Dead or Alive (9 page)

Miss Cannock advanced with a timid hand outstretched. She wore large horn-rimmed spectacles with smoky-coloured lenses, behind which her eyes had a vague and peering look. She wore black Cashmere stockings, and shoes with beaded toes. She smiled, showing yellowish teeth, and said in a very high-pitched lisping voice,

“Oh, how do you
do
, Mr Coverdale!”

“Miss Cannock?” said Bill.

X

Miss Cannock smiled again.

“Oh yes!” she said, and Bill found himself holding a limp hand which weighed heavily in his for the briefest possible moment and then withdrew.

He was astonished at his own relief when she moved away from him and, going over to the window, sat down in a small hard chair with her back to the light. Some ridiculous vein of sentiment made him feel glad that she had chosen this chair which was a stranger, and not one of the blue chairs which belonged to his memories of Meg.

She said, “Won't you please sit down?” and Bill had actually taken his seat before it occurred to him that this was rather ominous. The feeling added a touch of firmness to his manner as he said,

“I'm hoping to see Mr Postlethwaite. I don't know if he has spoken of me, but I am an old friend. Does he know that I am here?”

Miss Cannock was pleating one end of her old-maidish scarf. She didn't look old, but she looked like an old maid. She said,

“Ah yes—that is just the point, Mr Coverdale—that is just the question I was going to raise with you.” She smiled in a deprecating manner, and as she did so, he noticed with distaste what seemed to be a slight distortion on the left side of her face. Her smile ran up crookedly and emphasized this twist or whatever it was. He wished she wouldn't smile.

He said, “Yes—but I am very anxious to see him, Miss Cannock.”

She continued to smile. Now that she had her back to the light, he couldn't see her eyes at all, only the solemn smoky circles behind which they were looking at him.

“Oh yes, Mr Coverdale—and I'm sure it would give him great pleasure, but if you are an old friend, you will know how difficult it is to interrupt him when he is working—very, very difficult indeed—and I don't know—”

Bill interrupted
her
rather brusquely.

“Does he know I'm here?” he asked.

She fidgeted with her scarf.

“That was the point I was going to raise, Mr Coverdale. It is most natural that you should want to see him—such an old friend, I'm sure, though he doesn't talk about people, at least not when he's working. But just at the moment he is so very much taken up with the book—I should perhaps say
immersed
. He hardly seems to notice the outside world at all. You see, this is his answer to Professor Hoppenglocker, and he expects it to dispose once and for all of Ottorini's theory, which he has always considered to be unsound in principle and—er—fundamentally unscientific.”

Bill had not the slightest interest in Ottorini's theory, which he now heard of for the first time, but he intended to see the Professor. He said,

“Yes, I know—but he can't work all day and all night, and I shan't keep him very long. Has he been told that I'm here?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, Mr Coverdale—”

“He hasn't?” He got up. “I wonder if you would kindly let him know, Miss Cannock. I am afraid I must see him.”

Miss Cannock got up too. Her scarf slipped from her shoulders and she made an awkward flustered movement to pick it up.

“So very difficult, Mr Coverdale—such strict orders—I hope you realize. I'll see what I can do, but he is, as I said before, so
immersed.”

Bill went to the door and opened it.

“Will you tell him that I want to speak to him about his niece—about Mrs O'Hara,” he said.

Miss Cannock clutched at her scarf.

“Oh certainly, Mr Coverdale. You may rely on me to do my best, but these very clever men are all alike—a world of their own—no interruptions—and, I am afraid, sadly vague about family affairs. I have had to urge, positively to urge him to answer Mrs O'Hara's letters, and very often without success, but you may rely on me to do my best—oh yes.”

She went out, smiling her crooked smile. As if half unconsciously, she turned to shut the door, but more because of some inward antagonism than for any real reason Bill kept his hold of it and watched her, after a moment's hesitation, cross the hall and pass out of sight down a passage of which he could see only the nearer end. He thought he would keep the door open. If there were to be any comings and goings, he might as well be aware of mem. He disliked that Cannock woman a good deal, and remembered stout, placid Miss Wallace with regret.

