The Moving Toyshop (9 page)

His plan was that each of them should walk down one side of George Street, entering every shop on the way, investigating for beautiful, blue-eyed girls, and, where these proved to exist, making such inquiries about their pets as seemed possible in the circumstances; this procedure to be continued throughout the shopping centre. Standing on the crowded pavement, and listening to the clocks strike fifteen minutes after midday, Cadogan assented to this gloomily enough; in any case, he reflected, he would almost certainly be arrested before he got far.

“Ryde is the only Young Lady in those five limericks,” Fen remarked, gazing a trifle despondently down the length of George Street, “so it must mean the girl Sharman was talking about. We’ll meet and compare notes at the end of the street.”

They set forth. The first shop on Cadogan’s beat was a tobacconist’s, presided over by a plump, peroxided woman of uncertain age. It occurred to Cadogan that the difficulties of the undertaking were greatly increased by the consideration that
(a)
there could be no certainty regarding Mr. Sharman’s standards of female pulchritude, and
(b)
one can seldom make out the colour of a person’s eyes without peering very closely at them. Affecting short-sightedness, he thrust his face close to that of the peroxided woman. She recoiled hastily and simpered at him. Her eyes, he decided, must be either blue or green.

“What can I do for you, sir?” she asked.

“Have you a small, spotted dog?”

To his surprise and annoyance, she gave a little shriek and called out: “Mr. Riggs! Mr. Riggs!” An agitated, pimply young man in brilliantine and a creased morning suit appeared from the back of the shop.

“What is it, Miss Blount?” he said. “What is it?”

Miss Blount pointed a wavering finger at Cadogan and said faintly: “He asked me if I had a small, spotted dog.”

“Really, sir…”

“Well, and what’s the matter with that?”

“Well, sir, don’t you think… perhaps a little… that is to say somewhat—ah—”

“Unless the vocabulary of bawdry has undergone accretions since my young days,” said Cadogan, “no.” He stalked out.

In the shops which he subsequently visited he had no more success. Either there were no beautiful girls with blue eyes or else they did not possess small, spotted dogs. He was received alternately with fury, amusement, mystification, and frigid politeness. Periodically he saw Fen emerge on the opposite side of the road, wave a negative across the surge of traffic, and disappear again. He became disheartened and began to buy things at the shops he entered—a tube of toothpaste, some bootlaces, a dog-collar. When he finally met Fen at the traffic lights where George Street joins the Cornmarket, he was burdened about like a Christmas tree.

“What in God’s name are you doing with all those things?” said Fen, and then, without waiting for an answer: “This really is rather a job, you know. Nothing on my side of the road. One woman seemed to think I was proposing marriage.”

Cadogan miserably shifted a wicker basket, the most substantial of his purchases, from one arm to the other. He grunted. In fact, his mind was occupied with the virtual conviction that they were being watched. Two heavily-built men in dark suits had been following their progress and were now standing near them on the opposite corner, mutually engaged in a prolonged effort to light a cigarette. They could not conceivably be the police; consequently, they must have something to do with the death of Emilia Tardy. But as he was about to point them out to Fen, he was gripped suddenly by the arm.

“Look!” Fen exclaimed.

Cadogan looked. A girl had just emerged from an alleyway which ran behind one of the shops in the Cornmarket. She was about twenty-three, tall, with a finely-proportioned, loose-limbed body, naturally golden hair, big candid blue eyes, high cheek bones, and a firmly moulded chin. Her scarlet mouth broke into an impish smile as she called back to someone in the alley-way. She wore a shirt and tie, a dark brown coat and skirt, and brogue shoes, and walked with the insouciant swinging grace of perfect health.

And beside her trotted a Dalmatian dog.

“It isn’t very small,” Fen said, as she walked towards them.

“Well, it may have grown,” said Cadogan. Relief at not having to enter any more shops made him unwisely raise his voice. “That must be the girl.”

She heard, saw them, and stopped. The lingering smile faded from her red lips. With something like panic in her eyes, she changed direction and cut across the road, walking so fast down Broad Street that she almost ran, and glancing back over her shoulder.

