There Came Both Mist and Snow Read online

  ‘There is a strong family resemblance,’ said Appleby. ‘And it is in the Foxcrofts too. Both Wilfred and Cecil have a look of Sir Basil. And, incidentally, Wilfred and Cecil are astonishingly alike. They might almost be twins.’

  ‘Wilfred is the elder by about five years,’ I replied. I saw that in Appleby’s observation – which was accurate enough – there might be found some food for thought. So presumably did Leader, for he made his inevitable note.

  ‘I don’t suppose,’ Appleby went on, ‘that there is a picture of Wilfred here? I have only seen him as a badly wounded man.’

  ‘There is none that I know of. Hubert is just beginning a portrait of Cecil – a fantastic affair viewed in a mirror and with some mildly improper emphasis on a woman’s slipper. But that is beside the point.’

  Appleby looked at me doubtfully. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose so.’ He appeared to reflect. ‘I wonder if we might see it? I believe Leader would be interested. He does a bit himself.’

  I found it very hard to view this other than as a piece of the most unseasonable facetiousness. Nevertheless I led the way towards the attics. And Appleby continued to talk. ‘Dr Foxcroft’ – he was referring to Cecil – ‘is rather obviously a headmaster, is he not? I seem to remember him as a fellow of St Thomas’. Does he keep up his scholarship at all?’

  ‘I know nothing of his studies,’ I replied, ‘except that he reads Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.’

  Even Leader made no note this time. The omission, curiously enough, was a mistake.

  We had no business, I felt, in Hubert’s temporary studio. But Horace Cudbird had even less. Yet there was Cudbird standing in the middle of the floor – standing in a sort of dogged perplexity which was emphasized by being caught and caught again in the three mirrors which were still in position. He looked up as we entered and greeted Appleby. ‘So here you are, John. I was wondering how long it would take you to drift up here.’ He turned to me. ‘John has always been one for the arts,’ he said. ‘I’m keener on photos myself.’

  ‘Mr Appleby certainly appears to be an authority on Guardi’s brush-work.’ I was unable to resist this stroke. For Leader was looking about him in a way that was far from suggesting that he did a bit himself. We had come up here as the result of the merest levity or the most irrelevant curiosity. But even as I concluded this I looked at Appleby again and had my doubts. He was subjecting the room to the most serious scrutiny. ‘Photographs?’ he said absently to Cudbird.

  ‘Yes. And very instructive they can be.’ The brewer was looking at Appleby as one who sets a puzzle.

  Appleby stopped looking about him. For the first time he looked as if he was really thinking hard.

  ‘Particularly if one plays about with negatives and scissors.’

  ‘Mr Cudbird,’ said Appleby slowly, ‘do I understand that you feel in on this investigation?’

  ‘You’ve got it, John. And if it weren’t something improper with Wilfred Foxcroft lying at death’s door, I’d put five shillings–’

  ‘Never mind the impropriety,’ said Appleby briskly. ‘Done.’

  I looked at Leader. The disapproval on his face must have been a comical exaggeration of my own.

  13

  Of what had happened in Basil’s study there were eventually to be seven principal theories sponsored by seven different people – of whom one of the most emphatic was to be myself. But as I stood in Hubert’s studio this was hidden from me, and I felt that Cudbird’s proposal to import an amateur element into the investigation was in the most questionable taste.

  ‘I feel a little unhappy,’ I said, ‘about intruding on Hubert’s quarters in this way. So if Mr Leader’s artistic interests are satisfied–’

  I broke off, compelled to silence by the extraordinary conduct of Appleby. He had been rummaging about among the sketches on the table in the most unblushing manner, and occasionally showing one to Cudbird as if he were setting a puzzle of his own. But now he had abandoned this and was delving into the painting materials near the easel. Among these were a number of bottles; each of these he picked up gingerly in turn, and sniffed at. It was just the way in which detectives are supposed to behave; the effect was enhanced when he produced a small magnifying glass and proceeded to scrutinize one largish bottle with the minutest care. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it depends on the powder and the weapon. But sometimes firing a single shot will get one’s hand into quite a smoky mess. Turpentine is then useful.’ He put down the bottle. ‘The incriminating fingerprint, however, is not to be observed.’