Time went by. A clock struck three. That would be the old wall-clock which had faced the barometer across the hall at Way's End. It wheezed a little between the strokes, and unless it had set up new habits in the last year, the time was now half past three. The hands would be all right, but for some reason which no one had ever fathomed, the strike was always half an hour behind. It must be nearly twenty minutes since Miss Cannock had gone away. He wondered what she was doing and whether she wouldn't just come back presently and say, with that smiling lisp, that the Professor was too
“immersed”
to see him.

He walked to the left-hand window and stood looking out upon the lake. It was dark and leaden with the reflection of the low cloud overhead. A slight drizzle had begun, and already there was a suggestion of mist on the ground beyond the water's edge. He was prepared to bet that there would be fog here five nights out of seven in the winter. He could see the bridge going over to the island—all of it, that is, except the bit nearest the house, which was hidden by what he guessed to be the drawing-room bay. The island looked like some ridiculous toy, with its high walls and two chimney-pots sticking up like ears from the sloping roof of the house inside. He remembered that the bridge had a door at either end, and he wondered whether the Professor had locked himself in on his island and was refusing to answer Miss Cannock's not very insistent knock. He had the feeling that she would not try unduly hard to make him hear.

He turned back to the room and went over to the hearth. There was no fire. He wondered how long it was since there had been one. Everything smelt damp—and that after the driest summer on record. What the place would be like in a wet winter beggared imagination. What a mutt Henry Postlethwaite was!

He stood frowning at the mantelpiece, a depressing piece of work executed in a marble which looked exactly like jellied brawn. The little blue and gold enamelled clock which had belonged to Meg's grandmother ticked softly between the blue candlesticks which she had been so fond of. These three things had been at Way's End, but not the horrible family of wooden bears, or the olive-wood box, or the really dreadful photograph frame—silver filagree upon red plush. These bespoke Miss Cannock, and he found himself most savagely resenting them. The frame contained a photograph of the Professor, a badly taken snapshot several times enlarged. From the resulting blur he gathered that Henry Postlethwaite had taken to a beard.

His frown deepened. What was Miss Cannock doing taking snapshots of the Professor, having them enlarged, and framing them? It seemed to him that the old man wanted looking after. True, he had managed to remain a bachelor for seventy years or so, but he was so vague that a determined woman might almost marry him before he woke up sufficiently to resist. He thought Meg had better take the matter in hand. The prospect of having the Cannock as an aunt was most unnerving.

He had another look at the hall, and found it dark and empty. Even considering the afternoon, no house ought to be as dark as this.

He emerged and looked about him. The door immediately opposite would lead into the drawing-room. The staircase went up on the right between him and the front door, and rose to a gallery which ran round three sides of the hall. The passage down which Miss Cannock had disappeared divided the rooms at the front of the house from those at the back. He strolled across to have a look at it, and found it even darker than the hall. It had no window of any kind, and when the doors which gave upon it were shut, as they were at present, it resembled one of those gloomy corridors in an old-fashioned country hotel. Bill wondered whether it was all one one level, or whether, after the manner of such passages, it concealed an unexpected step or two in its shadows.

He was just thinking that he had never been in any house that he liked so little, when a door at the far end of the passage opened, letting in a grey light, and against that light he saw Henry Postlethwaite.

With the cheerful feeling that at last something was going to happen, Bill advanced along the passage. There was a sudden step down which nearly cost his his balance, and as he recovered himself he heard behind him the voice of the man-servant saying,

“This way, sir, if you please.”

This presumably meant the way he was going, so he held on with a “Hullo, Professor!”

The door at the end of the passage remained open and afforded enough light for him to see that Henry Postlethwaite was coming to meet him. There was another step, up this time. He stubbed his toe, and then they were shaking hands and he was saying,

“Very nice to see you again, Professor.”

“Yes—yes—” said Henry Postlethwaite vaguely. He stood where he was, a stooping shadow with the leonine head and shaggy mane of hair which were so effective in a photograph. The new beard showed as a grey blur against his dark coat.

