From London Far (8 page)

‘Um,’ said Mrs Martin.

‘–have been involved together in an exhausting incident–’

‘Well, well,’ said Mrs Martin.

‘–and, being uncommonly hungry, would be glad of whatever your celebrated skill in such matters can put before us.’

‘Well, well, well.’ Mrs Martin, however, was mollified. ‘There’ll be somefink, I dare say.’ She looked past Meredith and her expression became misdoubting. ‘And would those be your friend’s ’ounds?’

Meredith considered this for a moment. ‘No,’ he said; ‘I hardly think that we may so describe them. On the contrary, indeed, they are my enemy’s.’ And he nodded innocently to Mrs Martin, who, presumably accustomed to obscure academic witticisms, let this enigmatic rejoinder pass. ‘It would be not inaccurate, I suppose, to describe them as prisoners – or conceivably as booty. It is probable that they would appreciate being found a bone. Or two bones. And no doubt they can pass the night in the area or the basement.’

‘Did you say pass the night?’

‘Oh, decidedly so.’ Meredith had an obscure feeling that there was something of chaperonage in the dogs; the evil constructions to which, as he feared, Mrs Martin was prone would be less colourable in the face of a party of four than of two. ‘And, of course, my friend as well. Perhaps you can manage something on the second floor. You see, she can’t get home tonight.’

‘A pity,’ said Mrs Martin.

‘Because she doesn’t live in London. She came to Town’ – it would be politic, it occurred to Meredith, a little to harrow Mrs Martin – ‘she came to Town squeezed up with an Adonis in a van.’

‘Is that so, now?’ It was deplorably plain that the vision conjured up in Mrs Martin’s mind by this information was altogether impertinent to the matter.

‘With a statue, that is to say. The
Adonis
of Capri.’

‘The Adonis of the coal-cellar, I should have said.’ As she uttered this severe witticism Mrs Martin looked more attentively at the girl. ‘Well, well, well,’ she added with sudden placidity, ‘it mightn’t be a bad thing if I began by turning on the barfs.’

It was an hour later. Meredith, made philosophical by the rare indulgence of cutlets and sherry, leant forward and poked at a hospitable if diminutive fire.

‘Despite your charming fancy’, he said, ‘I must lay claim to all the years that time has laid upon me. But the fact is that even at my age new facets of human nature are constantly being revealed to one. Here is a woman with whom I have lodged since some time before the war. During this long period my conduct has been almost painfully exemplary. And yet, upon the first occasion of my introducing a lady into the establishment in somewhat unconventional circumstances, all this goes for nothing. Mrs Martin at once supposes me fallen into immoral courses. What I say in the matter she unhesitatingly ignores. Only after a personal appraisal of yourself for which I must really apologize does she relinquish a thoroughly nasty view.’

Meredith laughed unexpectedly. ‘And, having provided us with some very tolerable coffee, she is now, I don’t doubt, investigating the
mores
of Titian and Giotto.’ He laid down the pipe which he had just picked up from the mantelpiece. ‘By Jove! Do you know I believe I have some cigarettes?’ He jumped up. ‘Ten cigarettes for you – I haven’t the faintest doubt you smoke – and for me two ounces of tobacco which I bought in a commonplace little shop this afternoon. Do you know Johnson’s
London
? “Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay”. And “Here falling houses thunder on your head”. It is extremely odd that lines so apposite should have been running in my mind as I bought the stuff. Yes, here are the cigarettes – and now let me find you a match. You and I, it is clear, have a tale to tell each other. And I think we might begin by exchanging names.’

The girl had curled up on a sofa and now looked at him through a perfectly defined smoke-ring which she had formed from her first puff of tobacco. ‘Yes, Mr Meredith.’

Meredith laid down his pipe once more and looked at her in surprise. ‘I don’t think I heard Mrs Martin–’

The girl smiled. ‘Martial,’ she said. ‘I used to come to your lectures on Martial at Cambridge.’

‘Good heavens! That must be nearly twelve years ago.’ Meredith was oddly pleased. ‘You know, as simple, expository lectures they weren’t at all bad.’

