13
While Appleby was talking to Miss Arne, and Honeybath to Burrow, Judith Appleby and Dolly Grinton were together making their way to the local post office. Each had discovered a need to buy stamps, and although either might have bought them for both, it had seemed companionable to make a joint expedition. The February morning was chilly, and they moved at a brisk pace. But this didn’t extend to any inhibiting of conversation. Judith found Dolly sufficiently odd to be entertaining, and Dolly was disposed to admire Judith as one not exactly trendy (which was what she tended to be herself) but at least well up in metropolitan movements in literature and the arts. Dolly read all the books that won prizes and all the theatrical notices that raved about all the new plays. Moreover there had been a Meštrovič exhibition at the Tate, with sundry exhibits brought from Zagreb and Belgrade, and as Judith was professionally equipped to pronounce upon these, a satisfactory dialogue ensued. But then suddenly – and it was of a piece with her oddity – Dolly flew off at a most unexpected tangent.
‘Judith,’ she said, ‘how extraordinary it must be to have a husband who isn’t gullible! And how difficult! However do you get your own way?’
‘I don’t know that I do.’ Judith decided this was an insufficiently accurate reply. ‘Or if I do, I never seem to notice it. Do you consider Terence to be gullible?’
‘Quite exquisitely at times. But he is such a strange mixture, you see. He combines it with being more pig-headed than any man I know. Sometimes in matters that are quite important, but more frequently about things that are too small and silly for words. That chicken fund, for example.’
‘Oh, yes – the chicken fund. Is there really somebody who goes round giving money to old women whose chickens have been eaten by foxes?’
‘Of course there is. Otherwise the old men would do something nasty to the hunting gates, and the other old men – the mounted ones, who are mostly bankers and stockbrokers far too heavy for the saddle – would come a cropper at them and break their necks. So subscriptions would fall off too.’
‘I see. I suppose there is a great deal of politics about fox-hunting.’
‘The most horrid people hunt. And people even more horrid object to hunting – with banners and aniseed and heaven knows what. I sometimes wish Terence would turn civilized, and content himself with shooting pheasants and partridges, and exterminating badgers because they are bad for cows. But Terence says bugger the cows, and he isn’t a bloody Hindu. Isn’t it extraordinary that Terence knows about Hindus and their cows? He must have read something about them in a colour supplement.’
‘One does learn in surprising ways nowadays. Sometimes when I wake up early I turn on the radio and listen to the Open University. It may be about Wittgenstein or it may be about how not to bring up children. But it’s always informative.’
Dolly at once opted for Wittgenstein, being aware that he was another sacred cow. But as her knowledge of this disturbing philosopher was about equal to that of a Hindu of average accomplishment, the topic presently lapsed. The two ladies had, however, reached the post office.
So had Mrs Mustard. Mrs Mustard, in fact, emerged just as her hostess and fellow guest were about to enter. Although exhibiting her customary air of diffused inspiration, she somehow contrived to look agitated as well.
‘Just in time!’ she exclaimed rapidly. ‘A housemaid told me I could probably catch the morning collection. A most important letter to the Sadhu Nadu. We are in constant communication concerning the Further Beyond. And now I fear I must hurry on. My fixed hour for hypertranscendental meditation, you understand. Goodbye!’ and Mrs Mustard marched rapidly away.
‘How very rude!’ Dolly Grinton was understandably indignant. ‘Mightn’t she have had the civility to walk back with us? And the morning collection won’t be taken up for more than an hour, so she wasn’t even speaking the truth. I’ll tell you what! She can’t bear us, and has been sending a telegram arranging for another telegram to call her urgently away. I’ve detected it happening at Grinton before.’
Judith felt that this could be believed. She was puzzled, all the same.
‘But isn’t Mrs Mustard a friend of yours?’ she asked.
‘Not a bit. She just wrote to me, you see. So I had a look in Who’s Who, and they’re quite respectable. She and her husband, that is. It’s her husband there’s a bit about – he’s a professor of architecture or something, so they did seem quite okay. And I just asked her down.’
‘I see. What did she write to you about?’
