There were times, I reflected, at which Basil could be distinctly heavy. ‘A difference isn’t necessarily the same thing as all the difference,’ I said. ‘And, anyway, I repeat that Appleby seems to me not altogether discreet. He shows his hand. For example, I showed him out last night by the little door opposite the mills. As a result he revealed the way his suspicions were turning.’
‘There!’ said Geoffrey. ‘I knew we should get something out of Arthur at last.’
‘He remarked how easily the shooting could have been by–’
Richards appeared at the door. ‘Mr Cambrell,’ he announced.
17
Hard upon Richards’ announcement came Cambrell himself. ‘Roper,’ he said, ‘will you forgive me for coming in at this hour? I felt I had to say how very sorry I was to hear your bad news.’ And Ralph Cambrell pulled a long face. He pulled it, I thought, without much difficulty, as if the ribbon and tape business were going through a lean time.
Basil’s acknowledgements and report of the last news of Wilfred were accompanied by the rustle of a newspaper down the table. It was Anne. ‘But it’s not in the Post,’ she said. ‘However did you get to know?’
Cambrell looked embarrassed. ‘The police,’ he replied. ‘I had it from the police. The fact is’ – he turned again to Basil – ‘that I have explanations to make.’ He hesitated. ‘And something to return.’ He took a book from under his arm and laid it on the table.
‘Have a cup of coffee,’ said Basil.
Cambrell looked more disturbed still. ‘And of course an apology to offer. I beg you to forgive what I said at our parting yesterday afternoon.’
We looked uncomfortably down our noses. Basil admirably contrived not to be brusque and not to be hearty; Cambrell got his coffee, got two lumps of sugar. ‘Yes,’ he said; ‘as I say, the police. They appear to be quick-working and efficient. That is most satisfactory.’
‘Most satisfactory,’ said Anne.
‘Most satisfactory,’ said Geoffrey.
Cambrell shifted slightly on his chair. ‘The book. They traced me through the book I left in your study.’
Basil looked puzzled. ‘I am quite sure you didn’t–’
‘The book I left last night.’
‘The book,’ said Geoffrey and Anne in chorus, ‘he left last night.’
Basil, I am glad to record, stood for no more of this. ‘Anne,’ he said, ‘Geoffrey, no doubt you have your own plans for the morning.’
The door closed on the impossible couple. Cambrell looked slightly relieved. ‘I had better begin at the beginning. After leaving you yesterday afternoon I went across to the office and worked late. A little after seven o’clock I prepared to go home. Then it occurred to me that in the matters we had been discussing the – the last word had not perhaps been said. I remembered your remarking that you would probably be working in your study till dinner. So I slipped into the park by the little door–’
Basil’s eyes flickered for a moment towards mine. I could see that he knew very well what I had been about to report when our visitor was announced.
‘–and strolled up to the house. The front door was open–’
‘Yes,’ I interrupted. ‘I left it open when I went out.’
‘–and the hall deserted. I noticed that it was a couple of minutes after half past seven. I had an impulse – I am afraid it is most inexplicable – not to present myself to your servants again in a formal call. So I walked straight down the little corridor, knocked at the door of your study, and went in. It was empty.’
Basil no more than faintly raised his eyebrows. ‘I see. I had just left it. And Wilfred had not yet gone in. I am sorry I missed you.’
Cambrell received this irony unresentfully. ‘I waited for a couple of minutes. I must tell you that I had with me a circulating-library book which I was taking home. I must have laid it down on the desk.’ Cambrell paused. ‘I say I waited a couple of minutes. But perhaps it was really less than one; in fact it didn’t take me long to realize that I had done an exceedingly awkward thing.’
‘Quite so.’
‘You will not think it absurd when I say that a mild panic seized me. I picked up my book, returned to the hall, found it still deserted, and left the house, closing the door behind me. Only in my flurry I took the wrong book.’
‘Odd,’ said Basil. ‘If you had wanted to demonstrate your presence in the study you could scarcely have left a better clue.’