  Somehow I felt suddenly depressed. The intellectual stimulation – the sense of a hunt going forward – had suddenly failed me. Instead, I saw an able and decently educated young man pursuing an undignified profession and proposing to involve Belrive in a great deal of scandal and embarrassment. At the same time I distinguished in myself a wholly irrational annoyance with Wilfred Foxcroft. It was callous; I wished him no ill; but I could not help feeling that it was just like him to plague us all by getting in the way of a mysterious bullet. I remembered his large confidence with the revolver as we drove up in the taxi; his informative prattle about safety catches and Verona drops. And even as I did so my mood changed. Suddenly I was thinking of Wilfred with a large benevolence and wishing for reassuring news from the hospital. As if to compensate for this again, the image of Cecil rose in my mind and I reflected what a very irritating and pompous creature Cecil was. I felt it rather a pity that it was not Cecil who had chosen to write a letter at Basil’s desk…

  I came awake with a jerk. There was only one explanation of these vagaries, and it could be read on the face of my watch. When should we be allowed to go to bed? I had a horrid vision of these sniffings and prowlings and questionings protracting themselves into the small hours; of Belrive being given what Lucy calls ‘the works’ and permitted no wink of sleep until all was discovered. I turned and addressed Appleby – raising my voice unnaturally, like a chairman determined to bring a straggling meeting to a close. ‘Since it is growing somewhat late–’

  Appleby looked at his watch. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘as it is growing quite late we may expect Wale to have got back. And he is the next person, Mr Ferryman, with whom we must have some talk.’

  Desperation seized me. ‘Really, if you would excuse me–’

  ‘These fashionable doctors feel they have to be very discreet. He will like to know that there is a witness on whom he may rely. Shall we go down?’

  It was the merest blarney. But I gave in. We moved toward the door. Cudbird, who had been silent for some time, gave a last dogged look round. ‘I must be finding Sir Basil to say good night,’ he said. ‘It was hardly right to stay, I’m afraid, being nothing of the family. Still, I can’t help but take a real interest in Belrive now.’

  I halted. ‘Mr Cudbird, are you going to buy the Priory?’

  He looked at me in his rather wary way, suspicious of hostility. ‘It’s very likely.’

  ‘Would it be unpardonable to ask what for?’

  ‘A pub with a garden, a concert-hall, a skating-rink, a swimming-pool, a fun fair for the children, a crèche, dancing, a workers’ film society, a bit of a college.’ His eyes were sparkling as he reeled off this, to me, appalling catalogue. ‘Mind you,’ he said quickly, ‘there’s money in it!’ He looked from one to the other of us defiantly. ‘Make no mistake about that.’ He was gone.

  Leader was looking bewildered. Appleby chuckled. ‘Out-and-out philanthropy. He’ll spend thousands. And every old rascal in the town will say Cudbird has gone soft at last.’

  ‘I think,’ I said, ‘that he might choose a more appropriate site for his rash social experiment.’

  Appleby crossed to a window and drew back the curtain. I suppose he could just see the intermittent glow of the great bottle licking the ruins which had once been the nerve centre of all the country round.

  ‘It would not be wholly impossible,’ he said formally, ‘to maintain that you are mistaken
.’

  We went downstairs. I was ruffled, as one can be when one sees a point without at all agreeing with it. Nothing pays less regard to sentiment than does sentimentality. And I could see only sentimentality in Cudbird’s – and Basil’s – plan; for the sake of an ephemeral ‘progressive’ experiment it was going to obliterate all that was truly venerable at Belrive. It was no doubt because of the mood I was in that I found the ensuing incident peculiarly irritating.

  We had nearly reached the hall – we were, in fact, just on the spot from which Lucy and myself had observed the Cambrell affair in the afternoon – when Appleby suddenly froze. The word is not too strong; his instantaneous, trained immobility put me in mind of those rather tiresome dogs employed to point at game. Involuntarily, I found myself behaving in the same way, and behind us Leader also came to a halt. We were spying on Cecil Foxcroft.

