There Came Both Mist and Snow (19 page)

‘But Cecil has certainly lost his head.’ I turned to Appleby. ‘Is this indiscretion known to Wale? And is that why…’

Appleby had gone to the window and was drumming gently on the sill; it struck me again that he was waiting for something other than the conversation of Hubert, Cudbird, and myself. Now he turned round. ‘It would hardly explain his wanting to make a will. Nor his sudden bolt.’

‘He was due,’ said Hubert, ‘to lunch with a parent – awful man called Podman who makes motor-bodies over in Riverton. I suppose someone ought to ring up and say he’s ill. For I suppose he
is
ill. Going to be dam’ well dammed up by Beevor.’ Over this joke – characteristic of Geoffrey rather than of his father – Hubert laughed with even less enjoyment than before. He tossed his palette on the table and paced restlessly across the attic. ‘What the devil of a lot of interesting talk. Nothing bores me more. Can’t we have a spot of action?’

‘Action?’ said Appleby. He smiled with an affectation of vague geniality. ‘Oh, no. We just wait about.’ He put his hands in his pockets.

Cudbird, as if prompted to take up a contrary attitude, moved briskly towards the door. ‘To keep up with John’s waiting about,’ he said, ‘you have to look pretty nippy. As for action–’

‘Yes, action.’ Hubert’s voice rose insistently. ‘This chatter gets nowhere.’ He paused, and I was conscious of his giving me an odd look. ‘If only the unknown would take another crack at Basil the thing might begin to work out.’

‘I think,’ said Cudbird, ‘that Sir Basil is safe enough at the moment.’

‘From what you said last night’ – I turned to Appleby – ‘I gather you really think there might be some danger of Basil’s being attacked? And Cudbird has several notions which point to the same possibility.’

Appleby shook his head; he seemed increasingly preoccupied. ‘No, I hardly think there’s much danger. Perhaps I was just trying something out on Sir Basil.’ He smiled his absent and engaging smile. ‘As Mr Roper says: a lot of interesting talk. All over the house. Theories rather than deeds, perhaps, are incubating at Belrive. Don’t you think so, Mr Cudbird?’

Cudbird was still standing by the door; his reply was lost in the sudden screech of the Cambrell siren. ‘Twelve o’clock,’ I said, ‘and it seems as if we had scarcely finished breakfast.’

‘Twelve o’clock?’ Appleby took his hands out of his pockets and looked innocently surprised. ‘Dear me, perhaps we ought to be going downstairs.’

‘Perhaps you ought,’ said Hubert. ‘You have all been very generous of your time already. And I mustn’t be greedy and expect more than my share.’

Appleby amiably smiled. ‘I am sure – and Mr Cudbird is even more sure – that you are quite absorbed in your work.’ He glanced at the brewer and I thought that his smile took on the character of a private joke. ‘But perhaps you will come down too? I have just remembered’ – and Appleby’s features took on the expression of a man who had just remembered – ‘that Leader is proposing a sort of conference at twelve.’

‘A conference?’ I said suspiciously.

‘In the library. We must hurry or we shall be late.’

With Cudbird leading the way we trooped downstairs. Everybody was in the library – or everybody except Basil and Cecil. Even Cambrell had appeared once more. And at a desk near the middle of the room sat Leader supported by a sergeant of police. We edged ourselves into chairs, and I noticed that Appleby dissapeared into a shadowy corner. Then we waited. Nobody had anything to say, or any apparent idea of what was going forward. The effect was uncommonly solemn.

A long and somewhat fidgety silence was broken by an important cough from Leader. ‘Our business–’ he began.

The sergeant murmured something in his ear. Leader broke off and nodded. The sergeant rose and rang a bell. A constable appeared, was given whispered instructions, and departed. The police, we had to realize, had descended upon Belrive in a flood.

‘I am afraid,’ said Leader, ‘that we can scarcely begin without Sir Basil.’ He tapped the desk impatiently. ‘But he is unlikely to be long. He promised to be here with the rest of you at noon.’ And Leader fell to studying his notebook. It had the appearance of having grown larger overnight. He turned a page; the rustle fell upon an increasingly nervous silence.

A couple of minutes went by. Leader, I thought, was passing from mere impatience to apprehensiveness. At the sound of a footstep in the hall every eye turned towards the door: it was the constable again. He murmured to Leader, crossed the room, and murmured to Appleby. And it seemed to me that between the two men there passed a guarded but startled glance.

