Watson's Choice (5 page)

Mrs Godley began to protest, but was waved to silence. Sir Bohun looked at his watch and gave the word for the participants to go to the library. As soon as they had picked up a competition paper and a pencil, they were to set to work without loss of time.

‘And how many of your ten objects do you anticipate that the successful competitor will identify?’ Mrs Bradley enquired, when he and her host had retired to the small snuggery which openeds out of the library, and the secretary, Bell, the only other non-competitor, had taken himself off to enact as discreetly as possible the rôle of umpire.

‘Shouldn’t wonder if Grimston doesn’t manage to get the whole lot. Clever fellow, although mad as a hatter,’ Sir Bohun replied.

‘Really?’ said Mrs Bradley, referring to the cleverness, and not to the madness. Sir Bohun misunderstood her.

‘Yes. You remember I mentioned my life is in danger? Well, Grimston’s the chap. Always lock my door at nights and keep Bell dancing attendance during the day. Bell doesn’t know what I think about Grimston, of course. Libellous to tell him. But while you’re here, Beatrice, you might just keep him under observation – Grimston, I mean. He can bear watching. Very peculiar fellow. Jealous, you know. Suspicious. Bee in his bonnet and, as I say, bats in the belfry. Interesting study for you. You’ll enjoy it.’

Mrs Bradley, whose private opinion of these disclosures would not have flattered Sir Bohun had he been permitted to know it, said courteously that she was certain she would find it interesting to observe Mr Grimston.

‘But what makes you think him dangerous?’ she enquired.

‘Ah, that,’ said Sir Bohun, ‘would be telling! I may hint that his attitude is not unconnected with Linda Campbell, but possibly I mentioned that before. Let us change the subject. He will be safe enough and happy enough to-night, poor fellow, pitting his wits against those of Bell and myself. Bell, I must say, has been invaluable in arranging all this.’

Bell came in at this moment to report that the ladies felt at a decided disadvantage compared with the gentlemen because their costumes were a nuisance, even a danger, on the stairs. Mrs Dance, reported Bell, was particularly concerned about her bustle.

‘Nobody asked her to wear a bustle,’ snapped Sir Bohun. ‘No bustle is mentioned in the text, so far as I am aware, as being part of any lady’s costume. Nobody but Brenda Dance would have thought of wearing such a tasteless and frivolous appendage.’

‘I regret to inform you that my secretary, Miss Menzies, thought of it,’ remarked Mrs Bradley. ‘Her sense of humour is occasionally elementary, I am afraid.’

‘May the ladies change into more convenient costumes, Sir Bohun?’ pursued Bell.

‘I suppose so, but they won’t be allowed extra time. What about Young Holder? Is he warm enough in his shirt and trousers?’

‘He has assumed a dressing-gown, Sir Bohun.’

‘Oh, well, that’s reasonable, I suppose. All right. Pop back, there’s a good fellow. You know what cheats these people are if you take your eyes off them!’ Having disposed of the probity of his invited guests and his trusted employees thus, he sighed with relief as the door closed behind Bell, and added, ‘What do you think of Manoel? He is a wealthy man now. He has gone into the bull-fighting racket and cleans up to the tune of a thousand pounds an afternoon, or so he tells me. Shouldn’t have thought there was that much money in the game. I’m a bit – he’s rather a problem at the moment. His mother’s still alive, you know, and it’s only a question of time before somebody lets the cat out of the bag and tells him I may be thinking of marrying – and
not
his mother.’

‘Not his mother? Is he fond of her?’

‘He’s haughty, like lots of ’em out there, and he doesn’t like being a bastard.’

‘Who would? I should think, from what I have seen of him, that he might be a more implacable enemy than Mr Grimston, to whom you referred a moment ago,’ said Mrs Bradley reasonably.

‘Oh, well, let’s talk about something else,’ said Sir Bohun uneasily. ‘What are you reading just now?’

‘… I crave but four days’ respite: for the which you are to do me both a present and a dangerous courtesy.

Pray, sir, in what?

In the delaying death.’

