Appleby's Answer (2 page)

He had produced a pencil. It was a distinguished pencil. It was in form a flattened oval; it was no more than an inch long; its value would have to be placed at something under a farthing (old style). But it lived with its tail in a little gold holder and its head in a little gold cap. It somehow didn't look the sort of writing instrument for which one could obtain a refill; when the stubby little affair had been sharpened and whittled away you simply had to repair to some jeweller's shop in Bond Street and start all over again.

Miss Pringle (because she had an instinct for the minutiae of refined living) would have been much impressed by the mere appearance of this object had she not been so instantly depressed by the use to which she now saw it put. The stranger turned over the last few pages of
Murder in
the Cathedral
– without even skimming them! – and inscribed beneath the final paragraph a sign which (since he then obligingly dropped the book on his knees) Miss Pringle was at once able to read.

It was this:

 

ß –? –

 

Miss Pringle not only read; she understood, since conversation with her erstwhile undergraduate nephew Timothy had taught her the elements of this dismal academic language.
Beta-minus-query-minus
was what you got from your tutor for a composition which somebody using plain English would call ‘mediocre' or ‘dull' or even perhaps ‘dim'.

It might have been expected that a just indignation at so ungenerous a verdict would alone have occupied Miss Pringle's consciousness at this discomfiting moment. Actually, she was aware of other feelings as well. One was disappointment. The elderly man in the corner could not, after all, be a baronet. Baronets don't deal in betas, or in alphas and gammas either. It seemed more likely that he was a university professor. Miss Pringle had been brought up to hold the learned classes in high regard, but she was aware that these classes – indeed the liberal professions generally – were not quite what they had been in her father's time. Even the fellows of an Oxford college, she had been reliably told, might now be rather a mixed lot. Still, however that might be, there could be no doubt about this particular individual's social
ambiance
. And it was even possible – it suddenly came to her – that he was both a baronet and a professor as well. In the church there were certainly persons who held hereditary titles as well as being the Rector of this or the Lord Bishop of that. No doubt in the universities the same sort of thing occasionally occurred.

These thoughts (in an area in which Miss Pringle was prone to be rather foolish) were jostled by others (in an area in which she could occasionally be more perceptive than her unassuming profession required). As well as being injured by her travelling companion's low rating of
Murder in the Cathedral
and disappointed by what she now had to judge ambiguous in his social situation she was intrigued by something elusive – that was the word – in the nature of his concluding reaction to her book. Deep in the constitution of the detective story there is a large liability to end flatly or badly, and readers who have perused some 200 pages with satisfaction are often enough disproportionately censorious as they make their way through the score or so of pages with which it concludes. It is as if the ungrateful creatures were suddenly persuaded that they have been chewing straw. They may even be annoyed that this innutritious diet has been purveyed to them at an approximate rate of ten of those new pennies to the hour.

But this didn't seem to be quite what the gentleman with the ogee moustache was feeling. He wasn't registering irritation; he was registering gloom. And it came to Miss Pringle instinctively that her novel hadn't been judged and written off quite in terms of the simple canons of its craft. It was not with a literary critic that she was encapsulated in this snug and slightly overheated compartment. And this inclined Miss Pringle to a charitable view of her companion and his behaviour. For instance, she dismissed at once the thought that the recognition scene had taken place; that the injurious scribble had been perpetrated, and cunningly offered to her regard, by one who had spotted her identity. He was a gentleman. He wouldn't do just that.

And now the situation developed. The elderly man began to evince certain small signs of physical discomfort characteristic of elderly men during the later stages of a railway journey. He shifted slightly in his seat. He discernibly estimated his distance from the door giving on the corridor. He equally discernibly studied Miss Pringle's knees and feet – not lasciviously, but from a courteous impulse as little as possible to incommode a fellow traveller. And then he knocked out his pipe, rose a shade stiffly to his feet, produced the ghost of a polite murmur, reached for the door beside her, and in a moment had vanished in quest of whatever convenience it had become incumbent upon him to seek. Miss Pringle was left alone – or alone except for the company of a harmless detective romance the quality of which had been most cruelly aspersed with the aid of an elegant gold pencil.

