Stop Press (26 page)

‘And the goldfish to whisk their redundant tails.’

‘Just that. I sent a wire to my agent at once. And it’s all right.’

‘All right?’

Holme’s face assumed an expression of preternatural cunning. ‘Kermode,’ he said. ‘I thought at once of Kermode. Vassalage to that renegade hearty would be quite the last straw. But it’s perfectly all right. I’m tied up for plays done out of books written by Eliot himself – nothing else. So I do think things should be let alone.’

‘I see. In one direction at least your clarity of vision is abundant and undisputable.’

‘But, mind you,’ continued Holme as if suddenly anxious to vindicate himself, ‘though I may be muddled I’m quite open-minded. I’ve no theory at all. And I didn’t a bit sympathize with the line Chown was taking when he blew in this morning.’

‘Chown blew in this morning?’ Appleby was surprised.

‘With the bird of dawning Chown blew in – for professional consultation.’

‘Professional consultation? He surely doesn’t think that you are positively–’

‘Officer, officer! You’re getting it wrong; Chown came in to consult
me
. A clever fellow, really. He realizes – unlike those awful newspapers – that an actor is the best critic of acting. One day I’m going to be a dramatic critic and eat as much as I like.’

‘An actor’, said Appleby, ‘is always likely to be the best actor. I wouldn’t myself go further than that. But tell me about Chown.’

The bubbling innocence of Peter Holme might have been thought to subside momentarily into thoughtfulness; he seized a phial from the dressing-table and applied its aromatic contents to his waving chestnut hair. ‘Chown’, he said, ‘has quite taken old Eliot into his bughouse fold. I gather Eliot was patient of his for a bit some years ago. Now he says it’s his duty to protect him.’

‘What’s that – Eliot was a patient of Chown’s?’ Appleby was suddenly vividly interested. ‘You’re sure of that?’

‘I can’t say I am. The old boy’s a stickler for his professional etiquette except when he’s feeling a bit shirty. I just got that impression – that Eliot had been to Chown without telling the family. And anyway, he’s all for wading in now. This opinion of mine he was after: he seemed to feel it might help him to sort things out. That’s why I wasn’t awfully keen on him. And why I’m not sure that I feel at all keen on you. I’m opposed to sorting things out at all; in my view it would be a great pity.’

‘And Chown – how does he want to sort things out? Just what was he after?’

Holme shook his head, his expression more vacuous and cunning than before. ‘That’s secrets,’ he said, ‘but I’ll tell you this: the old boy went off as pleased as punch – like a kid that’s found a particularly rare bug. And, as I say, it was smart of him to come along.’

‘It might be described’, said Appleby, ‘as leaving no stone unturned.’

Retreating to the corridor, Appleby ran into a large, moist sponge. Behind it was Gerald Winter.

‘I had begun to think’, said Winter absurdly, ‘that you were only a curious dream. And here you are again – as solid as the kind who stand outside the Houses of Parliament; a portly man, to be a sergeant able.’ He peered at Appleby in the half light. ‘And – alas! – impervious to impertinence. Tell me: what are you? The whole house seethes with curiosity. The assistant-commissioner?’

‘A chief-inspector, CID. And now curb your morning gamesomeness. Do you know this Peter Holme? Is he really and truly the light-comedy figure that he appears?’

‘Tell me if Congreve’s fools be fools indeed.’

Appleby raised a protesting hand. ‘Today’s motto’, he said, ‘is
No Popery
. What do you really know of Holme?’

‘That he’s a good actor and consequently an able man. And that if anyone has been treating him somewhat as a patch of motley he will apply his art to the amusement of playing you up. By the way, I have news.’

Well, well.’

‘But you shan’t have it.’ Winter glanced up and down the corridor. ‘As a matter of fact, it’s this. You remember how you were affirming that the theft of the Renoir must be the most inside of jobs? That made me run over all the other pranks I’ve heard of and consider their insideness or outsideness. And I’ve just been talking to Timmy about it from the heart of a cold shower. After all, I did come down to probe, and I might as well make some show. What I’ve gathered is simply that everything might have been done from the outside. As in the matter of the picture, knowledge of the household and its ways is implied. But as far as physical considerations go the joker may stand entirely outside Rust. The crux, of course, is the business of the manuscripts.’

