There Came Both Mist and Snow (10 page)

Horace Cudbird, who had said nothing throughout our thoroughly constrained meal, looked up suddenly as one who will rebut a slander. ‘It can’t be denied,’ he said, ‘that winning a country scholarship has led the lad to pick up south-country ways. But his grandfather baked the best bread in Stonegate.’

‘And was intimately acquainted with Jim Meech and the canaries.’ Anne was smiling impertinently at Cudbird. ‘The bloodhound, in fact, is late-risen from the
canaille
. Always more sagacious than the highly bred strains. Consider Cousin Cecil. Could he avenge Wilfred? Well, could he?’

‘Would he?’ said Geoffrey, and gloomily drained the dregs in his glass.

‘Need he?’ Geoffrey’s father spoke for the first time. ‘Surely it is most extravagant to suppose that this is a matter of crime? Wilfred was quite as careless with those revolvers as Cecil suggests.’

‘Safety catches,’ I said, ‘and Verona drops.’

Hubert nodded. ‘His zest for trivial lores. He fancies himself among other things a gunsmith.’

‘I don’t know’ – Basil pushed his coffee cup away from him – ‘that Wilfred has ever fancied himself as a genie or sprite.’

‘Though he might readily be conceived,’ said Geoffrey, ‘as a goblin.’

‘Or,’ said Anne, ‘as a satyr.’

‘I mean,’ continued Basil evenly, ‘that he might very well shoot himself, accidentally or otherwise. But he could hardly ensure that the weapon be spirited away forthwith. And certainly no weapon has been found. Lucy’s point moreover, though not perhaps raised in a very timely way, was sound. About the powder-marks. Wilfred was not shot from particularly close range.’

For the first time, I think, there was general recognition of what we were facing. Cecil reacted characteristically and at once. ‘Robbery,’ he declared. ‘There has undoubtedly been either robbery or an attempt at it.’ He looked genuinely alarmed. ‘The house must be searched.’

‘I think it likely,’ said Hubert, ‘that they will search more than the house.’

‘They will search the family history,’ said Geoffrey.

‘They will search the wind,’ said Anne, ‘–to see what is in it.’

‘They will search,’ said Geoffrey, ‘the heart.’

‘Known enemies.’

‘Blackmail…the past.’

‘Beneficiaries.’

‘Women…jealousy.’

‘Where were
you
when the shot was fired?’

‘Who last saw the…’

The telephone bell rang shrilly in the lobby.

Anne Grainger was rather more than normally athletic; nevertheless there was something startling in the lithe speed with which she was out of the room. I wondered if Geoffrey, whose callousness was of the genuine and thoroughgoing sort artists sometimes develop, realized just how she had been waiting for that ring. For I was convinced that Anne, whatever her normal attitude to her guardian might be, had been sitting through this meal in a condition of intolerable strain. It was this that had given her talk – never wholly beautiful – its extravagant impropriety.

She came back, quite slowly, her lips parted in an expression I had never seen before. ‘They have removed the bullet,’ she said. ‘He is still unconscious. Wale is on his way back. They think’ – she hesitated – ‘they think he may pull through.’

Cecil offered up a pious ejaculation – loudly, as if quite determined to be heard in the right quarter. The rest of us were silent, and in the silence I found myself trying to interpret Anne’s voice. All but suppressed in it there had been a tone of incredulity. Perhaps she had until this moment shut out of her mind the mere possibility of such an issue. I tried to imagine in just what circumstances I should look like that, speak like that… And I told myself that it might conceivably be if I found some dream or nightmare come true.

We had abandoned the dinner table; now Basil made for the door. ‘Those fellows in the study had better be told,’ he said. ‘And it is about time I had some conversation with them myself. Yes, Richards?’

The butler had come in as if with a message; he was an old servant of the family to whom I was considerably attached; I was surprised to notice him glancing at me with mild disapproval.

‘Inspector Leader, Sir Basil, would be greatly obliged if Mr Ferryman would come to the study.’

It was awkward and odd. The request was unaccountable in itself, and it had been issued from Basil’s study as the study’s owner had announced his intention of proceeding there himself. We were made abruptly aware that Belrive was no longer a self-contained, self-controlled community. It had become the business of the police to investigate our affairs. And they had their own way of setting about it.

