Stop Press (29 page)

‘And do you think’, asked Appleby, ‘that this family history has left what might be called bad blood in the family?’

But at this Bowles withdrew into a shell. ‘Really, sir, I think that is a subject to enquire into in the family itself.’ He turned round and looked at a clock which had begun to strike on the mantelpiece. ‘Ten o’clock, Mr Appleby; dear me.’ He paused in this act of decent dismissal, perplexed. ‘I could be certain that the clock struck twelve; nothing seems quite in order at Rust these days. If I might venture to give advice, sir, you would do well to try and introduce yourself to the conversation of Mrs Eliot.’

‘Of Mrs Eliot?’ Appleby was bewildered.

‘The widow of Sir Gervase’s second son Timothy, Mr Appleby. And an Eliot herself, being Sir Gervase’s brother’s daughter. She has resided with us at Rust for many years.’

‘I don’t think I’ve heard her as much as mentioned.’

‘Very likely not, Mr Appleby. We
don’t
mention her, if the truth be told. She doesn’t come down, sir, and she doesn’t commonly receive. A very old lady she is now and inclined, Mr Eliot puts it, to speculative gloom. And a little behind the times, in a manner of speaking. But probably a great one for family history. If you could get her to converse I dare say you would obtain all you want’ – Bowles permitted himself a split second’s remote merriment – ‘
quite
all you want. Mrs Eliot has apartments on the upper storey on the Caroline side. I wouldn’t venture to take you there myself, sir; Mrs Eliot is never waited on by anybody except Mrs Jenkins. But if you were to go boldly up yourself–’

Appleby wasted no time. A gloomy matriarchal figure inhabiting the attics was on no account to be missed. Resolved to set out without a guide, he took a somewhat abrupt leave of Bowles, who appeared at once to give himself to a puzzled contemplation of his clock.

Gerald Winter, feeling that he was without skill in spying among servants, was beguiling the morning by spying among the guests. Partly because he really wanted to know, and partly because the endeavour gave scope for mild verbal exercise, he had set himself to find out who had been paired with whom in the particular form of hide-and-seek that had been going forward while the Renoir was being stolen. Appleby had put a finger at once on the odd fact that the thing had happened when everybody had been keeping an eye on somebody else; and he had erred, it seemed to Winter, in not going pertinaciously after this point at once. Presuming that the tricks were not the work of an outsider or a servant, a thorough enquiry into the conduct of the game must inevitably lead to a sifting out of suspects. And the difficulties were technical. There was no formal police enquiry going on; Mr Eliot’s guests were vague, noisy, numerous, and drifting; the task of interrogating them was therefore formidable. Perhaps because of the way in which Timmy had brought him down, Winter felt himself to be in some species of competition with the professional detective; to be first in the discovery of the joker who was disturbing the peace of Rust would afford him very considerable gratification. And he had a further and disinterested motive for research. He had decided, as Appleby had done, that a Mr Eliot who was not after all to be downed by shades might very conceivably come to be attacked in more tangible ways. And Mr Eliot, he felt, having revealed himself as harmless and amusing, must be preserved.

Archie Eliot alone had not been paired. When everyone else was hiding the exigencies of the game had left him free to roam the house alone as hunter. But he had not, in fact, hunted. He had been drugged.

Winter meditated this; meditated drugs in general; was visited by an odd thought – and went in search of Miss Cavey. Miss Cavey had been hiding with Mr Eliot. Mr Eliot had made a little joke of the fact that Miss Cavey’s conversation on the occasion had passed entirely from his mind.

Miss Cavey had retired with her writing materials to a conservatory, in which she was discovered sitting between tiers of electric radiators. Her eye, as Winter approached, suspended itself absently some inches above his head; it was to be conjectured that she was once more in communion with her muse. He was distrustfully received. Sir Archie and the little André between them had made her chary of friendly overtures.

‘I hope’, said Winter, ‘that all this wretched business is not upsetting your writing. That seems to me the really important thing.’

