Stop Press (11 page)

Winter and Mrs Moule stared blankly.

‘Andrew being Scotch, it came about that the young man set to work on a series of
Perils
. He began, naturally, with the Red Peril and then he did the Yellow Peril and the Brown Peril. Andrew thought he might as well put them out and the Perils beat the Gems hollow.’

Mrs Moule laughed with unexpected robustness. Winter agreed to be moderately amused.

‘And that’, continued Wedge seriously, ‘set the fashion and we have this spate of political stuff. The Perils were such a success that when Andrew’s young man ran out of more or less authentic material he took to inventing. For instance, there was the Gamboge Peril – some frightfully reactionary movement in Monaco. And the Ultra-Violet Peril…hullo, people appear to be moving.’ He stood up. ‘Cultured Perils, as you might say.’

A wise-crack the richer, thought Winter, but otherwise not much forwarder.

In an indeterminate room, which might have suggested to an observer sufficiently acute that its owner was both a widower and a widower with a favourite daughter, he took fuller stock of the party. Mrs Moule had been snatched away from him – possibly at the point of revelation; in a deep window recess which looked chilly but was actually nicely warmed by electric pipes she was listening to a small man with a beard. The beard was of the convoluted and incredible kind with which the French are familiar in advertisements of aids to beardedness; it agitated itself rapidly in close proximity to Mrs Moule’s face; and across that face the blushes came and went with the regularity of the less complicated species of neon sign. Winter conjectured that the monologue was scandalous and refrained from breaking in. His second neighbour at the luncheon table was in the centre of a little crowd by a fireplace at the far end of the room; Winter could just see him rubbing his hands together and intermittently standing on one leg: presumably he was engaged in another of his celebrated imitations. Securing a cup of coffee from Belinda Eliot, Winter retired comfortably to a corner.

There were the Eliots. Belinda, with whom he had exchanged only a word, had a tip-tilted nose dwarfed by large round glasses which were in turn overshadowed by a high and bumpy forehead. To this appearance, which accorded with early printers’ devices substantially enough, she joined an air of practical calculation which seemed at the moment to be directed at her brother. Timmy was still clinging to his Hugo, and his Hugo’s cautiously wandering glance could be interpreted as searching the room for the right sort of old school tie. The human species is absurdly dependent on the eye, a fact which creates the subtle hierachy of tailors and milliners. What Toplady stood really in need of in this unfamiliar environment was the primitive simplicity of a nose.

Winter looked for his host. Mr Eliot was moving about among his guests with the meticulous but unconvincing cordiality of one whose person would fain follow his thoughts elsewhere. At the moment he was shaking hands with Dr Chown in what Winter conjectured to be only the most evanescent surprise; no doubt he had a kindly feeling for even an unaccountable guest who had no stake in the fortunes of the Spider. An agreeable little man, Mr Eliot – as those who carry something of their childhood with them commonly are. Winter was glad to be unconvinced by Mrs Moule’s presagement of traps and disasters to come. It occurred to him to wonder who could be responsible for the project – mentioned by Mrs Moule – of bringing down a detective. Mr Eliot himself, though clearly disturbed, appeared to be thinking along lines not altogether different from his assistant’s – only he talked about metaphysical problems where the old lady talked of astral planes. He had shown no consciousness that he was simply being played a troublesome joke; and, besides, Timmy had explained that from real-life detectors of crime his father had a comprehensible if nice-minded aversion. Perhaps Timmy, with Herbert Chown safely at Rust, was adding yet another string to his bow. Or perhaps Belinda –

‘Excuse me,’ said a voice. ‘I don’t think I know you.’

The voice had made an observation; it had also – if with disarming naivety – passed judgement. Winter bowed. ‘I am Gerald Winter, an archaeologist.’

‘I’, said the stranger, ‘am Peter Holme’ – he appeared to hesitate for a moment between the definite and indefinite article – ‘an actor. I just wanted to ask if you are interested in amateur theatricals.’

‘Good lord, no. And no more are you, surely.’

Holme smiled a beautiful if rather too tender smile. ‘I’m certainly not. But you see at this party I’m always expected to get something up.’

‘Who expects you?’

By this question Peter Holme was much struck. ‘I don’t know that I’ve ever thought. It’s something that’s happened every year for years. I don’t know who was at the bottom of it originally. Wedge, I expect. That man’s at the bottom of darn near everything. We get up a bit of burlesque rot about the Spider – just to please old Eliot.’

‘Does it please him?’

