Honeybath's Haven (16 page)

The barman now returned, accompanied by a woman clearly of superior standing in the pub. She appeared as surprised as she was gratified that an inquiry about accommodation should be forthcoming from a person of Honeybath's speech and bearing. This was scarcely promising in point of what he was likely to find in the way of entertainment at the Hanwell Arms. But the room he was shown was decently clean, and he closed with it at once – further encouraged, indeed, by the sound he had heard from the inn yard of two rapidly departing cars. The gang – the auld lang syne gang, as it might be called – was pursuing the hunt for its friend elsewhere. No doubt he would be found in a ditch that night, appropriately ‘worked over', as such people were said to express the matter.

This macabre thought a little distressed Honeybath as he presently ate some indifferent cheese and distastefully plastic bread by way of luncheon. He then walked back to Hanwell Court.

 

 

 

The entrance hall of the mansion was a spacious area, lofty and with dark-panelled walls on which hung sundry mediocre portraits of unknown eighteenth-century notabilities – these last having presumably ‘gone with the house' when it was first appropriated to its present communal purpose. Being, moreover, handsomely carpeted and liberally supplied with sofas and easy chairs in crimson leather, it was sufficiently habitable to be referred to from time to time by inadequately cultivated inmates as the ‘lounge'. One would not have expected it ever to become the scene of indecorous behaviour. But as Honeybath entered it indecorous behaviour was undoubtedly going on.

It was being occasioned by Ambrose Prout, who was reprehending Brigadier Luxmoore in the most violent terms for some act of omission or commission which Honeybath for some moments failed to pick up. Mr Brown was assisting at this discreditable episode – although at present only in the passive sense of standing by and taking note.

Honeybath would have been annoyed – although perhaps unreasonably – by Prout's thus promptly turning up even had his behaviour been irreproachable, since he had by now come to view with the deepest suspicion the integrity of this confounded picture-pedlar's dealings with his brother-in-law's affairs. And if it was true that he might quite properly have been sent down by a prostrated Melissa as a representative of the family (which Honeybath himself, after all, was not), it yet couldn't have been for the purpose of making a vulgar scene. Or at least it was to be hoped not.

And it at once turned out, indeed, that the matter at issue was one about which neither Melissa nor anybody else beyond the walls of Hanwell Court could know anything as yet. Within the last hour there had been a burglary perpetrated on the premises. Or if not aburglary (which implies intent to commit a felony) at least a breaking-in. It had happened in those comfortable apartments which Edwin Lightfoot had now quitted for good. The door admitting to them from the body of the house had been locked by the police, who presumably proposed some routine examination of them later for anything that might throw light on the dead man's circumstances or state of mind. A passing servant, however, had heard somebody give what she described as ‘a kind of sudden laugh' within, and had reported this perplexing mild indecency to Brigadier Luxmoore. The solitary policeman remaining in the house had been summoned; the door had been unlocked; and nothing in any way untowards had at first appeared. The constable, however, examined the windows with care. Although the rooms were on the first floor, a couple of the windows gave directly upon the flat roof of what had once been a billiard-room, and one of them had been forced open ‘in what the constable declared with authority to be an unskilful manner. But theperpetrator could have taken his time had he desired to do so, since the disposition of the adjacent walls was such that he would have been virtually secure against observation.

It was this perplexing incident that Prout was creating about – and with a vehemence and agitation than Honeybath judged unseemly in the circumstances. That some sort of sneak-thief had conceivably been prowling the dead man's property was almost as shocking in itself as that he should have been mysteriously and rashly prompted to audible laughter. But matters were not improved by making a vulgar row.

