Old Hall, New Hall

by Michael Innes

  Gingrass was directing operations with a great appearance of science – or might have been described as doing this had any of the members of the Junior Archaeological Society been paying any attention to him. But these young people were only aware that they were engaged in some species of treasure hunt; many obscurely supposed that it was being conducted upon competitive principles; and all were convinced that the deeper and farther they got with pick and shovel the better.

  All this laudable zeal had already yielded striking results. One vigorously wielded implement had pierced a water-main, and as a consequence a substantial corner of the yard was now occupied by an elaborate jet d’eau. Just as Olivia and Sadie came upon the scene it was blindingly lit for a second by a lurid green flash; the air in the yard seemed to snap and crackle; girls screamed, horses reared, the Vice-Chancellor with discernible difficulty maintained a philosopher’s proper calm, Gingrass bawled commands, prohibitions, and exhortations, and old Professor Harlock was heard to declare in her high, clear voice that, to her certain knowledge, ants or beetles would put up a better show even after the majority of their reflexes had been carefully destroyed in a laboratory. Meantime somebody ran to turn off the electric current which had been so rashly tapped; two dazed young men who had been chiefly involved were haled away forcibly to undergo the horrors of First Aid; and the dig went on.

  It went on for a long time. Large excavations were achieved more or less in terms of some plan which Gingrass had devised. As these, however, yielded absolutely no result, the plan had to be modified and extended impromptu. This involved digging in sundry places where the surface had unfortunately been piled high with the earth from previous trenches and chasms. The junior archaeologists, conscious that the eyes of the whole University were upon them, laboured mindlessly and heroically on. Occasionally from one or another of them there would come an excited shout; Gingrass – like a referee in some lunatic game – would blow a whistle; all the diggers would pause in their labour; and amid a breathless hush the possible significance of some ambiguous find would be investigated. Tiles and bricks and sundry scraps of rusty iron or rotted timber were solemnly pronounced upon. And then the digging would go on more frantically than ever.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense.’ Olivia, pausing with Sadie at a little remove, viewed the confusion with disgust. ‘You realize that, as soon as you actually see them at it. They’ve dug up nearly the whole of this yard. But Joscelyn and his friends may just as well have buried the stuff in front of the building as at the back.’

  Sadie shook her head. ‘You forget that Gingrass has received a tip straight from the horse’s mouth – or believes he has. That’s why he’s backed himself so heavily. And now he’s worried. He sees he’s going to look an awful ass if nothing turns up.’

  Olivia looked round the crowd. ‘I think people are getting a bit restless already. Some of your young friends are drifting off. And the Vice-Chancellor is tapping with his foot in an irritated way.’

  ‘And you can see that the Staff are edging towards an attitude of sceptical amusement. That’s so as to save themselves from feeling asses too, if nothing does turn up. Hullo!’ – Sadie broke off as Gingrass’ whistle sounded. ‘There he goes again.’

  This time there was a longer pause. A small group of diggers had gathered round Gingrass, but it was possible to see that he was stooping to examine several small objects – dull yellow and dirty grey – that had just been turned up and were now placed before him. Suddenly his voice was heard, sharp with excitement. He was calling for a stretcher-like contrivance, constructed of wood, which was waiting on the fringe of the excavations. This was brought forward in what was now a tense silence, and the newly discovered objects were set upon it. The Vice-Chancellor called out something in a tone of majestic calm; this apparently was a summons, since the discoveries were now borne solemnly towards him by two sweating students. Everybody stood on tiptoe or craned their necks. It was a highly dramatic moment.

  Olivia gave an exclamation of horror and dismay. ‘It’s bones!’

  Sadie nodded. ‘A macabre scene – but funny, all the same.’

  ‘Funny?’ Olivia was indignant. ‘It must be the Caucasian queen, or whatever she was – Joscelyn’s mummy! It means they’ll be on to the treasure in no time.’

  ‘That’s what Gingrass thinks. He’s expounding it all to the V-C now. And the Staff’s making haste to look impressed and serious again. And reverent. A respectful bearing in the presence of the dead – particularly royal dead.’ Sadie appeared quite unsuitably amused. ‘Now Professor Harlock’s having a look. She’s the elderly woman with the white hair. I wonder–’

  Sadie had lowered her voice, because of the complete hush in the stable-yard. Now she broke off. Miss Harlock had been examining the bones with care. She turned to Gingrass – and her clear tones had never carried to the back of a lecture theatre with more deadly effect. ‘Equine,’ she said.

