Stop Press (27 page)

Miss Cavey jumped. ‘Which room? Why, the little one by itself under the tower.’

André, who had been exploring after kidneys, returned in time to say, ‘Ah!’

‘Now,’ continued Archie with quiet reasonableness, ‘what we are afraid of is this. We have had the Birthday Party; may we not have Murder at Midnight too? Our apprehensions, my dear André, are of that, are they not?’

‘Of just that. We are afraid that some poor woman may really be murdered.’

‘A woman?’ Miss Cavey had pushed her unfinished kipper nervously away.

Archie nodded seriously. ‘A woman,’ he corroborated. ‘Dear me, there is Joseph looking at you in that peculiar way again.’

Miss Cavey made a last effort after self-control. ‘I don’t believe he’s looking at me in – in the way you seem to suggest. It’s much more as if he were stripping me of my clothes.’

‘My dear lady, pray keep calm. If we are calm we have a much better chance of facing the thing out. To begin with: who is the woman likely to be?’ Archie deliberately scanned Mr Eliot’s guests. ‘We have only a slight description.’

‘A description?’

‘The body is described as that of a well-nourished woman in middle life.’

Miss Cavey rose abruptly. ‘I have something’, she said with resolution, ‘to look up in a time-table.’

‘Of course my knowledge of my cousin’s story is slight. I believe that at present there are alternative versions. In one the unfortunate woman dies in her bedroom – rather an isolated room. In the other nemesis overtakes her as she is endeavouring to fly from her persecutors.’

Miss Cavey sat down again. ‘Do you know’, she asked in a strained voice, ‘how she dies? Is it something – something painful?’

André rose brilliantly to the occasion. ‘She is strung up’, he said, ‘with a window cord. They rush in and discover her just as she gives her last wriggle; her last dry horrid gasp.’

‘And here’, said Archie, ‘is Richard. Richard, old fellow, I fear Miss Cavey is a little unwell. She has been annoyed by Joseph.’

Saturday was full of incident, as befitted the crowning day of the Spider’s party. But it opened with abundant talk – particularly for Appleby, who found himself at breakfast once more in the company of Winter. His sister and Timmy Eliot were opposite, and in this Winter found material for mild amusement. He offered Patricia an appreciative analysis of the personality of Hugo Toplady, appealing to Timmy for corroboration point by point and concluding with a mysterious exhortation to scorn not the sonnet and the yet more mysterious verdict that if only Toplady were chocolate-coloured he would be perfect. In vain Timmy offered his tutor a virgin copy of
The Times
. No sooner did the theme of Toplady verge on the tedious than Winter was off on another tack.

‘You and I, Miss Appleby, are committed to professions, but Timmy still has the delight of choosing. We were consulting about it in the train yesterday.’ He addressed himself to a Timmy who was endeavouring gallantly enough not to turn sulky. ‘I had an idea which I forgot to put to you. It was suggested by those seducing photographs which they fasten above the seats; there was Bridlington’ – he turned to Appleby and threw him a phrase like a biscuit – ‘a sickle of sand on which departed holidaymakers palely loitered in bleaching sepias: and why, I thought, should Timmy not come unto those sepia sands? There was Ludlow Castle’ – he spoke again to his pupil – ‘and it was Ludlow Castle that really put the thing in my head. Why, Timmy, should you not buy a bus and conduct superior literary tours?’ He glanced at Patricia. ‘You know, he has the instinct of showmanship.’

Appleby allowed his thoughts to depart elsewhere; when they returned Winter was still discoursing on his new theme. ‘Shrines, Timmy! Make it an Eliot’s Luxury Pilgrimage this year. Here Gaveston, ladies and gentlemen, made the following plans for amusing the king.’

It was approaching the harangue which the man generally avoided. But Winter, unaccountably raising his voice, talked on. ‘Vividly, Miss Appleby, it rises before one! The courtyard of the ruined castle, above its crumbled silhouette rooks tossing against a chilly sky, on the drawbridge the great char-à-banc – scarlet, and blazoned in gold
Miss Guinivere
or perhaps
The Seige Perilous
– purring its gentle impatience, the little group of tourists with cameras and pamphlets and notebooks – wistful schoolmistresses plucking the barren rose of York or Lancaster, eccentric businessmen gathering material for provincial literary societies – and in the midst Timmy himself’ – Winter’s voice rose higher still – ‘declaiming amid the mouldering but yet resonant walls–’

And Winter started to declaim – something that appeared to be out of Marlowe’s
Edward II
. By this time, however, it was clear that he had been talking in calculated opposition to a disturbance at the other end of the table. And that he was beaten. Timmy’s proposed career as cicerone faded into silence; the group became embarrassed spectators of what was going forward.

