To Love and Be Wise ag-4

by Josephine Tey

  'Three, Reeve said. 'The Clarion, the Morning News, and the Post. They're all out now, sucking the village dry.

  'Also ran: Scotland Yard, Grant said wryly, and drove away to see Bill Maddox.

  At the end of the village was a high clapboarded structure on which faded paint said: William Maddox and Son, Carpenters and Boatbuilders. At one corner of this building a bright black and yellow sign pointed into the yard at the side and said simply: Garage.

  'You manage to make the best of both worlds, I see, he said to Bill Maddox when he had introduced himself, and tilted his head at the sign.

  'Oh, Maddox and Son is Father, not me.

  'I thought that perhaps you were "Son".

  Bill looked amused. 'Oh, no; my grandfather was Son. That's my greatgrandfather's business. And still the best woodworkers this side of the county, though it's me that says it. You looking for information, Inspector?

  Grant got all the information Maddox could give him, and as he was going away Maddox said: 'You happen to know a newspaper-man called Hopkins, by any chance?

  'Hopkins of the Clarion? We have met.

  'He was round here for hours this morning, and do you know what that bloke actually believes? He believes that the whole thing is just a publicity stunt to sell that book they planned to write.

  The combination of this typically Hopkins reaction and Bill's bewildered face was too much for Grant. He leant against the car and laughed.

  'It's a debasing life, a journalist's, he said. 'And Jammy Hopkins is a born debase-ee, as a friend of mine would say.

  'Oh, said Bill, still puzzled. 'Silly, I call it. Plain silly.

  'Do you know where I can find Serge Ratoff, by the way?

  'I don't suppose he's out of bed yet, but if he is you'll find him propping up the counter of the post-office. The post-office is in the shop. Half-way up the street. Serge lives in the lean-to place next door to it.

  But Serge had not yet reached his daily stance by the post-office counter. He was coming down the street from the newsagent's with a paper under his arm. Grant had never seen him before, but he knew the occupational signs well enough to spot a dancer in a village street. The limp clothes covering an apparently weedy body, the general air of undernourishment, the wilting appearance that made one feel that the muscles must be flabby as tired elastic. It was a never-ceasing amazement to Grant that the flashing creatures who tossed ballerinas about with no more effort than a slight gritting of teeth, went out of the stage door looking like under-privileged barrow boys.

  He brought the car to a halt at the pavement as he came level with Serge, and greeted him.

  'Mr Ratoff?

  'That is me.

  'I'm Detective-Inspector Grant. May I speak to you for a moment?

  'Everyone speaks to me, Serge said complacently. 'Why not you?

  'It is about Leslie Searle.

  'Ah, yes. He has become drowned. Delightful.

  Grant offered some phrases on the virtue of discretion.

  'Ah, discretion! said Serge, making five syllables of it. 'A bourgeois quality.

  'I understand that you had a quarrel with Searle.

  'Nothing of the sort.

  'But —

  'I fling a mug of beer in his face, that is all.

  'And you don't call that a quarrel?

  'Of course not. To quarrel is to be on a level, equal, how do you say, of the same rank. One does not quarrel with canaille. My grandfather in Russia would have taken a whip to him. This is England and decadent, and so I fling beer over him. It is a gesture, at least.

  When Grant recounted this conversation to Marta, she said: 'I can't think what Serge would do without that grandfather in Russia. His father left Russia when he was three-Serge can't speak a word of Russian and he is half Neapolitan anyhow-but all his fantasies are built on that grandfather in Russia.

  'You will understand, Grant said patiently, 'that it is necessary for the police to ask all those who knew Searle for an account of their movements on Wednesday night.

  'Is it? How tiresome for you. It is a sad life, a policeman's. The movements. So limited, so rudimentary. Serge made himself into a semaphore, and worked his arms marionette-wise in a travesty of point-duty signals. 'Tiresome. Very tiresome. Lucid, of course, but without subtlety.

  'Where were you on Wednesday night from nine o'clock onwards? Grant said, deciding that an indirect approach was just a waste of time.

  'I was dancing, Serge said.

  'Oh. At the village hall?

