The Glimpses of the Moon (38 page)

‘It's very kind of you, my dear fellow, but really, there's not the least need. A few hours' rest, and I'll be as right as rain again. Come to think of it, I do believe the fall's done my arthritis good: it doesn't seem nearly as painful as usual.'

On arrival, they found Widger at odds with the Rector.

‘No, of course I'm not going to charge him with anything,' the Rector was saying. ‘I set him a booby-trap and he fell into it, that's all.'

‘He surreptitiously entered your premises, sir.'

‘Yes, I know. Dozens of people do, because apart from anything else, I never keep it locked, except for the attic rooms. And even the attic rooms have been left unlocked these last few days, since Spink and Sotheby and Christie took all the valuable stuff away … You should have heard them ooh-ing and ah-ing, for all the world like Billy Bunter offered a huge plate of chocolate éclairs. Yes, dozens of people come in and wander about the house, calling “Rector! Rector!” when all the time I'm hiding in the cloaks cupboard. I'll admit, they have souls to be saved like anyone else, but the trouble is, I've saved most of them already, and it only makes them pester me all the worse.'

‘Well, I don't care,' said Widger in one of his rare spasms of irritability. ‘If you won't bring a charge against him,
I shall.
I'm not having any stair dancers wandering around loose in
my
manor … Rankine!'

‘Sir?'

‘Arrest that man.'

‘Sir.'

With some reluctance Rankine approached the man from
Sweb. ‘I am a police officer,' he said, ‘and I arrest you … I arrest you … I arr - What's his name, sir?'

Widger glowered at the man from Sweb. ‘What's your name?' he said.

‘It's Humphrey de Brisay,' squeaked the man from Sweb.

Ling snorted his disgust. ‘Oh, rubbish,' he said.

‘No, hang on a minute, Eddie,' said Widger. ‘I think that actually
may
be his name.' To the man from Sweb, ‘I've heard of you,' he said. ‘You've just come out of the nick for breaking and entering and stealing a Koekkoek and a Bosboom from a house in Wiltshire. You've got a record as long as my arm.'

‘I never broke. I never entered,' squeaked de Brisay indignantly. ‘Half of the people with valuables go out for the day leaving their front doors and their ground-floor windows open, so there's no need to break. All that happened in Wiltshire was that I noticed one of their billiard-room windows had a bit of a crack in it, and I gave it a little tap, just to see if it was firm, and the whole lot fell in.' He subsided into gloom. ‘Only the judge wouldn't believe me,' he concluded bathetically.

‘I don't believe you, either,' said Widger. ‘Come on, come on, Rankine. Get on with it.'

‘Sir … I am a police officer, and I arrest you, Humphrey de Brisay, in that you did - did - What
did
he do, sir?'

‘Broke and entered, of course.'

‘There's no such thing,' said de Brisay.

Rankine lifted a forefinger. ‘We have now to consider,' he began.

‘We have now to consider, Rankine,' said Widger, ‘whether you remain in the Force or whether I recommend that you -'

‘Yes, sir,' said Rankine hurriedly. ‘I am a police officer,' he said. Ling groaned.

‘IamapoliceofficerandlarrestyouHumphrey de Brisay in that-youdidsteal - did steal - Exactly what did he steal, sir?'

‘It's my Grandmother's jewel-safe,' said the Rector. ‘Spink and Co. wanted it, but I kept it for sentimental reasons. It's not very valuable I understand, but these London dealers - Sotheby and so forth - would call their mothers “Ma'am”, and bow at them and bob at them, their aged souls to damn.'

‘He keeps a lady in a cage most cruelly all day,' said de Brisay.

‘There,' said the Rector triumphantly, ‘there's good in all of us, if only you know where to look for it.'

‘What are you two talking about?' said Widger, his choler growing momently. ‘Rankine!'

‘ - in that you did steal the Rector's grandmother's jewel-safe of the value of - of the - '

‘About a hundred,' said the Rector.

‘—ofthevalueofaboutahundredbelongingtotheRectorcontrarytoSectionsoneandsevenTheftActl968.'

‘Bravo,' squeaked de Brisay. ‘So now let's have it all again, from the beginning.'

‘I am a p -'

‘Rankine, get back into the car at once. And take de Brisay with you.' Suddenly Widger frowned. ‘No, wait a minute. Now I come to think of it…'

‘Exactly,' muttered Ling.