‘I suppose I had better go,’ I said. The remark sounded rather fatuous; I might have been a small boy putting a jaunty face upon a summons before authority.

‘Leader must plainly see everyone, and arrange the interviews as he wishes,’ said Basil. ‘The rest of us had better go into the library.’

‘When it is Cecil’s turn,’ asked Geoffrey, ‘will he give them a little talk on what he calls Control?’

On this I left the dining-room, and I confess I felt some need of control myself. I do not approve of the police. This may seem a foolish statement – and indeed I don’t doubt that if I were being robbed I should call out for the nearest constable lustily enough. I suppose I mean that I have no great fancy for the working out of human law. Nemesis is more expressive. At least I have an invincible repugnance towards that sort of ferreting which Geoffrey and Anne had been suggesting when the telephone rang. Walking to the study I felt that I must be on my guard against presenting an appearance of irrational hostility.

Leader and Appleby were both standing when I entered: Leader studying something on Basil’s desk; Appleby staring at the floor with a frown which I hoped reflected a continued sense of the delicacy of his position.

‘The doctors think that Mr Foxcroft may live,’ I said.

Leader grabbed a notebook – very much as if this were something which it would be helpful to commit to paper. Appleby, I thought, looked if anything a shade disappointed; it might be suspected that he regarded Wilfred’s possible recovery, attended as it would probably be by a simple denunciation of the criminal, as likely to dissipate a very pretty problem. Here was another strictly professional angle.

‘Mr Ferryman?’ said Leader.

‘Yes.’

‘Mr Ferryman, Mr Foxcroft is a stockbroker?’

‘A banker.’

Leader peered at the desk before him. ‘Margins,’ he said; ‘he was writing a letter about margins. I thought it sounded financial. But what exactly would they be?’

I shook my head, feeling that this was distinctly a tangential method of investigation. ‘I have very little idea.’

‘One covers them,’ said Appleby helpfully. ‘They are something financial and one covers them. Make a note of that, Leader. And now we might experiment with the lights.’

Leader scratched his chin. ‘You’re forgetting Mr Ferryman here.’

‘Not at all.’ Appleby seemed to be thoroughly in charge. ‘Mr Ferryman will help. Do you mind? Come over here. Don’t step in the blood. Please sit down at the desk.’

‘You struck me earlier in the evening,’ I said, ‘as quite a diffident person.’

Appleby smiled the slightly absent smile with which a dentist receives the repartee of a patient. ‘Facing the window, Mr Ferryman. Yes, that’s just right. Leader, the switches are by the door. Only I don’t at all want to disturb those curtains. So do you mind waiting? I shan’t be a moment.’

He disappeared. ‘Your colleague,’ I said, ‘has a brisk way with him.’

In Leader’s eye I thought I detected a sympathetic gleam. He contented himself, however, with a nod; and then fell to his notebook. I had leisure to look about me. The room was large; looking at it with a fresh eye I reflected that it might best be described as a handsome apartment. The most noticeable piece of furniture was the great desk at which I now sat. It faced an embrasure, at present curtained, in which stood as I knew a large French window giving on the terrace: to judge from an icy wind which blew about me this window must be wide open. Behind me and to my left as I sat facing this was a low standard lamp; in the wall on my left was the fireplace with a sofa and chairs; in the opposite wall was the room’s only door. The walls were lined with Basil’s working books; there were a number of glass cases and sliding presses with geological specimens; a large table in a corner was littered with maps and charts.

‘Mr Ferryman is unmistakable.’ Appleby’s voice, coming from directly in front of me, made me start. He had gone out to the terrace, entered the room by the French window, and now stood a few yards away from me concealed by the curtains – through a crack in which he must be making his observations. ‘And now, Leader, the lights.’

Leader crossed to the door and flicked at the switches. For a moment the room was in darkness save for the dancing light of the fire. Then the single standard lamp behind my left shoulder went on.

‘Mr Ferryman,’ came Appleby’s voice, ‘consider yourself to be writing a letter on margins. Is that a good light in which to do so?’

‘Perfectly.’ The soft illumination was picking out an arc upon the desk before me.

‘In a way,’ said Appleby – and I thought his voice sounded disappointed – ‘it’s not at all a bad light for shooting.’ There was a pause. ‘But only in a way. It would be all right if one felt that all one had to do was to shoot.’

