canonicorum.’

  Jane decided it was hopeless. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I will try Canonicorum. But how do I get there?’

  ‘I’ve told you, haven’t I? Go straight on.’

  The old woman turned and vanished – snuffling, as she had come. Jane had for a moment the disordered fancy that she heard a rustling of straw.

  3

  She left the little shop and the bell tinkled behind her. She was baffled, and for a moment felt discouraged to the point of hopelessness. The ambulance had vanished; there was no more to it than that; and she might as well return to Oxford. But at least she could go to Milton Canonicorum first. Not that she had any faith in it. Just as Milton Porcorum contained nothing but porcine old women, so would the answering village be populated exclusively by monkish and uncommunicative old men. They would have nothing to say – except that there was an ill wind at Porcorum, and that she should go straight on.

  She returned to the car and reported her lack of success to Roger Remnant. He listened attentively. ‘The old lady sounds a rich type,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll have a go at her myself.’ And he walked over to the shop.

  Jane looked about her. She ought to make her inquiry of anybody she could see. But Milton Porcorum seemed the next thing to a deserted village. The few remaining cottages constituting it were unpromisingly blank and silent; the only sound was a distant, shrill shouting from the school so
me way on; the only wisp of smoke, even, was from a farmhouse a couple of fields away.

  Remnant was back again. ‘She’d farrowed,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’

  ‘Nothing but a small, fat, sucking-pig of a child. She said that granny had been taken poorly. The shock of doing no trade with you has sent her to her bed. But I did a bit of trade myself. It’s all I got out of the place. A much better map. The one-inch Ordnance Survey.’

  Jane took the map and they climbed into the front of the car together. ‘We’d better try Canonicorum,’ she said. ‘And I’ll have a squint at this as we go.’ She spread the map out on her knees. ‘What a tremendous difference this makes. One feels one could really find one’s way about with it.’

  ‘If we knew where to go, Miss Appleby, it would take us there in no time. As it is, we’ll try Canonicorum, as you say. They may have quite a line in ambulances, after all.’

  ‘It’s about three miles ahead, and this lane curves right round to it, skirting a big green patch.’

  ‘That’s a wood.’

  ‘Only mixed up with the green there’s a lot that’s uncoloured, and dotted with little circles.’

  ‘Park and ornamental ground. There ought to be a seat in the middle.’

  ‘A seat? Oh – I see. And so there is. it’s called Milton Manor.’

  ‘Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour. But, actually, it will be quite dead – or dead so far as the old squirarchal spirit is concerned. Here’s the wall bounding it. Pretty formidable, isn’t it? But there’ll be nothing inside except a district headquarters of the Coal Board, or perhaps a high-class loony bin… That wall would keep anybody in.’ The car was now racing past a seemingly interminable curve of masonry. ‘Look at that sinister little door.’

  ‘Stop!’ Sudden and unaccountable certainty had flashed upon Jane. ‘It’s the place.’

  Remnant threw out his clutch and applied his brakes. ‘The place where the ambulance has gone?’

  ‘It must be.’ Jane was peering at the map. ‘But go on. I’ve seen where there must be gates and a drive. In about a quarter of a mile. A black spot and then a double line of fine dots through the park.’

  ‘That will be a lodge and a drive, all right.’ The car moved on again. ‘Are we going to pay a call?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Remnant said nothing. But he was frowning slightly.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you? I don’t expect I shall be long.’

  ‘I don’t mind a bit. But, you know, you’ve managed to import an atmosphere of melodrama into this. Yet you don’t look a romancing type. It seems to me you may be running into something uncomfortable… Here we are.’ The car had stopped again at a point where the high wall was pierced by double iron gates. ‘I wish you’d tell me what this is about, and how it began.’

  Jane hesitated. The gates were flanked by massive stone pillars supporting eroded and obscure heraldic animals; there was a lodge immediately inside; and from it a well-kept drive curved away through a gloomy belt of woodland. She had never supposed herself to be very sensitive to impalpable things. But even the outer defences of Milton Manor had an atmosphere she greatly disliked. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, it began – or more immediately began – in the Bodleian this morning.’

  ‘The Bodleian!’ Remnant’s tone might have been elicited by a mention of something as remote as the Taj Mahal. ‘You mean the place where they keep all the books?’

  ‘Precisely, Mr Remnant.’ Jane looked at the young man suspiciously. But his innocence appeared entire and unflawed. ‘I don’t suppose that your occasions ever drew you there.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Remnant was indignant. ‘I once took an aunt of mine there. She wanted to see something called King Alfred’s Jewel.’

  ‘Don’t you think that was the Ashmolean?’

  ‘Aren’t they the same thing?’