‘Quite so.’

‘You know about their being kept in a cupboard, unlocked. Well, the house is kept unlocked too. Eliot is accustomed to keep late hours, and none of the servants waits up. Any shutting up of the house he does himself; and according to Timmy that’s just none at all. Even during the period that the manuscripts were misbehaving nobody thought to impose any sort of check and control.’ Winter paused. ‘The first thing I felt about Rust was that nobody would ever solve a mystery here.’

‘You were wrong. Not that special difficulties don’t exist. For instance Eliot’s secretary, who might have been particularly useful, has been inconveniently eliminated. And Eliot himself makes a classical little problem in approach. I badly want a little family history and Eliot is the proper person to get it from. But can I do it?’

Winter shrugged his shoulders. ‘Search me.’

‘I will – and everybody else in the household, in a metaphorical way. But at the moment I want the family ghosts and skeletons.’

‘I should try the servants. Talking of the classics, I’ve always understood that to be the classical method.’

Perpetually about Winter there hovered this suggestion of challenge. ‘Very well’, said Appleby briefly; ‘I will.’

Miss Cavey nibbled a pen and contemplated her dangling puppies. She had on the table before her books explaining reflex actions,
rigor mortis
, and the anatomy of
canis vulgaris
, or the dog. Nevertheless the thing was not going too well. The fourth puppy, unskilfully strung up by her heroine, was making heartrending noises. The noises were a difficulty. Indicated by conventional collocations of the consonants
g
and
r
the effect was trite and unmoving. But anything phonetically more accurate proved both elusive to catch and complicated to render. Miss Cavey strained her inward ear – that organ which is at once the bliss and the agony of the novelist in her solitude – and shut her inward eye, even meditating for a moment the transposing of her whole great scene into darkness. This, however, would introduce great technical difficulties of its own; Miss Cavey retained daylight and in despair cut down the fourth puppy and began again. This time she must remember to put in copious salivation. And a slowly glazing eye. The tail would twitch rhythmically – and there would be abundant pathos in the thought that it seemed almost to be wagging for its cruel little mistress… Miss Cavey discovered that she was hungry. Laying aside her manuscript, she descended to breakfast.

On the staircase – disastrously, for her peace of mind – she overtook Archie Eliot and slapped him heartily on the back. For Miss Cavey, once more in full reaction from her tragic theme and with the prospect of an ample material recruitment awaiting her below, was filled with jollity. ‘My dear old superannuated Watson,’ she said robustly, ‘you look no whit the worse for your spot of dope.’

Archie turned round with placid courtesy. ‘My five grey hairs’, he murmured, ‘and ruined fortune flout.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Nothing, my dear lady; nothing at all. I happened just to be thinking of an old curse.’ Archie momentarily opened his heavy eyes in an innocent and dangerous stare. ‘And how nice that we have met. I shall be your guide through the maze of Richard’s sumptuous chafing-dishes and then we shall have a little chat. As it happens I particularly want your advice. And here is André. Perhaps we shall let him make a third.’ The little translator had come pattering downstairs after them.

Breakfast during the Rust parties was a straggling affair. The chafing-dishes, if not sumptuous, were numerous, and there was an intermittent attendance on them by Mr Eliot’s butler, Bowles, and his assistant – a youth whose baptismal name had been forgotten, for he was prescriptively known as Joseph. Archie obtained a kipper from Joseph and André coffee from Bowles; these were set solicitously before Miss Cavey, and her attendants took their places on each side of her. Wedge was a little way down the table, casting an appreciative eye over his own advertisements in a pile of newspapers; a group of half-a-dozen people was chattering animatedly at the far end of the room.

‘I hope’, said Archie earnestly, ‘that you slept well after the Birthday Party. We are all very much upset that our guests should have had so disturbed an evening.’

‘Very upset indeed,’ corroborated André. During his sojourns at Rust he liked to identify himself thoroughly with the household.

‘Thank you; after a time I slept very well.’ Light – as often happens – had come to Miss Cavey hard upon the first mouthful of kipper. She would have a storm outside and the noises emanating from the fourth puppy would be described as a sort of feeble echo of the elements. She took another bite. ‘That young man over there’, she said suddenly, ‘is looking at me in a very odd way.’