  Gingrass gaped at her. ‘What do you mean – equine?’

  ‘My dear man, I see no occasion to goggle. What is more natural than to find a few horse’s bones buried behind a coach-house?’ Miss Harlock looked round the silent crowd with withering scorn. ‘I’m going to get some tea,’ she announced; and moved off.

  A few other people began to move off too. But most stayed behind. The Vice-Chancellor appeared to be reasoning or expostulating with Gingrass. This in itself was an entertaining spectacle. But better was to follow.

  Gingrass was annoyed. Partly because of this – and partly, perhaps, because of his efforts with the whistle – his usually pallid face was flushed a deep red. As he was now, for some reason, revolving slowly on his axis, the effect was rather as of some small lighthouse that a careless keeper had forgotten to switch off at dawn. Presently this beam suddenly paused, transformed into a searchlight. It had come to rest upon a solitary figure, at present advancing through an archway on the farther side of the yard. ‘Hi – you!’ Gingrass shouted rudely. ‘Come here at once.’

  The figure halted for a moment. It was that of the Shufflebotham Student – returning, presumably, from his luncheon with Professor Milder at the Metropole. Clout was already staring in astonishment at the scene before him; now he halted and regarded his discourteous chief with amazement and disfavour. As a consequence, the succeeding exchange took place across a considerable empty space. And this lent it a theatrical flavour highly to the taste of the audience. ‘Where have you been?’ bawled Gingrass. ‘Where the devil have you been?’

  Thus assaulted in the presence of the entire University, Clout allowed his own indignation to mount. Gingrass was impossible, and this must be the end of him. ‘I’ve been lunching with Professor Milder,’ he replied with dignity. ‘And I’m resigning the Shufflebotham. I’ve accepted a Fellowship in Creative Literature in America.’

  ‘Oh, you have – have you?’ Gingrass spoke with difficulty. ‘And perhaps you’ve been doing a little in a creative way already – eh?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll deny telling Professor Milder you have found an important document – a letter from Sir Joscelyn Jory to his solicitor, never posted, saying that he had been obliged to bury some extremely valuable property in this yard?’

  ‘Milder says I said that?’ Clout now spoke in consternation. He was aware that the Vice-Chancellor was regarding him with distinct disfavour. And somewhere in the crowd an idiotic girl had begun to titter. ‘It’s entirely untrue. He must have gone off his rocker. Or perhaps’ – and Clout glanced rather wildly round the chaos of the stable-yard – ‘perhaps he goes in for jokes…practical jokes.’ Clout paused, aware that this was both a feeble and a tactless line to take.

  ‘If he does, his joking extends to offering non-existent Fellowships in Creative Twaddle to imbecile students.’ Gingrass looked about him. The circle of gaping faces apparently brought home to him more vividly the fiasco in which he had involved himself. He uttered a surprising noise that mi
ght have been categorized, roughly, as a howl of humiliation and rage. ‘To unemployed students, I should add,’ he bawled across the yard. ‘Now, go away!’

  ‘But he couldn’t!’ To Clout too the full realization of a horrid position was coming with force. ‘An American professor! It’s not possible.’

  ‘Listen, Colin – it’s no good.’ Clout turned and found that Sadie Sackett had come up beside him. ‘Gingrass has been had, and you’ve been had too. Milder may be an American. But he’s certainly not a professor.’

  ‘Not a professor!’

  Sadie looked at his dismayed expression and laughed. But her laughter held a contrite note which somehow comforted him. ‘It’s only dawned on me today. It never entered my head before. But – don’t you see? – as soon as the suspicion comes to you, you know it’s true. No real American professor could be quite like that – not outside the Light Programme.’

  Clout felt that he ought to make the sort of gesture conventionally described as dazed – perhaps clutch his hair, or pass his hand slowly across his forehead. But all he managed was to stand quite still. For the first time, he spied Olivia, standing rather aloof in the crowd. It was all getting worse and worse. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said feebly. ‘Why did he ask me out to lunch?’

  ‘To get you out of the way – so that you wouldn’t blow the gaff on all this nonsense.’ Sadie pointed to the dig.

  ‘And all this?’

  ‘Just a distraction, I think. He wanted the whole University out of the way.’