Brown now revealed himself as being almost as upset as Prout. Honeybath recalled that Brown – if Gaunt, the somewhat eccentric stiletto man, was to be believed – had provided the establishment with obscurely professional advice on protecting itself against such depredations. So perhaps it was just that Brown's vanity was affronted by the ease with which an intruder had broken in. Luxmoore – a thoroughly reasonable man, but one whose job probably required him to be constantly smoothing ruffled feelings of one sort or another on the part of his inmates – was inclined to play the episode down. Not so, it appeared, the constable, who was now on the telephone, summoning higher authority back to the scene. And the constable, of course, was right. Honeybath saw this clearly. Hard upon Edwin's still totally mysterious death, Edwin's rooms had been raided by a person unknown. The obvious inference was that he had been concerned to secure, and remove or destroy, documents or other material of an incriminating character bearing upon the fatality. But it didn't seem to be this that was in Prout's mind, or in Brown's either.

Honeybath realized, too, that this fresh mystery affected his own position. He had felt, a little vaguely, that it would be in order for him to have some access to Edwin's rooms himself, and that this would at least rationalize his impulse to stay around as an observing presence for a time. In this assumption he had perhaps been encouraged by the apparent disposition of Adamson, that high-ranking officer, to take an open-and-shut view of the case. But in face of this new development the police would at least have to suspend their persuasion that Edwin had died because he was a melancholic or a drunk. And as a consequence of this they would be much indisposed to have an amateur assistant poking around where he had no business to be.

So Honeybath now rather regretted having booked that room at the Hanwell Arms. On the other hand he was determined not to let Ambrose Prout remain in any sense in command of the field. For Prout, he told himself, was up to no good. On the contrary, he was (if the expression was possible) up to
bad
. Honeybath even had a glimmering sense of what that
bad
might be. And as his mind now turned that way, one of those striking ideas of his came to him. Prout's present fuss and indignation was a blind.
He and the man who had broken into Edwin's rooms were confederates, fellow-conspirators
. It was as simple as that.

Or, of course, as complicated. What would Adamson say if he came forward with so bizarre a notion? Or the urbane Luxmoore, for that matter? Or even the still invisible Dr Michaelis? Why had Michaelis visited Prout in London?
Was Michaelis a conspirator too?
And what about Brown, of whom it was a tenable theory that he owned some sort of criminal past?
Was Brown one as well
? And what about that gang in the pub? Faced with these thronging suspicions, Honeybath suddenly felt very much on his own.

He also felt that he wanted to see Michaelis at once. He wanted to have it out with the man – although he wasn't, indeed, altogether clear about what he meant by ‘it' in this connection. The cardinal fact about the Medical Superintendent – at least in relation to Edwin – was that he had revealed himself as an out-and-out Philistine. Hadn't he talked of Edwin's efforts to regain command of his art as he might talk of some old woman who had to be encouraged in her basketwork by way of ‘occupational therapy'? Such a man couldn't have been in any sympathetic relationship with an artist; he wouldn't know whether Edwin was painting well or ill; he couldn't care less, so long as the employment was having a composing effect upon one whom he quite gratuitously regarded as his patient. Still, it did seem as if he and Edwin had fairly regularly conversed over a considerable period of time. What he had to say about Edwin's being, or not being, suicidally inclined, or as having, or having not, given way to secret nocturnal drinking, ought at least to be listened to. In this persuasion Honeybath slipped away from Brigadier Luxmoore and the two men pestering him, and made his way to Michaelis' subterranean quarters.

He knocked on the door, appeared to hear a summons from the interior, and entered the room. Michaelis' back was turned to him, and he was peering into the gloom of a bookcase so excessively Gothic in inspiration that it looked less like a bookcase than a tomb. Michaelis turned round, recognized Honeybath, and jumped. People don't often really jump out of their skins. The image is extremely extravagant. But that seemed to be roughly what Michaelis' spasmodic movement aimed at. Had Honeybath been Adamson, and had there been ranked behind him a posse of policemen brandishing truncheons and manacles, the man could not have been more alarmed. Honeybath had been told by Brown that panic was abroad in Hanwell Court. Here, surely, it was.

‘Ah, good afternoon, Mr Honeybath. Can I help you in any way?' Michaelis had endeavoured to pull himself together. But the question was so absurd (being, no doubt, the man's customary formula when visited by inmates in a professional way) that Honeybath was for a moment at a loss how to answer it.