Miss Cavey showed provisional gratification. But she had been led up the garden before now, and she had tests which she applied. ‘Thank you,’ she said; ‘I am getting along not badly. But I admit that it is disturbing. One needs, above all things,
quiet
.’ Miss Cavey dropped her voice solemnly at the conclusion of this sentence as if she were invoking the very spirit of stillness. ‘And I have not worked under such disturbed conditions since I was writing
Frenzied May
. Those last chapters of
Frenzied May
.’ Miss Cavey looked at Winter in frank expectation.

It was stiff fence. For all Winter knew May might be a human rather than a climatic phenomenon – conceivably an overwrought heroine. ‘You were disturbed while writing the end of
Frenzied May
? How surprising that is! It seems to me to show such utter concentration; to be even more powerful than the conclusion of the previous book.’

‘Than
April Apples
? You really think so?’

‘I do. And I consider them both’ – Winter now had a fragment of light to exploit – ‘as pioneer works in the building up of the seasonal novel. And the seasonal is the novel of the future. The chronicle novel, the period novel, the regional novel: all these have had their day. The future, my dear Miss Cavey, is with
you
.’

This abrupt creation of a new literary kind was completely and almost embarrassingly successful. More searching enquiries were dispensed with. Miss Cavey laid a fat and cordial hand on Winter’s. ‘How much’, she said, ‘you will enjoy
This Sour September
!’

Oddly enough, it was
This Sour September
that Winter wanted to hear about. He glanced covertly at his wrist-watch and disposed himself to listen. The cardinal point would be whether Miss Cavey, while expatiating on her present travails and triumphs, had the habit of expecting comment or interjection.

‘The keynote’, said Miss Cavey, ‘is going to be
depth
.’ She produced the last word in a deep ventriloquial growl. ‘In my previous books I have been concerned mainly with
breadth’
– Miss Cavey contrived along expiration which conjured up the vistas of
War and Peace
or the uncertain horizons of
The Brothers Karamazov
– ‘and now I am turning to
depth
. And first I have to ask: What is
depth
?’ Miss Cavey paused interrogatively and for a moment Winter supposed that she did expect occasional murmurs from her auditory. But she proceeded at once to answer her own question. ‘I take the view that
depth
is only another function of
breadth
.’ She searched the air for words which would touch this difficult conception to luminousness. ‘I maintain that it is largely a matter of how one
feels
.’ Miss Cavey’s voice rose trembling into some sphere of pure sensation. The effect was so successful that she remorselessly repeated it. ‘Of how,’ said Miss Cavey tensely, ‘One
feels
.’

Winter felt bad. He had a professional uneasiness in the presence of muzzy minds. Reminding himself, however, that the woman had vitality and talent enough in her own line, he contrived to sit tight… Miss Cavey talked for eight and a half minutes.

So that was that – and now there was a further point to be investigated. Miss Cavey had got to her difficulties in the critical matter of the puppies; Winter seized the moment to assume a less passive part in the conversation. ‘You are confronted’, he said, ‘with a fascinating problem. But I suppose that only a fellow craftsman could offer you any helpful suggestion.’

Miss Cavey received this proposition dubiously. ‘A fellow artist
might
help. But I find that true inspiration comes from the great shades of the past. Sometimes’ – Miss Cavey was very solemn – ‘I seem to
feel
the spirit of Emily Brontë standing at my side.’

What, thought Winter suppressing a too-obvious shudder, one will suffer in a good cause. He made an impressed and respectful noise and cast about in his mind anew. One gambit had failed, he would try it turned inside-out. ‘I suppose’, he said, ‘that you are often embarrassed by people offering you unsolicited advice? It must be very irritating to have the true vein troubled in that way.’

This was much better. ‘Every sincere and conscientious artist’, agreed Miss Cavey, ‘has to deal tactfully with well-meant but obtuse suggestions.’

‘Particularly, I imagine, from other writers of an inferior order? Our worthy host, now’ – Winter plunged blandly into the most outrageous taste – ‘does he endeavour to put in a helpful word? He mentioned that last night you were telling him about
This Sour September
while you were hiding together. Had he any suggestions to make?’

‘Mr Eliot? No, I can’t say he had.’ Miss Cavey reflected. ‘I think he was really very understanding. He listened most attentively, without uttering a sound.’

Winter sighed; the account dovetailed with Mr Eliot’s neatly enough. ‘I mustn’t’, he said, ‘stop another moment. It would be terrible to get in Emily Brontë’s light.’

