Stop Press (32 page)

‘Dear lady,’ said Bussenschutt instantly, ‘do you remember your glorious boar hunt there on Good Friday?’

Appleby, dismissing the pigs as inessential properties, looked curiously at Gerald Winter’s colleague-in-chief. The pigs were loudly absurd – but it is the little things that are really odd. And his eye went from Bussenschutt to Shoon. The eminent antiquarian – or
curioso
as Patricia said he preferred to be called – had clearly been pained at the cruelty of Mrs Birdwire’s act; he was going so far as to lean forward and scratch the ear of the offended pig with a lavender-coloured glove. ‘Lovely creatures!’ he said. He glanced at the terrace and then at Mr Eliot with a charming mischief that seemed to emphasize the appallingness of Mrs Birdwire. ‘Even’, he added with quaint learning, ‘if shade ectopic in their present situation.’ Mr Shoon glanced benignantly round – humane, cultivated, important, and quite definitely in command.

There was a pause during which it was only too evident that Mrs Birdwire was preparing some major act of self-expression. Only the middle blacks were moderately comfortable; they stood in little groups, absorbed in tilting their flat snouts to various experimental angles, as if their life’s work was composing tiny arabesques in air. Mr Eliot, though in robustly rural mood, was plainly harassed; he introduced Appleby and there was another pause in which it seemed almost appropriate that he should introduce the pigs. Or apologize for them. But Mr Eliot, Appleby noted with interest, made no apologies; he was almost firm. ‘We have a large and gay party this weekend,’ he said, ‘and amusing things keep happening. You are sure you will not lunch with us?… You must at least come in and take a glass of sherry.’

They began to thread their way though the pigs. But in the act Mrs Birdwire found what she wanted to say. ‘And do the loathsome friends your wretched poppycock collects about you’, she demanded, ‘think it amusing to pester perfect strangers in the small hours? What is it, anyway? Another publicity stunt like that red paint?’ Mrs Birdwire spoke not in anger but according to her own private canon of permissible banter – a method, she plainly considered, which licensed all atrocity.

Mr Shoon intervened with urbanity and force. ‘A large party? You must not let us inconvenience you. At moment we are a large party at the Abbey too. The summer school’ – he glanced about him at the chilly landscape – ‘the winter school, I should say, of the Friends. The Friends of the Venerable Bede. They have been so kind as to honour their president by meeting under his roof. Dr Bussenschutt is going to address us – and tomorrow you shall all pay us a visit.’ Mr Shoon, unfolding these mysteries and making this statement, surveyed the gathering with such bland authority that Mrs Birdwire was silenced and even the middle blacks might be imagined to pay heed.

‘The Collection’, said Mr Shoon, ‘I shall introduce with confidence to you all; it is largely’ – he bowed gracefully to Mr Eliot – ‘in the keeping of our host’s charming and able daughter. Of Miss Eliot and’ – he bowed to Appleby, showing in the process that he lost little – ‘of Mr Appleby’s equally talented sister.’ He paused, confident of momentary silence: he was accustomed to overpower. ‘The Cabinet of Curiosities’, he said, ‘may, I fear, be beneath the severity of scholarship’ – his bow went this time to Bussenschutt – ‘but it may afford the ladies amusement for an idle quarter of an hour. And if all else fails’ – he turned to Mr Eliot with a playfulness which implied that his host, despite his rural humour and curious literary pursuits, was a reputed scholar too ‘– if all else fails I can trust my Tamworths to win the heart of the owner’ – his ivory stick swept over the grunting middle blacks – ‘of these dear, dear fellows who have so charmingly turned out to welcome us.’

As an exit line it could hardly have been bettered; the procession, with the exception of Appleby, swept on to the house. Appleby stayed outside, contemplated the middle blacks, took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. As he did so he became aware of Mr Eliot, who had made a momentary dive back to him.

‘Those pigs,’ he said; ‘whoever did it hasn’t loosed the whole herd.’

Appleby surveyed the wandering creatures. ‘At a guess’, he said, ‘I should say there are twelve.’

‘Nothing’, said Mr Eliot, ‘is more likely.’ He gave Appleby a glance of lucid and placid intelligence and was gone.