Holme looked positively startled. ‘This’, he said, ‘is what is meant, no doubt, by bringing in new blood. And I don’t know that I’ve ever met an archaeologist before. Come and have a drink.’

They edged through the crush and turning down a corridor found themselves in a deserted billiard-room amply decantered and cigared. ‘I say’, said Holme, ‘what awful luck. We can have a game. Nearly always there’s somebody messing about.’ He sent a ball up the table and brought it to rest dead on the cushion beside him. ‘I don’t know that it does. Please Eliot, I mean. I’m sure it used to. But of recent years – It looks as if I’d better give you fifty.’

‘You better had. It’s pretty understandable, isn’t it, that he should be a bit tired of the whole thing?’ Winter fumbled ineptly with his cue. ‘Imagine a sensitized sausage-machine. Isn’t that our host? Superb sausage in February, magnificent sausage in October, and a steady demand for gem-like little sausages in between – rather a grind.’

‘Well, for that matter what about me?’

‘The truth about you’, said Winter with rapid candour, ‘is that all roads lead to Holme. But you can play billiards. Better than you can play – ’

His opponent missed a shot and sighed. ‘People are so often rude. But archaeologists seem to get particularly quickly off the mark. Have you ever seen me?’

‘Lord, yes. Once a week at the Oxford Repertory. Do you remember
The Lady from the Sea
? And
Uncle Vanya
?’

Holme sighed more heavily and achieved a stroke of great subtlety. ‘Those’, he said – and he could scarcely, Winter judged, be more than twenty-six – ‘were the days. But for years now I’ve been dogged by this damned Spider. Eliot, after all, flits from fable to fable. And they’re not exactly sausages; he does have the knack of finding something new from time to time. I’m liable to be put under the wire by one fable for three hundred nights and matinées twice a week. I took
The Trapdoor
to Capetown, Jo’burg, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, a huddle of places in New Zealand, and Brisbane. Have you ever been to Brisbane?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘It’s hot. Do you know
The Trapdoor
? That knack of finding something new. It’s set in Antarctica. The trapdoor leads down to a sort of hut cut out of the ice where some chaps are struggling to live through the long polar night. I wore the appropriate outfit, worked out for me by real explorers. I
hate
the Spider. I wish he were dead. I wish he would kill him.’

Winter shook his head. ‘No good. Conan Doyle almost certainly killed his Sherlock. But he bobbed up again – if I remember aright out of a crevasse. And Mrs Moule would decidedly have no difficulty with a dead Spider. She would reincarnate him before you could wink.’

‘I’ve won. I think we’ll play five hundred up. I think’ – Holme looked cautiously about the empty room – ‘he
may
kill him. Seriously.’

‘Will you put a fiver on it?’

Holme looked startled. ‘On his killing the beast?’

‘On the five hundred up.’

‘I’ll say I will.’

For ten minutes they played billiards with Holme mostly sitting by the wall. ‘You unspeakable cad,’ he said. ‘You won’t really make me
pay
?’

‘I’ll say I will… What do you mean you think he may kill him?’

Once more Holme looked cautiously round. ‘You haven’t heard?’

‘Indeed I’ve heard, but in a murmuring sort of way. Perhaps you can give me a coherent account.’ Winter continued to score monotonously.

‘I doubt if you deserve it. But I’ll try. You see–’

At this moment the door opened and Timmy and Belinda came in.

‘Holme’, said Winter deliberately – for he was determined not to be sidetracked again, ‘thinks that your father may kill the Spider off.’

Belinda came quickly forward. ‘You mean sort of retire?’

Holme, illegally sprawled upon the table, nodded. ‘And concentrate on the pigs. Go out of the policeman business altogether. His helmet now shall be a hive for bees.’

‘Not a chance,’ said Belinda crisply. ‘Think of Wedge.’

‘And André and Mrs Moule and all the Americans,’ said Timmy. He strolled over to a window and began to whistle softly – to whistle something that stirred obscurely in Winter’s mind.

‘And’, said Holme, ‘the managers and the film people; you come to big business there. But as I was going to tell Winter–’

‘Stop!’ Belinda was standing suddenly rigid by the fireplace. ‘Timmy, can’t you
hear
?’

Timmy’s whistling stopped – and as it stopped Winter recognized the melody. It was the same that had been so consideringly repeated by the girl who had collected him from Laslett’s barn. With the others he strained his ears. Timmy must have picked up the music unconsciously from the air. For faintly as if from some remote quarter of the house the little neurasthenic phrases were floating down to them…floating down, fading away. Winter recognized the instrument on its last audible note. It was a clarinet.

