There Came Both Mist and Snow (17 page)

The tail-end of this shocking conversation Basil might almost have heard; he came into the hall just as Geoffrey disappeared. Simultaneously Richards emerged; there had been a summons to the front door. A moment later he reappeared, ushering in first Inspector Leader, and then an elderly man of substantial and severe deportment, accompanied by a nondescript person carrying a dispatch-case.

‘Sir Basil,’ said Leader, ‘Mr Foxcroft is now out of danger, I am glad to say.’

The substantial person handed Richards an overcoat. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘We are devoutly thankful. But I presume he will want my hastily summoned service all the same – eh, Sir Basil? And good morning to you.’

‘Good morning, Cotton. You haven’t got the situation quite clear. The inspector here is referring to Wilfred Foxcroft, who is in hospital after being shot last night.’

‘Shot? Dear, dear.’ Cotton moved abruptly away from Leader, as if dissociating himself from one suddenly revealed as a natural enemy. ‘Shot, indeed. Well, we mustn’t start talking about it here. When that sort of thing – ah – begins to happen discretion is the word. But I understood that someone called Foxcroft–’

‘Wilfred’s brother Cecil. He has decided that he requires legal advice in a hurry and I gave him your name.’

‘Odd,’ said Cotton. ‘I came in a hurry because I gathered it was an urgent matter of a will. Tripet, was it not a will?’

The nondescript person nodded. ‘Yes, sir. A will, certainly.’

‘A will,’ said Cotton, ‘to be drafted urgently. So I brought Tripet. You won’t believe me, but I’ve known testators determined to leave legacies to everyone within three miles round. Virtually impossible to find a witness. So I bring Tripet. Eh, Tripet?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Basil was watching Richards out of the hall. ‘I have no doubt my nephew Cecil wants to make a will. But I ought to tell you that he is thought to be unwell. His doctor, Mervyn Wale, is staying with us, and has just proposed to call into consultation a colleague called Beevor.’

‘Beevor?’ exclaimed Cotton. ‘Beevor’s an alienist. Tripet, isn’t that right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Come along then, man – come along. No time to be lost. Would it be any use taking instructions on testamentary dispositions from a client after Beevor had been at him – eh? Use your sense, Tripet.’

‘No, sir. Certainly, sir.’

‘I understand,’ I said, ‘that Dr Foxcroft has suddenly developed an unreasoning dread of the medical profession. The trouble is there.’

‘It only sounds sense to me. To my mind consulting doctors is either a waste of money or a forlorn hope. Eh, Tripet?’

‘No, sir; I can’t say I agree.’

‘Quite right, Tripet, quite right. Know your own mind. Essential in the law.’

‘Thank you, sir. Yes, sir.’

Leader shifted his feet in discreet impatience. ‘Sir Basil, if you could spare the time–’

Basil nodded. ‘Arthur, could you take Cotton and Mr Tripet up to Cecil? It is distressing and absurd, but it appears that he is reluctant to come down.’

I led the way, wondering as I did so what had become of Appleby. He must have worked through the small hours on the matter of the circulating-library book. Perhaps after interviewing Cambrell he had gone to bed. Perhaps in the investigation of the Belrive affair he was going to take what might be called the night shift.

Cecil’s room was at the end of a corridor. I tapped at the door. ‘Cecil, here is Mr Cotton, the solicitor whom you asked to call.’

There was a sound which was distinguishably that of a heavy piece of furniture being moved. ‘Ask him,’ came Cecil’s voice, ‘if he has a card.’

I glanced rather uncomfortably at Cotton in the half-light of the corridor. ‘I’m afraid,’ I murmured, ‘that he does seem to be in an eccentric mood.’

‘And be so good as to push it under the door.’

Had Cecil spoken wildly or in agitation the situation would have been distressing enough. But the voice which was coming to us was very much that of the headmaster on his own ground – calmly authoritative, intimidatingly august. And this imported an uncanny element into the affair.

Cotton produced a card and handed it to Tripet. Tripet pushed it under the door. It disappeared with a nervous jerk. After a moment’s pause came the sound of a key turning in the lock. There was another and longer pause and we were told to enter. Cecil had retreated to a little writing desk at the far end of the room. He rose and advanced towards Cotton with measured cordiality. He might have been receiving a parent of respectable but undistinguished condition. ‘Mr Cotton?’ he said. ‘How do you do?’ And at the same time he looked rather apprehensively at Tripet’s dispatch-case. He was speculating, I believe, on the chances of its really harbouring stethoscopes and clinical thermometers. ‘It is my desire,’ said Cecil – and he spoke with even more of an eerily false calm – ‘to make a will.’