  And Cecil seemed to be engaged in a somewhat similar activity himself. There was no one else in the hall; he was prowling round it much as he might prowl round a dormitory or changing-room when the boys were safely off on a run. The censor preparing to catch out the morally reprobate while warily apprehensive of being caught out himself; the proprietor ambiguously trespassing on what he has leased to others; the curious guest aware that curious servants may be round the corner: in Cecil all these displeasing suggestions were evident. When I first observed him he was trying the doors of a large glass-fronted cabinet. Having assured himself that they were unlocked he walked over to the fireplace and stood there a moment glancing round the hall – without, however, raising his eyes to the level at which we stood. Then he returned to the cabinet, opened it, and appeared to rummage within. The operation took perhaps a minute; when it was concluded he closed the doors again, made another survey of the hall, and moved off towards a second cabinet. I greatly disliked the whole thing and it was a relief when Appleby continued his interrupted progress downstairs.

  We came up with Cecil just as he had opened the cabinet. It was an ancient and roomy Dutch affair, with iron-bound wooden doors. On the shelves were a number of large earthenware jars, painted with a variety of primitive designs in yellow and brown.

  ‘Predynastic,’ said Appleby – more or less in Cecil’s ear.

  The boys had returned from their run distinctly out of time. Cecil’s jump was a crumb of malicious comfort in the whole deplorable situation. Leader was still holding his notebook ritualistically before his stomach and had all the appearance of being about to demand an explanation of my cousin’s conduct out of hand.

  Cecil had recourse to severity. ‘Precisely. Undoubtedly of the Fourth Millennium, Mr – um – Appleby. Such things should be under lock and key.’

  And Cecil put his spectacles on his nose and looked steadily at Leader. This, if I remember aright, is the standard scholastic technique for dealing with boys against whom no logical weapons are handy at the moment. But Leader was unimpressed. ‘Lock and key?’ he said. ‘We’re going to get more under lock and key than a heap of heathen pots.’ He gave the tip of his pencil a hungry lick.

  Cecil frowned. ‘Property must be conserved. There has undoubtedly been an attempt at theft. Why else should Wilfred have been shot? And yet, when our energies should be bent on discovering what, if anything, has been stolen, Basil will do nothing at all. There is a vein of irresponsibility in Basil. Such carelessness’ – he waved vaguely at the rows of Egyptian utensils – ‘is really a moral weakness. For if a man will not respect his own property how can we be assured that he will respect the property of others?’ And Cecil, as if dimly aware of the dialectical weaknesses of this proposition, frowned very severely indeed.

  ‘So you are endeavouring,’ said Appleby, ‘to make Sir Basil’s moral weakness good?’

  It was not, I reflected, at all incredible. Cecil had that sort of mind. That his brother might at this moment be coughing out his life in hospital would not at all distract him from the sacred task of conserving property – even property which was presently to be dispersed in order to shoot rockets at the moon. The thing was an instinct with him. And I had a momentary fantastic vision. I saw Cecil, stuffed and in a glass case, standing in some museum of the future as an excellent specimen of Acquisitive Man. And this prompted me to say, absurdly: ‘The Guardi; Mr Appleby entertains the gravest fears about that. It appears to be there still – but what if a copy has been cunningly substituted? Mr Appleby – whose mind is a veritable omne scibile – doubts if Guardi ever painted water with that – ah – square touch.’

  Cecil looked at me suspiciously. ‘Substituted? One has heard of such things being done. Leonardo’s Mona Lisa is said to be an instance. A remarkable picture.’ Cecil took his spectacles off again and turned to Leader. His expression became affable and instructive. ‘She is as old,’ he said, ‘as the rocks amid which she sits.’

  It was when our conversation had reached this pitch of inconsequence that Appleby chose to ask: ‘Dr Foxcroft, would you be so good as to tell us what you were doing at a quarter to eight this evening?’

  Cecil appeared to abstract his mind with an effort from Leonardo’s masterpiece. ‘At a quarter to eight? I was in my bedroom.’

  ‘Just what were your movements from tea-time onwards?’

  ‘I sat reading in the library until about half past six. Then I went to my room and wrote letters. At about half past seven I changed. I did not come downstairs until the disturbance in the hall.’

  ‘From half past six onwards you did not leave your room?’

  ‘That is so.’