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –
Measure for Measure

IT DID NOT
take Laura long to change into a suit and some comfortable shoes. She was prepared to enter the competition with zest, not for the sake of the prize, which, in the face of what she supposed would be the concentrated opposition of the tutor Grimston and the dark-horse nature of the rest of the field, she hardly expected to gain, but because it was a unique opportunity to explore most of the house.

Exploring old houses was a hobby of hers, and Sir Bohun’s home, although not the exciting affair it might have been, in her eyes, if it had been built a hundred and fifty years earlier, nevertheless offered, in the way of staircases, fireplaces, carved overmantels, and cupboard doors, much that was both interesting and delightful. It belonged to the late seventeenth century, a period of which she knew a considerable amount so far as its domestic architecture was concerned.

The spectacle of a large stuffed goose, a white one with a barred tail, recalled her to the contemplation of the paper and pencil in her hand. This happened as soon as she came out of her room, for the bird, looking extremely disagreeable, was perched in a glass case on a tall-boy on the landing. She rested her paper on the seat of a chair which stood near the tall-boy, and wrote triumphantly:

Either the right or the wrong goose. The Blue Carbuncle
.

She glanced at the next flight of stairs with its stout posts and spiralled banisters, and decided to ascend. The flight was short,
and
soon turned to disclose another which led up to the landing, so that, by the time she heard the footsteps of people below her, she was hidden from these people and they from her.

She hoped that they would not mount behind her. She preferred to explore on her own. Very soon it was clear that they did not propose to join her, for a man’s voice said:

‘All right. Let’s park in here. We can stick down some rot or other on our papers. There are only a limited number of things to choose from. I’ll tell you what they are, and then we can cook our papers so that they don’t look quite the same. I want you to get quite clear the fact that –’

‘I don’t see any point in going over it all again. It won’t work, and, anyway – ’ was the last that Laura heard. She had no instinctive desire to loiter for the sake of overhearing other people’s conversation, and she certainly shrank from overhearing this one. The man’s voice was that of Toby Dance and the other was that of his wife.

‘Talking about the divorce,’ thought Laura glumly. She liked the couple. She went into the first room she came to, and discovered that it was full of lumber and old clothes. It looked, she thought, a happy hunting ground, for she could not believe that most of the Sherlock Holmes objects would be placed in as obvious a position as the goose from
The Blue Carbuncle
.

As she was ferreting about, two more of the seekers came in, the stage couple, Ethel and Charles Mildren. Laura greeted them cheerfully and asked whether they had had any luck. Charles thought he had managed to identify two of the objects, but Ethel shook her head and said she had not a clue, had forgotten everything about the stories except the racehorse one and the one with the governess in it, and proposed to stick to Charlie for a bit and then to find a quiet spot somewhere and put her feet up and wait until the gong sounded.

‘Sir Bohun won’t like it,’ said Charles Mildren. He had retained his Sherlock Holmes costume and, for Laura’s benefit, put on a waggish act with his magnifying glass. He did not seem too steady on his feet, and Laura wondered whether his wife’s faithful attendance on him was occasioned less by
ennui
on her own account than by a certain amount of anxiety on his.

Laura grinned politely at his antics, but was not sorry when his wife, remarking that it would take all night to go through
that
junk,
took him away. She heard the sound of a stumble on the stairs, followed by a cheery but slightly thick, ‘Whoa, there! Git up them stairs!’ The running buffet had been patronized by several people during the dancing, but Mildren, she thought, must be unaccustomed to drink or very tired or a remarkably quick performer to have reached, so early in the proceedings, a stage where his wife felt it imperative to keep an eye on him.

Suddenly Laura realized that she was staring straight at a pair of Victorian stove-pipe trousers. They were untenanted, and were slung over a coat-hanger dependent from a cupboard door. Laura examined them, and then wrote on her list:

The knees of Vincent Spaulding’s trousers. The Red-Headed League
.

She thought for a moment and then said aloud:

‘Well, I know what
I
should have done if the job had been left to
me!
’

Feeling like an adult and extraordinarily intelligent Alice, she opened the cupboard door and looked inside. On the shelf facing her was a glass jar containing an object which was interesting, but, to the ordinary eye, without charm. Laura wrote:

Victor Hatherley’s Thumb. The Engineer’s Thumb
.

