‘These things do tend to happen late at night,’ Adamson said. ‘A man dines well, and so on. Then he has bad luck, and the accident happens. If he has very bad luck, as in Mr Lightfoot’s case, the accident is unhappily fatal.’
‘Quite so.’ Honeybath paused for a moment, and decided that there had been an implication in this that must be challenged. ‘Only there is no reason to suppose that Lightfoot “dined well” – or not in the sense you suggest. He could be a convivial man in congenial company. But I doubt whether there is much conviviality at Hanwell Court. You have to think of Lightfoot sitting at his own small table, eating his meal, and drinking a glass – or perhaps a couple of glasses – of wine. Certainly not as living it up.’
‘He was a habitually temperate man?’
‘He certainly wasn’t a drunk.’ Honeybath felt considerable indignation at the line Mr Adamson was developing. ‘Am I to understand that he was observed by anybody last night in an intoxicated condition?’
‘I haven’t heard of anything of the sort so far.’
‘Then the whole speculation is gratuitous.’
‘Fair enough, Mr Honeybath.’ Adamson wasn’t at all ruffled. ‘But you must remember our position. There are more or less routine questions which the coroner may feel it his duty to raise. And we have to credibilize what happened, if I may put it that way. A perfectly sober man might stumble into a pond like that in the dark. But it’s hard to believe that a perfectly sober man wouldn’t simply climb out again. You’ve seen the pond, Mr Honeybath?’
‘No, I have not. I happened never to have made my way there, although I have visited Hanwell Court on a number of occasions. I suppose it is the saltwater pond in which a woman called Lady Munden amuses herself by growing or cultivating seaweed?’
‘Just so – and a singularly futile hobby, it seems to me. But it appears that the lady has had considerable success in acclimatizing – if that’s the word – various exotic varieties. I had a man from a Marine Institute looking into it a couple of hours ago. Fucus giganteus, he said, which is the biggest of the lot. Stems as thick as a cable. But what proved really treacherous and fatal was bullhead Kelp. It seems that the Red Indians make fishing-lines of it. But I still don’t believe that a quite sober man could have tangled himself up in it.’
‘That’s what happened?’ Not unnaturally, Honeybath was appalled by this revelation. ‘Edwin – Lightfoot – died that way?’
‘Yes, indeed. The body had to be cut out of the stuff.’
‘Good God!’ There had been occasions upon which Honeybath had indulged a vein of macabre fantasy about possible sudden death at Hanwell: one of the Misses Pinchon going the way of Admiral Emery at a touch on Colonel Dacre’s trigger; Mr Gaunt running amuck with a poisoned dagger; even some harmless inmate wandering into the maze and never being seen again. But Lady Munden’s saline pool as a hazard had never occurred to him.
‘But do you know?’ Mr Adamson was saying. ‘There came into my head this morning something I’d once read about the poet Shelley.’
‘About Shelley? What can Shelley have to do with it?’ Asking this reasonable question, Honeybath was confirmed in his suspicion that Adamson emanated from the superior echelons of the police, among whom there may be supposed individuals conversant with polite literature.
‘Shelley took it into his head on some occasion that it would be quite nice just to drown.’
‘I doubt whether it was a view he maintained to the end of his life.’
‘One supposes not.’ Adamson clearly took this reference without effort. ‘Well, Shelley simply lay down on the bottom of a pool and calmly stayed put. I forget how he was rescued. But it must have been a difficult thing to do – just lying there quietly. If he’d been in Lady Munden’s pond, of course, Fucus giganteus and bullhead Kelp would have helped.’
‘Great heavens! You don’t suggest…’
‘Just wriggle into the stuff, and you wouldn’t quickly wriggle out again. Mr Honeybath, would you describe your friend as of melancholic or depressive temperament?’
‘You had better ask Dr Michaelis.’ Honeybath at once thought better of this evasive reply. ‘I’d say that Edwin Lightfoot went up and down a good deal. “Cyclothymic”, I believe, is the technical term.’
‘And how was he during your visit to Italy together? Would you say he was under any particular stresses and strains?’