Gerald Winter, with memories of former comparative security, had removed himself to the billiard-room. It was tenanted only by Belinda and Timmy – but proved to be something of a storm-centre nevertheless. The brother and sister were not precisely quarrelling; they were however at cross-purposes, and palpably engaged in getting on one another’s nerves. It occurred to Winter that for the moment they had obscurely exchanged roles. Belinda was inclined to be airy and ironical; it was to be guessed that she was enormously relieved by the happy if obscure turn achieved that morning in her father’s mental processes. Timmy, on the other hand, had turned petulant and subterraneously dangerous; he was on the verge, indeed, of being furiously angry.

‘I don’t see’, Belinda was saying, ‘that it really matters very much. Daddy’s got the size of it, and that’s the main thing.’ She gave Winter a glance that tacitly admitted him to the conversation. ‘As long as poor Mr Toplady isn’t worried again it will all pass off bearably enough.’

Timmy, sprawled by a window attempting to read, snapped his book shut: it was a volume, Winter noted with mild astonishment, prescribed for study
in
Litteris Humanioribus
in the University of Oxford. ‘For goodness sake’, he cried, ‘give over about that awful Hugo once and for all.’

Belinda opened wondering eyes and turned to Winter. ‘You don’t happen to know if Timmy has been taking to drink?’

‘Neither to wine’, said Winter, ‘not to song.’ He smiled blandly at his scowling and infuriated pupil. So many Timmys – in his favourite phrase – had passed beneath his bridges with the same fated eddies and darts that his interest in the spiritual progress of any one specimen was severely moderate. Patricia came and Hugo went: it was the order of things in an adolescent world. ‘The plan’ – Winter turned to Belinda and amused himself by deliberate broadness – ‘was yours, after all.’ He shook his head. ‘Always a plan or two going at Rust.’

Timmy scrambled to his feet. ‘I could wring’, he said, ‘that blasted little André’s neck. Plans, indeed! If he’s capable of putting what he did across the Cavey he’s capable of putting anything across anybody.’ He appealed to Winter. ‘Do you know what he and Archie were up to this morning? They invented what is certainly a pack of lies about this beastly
Murder at Midnight
, and persuaded the rabbity woman that when the book comes alive she will certainly be the victim. She got such a shock’ – Timmy rose for a moment to an almost inspired violence of phrase – ‘that she’s probably upstairs now, spawning her flaccid fictions before her time.’

Winter looked at his pupil seriously. ‘Timmy,’ he said, ‘don’t tell me that you don’t find that funny?’ He turned to Belinda and shook a solemnly significant head.

‘And do you know what plan André’s hatching now? He’s preparing some show for tonight. I believe he’s really been concocting it for days, and that it will be elaborate as well as disgusting.’

Belinda contrived to look bored. ‘No doubt’, she said, ‘it’s lowering. But I don’t see we need bother so much. As I say, the one important point is whether the joker turns violent before he’s caught. And I think John will look after that.’

‘And do you know’, asked Timmy, who was pale and apparently incapable of proceeding except by means of rhetorical questions, ‘just
what
he is getting up? Do you know what he told me?’

Winter sat down resignedly. ‘I plead’, he said, ‘for quiet and sustained narrative. There is to be some sort of theatrical performance?’

‘There certainly is. And its theme – ’

The billiard-room door opened, as it always did. There entered – of all impossible couples, thought Winter – Hugo Toplady and Patricia. Belinda looked for a moment as if sisterly regard would dispose her to throw some raft or spar to her brother. Winter, who felt that luncheon was still far off and entertainment necessary, cut quickly in. ‘Timmy’, he said, ‘is just about to tell us André’s plans for this evening. There is to be a theatrical performance, and its theme–’ He made a gesture as if tossing back to Timmy an invisible ball.

Timmy achieved an appearance of desperate calm. ‘André took it upon himself to tell me that under the circumstances a burlesque of the crime-and-detection stuff would be in bad taste… In bad taste!’ Timmy paused, looked warily at Patricia, sulkily at his sister. ‘Lord, lord,
lord
.’

‘Well,’ said Belinda reasonably, ‘its rather a stuffy way of putting it, but I suppose he’s not exactly wrong. Whatever’s biting you?’

‘Yes,’ said Patricia, ‘whatever is?’ Her instinct in such situations, Winter reflected, was as yet uncertain.

Timmy shied, looked despairingly at door and windows. ‘Oh, nothing. Just that he is putting on some foolery all the same.’ He fidgeted with a stray piece of billiard chalk, glanced up at remorselessly expectant faces. ‘André is arranging a sort of fantasia on the romantic element in the books.’

Belinda stood up briskly. ‘I see. Well, let’s not meet foolery half-way.’

‘The romantic element, Timmy? Toplady raised his eyebrows in solid and fatal inquiry. ‘I understood the books to be romances through and through?’