‘A scene,’ said Timmy bitterly. ‘Of course there is always a scene or two during a party. But with a servant! Lord, lord, lord.’

‘Timmy’ – Patricia’s voice was challenging – ‘your mind glides at once to scruples. Though I agree it would have been nicer if the woman had assaulted Wedge. Your father – how cheerful he seems – is being very competent and has got the bewildered young man out of the room. And there goes old Bowles; he seems most upset of all. I wonder what it was all about?’

Timmy shook a gloomy head. ‘Archie and that little André were sitting beside the woman; I expect they were amusing themselves with some ingenious piece of baiting, so that she lost her head. But why she should go head down for Joseph I can’t imagine.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Patricia, ‘I did once or twice see Joseph looking at her in an odd way.’ She glanced ironically at Winter and her brother. ‘I’m not sure that the tale of mysteries isn’t gaining on you. And I’m all for these minor jokes and scandals; they strike me as healthy.’ She cautiously whistled a couple of bars from the leitmotiv of the Spider.

Timmy looked at her doubtfully. ‘Whatever do you mean? That they keep this awful party pleasantly occupied and amused?’

‘I mean that the more petty operations, the less likelihood of any major sinister design.’

Looking up from the interrupted breakfast to which he had decorously returned, Winter gestured a vigorous intellectual dissent. ‘A most dangerous notion. A lot of foolery may easily be employed to cloak a single vital operation. Alternatively, it may give such an operation an artistic atmosphere or setting. Or alternatively again, there may be more lurking operations than one. A joke by
A
may give the notion of a crime or misdemeanour to
B
. Wheels within wheels.’

Appleby chuckled appreciatively. ‘You’ve little to learn.’ He rose. ‘Meanwhile I had better pursue my disagreeable profession. Spying telegrams about other guests.’ He took out a pencil, glanced innocently at Winter, licked it and began laboriously to write on a page torn from a notebook, his tongue following the motion of his hand.

‘John,’ said Patricia, ‘when you try to be funny you are quite awful.’

‘That, my dear, may be true of our joker too. And now I’m taking Winter’s advice and am off to sneak round the servants. It is the psychological moment.’ He turned seriously to Timmy. ‘I don’t think I’ll bother your father about it. So do you mind?’

‘Certainly not. This, as we all know, is Folly Hall. But I think you ought to take Winter, too. He said he was confident that he could solve–’

‘There are fictions’, said Winter, ‘that pall. And Miss Appleby and I are going to have another cup of coffee.’

Appleby’s sneaking began, appropriately though fortuitously, with a piece of successful eavesdropping. Going in search of Bowles and the unfortunate Joseph, he got lost; getting lost, he paused; and pausing, he heard a voice say: ‘Eliot has bounced up again; the thing’s failed.’

The words were sufficiently intriguing and Appleby eavesdropped with a will. He was in a shadowy corridor which led uncertainly towards the offices; the voice came through the half-open door of some nondescript public room.

‘Failed?’ A second voice struck in – a sepulchral voice, rather like that of Hamlet’s father, but of inferior resonance. ‘The thing’s failed?’ The second voice contrived to imply that failure is the most nearly universal of conditions. ‘One can learn a great deal from failure. I feel myself that I have learnt more from my failures than from my successes.’

‘Heaven preserve me from
your
successes,’ said the first voice ferociously and rudely. ‘The point is it’s as you were.’

‘As
I
was?’

‘No, you fool. I mean we’re back where we started.’

‘
Did
we start?’ The sepulchral voice Appleby recognized as belonging to the unsuccessful Gib Overall; the other was Kermode’s – that uneasy ghost. And the conversation promised to be apocalyptic. To clear up a mystery by lurking behind a door is distinctly inglorious. But Appleby’s profession was not one which afforded luxuries, and he listened with all his ears.

‘
You’ve
started,’ said Kermode sullenly; ‘and pretty well come to a full stop again. When I start I’ll keep moving. But I’ve never been let.’

‘Did you really expect–’

‘The whole house knows he was next to nuts and on the point of chucking in his hand. And now, just because of the way the thing’s been found, he’s as right as a rivet.’