‘He had been, undoubtedly. He was dissatisfied with his work.’
‘With his painting, that is? Had he reason to be? Objective reason, I mean, such as another painter like yourself would judge well founded. Or was it a matter of his having set himself an impossibly high standard, and being dejected because he couldn’t attain to it?’
‘His work was undoubtedly deteriorating.’ Honeybath had been a little surprised by Adamson’s string of questions. But there could be no doubt about what prompted them. Indeed, Adamson now came out with it forthrightly.
‘Mr Honeybath, you will see that here is a question I have to ask. Were you ever apprehensive of Mr Lightfoot’s taking his own life?’
‘Yes – but only as something, so to speak, on the verge of possibility. Moreover I think others may have entertained the same thought. But as an explanation of Lightfoot’s death under the circumstances in which it has taken place, suicide appears to me quite ludicrous. Can we conceivably believe, Mr Adamson, that he climbed into a comparatively shallow pool, and there so deliberately entangled himself in all that abominable stuff as to ensure that it would be beyond his power to free himself were he prompted to do so? It is the sheerest nonsense, and we don’t make it less so by talking about Shelley.’ Honeybath hadn’t finished uttering these last words before regretting them as discourteous rather than merely tart, and when Adamson’s response was a very genuine laugh he was considerably relieved. ‘But I take it,’ he added, ‘that you’re thinking once more about that coroner?’
‘And his jury, Mr Honeybath. But I don’t really expect much trouble ahead. This and that will be canvassed; and it will become clear that nobody knows or is going to know; and these worthy people, after being dragged away from their desks and counters for the better part of a day, will bring in what is called an open verdict, and go home to their teas and suppers.’
‘You don’t think there’s anything more to find out?’ It seemed to Honeybath that Adamson’s last remarks, although they established him yet more firmly in that superior echelon, had been on the cavalier side.
‘Well, of course, this or that may turn up. To go back, for instance, to my first very tentative conjecture. It’s possible that the post mortem may disclose in the body whatever it is that is left there after the breakdown of a good deal of alcohol. But, even so, I’d hope that nothing much need be made of it. One always hopes that these things won’t attract vulgar curiosity or be made a thing of in the newspapers. And I know Mr Lightfoot’s work, as it happens, and regard him as a man of very real eminence. I think we can manage the press.’
‘I’m told there have been several reporters here already this morning.’
‘Oh, yes – and their brief reports will appear. Beyond that, they can be managed.’
‘Managed?’ Honeybath felt this to be somehow a mildly scandalous word.
‘They come along, you know, asking for information one isn’t in the least obliged to give them. But one plays them on an easy line. “Ah, yes,” one says. “But I don’t think there is really much for you in that. But listen to this.” And one hands them out a good lead on some hardened villain. It’s all part, my dear Mr Honeybath, of a policeman’s prime duty to protect the respectable classes.’
‘I see.’ This urbanely ironical stuff was not alien to Honeybath’s taste, but he didn’t care for it hard up against Edwin’s death. ‘Perhaps I haven’t made it clear,’ he said firmly, ‘that Edwin Lightfoot was my oldest friend. We had grown a little apart, as it happens, a few years ago, but then came together again. As you do know, the last weeks of his life were spent
in my company. It is fair to say that I feel a certain duty to his memory.’
‘A duty, Mr Honeybath?’ Adamson was entirely serious again.
‘And I’d wish, as far as it can be done, to clarify the circumstances of his death. There is one possibility, is there not, that we have failed to discuss so far?’
‘Foul play.’ Adamson smiled faintly. ‘The papers are going to report that “the police do not suspect foul play.” I sometimes wonder how many criminals are gullible enough to believe it.’
‘Then you do suspect foul play?’
‘I acknowledge its possibility.’
‘But not its probability, Mr Adamson? That seems fair enough. There are unlikely, I suppose, to be any hardened villains, as you call them, at Hanwell Court.’