  Cecil, it occurred to me, had suddenly turned into a model witness – brief and to the point. And even as this thought went through my head I heard the rustle of the leaves of Leader’s notebook. ‘Dr Foxcroft,’ he said, ‘we have had certain statements from servants.’ He paused heavily; his manner was very different from Appleby’s. ‘And we have been told by the butler that at half past seven he took a message to your room. He knocked twice, got no reply, and came away. How would you account for that now, sir?’

  There was a pause and I glanced at Appleby. He was looking far from expectant. And Cecil’s reply was brief and sufficient once more. ‘I was engaged,’ he said solemnly, ‘in prayer.’

  ‘Prayer,’ said Leader gloomily, and wrote.

  ‘Meditation and prayer,’ amplified Cecil urbanely. ‘It is my habit at that hour.’

  There was a slightly embarrassed silence. Here, I thought, was something Lucy had never hit upon – a new sort of alibi and one difficult to shake. Not, for that matter, that Cecil could call his saints into court…

  We were interrupted by the glass door from the lobby swinging back. Sir Mervyn Wale came in, shaking a thin powdering of snow from an enveloping fur-lined coat. ‘Snow…mist…a hard frost,’ he said. ‘A wretched night for such adventures.’ He paused, glanced keenly at Appleby, turned to Cecil. ‘I got Badger,’ he said. ‘He’s not what he was.’ Wale took off his coat and walked with it towards the fire. ‘Not a shadow of his old self, poor fellow.’ He spread the coat over a chair. ‘No one to touch Badger ten years ago, you know.’

  Cecil’s features worked; they arranged themselves into an expression of decorous disappointment. ‘You mean, Wale,’ he asked, ‘that Badger has performed the operation on Wilfred with – ah – inadequate dexterity?’

  ‘Inadequate fiddlesticks.’ Wale, like many fashionable physicians, had two manners: suave and brusque. The brusque was now well to the fore. ‘Never seen the thing done better. But slow. His record, you know, was–’ As if remembering his exclusively lay auditory, Wale stopped, turned away, warmed his hands at the fire. ‘Fortunate we got Badger. Tell him what to do, of course. Must be off to bed. I’m past this sort of thing myself.’ He turned round and squared shoulders which were drooping with fatigue.

  ‘There is hope, then, for Wilfred’s life?’

  ‘Hope? Of course there is. Serious, naturally. A close call. Deuced fortunate about Badger.’

  And Wale moved towards the staircase �
�� competent, old, frayed, oddly abrupt. But my glance was all for Cecil. It was not often that he looked other than pleased with himself and with the world he adorned. I have remarked on his capacity for unawareness when stricture or satire was in the air. I have remarked that in primitive situations he would be dangerously without a sense of danger… It was not so now. He was looking after Wale with consternation…with dismay…with terror open and declared.

  14

  We were back in the study. Appleby had shown no disposition to pursue Wale for that interview in quest of which we had left Hubert’s attic. Nor had he shown any further interest in Cecil. Indeed his interest in the household seemed to have evaporated for the time; Leader had been to the library and announced that police inquiries were over for the night.

  ‘They’re going to bed,’ said Leader, returning to the room. ‘I suppose we’d better–’

  ‘Leader’ – Appleby looked up from the brown study – ‘did you make a note of that book?’

  ‘Book?’ Leader was bewildered.

  Appleby turned to me. ‘The book Dr Foxcroft has been reading. Didn’t you say it was Law’s Serious Call?’

  ‘Yes. Cecil has mislaid it. But I don’t see–’

  ‘That interview in the hall with Wale. Would you agree that Dr Foxcroft was perturbed at the end of it?’

  ‘Perturbed?’ I said impatiently. ‘Cecil was terrified.’

  Appleby nodded. ‘That is no doubt what Sir Basil calls the better English of it. Terrified. Did you form any notion of the cause?’

  I hesitated. ‘It is a dreadful thing to say, but what seemed to scare Cecil was Wale’s announcement that Wilfred would probably recover.’

  ‘That’s it.’ Leader interrupted with more animation than he had yet shown. ‘And we must make what we can of it.’

  ‘We must make what we can,’ said Appleby, ‘of this.’ He paused in some sort of recollection. ‘“Hope? Of course there is. Serious, naturally. A close call. Deuced fortunate about Badger.”’