The Daffodil Affair (15 page)

‘Ah,’ said Wine – and his glance travelled over the side of the steamer, rather as if he were seeking inspiration among the alligators. ‘But there is the historical point of view, you know. One must consider that.’ He nodded largely and vaguely in support of this obscure statement. ‘And then there are affiliations.’ His voice gained confidence. ‘When these strange voices speak through Mrs Nurse are we really in contact with an unseen world – or is Mrs Nurse momentarily in Lucy’s case? You see?’

Appleby saw. And he saw that the man knew his stuff. Whatever was Wine’s game – and it was surely not quite what he claimed – the fellow had the science of the thing adequately enough. Was he what he held himself out to be – and something more? Or was he not what he held himself out to be at all? It was conceivable that a man might devote himself to the organization of large-scale psychical research: many first-rate intelligences had become absorbed in it. It was conceivable that such a man might have a rival called Radbone, and might go to strange and even bizarre lengths to secure a sort of corner in the necessary human material. But was it conceivable that such a man should concentrate his activities thousands of miles up an appalling South American river? Was it conceivable that he should carry off to such a fastness a Harrogate cab-horse and a Bloomsbury mansion – to say nothing of two men whom he declared were spies of his rival, but as to whom there was a recurrent little joke about plain-clothes police? It was a long way up the river – and a long way back. Wine had taken them straight from the liner to his own craft. And now here they were… Appleby, who did not greatly mind tough spots if only they were odd enough, sat back and sipped comfortably at his Maté tea. To all these questions – and others – answers would appear.

Lucy was having a rug wrapped round her toes; Wine nodded approvingly, set down his glass, and sighed with content. ‘Poor old Radbone!’ he said. ‘Do you know, I think I’ll send him Eusapia as a Christmas present? I could wish him a nice little crumb of comfort like that.’

Hudspith eyed his host with unforced gloom. ‘You seem to feel that you’ve got Radbone thoroughly down.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. He’s a smart man – though a smart man with a weakness. A weakness fatal in this particular field. The fact is, he’s credulous. He doesn’t know it, but he’s credulous. Deep down, Radbone is hungry for wonders. And in a scientist, you’ll agree, that is sheer contradiction and nonsense.’

‘But isn’t it a hunger for wonders which actuates you too?’ Appleby had looked up sharply. ‘If you don’t hanker after ghosts and marvels why take all this trouble? You can hardly take much pleasure in carrying off Mrs Nurse if you regard yourself as a confirmed sceptic.’

Wine shook his head impatiently. ‘My dear Appleby, you must give the matter a little more thought. My attitude is objective. And I am a scientist. That means that I am not interested in anything outside nature. If there are, in fact, ghosts, then ghosts are in nature and to be brought within the rule of natural law. But Radbone has a sneaking nostalgia for something outside nature – thrills, creeps, mystery for the sake of mystery. He wants his ghosts to be uncanny to the end; to produce the same emotional effects in the laboratory as in the peasant’s cottage.’ Wine had risen and was speaking almost with violence. ‘So his attitude and mine are poles apart. It is contended that there are certain classes of phenomena which are unaccountable. These classes of phenomena may or may not exist. But if they do exist they are certainly
not
unaccountable. The laws governing them can be discovered – and that is my job. Radbone, despite his ability and his eminence, is fundamentally no more than a silly woman at a seance. He seeks not the truth, but the thrill. You follow me?’

Appleby modestly intimated that he followed.

‘You must forgive my being a little carried away.’ Wine let his scientific fervour soften into a whimsical smile. ‘And now I think I shall go down and change.’

Hudspith watched his immaculate panama disappear down the companionway. Then he turned to Appleby. ‘I say,’ he murmured cautiously, ‘do you believe in this Radbone?’

‘It would be nice to. If Radbone is an invention we can hardly be his agents, can we? Which would mean that we had walked nicely into a trap. With our eyes open, of course.’

‘No doubt there’s comfort in that.’ Hudspith was keeping a wary eye on Lucy Rideout.

‘I think myself that Radbone has a sort of existence.’ Appleby’s eye too was on Lucy as he spoke. ‘If so, it greatly complicates the whole affair.’

‘Heaven forbid that it should be more complicated than at present appears. And for my own part I don’t believe in Radbone and his rival push a bit.’