  Serge looked as if he were going to faint.

  'You suggest that I, that I, Serge Ratoff, was taking part in a op?

  'Then where were you dancing?

  'By the river.

  'What?

  'I work out the choreography for a new ballet. I burst with ideas there by the river on a spring night. They rise up in me like fountains. There is so much atmosphere there that I get drunk on it. I can do anything. I work out a very charming idea to go with the river music of Mashako. It begins with a —

  'What part of the river?

  'What?

  'What part of the river?

  'How should I know? The atmosphere is the same over all.

  'Well, did you go up river or down, from Salcott?

  'Oh, up, most certainly.

  'Why "most certainly"?

  'I need the wide flat spaces to dance. Up river they are there. Down river from the village it is all steep banks and tiresome root crops. Roots. Clumsy, obscene things. They —

  'Could you identify the place where you were dancing on Wednesday night?

  'Identify?

  'Point it out to me.

  'How can I? I don't even remember where it was.

  'Can you remember if you saw anyone while you were there?

  'No one who was memorable?

  'Memorable?

  'I trip over lovers in the grass now and then, but they-how you say, go with the house. They are part of the-the set-up. Not memorable.

  'Do you remember, then, what time you left the river bank on Wednesday night?

  'Ah, yes, that I remember perfectly.

  'When was it that you left?

  'When the shooting star fell.

  'What time was that?

  'How should I know? I dislike shooting stars. They make butterflies in my stomach. Though I did think that it would be a very fine ending to my ballet to have a shooting star. A Spectre de la Rose leap, you know, that would set the town talking, and show them that I can still —

  'Mr Ratoff, can you suggest how Leslie Searle came to be in the river?

  'Came to be? He fell in, I suppose. Such a pity. Pollution. The river is so beautiful it should be kept for beautiful things. Ophelia. Shallott. Do you think Shallott would make a ballet? All the things she sees in the mirror? It is an idea, that, isn't it?

  Grant gave up.

  He left his car where it was and walked up the street to where the flat stone front of Hoo House broke the pinks and chromes and limes of the village's plastered gables. The house stood on the pavement like the other cottages, but three steps to the front door raised the ground floor of the house above street level. It withdrew itself a little, in a dignity entirely natural, from everyday affairs. As Grant pulled the Victorian bell in its bright brass circle he spared a thought to bless the man, whoever he was, who had been responsible for restoring the place. He had preserved the structure but had made no attempt to turn it back into its original form and so make a museum piece of it; the tale of the centuries was there, from the worn mounting-block to the brass bell. A great amount of money had obviously been spent to bring it to its present condition of worthiness, and Grant wondered if perhaps the saving of Hoo House was sufficient to justify Toby Tullis's existence.

  The door was opened by a manservant who might have walked out of one of Toby's plays. He stood in the doorway, polite but impenetrable; a one-man road-block.

  'Mr Tullis does not see anyone before lunch, he said in answer
to Grant's inquiry. 'He works in the morning. The appointment with the Press is for two o'clock. He began to move his hand towards the door.

  'Do I look like Press? Grant said tartly.

  'Well-no, I can't say that you do-sir.

  'Shouldn't you have a little tray? Grant said, suddenly silky.

  The man turned submissively and took a silver card tray from the Jacobean chest in the hall.

  Grant dropped a piece of pasteboard on to the tray and said: 'Present my compliments to Mr Tullis and say that I would be grateful for three minutes of his time.

  'Certainly, sir, said the man, not allowing his eyes to stray even to the vicinity of the card. 'Will you be kind enough to step into the hall and wait.

  He disappeared into a room at the rear of the house, and closed the door behind him on some very unworkmanlike sounds of chatter. But he was back in a moment. Would Inspector Grant come this way, please. Mr Tullis would be very pleased to see him.

  The room at the back, Grant found, looked into a large garden sloping down to the river-bank; it was another world altogether from the village street that he had just left. It was a sitting-room, furnished with the most perfect 'pieces' that Grant had ever seen out of a museum. Toby, in a remarkable dressing-gown, was sitting behind an array of silver coffee things; and behind him, in still more remarkable day clothes, hovered a callow and eager young man clutching a notebook. The notebook, from its virgin condition, appeared to be more a badge of office than the implement of a craft.