Silence descended once more; once more it was broken by the sound of footsteps. But this time of running footsteps. The door flew open: Richards appeared with yet another constable behind him. He looked distractedly round the room, hurried across to Leader. ‘Sir Basil,’ he cried; ‘Sir Basil has been attacked in the ruins. An attempt to murder him. They’re bringing him up to the house.’

Far advanced as I am into the territory of Lucy Chigwidden, I see I have yielded in the matter of chapterization to just Lucy’s sense of effect. Richards’ announcement makes a capital little curtain – a curtain which rings up again immediately on much hubbub and confusion in the library. But I can at least refrain from exploiting this. Briefly, what followed was rather like a scene in an overcrowded classical tragedy. The messenger dashes in with news of disaster, the chorus makes a great to-do, and then a second messenger – somewhat less out of breath – arrives and gives a fuller account of the trouble on hand. In our case the second messenger was a uniformed inspector of police: I found myself hoping for a moment that he was that Haines of whose services Appleby had adroitly deprived us the evening before. His actual name – if I ever knew it – has long escaped me. I remember him only as a voice. As that and as a further intimidating intimation of the manner in which the constabulary were crowding in upon the mystery.

Wale – once more called upon for emergency services – hurried from the room. And then the voice struck up. It appeared that the whole park and gardens were being patrolled and that the success of this new attack had in consequence upset the police very much: our second inspector seemed concerned to exculpate his subordinates to the company at large. He had made an appointment with Basil, it appeared, to examine the little armoury at the range. He arrived to find Basil unconscious in the ruins.

‘A cleverly contrived accident,’ said the inspector – nominally to Leader, but actually in an indefinably threatening way to the assembled party. ‘Severely wounded in the head, and beside him a large stone apparently dislodged from the tower. He can’t as much as have cried out, poor gentleman, or one of our men would have heard. A devilish trick enough.’

The Voice was clearly of a more emotional habit than those of his colleagues whom we had encountered hitherto. He shook his head in a thoroughly gloomy way and had to be prompted by Appleby, speaking from his corner.

‘Any signs in the snow? Anyone reported as having been seen about the park?’

The Voice shook its head. ‘Not a sign. And not a soul. And of the present company – Dr Foxcroft excepted – everyone seems pretty well accounted for.’

I felt someone stir suddenly beside me: it was Geoffrey Roper. He leant forward as if to interrupt and then, thinking better of it, sank back in his chair.

‘There’s one queer thing, though. Sir Basil’s waistcoat and shirt were unbuttoned. Looks as if the person responsible had tried to make sure he was done for.’

I noticed Appleby looking momentarily disconcerted, and I wondered if some theory of his was upset by this intelligence. But for that matter we were all undoubtedly very much upset. This fresh disaster, coming on top of the original shooting and Cecil’s madness, had got us pretty well on the run.

Lucy was the first person to venture a contribution to the deliberations of the police. ‘Perhaps,’ she said nervously, ‘it really
was
an accident. Looking up at the tower I have often thought that it was in dangerous disrepair. Perhaps a stone really fell off and hurt Basil.’ Her eye became abstracted, as it did when she was consulting some world of inner experiences. ‘After all, the most extraordinary coincidences do happen.’

The answer to this suggestion came from Wale, who had reappeared at the door. ‘Casually falling masonry,’ he said, ‘doesn’t behave with surgical skill.’ He crossed the room and sat down somewhat wearily in his former place. ‘The blow could not have been more deftly delivered.’

There was silence. We were all faintly bewildered without for a moment knowing why. Then Hubert Roper spoke. ‘But surely it wasn’t a very efficient attack – supposing it to be that? Basil, we gather, is still alive – even if the wound is severe?’

‘Severe?’ Wale snorted contemptuously. ‘It might look severe to an innocent eye. But I assure you that Basil was no more than stunned – and uncommonly neatly too. There was never the slightest danger. He will have nothing but a bit of a headache twenty-four hours from now.’

From the far end of the room came the clear voice of Anne Grainger. ‘But the police
will
think us an ineffective lot. First Wilfred messily and inconclusively shot and now this. I call it humiliating, positively. But I suppose’ – and she looked collectedly round at our disapproving stares – ‘that it’s pretty typical of our decaying social class. Nothing done quite right.’

