Close Quarters (14 page)

‘So easy to slip, if you aren't careful.'

There was no doubt that he held Parvin's attention now. The verger's lips were moving, and he was staring horrified at the detective.

‘Such a long way to fall, too. Look at it, man.'

Casually Hazlerigg turned on his front and lowered his body over the ledge. The sweat poured down Pollock's face in a steady stream. Then Hazlerigg slipped clear of the ledge until he was hanging by his hands.

Suddenly Parvin started to scream. His eyes were on the stone floor, eighty feet below him. For the first time he seemed to become aware of it. He backed away from it, pressing and flattening his body against the wall behind him – and all the time he was screaming in a horrible high-pitched voice.

Pollock could no more have moved than flown.

So it was Hazlerigg who pulled himself lightly back on to the ledge, stepped up to Parvin, and moved him firmly back along by the way he had come. Though he placed himself on the outside of his prisoner he knew that he had nothing to fear. Parvin's one idea was to keep as close to the wall as possible.

Pollock tottered after them.

13

CROSSWORD PUZZLE

‘What is the crossword solvers' fun
This, in a minor key
The love of things begun and done
In welcome symmetry.
The piecemeal pitting of the wit
Against the wide unknown
With here a bit and there a bit
From sources of one's own.
‘Seacape.' From
The Week-end Calendar.

So
Parvin was taken to the police station and questioned, dazed at first, and saying nothing until Hazlerigg spoke of his wife. When he heard that she was safely convalescing in Melchester Infirmary (they mentioned neither the private ward nor the policewoman everlastingly knitting outside the door) he spoke for the first time since his arrest. He must see her at once.

The words were peremptory, but the tone was pleading, wheedling, almost – very different from his former confident blarney, thought Hazlerigg, finding it difficult to say no. And in the end he gave in, with the stipulation that the interview should be in front of a police officer, who would, if necessary, take notes of what was said. Parvin agreed readily to that; he seemed anxious only to see his wife again.

That evening brought a welcome coolness into the air. The news of Parvin's arrest had sped round the Close, and the consequent relief had produced a very “end-of-term” atmosphere amongst its childlike inhabitants. ‘Now may canon look canon in the face once more,' chanted Prynne to Malthus. The Deutero-Aunt Sylvia was holding a session in Prynne's study. ‘It is a blessing,' agreed Malthus. ‘At least,' he added, a frown crinkling his good-natured face, ‘I don't quite mean that. A judgment, anyway. Poor Parvin – I can't help feeling—'

‘Poor Parvin,' snorted Prynne. ‘Poor Appledown, for that matter.'

‘Anyway,' said Malthus, ‘it made things much easier.'

He was right. At that very moment the Dean was explaining to Halliday, over a cup of tea, that he felt ten years younger. Dr. Mickie, unusually gracious, was listening without visible distress to the Precentor's theories about plainsong. Canon Bloss, alone, was unmoved.

After tea, Prynne called on Canon Trumpington and found him in his library. They were close but undemonstrative friends. Prynne liked Trumpington for the same reasons that everyone else in the Close liked him – because he was unpretentious, possessed a sense of humour, and used to turn, if not a deaf ear, at least a charitable ear to his neighbour's gossip. If Trumpington had been forced to defend his liking for Prynne before the tribunal of public opinion he might have offered the explanation that a classical education had made him tolerant. Certainly he was the only person who was not afraid of Prynne's tongue. They had got past the stage when they needed to make conversation for each other. Trumpington was coiled into a leather arm-chair, poring over a stout green quarto volume. Prynne stood beside the shelves, picked a book out at random, and ran a long white finger lovingly over the bindings. He knew little about them technically, but could appreciate workmanship.

He slipped the book back and let his eye rove happily about the crowded shelves. They were a democratic company, with no sort of order or precedence. The big “Fortune'” Shadwell rubbed shoulders with a standard edition of Webster and a collected Chapman. The old and almost unobtainable ‘definitive' Congreve lived in perfect amity with the first and only volumes of Ben Jonson, which the Oxford Press had so far issued to the world of panting bibliophiles, whilst between the twin spires of the Nonesuch Farquhar peeped that exotic beauty, the Fanfrolico Tourneur himself. The wizards of the Nonesuch Press were strongly represented. In addition to Farquhar, Prynne's greedy eye took in Otway, Etheredge, Wycherley and Vanburgh, all works of conscious craftsmanship.