He was gone. Miss Cavey looked after him with an expression of dawning suspicion. The conservatory clock – a cuckoo-clock – began to call to her derisively. It called twelve times.

Appleby had come to what was undoubtedly a Caroline staircase. So he climbed. He climbed with no plan of campaign in his head; in such peculiarly hazardous adventures it is best to trust to inspiration. But he recapitulated the family situation as he had received it from Bowles. The venerable person whom he was proposing to visit was the widow of a certain Timothy Eliot and the mother of three sons – all of whom were dead and out of the picture. This Timothy’s elder brother had been the Sir Herbert who had disinherited his son, the present Sir Rupert. His younger brothers had been the fathers of Mr Eliot and Archie Eliot respectively. And this old lady, his widow, had lived at Rust for some time – perhaps even when Rupert and Mr Eliot were boys there together. At least she had command of the family history. She took a dark view.

Meditating this summary, Appleby found himself on a landing than which Mrs Eliot’s vision itself could not be gloomier. A raftered ceiling, dimly discerned, assured him that he could climb no farther; somewhere close at hand must be the lady’s retreat. There were branching corridors, each fading into darkness before him. He decided to venture on turning on a light – only to conclude, after some seconds spent in vain search for a switch, that the elaborate electrical installation of Rust had not penetrated to this remote eyrie. He went halfway down one corridor and listened, with some hope that he might come upon that Mrs Jenkins who had been mentioned by Bowles and succeed in persuading her to introduce him into the presence of her mistress. Hearing nothing, he went farther down the corridor, chose a door at random, and listened at that. The career of police detective has its moments of inconvenience and embarrassment: Appleby had just stooped to listen carefully when the surface of the door receded from before his nose and he was confronted by Rupert Eliot. The voice of Rupert Eliot, harsh and querulous, said: ‘Who the devil are you? Are you one of my cousin’s guests, or have you come about the drains?

‘The former, I’m afraid.’

Rupert, who perhaps thought that the giver of a response so well judged as this deserved scrutiny, stepped back out of the light and recognized Appleby. ‘Damn it, sir – I suppose you’ve been spying on me? A pretty pass when we have to be protected at Rust by sneakers and snoopers. Come in, man, and have a good look round.’ He made way for Appleby to enter. ‘Please don’t think that I mean to be offensive. As a man of the world you’ll know I don’t speak personally. And I may tell you at once I’d prefer a squad of constables to half their number of Richard’s cattle. You
are
a policeman, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, decidedly.’

Rupert cleared a chair of a variety of small tools – the room appeared to be a species of workshop. ‘Sit down.’ He leant his lanky but not ungraceful form against a bench and glanced a shade defiantly at his visitor. ‘I can’t say you quite come within my experience. And I don’t mind telling you that I’ve had experience of the police in more countries than one.’

‘You are interested in criminology, Sir Rupert?’

Rupert gave a bark – the sort of noise, it occurred to Appleby, that choleric baronets are conventionally supposed to make. ‘Criminology? I leave that to my cousin. I’ve led an active life, Mr Appleby; I’ve tumbled about the world. I’ve rubbed shoulders, damn it, with cattle enough. Have you ever been set to chip out a boiler in the tropics, Mr Appleby, with a buck nigger working against you on the other side?’

‘No.’

‘It’s what’s apt to happen, you know, if one has a gentleman’s accent and a pauper’s purse.’

‘No doubt.’ Appleby contemplated Rupert in the dubious light with interest. ‘My own modest tumblings have convinced me that the world is brutal and brutalizing enough. I wonder how you feel about Rust? Is it port after stormy seas? Or is it just dull?’

Leaning sideways on the bench, Rupert picked up a tiny screwdriver and began to fiddle with it. ‘Yes,’ he said; ‘you’re something outside my knowledge. The higher snoopery. I never knew a policeman who could ask impertinent questions in that damned confident well-bred way.’ He gave a curiously wolfish grin. ‘I’m not at all sure I think you a good idea.’

‘Then you’re like Peter Holme, who distrusts me because he thinks I may clear up this mystery. He wants it to remain mysterious – seemingly for deplorably selfish reasons of his own.’