After a moment’s initial stupefaction Fen grabbed Cadogan’s sleeve and urged him across the road after her, regardless of changing lights and an ominous grinding of gears among the cars waiting to proceed. They reached the opposite pavement much as Orestes, hounded by the Furies, must have staggered into Iphigenia’s grove in Tauris. Out of the corner of his eyes Cadogan saw that the two men in dark suits were moving after them. For a moment the girl was lost from view behind the windows of a large china-shop, but they soon caught sight of her again, pushing hastily through the ambling crowds on the pavement. By mutual consent, they began to run after her.

Broad Street lives up to its name; it is also quite short and straight. In the centre of it there is a taxi-rank, and at the end you can see Hertford College, Mr. Blackwell’s Bookshop, the Sheldonian Concert Hall (fronted by a row of the stone heads of Roman emperors, severe and admonitory as the totems of some primitive tribe), and the Bodleian Library. The midday sun, pleasant and warm, struck splinters of blue and gold from the ashen stone walls. Indefatigably the women under­graduates pedalled to their last assignments of the morning. And Fen and Cadogan ran, Cadogan shouting “Hi!” in a penetrating voice.

The girl, too, began to run as they drew nearer to her, the dog cantering beside her. But both Fen and Cadogan were vigorous, active men, and they would have caught up with her in a minute or less had their way not been suddenly blocked by a substantial form in the uniform of the Oxford Constabulary.

“Now then,” said the form conventionally. “What’s all this?”

Cadogan panicked, but he realized after a second that the constable had not recognized him, and was merely taking exception to their satyr-like pursuit.

“That girl,” Fen fumed, pointing his finger after her. That girl.”

The constable scratched his nose. “Well, now,” he said. “we’re all for love in the Force, but fair’s fair, you know. One of you at a time, and no stampeding. You’d better go and get some lunch,” he added kindly. Evidently he suspected that this would constitute some sort of anaphrodisiac.

“Oh, God,” Fen exclaimed disgustedly. “Come on, Richard. It’s no use trying to follow her now.” Watched by the benevolent eye of the law, he led the way across the road to Balliol College and entered its Gothic portals with some dignity. Once inside, however, they hastened through the grounds and into the precincts of Trinity, which stands next door. A hasty reconnoitring at the wrought-iron gates showed the constable, his mind at ease after their display of resignation, strolling away towards the Cornmarket with his back to them; and the girl hesitating outside the Sheldonian Theatre. It also showed the two men in dark suits prowling about the window of a tailor’s opposite. Cadogan pointed them out to Fen and explained his suspicions.

“H’m,” said Fen thoughtfully. “I rather think it might be as well to lose them if we can. On the other hand, we can’t risk losing the girl at the same time. we’d better go after her as fast as possible, and hope for the best. Obviously whoever knocked you on the head last night wants to keep an eye on you, but they don’t seem keen on doing more than just follow.” He was plainly exhilarated by the entire proceedings. “All right, let’s go.”

As they came out again into Broad Street, the girl saw them, and after a moment’s indecision turned and went into the Sheldonian, leaving the dog outside. It sat down patiently to wait. Fen and Cadogan hastened their steps. The two men in dark suits, whose acquaintance with the topography of Oxford was plainly uncertain, did not observe and begin to follow them until they were practically at the gates of the Sheldonian.

This building, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, consists (apart from some mysterious, warren-like passages about its circumference) of a tall, circular hall, with galleries, an organ, and a painted roof. In it, concerts are given; in it, University degrees are conferred and ceremonial confabulations held; in it, the larger choirs and orchestras rehearse. Such a rehearsal—of the Handel Society—was in progress now, under the impassioned conducting of the preternaturally thin and energetic Dr. Artemus Rains. As Fen and Cadogan mounted the stone steps and crossed the paving to the door, a blast of Hölderlin’s fatalism, as interpreted by Brahms and translated by the Rev. J. Troutbeck, met their ears.
“Blindly,”
sang the choir,
“blindly at last do we pass away.”
The orchestra accompanied them with racing arpeggios, and acid, fiery chords on the brass.

Fen and Cadogan peered in. The orchestra occupied the well of the hall. Round it, ranged in tiers, stood a choir of three hundred or more, copies raised, eyes straying uneasily between the printed music and the frenetic gesticulations of Dr. Rains, mouths opening and shutting in unanimous pantomime.
“But man may not linger,”
they chanted,
“for nowhere finds he repose.”
Among the altos, hooting morosely like ships in a Channel fog—which is the way of altos the world over—Cadogan caught sight of the girl they were seeking. He nudged Fen and pointed. Fen nodded, and they entered the hall.