‘No doubt. And as I say, the police acted most expeditiously. They noticed my book when examining the room and had the thoroughness to ask your butler if you subscribed to this particular library. He told them that you had books sent down from London. So they roused the manager of the book shop in the small hours of this morning, examined his files, and traced the book to me. A young detective officer called Appleby – a very civil fellow – was on my doorstep at eight this morning and I had to explain the whole thing. He was very reasonable and seems to agree that I acted unwisely but naturally enough.’ Cambrell announced this with some satisfaction, seemingly unaware that in Appleby’s pronouncement a certain judgement of character was involved. ‘And then I felt, of course, that I must come over at once and explain everything. And return the book I took away with me.’
Basil picked up the volume from the breakfast table. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I see. Law’s Serious Call.’
Crossing the hall some twenty minutes later I met Geoffrey. Clad in a large sweater and muffler, he was swinging a badminton racket. ‘This sight of death,’ he said, ‘is as a bell That warns my old age to a sepulchre. You remember Wale quoting that in Lucy’s game? I was going to draw something surrealist on it this morning. But the fingers get too cold this weather. So if the sleuths come Anne and I are in the coach-house. And Cecil is locked in his bedroom.’
‘Locked in his bedroom?’
‘I mean he has locked himself in. As you know, Wale has been Badgering one Beevor. Quite a Bestiary in that.’ Geoffrey paid this the tribute of a long, loud laugh. ‘But Cecil will neither be Badgered nor Beevored. In fact he’s rapidly developing an anti-medical mania. No one is to be let in to him except this lawyer he’s sent for. Odd, isn’t it? As Lucy would say, the plot thickens. Sickens would be the better word, to my mind. Off to who-goes-with-whom, I suppose?’
This was Geoffrey’s name for my sort of writing. His generation affects to be uninterested in personal relations and to regard every drawing-room as a boring bedroom in disguise. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I shall try to do a little work, and it will be about people who are reasonably aware of each other. By the way, Appleby thinks that you and Anne are not unlike the creatures in my books.’
Geoffrey stared; I think he was really shocked.
‘He thinks of you as exceptionally well-up in who-goes-with-whom – in the whole wash and drift of feeling at Belrive. He also remarked that you have penetrated to the heart of the mystery.’
‘If he means that I see there isn’t a mystery, he’s right.’
‘Isn’t a mystery? I hardly think he meant that.’
Geoffrey opened round eyes on me. ‘Surely you don’t think there’s any doubt about who shot Wilfred?’
I looked at him in dismay. ‘Really–’
‘Basil shot Wilfred, of course. Tried to murder him. When the bed-stuff bores you come and watch the badminton.’
And my young kinsman shrugged his shoulders and moved off. But after a couple of paces he turned round. ‘Do you imagine’ – he spoke with something between irritation and vehemence – ‘that a chap like Basil would let a fat little banker stymie something serious?’
The tail-end of this shocking conversation Basil might almost have heard; he came into the hall just as Geoffrey disappeared. Simultaneously Richards emerged; there had been a summons to the front door. A moment later he reappeared, ushering in first Inspector Leader, and then an elderly man of substantial and severe deportment, accompanied by a nondescript person carrying a dispatch-case.
�
�Sir Basil,’ said Leader, ‘Mr Foxcroft is now out of danger, I am glad to say.’
The substantial person handed Richards an overcoat. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘We are devoutly thankful. But I presume he will want my hastily summoned service all the same – eh, Sir Basil? And good morning to you.’
‘Good morning, Cotton. You haven’t got the situation quite clear. The inspector here is referring to Wilfred Foxcroft, who is in hospital after being shot last night.’
‘Shot? Dear, dear.’ Cotton moved abruptly away from Leader, as if dissociating himself from one suddenly revealed as a natural enemy. ‘Shot, indeed. Well, we mustn’t start talking about it here. When that sort of thing – ah – begins to happen discretion is the word. But I understood that someone called Foxcroft–’
‘Wilfred’s brother Cecil. He has decided that he requires legal advice in a hurry and I gave him your name.’