Archie turned round. ‘Joseph? It is just his rather uncouth manner. I am afraid that my cousin is unexacting about the menservants. And Belinda is now much away from home.’ Archie paused and looked at Miss Cavey with the most friendly anxiety. ‘When ignorance is bliss’, he murmured, ‘’tis folly to be wise.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I was reflecting’, said Archie. ‘that you ought to be told. Perhaps you will be able to advise us. André, do you not agree?’

‘Agree?’ For a moment André looked blank. ‘Oh, decidedly, my dear Eliot; very decidedly indeed. I would go as far as to say that
Miss Cavey must know
.’ André, with no idea of what he was talking, looked very solemn indeed.

Or perhaps outside there might be a dry, autumnal heath and the rustling of the wind in the withered harebells might be echoed in little, dry, horrid gasps from all the puppies in a row. But Miss Cavey’s mind was now only half on her stark creation; her eye was once more on Joseph. ‘Really,’ she said, ‘there is something very curious indeed about the manner of that young man by the sideboard. He appears to be quite fascinated by me.’

‘Perhaps’, said Archie soothingly, ‘he is feeling unwell.’ He turned round and glanced at Joseph. ‘He is certainly paying you a good deal of attention.’ For a moment Archie transferred his gaze thoughtfully to the ceiling. ‘When I come to think of it’, he continued, ‘Joseph is a remarkable lad. He came to us as a boy from somewhere in the Hebrides; as you may know, my cousin’s late wife was the daughter of a proprietor there.’ Archie paused again in order that this piece of territorial information might have proper acknowledgement. ‘And Joseph is said to be gifted with the second sight.’

‘The second sight?’ Miss Cavey’s attention was fully caught. ‘How very interesting! I am particularly keen on all that sort of thing. In my new novel–’

‘It is curious,’ pursued Archie musingly, ‘that Joseph should suddenly become interested in
you
. André, are you not inclined to take the same view?’

‘Decidedly.’ André spoke with the ready confidence of one who has fallen into a role. ‘It strikes me at once as being peculiar – more than peculiar, indeed.’

Miss Cavey looked a shade uncertainly at her companions. ‘I really don’t see–’

‘But this quite extraneous topic’, pursued Archie, ‘must not divert me from what I was going to tell you. Last night we had the Birthday Party. And it is impossible not to ask: what shall we have next?’

‘It is impossible’, said André formally, ‘not to put this question to oneself
with the gravest anxiety.’

‘I don’t pretend’ – Archie placidly sipped coffee – ‘to say what agency is at work in the peculiar manifestations which are going on around us. Rupert believes that some low scoundrel is at work; but, of course, Rupert’s mind would turn that way naturally enough. Others feel that something preternatural is involved. And certainly the affair has one very strange aspect; the phenomena seem to tap my cousin’s most secret mind. Last night we had a species of enactment of a story he never committed to paper. What may we look for now? It is here that I have disturbing news.’ Archie stopped off and favoured Miss Cavey with a hard, blue, calculating stare. ‘If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.’

‘Cry aloud’ – André threw sudden genius into his task as chorus – ‘with a long lamentation; cry aloud for an end is at hand!’

Under these minatory citations Miss Cavey abandoned her kipper. ‘You mean’, she asked, ‘that there is some danger ahead?’

‘You must not be alarmed – not
unduly
alarmed. For some years, as your delightful fun on the staircase tells me you are aware, I have been lucky enough to afford my cousin a fragment of his inspiration – a humorous fragment.’ Archie’s placid smile spread momentarily to the display of two yellow canine teeth. ‘In his books there is an engineer – an unsuccessful engineer, of somewhat obtuse mind perhaps, but fond of books – with whom Richard’s literary and – ah – commercial friends’ – and Archie made a gesture round the now populous dining-room – ‘are accustomed, no doubt on good grounds, to identify me.’ At this embarrassing point Archie amiably paused and Miss Cavey, though her creative absorptions left her little energy for random sensitiveness, looked quite uncomfortable. ‘But in return for this slight service I have my privileges. Not only am I hospitably maintained at Rust; I have occasionally the pleasure of hearing or seeing something of my talented cousin’s plans. And I can tell you that he has for some time been working on a romance called
Murder at Midnight
. An exciting title, is it not? By the way, which room have they given you this year?’