‘And they seemed to be extempore. Which made me not so astounded at your dazzling performance this afternoon. Seconds after being dubbed Vogelsang you were piping like the veriest songster of the grove. But not before I had recognized you – and it was lucky that I did. Otherwise I should never have tumbled to it that you were on my side. By the way, my name is Jean Halliwell.’

‘God bless my soul! Do you mean to say you wrote those papers on Minoan weapons in the
Hellenic Review
?’ Meredith was so surprised that he had jumped up from his chair. ‘And I took you for an adventuress or the sort of person sent out by newspapers.’

‘I’m terribly sorry to be nothing so romantic. But I did write them and hope to write some more.’

‘Of course you wrote them.’ Meredith was quite confused. ‘And I assure you that by “adventuress” I did not at all imply – That is to say–’ He caught Jean Halliwell’s eye, recovered suddenly, and sat down again, chuckling, to stuff his pipe. ‘I liked them. The
ordonnance
is markedly good. But I am bound to say that in some of your conclusions–’ Meredith was once more on his feet, scanning the bookshelves which everywhere reached to the ceiling. ‘I believe I could dig you out something by Salzwedel–’

‘Which of us’, asked Jean Halliwell, ‘shall tell the first tale?’

And Meredith explained himself – with quite as much lucidity as if it were the
Epigrammata
of Martial that were in question. Miss Halliwell appeared to find it not at all odd that one should say ‘London, a Poem’ out aloud in a tobacco shop. ‘London, a Poem,’ she repeated appreciatively. ‘London’s goin’. Your tobacconist must have expected a visitor from the very highest circles. Not even the boldest and baddest baronets talk of huntin’ and shootin’ nowadays. The dropped
g
is confined to a few decrepit peers of the realm. I’m afraid he thought you were a duke – just another duke come to pawn a Gainsborough or Velasquez in a quiet way.’

‘Do dukes pawn things to those people?’

‘I doubt it. Anything like honest business would be abhorrent to the spirit of the firm. London, a Poem. How foolish of them to have a fellow with so defective an ear. And how foolish of the next lot of people to jump to the conclusion that you were Vogelsang.’

‘Or Birdsong.’ Meredith frowned. ‘I’m afraid there is no doubt at all that I killed him. The – the appearances were conclusive.’ (Brains, thought Meredith; brains as well as blood on that Aubusson carpet. He took a good pull at his pipe and discerned in the eddying smoke that his conscience was clear, after all.) ‘It is not a thing one would willingly have done.’

‘But, being done, it’s all to the good. It gives us a line.’ Jean Halliwell threw the butt of her cigarette into the fire. ‘And now let me tell you about me. The story has points of similarity with your own. That is to say, I passed for a time under false colours too. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t know half so much as I do. Not that what I do know is enough. I think you’ll find that we have lots to discover still.’ She glanced fleetingly at Meredith. ‘When we really get going on the job.’

Meredith looked startled. ‘Do I understand that you propose–’

‘But my introduction to the affair was not like yours. You pushed in without suspecting what it was all about. Although I suppose you must have suspected
something
.’

Meredith recalled his speculations when his eye had first fallen on the dimly lit Horton
Venus
. ‘Well,’ he said cautiously, ‘my mind did turn over a few commonplace explanations. The reality at least had the charm of being out of the way. But do not let me interrupt you any more.’

‘You pushed in without suspecting. I pushed in because I did suspect. And then, when it would have been healthy and possible to push out again, I gave a second obstinate shove, Lord knows why. And that was what I meant by saying that I had asked for it.’

Jean Halliwell paused as if to collect her thoughts and Meredith eyed her speculatively through his tobacco smoke. The horrible death of the creature Vogelsang, she had declared, was
all to the good
. Was so tough an assertion not disconcerting – even, perhaps (and Meredith picked a word from one of his obsolete vocabularies), a shade
unmaidenly
? Or was it merely clear-headed? Certainly the girl was that, and courageous as well. ‘Go on,’ he said softly.