  It was at this point this the Vice-Chancellor moved augustly forward. He ignored the unfortunate Clout. ‘Out of the way, Miss Sackett?’ he asked. ‘Pray, out of the way of what?’

  Sadie shook her head. She seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘I’m afraid I just don’t know, sir. But out of the way of some operation of his own.’

  ‘It’s astounding…incredible!’ The Vice-Chancellor was outraged. ‘A perfectly well-accredited man. He lunched with me. Thoroughly scholarly, to judge from his conversation. Although a little on the dry side. In fact, a bore.’

  ‘That’s his technique, I think.’ Sadie offered this explanation with confidence. ‘He puts on such a turn as a bore that the mind simply revolts from him. And so nobody gets curious and questioning.’

  ‘I see.’ The Vice-Chancellor looked at Sadie with respect. He might have been acknowledging that, contrary to reasonable expectation, this large gathering contained one other individual with some claim to intellectual competence. ‘Do you suppose, Miss Sackett, that this Mr Milder’s aim had been to possess himself of the treasure which has led Professor Gingrass to – to such fantastic courses?’

  But before Sadie could answer this question, or Gingrass protest against the terms in which it had been framed, a further diversion occurred. Through the same archway by which Clout had made his hapless appearance on the scene, there advanced, in hurried dignity behind his large brass buttons, the head porter, Gedge.

  4

  ‘Mr Vice-Chancellor, sir!’ Gedge, having located the University’s fountain-head of authority, was propelled, as by a natural affinity, straight towards it. ‘All that there digging, Mr Vice-Chancellor, sir, turns out to be unauthorized and pretentious. I’ve just had it on the telephone from the Company.’

  ‘Unauthorized, Gedge? I don’t know what you can mean. Can’t you see that I have been present myself? That it may have been pretentious is another matter.’ The Vice-Chancellor glanced balefully at Gingrass. ‘There I am disposed to agree with you.’

  ‘No authority was given, Mr Vice-Chancellor, sir. And no gas pipes is, in fact, to be put down there. Pretenders they are, Mr Vice-Chancellor, sir, engaged upon unknown felonious purposes.’ Gedge paused on this – clearly because he had struck out a turn of phrase that gratified him. In this pause he became aware – seemingly for the first time – of the extraordinary scene around him. His jaw dropped. ‘What’s this here? It ain’t going on here too?’

  The Vice-Chancellor stared at Gedge in perplexity. Then he remembered that there was one other person of appreciable intelligence present besides himself. ‘Miss Sackett,’ he asked, ‘can you make anything of what the man is talking about?’

  ‘I think I can, sir.’ Sadie turned to Gedge. ‘Do you mean that people have turned up, pretending to be from the Gas Company, and have been digging pits and trenches like this in the old sunk lane?’

  ‘Just that, Miss Sackett, miss.’ Gedge’s brow cleared a little. ‘And entirely pretentious, it turns out to be. Noticed it was, chance-like on account of my thinking to ring up the Company and ask if there would be a night-watchman, or if we was to be responsible. Never heard of this pipe, they hadn’t. I’ve sent down my assistant, Spokes, to warn them off now.’

  Suddenly Gingrass produced one of his odd, multi-purpose noises. This one compendiously indicated states of enlightenment, despair, and fury. ‘That’s it!’ he yelled. ‘It’s by the foundations of the Temple of Diana. They must have taken the treasure there, and buried it at the same time as–’ He stopped suddenly. ‘And that wretched impostor, Milder, has found out. And while he’s kept us all digging and sweating here–’ Again he broke off. But this time it was because sheer inspiration had visited him. Clout, who had always admitted a covert vein of admiration for his unspeakable professor, was conscious of it now. Gingrass’ eye had fallen upon the young ladies and gentlemen of the Riding Club, mounted and wondering at the back of the crowd. It was a crisis in which they could be of far more use than the Junior Archaeological Society. ‘Ride!’ he bawled at them. ‘Ride to the lane! Canter! Gallop! Stop the villains! Intercept them! Apprehend them!’ He waved his arms frantically above his head.

  Not unnaturally, this exhortation was immediately effective. The young equestrians, delighted at thus unexpectedly coming to dominate the scene, departed as spectacularly as possible, followed by shouts and cheers that were partly encouraging and partly facetious or ironical. The Vice-Chancellor, after a moment’s hesitation, moved off after them. Gedge, as the person of next greatest consequence present, strode beside him. The Staff, whether out of curiosity or habit, formed themselves into a characteristically shambling academic procession and followed. The body of the students, rapidly spreading out on either side, completed a large sickle-like movement which was presently sweeping across the park towards the site of Sir Arthur Jory’s long-vanished temple.