‘You don't deserve them,' he said aloud. ‘And you'll never read a quarter of them.' He glowered benevolently at Trumpington, who raised himself with difficulty from the green depths of his volume, and said: ‘What's that?'

‘I said, you'll never read them. Before Whyte gave these books to a Philistine like you he should have exacted a solemn promise – you ought to have pledged yourself to read so many pages a night until you'd finished them.'

‘I did,' said Trumpington simply, and dived back into his book. ‘Hey – wake up,' said Prynne, stirring him with his toe. ‘What did you say?'

‘I said I'd read them all – in time. Especially the Boswell. We were both rather keen on Boswell, and Whyte had this splendid edition – twelve volumes. I've just started on the
Tour in the Hebrides.'
He held the book up for Prynne's inspection. ‘I'd never read it through before. Whyte knew it by heart, almost.' With a casual forefinger – never has the forefinger of destiny itself been more casual – he flicked over the thick pages.

‘That's funny,' he said. ‘Well, that really is funny. And I know that this was Whyte's favourite edition.'

‘What's funny?' said Prynne.

‘Why,' said Trumpington, ‘here's a double page in the middle that hasn't been cut.'

‘The old hypocrite. The evil that men do lives after them.'

‘Nonsense. Whyte had read every word …'

‘Well, it must be something extra indelicate,' said Prynne, ‘which he thought was better uncut. So let's cut it and see.'

But Trumpington was staring at the book, with a very puzzled and rather frightened look on his face.

‘This page isn't uncut,' he said quietly, ‘or not like any page I've ever seen. It's been stuck up – top and bottom as well. And'—he held the book up to the light for Prynne to see—'there's something inside.'

The two men looked, first at the book and then at each other, just as Keawe and Lopaka looked at the bottled imp.

‘Open it,' said Prynne; he sounded irritable.

There was a silence, broken only by the dry crackling of parchment as Trumpington slit the leaves. A small square of paper fell out. When they had unfolded it, they saw that it was a crossword puzzle.

‘Ah,' said Trumpington, with a little laugh – it would be hard to say whether relief or disappointment predominated. ‘I thought, for a moment—'

‘You thought it was a last message from Whyte,' said Prynne coolly. ‘Well, why shouldn't it be?'

Canon Trumpington gaped.

‘You were both very keen on this sort of nonsense, weren't you?' went on Prynne, with all the contempt of the non-addict for the addict. ‘Well, if he wanted to tell you something – something important – it was quite a reasonable proceeding to put it in a book that only you could possibly read, and write it in a language which only you could possibly understand.'

‘I'm sure,' said Trumpington, ‘that it wouldn't have been anything that—after all, he knew you very well—I mean—well, since we found it together, let's solve it together.'

‘I was hoping you'd suggest it,' said Prynne with a smile. ‘I shan't be much use, I'm afraid. How do we start?'

CLUES

A
CROSS

1. Crooked slope.

4. Solve empirically.

8. I a poet? (anag.)

10. Archetype of the manifold varieties of existence.

11. Star (anag.)

12. Blind beggar's seat.

13. ‘An envious – broke.'

15. Entertainment showing what they did.

17. (With 3 down.) The great white water-lily.

18. ‘She had a tongue with a—'

19. Two English pronouns in a foreign one.

21. Loll cipherless thrust.

23. Confused end of 8 or 6.

25. A donkey in the dawn? Rather the other way round.

28. The subject of 13 said they bore him barefaced on one.

29. Past scraps?

30. Solve empirically.

31. A typical unit.

D
OWN

2. 27 to this fruit brings a dear friend in view.

3. See 17.

4. Did they, Blake?

5. White in Spring when added to 2, also a little more than canonical.

6. But where
did
you eat?

7. Merely relative.

9. A monocotyledon of the South Seas. 12 and 14. Solve empirically.

15. second (two words 6 and 4).