  'You are modest, Inspector! Toby said, greeting him.

  'Modest?

  'Three minutes! Even the Press expect ten.

  It had been meant as a compliment to Grant, but the effect was merely a reminder that Toby was the most-interviewed individual in the English-speaking world and that his time was priceless. As always, what Toby did was a little 'off-key'.

  He presented the young man as Giles Verlaine, his secretary, and offered Grant coffee. Grant said that it was at once too late and too early for him, but would Mr Tullis go on with his breakfast; and Toby did.

  'I am investigating the disappearance of Leslie Searle, Grant said. 'And that involves, I'm afraid, some disturbance of people who are only remotely connected with Searle. We have to ask everyone at Salcott who knew Searle to account for their time, as far as they can, on Wednesday night.

  'Inspector, you offer me a felicity I had never hoped to enjoy. I have always been madly desirous of being asked what I was doing at nine-thirty p.m. on the night of Friday the 13th, but I never really dared to hope that it would happen to me.

  'Now that it has happened, I hope your alibi is worthy of the occasion.

  'It has the virtue of simplicity, at least. Giles and I spent the hours of that lovely midnight discussing Act II, Scene 1. Pedestrian, Inspector, but necessary. I am a business man.

  Grant glanced from the business man to Giles, and decided that in his present stage of discipleship the young man would probably confess to the murder if it would pleasure Toby. A little thing like providing an alibi would be merely routine.

  'And Mr Verlaine corroborates that, of course, Grant said.

  'Yes, oh yes, of course; of course I do; yes, said Giles, squandering affirmatives in the service of his patron.

  'It is a tragic thing indeed, this drowning, Toby said, sipping coffee. 'The sum total of the world's beauty is not so great that we can afford to waste any. A Shelleyan end, of course, and to that extent fitting. Do you know the Shelley Memorial at Oxford, Inspector?

  Grant knew the Memorial and it reminded him of an overboiled chicken, but he refrained from saying so. Nor did Toby expect an answer.

  'A lovely thing. Drowning is surely the ideal way of going out of this life.

  'After a close acquaintance with a great variety of corpses taken from the water, I can't say that I agree with you.

  Toby cocked a fish-scale eye at him, and said: 'Don't shatter my illusions, Inspector. You are worse than Silas Weekley. Silas is always pointing out the nastiness of life. Have you got Silas's alibi, by the way?

  'Not yet. I understand that he hardly knew Mr Searle.

  'That wouldn't stop Silas. I shouldn't wonder if he did it as a bit of local colour.

  'Local colour?

  'Yes. According to Silas country existence is one cesspool of rape, murder, incest, abortion, and suicide, and perhaps Silas thinks that it is time that Salcott St Mary lived up to his idea of it. Do you read our Silas, Inspector?

  'I'm afraid not.

  'Don't apologise. It's an acquired taste. Even his wife hasn't acquired it yet, if all reports are true. But then, poor woman, she is so busy suckling and suffering that she probably has no time to spare for the consideration of the abstract. No one seems to have indicated to her the possibilities of contraception. Of course, Silas has a «thing» about fertility. He holds that the highest function of a woman is the manufacture of progeny. So disheartening for a woman, don't you feel, to be weighed against a rabbit, and to know that she will inevitably be found wanting. Life, by Fertility out of Ugliness. That is how Silas sees it. He hates beauty. Beauty is an offence. He must mash it down and make it fertile. Make mulch of it. Of course he is just a little crazy, poor sweet, but it is a very profitable kind of craziness, so one need not drench oneself in tears about it. One of the secrets of a successful life is to know how to be a little profitably crazy.

  Grant wondered whether this was merely a normal sample of Toby's chatter, or whether it was designed to edge him on to Silas Weekley. Where a man's personality is entirely facade, as in the case of Toby Tullis, it was difficult to decide how much of the facade was barricade and how much was mere poster-hoarding.

  'You didn't see Searle at all on Wednesday evening? he said.

