The Mysterious Commission (16 page)

It was like a dream – a through-the-looking-glass dream. Everything was there, but everything was the wrong way round. There was the train, but he was looking
from
the train. There was the house, but he was looking
at
the house. There was the gap in the trees, hut it was quite close up on him instead of quite far away. And the house was
just
a house, precisely as the train had been
just
a train until he got those binoculars on it. A large house, but totally anonymous. It rang no bell with him. But then there was no reason why it should. He had never once been able to stand back from it and view it
coup d’oeil
before.

All this – if only in the suddenness of its appearing – was disconcerting and confusing. Honeybath sat goggling through the window, with his litter of abruptly needless maps around him. And then the train – which, after the habit of pausing trains, had not quite lost momentum after all – the train gave itself an indignant twitch, and within seconds had achieved an accelerated motion in the direction of the now westering sun.

The scene had rung no bell, Honeybath repeated to himself, and was conscious of the phrase as carrying some obscure ambiguity. The scene had vanished – and now, in no time, its entire rural context would for a while vanish too. What lay ahead must be the shocking city of Swindon – full, no doubt, of enjoying and suffering human beings much like himself, but decidedly without marked aesthetic appeal. He would get out of the train there, possibly hire a car, and then–

And then
what
? He had really made no plan; hadn’t thought beyond just locating the enemy on the map. And he hadn’t even done this – although it would be only a moment’s work now. He knew to within half a mile the position at which the train had paused seconds ago. His finger was still on the spot. And there – precisely at the tip of a well-tended nail – was the conventional representation of a small piece of parkland, and in the middle of it a black rectangle and the words
Imlac House.
An odd name, but that was it. Imlac House. He peered backwards through his window, on the off-chance that a glimpse of this residence might still be offering. But, naturally enough, it had vanished from view. It must now be at least a mile away.

And the girl was looking at him curiously.

‘Excuse me,’ the girl said. ‘Are you making some sort of survey of English country houses?’ She spoke rather as if she expected Honeybath would reveal himself as having an American accent, but at the same time with a polite confidence which somehow made her barging in like this quite inoffensive. Honeybath had an impulse to agree that he was doing just that. It wouldn’t be a bad cover for the eccentric show he had been putting up. And it looked as if the young woman hadn’t been so sound asleep as he had supposed.

‘Well, no,’ Honeybath said (thinking better of this). ‘But I am quite interested in the place we have just passed. It’s called Imlac House.’ The girl, it occurred to him, might well live in the district, and have some useful information to give. ‘Do you happen to know anything about it?’

‘Well, yes – I think I can say I do.’ The girl was looking at him oddly. ‘Just why are you taking an interest in it?’

‘I was there quite recently – professionally, and for nearly a fortnight. I happen–’

‘That hardly explains why you should be concerned to spot it from a train with the aid of a map.’ The young woman had produced this challenge crisply. It was to be feared that she was rapidly coming to view Honeybath as a highly suspicious character. ‘Did you take a great fancy to it?’

‘Nothing of the kind. In fact, I can hardly be said to have seen it at all.’

‘In a fortnight!’

‘It certainly sounds odd. But the circumstances were unusual. I arrived in the dark, and came away in the dark too. And all I saw of the house was the rooms I lived and worked in. That, and a walled garden. Oh, and a lift. By the way, may I say my name is Charles Honeybath? I’m a portrait-painter.’ Honeybath rather hoped that the girl might be familiar with his name, and find it reassuring. But this didn’t happen. On the contrary, the girl’s glance was now positively hostile.

‘And my name is Diana Mariner,’ she said. ‘Mr Honeybath, is this some sort of stupid joke?’

‘Nothing of the kind.’ Honeybath was indignant. ‘Why should you suppose anything of the sort?’

‘Simply because I live at Imlac House. I’m going home there now.’

‘How very interesting!’ If Honeybath had been dumbfounded he supposed he had successfully dissimulated the fact. Could this upper-class female economist in whom he had so rashly begun to confide be a daughter of the unspeakable Arbuthnot, and perhaps wholly ignorant of her father’s evil ways? A crucial question occurred to him. ‘May I ask, Miss Mariner, whether you have been away from home for long?’

