Stop Press (53 page)

‘The burglary – its motive – must be mysterious. If it became known that the woman had simply been robbed of scandalous memoirs my object might be defeated. So I thought of a large-scale burglary which should have the evident character of a broad joke or burleque. I discovered something of the Birdwire’s circumstances – the legend of a husband in the city, her strained relations with the Eliots. I prospected the ground. I set the key of rather crude jesting by ringing up Eliot and making a coarse joke about the lady and himself. And then I burgled. I thought it likely that I should have to carry off a good deal of material for subsequent search. So I went down in a car, spent a late afternoon drugging a great many dogs, broke in at night, collared a mass of curios and all the papers I could find, painted my rude painting–’

‘You have more than once’, interrupted Appleby, ‘shown a tendency to defend the humour involved, and to assert that the affair hurt nobody.’

‘No more it did. My next business was to emphasize the character of the whole affair as a freakish joke by returning everything I had nobbled. You know how I contrived that. The Spider
qua
crook stole the stuff; the Spider
qua
detective recovered it. Here was the first place in which the double character of Eliot’s creature was to help me.

‘It is a thousand pities that I really have no more to tell. I failed to get what I wanted. When at home, the Birdwire no doubt keeps her more scandalous material at a bank. So I was dished and there an end of it. But you have guessed how I meant to carry on. Armed with the deadly facts, I was going to turn not myself but the Spider loose on Benton. I felt that Benton would be peculiarly vulnerable to a sort of hanky-panky attack – to something, in fact, of the sort that has been attempted at Rust.’

‘Bussenschutt this afternoon said very much the same thing.’

‘The Spider’s double character might have been brought into play again: the crook who blackmailed; the detective who exposed. I never formulated anything precise, but if I had only got my facts it would all have come, I don’t doubt.

‘And that is the end of my part of the affair. The rest of the Codex story is Bussenschutt’s. I was a bit thrown off my balance – as you can imagine – by Timmy’s story and appeal. And that night I rashly pitched the Birdwire at Benton’s head in the presence of Bussenschutt. As one might imagine, he was on it like a flash. He simply stormed La Hacienda, put the silly woman in his pocket, got whatever the horrid truth may have been, walked in on Benton and ordered him up to town to fetch and deliver the Codex. Bussenschutt has a grand simplicity and I give him best. But after the Birdwire burglary the Spider business passes out of our hands, and whatever the mystery may be our academic tragi-comedy is irrelevant to it.’

‘On the contrary, it may be vital.’

Winter shook his head. ‘I don’t see it. And, incidentally, I don’t at all see how you got on to me.’

‘My dear man, crime is not your pigeon. You have been most suspiciously out of place throughout. Why were you at Rust at all? I asked myself that at the beginning. It wasn’t a bit your business to come and investigate an embarrassing domestic problem of the sort brought to you by Timmy. Unless you had an interest in it your instinct would have been amiably to refuse. I practically put that to you when you came poking in on me after the theft of the Renoir. And the next minute, when I suggested rather gravely that something really serious might happen, you started to out with something and thought better of it. Later you analysed the situation confronting us with quite suspicious clarity: a joke by
A
, you suggested, might give the notion of a crime or misdemeanour to
B
. On the other hand there was a suspicious lack of clarity in your first account of the conversation in your common-room when Benton was scared by the mention of the Birdwire. “A manuscript of Benton’s which had been found in the Levant.” I wasn’t clear just how that came in. But – as I said before – your identifying and then dodging the Birdwire was the cardinal point. That helped me to force your first confession. After that a little conversation with Mummery gave me a line on the importance of the Codex. And after
that’
– Appleby chuckled – ‘and as one has so often to do in my trade, I guessed.’

‘A joke by
A
may give the notion of a crime or misdemeanour to
B
. If that is a clear analysis isn’t it as much as to say that my story is irrelevant to what has happened since?’

‘It would be nice to be certain of that. It would be nice to think that you and your precious colleagues and your Codex are done with and out of the way. If I could place you well back-stage what you call my role of tidying up would be simpler. Eliminations – the problem more clearly seen; more eliminations – the problem seen more clearly still. The Eliotic manner.’ Appleby shook his head. ‘But, as I say, things may be more closely knit than that. Your burglary may have got you in more deeply than you think. So take warning once more. When standing there by the back-drop while the tidy up goes forward, just look out for knives, pistol shots, or heavy weights being dropped on you from above.’