Cotton bowed. ‘Always a wise resolution, my dear sir,’ he murmured soothingly. ‘The obligation to make exact testamentary dispositions–’

‘Quite so.’ Cecil’s pupils narrowed, as if he were peering into the remote past. ‘Property must be conserved. I commonly give a little talk–’ He broke off and looked carefully round the room. ‘But at the moment it is not property that is in my mind. My directions concern disposal’ – he hesitated – ‘concern disposal of the remains.’

I gave a start, and in doing so knocked a book off a small table. Cecil positively jumped. ‘Arthur,’ he said, ‘be so good as to pull the chest of drawers against the door.’

‘My dear Cecil, can I not persuade you–’

‘It breaks the draught. On these chilly mornings I find it breaks the draught.’

I did as I was bidden.

‘ – of the remains. And to do this I wish to give legal effect at once.’

‘A statement of wishes,’ said Cotton smoothly, ‘formally witnessed. An excellent thing. But I must tell you that you have actually no power–’

‘And there must be two copies, made
immediately
. And, Arthur, one of these I desire you to take down to the hall and pin up.’

I stared at him. ‘
Pin up?
’

‘Pin up. Pin up.’ Cecil’s calm had gone. He was trembling violently. Suddenly he sat down on his bed. ‘A little talk,’ he said. ‘I give a little talk. On what I call Control…what I call Control…
Control
…’

Going downstairs – for I had concluded that Cecil’s distresses might decently be regarded as none of my business – I found Lucy Chigwidden domestically employed in the hall. On a table before her were masses of shaggy chrysanthemums, and these she was beginning to arrange in bowls. Beside her also was a large sheet of paper on which she was making spasmodic scrawls with a pencil. ‘Arthur,’ she called out, ‘come and help me with your advice. I am arranging the flowers because it is so soothing.’ She made a jab at her paper. ‘How beautiful these roses are.’

‘My dear Lucy, you are arranging chrysanthemums.’

Lucy peered in mild surprise at the massed flowers. ‘Dear me – indeed I am! Do you know, I was expecting them to bring roses – Andrews promised roses – and so I
saw
them as roses. And now I am quite disappointed. But it shows what Doctor Johnson calls the prevalence of imagination.’

Lucy was determinedly literary. ‘It shows,’ I said, ‘great absence of mind. And that pencil is unsuitable for cutting stalks; you will find the scissors on the table more convenient.’

‘Thank you, Arthur.’ Lucy picked up the scissors and poised them over her paper. ‘I suppose I
was
in something of a brown study. I am beginning to work it out.’

‘Better a brown study than a blue funk – which is the condition in which I have just left Cecil.’

‘Ah!’ Lucy, who had crossed the hall to ring a bell, placed a finger on her lips. ‘Richards, take this bowl to the library. For the large window.’

‘Lucy, you are incorrigible. Richards is the butler. That young person who has just gone out is called Rose.’

‘Richards rose abruptly,’ said Lucy.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘
Richards rose abruptly
. There is a Richards, you know, in my new book, and this morning I decided to end a chapter on that.
Richards rose abruptly
. So you can see how the confusion arises.’

I sighed. ‘It only remains for me to add that a Rose by any other name–’

‘Cecil,’ interrupted Lucy with unwonted definiteness, ‘did it.’ She poked about among the flowers on her left hand for the paper which lay on her right. ‘I’ve worked it out.’

‘My dear Lucy, you really mustn’t…’

At this moment Basil entered the hall and Lucy caught sight of him. ‘Basil,’ she said prosaically and raising her voice, ‘Cecil did it.’ She found her piece of paper and began to wave it in the air. Still waving it, she again moved to the bell and rang. ‘Rose, these had better go in the library too. Why do you think Cecil should say he was praying at half past seven last night?’

Rose, to whom this emphatic question had every appearance of being directly addressed, gave a startled yelp and set down the bowl abruptly and all but disastrously on the table. We had to stand in great embarrassment until she had recovered sufficiently to take herself off.

‘Lucy,’ said Basil, ‘If you
could
be a little more collected–’

I nodded severely. ‘Yes, indeed. The girl appeared scared to an unreasonable degree. So much so, I hope, that she will refrain from gossiping in the servants’ hall.’

