Honeybath watched the blade, although without enthusiasm. He saw it instantly transform itself into three more slender blades disposed as on a fork or trident.
‘The significance is, as you will have realized, religious,’ the elderly man said with mild satisfaction. ‘Execution has been carried out in the name of the Holy Trinity. May I venture to inform you that my name is Richard Gaunt? I have a reason for so presuming.’
‘I am Charles Honeybath.’ Honeybath didn’t commonly exchange such information with persons casually encountered in public conveyances. But his interlocutor, if slightly odd, was demonstrably a man of impeccable comportment and address. ‘How do you do?’ he added, stretching a further point.
‘How do you do? My excuse for hazarding so irregular a mode of introduction, Mr Honeybath, is to be found in the brochure I see lying beside you. I infer from it that you have some interest in Hanwell Court. I am on my way there now. It has been my home for several years.’
‘I am most interested to hear it.’ Honeybath eyed with genuine curiosity the first inmate of his proposed haven with whom he had achieved speaking terms. ‘And you keep your collection there?’
‘Yes, indeed. Collecting is quite a thing with a number of us. Lady Munden, for example, collects seaweed. Indeed, she may be said to cultivate seaweed, if that is the term. She is not without hope of achieving some notable hybridities.’
‘I should suppose that to be difficult, so far from the sea?’
‘The establishment has provided Lady Munden with a large saline pool. It is always very good in that sort of way. But, between you and me, it seems probable that medical considerations were involved. The contemplation of seaweed would appear to have a composing effect upon the emotions.’
‘I see.’ Honeybath wondered whether the same was to be said of the contemplation of outlandish weaponry. To this occupation, indeed, Mr Gaunt was now showing a disposition to return. He was rummaging in the suitcase.
‘Now, I wonder,’ he said, ‘whether I have anything else that might interest you? Ah! Here is the hopper for my Gatling gun. It is the last piece missing, so I believe I can now assemble the thing. Not from Sotheby’s, this; I picked it up in a useful little place I know of in the Mile End Road. A remarkable achievement in its day, the Gatling gun. It has justly been commemorated in the poetical sphere.
We have got
The Gatling gun, and they have not.
Kipling, no doubt.’
‘Belloc, more probably.’ Honeybath cast a dubious eye over what was now being exhibited to him. ‘Your interest in your subject appears to be wide-ranging,’ he said. ‘Does it stretch to practical ballistics? When you have put together this Gatling-thing will you get round to firing it?’
‘Oh, very probably – very probably indeed. There is Colonel Dacre’s rifle-range, you know. They constructed it for him after the accident to Admiral Emery. There is a great deal of forethought at Hanwell.’
‘I am delighted to hear it.’ Honeybath hesitated upon this. He rather regretted having exposed the promotional material for Hanwell Court on the seat beside him. Had he not done so, indeed, he would have failed to pick up some interesting scraps of information on the place from this harmless connoisseur of violence. But now he could not very well conceal the purpose of his present journey. It wouldn’t do, for instance, to say that he was proposing to inspect Hanwell Court as a possible place of residence for a maiden aunt, or something of that sort. It looked as if he and Mr Gaunt were going to arrive there together, and if this happened any prevarication would almost certainly be detected. But then why think in terms of ‘detection’ at all? He saw that at heart he must be a little ashamed ofthe whole project – almost as if he were thinking in terms of being sent to gaol or entering a home for alcoholics. This was very absurd – but there it was. Perhaps like Othello he had an instinct for an unhoused free condition, and if he settled for Hanwell would come to regret its circumscription and confine.
‘I’m booked into Hanwell Court myself,’ he said, suddenly and firmly. ‘At least in a tentative way. And I’m running down to take another look at it.’
‘Excellent, Mr Honeybath! I sincerely hope you don’t think better of your resolve. I shall look forward to many pleasant confabulations over this joint interest of ours. Daggers and stilettos make a large and intricate study in themselves, do they not? Have you ever thought, by the way, of specializing in those that came to be employed in duelling? Do you run to a main gauche?’
