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‘I ran into them on my walk. Kate had rung them up–’

  ‘Kate? Who in the world is Kate?’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid. Kate Anketel. She’d rung them up about something, and told them who you are. They were all agog. They want your professional opinion about some disturbing goings-on at the manor. So we’re going to drinks.’

  ‘Damn their impertinence. They can confer with the local constable. I’m not in the least disposed–’

  ‘My dear John, the Pinkertons are the hitherto unexplored factor in your mystery. Bulkington has a thing about them, hasn’t he? So it’s essential you should case their joint too. I consider it extremely clever of me to have made the contact.’

  ‘So do I.’ Appleby said this with an air of magnanimous frankness. ‘All the same, I flatly decline to go and drink with a woman to whom you were so monstrously uncivil on the public highway.’

  ‘She was monstrously uncivil to us.’

  ‘So she was.’ Appleby held open the door of the car. ‘But that’s rather far from mending the matter.’

  ‘You’ll find that over the unfortunate episode a ready veil will be drawn. The effortless civility of well-bred persons will prevail.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. All the same–’ Appleby broke off, grinning broadly. ‘Good on you, my dear,’ he said. ‘Let’s get moving.’

  16

  The manor house at Long Canings did not suggest itself as based on any very simple rural economy. Sir Ambrose and Lady Pinkerton, together with their predecessors (whether Pinkertons or not) over a good many generations, must alike have been in the enjoyment of other and larger sources of revenue than would be constituted by half-a-dozen or a dozen farms. Without the house and within there was much mellow opulence on view. Even the portal-warding griffons on either side of the drive had a sleek and well-groomed air, as if they had lately paid a visit to a superior class of poodle-parlour. The lawns were shaved, the shrubs were clipped, the statuary deployed here and there looked at once respectably antique and rigorously tubbed: one could almost imagine the mythological ladies (who were already conveniently disrobed) as under contract to descend from their pedestals at some appointed daily hour for the purpose of performing the most far-reaching ablutions. The butler who answered the door-bell presented (unlike so many butlers) a similarly cleanly look – partly, perhaps, because he was attired not in ignobly ambiguous garments parsimoniously appropriate to either dawn or dusk, but in impeccable if sombre morning dress such as might have graced a funeral or a memorial service in the highest rank of society.

  It was disappointing that Sir Ambrose and his wife, thus surrounded by so much cushioned and indeed gilded amenity, were distinguishably lacking in repose. In her brief encounter with Lady Pinkerton earlier that day, indeed, Judith had already remarked some indefinable quality of nervous expectation not to be accounted for by a mere flint in a horse’s hoof, and which might have been held a little to excuse the notable lack of urbanity her comportment had then betrayed. She was much disposed to be gracious now – or she was this until, having taken the social measure of her guests, she had concluded that precisely that was not the appropriate social note to strike. But she was jumpy too. Being naturally of a commanding and even imperious habit, she was in fact jumpy while remaining, as it were, jumping as well. She jumped on the butler for misunder-standing something about the drinks: behaviour in the presence of strangers not to be excused (particularly in the lady of a manor) except on the score of mental perturbation of an uncommon sort. She bore every appearance of being willing to jump on Sir Ambrose if she got the chance.

  And Sir Ambrose, if circumspect, was agitated too: a condition attested by something curiously discontinuous in his manner. He had a board-room manner, and a parade-ground manner, and a manner of well-bred hesitancy and reserve, and also a sudden between-cronies manner which kept on bobbing up in the middle of any of the others. He was a very red-faced man – so much so that one was, so to speak, altogether more aware of the redness than of the face: and this lent Sir Ambrose a certain air of anonymity. Although he must have been well-accustomed to decorous entertaining, he betrayed a tendency to stand over Appleby with a poised gin bottle, as if convinced that the sooner the fellow was well tanked up, the sooner would he be persuaded to do his stuff. It was clear that he regarded the arrival of this top policeman as providential in the strictest sense. God, having lately taken the monstrous liberty of afflicting Sir Ambrose with mysterious and sinister occasions of annoyance, had now come sufficiently to His senses to take steps to set matters aright.

  ‘Elementary, my dear Watson.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Appleby, having been distracted by some interpellation of Lady Pinkerton’s, had momentarily lost the thread of his entertainer’s remarks.

  ‘Just that. “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Printed out, and pinned to each of them in turn. No sense in it, that I can see. Who the devil would Watson be?’

  ‘Who would he be? Well, Holmes’ Watson, I suppose.’