Lucy contrived to look momentarily contrite. ‘I am so sorry, Basil. But when I have just worked something out–’

‘If you will tell us just what you have worked
out
perhaps that will be the safest way of working it
off
.’

‘
One
–’

‘What?’

‘
One:
why did Cecil say he was praying at the time of the crime?’

‘Perhaps,’ I suggested, ‘because he was. Some people do.’

‘
Two:’
– Lucy peered at her paper and turned it sideways – ‘
Two:
why is he so scared of the doctors?’

‘It is possible–’

‘Or we may better put it this way: why is he so scared of
medical science
?’ And Lucy looked up from her paper as if she had achieved a very cogent formulation indeed. ‘I will tell you. It is because he is afraid it may detect the lie!’

We looked at her incredulously.

‘Something about blood-pressure. I have no doubt that a heart-specialist like Sir Mervyn understands the technique. A little machine. They would tie it on and say “Did you try to shoot your brother?” And then the machine would ring a bell.’

‘Lucy,’ I said, ‘Anne would say you had bells in the belfry. Or campanophilia. First Shakespeare’s bells and now this. It is immoderate.’

But Lucy was not to be checked by raillery. She turned to Basil as to a more sympathetic listener. ‘
Three
.’ She tapped the table decisively with her scissors. ‘
Three
is the motive. Who stands to gain most by Wilfred’s death? Cecil.’

Basil tried to interpose; he took a different line from mine. ‘Lucy, don’t you see any indecency in indulging this fantasy at the expense of your nephews? You are letting your habitual imaginings run away with you.’ He looked at the chrysanthemums. ‘Turn your mind to something else.’

At this Lucy really did look slightly dashed and I was prompted to intervene. ‘I suspect, Basil, that Lucy is only in the van. Everybody in the house is beginning to build up one fantasy or another. And most of them at the expense of relations. Appleby pointed out the inevitability of this to me last night. And Cecil – though I don’t myself believe Lucy’s theory – is as fair game as the rest.’

‘That reminds me,’ said Lucy. ‘I think it very likely that he will take wing. It’s very difficult. In the ordinary way I should explain the situation to the police – particularly since there is that pleasant Mr Appleby. But being a nephew makes it rather different, don’t you agree? But then Wilfred is a nephew too. I wish Cecil hadn’t done it.’ She looked quite distressed. ‘I shall tell him so if I get the chance.’

‘If you take my advice,’ said Basil, ‘you will keep your interesting ideas entirely to yourself. And as for Cecil’s taking flight, I think it most unlikely. Actually he was going today to lunch with one of his important parents in the city somewhere. But he seems determined to keep to his room. He is there with Cotton now. What will happen when this colleague of Wale’s turns up heaven knows.’

There was a sound of footsteps on the stairs. Cotton and the attendant Tripet appeared. ‘A flat roof,’ Cotton was saying. ‘Remember that, Tripet; a flat roof. Nothing more natural.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘No agitation, Tripet; no agitation at all. Our business took longer than was expected, no doubt, and Dr Foxcroft was in a hurry.’

‘No doubt, sir.’

‘For an athletic man – a schoolmaster, mark you – the drop would be nothing out of the way. We were not surprised, Tripet. We felt no surprise at all.’

‘None, sir.’

‘Our client, though indignant at what appears to have been some indiscretion on the part of his medical adviser, was calm. Eh, Tripet? – calm.’

‘Calm, sir.’

Cotton advanced towards Basil. ‘Our business is concluded, Sir Basil. I had to advise Dr Foxcroft that what he proposed was – um – inexpedient. Dr Foxcroft then went out.’

‘Went out?’

‘Dr Foxcroft went out by the window. An urgent appointment, I should judge. We last saw him making considerable speed across the park. A charming person. I was very glad to be able to advise him.’

And Cotton looked briskly about him for his hat and coat. Lucy Chigwidden, her arms full of chrysanthemums, made an expressive grimace at Basil and myself.

The morning was inevitably restless. Out of sheer need to wander I went up to Hubert’s attic. It was likely that he would be working there, and I could present myself as bearer of the intelligence that his sitter had decamped. But Hubert was not in the attic. Once more, it was tenanted by Horace Cudbird.

‘The chief news,’ I said, ‘is that Cambrell was prowling about this house last night very much as it were an hotel.’