‘For two years, as a matter of fact. From
this
home, that is – the one you seem to have been staying in some rather odd way. We have a smaller house somewhere else. Daddy lets Imlac when he has to go away for long periods. He’s an ambassador, you see – although really he’s an admiral.’

‘An admiral?’

‘Admiral Mariner. So you can tell – can’t you? – that he’s only a sort of amateur diplomat. Not what they call a career one. And about Imlac – well, he only got possession again a couple of days ago. I expect the place is in an awful mess. Not that the man who rented it didn’t have all the right references. And we only use one wing when we’re there ourselves. I suppose it’s because Daddy hasn’t got very much money. Anyway, I’m longing to get back. I love Imlac, and wish he didn’t have to turn an honest penny that way.’

‘Most understandable.’ Honeybath was probably staring stupidly at Miss Mariner. She was no longer hostile; indeed, it must be said that she had turned surprisingly, if ramblingly, communicative. And that such invaluable information as this (which he dimly began to see as fitting into the entire mystery plausibly enough) should tumble by sheer coincidence into his lap was a gift of fortune such as he could scarcely have hoped for.

‘But I still find something rather odd in what you’ve told me, Mr Honeybath. About hardly moving freely around Imlac at all. Were the people very eccentric or something?’

‘Decidedly so. Or at least it may be expressed that way.’

‘I just can’t understand it.’ The largeness of Miss Mariner’s astonishment before the not very striking facts which had been communicated to her might have struck Detective Superintendent Keybird (had he been present) as almost obtrusive. ‘And do you mean you were there to paint a portrait?’

‘Certainly I was.’

‘You were painting Colonel Bunbury himself?’

‘Colonel Bunbury?’ Honeybath was aware that he was feeling slightly giddy.

‘That’s the name of our tenant at Imlac – the one who has just quit.’

‘No, I wasn’t painting anybody with that name. I was painting–’ Honeybath broke off. If he announced that he had been painting somebody called Mr X it was probable that Miss Mariner would conclude him to be mad (he was rather wondering about this himself) and make a dive for the communication cord. ‘Imlac seemed to be in the possession of a man called Arbuthnot – Basil Arbuthnot.’

‘I don’t understand it at all.’ Diana Mariner was looking perplexed, but fortunately not alarmed. ‘It seems to me that something uncommonly funny has been going on. I’m not sure that my father hasn’t been wondering a little, as a matter of fact.’

‘It’s a pity that he hasn’t wondered to better effect.’ Honeybath judged it fair enough to offer this astringent remark. ‘Something very funny indeed has been going on.’ He looked steadily at Admiral Mariner’s learned daughter – so recently no more than a young stranger with an interest in economic theory. ‘And connected with a very big bank robbery, I think I ought to say. Brutally put, Miss Mariner, your father has been renting Imlac to a bunch of crooks.’

There was a moment’s silence. Honeybath wondered whether he had done very wrong in thus so abruptly introducing an innocent child to the horrors of criminal life. The train rattled through a station which he vaguely supposed to be Shrivenham. They would be in Swindon in a very few minutes.

‘I don’t see why a bunch of crooks should want you to paint a portrait.’

‘No more do I.’ Honeybath was impressed by the immediate clarity of Miss Mariner’s observation. It came, he supposed, of a severe academic training. ‘It’s what I’m trying to find out. And I want to get back my portrait. That’s why I’m on this confounded train.’

‘You mean you’re coming to visit us?’

‘Well, not exactly. Obviously not, in a way, since I haven’t been aware of your existence.’

‘I think you’d better, all the same.’ Miss Mariner said this decisively and almost threateningly. ‘You owe my father an explanation, it seems to me.’

‘A good many people are owed explanations.’

‘Including the police, I’d think. Are you just doing this on your own, Mr Honeybath?’

‘Well, yes – so far as this particular move goes.’ The girl had again been unnervingly quick on the ball. ‘The police don’t seem to be quite so interested in my portrait as I am. So–’

‘That’s natural, I’d say, if they have a big robbery on their plate. But will you come and see my father – now? Just to explain things a little.’

