The Norfolk Mystery (The County Guides) (32 page)

Thomas Thistle-Smith

‘I'll do it for you, mister.' A boy in a blue velvet suit had appeared at my elbow. He held out his hand. He was probably no more than twelve or thirteen years old; there was, on his lip, the faintest hint of an incipient moustache, and his voice wobbled on the very furthest, most querulous edge of the soprano. He had thick, dark hair that hung down to his shoulders.

‘You'll peel the egg?'

‘Yes, sir, I will, sir. I'm an expert, sir.' His face and his manner were, all at once, open, bold, mild and teasing – as though I were merely an entertaining discovery, and he knew well in advance the outcome of our exchange.

‘You're a quail-egg-peeling expert?' I asked.

‘Yes, sir. That's right, sir.'

‘Employed especially for the evening?'

‘By my mother, sir. Yes, sir.'

I glanced around but could see no obvious hovering maternal presence. ‘Is your mother the cook?'

‘No, sir. My mother is the lady of the house, sir.'

‘Mrs Thistle-Smith?' I was surprised. Mrs Thistle-Smith seemed a lady long since past her child-rearing years.

‘Indeed, sir. I am Thomas Thistle-Smith, sir.' He shook my hand, one eye still firmly on the quail's egg. ‘My friends call me Teetees, sir.'

‘Teetees?'

‘Yes, sir. And my mother always allows me to assist at her parties, sir, if I'm home from school. I'm not allowed to eat them. Only to peel them. I'm a champion quail-egg peeler, sir.'

‘Are you, indeed?'

‘Yes, sir. If you'd like, sir, I'll challenge you.'

‘Challenge me?'

‘If you can peel a quail's egg quicker than me I'll give you a shilling, sir.'

‘A shilling? And I suppose if you can peel an egg quicker I give you a—'

‘Shilling. That's correct, sir.'

‘Very well, then.'

I held my quail's egg at the ready. The boy took a quail's egg from a dish.

‘Ready,' he said. I braced myself. ‘Steady. Go!'

I started fumbling with the blasted thing, but only a second later the boy held his peeled egg aloft, triumphant.

‘That's incredible,' I said, for incredible indeed it was.

‘Practice makes perfect, sir.'

He held it – tiny, bald, rather grey-looking – out towards me. It looked sad and old rather than shiny and new. I detected hints of pocket lint. I suspected foul play and sleight-of-hand.

‘That'll be a shilling then please, sir.'

‘A shilling!'

‘Yes, sir. It goes towards my school fees, sir.'

‘Your school fees? You need to peel a lot of quail's eggs to cover your school fees.'

‘Just for the incidentals, sir. There are always incidentals.'

‘I'm sure there are.'

I handed over sixpence. He handed over the peeled egg. He looked at the coin. I ate the egg.

‘Hold on,' said Teetees, too late. ‘This is only a sixpence.'

‘Correct,' I said. ‘And this is not a freshly peeled egg, is it?'

‘Of course it is!'

‘Really?'

The boy had exhausted my patience. I was hungry. I had drunk several glasses of sherry, and I had the prospect of a long evening ahead with Morley. I reached forward and forcefully patted the pocket of his blue velvet jacket – and sure enough there came the answering sensation of a handful of tiny pre-peeled eggs squashing together.

‘Hey!' he said. ‘Hey! They're my eggs!'

‘Goodbye,' I said.

He scowled at me, and I scowled back, and he disappeared into the crowd, ready to pester others with his pre-pubescent upper-class begging.

Morley, meanwhile, had been temporarily abandoned by Mrs Thistle-Smith, who was now busy elsewhere in scintillating sherry-party conversation, and he had sought out, or been found by Dr Sharp, who had attended the body of the reverend on our first night in Blakeney. Their voices could be heard faintly over the hubbub, and I felt the distant twitching of Morley's moustache, always a sign of great danger. I hurried over.