  It was borne in upon Jane that the young man, although doubtless not of a studious temperament, was decidedly not a fool, and that idiocy was his way of expressing a profound scepticism as to her proceedings. That this wild goose chase was authentically the consequence of anything that could have happened in Bodley was really too much for him. And small wonder, Jane thought. But she could hardly sit back and try to tell him the whole story now. ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘do you mind if we just get out and nose around? Perhaps I’ll try explaining presently.’

  He jumped out, came round the bonnet of the car, and opened the door for her. ‘Very well,’ he said impassively. ‘Provided we nose together.’

  They crossed the road and peered through the high iron gates. The lodge showed signs of being tenanted, but there was nobody stirring. Jane shook the gates cautiously, and tried turning a large wrought-iron handle. They were certainly secured. ‘What does one do,’ she asked, ‘when visiting the gentry? They don’t seem to demean themselves by having any sort of doorbell.’

  ‘Blow the horn, I suppose – and wait for the vassals to come running out, touching their forelocks.’ Remnant’s distrust of their proceedings seemed to have increased, and his voice for the first time held a hint of impatience. He really did believe – Jane thought resentfully – that she was a romancing type, after all.

  She spoke almost at random. ‘It can’t be empty,’ she said. ‘Everything’s very tidy.’

  ‘Except for a bit of litter outside.’ Remnant had stooped and automatically picked up a scrap of crumpled paper from just beside the gates. He seemed to be summoning resolution to speak his mind. ‘Now, look here… well, I’m damned!’

  Unthinkingly he had smoothed out the piece of buff paper in his hand. It was a blank book slip from the Bodleian.

  4

  ‘He saw people filling in slips from the catalogue. And he pretended to be doing the same thing – so as not to attract attention.’ Jane spoke absently. She was still staring, wild-eyed, at the small oblong of paper.

  ‘For goodness sake, woman, explain yourself. Who did?’

  Jane paid no attention. ‘And he must have had this one, crumpled in his hand – when it happened. And then – well, when the ambulance stopped for those gates to be opened, and he knew he was on the threshold of the place, he managed, somehow, to thrust it outside. In the desperate hope that it would act as some sort of sign… And it has.’

  ‘I can see that it is a sign all right. Do you mean that somebody has been taken in here against his will?’

  ‘More than one person. I’m sure of it now! This wretched little man that I saw for the first time this morning, and – and somebody that I know much better…who is very important to me.’

  ‘Nothing to do with – with being quite lawfully taken charge of by doctors who believe – rightly or wrongly – that they are insane?’

  ‘Nothing to do with that.’

  ‘Good!’ Roger Remnant spoke with decision. ‘Then the whole thing is simplified. Here they are. We’re morally certain of it. And now we have just got to get them out again. We go straight in, Miss Appleby.’

  She turned to him gravely. ‘You mean that? You’re helping?’

  He answered her gravity with sudden extreme merriment. ‘My dear young woman, you are helping. Bulldog Drummond is on the job – but of course you can stand in the corner and hold the sponge and towels. Incidentally, unlike the boneheaded Bulldog, we don’t go quite straight in. That might be unhealthy. We send some word of our intentions into the outside world first. That’s sense. Then we go right in. That’s what, in the circumstances, a chap – and even a lass – must do.’

  This judicious admixture of prudence and personal honour was something that Jane found she highly approved of. ‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, ‘I’ve done that already. I sent a telegram to my brother before I picked you up.’

  Remnant grinned. ‘Do you always telegraph your brother before you–’

  Jane was mildly confused. ‘Don’t be an ass. And he’ll have got it by now. He’s in Oxford.’

  ‘An undergraduate?’ />
  ‘No, he’s much older than I am. He’s a policeman.’

  ‘Excellent. We now approach something like social equality.’

  ‘He’s an Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Snubbed again.’ Remnant’s cheerfulness, however, suffered no appreciable diminution. ‘And that suggests something. How do we stand to one another when we do barge in? Great lady and her chauffeur?’

  ‘You don’t look a bit like a great lady’s chauffeur, Mr Remnant.’

  ‘I’m not very sure, for that matter, that you look like a chauffeur’s great lady. What about brother and sister?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘And what’s our business?’

  Jane hesitated. She hadn’t considered this. ‘We should really know’, she said, ‘what the place is. I mean, what it pretends to be. They must know in Canonicorum. Shall we drive on there first, and ask?’

  ‘Certainly not. I wouldn’t call that going right in. Come on – into the car, face the gates, and sound the horn like mad. Childe Remnant – and faithful page – to the dark tower came.’

  ‘And trust to luck?’

  ‘We haven’t much else to trust to, have we?’

  Jane said nothing, but climbed into the car.

  Remnant backed, swung round to face the gates, and gave a blast on his horn. It was a very loud horn – or here in the silence of the country it appeared so – and he made prodigal use of it.

  ‘I say,’ said Jane, ‘perhaps you’d better not be so–’

  She stopped as she saw the door in the lodge open and a man come out. He walked briskly but without hurry to the gates, and immediately unlocked them and drew them open.