Miss Pringle's glance travelled, by an involuntary movement, to the suitcase perched on the rack in the further corner of the compartment. It revealed a luggage-label of that old-fashioned sort consisting of a leather sheath with a small celluloid window through which a visiting-card may be exhibited. It could be seen that such a card was actually on view, and it would be quite easy to stand up and examine it. Miss Pringle, who would have hated to be caught out in any unladylike act, hesitated. What if the owner of the suitcase had discovered what he sought to be ‘engaged', and had decided that, rather than linger awkwardly in the corridor, he would simply return in temporary bafflement to his compartment? But Miss Pringle was a courageous woman, and she decided to risk it. What this resolution brought her was the following:

 

A G de P Bulkington

Imperial Forces Club

Pall Mall, SW1

 

This was informative; yet, somehow, it was not quite informative enough. Miss Pringle's curiosity was but sharpened, and it was when thus vulnerably keyed-up that her attention was caught by something else. The gentleman's overcoat had been thrown carelessly on a vacant seat, with its lining – and in that lining an inner pocket – revealed. And peeping out from the pocket…

A strong tremor passed through Miss Pringle's frame. She felt like one standing on the brink of an awful chasm. What she saw was a letter, without a doubt. And a letter might tell much, or all!

Ladies do not trespass upon the private correspondence of gentlemen. On this there could be no conceivable argument. But are not lady-novelists a little different from
mere
ladies? Do they not possess a certain licence – even, in a sense, a certain duty – in the matter of possessing themselves as they can of whatever may the better inform them of the mysterious lives of the opposite sex? And all that seemed required, initially at least, was a mere tweak. The letter might simply have tumbled from the pocket! Miss Pringle tweaked, and found herself looking at an envelope thus directed in a sprawling hand:

 

Captain A G de P Bulkington

‘Kandahar'

Long Canings

Wilts.

 

At this moment Miss Pringle heard the sliding-door of the compartment open again. She relapsed abruptly into her seat – or rather into the seat opposite Captain Bulkington's. It was a very awkward moment.

 

 

But Captain Bulkington seemed to notice nothing amiss. Perhaps he merely supposed that Miss Pringle preferred the view from this side of the train or imagined that she was avoiding a draught. He moved his overcoat a little, absently shoving the letter back into his pocket as he did so. He sat down, stiffly and this time with an audible creak, and slanted his legs unobtrusively in the manner necessary even in first-class carriages if one is to avoid an accidental flick or kick at opposing toes or ankles. All was well; nothing was going to be said. Miss Pringle, in consequence, was about to breathe freely (in a literal, not metaphorical sense, since she was a nervous woman) when she suddenly became aware of a fresh occasion of embarrassment.
Murder in the Cathedral
was lying on the floor of the compartment, with Orlando and herself uppermost. In her perturbed withdrawal she must have made some movement which had brushed it from the seat.

‘Oh, dear – your book!' she exclaimed, and made a dive for it in a random and undignified fashion which might have suggested to anybody that she had mysteriously lost her head. And Captain Bulkington had, in fact, forestalled her. His own dive, if not exactly agile, had been more exact, and now the volume was in his hand. He glanced at the photograph, and he glanced at Miss Pringle.

‘And
your
book, too,' he said.

The recognition scene had taken place.

Miss Pringle had enjoyed an almost similar experience two or three times before. Still, not quite similar – and it was precisely the element of dissimilarity that would have made ‘enjoyed' something of a misnomer now. She was still shaken by her narrow escape from being discovered in what would have been a most humiliating situation. And there is obvious difficulty in extracting pleasure from being identified as the authoress of a beta-minus-query-minus book. It was a little spurt of indignation that must have prompted the remark she now (with some surprise) heard herself offer.

‘You didn't much like my novel,' she said. ‘But I hope that you do at least like my cat.'