‘I haven’t even heard of it. And you are mistaken, Mr Gaunt, in supposing that I…’
‘It was, of course, named from the fact that it was held in the left hand and used for parrying. I lately acquired a specimen with a toothed edge on which the adversary’s sword could be caught and broken. But in the main, I confess, I have of late been working mainly in the field of offensive weapons. Hyper-offensive weapons, indeed, if the term is an admissible one. They exert a peculiar fascination over me. The dagger with the poison-channel, as perfected in Mantua: there is great scope there. And the amazing ingenuity so often employed in inventing blades capable of inflicting particularly awkward lacerations. I have read that the poet Browning was an enthusiastic devotee of these.’
Honeybath felt disposed to say, ‘But the painter Honeybath is not.’ He reflected, however, that this might be (at least metaphorically) wounding, and that Mr Gaunt’s hobbyhorse was entirely innocent. Moreover, it looked as if they might be destined at least to pass the time of day for the remainder of their joint lives. So he held his peace while being shown several more lethal objects which had been knocked down to his companion the day before. The total sum of money that had thereby passed through Messrs Sotheby’s hands must have been very considerable. But then Hanwell Court was far from being any refuge for genteel indigence. What it was a refuge for, Honeybath was beginning to feel he hadn’t been quite adequately informed. Was Colonel Dacre more careless than a military man ought to be of the conditions under which he fired off his rifle? Had Admiral Emery perished on the instant, like poor Admiral Byng on his quarter-deck at Portsmouth? Was Lady Munden really provided with lavish facilities for treating bits of seaweed as if they were dahlias or sweet peas? Was his new acquaintance Mr Gaunt any more to be trusted with firearms (or even misérecordes and mains gauches) than his fellow-inmate the colonel? Honeybath decided to seek cautious enlightenment on these matters. So in a pause after Mr Gaunt had finished expounding the operation of something called a bouche à feu he ventured on a change of subject.
‘Would it be impertinent,’ he asked, ‘to inquire what directed your interest to Hanwell Court in the first place?’
‘Ah, that was a matter of my trustees.’ Mr Gaunt was clearly not offended. ‘For some years I have found it convenient to have my financial affairs, and so forth, conducted by persons of that sort. And I am fortunate enough to have very reliable trustees. After comparing notes with a number of our residents I have come to the conclusion that I am very fortunate indeed. By no means all are as satisfied as I am.’
‘I am sorry to hear that. Troublesome trustees must be extremely vexatious.’ Honeybath paused on this sympathetic note. ‘Lady Munden, for example,’ he said at a venture. ‘Does she not get on too well with hers?’
‘She is far from pleased with them. I think I may say – strictly in confidence, Mr Honeybath – that the seaweed has to be described as an inexpensive second-best. Lady Munden had formed the project, the wholly laudable project, of purchasing a substantial stretch of the park at Hanwell and constituting it a reserve for threatened indigenous fauna. She was simply told that the money wasn’t there.’ Mr Gaunt shook his head in a sombre fashion. ‘Incredible as it may seem, that is what her trustees told her. She then offered to throw the enterprise open to the public for an appropriate fee, and declared herself willing to sit in person at a turnstile and collect the cash. She had made the most careful calculations, she was able to declare, and was assured there would be a substantial profit.
But her trustees remained obdurate. These are grim times, Mr Honeybath, grim times indeed. The late Sir Adrian Munden, although not a man of good family, fell little short of being what you and I would call a nabob. But here was plain penury confronting his widow.’
‘How very shocking.’ Honeybath, who had perfected a technique of offering composing remarks to tiresome sitters for whom the times were out of joint, offered this absurd untruth unblushingly. But the train was now slowing down to make its first halt at Didcot, and he felt a strong impulse to gather together his belongings and make a dash for freedom. But he reflected that Mr Gaunt’s was possibly only a partial view of society at Hanwell Court; that he belonged, as it might be brutally put, to a lunatic fringe of the place. Honeybath was, moreover, a man commendably curious about his fellow-mortals in their inexhaustible variety, and he told himself it was extravagant to suppose that by merely venturing once more within the curtilage of Hanwell he would put himself in any danger of being locked up. He resolved to see the day’s venture through.