‘Odd,’ said Cotton. ‘I came in a hurry because I gathered it was an urgent matter of a will. Tripet, was it not a will?’
The nondescript person nodded. ‘Yes, sir. A will, certainly.’
‘A will,’ said Cotton, ‘to be drafted urgently. So I brought Tripet. You won’t believe me, but I’ve known testators determined to leave legacies to everyone within three miles round. Virtually impossible to find a witness. So I bring Tripet. Eh, Tripet?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Basil was watching Richards out of the hall. ‘I have no doubt my nephew Cecil wants to make a will. But I ought to tell you that he is thought to be unwell. His doctor, Mervyn Wale, is staying with us, and has just proposed to call into consultation a colleague called Beevor.’
‘Beevor?’ exclaimed Cotton. ‘Beevor’s an alienist. Tripet, isn’t that right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Come along then, man – come along. No time to be lost. Would it be any use taking instructions on testamentary dispositions from a client after Beevor had been at him – eh? Use your sense, Tripet.’
‘No, sir. Certainly, sir.’
‘I understand,’ I said, ‘that Dr Foxcroft has suddenly developed an unreasoning dread of the medical profession. The trouble is there.’
‘It only sounds sense to me. To my mind consulting doctors is either a waste of money or a forlorn hope. Eh, Tripet?’
‘No, sir; I can’t say I agree.’
‘Quite right, Tripet, quite right. Know your own mind. Essential in the law.’
‘Thank you, sir. Yes, sir.’
Leader shifted his feet in discreet impatience. ‘Sir Basil, if you could spare the time–’
Basil nodded. ‘Arthur, could you take Cotton and Mr Tripet up to Cecil? It is distressing and absurd, but it appears that he is reluctant to come down.’
I led the way, wondering as I did so what had become of Appleby. He must have worked through the small hours on the matter of the circulating-library book. Perhaps after interviewing Cambrell he had gone to bed. Perhaps in the investigation of the Belrive affair he was going to take what might be called the night shift.
Cecil’s room was at the end of a corridor. I tapped at the door. ‘Cecil, here is Mr Cotton, the solicitor whom you asked to call.’
There was a sound which was distinguishably that of a heavy piece of furniture being moved. ‘Ask him,’ came Cecil’s voice, ‘if he has a card.’
I glanced rather uncomfortably at Cotton in the half-light of the corridor. ‘I’m afraid,’ I murmured, ‘that he does seem to be in an eccentric mood.’
‘And be so good as to push it under the door.’
Had Cecil spoken wildly or in agitation the situation would have been distressing enough. But the voice which was coming to us was very much that of the headmaster on his own ground – calmly authoritative, intimidatingly august. And this imported an uncanny element into the affair.
Cotton produced a card and handed it to Tripet. Tripet pushed it under the door. It disappeared with a nervous jerk. After a moment’s pause came the sound of a key turning in the lock. There was another and longer pause and we were told to enter. Cecil had retreated to a little writing desk at the far end of the room. He rose and advanced towards Cotton with measured cordiality. He might have been receiving a parent of respectable but undistinguished condition. ‘Mr Cotton?’ he said. ‘How do you do?’ And at the same time he looked rather apprehensively at Tripet’s dispatch-case. He was speculating, I believe, on the chances of its really harbouring stethoscopes and clinical thermometers. ‘It is my desire,’ said Cecil – and he spoke with even more of an eerily false calm – ‘to make a will.’
Cotton bowed. ‘Always a wise resolution, my dear sir,’ he murmured soothingly. ‘The obligation to make exact testamentary dispositions–’
‘Quite so.’ Cecil’s pupils narrowed, as if he were peering into the remote past. ‘Property must be conserved. I commonly give a little talk–’ He broke off and looked carefully round the room. ‘But at the moment it is not property that is in my mind. My directions concern disposal’ – he hesitated – ‘concern disposal of the remains.’