Leader frowned. The Voice frowned a great deal more menacingly than Leader. And if Appleby, on the contrary, seemed pleased we drew small comfort from that. We were thoroughly discomfited. It might have appeared impossible that these appalling pleasantries of Anne’s could be capped. But capped they were – and needless to say by Geoffrey.

‘I’m sorry about Basil’s headache,’ Geoffrey said. ‘It will be such a horridly uncomfortable thing to take to quod.’

I recall Appleby leaning back in his chair – and as I do so the image of a rising curtain again presents itself to me. For him the play was beginning. And, though largely passive, he was more than a simple spectator. There was something about him of the manner in which the producer finally takes his place in the stalls. And I thought he was particularly satisfied when Geoffrey suddenly rose excitedly and pointed at him – pointed with a gesture that held much more of drama than decent manners.

‘Look at him,’ said Geoffrey. ‘And look at the others.’ His hand swept round Leader, the second inspector, the sergeant, the waiting constable. ‘Do you think they believe this stuff about someone having attacked Basil? Of course not. And any more foolery is a waste of time.’

Hubert Roper had been watching his son’s extravagant conduct with a vaguely disapproving eye. But now he nodded. ‘Intolerable waste of time, all right. Still, one doesn’t feel you’re likely to brisken things up by shouting, my boy.’ And Hubert, having exerted himself to the extent of this unusual rebuke, sat back and evidently debated with himself the propriety of lighting a cigarette.

‘Let Basil,’ continued Geoffrey unperturbed, ‘be removed in a big black van. Then we can get on. I don’t mean I don’t think it a pity. I do. There was some sense in that notion of a meteorological station. And as for the selling-up I for one should not object – and Belrive, after all, would be mine one day. If a person like Wilfred, who has no notions at all except of just mucking comfortably along, announces he is going to get in the way of an idea – well, I think it quite sound to see that he gets in the way of a bullet. But Basil shouldn’t have muffed it. Shows he must be losing grasp. Makes one rather feel he might muff the Antarctic business too. And then we should have lost Belrive for nothing. I’m sorry for Basil. But he took a risk and now the sooner he takes that van the less fuss there will be. For you may be sure that these smart alecks’ – and Geoffrey waved a finger at Leader and his sergeant – ‘won’t let anybody off. Jugging chaps is all their joy.’

I had listened in stupefaction to this long speech, and I suppose the rest of us had done the same. It was Appleby who was the first to speak. ‘So you think, Mr Roper, that Sir Basil shot Mr Foxcroft because Mr Foxcroft might interfere with Sir Basil’s projected expedition?’

‘That’s what
you
think, Mr Appleby. I’m just helping you to the complete motive. It’s bound to come out and may as well come out quickly. Of course they had quarrelled long ago while climbing a mountain. I don’t know why: perhaps even in those days Wilfred needed a spot too much comfort. There may have been a half-conscious carry-over from that to the present affair. But I don’t think so. Basil’s decision to eliminate Wilfred goes back no further than tea-time yesterday.’

Lucy Chigwidden gave a startled exclamation.

‘Lucy remembers at least. We were chattering about the sale of Belrive – it was over the muffins when one cackles like anything – and Wilfred said he didn’t believe it, but if it were true he knew who could stop Basil. Obviously he meant himself: he’s the business man of the family, remember, who would be up in that sort of thing. And just at that moment Basil came in. He’d plainly heard and we all felt pretty fools. I remember Cecil began yattering about his
Serious Call
. But it was poor old Wilfred’s serious call, and pretty nearly his last. Basil, I say, who is a remote and ruthless bird really, wasn’t going to stand for having his expedition wrecked. He took a shot at Wilfred. And of course nobody attacked him in the ruins this morning. He simply felt these worthies’ – the finger pointed at Appleby and the Voice this time – ‘were probably after him and he decided to cloud the issue by arranging a bogus assault.’

Less than an hour before, I remembered, Cudbird had been putting just this possibility to me. I stared at Geoffrey, horrified by the brusque and almost careless conviction with which he spoke. It was impossible to resist the conviction that he believed what he said; believed not only in the facts as he had related them but in the morality behind them as well. Basil had possessed a notion, and was entitled to eliminate Wilfred, who had no notion, if Wilfred interfered. But Basil had muffed it, and the sooner he went off to prison the sooner we could get back to our desks and studios. Hence a sudden zeal for the dispatch of justice. I can only say that the perversity of this willingness to throw an uncle to the bloodhounds left me gasping. When I had a little recovered it was to hear with considerable relief the colourless voice of Leader.