‘That is possibly true.’ The faint irony had returned to Adamson. ‘But murder, as it happens, is commonly an amateur affair. Professional criminals have been taking to it rather ominously, it is true, in recent years. But in the main homicide continues to be – shall we say? – a very special sort of crime.’ Adamson paused for a moment. ‘However, Mr Honeybath, it is not in our character as philosophers that we are conversing at the moment. Have you any reason whatever to believe that Mr Lightfoot was murdered? If you have, please tell me about it.’
‘I have none. I can certainly say that I have none. But my mind is not entirely at ease, all the same.’ Honeybath paused in his turn. He knew that what he had in his head was so vague and shadowy – and so remote from any of the darker forms of crime – that he might stumble badly if he embarked on it now. ‘Edwin Lightfoot was the most honourable of men. To be involved in anything shady would have been wholly alien to his nature. But in these last months of his life he was, I believe, being practiced upon in a manner that remains quite obscure to me. What I have in mind – only very obscurely in mind – may be wholly unrelated to the manner of his death. And I simply can’t embark on this now. To do so might be to involve entirely innocent people in senseless and fantastic suspicion. I must think about it – and even a little cast about on my own. I am afraid that I can say no more to you.’
Honeybath had made this speech with an irrational sense that it was going to get him into instant trouble; that he was liable to be sternly admonished about his duty as a liege and a citizen to come clean in the interest of the Queen’s peace. That sort of thing. So he was surprised when this formidable policeman didn’t take that line at all.
‘I quite understand you, Mr Honeybath,’ Adamson said. ‘Perhaps we may have another talk on a later occasion. It may even be that you would wish to communicate with me rapidly. In that case, it would be quite in order to by-pass the county constabulary.’ Adamson brought out a notebook, scribbled in it, tore out the leaf, and handed it to Honeybath. ‘This would be the telephone number.’ For a fraction of a second Adamson hesitated. ‘Mr Honeybath,’ he then said, ‘you are a wholly reliable man. In confidence, then, let me say that it will put you in immediate contact with my office in New Scotland Yard.’ Adamson smiled fleetingly. ‘I have strayed in here, you see, from the Metropolitan Police Office. And I’m bound to say the local bobbies are being very nice about it. And – what’s more important – very discreet as well.’
14
But Honeybath too had strayed in. One can’t visit a corpse, and as yet there wasn’t even any word of a funeral. It would be Melissa who would have to be consulted about that, and about the various practical dispositions to be made thereafter. Melissa hadn’t yet showed up, but when she did she would either take charge of things, or nominate persons to do the job for her. The Lightfoots hadn’t been divorced; they hadn’t even been separated to any legal effect. Honeybath thought it probable that, had it ever occurred to Edwin to make a will, he might find himself appointed as an executor. Meanwhile, he was only a concerned old friend. He had meant what he said, however, when he had told Adamson that he was prompted to remain on the scene for a time and a little cast about on his own. But Hanwell Court wasn’t a hotel, so he couldn’t simply march up to a desk and book a room. On the other hand he was sufficiently well known to Brigadier Luxmoore, Dr Michaelis and others as the dead man’s intimate friend to make it seem perfectly natural and proper that he should come and go for a time, and render a general effect of doing a little tidying up. He decided to walk over to the local pub, secure himself a couple of nights’ accommodation there, and then return to Hanwell Court. Considerable mystery did attach to the manner of Edwin’s death, and he had an obstinate feeling that certain apparently unrelated facts which he alone was in possession of might turn out to be involved in the horrible business after all. He was departing up the drive, and had come in view of Poseidon urging the Sea-Monster to attack Laomedon, when it occurred to him that he hadn’t yet viewed what his imagination was hinting to him ought to be called the scene of the crime. It may have been the Sea-Monster itself – a sufficiently hideous aquatic phenomenon – that thus put Lady Munden’s opprobrious pool in his head. He had a general notion of where it lay. He now turned aside in search of it.