Captain Bulkington was startled – which was natural enough. He even glanced around the compartment and under its seats, as if supposing the lady to have referred to some actual feline co-partner in their colloquy. He also looked alarmed. Perhaps he owned a pathological fear of cats, and would have found Orlando in the flesh (or fur) not merely a brute
tertium quid
but positively what the witty Italians call a
terzo incomodo
. Then he became aware of Miss Pringle's politely pointing finger.

‘Oh, I see!' he said. ‘A delightful-looking creature, madam, 'pon my soul. But not got him with you – eh? In a basket, or anything of that kind?'

‘When I have to travel, Orlando goes to a cats' hotel. A really good hotel, accepting only pedigree cats.' Miss Pringle provided this information quite cordially. The truth is that Captain Bulkington's 'pon my soul' had not a little enchanted her. She had never before actually met an English gentleman given to this antique locution, although she had come across it in novels, and even employed it in fiction herself, dowering with it some socially apposite character – a peer, perhaps, or what her father had used to call a Harrovian of the old school.

‘Quite right,' Captain Bulkington was saying approvingly. ‘One can't be too careful in choosing a well-bred cat's company, eh? Evil communications corrupt good manners. And Manners maketh Cat. True of Dog, too. Ha-ha!'

Miss Pringle joined in this conventional evocation of merriment. She had forgotten for the moment the Captain's invidious and dyslogistic employment of the Greek alphabet. She had been absolutely right in judging him (like Orlando) eminently well-bred. And now he further vindicated his possession of this character by boldly declining to flinch from the point of discomfort between them.

‘That scribble, eh? Unfortunate misconception, madam. Word of honour. Bad habit of mine. Something I have to remember comes into my head, and I stick it down on whatever's in front of me. This time, it was a mark I'm simply bound in conscience to put into a pupil's report. His father won't relish it, I fear. But one's obliged to tell the truth.'

‘A pupil? You are–' Miss Pringle hesitated. She judged it awkward to say ‘a schoolmaster'. Schoolmasters nowadays are liable to be people who go on strike, and thus definitely align themselves with the lower orders. ‘A college tutor?' she ventured.

‘A coach, madam. An old-fashioned crammer. Lads going into the Services mostly. Usually the Brigade.'

‘Yes, of course.' This ready confirmation was rashly offered, since it turned upon Captain Bulkington's own possession of martial status, which was something she was not supposed to know about.

‘Enjoyed your yarn very much,' the Captain said easily. ‘Deuced ingenious. Dashed if I know how you people think of these things. Ladies particularly.'

‘Women, as it happens, have been outstandingly successful at writing detective stories.'

‘Perfectly true, perfectly true. Noticed it myself, 'pon my word.'

‘It is what first directed my own attention to that branch of literature.'

‘Jolly good. Dashed fortunate, if I may say so. World deprived of a lot of pleasure – innocent pleasure, eh? – if you'd taken up tragedies, or anything morbid of that sort.'

‘I have always liked to think so.' Miss Pringle had flushed with satisfaction, for this was a genuine persuasion of her own. ‘There are times when an absorbing yarn – you have used entirely the right word – provides distraction and solace, does it not? Times of anxiety, periods of illness or convalescence, even occasions of bereavement.'

‘Bereavement?' Captain Bulkington looked doubtful. ‘I'm not sure about that. Too much sudden death in your sort of thing, if you ask me, to be just right for reading after a funeral. Better than poetry, of course. When my poor father died – he had been in the regiment before me – the padre said he was sending me something called
In Memoriam
. Thought it would be one of those little notices you pay for in a newspaper. Turned out to be an interminable thing by Tennyson. Ring out wild bells, and so-forth. Queer stuff.'

‘But extremely melodious,' Miss Pringle demurred. She didn't know quite what to make of this summary judgement. The Captain, presumably, employed an assistant to instruct his charges in English literature. ‘May I ask if you are a regular reader of detective fiction?'