‘It began with my getting ten days’ holiday and starting to help some people with a dig. You remember the fun some twenty years ago when all the Viking stuff was dug up at Traprain? Well, these friends of mine were on the trail of something similar in the Pentlands; and off and on they were digging away on some plan I didn’t at all understand. You may guess I know nothing whatever about Danish and Norse antiquities. But I love a dig and I went up to help when I could. It was all pretty quiet; we had let out that all those hearty pits and trenches were an obscure sort of geological survey – and if the folk round about didn’t believe that one they took it to be a hush-hush hunt for oil, which came to much the same thing. But then we suddenly got a bit of an advertisement. Sir James Presland, who lives in Edinburgh and is no end of a swell in that sort of archaeology, used to come out sometimes and give an eye to the affair. He gave a hand, too – for although he has a great white beard and must be about eighty he just loves going at it with a spade and pick – terribly recklessly, I may say, after the fashion of digging folk of that generation.

‘Well, there was little doubt in the end that we were bang on the site. And out came Sir James brandishing his pick as if plumb determined to send it straight through a cinerary urn or a faience goblet. What he did put it through was a skull, and the skull turned out to be embarrassingly recent. In fact, the eminent Presland had unearthed some rather nasty mid-nineteenth-century crime. It was in all the sensational papers, and there was even a decent little column in the
Scotsman
. As a result, everybody knew just what was on and that quite a find might be expected any day. The publicity didn’t seem greatly to matter, even though the dig had as often as not to be left deserted during the week. What we were likely to find might have considerable intrinsic value – there might be gold and jewels, that is to say – but the general impression would be that we were eager to dig up a few old swords and helmets… I’m afraid I’m making this story frightfully long.’

‘You are making it distinctly intriguing.’ Meredith chuckled at what he conceived to be his very modish use of this word. ‘I would beg you not to retrench in any way what may appear to you to be the superfluities of your expression.’

Jean Halliwell gave him a momentary wary glance, such as elaborately facetious dons are accustomed to receive from their pupils. ‘Well, we were working away one day – cautiously and without Sir James – and suddenly we came on the whole thing. The clue, whatever it was, had led to something very considerable indeed: piles and piles of treasure thieved from all over the place. And there we were, four women and one man, ladling the stuff out as if from a bran pie. We had the use of a shed nearby and we stacked things there for the first night. We had arranged with the nearest police-station for a guard if necessary, and one of us went off on a bicycle and found the bobby assigned to the job. In the end we left both him and the man of our party camped in the hut until various transport arrangements could be made next day. The bobby was a decent chap in a dour Midlothian fashion, and two of his kids came along to see him settled in for the night. And our own man was a decent chap too – minus a leg which he had left in Lybia, but able to give a thoroughly good account of himself if there was trouble. It seemed all right.’ Jean Halliwell paused. ‘The next bit isn’t at all nice.’

‘They were attacked?’

‘On the following morning there was nothing but a crater, bomb fragments, four bodies, and a lot of archaeological debris.’

‘God bless my soul!’ Meredith was horrified. ‘But those things did fall just anywhere.’

‘That is what everybody said. But just consider. That one of the beastly things should land not only just there but
just there on that particular night
is a very big coincidence. And why the bodies of
four
men – two of whom were never identified? It was a pretty hectic month that, one way and another, and I don’t know that the technical check-up on the incident was particularly thorough. Anyway, I had to come back south and hadn’t much time to think about it. But when I did think I saw more and more clearly that it was queer, and I wrote once or twice to the people who had been in on it. They had managed to collect quite a lot of interesting stuff from the rubble, but when I saw finally that these remains were far more scanty than was natural I definitely began to view the thing as a crime – a very ruthless and horrible crime planned by people with exceptional resources. Faking the death of four people by a particularly violent form of enemy action–’

‘But why four?’ Meredith found himself as absorbed as he was horrified by this further new world that was swimming into his ken. ‘There must have been visitors–’

‘Not a bit of it. You see, it wasn’t just a matter of blowing up the hut straight away. Our men had to be overpowered, and all the best things removed, and
then
the incident had to be faked. Well, our men were armed, as I said. And, despite being taken by surprise, they gave a good account of themselves – which is why four bodies were finally involved… When I had eventually got all this sorted out in my mind I thought it was about time to go to the police.’

Meredith nodded. ‘It most certainly was.’

‘But I didn’t. I went north again to scout round. You see, I was coming to think of it as
my
mystery. Just as now I’m coming to think of it as
ours
.’