Bill came straight to the point. You always had to if you wanted to talk to the Professor.

“I know you're most awfully busy, sir, so I won't keep you, but I want to speak to you about Meg.”

“Ah—yes—Meg—” said Henry Postlethwaite in his gentle voice. “Ah yes—Meg—how is she? Is's a long time since I've seen her.”

“If there is somewhere we can talk, sir—”

The Professor patted his shoulder.

“Yes—yes. Are you in London—are you making any stay?”

“I'm home for good, sir. The firm is giving me my uncle's place on the board. But I wanted to talk to you about Meg.”

It was exactly like the Professor to prop the wall, and to remain impervious to any attempts to shift him. Well, if he had got to talk about Meg's affairs in a passage, he had got to, and that was all about it. He wasn't going away without talking about them, and at least Miss Cannock had made herself scarce.

“Yes—yes—” said Henry Postlethwaite—“in town, you say. Then I wonder if you would find it troublesome to go to Malverey's in the Strand and ask them whether they have been able to trace that early pamphlet of Hoppenglocker's that I have been inquiring about. If I could show over his own signature—”

Bill repressed a groan.

“All right,” he said. “But about Meg, Professor—I wonder if you've had all her letters. She's in a very difficult position, and I think she's more than hard up—I believe she's starving herself. I don't know what O'Hara had to leave, but she can't touch any of it until his death has been proved. I'm trying to make her see her solicitor—she ought to have done it long ago, but—”

The Professor laid a hand upon his arm.

“Yes, yes, my dear boy—but just now I haven't time. Of course if Meg wants money—she'd better write to me and tell me how she stands. Did you say she had written? These country post offices are not always very efficient, which is why I should be grateful if you would look in at Malverey's for me about that pamphlet. The early Hoppenglockers are scarce—very scarce—and before I've done with him Hoppenglocker will be wishing they were scarcer still, because if my memory serves me right—and I think it does—in fact I'm sure it does—he has committed himself to a statement—I believe it is on page four—which I can use with really pulverising effect. Hoppenglocker may have forgotten what he wrote in 1903, but I have not.” He finished on a triumphant note, patted Bill on the shoulder, and said, “You won't forget—Malverey's in the Strand,” and, turning, began to walk back along the passage.

Bill hurried after him.

“But, sir—one moment—” Then, in desperation, “I don't know the name of the pamphlet you want.”

Henry Postlethwaite checked that drifting walk of his. He half turned and spoke over his shoulder.

“Number three in the first series—
Wesensgleichheit der Wissenschaft
. I have the other two. At least—” he put his hand to his head and dragged at his hair—“at least I should have—but this move—I must ask Miss Cannock—an invaluable secretary—invaluable.”

“I don't think I got that name, Professor. You'll have to write it down for me. Perhaps if we could come somewhere where there's a bit more light—”

“Yes, yes,” said Henry Postlethwaite—“number three in the first series. And I'm pretty sure the passage I want is on the fourth page—rather near the top—a right-hand page.” He produced a note-book and tore out a leaf, which he handed to Bill. “Write it down—write it down. I'll give you a pencil. Ah, here you are! Now write it down carefully, so that there's no mistake—
Wesensgleichheit der Wissenschaft.”
He spelt the words out letter by letter.

Bill put the paper in his pocket.

“Professor, I really do want to have a talk with you.”

Henry Postlethwaite began to walk away from him again.

“Another day, my dear boy, another day.”

“But Meg, Professor—her affairs won't wait. I wouldn't be worrying you like this if they weren't urgent. She won't take money from me, and—”

The Professor stopped by the half open door through which he had come.

“No, no—of course not,” he said—“naturally not—she wouldn't care to do that. She had better come down here. Yes, yes, she had better come down here on a visit. Tell her to write to Miss Cannock. I am very busy—very busy indeed. And you won't forget to go to Malverey's, my dear boy, because that is important. And now if you will excuse me.” He went through the doorway and shut the door behind him.