‘Yes, of course – if you want me to.’ It didn’t appear possible to give Diana Mariner any other reply than this. ‘But if you think, in the light of what I’ve told you, that you should go first to the local police–’

‘I shouldn’t think local police would be much good in an affair like this.’

‘You’re probably right.’ Honeybath had his own unfortunate encounter with a rural constabulary still freshly in mind. ‘How do we get to your house?’

‘They’ll have left my Mini in the station car park. It’s our usual arrangement. And here we are.’

There were two car parks, it seemed, and Miss Mariner’s modest conveyance might be in either. She went off to hunt for it, leaving Honeybath with a brisk injunction to stay put. So he stood in the big station yard and waited – much occupied with his own reflections, and not greatly attending to what went on around him. He had a strong but confused sense that just these few minutes were affording him a useful chance of working out the implications of his abruptly transformed situation. His quarry had fled and only their late domicile remained – a domicile now returned to its just proprietor, a respect able and indeed no doubt eminent public servant, to whom he, Honeybath, was going to have an uncommonly unlikely-sounding story to tell. But what was
not
unlikely-sounding in this whole affair? And even when anything
did
sound likely ought he to think of accepting it without a good deal of caution? For instance –

Honeybath found that something which had been hovering in his head was eluding him, and that what he was chiefly conscious of was a slight chill in the air. He was standing in shade, and the station yard was being visited by an unfriendly breeze. But there was sunshine only a few yards away, and a high brick wall which probably caught and radiated an agreeable warmth. He strolled over to it. The girl – Miss Mariner, Diana Mariner – was taking rather a long time to find her car. He wondered whether it was refusing to start, or had been pinned in by some unscrupulous fellow-motorist. The station yard itself was fairly busy, but so large that the traffic seemed able to charge around in rather a carefree way. Directly in front of Honeybath now, a heavy lorry had begun to back with surprising speed out of a bonnet-to-pavement row of similar vehicles. He speculated, quite idly, on whether it would wheel to left or right. He saw that it was doing neither, but simply continuing to back – and at a speed which could only be judged not so much dangerous as completely mad. Unless–

Honeybath found that he had achieved a miraculous sideways jump, and had done so in the split-second of realizing that sudden death was hurtling at him. But the jump didn’t get him clear by any means. He was conscious of a terrific force catching him he didn’t know where. Tumbled to the ground, he was aware for a moment only of similarly tumbling bricks. Then he saw a gaping hole in the wall against which he had been standing. The tail of the lorry was in some way jammed in it. The lorry was screaming in rage or agony – presumably because it was frantically trying to extricate itself and get away. The lorry suddenly clanked and clattered instead of screaming, and then fell silent. The driver jumped from the cab, and for a moment stood halted and irresolute. He was dressed – Honeybath’s senses were at once acute and chaotic – as the drivers of such vehicles commonly are dressed. But, in fact, he was Mr Basil Arbuthnot’s (or was it Mr X’s?) chauffeur. The chauffeur glared at Honeybath. Honeybath, still on the ground, glared at him. And then the man turned and vanished.

‘Are you badly hurt?’ Diana Mariner was bending over him.

‘No, not badly.’ It was by some mysterious intuition that Honeybath knew this. ‘But get the police. Get the police, after all. I’ve been murdered. I mean, I’ve been–’ Honeybath was incoherent.

‘Can you get up?’ Miss Mariner was less concerned than peremptory. ‘This place just isn’t healthy. Get into the car. We’ll beat it before the fuss starts.’

Not unnaturally, this wouldn’t have been easy. In fact, a fuss
was
starting. One or two people had paused near by, and were staring in the passive and unready way into which unexpected exigency tends to precipitate modern urban man. But from a little further off there came more purposive shouts, and Honeybath fancied he glimpsed a couple of uniformed men who might be either railway officials or policemen. By this time, however, he had actually been bundled into the Mini – a process making him aware that, if not hurt in the sense of being a mass of broken bones, he was certainly going to find himself atrociously bruised all over. The Mini was in motion, and he knew this to be quite wrong. Even if one has been only at the most sheerly receiving end of an accident, one certainly mustn’t bolt from it. One explains things to a constable, gives one’s name and address, is dusted down and handed one’s umbrella or whatever by sympathetic persons. One–