There Came Both Mist and Snow (13 page)

I came awake with a jerk. There was only one explanation of these vagaries, and it could be read on the face of my watch. When should we be allowed to go to bed? I had a horrid vision of these sniffings and prowlings and questionings protracting themselves into the small hours; of Belrive being given what Lucy calls ‘the works’ and permitted no wink of sleep until all was discovered. I turned and addressed Appleby – raising my voice unnaturally, like a chairman determined to bring a straggling meeting to a close. ‘Since it is growing somewhat late–’

Appleby looked at his watch. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘as it is growing quite late we may expect Wale to have got back. And he is the next person, Mr Ferryman, with whom we must have some talk.’

Desperation seized me. ‘Really, if you would excuse me–’

‘These fashionable doctors feel they have to be very discreet. He will like to know that there is a witness on whom he may rely. Shall we go down?’

It was the merest blarney. But I gave in. We moved toward the door. Cudbird, who had been silent for some time, gave a last dogged look round. ‘I must be finding Sir Basil to say good night,’ he said. ‘It was hardly right to stay, I’m afraid, being nothing of the family. Still, I can’t help but take a real interest in Belrive now.’

I halted. ‘Mr Cudbird, are you going to buy the Priory?’

He looked at me in his rather wary way, suspicious of hostility. ‘It’s very likely.’

‘Would it be unpardonable to ask what for?’

‘A pub with a garden, a concert-hall, a skating-rink, a swimming-pool, a fun fair for the children, a crèche, dancing, a workers’ film society, a bit of a college.’ His eyes were sparkling as he reeled off this, to me, appalling catalogue. ‘Mind you,’ he said quickly, ‘there’s money in it!’ He looked from one to the other of us defiantly. ‘Make no mistake about that.’ He was gone.

Leader was looking bewildered. Appleby chuckled. ‘Out-and-out philanthropy. He’ll spend thousands. And every old rascal in the town will say Cudbird has gone soft at last.’

‘I think,’ I said, ‘that he might choose a more appropriate site for his rash social experiment.’

Appleby crossed to a window and drew back the curtain. I suppose he could just see the intermittent glow of the great bottle licking the ruins which had once been the nerve centre of all the country round.

‘It would not be wholly impossible,’ he said formally, ‘to maintain that you are mistaken.’

We went downstairs. I was ruffled, as one can be when one sees a point without at all agreeing with it. Nothing pays less regard to sentiment than does sentimentality. And I could see only sentimentality in Cudbird’s – and Basil’s – plan; for the sake of an ephemeral ‘progressive’ experiment it was going to obliterate all that was truly venerable at Belrive. It was no doubt because of the mood I was in that I found the ensuing incident peculiarly irritating.

We had nearly reached the hall – we were, in fact, just on the spot from which Lucy and myself had observed the Cambrell affair in the afternoon – when Appleby suddenly froze. The word is not too strong; his instantaneous, trained immobility put me in mind of those rather tiresome dogs employed to point at game. Involuntarily, I found myself behaving in the same way, and behind us Leader also came to a halt. We were spying on Cecil Foxcroft.

And Cecil seemed to be engaged in a somewhat similar activity himself. There was no one else in the hall; he was prowling round it much as he might prowl round a dormitory or changing-room when the boys were safely off on a run. The censor preparing to catch out the morally reprobate while warily apprehensive of being caught out himself; the proprietor ambiguously trespassing on what he has leased to others; the curious guest aware that curious servants may be round the corner: in Cecil all these displeasing suggestions were evident. When I first observed him he was trying the doors of a large glass-fronted cabinet. Having assured himself that they were unlocked he walked over to the fireplace and stood there a moment glancing round the hall – without, however, raising his eyes to the level at which we stood. Then he returned to the cabinet, opened it, and appeared to rummage within. The operation took perhaps a minute; when it was concluded he closed the doors again, made another survey of the hall, and moved off towards a second cabinet. I greatly disliked the whole thing and it was a relief when Appleby continued his interrupted progress downstairs.

We came up with Cecil just as he had opened the cabinet. It was an ancient and roomy Dutch affair, with iron-bound wooden doors. On the shelves were a number of large earthenware jars, painted with a variety of primitive designs in yellow and brown.

‘Predynastic,’ said Appleby – more or less in Cecil’s ear.