‘Luv,’ said Timmy with inexpressible violence; ‘ruddy luv. “Henry,” she faltered, “you know I love you, but we cannot marry until this cloud is removed from my father’s name.”’

There was a moment’s baffled silence. Then Patricia with perfect simplicity laughed. ‘Do your father’s books’, she asked, ‘run to that sort of thing? I didn’t know.’

Winter sighed – for the fraility of his own sex. There are whole tracts of tommy rot, he told himself, which women just cut out. Aloud he said, ‘Luv – an awful theme indeed.’ But Patricia continued amused. He felt the irritation of a motorist who toots restrainedly and in vain.

And Timmy – fantastic to what crannies the tiresome Spider could reach – was hurt. Wallowing in new and beautiful sensations, which had Patricia as their centre, thought Winter, he was outraged that, even remotely, his wallow should be mocked. And nobody minded – least of all the girl. Only Winter – indeed because his knowledge was objective, theoretical, and drawn from the best printed sources – fully saw the point. Or Winter and, presumably, André. Likely enough, the evening’s entertainment was not to be like this at all; likely enough André was simply playing up Timmy as he and Archie had played up Miss Cavey. It was ingenious and – thought Winter glancing at Timmy again – unkind; it was also liable to be immediately embarrassing if not controlled. ‘I don’t know’, he said, ‘if your father will want any sort of elaborate entertainment tonight? The party might do better to set to and repair the clocks. I suppose you know that they’ve been striking what must be called a definitely sinister note.’

This nicely phrased diversion was unsuccessful. ‘Eleanor,’ said Timmy at once – Webster’s Dictionary seemed to lie open before him at its most appalling page – ‘can you hear those happy bells? I want to tell you that they find an echo in my heart.’ He gave his companions a horrid and masochistic grin.

Belinda felt it necessary to explain. ‘I don’t think’, she said prosaically, ‘that daddy was ever much interested in that sort of thing. But when his circulation grew he felt it fair to the expectations of his readers to put it in. His luv’s very old-fashioned, and quite unreal at that, but we’re told it’s a great success. There’s always a hero and heroine, and a conflict between love and duty develops after about thirty thousand words. I think daddy got the formula from Corneille.’

‘All’, chimed in Timmy, ‘on the nicest plane. Nothing physical until just after that last chapter.’

Toplady was looking disapproving; Patricia, faintly puzzled. Winter said dismissively, ‘And we’re to have Henry and Eleanor tonight? Well, it might be worse, after all. Henry and Eleanor might come alive on us too.’

‘As a matter of fact’, said Appleby’s voice from the door, ‘they have.’

They all swung round.

‘Mrs Birdwire’, said Appleby, ‘has come – in interesting company – to complain. Or rather not to complain. As dear Lucy Pike says, she says, she is
not
that sort of person. She has come rather to exult in insult, slapping heartily round at all available backs meanwhile. Mrs Birdwire has been receiving amatory excerpts from the books – a little old-fashioned in phrasing, as Belinda says. Irritating, no doubt, to a woman of that robust temper. Victorian
erotica
murmured over the telephone at dead of night. Incidentally a vile woman, one agrees. Out there on the terrace I thought how nice it would be to be able to summon Circe.’

‘Circe?’ said Winter, bewildered.

‘Circe Aeae, that knowing dame. But that’s another story and connected with pigs.’

Once more perambulating a dripping terrace with Appleby, Winter paused and looked at his watch. This action, prompted by his stomach, brought his mind sharply to something else. ‘Timing,’ he said. ‘The joker has pace. Timmy falls in love with your sister overnight; Henry and Eleanor immediately begin to stir. The thing has subtlety and speed combined. Timmy becomes vulnerable and Timmy is at once attacked. And you were right in prophesying that the plot would ramify.’

‘Plots don’t ramify; they thicken.’ Appleby stopped in his tracks. ‘This plot thickens. To an improbable, fatiguing and almost Eliotic-Spideresque degree. I suspect – I admit it’s only suspicion – that so far we’ve been going round the side-shows. The main entertainment is elsewhere.’

There was a pause. Appleby produced and filled a pipe, lit it, puffed – all with the deliberation which hinted at a lurking dramatic sense. ‘Tell me’, he said – and tossed a match-box into the air – ‘what you can’ – the box fell and he caught it – ‘about Bussenschutt and the Birdwire.’

‘About
what
?’ Winter’s eyes opened wide.