‘Kermode, isn’t it
trivet
?’

It was apparent that Kermode was labouring under emotion; he qualified rivet and trivet alike with a string of lurid epithets, and when he fell silent his violent breathing sounded clearly in the corridor.

‘You say because of the way the thing’s been found–?’ Overall appeared to be dully curious.

‘He’s taken it into his head that it’s something quite remote from the way his own precious and refined mind works. He wouldn’t touch such a situation with a barge pole. And therefore it can’t be a matter of his imaginings coming alive on him, but a common trick. I think myself it’s damned funny; it’s just the sort of thing I’d be gingering up the books with if I had my innings.’ Kermode paused broodingly. ‘The man’, he concluded disgustedly, ‘is clean crazy.’

‘I thought you said’ – Overall’s voice was painfully puzzled – ‘that crazy was just what he was
not
.’

But Kermode was in no mood for logic. He roared – so threateningly that there were sounds as of Overall making hastily for the door. Appleby rapidly withdrew. The conversation, he told himself sadly, was at once mysterious and completely ambiguous. And there is nothing more annoying than to overhear riddles. He pursued his way pondering.

Bowles was in his room, in great darkness. Perhaps because he associated Appleby with the bringing of light, perhaps because he understood him to be more in the confidence of his master than was quite the case, he was at once communicative. His first remarks were in defence of Joseph. Joseph was a steady lad, of a respectable ancestry both in and out of livery, and the orthodoxy of his training had been Bowles’ special care. But there were situations with which he had naturally not been taught to cope. Perhaps he was a little too impressionable; the thing had fascinated him and he had no doubt stared at the lady in a way it was not his place to do. As a matter of fact, when pointed out to him, the thing had not a little compelled the notice of Bowles himself. Bowles wasn’t one for the arts; the bent of his private interests was political. And no more was Joseph’s, whose leisure hours were given to football coupons – deplorable devices not tolerated when England was still governed by the gentry. Perhaps because of this the thing had come on them with a particular shock. Bowles ventured the opinion that the lady’s conduct was a little lacking in what one was entitled to expect in an employers’ class. He was glad to have received some support for this view from Mr Eliot himself.

Appleby listened discreetly while these further riddles were ramblingly unfolded; he had no desire to hurry Bowles, whose life had plainly long owned a dignified tempo of its own. And presently the key emerged. The Renoir had turned up again. Joseph had wakened to find himself in bed with it.

‘In a manner of speaking, that is to say,’ qualified Bowles. ‘The poor lad – as decent a lad as you could wish and as chaste-minded as is natural for a lad to be – woke up and there was the thing perched at the bed’s foot and sort of looking sideways down at him. I don’t suppose he’d ever noticed the picture while it was on the wall – it’s not the place of servants to take account of such things – and finding it like that gave him a real turn, one can’t doubt. You’d have been startled yourself, Mr Appleby, though no doubt accustomed to such situations.’

Being a little doubtful of Bowles’ meaning. Appleby cautiously agreed that he was fond of pictures and had given them some study. ‘And what’, he asked, ‘of Miss Cavey?’

‘Well, sir, that’s the funny part – the unfortunate part I should say if I’m to express myself correctly. After this had happened and when Miss Cavey came in to breakfast, Joseph was seized with a queer notion about her and the picture. If you’ll imagine the lady in – well, Mr Appleby, in an inadequate garment, you’ll be imagining something very like what this painter must have had in front of him. And yet the lady and the picture can’t be called at all alike. They have quite different sorts of attractiveness, if you follow me. And that’s what had a queer fascination for Joseph so that he couldn’t take his eyes off Miss Cavey. I wouldn’t call him a thinking lad, Mr Appleby, but he’d suddenly hit on a philosophical problem. Of course’ – concluded Bowles with irrelevant satisfaction – ‘we’re a philosophical household in a way, both the master and Miss Belinda being great scholars. I sometimes think it a pity Mr Eliot doesn’t keep a little more to that line.’

Appleby noted in passing that Bowles seemed mildly to share in the general disapproval which Mr Eliot’s activities engendered at Rust. He noted further that much in the conversation which he had recently overheard was now explained. ‘I think’, he said, ‘that Joseph is to be congratulated on discovering something about art. He has been the victim of a most disgraceful trick, and we can only sympathize with him.’