I gave a start, and in doing so knocked a book off a small table. Cecil positively jumped. ‘Arthur,’ he said, ‘be so good as to pull the chest of drawers against the door.’
‘My dear Cecil, can I not persuade you–’
‘It breaks the draught. On these chilly mornings I find it breaks the draught.’
I did as I was bidden.
‘ – of the remains. And to do this I wish to give legal effect at once.’
‘A statement of wishes,’ said Cotton smoothly, ‘formally witnessed. An excellent thing. But I must tell you that you have actually no power–’
‘And there must be two copies, made immediately. And, Arthur, one of these I desire you to take down to the hall and pin up.’
I stared at him. ‘Pin up?’
‘Pin up. Pin up.’ Cecil’s calm had gone. He was trembling violently. Suddenly he sat down on his bed. ‘A little talk,’ he said. ‘I give a little talk. On what I call Control…what I call Control…Control…’
18
Going downstairs – for I had concluded that Cecil’s distresses might decently be regarded as none of my business – I found Lucy Chigwidden domestically employed in the hall. On a table before her were masses of shaggy chrysanthemums, and these she was beginning to arrange in bowls. Beside her also was a large sheet of paper on which she was making spasmodic scrawls with a pencil. ‘Arthur,’ she called out, ‘come and help me with your advice. I am arranging the flowers because it is so soothing.’ She made a jab at her paper. ‘How beautiful these roses are.’
‘My dear Lucy, you are arranging chrysanthemums.’
Lucy peered in mild surprise at the massed flowers. ‘Dear me – indeed I am! Do you know, I was expecting them to bring roses – Andrews promised roses – and so I saw them as roses. And now I am quite disappointed. But it shows what Doctor Johnson calls the prevalence of imagination.’
Lucy was determinedly literary. ‘It shows,’ I said, ‘great absence of mind. And that pencil is unsuitable for cutting stalks; you will find the scissors on the table more convenient.’
‘Thank you, Arthur.’ Lucy picked up the scissors and poised them over her paper. ‘I suppose I was in something of a brown study. I am beginning to work it out.’
‘Better a brown study than a blue funk – which is the condition in which I have just left Cecil.’
‘Ah!’ Lucy, who had crossed the hall to ring a bell, placed a finger on her lips. ‘Richards, take this bowl to the library. For the large window.’
‘Lucy, you are incorrigible. Richards is the butler. That young person who has just gone out is called Rose.’
‘Richards rose abruptly,’ said Lucy.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Richards rose abruptly. There is a Richards, you know, in my new book, and this morning I decided to end a chapter on that. Richards rose abruptly. So you can see how the confusion arises.’
I sighed. ‘I
t only remains for me to add that a Rose by any other name–’
‘Cecil,’ interrupted Lucy with unwonted definiteness, ‘did it.’ She poked about among the flowers on her left hand for the paper which lay on her right. ‘I’ve worked it out.’
‘My dear Lucy, you really mustn’t…’
At this moment Basil entered the hall and Lucy caught sight of him. ‘Basil,’ she said prosaically and raising her voice, ‘Cecil did it.’ She found her piece of paper and began to wave it in the air. Still waving it, she again moved to the bell and rang. ‘Rose, these had better go in the library too. Why do you think Cecil should say he was praying at half past seven last night?’
Rose, to whom this emphatic question had every appearance of being directly addressed, gave a startled yelp and set down the bowl abruptly and all but disastrously on the table. We had to stand in great embarrassment until she had recovered sufficiently to take herself off.
‘Lucy,’ said Basil, ‘If you could be a little more collected–’
I nodded severely. ‘Yes, indeed. The girl appeared scared to an unreasonable degree. So much so, I hope, that she will refrain from gossiping in the servants’ hall.’
Lucy contrived to look momentarily contrite. ‘I am so sorry, Basil. But when I have just worked something out–’
‘If you will tell us just what you have worked out perhaps that will be the safest way of working it off.’
‘One–’
‘What?’
‘One: why did Cecil say he was praying at the time of the crime?’
There Came Both Mist and Snow Page 13