‘The Spider and his leitmotiv,’ said Holme softly. ‘It’s the first time
I’ve
heard them.’

Belinda was still standing quite still. Timmy had turned from the window and was making for the door. ‘I’ll rip this house to pieces’, he cried furiously, ‘if I don’t–’ The door opened before he reached it. He fell back in exasperated resignation. ‘André,’ he said. ‘Lord, lord, lord.’

It was the little man with the abundant beard. ‘Peter!’ he cried, ‘I have an idea.’

‘My dear André, that sort of thing is not your line.’

André laughed delightedly. If he had heard the spectral music of seconds before he gave no sign. ‘And it will be such fun! Better than last year; better than the year before–’

‘Lord,’ said Timmy, ‘lord, lord,
lord
.’

‘And better than the year before that.’ André helped himself to whisky. ‘At three o’clock’, he said, ‘how much one begins to long for tea. My idea’ he hesitated before a box of particularly large cigars – ‘derives from Pirandello. The curtain goes up, the play goes forward until – lo and behold! – the audience realizes that what they are watching is not exactly a play but a play within a play. My idea is that we might exploit along those lines this funny business they’re all talking about. These jokes. By the way, I suppose they are jokes?’ He paused fleetingly and glanced at his companions. ‘Not so much a play within a play as a Spider within a Spider. As I say, if we could think something out there would be no end of fun in it. Just the thing to please your father no end.’ He smiled at them: innocently, maliciously – impossible to say. ‘Think it over.’ He gulped his whisky and was gone.

There was an awkward pause. ‘I think’, said Winter dubiously, ‘it was Puccini. Does it happen often?’

Timmy had gone back to the window. ‘The music? I gather it’s a rare and choice effect. The cream of the joke.’ He turned round and faced them. ‘Life’s becoming not worth living. The Spider making his ghostly music off, and André making his bestial proposals on. Whatever will poor Hugo think?’

Belinda’s equanimity appeared to be equally disturbed. ‘Why’, she cried at a tangent, ‘you should bring down that awful boyfriend just because I ask–’ She stopped, no doubt feeling very properly that this was a strictly family affair.

‘By the way’, said Winter hastily, ‘there’s something I was going to ask: Timmy’s mentioning Benton put it in my head. The girl who collected us from the station – I’ve forgotten her name–’

‘Patricia Appleby,’ said Belinda.

‘I think she said you had a job together. And she murmured very mysteriously about Benton and an old person called Mummery and myself – something about sending us telegrams.’

‘Why,’ said Belinda, ‘that’s a little joke of Shoon’s.’

‘Jasper Shoon the collector?’

‘Yes. Patricia and I work for him. I run the books and she runs the manuscripts. And as I say, Jasper is having a little joke. He had asked your Bussenschutt down for the weekend to a sort of private view of some particularly choice manuscript–’

‘Papyrus.’

‘No doubt. And as soon as he got Bussenschutt he wired invitations to several other people. He believes in what he calls stimulating academic rivalry. I expect your invitation will follow you here.’

‘This’, said Timmy, who had opened a cigar box which proved to be a cache of milk chocolate, ‘is beside the point at issue.’

Peter Holme, who had been silent for some time, flung down his cue on a settee. ‘The point at issue is decided. You don’t any of you seem to have noticed, but I’ve made a break of eighty-seven and won after all. Puccini doesn’t seem to disturb me.’

They stared at him incredulously. ‘It’s a blatant lie,’ said Timmy. ‘Your wretched contest recks of dishonesty from start to finish. And now let’s play one of those games with ever so many balls.’ He rummaged in a cupboard.

Winter crossed to the window. It was mid-afternoon and in the sky watery light was already fading among clouds which were coming to anchor for the night. The wind had dropped. The rain, which had been driving in diagonal washes giving movement to the landscape, was now falling perpendicularly on a country which, although actually undulating, appeared to stretch out in flat, sullenly resistant lines. The immediate prospect was a balustraded terrace, its nearer corner embellished with a pedestal on which stood a small marble bull. The creature showed even in the uncertain light as a work of craft and beauty but someone had tied an open umbrella to one of its horns and it thus stood in mute indignity, dry-headed, and with the rain streaming down its slim hind quarters. The landscape, the witticism, and the horrid little tune which yet seemed to linger in the air were alike depressing; Winter turned back to find the billiard-table under a flood of soft clear light. A voice was saying, ‘Then I’ll mark for you.’ It was Patricia Appleby’s.