‘I can’t see why – ’

‘Bussenschutt, having worked it all nicely out, as good as knows that you were the Birdwire burglar?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And he’s a gossip?’

‘Most certainly. But even so–’

Appleby stood up. ‘I do sincerely believe’, he said, ‘that somebody may attempt to murder you. I admit, though, that it’s a longish shot.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We shall be late for this supper… It has all been rather slow, don’t you think? But it’s a minute by minute affair now. I hope to get early to bed.’

More than once before in periods of crisis Hugo Toplady had proved his worth. His conversation was sedative; his sense of decorum made him instinctively resist unseemly exhibitions of excitement or agitation. It was perhaps because of this that Belinda contrived to manoeuvre him at supper into a place beside her now frankly alarmed cousin Rupert.

‘I cannot say’, said Toplady to Belinda and Rupert indifferently, ‘how much I regret – and particularly in view of the happy way that this one matter at least seems to be turning out – my grandmother.’

‘Your grandmother?’ said Belinda blankly.

‘The matter of my grandmother. I lent her Timmy’s poems. Not, I really must not omit to plead, without reasonable cause, for my grandmother has always been interested in that sort of thing. Her younger brother had to go into the Home Office, and at that period there was, I believe, a great deal of poetry in the Home Office. It was quite the thing there for a time, and my grandmother became interested in a way. I thought she might find somebody up in it all who could give a considered criticism. But reflection’ – Toplady looked very reflective – ‘has led me to conclude that it was not critical appraisal that Timmy designed. At one time, you know, he gave the poems to – to a person from Nubia, who could hardly be expected to have any nicety in English versification. I have come to think that Timmy likes to give his verses to people he
likes
: he used to say – I remember now that I have endeavoured to recall the matter – that this black person had some
very
attractive ways indeed. What I mean is that I am sorry that he has not the verses at hand now when it can hardly be indiscreet to suspect that he may be reflecting that if he
did
have them his impulse would be – and we are all happy, I think, to feel that we do reasonably suspect this – to give them to Miss Appleby.’

This was sedative enough, and Toplady followed it up by turning to Rupert, who was staring glumly in front of him. ‘Sir Rupert,’ he asked with serious courtesy, ‘are
you
interested in poetry?’

Rupert started as if from concentrated thought. ‘Poetry? Not in my line – man of the world – never cared for anything’ – his eye went uneasily round the table and came to rest on Appleby just opposite – ‘anything fanciful.’

He relapsed into silence. Toplady appeared to conduct a brief review of other agreeable and distracting topics. ‘Sir Rupert,’ he said, ‘do you know anything about the anatomy of camels?’

Rupert dropped his knife and fork and looked as alarmed as if suddenly compelled to doubt his neighbour’s sanity. ‘Belinda,’ he said abruptly, ‘you know about camels – damn it, I mean cars’ – he gave Toplady a sullen glare – ‘and must know what has happened. Can’t a single one be got going?’

‘I asked’ – Toplady’s tone held a firm protest against this unmannerly changing of the subject – ‘merely because the matter seems to interest your cousin. I think it must have to do with
A Death in the Desert
. What writers call, I believe, local colour. Whether the creatures stand up head or tail first – that sort of thing. And I thought that as you knew the Near East–’

‘Young man, I don’t know the Near East.’

Toplady looked solemnly surprised. ‘But my uncle Rudolph,’ he said, ‘who last had the Legation at Teheran, has mentioned you in
Indiscretions
. I was reading it the other day. He met Sir Rupert Eliot when attached to a military mission to–’

‘No doubt. But I can’t help Richard with his damned camels all the same. Whom has he been talking to? If he must write these rubbishing fictions for shop-girls and counter-jumpers let him keep off the subject in decent society. That’s what I say.’ Rupert glared interrogatively at Toplady.

‘Really, Sir Rupert, I can conceive more impropriety in certain ways of
talking
about Mr Eliot’s books than anything that can be imagined of the
writing
of them.’