She felt extremely pleased with herself. Most people, she thought, would have been so delighted at having identified the trousers that it would not have occurred to them to open the cupboard. Conversely, many others, having opened the cupboard and identified the thumb, would not have thought of examining the trousers.

‘There ought to be a stuffed snake somewhere,’ she decided, ‘and possibly a hank of red hair.’

She found the snake in a discarded and broken meat-safe (the receptacle, she thought, was a clue, in a sense, although it was the wrong kind of safe). She wrote, with rising satisfaction:

Doctor Roylott’s Swamp Adder. The Speckled Band
.

It began to seem too easy, but after that her hunch failed, for there seemed to be nothing else in the room which had any connexion with the competition. She was leaving to pursue the search elsewhere, when she almost collided with her betrothed.

‘Good evening,’ said the handsome young man. ‘Any luck so far? – or doesn’t genius burn to-night, Jo March?’

‘Getting on,’ replied Laura, very pleased with herself. ‘How’s the arrogant C.I.D. doing?’

‘I’ve got six. It seems pretty simple,’ Gavin replied. ‘But I perceive that you’re feeling smug, so, if you don’t mind, I’m going to have a good look round in here. Vincent Spaulding’s trousers … um … bound to be hiding something behind that cupboard door, I should imagine.’ He opened the cupboard. ‘I spy, with my little eye, the engineer’s thumb, do I not?’

Complacently he noted it down, and then went straight over to the meat-safe.

‘Blow you, Gavin!’ said Laura jealously. ‘That makes you nine out of the ten!’

‘I shall fall down on the tenth, I expect,’ said Gavin generously. ‘I have a hunch it’s in here, too. Do you mind if I continue to look around? Don’t let me detain you. I believe you were about to depart.’

Laura hit him and departed. She was puzzled and perturbed. She respected Gavin’s emotions and understood them, except where she herself was concerned, and she knew that his dismissal of her meant that he was feeling worried about something.

‘Oh, bother the competition!’ she suddenly thought. ‘What on earth does this Chantrey man matter? He’s a selfish old pig, except that he’s good to those kids. I don’t see why we should all play silly games just to please him!’ But then she reflected further that, after all, she need not have accepted the invitation, that she had enjoyed her dinner, and, up to this encounter with Gavin, the competition. She went back to the lumber-room which Gavin was still patiently and methodically searching.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked abruptly. He was squatting on his heels beside an open suitcase, but, at the sound of her voice, he stood up, looking even taller than usual in the police uniform of the previous century. He hunched his shoulders, spread his palms, and said:

‘Don’t know yet myself, Dog. Something wrong with the set-up here. I’m supposed to be holding a watching-brief on behalf of our host, but it’s not the cagey Sir B. that’s on my mind.’

‘What, then? Spit it out to Auntie Laura.’

Gavin walked to the door and closed it.

‘Here it is, then, for what it’s worth … and, spoken aloud, it comes to nothing. Charles Mildren, who’s been telling me his life-
story,
particularly the bit when Sir B. did him out of a fat part back in 1949, is half-seas over, and that worries me because I’m sure it’s out of alignment. Ethel Mildren is worried stiff, and not
only
because Charles is blotto. Then, at least half the competitors are not walking round the house at all. Where they are, and what they’re doing, I don’t know, but I do know that two of the rooms which were not originally out of bounds are out of bounds now. It’s no business of mine if people have chosen to take themselves out of the competition, but it seems a bit odd of them to seal off a couple of rooms when they’ve all got their own bedrooms. After all, none of the bedrooms has been used. All have been marked as being out of bounds. Then – nothing to do with this evening particularly – but why a tutor
and
a nursery governess for those two little chaps? Sir B. thinks money’s no object, but he said openly to me that education
has
no object; that Linda Campbell is moronic and that Grimston is a madman and a freak. Then, where does he get off in the little matter of Manoel Lupez? The gallant bull-fighter obviously hates his guts, and Sir B. is manifestly afraid of him. Why have him here, then? Last, and, possibly, quite least (since each may not have known that the other was to be invited), why both Dances in the same house? I know each item separately sounds nothing, and perhaps the whole lot together sound nothing, either, but that’s what’s on my mind. Now tell me it’s all a lot of rot, as well you may, and I’d love to believe you.’