‘Is it really going to need five of us, Eddie? If not, Crosse or Tavener could take de Brisay to the factory in the Mini, while the rest of us -'

But Ling shook his head. ‘It
could
need five,' he said, still more or less
sotto voce.
‘And we'd look pretty silly if we started economizing on man-power in a thing like
this.'
Then he brightened slightly. ‘Tell you what, though. The Rector could take him back to Y wurry in the Mini and lock him up there until we had a man free to fetch him.'

‘I'm not locking anyone up,' said the Rector, who had overheard the last part of this. ‘I'il take him home with me, yes. And I'll get the pong off him. And I'll give him some lunch -
Tour-nedos Barbara
today, so he ought to enjoy that … And in return,' he said to de Brisay, ‘you can help me with my sermons for tomorrow. All these endless Sundays after Trinity, it gets very difficult to think of anything to say that has any bearing on anything.'

‘I've already told you,' squeaked de Brisay, ‘that I'm not religious.'

‘We'll soon cure that,' said the Rector. ‘The Repentant Thief,
now. Of course, it's not exactly the right time of year for him, but you could help me over him, even so. We could even stick you up in the pulpit, and you could Bear Witness.'

‘But I'm
not
repentant.'

‘H'm. You could read aloud to me over lunch, then. John Dickson Carr,
The Crooked Hinge.
Good stuff. And then after you've paid your debt to society, perhaps you'd like to be my valet.'

De Brisay was bereft of speech. ‘Your
valet,
Rector?' said the Major, almost equally bemused. ‘What on earth do you want a valet for?'

‘Well, I always look a bit of a mess, you know,' said the Rector cheerfully, ‘because my housekeeper isn't any good with clothes. So of course, although I don't want to peacock around the place like a Papist, I do feel that I ought at least to be a bit
neat,
due to my ordination and so forth. So I thought you might come in useful there,' he said to de Brisay, ‘once we get rid of that frightful pong of yours. Ha! Caught you neatly there, didn't I? Oh, haw-haw,' said the Rector. ‘Ah, haw-haw-HAW-
HAW.
That's right, you settle in quietly and be my valet. Sunday evenings off, and two whole weeks' holiday a year. Five pounds.'

‘You get better conditions than that in stir,' squeaked de Brisay. ‘So the answer is, No, I bloody well
won't
come and be your valet.'

At this point, they were rejoined by Leggings, who had presumably terminated his telephone call. He was clearly in a foul temper; and for some reason which no one was ever able to fathom, either then or later, he instantly fastened on de Brisay as the author of all his misfortunes. Striding up to the little man, he raised his mill-board - which despite appearances turned out not to be mill-board at all, but a stout plank of wood - and brought it down with colossal force on the top of his chosen victim's head, crushing down his soot-bedecked trilby so that de Brisay, blinded, off balance and partially stunned, reeled into the arms of Detective-Inspector Widger. Almost overpowered by the smell, Widger withdrew hurriedly from this unwelcome embrace, while de Brisay, after careering round several times in circles, eventually succeeded in recovering both his balance and
his power of vision, and so managed to bring himself to a stop.

‘Now, now, sir,' said Widger weakly, to Leggings, ‘you'd no call to be doing that, you know. No call at all.' But Leggings was of too stern a mettle to be affected by such feeble objurgations; without making any reply, or even paying any noticeable attention, he returned to his original post and began writing again.

‘Well, I'll be getting back to my flat, I think,' said the Major. ‘An hour or two lying down watching the telly'll work wonders, you'll see. Can you tell the butter from Stork Margarine?' he sang. ‘Course you can't, course you can't, course - you - can't. I can, as a matter of fact, quite easily, but it's a pretty little tune, charming. See you later, then, at the pub. Toodle-oo meanwhile.' And with this he hobbled up the lane in the direction of Aller House, which was just visible beyond the hedges and the trees.

It was the beginning of the break-up of the party. ‘Rector,' said Ling, ‘I know we can trust you to keep an eye on de Brisay for us. We'll send a car for him as soon as we possibly can. In the meantime' - he turned to Widger - ‘I've been wondering if a horse could jump that wire cradle thing and take a message on ahead for us. We've got the horses, we've got - we've got -we've -'

Astonishment, as he looked round him, stunned him into silence; and Widger, following his gaze, was equally flabbergasted. For during the preceding alarms and excursions, the horses, together with Beaver and Miss Mimms, had disappeared as completely as if the ground had opened and swallowed them all up; they were quite simply nowhere in sight. It was Widger who first saw the reason for this apparently supernatural happening.