  No, Toby had not seen him. His time for the pub was before dinner, not after.

  'I don't want to be intrusive, Inspector, but there seems to me a needless furore over a simple drowning.

  'Why drowning?

  'Why not?

  'We have no evidence at all that Searle was drowned, and some fairly conclusive evidence that he wasn't.

  'That he wasn't? What evidence have you that he wasn't?

  'The river has been dragged for his body.

  'Oh, that!

  'What we are investigating, Mr Tullis, is the disappearance of a man in Salcott St Mary on Wednesday night.

  'You really ought to see the vicar, Inspector. He has the perfect solution for you.

  'And what is that?

  'The dear vicar believes that Searle was never really here at all. He holds that Searle was merely a demon who took human shape for a little, and disappeared when the joke grew stale or the-the juice ran dry, so to speak.

  'Very interesting.

  'I suppose you never saw Searle, Inspector?

  'Oh, yes. I have met him.

  This surprised Toby so much that Grant was amused.

  'The demon attended a party in Bloomsbury, just before he came to Salcott, he said.

  'My dear Inspector, you must see the vicar. This contribution to the predilections of demons is of inestimable value to research.

  'Why did you ask me if I had ever seen Searle?

  'Because he was so perfectly what one would imagine a materialised demon to be.

  'His good-looks, you mean?

  'Was it only a question of good-looks? Toby said, half quizzing half in challenge.

  'No, said Grant. 'No.

  'Do you think Searle was a wrong 'un? Toby said, forgetting the facade for a moment and dropping into the vernacular.

  'There is no evidence whatever on that score.

  'Ah, me, Toby said, resuming the facade with a small mock-sigh. 'The blank wall of bureaucratic caution. I have few ambitions left in life, Inspector, but one of them is a passionate desire to know what made Leslie Searle tick.

  'If I ever find out, bureaucratic caution will crack sufficiently to let you know, Grant said, getting up to go.

  He stood for a mo
ment looking out at the bright garden with the gleam of the river at the far end.

  'This might be a country house, miles from anywhere, he said.

  Toby said that that was one of the charms of Hoo House, but that, of course, most of the cottages on the river side of the street had gardens that ran to the river, but most of them were broken into allotments or market gardens of some sort. It was the keeping of the Hoo House grounds as lawns and trees that made it spacious seeming.

  'And the river makes a boundary without breaking the view. It is a sadly mixed blessing, the river.

  'Mosquitoes?

  'No; every now and then it has an overwhelming desire to get into the house. About once in every six winters it succeeds. My caretaker woke one morning last winter to find the boat knocking against his bedroom window.

  'You keep a boat?

  'Just as a prop. A punt affair that is pleasant to lie in on summer afternoons.

  Grant thanked him for being so helpful, apologised once more for having intruded on his breakfast, and took his leave. Toby showed signs of wanting to show him the house, but Grant avoided that for three reasons: he had work to do, he had already seen most of the house in the illustrated press, and he had an odd reluctance to be shown the world's finest craftsmanship by a slick little operator like Toby Tullis.

  12

  Silas Weekly lived in a cottage down the lane that led to the far bend of the river. Or rather, that started off towards the river. The lane, where it met the fields, turned at right-angles along the back of the village, only to turn up again and rejoin the village street. It was an entirely local affair. In the last cottage before the fields lived Silas Weekley, and Grant, 'proceeding' there police-fashion, was surprised to find it so poor a dwelling. It was not only that Weekley was a best-seller and could therefore afford a home that was more attractive than this, but there had been no effort to beautify the place; no generosity of paint and wash such as the other cottagers had used to make the street of Salcott St Mary a delight to the eye. No window plants, no trim curtains. The place had a slum air that was strange in its surroundings.

  The cottage door was open and the combined howls of an infant and a child poured out into the sunny morning. An enamel basin of dirty water stood in the porch, the soap bubbles on it bursting one by one in slow resignation. An animal toy of soft fur, so worn and grubby as to be unidentifiable as any known species, lay on the floor. The room beyond was unoccupied for the moment, and Grant stood observing it in a kind of wonder. It was poorly furnished and untidy beyond belief.