The boys had returned from their run distinctly out of time. Cecil’s jump was a crumb of malicious comfort in the whole deplorable situation. Leader was still holding his notebook ritualistically before his stomach and had all the appearance of being about to demand an explanation of my cousin’s conduct out of hand.

Cecil had recourse to severity. ‘Precisely. Undoubtedly of the Fourth Millennium, Mr – um – Appleby. Such things should be under lock and key.’

And Cecil put his spectacles on his nose and looked steadily at Leader. This, if I remember aright, is the standard scholastic technique for dealing with boys against whom no logical weapons are handy at the moment. But Leader was unimpressed. ‘Lock and key?’ he said. ‘We’re going to get more under lock and key than a heap of heathen pots.’ He gave the tip of his pencil a hungry lick.

Cecil frowned. ‘Property must be conserved. There has undoubtedly been an attempt at theft. Why else should Wilfred have been shot? And yet, when our energies should be bent on discovering what, if anything, has been stolen, Basil will do nothing at all. There is a vein of irresponsibility in Basil. Such carelessness’ – he waved vaguely at the rows of Egyptian utensils – ‘is really a moral weakness. For if a man will not respect his own property how can we be assured that he will respect the property of others?’ And Cecil, as if dimly aware of the dialectical weaknesses of this proposition, frowned very severely indeed.

‘So you are endeavouring,’ said Appleby, ‘to make Sir Basil’s moral weakness good?’

It was not, I reflected, at all incredible. Cecil had that sort of mind. That his brother might at this moment be coughing out his life in hospital would not at all distract him from the sacred task of conserving property – even property which was presently to be dispersed in order to shoot rockets at the moon. The thing was an instinct with him. And I had a momentary fantastic vision. I saw Cecil, stuffed and in a glass case, standing in some museum of the future as an excellent specimen of Acquisitive Man. And this prompted me to say, absurdly: ‘The Guardi; Mr Appleby entertains the gravest fears about that. It appears to be there still – but what if a copy has been cunningly substituted? Mr Appleby – whose mind is a veritable
omne scibile
– doubts if Guardi ever painted water with that – ah – square touch.’

Cecil looked at me suspiciously. ‘Substituted? One has heard of such things being done. Leonardo’s Mona Lisa is said to be an instance. A remarkable picture.’ Cecil took his spectacles off again and turned to Leader. His expression became affable and instructive. ‘She is as old,’ he said, ‘as the rocks amid which she sits.’

It was when our conversation had reached this pitch of inconsequence that Appleby chose to ask: ‘Dr Foxcroft, would you be so good as to tell us what you were doing at a quarter to eight this evening?’

Cecil appeared to abstract his mind with an effort from Leonardo’s masterpiece. ‘At a quarter to eight? I was in my bedroom.’

‘Just what were your movements from tea-time onwards?’

‘I sat reading in the library until about half past six. Then I went to my room and wrote letters. At about half past seven I changed. I did not come downstairs until the disturbance in the hall.’

‘From half past six onwards you did not leave your room?’

‘That is so.’

Cecil, it occurred to me, had suddenly turned into a model witness – brief and to the point. And even as this thought went through my head I heard the rustle of the leaves of Leader’s notebook. ‘Dr Foxcroft,’ he said, ‘we have had certain statements from servants.’ He paused heavily; his manner was very different from Appleby’s. ‘And we have been told by the butler that at half past seven he took a message to your room. He knocked twice, got no reply, and came away. How would you account for that now, sir?’

There was a pause and I glanced at Appleby. He was looking far from expectant. And Cecil’s reply was brief and sufficient once more. ‘I was engaged,’ he said solemnly, ‘in prayer.’

‘Prayer,’ said Leader gloomily, and wrote.

‘Meditation and prayer,’ amplified Cecil urbanely. ‘It is my habit at that hour.’

There was a slightly embarrassed silence. Here, I thought, was something Lucy had never hit upon – a new sort of alibi and one difficult to shake. Not, for that matter, that Cecil could call his saints into court…

We were interrupted by the glass door from the lobby swinging back. Sir Mervyn Wale came in, shaking a thin powdering of snow from an enveloping fur-lined coat. ‘Snow…mist…a hard frost,’ he said. ‘A wretched night for such adventures.’ He paused, glanced keenly at Appleby, turned to Cecil. ‘I got Badger,’ he said. ‘He’s not what he was.’ Wale took off his coat and walked with it towards the fire. ‘Not a shadow of his old self, poor fellow.’ He spread the coat over a chair. ‘No one to touch Badger ten years ago, you know.’