‘No more do I. The existence I attribute to Radbone is – of another kind.’

Hudspith stared. ‘Well, if he doesn’t exist, then we’ve admitted to being the agents of a ruddy fiction.’ Hudspith frowned at himself as he fell into this improper language. ‘I’ve even had to vamp up some story of having angled after Lucy there as Radbone’s agent before Wine got in on her. And your birthday party is supposed to have been a trap all on that same fiction’s behalf.’ He paused. ‘Do you know, I’m beginning to take quite a morbid interest in those alligators.’

Appleby laughed. ‘Whereas Lucy’s interest is far from morbid. It’s as spontaneous as that of a child at the zoo. But you don’t think that Wine will make away with us simply because we are policemen disposed to tax him with somewhat irregular methods of assembling what he calls laboratory material?’

‘I do,’ said Hudspith. ‘And – what’s more – you do too.’

Appleby laughed again. ‘As Uncle Len was so fond of remarking: you’re telling me. Or, as Uncle Sid would put it: too right.’

‘There are bright spots, I suppose. I’m glad that that awful woman Mood is coming up on another boat. To have her counting up the bones after the alligators had been at work–’

‘There wouldn’t be any bones. The digestive system of the crocodile family is the most powerful known to zoology. The bones are dissolved within a few seconds of going down.’

‘It’s wonderful how you can always produce the relevant information.’ Hudspith stared sombrely at the clotted vegetation trailing past the port rail. ‘Can we really be bound for an island?’

‘We can – though it must be admitted that Juan Fernandez was a bad guess. The river runs to whole groups of islands; full grown archipelagos right in the middle of the continent. And of one such it appears that Wine has possessed himself.’

Hudspith heaved himself to his feet. ‘Has it occurred to you what it must all cost? The thing is far more like big business than scientific research.’

‘Quite so. And that brings in the alligators again. The ruthlessness of science tends to expend itself on white mice and guinea pigs. It’s in big business that you find a really concentrated effort to throw one’s rivals to the crocodiles.’

Hudspith rubbed his jaw and was silent; then he turned and made his way below. But Appleby sat on under the awning and watched the mists rising along the riverbank. The day was over, and its heat and its clarity ended in noisome vapours. Steamy and miasmal, the stuff came first in scattered wisps or in the finest and least perceptible of veils. And then almost immediately it was everywhere. The landscape, familiar and unchanging through the long day, was obliterated as if some great hand had let a curtain fall. A kind of treacherously luminous darkness fell.

And that was it. Appleby sat very still, looking out over the waters. That was it. The man had chosen with a certain symbolical fitness when he pitched his lair here.

PLOP.

‘Another one!’

Appleby was lost in thought; his lips were compressed and he gazed sternly before him. But now his expression softened. ‘Lucy,’ he called gently, ‘won’t you come and talk to me?’

‘Lucy–’ Appleby said, and paused. ‘Young Lucy–’ he said, and paused again. ‘It is young Lucy, isn’t it?’

Lucy Rideout nodded.

‘Are you glad you came, Lucy?’

‘I’m glad; I think it’s fun. Do you know St Ursula’s?’ And Lucy looked up at Appleby, friendly and unembarrassed.

‘No; I don’t know about St Ursula’s.’

‘It’s a girls’ school, and it goes round and round the world in a great steamer. They have a lovely time. Of course it isn’t really true. It’s in a book.’

‘I see.’

‘But this is really true. And I do think it’s fun. There’s lemonade whenever you like.’

‘That is very nice. But what about – about the others? Do they like it too?’

‘Sick Lucy hates it. She kept on trying to run away at first. But now, of course, she has her studies. She’s doing Latin with Mr Wine.’ Young Lucy spoke with a sort of reluctant respect. ‘That keeps her quiet.’

‘And–’

‘Real Lucy? Real Lucy is terribly thrilled. But she’s scared too, I think. Only since you came–’ Young Lucy hesitated. ‘She would be dreadfully angry if she knew I told you this.’

‘Then perhaps you had better not tell me.’ Appleby looked at the childlike young woman beside him with considerable perplexity. Conversation with Lucy Rideout – conversation with the Lucy Rideouts – was really a job for a specially trained man. The amateur, even when he understood the situation, was constantly liable to trip. The cardinal thing to remember was that there was only one Lucy in existence at a time – a Lucy who regarded the two other Lucys commonly in an objective and friendly, but occasionally in an exasperated manner… ‘If it would annoy her,’ Appleby said, ‘you had better hold your tongue.’