‘Ah, Didcot!’ he said. ‘An uninspiring gateway to the Berkshire Downs, is it not? But I believe ours is the next stop.’
‘It is, indeed. May I ask, Mr Honeybath, if you have good trustees?’
‘I have not, as it happens, had any occasion to consider the point so far.’ Honeybath offered this slightly evasive reply on a note of sudden gloom. Everybody ends up, he supposed, by being bossed around. Or everybody whose condition is such that there is money to be had out of the bossing. ‘May I offer you my Burlington Magazine?’ he asked. ‘I notice an interesting article on what is to be gathered of the later history of armour from Gervase Markham’s Souldier’s Accidence.’
‘Thank you. Thank you very much,’ Mr Gaunt said politely. ‘It is a subject a little aside from my own field of research. But it is always wise to broaden one’s view.’
And Mr Gaunt, blessedly, absorbed himself in a purely defensive scene of things for the rest of the journey.
5
The traveller who approaches Hanwell Court by the main drive has the advantage of first viewing the mansion disposed beyond a gigantic repoussoir known to art historians as the Poseidon urging the Sea-Monster to attack Laomedon. The monster has three heads, each with gaping jaws, and these must have spewed water once upon a time, since the whole group is perched within an enormous scallop shell which must have served as the basin of the fountain when it was a fountain in its native Italy. The entire ensemble is now perched on a squat pedestal some twelve feet high. The god straddles the monster, with arms flung up in the conventional pose of a huntsman unleashing hounds. Viewed from the rear (for the statue faces the house lying in a shallow valley beyond) the uninstructed might conjecture that Poseidon is in fact his brother Zeus, and that the business on hand is the directing of a thunderbolt against some race of overweening mortals in the magnificent architectural performance below.
Honeybath’s brochure contained the information that Hanwell Court had been completed, as to its main part, in the year 1702. What is immediately presented to the eye contemplating the main facade is six very tall windows on either side of a very tall front door. Above these are thirteen windows apparently equally tall (and in fact, therefore, rather taller), the middle one being a third as broad as the others. And above these again are thirteen squat little windows beneath an oppressive cornice and an elegant balustrade. A visiting Martian might suppose the entire edifice designed for the occupation of a dozen or so giants who had enslaved a local population of dwarfs now cowering in attic hutches when not performing the menial duties required of them. And indeed the architect had probably had in mind social dispositions not altogether remote from this fantasy.
So much for 1702. Slightly later generations had built on, in the same classical taste, sundry wings, pavilion, and the like, some of them free-standing except for sweeping connective colonnades, designed for the better conduct of balls and banquets or the large-scale cultivation of exotic plants. What the whole effect didn’t at all suggest was the possibility of tucking away in the interior adequately congruous but necessarily miniaturized accommodation for some two score of affluent persons resolved to carry gracious living along with them to the grave. Much of the original set-up must have been gutted and rebuilt in the interest of this intrepid proposal.
Honeybath drove up, still accompanied by the inmate Gaunt, in a conveyance which had been waiting for them in the station yard. He wondered whether he would be charged for this trip in a Rolls-Royce, or whether it would prove to be on the house. They had, after all, a good deal of his money already, and it must be earning interest for somebody. It was even possible that, in an indirect way, he had contributed to the cost of Lady Munden’s saline pool and Colonel Dacre’s rifle-range. These were doubtless unworthy thoughts, such as well-affected inmates would scorn to entertain. Not for the first time, he felt that he had perhaps made a mistake about Hanwell Court. Had he been corrupted by the assumptions of that class of society many of whose choicest ornaments he had for some years been contributing generously-interpreted likenesses of to the walls of Burlington House? It was a sombre thought.