‘The answer, Morley, if you would care to listen, is birth control,' the doctor was saying. It looked as though I was too late. ‘As you know, nature exercises a certain amount of control by effectively sterilising the alcoholic and the diseased, and I am simply saying that there is no good reason why we shouldn't augment her role and prevent some other types of unsuitable breeding. It's hardly unreasonable, man.'

‘It's eugenics,' said Morley.

‘It's birth control,' said the doctor flatly.

‘And who is it who controls the births? Doctors like yourself, presumably?'

‘I can think of no others better suited, Mr Morley. Can you? And certainly if individuals are incapable or unwilling to make the right decision—'

‘Sorry, doctor. Forgive me. Incapable or unwilling in precisely what sense?'

‘Precisely through background, or education or—'

‘Race?' said Morley.

‘Potentially, yes,' said the doctor.

‘Mr Morley?' I said, alerting him to my presence.

‘Ah, there. You see, Sefton?' He had – as was his habit – instantly recruited me onto his side of the argument. ‘A rather troubling suggestion, wouldn't you agree, doctor?'

‘I don't see why,' said the doctor.

‘Well, try telling the Aga Khan he can't have any more children, doctor. Eh? Or the Emperor of Nepal. Or the tribal chiefs of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Or the rabbi of—'

‘That is clearly not what I meant, Mr Morley, and I have to say that I am rather disappointed by your failure to take my argument seriously.'

‘I'm taking your argument very seriously, doctor.'

‘Mr Morley?' I said again, to no avail.

‘Good,' said the doctor. ‘So you'll understand that I am talking about individuals who cannot provide or account for the consequences of their actions.'

‘And you can provide and account for the consequences of all your actions, doctor?'

‘I certainly expect no one else to bear the consequences. And I hardly see why we as a nation should bear the responsibility for those born without the capacity to progress or succeed in life.'

I glanced at Morley's face. He looked utterly disgusted, as though having eaten half a dozen rotten quail's eggs.

‘I would have thought, doctor,' he said, ‘that was an argument beneath the dignity of a man like yourself. But clearly I was wrong.'

The doctor's face reddened. ‘I don't see what's wrong with it,' he said.

‘Which is precisely what's troubling,' said Morley. ‘It is the beginning of the slippery slope, sir.'

‘Towards?'

‘A deep world of darkness, doctor. A place I would rather we did not go, but where I fear we are plunging headlong.' Morley took a sip of his water to fortify himself. ‘What of the mentally unstable in your scheme, doctor? Or, shall we say, the merely psychologically
quirky
? The mentally or physically kinked and twisted. Have them all neutered, should we?'

‘Not necessarily,' said the doctor.

‘Not necessarily, Sefton, eh? Did you hear that? Very generous of him, isn't it?' He was becoming uncontrollably roused. I had seen the signs before.

‘Mr Morley,' I said again. ‘Sir, I think we—'

‘The epileptic, I take it, you think should automatically be kept from breeding?'

‘No. Not necessarily,' said the doctor. ‘Certainly not. But possibly, under certain circumstances, yes.'

‘And so what of Milton?' said Morley. ‘And of Keats?'

‘There would be exceptions, Mr Morley.'

‘And you would be able to identify these exceptions,
in vitro
? The good epileptic from the bad? The foetus capable of progressing and succeeding in life from the inevitable failure? The wheat and the chaff separated in the belly of a woman? The sheep from the goats, in the womb? It's outrageous, frankly, doctor. Absolutely and utterly—'

‘Mr Morley,' I said. ‘I think—'

‘Again, I'm afraid you've misunderstood my argument, Mr Morley, and twisted it, and taken it too far.'

‘The only place to take an argument, surely,' said Morley. I had a hold of his elbow by this stage, and was attempting gently to tug him away. But he was standing firm. ‘To test its eventual outcome? It's called the Socratic method, sir, and I would have thought a man of your background might have encountered it during the course of your long and privileged education.'