Or rather, they attempted to do so. Unhappily, at this crucial moment their way was barred by a plain but determined woman undergraduate, with spectacles and a slight squint.

“Your membership cards, please!” she hissed in a stage whisper.

“We’re only coming in to listen,” said Fen impatiently.

“Shhh!” The girl put a finger to her lips. The uproar beyond them increased in volume. “No one is allowed in, Professor Fen, except members of the choir and orchestra.”

“Oh. Oh, aren’t they,” said Fen. He indicated Cadogan. “But this is Dr. Paul Hindemith, the eminent German composer.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Cadogan whispered in a foreign accent.
“Sehr vergnügt. Wie geht’s Ihnen?”

“Never mind all that now,” Fen put in. “I know Dr. Rains will be delighted to see us.” And without waiting for any further protest, they pushed their way inside.

The girl with the blue eyes and the golden hair was embedded in the very middle of the altos, and there was no way to get near her except through the basses, who stood nearby, behind the orchestra. Accordingly, they hacked out a path between the instrumentalists, under the envenomed gaze of Dr. Artemus Rains. The second horn, a sandy, undersized man, went quite out of tune with indignation. Brahms thundered and trumpeted about their ears.
“Blindly,”
the chorus roared,
“blindly from one dread hour to another.”
They knocked over the music-stand of the tympanist, sweating with the effort of counting bars, so that he failed to come in at his last entry.

The haven of the basses achieved at last, a number of further difficulties presented them­selves. The Sheldonian is not particularly spacious, and the members of a large choir have to be herded together in conditions not unreminiscent of the Black Hole of Calcutta. When Fen and Cadogan, pushing, perspiring, and creating a great deal of localized pother, had penetrated the basses to a certain distance (Cadogan shedding wicker basket, bootlaces, and dog-collar broadcast as he went) they could literally get no farther; they were wedged, and even the avenue by which they had come was now irrevocably closed and sealed. Everyone was staring at them. Moreover, an old man who had sung in the Handel Society choir for fifty years thrust a copy of the Brahms at them. This was unfortunate, as Fen, seeing no chance of moving for some time and being content to stop where he was and keep an eye on the girl they were pursuing, took it into his head to improve the shining hour by joining in the singing; and Fen’s voice, though penetrating, was neither tuneful nor accurate.

“We STAAAAY not,”
he came in suddenly,
“but WAAAANDER:
Several of the basses in front turned round as if someone had struck them in the back.
“We grief-laden,”
Fen pursued unconcernedly,
“grieee-EEEF-laden mortals!”

This was too much for Dr. Artemus Rains. He banged with his baton on the rostrum, and the choir and orchestra faded into silence. There was a general murmur of interested comment and everyone stared.

“Professor Fen,” said Dr. Rains with painful restraint. A hush fell. “You are not, I believe, a member of this choir. That being the case, would you kindly oblige me by going away?”

Fen, however, was not easily abashed, even by the presence of four hundred vaguely hostile musicians. “I think that’s a most illiberal sentiment, Rains,” he countered across the gaping tiers of choristers. “Most illiberal and discourteous. Just because I happen to make one small error in singing an extremely difficult passage—”

Dr. Rains leaned his spidery form forwards across the rostrum. “Professor Fen—” he began in a silky voice.

But he was not allowed to finish. The girl with the blue eyes, profiting by this sudden focusing of attention, had pushed her way through the altos and was now heading at a brisk pace towards the door. Unnerved by this fresh interruption, Dr. Rains swung round to glare at her. Fen and Cadogan got on the move again with alacrity, clawing their way back through the basses and the orchestra without ceremony or restraint. But this process delayed them, and the girl had been out of the hall at least half a minute by the time they reached open ground. Dr. Rains watched them go with a theatrical expression of sardonic interest.

“Now that the English Faculty has left us,” Cadogan heard him say, “we will go back to letter L.” The rehearsal started afresh.

It was nearly one o’clock, so when they emerged again, somewhat hastily, into the sunlight, Broad Street was comparatively empty. For a moment Cadogan could not see the girl; then he caught sight of the Dalmatian loping up the street the way they had come, with the girl a few paces ahead. On the opposite pavement the two men in dark suits were examining the contents of Mr. Blackwell’s window.