‘Look!' he shouted. ‘Look!'

The two workmen had met with success at last. Just how long previously they had met with it was to provide matter for acrimonious dispute between Widger and Ling in the bar of The Seven Tuns that evening. The important thing, for the moment, was that at some undefined juncture their sweaty toil had been crowned with triumph. The cradle was no longer obstructing the throughway; instead, it was suspended high in the air between
its mini-pylons, with ample space for a ten-foot-high lorry to pass beneath.

Ling was galvanized into activity. ‘Quick!' he bellowed. ‘Quick! Crosse, Tavener, back into the Panda. Rankine -'

A new but filth-encrusted Volvo, coming from Burraford way, screeched to a halt alongside them. In its back seats were Beaver and Miss Mimms, the latter of whom was resting her head sideways against the former's chest, so that it looked (her cap was now off) like some monstrous hirsute pectoral growth which had burst through the veil of his beard and was exuding liquid (she was sobbing again). At intervals Beaver would hit her quite hard with the flat of his hand, supposedly as a therapy for hysteria. But her tears merely increased, making an embarrassing segment of Beaver's riding breeches dark and sopping wet.

Alone in the front, driving, was Dr Mason, who put his head out of the window to address Widger and Ling. ‘Anything I can do?' he asked cheerily. ‘I picked these two up when I was on my way to a call in Glazebridge - it's only Mrs Teacher's prickly heat again, so I'm in no hurry - and they said the girl had had a fall, and I said she'd better come in to Glazebridge for X-rays, so they left their horses at The Stanbury Arms, and here we are. They said something about an accident up the lane.' He eyed de Brisay, who certainly made a woeful spectacle, and then sniffed. ‘You the accident? You look as if you could be. If so, you must have fallen into a Kipp's apparatus and then tried to climb a chimney. No?' Dr Mason eyed Rankine. ‘Come to that,
you
look a bit the worse for wear, too.'

‘I am a p - '

‘Get in the car, Rankine, and try not to say anything for at least half a minute. No, Doc, we're all okay,' said Widger. ‘And now, if you'll excuse us, we're in rather a hurry. So …'

‘There's a cowman,' Fen volunteered, ‘who fell off his bike and thinks he's broken his ankle. That's up beyond Y Wurry.'

‘Get in and come and help me find him,' said Dr Mason. ‘Just between you and me and the gatepost,' he muttered, ‘that pair in the back, between them, are about as much use as a sick headache, and not nearly so easily cured.'

‘All right,' said Fen. He felt glad to be relieved of his moral
obligation to the afflicted Enoch - though the chances were that some passing vehicle had already picked him up and carted him off to somewhere where remedial measures could be applied. The police cars roared off towards Burraford. Dr Mason roared off towards Glazebridge. Looking back, Fen could see de Brisay and the Rector climbing into the Mini, the Rector ostentatiously holding his nose …

Peace descended on Pisser land.

The man in the caftan was leading Xantippe - at a snail's pace, in view of her presumed infirmities and exhaustion -towards the woods. They grew smaller. And smaller. And presently were gone. Disarmed, the Pisser stood mute, just another constructivist monster left out too long in the rain. Or was it practicable to rustproof metallic structures, as one did cars?

The two workmen neither knew nor cared. Another stage of their labours completed, they were taking a break for lunch, sitting with dangling legs on the lowered tail-board of the C.E.G.B. lorry while they consumed sandwiches and beer. The sandwiches had crisp fresh lettuce in them, so that the two men scrunched as they ate. The beer they swallowed straight from the bottles, so that they slurped as they drank.

The infant Grand Duchess smiled bravely through her tears.

Enoch was still there, and at the approach of the Volvo roused himself sufficiently from his self-pitying torpor to make feverish checking gestures with his hands. The car stopped beside him and the doctor jumped out.

‘Ha! What have we here?' he said with that settled eupepsia which at one time or another had numbed the sensibilities of most of the inhabitants of the district. ‘What seems to be the trouble, now?'