‘About there being a ghost. The Grinton Ghost. Of course old families do go in for ghosts, so it’s reasonable there should be a Grinton one. But I never heard of it before, and I don’t like the sound of it. Live Grintons are bad enough, without dead ones on top of them.’
With this harsh judgement upon her marital condition, Dolly prepared to enter the post office. But then she halted again for a moment.
‘I know the stupid old woman who runs this place,’ she said. ‘She comes to the WI and eats my cakes at its festivities. Shall I find out from her about that telegram?’
‘I think better not.’ Judith was quite firm. ‘She’s not supposed to talk about other customers’ business. And one oughtn’t to encourage such people to do anything irregular.’
‘Oh, very well!’
But it was plain that Dolly Grinton considered it set a mark upon a woman to be a policeman’s wife.
Charles Honeybath, meanwhile, was not easy in his mind. He felt that there was something anomalous in his having obtained from Burrow much information about Jonathan Grinton which had apparently never come the way of Jonathan’s descendant Terence. It was no doubt true that the eccentricity of Terence extended to his being disposed to resent so much as a mention of those of his forbears who had trafficked in literature or the arts. But now there seemed to be a real possibility that Jonathan’s affairs – or at least his luckless association with the poet Pope – had, so to speak, started alive to the extent of making an actual impact on the present state of affairs at Grinton Hall. And focal here was the mysterious Professor Hagberg. Burrow had declared that it was now some months since he had seen Professor Hagberg, and Honeybath was fairly sure that Burrow would never see Professor Hagberg again. Honeybath himself had seen him only yesterday as a dead man perched on a chair. And Terence Grinton had himself had obscure dealings with Hagberg when unprovided with information which Burrow, in his role as a family historian, could have afforded him.
So what ought Honeybath to do now? He somehow found it inconceivable that he could conduct with Terence a rational discussion of the matter; Terence, he felt, would simply roar or bellow. Very sensibly, therefore, he decided to make a beeline for Appleby and acquaint him in detail with all that had transacted itself in Burrow’s pantry.
Appleby listened attentively, but gave no evidence of astonishment. It took a lot, Honeybath reflected, to astonish Appleby. Nor did Appleby announce that here, then, was at last a chink of light in darkness. It was a question less of a chink than a slot. It was as if Appleby were already in possession of a large and ordered structure into which this fresh material fitted as snugly as one could hope. So Honeybath was just a little piqued.
‘I know, John,’ he said, ‘that you don’t want to be too active in the mystery just because you happen to be weekending at Grinton. Perhaps I ought to have taken all this stuff to Denver.’
‘Denver?’ Appleby seemed almost to have forgotten Denver. ‘Well, I don’t know about that. I really don’t know. Whether it’s a police concern at all, that is. Not that we shan’t have Denver round again before the day’s out.’
‘Not a police concern!’ Honeybath found this a most unaccountable remark. ‘When I actually came on a dead body…
‘Dead bodies are very tricky, Charles. In law, that’s to say. Do you know that, if you come on a dead body and believe it to be a live one, and plunge a dagger into it as a result, you can’t be found guilty of attempted murder? The mens rei is
there, of course, and that’s usually quite something. But not in such a case as that. Corpses haven’t much in the way of rights. Not in law.’
‘Body snatching,’ Honeybath said. ‘Burke and Hare.’
‘Hare got off – and Burke was hanged because he smothered people. Gruesome talk, Charles! But what I’m saying is that the mess we’re involved with is arguably a family matter. Perhaps Terence really will be able to tell the excellent Denver to go away. And Denver would certainly be glad to be shut of us. Is that a telephone bell? What’s the betting it’s for me?’
And this was a good question. For it was.
‘Natural causes.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Sir, did you hear me? That’s the preliminary report on this corpse. Death from natural causes. But we shan’t have a written report until tomorrow.’
‘All over by then. Have you been expecting to find yourself with a murder on your hands?’
‘Well, sir – when somebody makes off with a dead…’
‘Yes, yes. But murder has a smell, you know. Or an ambience, if that’s more elegant. And this just isn’t that sort of affair at all. I hope I don’t sound dogmatic.’