  Sadie somehow disappeared. The discomfiture of Clout was enhanced by an obscure feeling that she had been ill at ease. But at least he could now join Olivia, whom he distinguished hurrying forward with the crowd. Olivia – perhaps because she was actually running – hardly glanced at him as he came up to her. It wasn’t easy, he found, to hit on the right remark to make. ‘I say,’ he tried, ‘this is a pretty queer situation, isn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly isn’t one that you seem much in command of.’ Olivia snapped this out rather breathlessly. ‘Although you’ve contrived a bit of an achievement, one must admit.’

  ‘An achievement?’

  ‘Getting the sack before your whole assembled University. Rather like the bad boy being expelled in some ghastly Victorian school-story.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ Clout felt genuinely untroubled. ‘I doubt if the V-C would back Gingrass up. Not that it matters. I shan’t stop for the absurd Shufflebotham thing in any case.’

  ‘Because you’re going to America to be creative?’ As soon as she had uttered this gibe, Olivia appeared to have the grace to be sorry for it. ‘Probably you shouldn’t have come back here, Colin. I don’t believe you should have left Cambridge.’

  ‘Oxford.’

  ‘It’s the same thing. I’m sure you’ll get something better. Are we nearly there?’

  ‘Just across the east drive and round a clump of trees.’

  Olivia dropped to a walking pace. ‘It’s sure to be too late, anyway. And, even if the treasure’s still there, it will be in all the headlines tomorrow morning. And what good will that be?’

  ‘
What indeed?’ Clout realized that he was tired of the beastly treasure. He wished that Olivia’s mind didn’t so constantly brood on it.

  ‘I can’t understand how Milder found out.’

  Clout nodded gloomily. ‘Nor can I. And I don’t understand what he’s found out. How did Joscelyn and Edward join up again that night? And why ever should they lug the treasure all the way to the temple for the arbitrary and ghastly purpose of burying it beside the unfortunate girl?’

  ‘Economy of labour. One pit.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ But Clout seemed unconvinced. ‘It’s queer psychology, if you ask me… Look out!’

  They had drawn rather to the side of the hurrying crowd, and were about to cross a narrow, subsidiary drive that ran from Old Hall to the north gate of the park. Round a bend, and coming from the direction of the Hall, an estate-car had just appeared, so that they had to pull up to let it pass. It was going on its way without haste; and there was plenty of time to notice that the driver was Jerry Jory, and that beside him sat George Lumb. Neither appeared to be in the least interested in the extraordinary procession across the park. Jerry, who was wearing what Clout considered to be a highly affected deerstalker hat, took this object off gravely, and bowed with what seemed a merely distant courtesy to Olivia. Lumb stared at her with his usual asinine devotion. He also gave Clout a wave – rather a queer wave. And then they were gone.

  Olivia laughed. ‘What would that solemn Terry be doing here?’

  ‘Not Terry. Jerry.’

  ‘Yes, of course… Oh, look!’

  They had rounded the trees, and the lane above which the Temple of Diana had once stood was now before them. It exhibited a remarkable spectacle. For almost half its length it was ploughed and furrowed in a far more drastically effective fashion than the Junior Archaeological Society had achieved in the stable-yard. And the explanation of this was apparent. On the farther side of the excavations – which had held up for the moment their pursuers whether on horseback or on foot – several heavy vehicles, laden with uncouth mechanical contrivances, were making off down the lane. Gingrass screamed, Gedge bellowed, the Vice-Chancellor himself emitted calm but powerful noises. But nothing of this had any effect. The heavy vehicles vanished round a bend, and nothing was left except a single, powerful-looking car. It was empty. Even as they looked, however, a figure sprang up apparently out of the ground. It was Milder, and he was covered in dust and mud. He ran to the car – he must have been essaying a last desperate delve into the unrewarding earth – jumped into it, and started the engine. As it sprang into life he turned round for a second and shook his fist. Those at the front of the crowd declared afterwards that his features were contorted with fury. Having achieved this very sufficient melodramatic effect, Milder let in the clutch and drove rapidly and efficiently out of the picture. Nobody ever saw him again.