Quite probably, he thought, it would still be under some sort of guardianship by the police, who would be concerned to keep it from intrusion until certain that no more enlightenment was to be dredged from it. His approach, therefore, was made with circumspection. But he proved to be wrong in his persuasion. The pool was deserted. He felt this to be part of the general disposition of the police to play down Edwin’s death. It was a curious feeling to have, since it couldn’t in any way be averred that Edwin was being cheated of something. Yet he had convinced himself – he recognized this now – that Adamson at least wasn’t pleased by what had happened at Hanwell Court. It seemed impossible to make sense of this. Yet the idea clung to him.
It was quite a large pool. Some parts of it were comparatively clear, and others were clotted and crammed with the stringy or ramifying or bulbous or pulpy stuffs which were Lady Munden’s peculiar devotion. Lady Munden, he told himself, might be regarded as the Nereid of this nasty flood. She might rise out of it at any moment, waving a conch or other symbol of her watery nature. Or she might be glimpsed in the depths, like Shelley – only in twisted braids of Lillies knitting the loose train of her amber-dropping hair. That was Milton’s Sabrina, Honeybath told himself as he began to round the pool, and he wondered what on earth (or in water) had brought this snatch of verse within his recollection. Then he remembered that Edwin had obscurely referred to somebody as ‘soggy Sabrina’. It was quite possibly Lady Munden that he had meant.
At the far end of the pool there stood an undistinguished pavilion-like structure, with an extension glassed in on three sides. It recalled the kind of shelter to be found scattered along some seaside esplanades. The people who had provided Lady Munden with her pool were probably in that line of business too, and had added this affair to boost their bill. It wasn’t at all congruous with the general elegance of the grounds of Hanwell Court. Honeybath was noting this fact with disapproval when he discovered that the shelter was occupied. The man seated in it – and surveying the scene of the late fatality with a philosophic eye – proved to be the socially anomalous Mr Brown. Honeybath had failed to identify him immediately because he was not, on this occasion, wearing a Panama hat.
‘Ah, good day to you, my dear Honeybath!’ This robust and cordial greeting, although perhaps a shade too familiar in the form of words chosen, came from Brown with quite agreeable effect. Honeybath made a suitable reply. Brown, he felt, ought to be encouraged in his laudably pertinacious attempts to recover the manners and assumptions native to him before the unhappy period of his incarceration. (Honeybath had finally come down on the side of what might be called the luckless-financier interpretation of Brown.)
‘Would you say, now, that the Sargasso Sea looks like that?’ As he asked this question, Brown waved a hand over Lady Munden’s saline pool.
‘There may well be a certain resemblance.’ Honeybath, although his mood was sombre, managed to be amused by this ques
tion. ‘I have never seen the Sargasso Sea.’
‘Wonderful yarns I used to read about it as a boy. Spanish galleons and the like stuck in it as thick as flies on fly-paper and mouldering away for centuries.’
‘Ah, yes! I read that sort of thing too. An imaginative conception. I believe the actual thing is fairly patchy, and that the possibility of craft being permanently stuck in it was disproved early in the present century.’ Honeybath felt that this was too much in his informative vein. ‘But one likes to think of those stranded Armadas. Serving a kind of maritime life sentence, one might say.’
‘Just that.’ Brown took this analogy – prompted by Honeybath’s recollection of his curious interest in such matters – entirely in his stride. ‘But your friend Lightfoot,’ he said briskly ‘He got stuck. I’ve been sitting here thinking about it. A sad event, Honeybath. A very sad event, indeed. And happening just before his exhibition, too.’
‘His exhibition?’ Honeybath was puzzled. ‘What was that?’
‘What he told me about one day, shortly before the two of you went abroad together. That there was soon to be an introspective exhibition…’
‘A retrospective exhibition?’
‘That was it. Of everything he’d ever done, he said. At the Tate Gallery, down near Imperial Chemicals.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Honeybath avoided any tone of surprise. Poor Edwin must have been in a particularly freakish mood to spin the imperfectly informed Brown such a tale.
‘And then he tumbled into this nasty stuff. Or did he?’
‘Or did he?’ This time, Honeybath was really startled.
‘It was done to him, if you ask me. Nobody will believe it, of course – but that’s my view. Somebody was looking after him. Don’t ask me why – but these things happen. Tipped him in, and then used a pole, likely enough.’
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