‘She’s in love with you.’

‘Oh.’ Appleby was considerably at a loss.

Young Lucy’s eyes danced mischievously. ‘I think if you wanted–’

‘Be quiet.’

Young Lucy looked hurt. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know much about that sort of thing – not yet. And it’s a terribly long yet. I’m twelve, you know. And I seem to have been twelve for years. Sometimes I think that the others are getting all the fun. And sometimes I’m glad and think it would be horrid to be like the others and old.’ She paused and frowned, profoundly perplexed. ‘But mostly I just wish it was all different and that there weren’t any others. And I think the others feel that too. Since we got to know each other, that is.’

‘I see. And when did you get to know each other?’

‘At first there was just real Lucy, and for quite a long time after I came she knew nothing about me, though I knew about her. It was better after we did both know each other. Then after a long time sick Lucy came. We neither of us knew anything about her and she didn’t know about us. Not even that we – we
were
, I mean. That was the worst time of all. Then we got to know her and hated her. And then she got to know me, but not real Lucy. That was funny.’

‘It was rather strange, my dear.’

‘And there was something else that was funny. It was rather a good thing, I think. Sick Lucy was awfully clever. But she didn’t remember anything. She didn’t know anything about anything before she came. We had to teach her by leaving messages. We wrote things down about ourselves, I mean, and she read them, and so she got to know things. Nowadays sometimes two of us can sort of talk to each other. But it’s dreadfully muddling.’ Young Lucy looked at Appleby, cheerful and very pathetic. ‘
I
like you, too,’ she said. ‘May I ask you something?’

‘Of course, Lucy.’

‘How many are there of you?’ Lucy’s glance was now timid, hopeful.

Appleby looked at the deck, suddenly held by a great and growing anger. Here and there in the great cities of the world were specialists who could deal with all this; who could see their way through it as one sees one’s way through a mathematical problem. The girl could be healed; made whole; made one. But she was being carried off to an archipelago in the middle of South America… ‘There’s only one of me, Lucy,’ he said.

The corners of her mouth dropped. ‘There seems to be
nobody
else–’ Her glance wandered; she clapped her hands. ‘Flamingos!’ she cried. ‘Oh, aren’t they beautiful!’ She gave a little gasp and shudder. ‘Mr Appleby,’ she said, ‘can you tell me about the death of Socrates?’

The alligators plopped unregarded; the flight of the flamingos was now a whirr of wings. The servant called Jorge – a villainous-looking fellow – had drawn mosquito curtains round the little deck and lit a lamp. There was a powerful smell of cooking forward, so that one could almost believe that the paddles were monotonously slapping at a great river of gravy. But Lucy Rideout appeared to have no thought of dinner; her gaze was fixed intently on Appleby.

‘And he said that whether death was a dreamless sleep, or a new life in Hades among the spirits of the great men of antiquity, he counted it equally a gain to die.’

‘And that is all?’ Sick Lucy’s face, strained and anxious, was pale in the light of the lamp.

‘It is all I can remember, Miss Rideout.’

‘Thank you; you are very good. I know so little. My people were poor and without education. And I myself am subject to – to interruptions when I try to learn.’

‘Indeed? But that is true in some degree of all of us.’ Appleby knew that this Lucy was extremely reticent.

‘Mr Wine says that he has a great library on his island. He says that he has hundreds of books’ – her voice was awed – ‘but still I wish that I had not come. The Latin is very hard. Do you know
amo
and
moneo
?’

‘I knew them once.’

‘It is for always that one must know them. I think that I know
amo
now.’

‘You know what it means?’

Sick Lucy drew the rug about her. ‘I love,’ she said in a mechanical voice, ‘thou lovest, he loves.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘There is so much that I want to learn.’ Her voice had a painful precision of one who has doggedly studied books of grammar. ‘But I am hindered – the others hinder me.’

‘Very much?’

‘I do not wish to speak of it.’

‘Then let us speak of something else.’

‘The others hinder me. Young Lucy is greedy. She is greedy for time. She would push me back – back into–’

‘Yes?’