‘Oh no, Sir John. Not in the least.’ Pardonably, Inspector Denver’s tone betrayed a hint of sarcasm. ‘There’s just another word or two in this interim report on the death.’
‘Ah!’ Appleby’s voice had sharpened. ‘Cerebral disaster – that sort of talk?’
‘Approximately. Cardiac catastrophe. I suppose it means an instantaneously fatal heart attack.’
‘Of course it does. Any suggestion, yet, of a possible immediate predisposing cause?’
‘Excitement, Sir John.’
‘Excitement?’
‘Yes. I’d have supposed it would be the need for sudden and violent physical effort – that kind of thing. But our leech says it’s often sudden emotional shock. It seems to me you wouldn’t expect anything of that sort in Mr Grinton’s sleepy and deserted library.’
‘But it wasn’t deserted, was it? Or not quite. Almost certainly at least one other person was around. And no end of persons around last night, Denver. A regular picnic.’
‘A regular headache, if you ask me. Just what were they all up to? The whole lot of them look to have been up to something.’
‘A very judicious observation, Inspector.’
‘I’m having second thoughts about that Mustard woman. I’d like to have seen a little more of what she was up to.’
‘She’s been in the second-thoughts category with me too. Are you still thoroughly suspicious of Mr Grinton himself?’
‘Well no, sir. With me, he’s rather been crowded out.’
‘Perhaps not so judicious. By the way, the corpse’s name is Hagberg.’
‘Sir?’
‘Or was Hagberg. I’m not sure that corpses are entitled to proper names: it’s a nice theological point. Hagberg was almost certainly a professor in an American university. It would be extremely useful if you got on the line to London and had them look up all professors of that name over there. There’s a reference book that gives that kind of information at once. They may find quite a clutch of Hagbergs, odd though the name be. But brief particulars will be desirable. We want a literary Hagberg, with a special interest in the eighteenth century. Can you do that?’
‘Certainly I can. And I’m coming out to Grinton again after lunch.’
‘You’ll be universally welcome, my dear fellow. Goodbye.’
14
Judith Appleby, having acquainted her husband with the episode of the post office and heard the latest news of the corpse, had wandered back into the garden. Lawns had received their first mowing of the season, and pheasants were strolling on them as confidently as if they were house-guests, aware that a major crisis in life was happily behind them. Rooks were already behaving industriously in great elm trees still with no hint of leaf, and virtuously drawing attention to their behaviour by producing a great deal of clamour the while. And various other natural activities were going forward.
Less natural was the behaviour of Magda Tancock, who was conscientiously playing French cricket with her children on the croquet green. It is not a particularly graceful game. The method of scoring runs, a matter of rapidly rotating the bat behind one’s rump, is particularly insusceptible of aesthetically acceptable performance. Nevertheless Magda clearly regarded the entire proceeding as a callisthenic exercise, and was urging poise and rhythm upon her progeny.
‘One, two, and three, Demetrius!’ she was crying. ‘One, two, and three! Florinda, dear, breathe! Breathe!’
‘She’s cheating!’ Demetrius shouted furiously. ‘She cheated again! She counted a run when I’d already got hold of the ball. Playing with girls is stupid, stupid, stupid.’
‘Stupid yourself,’ Florinda called back. ‘Can’t bowl me out, can’t bowl me out. Cry-baby Metrius can’t bowl me out!’
Thus mocked, Demetrius hurled the ball not in the direction of the bat, but of his sister’s head. It was only a tennis ball, but murder was being attempted, all the same. And suddenly Magda was shouting too.
‘Horrible children!’ Magda shouted. ‘Beastly, beastly children, go away! Go away!’ She caught herself up. ‘Darlings,’ she said, ‘there is dear old Mr Mactaggart. There is grandad’s dear old gardener. Run to him, sweethearts.’ Magda was now coaxing. ‘Ask Mr Mactaggart to show you the first snowdrops. Ask him to show you’ – and here Magda Tancock dived desperately into the recesses of her botanical lore – ‘the sweet little aconites.’
‘Silly snowdrops!’ Florinda shouted, and stalked away in one direction.
‘Bugger the aconites!’ Demetrius shouted. (He had been listening to his grandfather.) And he stalked away in the other.