‘Good afternoon,' he said. ‘I came down to Hanwell at once when I heard the news. I hope not intrusively. You may recall that I was one of Edwin Lightfoot's oldest friends.'

‘No, not at all. That is to say, yes – yes indeed. Won't you sit down?' As he made this suggestion, reasonable in itself, Michaelis looked wildly round his handsomely furnished room, as if despairing of any possibility of finding a chair in it. ‘A marvellous day,' he said idiotically. And this was really too much for Honeybath.

‘Dr Michaelis,' he said severely, ‘Lightfoot's sudden tragic death is a sad and shocking thing. But you appear to me, if I may say so, in an unduly perturbed condition.' (He had been about to say ‘in a filthy funk', but remembered it was an expression he hadn't used since his prep-school days. The alternative he had adopted perhaps erred, on the contrary, on the formal side.)

‘Yes, of course. I mean, no – not at all. That is to say, I am considerably upset. I feel, Mr Honeybath, that I have failed in proper vigilance. Lightfoot was at risk, undoubtedly at risk. It was my duty to keep an eye on the situation.'

‘At risk? In what sense, may I ask, do you employ the expression? Do you suppose anybody to have been threatening him?'

‘Oh, no – no, indeed not!' Michaelis had actually done the jumping trick again – this time in a sedentary position, since he had collapsed into a chair. ‘I mean simply that Lightfoot, as an advanced neuropath, was likely to be subject to suicidal impulses. And death by water, indeed, was precisely what I ought to have been apprehensive of. A uterine fixation, Mr Honeybath. Had he shot or hanged himself it would have been altogether more surprising.' Michaelis showed a flicker of returning confidence as he gained this mushy professional ground. ‘So that was it,' he said firmly. ‘But very sad, of course. A talented man, without a doubt. I was myself a great admirer of his work. And he was much liked here – very much liked. I hope that, despite any theological difficulty, there may later be a quiet memorial service in our local parish church.'

‘Confound your hopes, sir!' Honeybath was suddenly very angry. ‘And I do not believe that Lightfoot took his own life. Nor do I believe the revolting suggestion that a condition of inebriety caused him simply to tumble into that woman's disgusting tank. I do believe that my friend was murdered. And I intend to get to the bottom of the mystery, and see justice done.' Honeybath paused, surprised by his own words. It was as if this conviction had bobbed up and crystallized only in the act of his giving utterance to it. ‘I give you fair warning,' he added, and realized that these words were more extraordinary still.

They certainly had a powerful effect on the wretched Medical Superintendent. His momentary attempt at a confident air vanished; his jaw sagged in an unnatural fashion, as if he were a bad actor registering an extreme of dismay; he stared dumbly at Honeybath for some seconds before speaking.

‘The police!' he then said hoarsely. ‘Do they believe that?'

‘They well may. I am not in their confidence. They will certainly investigate the affair in the most thoroughgoing way. Any appearance of their taking much for granted is probably a kind of routine deception, Dr Michaelis.'

‘They haven't taken anybody away? Prout, for example?'

‘Prout is still upstairs, making a nuisance of himself to Brigadier Luxmoore.' Honeybath had thought Michaelis' question exceedingly odd, but not exactly enlightening. ‘And as it appears that I am making myself a nuisance to you, I will bid you good afternoon.'

And Honeybath left the room with a curt nod. Michaelis' condition perplexed him, and he judged the whole situation required thinking over if he wasn't himself to risk some false step. He resolved to return to the Hanwell Arms at once, and there devote the evening to sorting out his ideas. In the hall he ran into Prout, who was now alone. It was only a fleeting encounter, since Prout plainly had no desire to converse. Honeybath derived a curious impression from it, all the same. Prout's agitation had left him, and he certainly wasn't in anything like Michaelis' state of panic. He looked, in fact, as if he too was feeling the need – and the disposition – to think matters out. And Prout (Honeybath found himself reflecting as he walked down the drive), although an objectionable person, had to be credited with the virtue of pertinacity. If he had resolved upon some course of wrongdoing, he wouldn't too lightly be put off.

 

 

THE EARTHSHAKER FALLS