‘Mr Morley! Sir!' I interjected as loudly as I could without disturbing the other guests, though noting that already those around us had begun to take notice of the kerfuffle.

‘And what about homosexuals?' continued Morley, horribly. ‘Dock their tails too, should we? Hmm?'

The doctor blushed red to the roots of his Brylcreemed hair.

‘Hmm?' continued Morley, rather cruelly, I thought, but clearly to the point. ‘
Medice, cura te ipsum
!'

The doctor had turned away, and I steered Morley fast into what I thought might be calmer waters over by the windows to the garden. Alas, I miscalculated. A schoolmaster, a perfectly agreeable man named Ellison, with a wide, pleasant smile, and the innocent face of a child, introduced himself to us. He was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

‘A friend of mine attended one of your lectures in London,' he said warmly, after the introductions. ‘They said it was
most
entertaining.'

‘That's nice, isn't it?' I said, hoping to calm Morley.

‘Schoolmaster are you, eh?'

‘That's right,' said the poor unwitting, grinning Ellison.

‘And would you agree with me then, sir, that the entire problem with our system of education is the problem of our public schools?'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘No need to be sorry, young man. Where do you teach?'

The teacher mentioned a prep school nearby of high reputation, and even higher prices.

‘I see. As you may or may not know, sir, I have spent most of my working life doing my best to offer some skimpy education to those less fortunate than your pupils, those who some among us indeed' – he pointed at the distant figure of the doctor, who was refreshing himself with sherry and cake – ‘believe are incapable of progressing or succeeding in life.'

‘Yes, Mr Morley, I know your—'

‘And it is my belief, in fact, that our public schools are responsible not only –
not only
– for the dulling and stultifying of the young minds with which they are entrusted, doing nothing more than repressing the intellect and the imagination with their pathetic idolatory of athletics and rugby, but are responsible also for the perpetuation of inequalities of opportunity in this country of which we should all be rightly ashamed. Am I right, do you think, in my assessment of the state of our education system?'

‘Well, sir … I don't know.'

The schoolmaster looked at me, bewildered, evidently unsure whether he should mount a sturdy defence of his profession. The situation clearly called for decisive action. By chance I was able to grab hold of Mrs Thistle-Smith as she circulated past.

‘Mr Morley,' I said, ‘was wondering if he might take a look at your garden, Mrs Thistle-Smith?'

‘But of course,' she said, sweeping Morley away from me. ‘Let's go together, Mr Morley.'

I breathed a sigh of relief, apologised to the poor schoolmaster, and followed Morley and Mrs Thistle-Smith at a discreet distance.

I needed fresh air. Morley needed calming.

The plan worked. Straight away, Mrs Thistle-Smith engaged Morley in hushed conversation. There was the sound of bubbling water in the stream down past the croquet lawn. The evening sun flecked the lawn with emerald greens. The sky was cloudless. I stood by the house, smoking, as they wandered slowly along the borders of the garden. I couldn't make out everything that was said, though snatches drifted towards me.

‘… and that is a Carmine Pillar I'm growing on the old apple tree … a thornless pink Zephirine Drouhin … the Japanese Rugosa Single Pink … ten feet high.'

‘You have a talent,' I think I heard Morley say. Something something something … ‘Very special.'

It was refreshing, I think she said, to find a man who appreciates … something. A garden?

‘Sometimes I think my husband would hardly notice …' Unintelligible … Something.

I watched from a distance as Mrs Thistle-Smith went to light a cigarette. Her match blew out. She went to light it again. I saw Morley move to light it; he kept matches about his person at all times, in case of emergency. As she held up her cigarette to her lips I thought I saw a slight ring of bruising around her wrist, but I may have been imagining it – the distance, the play of light and shade.

‘Thank you, Mr Morley, that's …' I think she said gallant. Mrs Thistle-Smith drew deeply on her cigarette and they turned slowly and began making their way back towards the house. ‘You don't smoke?'