There was a rustle and his footsteps sounded on the terrace; Leader and I were left to a few moments’ sufficient meditation; then Appleby was once more in the room.

‘There’s not a doubt of it,’ he said. ‘We know that Mr Wilfred Foxcroft was shot, but we have no reason at all to believe that he was shot at.’

‘We have,’ I said, ‘this reason: that he was shot.’

Appleby glanced at me sharply. Then he smiled. ‘Mr Ferryman, I have known for years that you have an exact mind. And here it is.’

Leader, who might be judged not a reading man, looked puzzled and licked his pencil.

‘Thank you. But it’s clear enough.’

‘Yes. The fact that the man was shot is evidence that he was shot at. But evidence of what strength? Fire a revolver into a crowd in the dark and the weight of such evidence would sink to a cipher. Fire through these curtains at someone sitting between that standard lamp and yourself and the fact that a certain man is shot is weak evidence that it was that particular man you wanted to shoot.’

‘Particularly,’ said Leader as if inspired, ‘when he is sitting at another man’s desk.’

‘And is dressed’ – I was tempted to join in this not very stretching game – ‘in the sort of uniform that a dinner-jacket constitutes.’

That the wrong man had conceivably been shot was a conception not in the circumstances very difficult to arrive at; I was disconcerted nevertheless at the speed with which Appleby had made the point. The little practical experiment too had rattled me. It was an eerie thought that sitting there in my own light I had been presenting just the silhouette which Wilfred had presented some three hours before. I glanced at the pool of congealing blood on the carpet at my right. The thing was becoming horribly real.

‘And now,’ said Appleby, ‘about Sir Basil’s habits with regard to this room. It is his study. Did he regard it as more or less private, or was it treated like the other living-rooms in the house?’

‘Really, that is the sort of point on which you might do well to apply to our host himself.’

I thought this a neat reminder; Appleby however was not at all put off. ‘For example, Mr Wilfred Foxcroft came in here and started to write a letter at Sir Basil’s desk. One sees how important it is to know if that was unusual. If only Sir Basil was ever known to work here…’

‘The point,’ I said, ‘is not wholly obscure to me.’ And then, because I felt this attempt at irony to have been childish, I added: ‘It might be called slightly unusual. And I believe I know how it may have happened. Downstairs, people usually write letters in the library. But all the note paper there was used this afternoon for another purpose. I know Foxcroft had this letter to write. And finding all the library note paper gone he might very well have wandered in here.’

‘I see. Sir Basil works here a lot?’

‘I believe so. He was working here this afternoon. I remember him saying that he would probably be working here right through to dinner.’

Leader’s notebook was poised in a flash. ‘Let me have the names, please, of everybody who heard him say that.’

The ferreting had begun. And I realized that Leader, though less forceful than his metropolitan colleague, had the right instincts. I gave the information meekly. Basil had made this remark at luncheon and it had been heard by everybody staying in the house, by Richards, by Ralph Cambrell, and by Horace Cudbird. Getting all this on paper considerably slowed down the tempo of the investigation.

‘Who,’ said Appleby, ‘would wish to shoot Sir Basil Roper?’ He looked at me speculatively, and I was preparing to evolve a reply when I realized that the question was a rhetorical one. ‘But, again, who would wish to shoot Mr Foxcroft? For, after all, it is far from certain that the shot was fired, as we have been assuming, from behind the shelter of the curtains. The assailant may have been facing Mr Foxcroft boldly, and very well aware of what he was about. And there is a third possibility. The shot may have been intended for neither of these people.’

‘You mean,’ I asked, ‘that only accident may have been involved?’

‘If it was an accident,’ interposed Leader, ‘where is the gun?’ He turned to Appleby. ‘An accident with some element of criminal carelessness,’ he suggested. ‘Somebody is scared and makes off with the gun.’

Appleby showed no enthusiasm for this reconstruction. ‘I was merely reflecting,’ he said, ‘that Mr Foxcroft might have been taken not for Sir Basil but for somebody else. At least, this is something which we must not exclude.’ He glanced rather vaguely from one to the other of us. I had a feeling that his mind was really occupied elsewhere.

‘May I ask,’ I said, ‘what has prompted you to call me in first in this way? I don’t at all mind, but I suspect that Sir Basil is a little puzzled.’