Charles Honeybath, had he been present, might have reflected that the pas de deux at Covent Garden was still a somewhat remote event on the Tancock family horizon.
‘I can’t think what has come over those children,’ Magda said, when she found that this contretemps had been observed. ‘It’s quite unaccountable.’
‘Surely not.’ Judith was amused. ‘I have grandchildren who behave just like that at the drop of a handkerchief.’
‘I wish I’d never got married,’ Magda said. ‘Do you know that, at Somerville, I was thought of as quite a promising scholar?’
‘So you might have stayed on, and become like that formidable Miss Arne? You may have the brains, but I doubt whether you have the temperament.’
‘I hope that’s a compliment.’ Magda didn’t seem displeased by this piece of candour. ‘And perhaps I’m like my father.’
Judith didn’t say, ‘I hope not’, which would have been carrying candour too far. And Magda went on at once.
‘I know what it is,’ she said. ‘What makes Demetrius and Florinda so edgy today, I mean. It’s Giles. Giles has gone as nervous as a cat. I suppose this dead man thing has worried him. He was quite rude to that common little Hillam at breakfast. And now he seems to want us to get away. He’s even messing around with the car. And we’re supposed to stay for a week. We always do.’
‘A couple of sunny days,’ Judith said, ‘and there will be daffodils in no time. You ought to stay for that.’
This conventional remark, designed to divert Magda from uttering inappropriate criticism of her husband, was of no effect.
‘And yet he’s pleased with himself as well,’ Magda went on. ‘And talking about getting a Mercedes. With Eton not all that far off! It’s crazy. Was Sir John at Eton?’
‘He was at rather a good grammar school – level pegging with Eton, more or less. If you want an Etonian, there’s Charles Honeybath. Much of a muchness with John, wouldn’t you say? Two comfortable old gentlemen – just a little discomposed by what you call this dead man thing.’
‘I suppose my father ought to be a comfortable old gentleman too. But he never seems quite to manage it. All that bluff cheer, and hullabaloo about hounds. It’s not quite all of him. A bi
t bewildered, don’t you think? Wondering how to make do in this unaccountable day and age.’
‘Yesterday was certainly not without its unaccountable element. But I have a feeling it’s going to be cleared up.’
‘I’m sure I hope so, Judith. At least I hope I hope so. I can’t think why, but it all strikes me as rather frightening.’
‘I don’t know why it should.’ Judith looked curiously at Magda Tancock. ‘A general malaise, perhaps, extending from your father to Demetrius and Florinda. With the exception, perhaps, of Burrow. Burrow is imperturbable. It’s a sine qua non with butlers, and taken for granted even in advertisements. “Wanted, an imperturbable butler”. One never sees that.’
Judith offered this nonsense by way of cheering Magda up. The young woman did have a harassed air. Perhaps her husband drank, or had a vexatious habit of pestering maidservants in corridors. Or perhaps it was just that Demetrius and Florinda were not really artistically endowed, and she knew it.
‘And there is Giles,’ Magda said, ‘and coming this way. I expect he has a bad conscience about refusing to join in that stupid French cricket. And he has that nasty Hillam with him. Why does my mother ask such awful people down? That awful Mustard woman, for instance. A failed actress.’
‘Is that what Mrs Mustard is?’
‘It seems so. Burrow told me. Burrow knows everything. Long ago, she was in a play called The Spook Sonata. Have you ever heard of it?’
‘Yes. It’s by a gloomy Swede.’
‘It sounds like a squalid vegetable. Anyway, the play has a ghost in it, as you’d expect. And it made the woman lose her nerve, so that she never went on stage again, but took to ghosts and things on her own account. Or so Burrow thinks. It’s extraordinary how much Burrow thinks. Not that it prevents him from being reasonably competent. Of course he picked up his job from his father. Nobody could pick up a job from mine.’
At this point Magda’s husband and Hillam came up with the ladies. They had, Judith thought, a conspiratorial air. Or perhaps it wasn’t quite that. Perhaps it was a kind of mutual suspicion that was between them. Probably Rosencrantz and Guildenstern distrusted one another quite a lot. So both interpretations were possible.
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