It was also a thought prompting Honeybath to defer for a little longer his renewed encounter with the management of the place. So on descending from the Rolls he murmured to Mr Gaunt that he was a little early for the appointment he had made, and that he proposed to fill in the time by taking a short stroll in the grounds. Whereupon Mr Gaunt, having expressed the hope of seeing his new acquaintance in permanent residence very soon, departed into the house, followed by the chauffeur lugging the weighty suitcase.
Perhaps because it was a remarkably fine spring day, the precincts and policies of Hanwell were less dispeopled than on the occasion of Honeybath’s previous visit. In the first of the formal gardens immediately below the terrace a lady in the soft and flowing garments held to become old age was snipping expertly at some sort of small flowering shrub. She was kind enough to pause in this occupation and bow to Honeybath as he went past. Honeybath swept off his hat in proper form. It was probably the convention that the inmates acknowledged one another’s existence upon every fleeting encounter, and the lady had at once observed that he was not the sort of man who comes in to wind the clocks. At the corner of the terrace itself another elderly lady was seated in a comfortable chair, engaged in making a watercolour sketch of a spray of early roses trained against the mellow masonry of the house. Salutations were again exchanged, and Honeybath wondered whether it would be proper for him to pause and offer some quasi-professional comment on the work of art in hand. He decided that this would be a liberty, and might even involve him in having to explain that the lady’s impromptu interlocutor was nothing less than a Royal Academician. So he walked on. It seemed to be worth noting, he told himself, that both these appropriately occupied females seemed entirely sane. But as neither of them had uttered, there could be no positive certainty on the point.
He descended to a lawn which had been laid out as that sort of putting green which has a dozen holes scattered over it, each marked by a little tin flag. It was the kind of recreational resource which one frequently remarks in public parks. A spare, grey-haired man of military bearing was involved with it. Honeybath wondered whether this might be Colonel Dacre, more pacifically employed than was his wont. His bearing was conventional but his behaviour was a little out-of-the-way; he was moving from hole to hole, removing each little flag in turn, kneeling down, and peering into the small cavity thus revealed. From this mysterious activity he abruptly desisted on marking Honeybath’s approach.
‘Good morning to you,’ he said commandingly. ‘Are you the man from the Patent Office?’
‘No, sir, I am not.’ Honeybath was considerably surprised by this unexpected question. ‘I have no connection whatever with such an institution.’
‘Ah! Well, I wrote to the Patent Office more than a week ago, and have been expecting them to send a fellow down.’
‘Indeed, sir. I fear the
only sort of fellow I am is an Honorary Fellow of my old Cambridge college.’ Honeybath made this slightly unsuitable communication with some asperity. To be classed as a fellow was much the same thing as being expected to wind clocks. ‘I regret,’ he added, ‘cheating your expectation in the matter.’
‘It may be just as well. I am not sure that an application to the Patent Office hasn’t been a mistake at this stage. I understand them to guarantee confidentiality, but one can never be certain of these things nowadays. There is a lot one can never be certain of. The increased use of plastics, for example. You know how these holes are constructed?’
‘I can’t say that I do.’
‘The hole is punched out with the kind of affair one uses to plant daffodils and so forth. Then a small receptacle is inserted, the lip of which lies just below the level of the turf. It has to be fairly heavy, in order that a socket in its base may be capable of supporting the flag. You follow me?’
‘Perfectly, sir.’
‘I have taken it for granted, therefore, that these receptacles are invariably made of iron or steel. But the horrid thought has occurred to me that plastics may be coming in. I am relieved to find that it is not so. If, that is to say, one may go by the layout here. Plastic, you must understand, would entirely defeat my design. Observe this ball.’ The military man suddenly held up a golf-ball. ‘It is nothing less, sir, than a guided missile. It embodies a homing device. Or rather, it will shortly do so. There are one or two technical hitches, so far. The space available being so small, I am coming to think the mechanism will have to be transistorized. But the principle will be clear to you. Once you have reached the green, you may strike the ball with your putter pretty well in any direction you like. It will home on the hole, attracted by the only metallic object within its range, and simply drop into place.’
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