16. Illness – but for the most part one might be on the look-out.

20. Holly.

22. O sire! Excuse me, I got mixed.

24. Ladylike flowers.

26. A drunken confusion.

27. Fluff – and see two down.

‘Typical Times' style,' said Trumpington briskly. ‘Obviously derivative. Look here – and here – hoary old favourites. Hidden anagram there – and another. And look at 15 across – I've seen that clue before.'

‘It's Greek to me,' said Prynne. ‘Suppose you start by shouting out the ones you do know. I'll write them down.'

‘8 across is “opiate” – I think it must be. 15 across is “rodeo.” 25 across should be something to do with “ASS” and “AM.”'

‘“Assam?”'

‘No, that won't do. Wait a moment – Ned. Short for Neddy, put AM inside. “Named.” What do you think of that?'

‘I think it's quite mad,' said Prynne, ‘but don't let me damp your ardour.'

‘16 down I've seen before – “disentry” – or “dysentry,” the second letter's dead, so it doesn't matter which. Sentry, you see, “on the lookout.” And 22 down is a concealed anagram of “O Sire.”'

‘Quite,' said Prynne patiently. ‘By anagram I take it you mean that the letters have to be rearranged in order to formulate a new word. Let me see, “O sire” … I've got it. “Serio” – as in seriocomic. Or “Rosee” – girl's name.'

‘Neither,' said Trumpington, with the dispassionate certainty of the man who knows. ‘“Osier.”'

‘I don't see that “osier” is in any way superior to either of my suggestions. But I'll take your word for it, and in it goes. 30 across is going to be rather an odd word, isn't it? That antepenultimate “Y” doesn't look very healthy.'

‘That's very odd – very odd indeed. “Solve empirically” is given as the clue for 12 down and 14 down, as well as 30 across.'

‘4 across, too.'

‘So it is – that's very strange. They can't all be the same, I suppose. No! Two of them have five letters and two have eight.'

‘We shall have to get the others first and see what we can make of them.'

‘It's not playing the game,' said Canon Trumpington. ‘Torquemada may indulge in such tricks, but
The Times
has always been a gentleman's crossword.'

‘Oh, well,'—such distinctions were above Prynne—‘I dare say we shall work it out in the end. Here's a quotation, 13 across. I feel sure that I remember it – wait a moment – no, it's gone.'

‘Say
Hamlet.'

‘Of course – Ophelia. Somewhere in Act IV. How did you guess?'

‘I didn't guess,' said Trumpington modestly. ‘It's one of the rules – at least one quotation out of
Hamlet
in each puzzle.'

‘We live and learn. “An envious sliver,” wasn't it?'

‘Six letters – that'll do. Here, wait a moment, though. Are you sure it was Ophelia – look at 28 down. The subject must be masculine, if they said “him” somewhere.'

‘We won't argue,' said Prynne. ‘Let's look it up. Pleasure to handle a book like this.' He caressed the big red volume. ‘Here you are.'

There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies and long-purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name.
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Cambering to hang, an envious sliver broke—

‘Have you ever wondered what the shepherds did call them? Something rather Elizabethan, I suppose. The note says that it's “wiser not to speculate.” Oh, dear!'

‘But this doesn't explain 28 across. The second letter's “I,” by the way, provided that “osier” is right.'

‘This is fascinating,' said Prynne. ‘And in this case don't you think rather macabre? 18 across must be “Tang” – from
The Tempest
, and there's an easy one – 11 across. Anagram of stare. “Rates” – got it in one.'

‘Or “tears,” or “tares,” or the Scottish “strae.”'

‘H'imp. And if you're out to be difficult I suppose one might talk of a pupil who “resat” an exam. But I still think it's “rates.”'

‘I'm inclined to agree with you. Nothing else will fit in with what we've got of 9 down. “Rates” gives us “TA-O;” just give me that dictionary, there aren't many possibilities. Here we are – “TARO.” It doesn't help with anything, but it's nice to know that we're right.'

‘I'm beginning to see how you crossword fans acquire your reputation for general knowledge. Could 5 down be “blossoms?” It looks rather like it – with a sly dig at Canon Bloss.'