Cecil’s features worked; they arranged themselves into an expression of decorous disappointment. ‘You mean, Wale,’ he asked, ‘that Badger has performed the operation on Wilfred with – ah – inadequate dexterity?’

‘Inadequate fiddlesticks.’ Wale, like many fashionable physicians, had two manners: suave and brusque. The brusque was now well to the fore. ‘Never seen the thing done better. But slow. His record, you know, was–’ As if remembering his exclusively lay auditory, Wale stopped, turned away, warmed his hands at the fire. ‘Fortunate we got Badger. Tell him what to do, of course. Must be off to bed. I’m past this sort of thing myself.’ He turned round and squared shoulders which were drooping with fatigue.

‘There is hope, then, for Wilfred’s life?’

‘Hope? Of course there is. Serious, naturally. A close call. Deuced fortunate about Badger.’

And Wale moved towards the staircase – competent, old, frayed, oddly abrupt. But my glance was all for Cecil. It was not often that he looked other than pleased with himself and with the world he adorned. I have remarked on his capacity for unawareness when stricture or satire was in the air. I have remarked that in primitive situations he would be dangerously without a sense of danger… It was not so now. He was looking after Wale with consternation…with dismay…with terror open and declared.

We were back in the study. Appleby had shown no disposition to pursue Wale for that interview in quest of which we had left Hubert’s attic. Nor had he shown any further interest in Cecil. Indeed his interest in the household seemed to have evaporated for the time; Leader had been to the library and announced that police inquiries were over for the night.

‘They’re going to bed,’ said Leader, returning to the room. ‘I suppose we’d better–’

‘Leader’ – Appleby looked up from the brown study – ‘did you make a note of that book?’

‘Book?’ Leader was bewildered.

Appleby turned to me. ‘The book Dr Foxcroft has been reading. Didn’t you say it was Law’s
Serious Call
?’

‘Yes. Cecil has mislaid it. But I don’t see–’

‘That interview in the hall with Wale. Would you agree that Dr Foxcroft was perturbed at the end of it?’

‘Perturbed?’ I said impatiently. ‘Cecil was terrified.’

Appleby nodded. ‘That is no doubt what Sir Basil calls the better English of it. Terrified. Did you form any notion of the cause?’

I hesitated. ‘It is a dreadful thing to say, but what seemed to scare Cecil was Wale’s announcement that Wilfred would probably recover.’

‘That’s it.’ Leader interrupted with more animation than he had yet shown. ‘And we must make what we can of it.’

‘We must make what we can,’ said Appleby, ‘of this.’ He paused in some sort of recollection. ‘“Hope? Of course there is. Serious, naturally. A close call. Deuced fortunate about Badger.”’

We stared at him.

‘You see? “
Serious
, naturally. A close
call
.” Nothing could be plainer.’

‘You mean’ – I found I had to struggle for words – ‘that Wale was making some covert reference to Law’s book? It’s perfectly fantastic. And Cecil would never pick such a thing up. He hasn’t that sort of ear.’

Appleby shook his head. ‘Nothing of that kind. And I don’t suppose that Dr Foxcroft
consciously
picked up anything. Wale used – quite by chance – the two elements in the title
Serious Call
. And that touched off some spring deep in Dr Foxcroft’s mind. Wale and the
Serious Call
were brought fortuitously together. And for Dr Foxcroft their union somehow meant danger. That is the way, you know, that the mind works.’

I was abundantly aware that the mind worked so. And though I considered Appleby’s line of thought fantastic I looked at him with a new respect. It was plain that of every word that eddied around him he missed just nothing at all. I looked at my watch. ‘Really,’ I said, ‘that is a notion on which it would be well to sleep.’

Appleby nodded. ‘Yes, and that is just what Leader here is going off to do. But I thought that you and I might take a stroll.’

I must have looked at him much as the rabbit looks at the snake. ‘A stroll?’ I said.

‘The nocturnal sort of which you are rather fond at the Priory. Leader, I shall be back in the morning. And I trust you to get me in on this officially. It interests me more and more.’

The door closed on the departing Inspector Leader. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I have seldom met a man less appropriately named.’

Appleby smiled. ‘
Dux a non educando
.’