Hugo, Belinda thought, could occasionally summon all the crushing power of a devastatingly right-thinking character in Jane Austen. ‘Daddy’, she said, ‘seems particularly keen on
A Death in the Desert
. I don’t think he’d ever have scrapped it as he scrapped
Murder at Midnight
. Not for anything. He very seldom talks about the stories, but he has said the basic idea is just the sort that such books should have – something imaginatively convincing but not actually possible.’

‘It must have been Archie’, said Rupert to Toplady, ‘whom your uncle met. Archie’s been in the East often enough. It was where he first met Shoon. And I have reason to believe that in disreputable scrapes he has sometimes taken my name. Just his sense of humour.’

‘My uncle, Sir Rupert, is most unlikely to have been associated with Sir Archie in
disreputable
scrapes
.’

This was almost a quarrel. ‘Something basically fantastic,’ continued Belinda by way of diversion. ‘Like
The Trapdoor
. A criminal could be imagined as scoring in that way, but no real criminal is ever likely to be in a position to do so.’

‘I think’, said Rupert hotly – and Belinda had the satisfaction of feeling that she had successfully drawn his fire – ‘that we have quite enough confounded fantasy round us at the moment without yattering about it. I’m an unimaginative man of affairs myself and I don’t care for it.’

‘But, Rupert – we’re all fantastic. I mean all the Eliots. Think of great-aunt Rachael.’

‘Great-aunt Rachael?’ asked Toplady courteously.

‘You haven’t met her, but she lives with us. Rupert is her favourite nephew.’ Belinda paused maliciously – as if this were evidence enough of the fantastic nature of the late Timothy Eliot’s widow. ‘She’s ninety-something and ready for any trick one can put her up to. And daddy, even if he stops writing, will certainly grow more fantastic with the years. And Timmy wants to be an ambassador. We really are quite odd.’

Toplady considered the right reply to this. ‘In my mother’s family’, he confessed, ‘a marked vein of eccentricity has made itself evident from time to time.’

‘The Shaping Spirit,’ said Miss Cavey tensely; ‘the Creative Imagination!’ She fixed on Shoon an eye which seemed to calculate whether he were within reach of a clammy paw. ‘I sometimes feel’ – her voice became very solemn – ‘that the Creative Imagination is All!’

Shoon, who was looking thoughtfully down the table, murmured a polite response.

‘But Mr Winter’, Miss Cavey pursued, ‘points out that there is also the Deep Well.’

‘The Deep Well?’

‘I call it that. Mr Winter calls it the memory. He points out’ – Miss Cavey looked momentarily dubious – ‘how important somebody – I think it was Proust – thought the memory was.’

‘I agree’, said Shoon, ‘ – and Benton here will agree – that memory is very important indeed. I look round my table now; there are familiar and unfamiliar faces; there are, perhaps, faces which one can call neither one nor the other. Benton, do you agree with me?’

From the other side of Miss Cavey Benton glanced nervously at his host. ‘Really,’ he said, ‘I have hardly thought.’

‘Faces’, continued Shoon with a flight into elegance, ‘over which there flickers some half-light from the torch of Mnemosyne. Benton’s colleagues, Miss Cavey, are most interesting men. You mention Winter. He is, it seems, a most enterprising fellow. Bussenschutt has given me some curious particulars of his habits – of his technique. I ask myself: is his one of the faces over which that half-light of memory passes? And at the moment I have to answer that it is not.’

Miss Cavey, because the tenor of these remarks was mysterious to her, looked particularly intelligent and understanding. Benton looked increasingly uneasy.

‘Have you’, Shoon continued, ‘met Mrs Birdwire, my dear Miss Cavey? I am sorry she cannot come across tonight; she would enjoy meeting a fellow writer. We are not on confidential terms, but I know her to be discreet. Which is just right for neighbourliness. Benton, you agree that she is an excellent creature?’

‘Really, Shoon, it is so many years–’

‘Ah, Memory, the fickle jade, once more! There are things, are there not, that we are particularly willing to forget: old humiliations, false starts, risks we were content to run when we were in a small way? Yes, indeed.’

Benton, who appeared to be masticating desperately without the aid of salivation, looked anxiously from Shoon to a stolidly perplexed Miss Cavey. ‘I wish’, he said, ‘that the moon may come out for this interesting inspection of the tower.’