  ‘Holmes? Nobody of that name round here. Nor Watson, either. I once had a groom of that name, but he was dishonest and I sacked him. Years ago, that was. Only fellow I’ve ever had to pack off at a week’s notice in my life.’

  ‘Except Lurch,’ Lady Pinkerton said.

  ‘Ah, yes – Lurch. Only a few months ago. But that was rather your affair, my dear.’ Sir Ambrose turned back to Appleby. ‘Lurch was one of the gardeners. Quiet man, but my wife discovered he was related to a pack of communist agitators. Uncle a shop steward somewhere. Shocking thing. Fired him, of course, although he seemed decent enough. Wife and kids and so on. But one can’t take any risks.’

  ‘Of course not. Would you say that this man Lurch might be bearing you a grudge?’

  ‘Ah!’ Sir Ambrose received this as if it were a very deep question. ‘Interesting idea, that. Has its possibilities, I’d say. Cecily, what do you think?’

  ‘Most improbable.’ Lady Pinkerton spoke decisively. ‘Lurch was a most peculiar person. During his last week with us his quietness entirely deserted him. He went about singing or whistling. And he told me, quite cordially, that my husband had done him a favour. He said he felt a new man. I suppose him to have been unhinged.’

  ‘That must certainly have been the explanation.’ Appleby declined more gin, and put down his glass. ‘So can we go and look at those exhibits?’ he asked.

  ‘Certainly, my dear fellow.’ Pinkerton’s old-crony manner had broken surface. ‘I’ll be uncommonly glad to have a professional eye look them over. But not Lady Appleby, perhaps? Something a bit macabre about the effect, to tell the truth.’

  ‘Nonsense, Ambrose.’ Lady Pinkerton, having taken this opportunity to jump on her husband, produced a vigorous nod which more or less jerked Judith to her feet. ‘Lady Appleby is obviously a perfectly strong-minded woman. And has seen worse, I dare say, than a posse of scarecrows.’

  ‘Yes, my dear. Only, you know, the clothes–’

  ‘The clothes won’t startle our guests in quite the way they startled us. So come along.’

  This conversation, and the refreshment accompanying it, had taken place in a drawing-room of impressive dimensions and general richness of effect. The Pinkertons – Appleby reflected as he and Judith were led from the room – were about as philistine and tasteless as could be, and somehow they would have been less unappealing if only they had been vulgar as well. But one mustn’t be censorious; their awfulness was probably superficial and harmless; and if somebody had been playing a nasty and unnerving trick on them they deserved a certain measure of support and sympathy.

  ‘Can you think of anybody else,’ Appleby asked Pinkerton, ‘who might have malicious feelings about you?’

  ‘I’m damned if I can.’ Sir Ambrose had paused to open a green baize door – from which it appeared that the party was making its way into the domestic offices of the house. ‘Tenants and labourers all very decent folk, really. I’d venture to say we’ve managed to keep out socialistic ideas
very well.’

  ‘I don’t know that what we’re in contact with can exactly be described as a socialist idea.’

  ‘Nothing else, I’d have thought.’ Sir Ambrose was innocently puzzled. ‘Disrespect for one’s betters, you know. Dead against sound democratic feeling. But I can’t say I’m aware of anything of that sort to complain of. Try to play my own part, after all. Fair landlord, and all that. They respect it.’

  ‘What about somebody in a rather different walk of life, Sir Ambrose?’ Appleby paused. ‘For instance, your neighbour Captain Bulkington.’

  ‘My dear fellow!’ Pinkerton, astonished, had come to a dead halt. ‘The chap’s a bit of a scoundrel, without a doubt. Little better than an impostor as a crammer, and so forth. Still, a gentleman, you know. Wouldn’t go in for this sort of thing. More a matter of cottage mentality, to my mind.’

  ‘I doubt whether “Elementary, my dear Watson” comes out of a cottage – or not if it contains the peculiar joke I think it does. But here, I take it, we are?’

  ‘We have used one of the old dairies,’ Lady Pinkerton said. ‘Because of the convenient stone slabs.’

  The effect was, without doubt, startlingly like a mortuary. On the convenient stone slabs three bodies were laid out. Or so it appeared, until a second glance showed the bodies to be manufactured out of sacking, binder-twine, and straw. Each had been provided with a mask of the kind to be bought in toy-shops, and each mask had been painted an apoplectic (or Pinkerton) red. All three wore male garments of a superior although much soiled or crumpled sort. Appleby surveyed this spectacle for some moments in sober silence.

  ‘Yes,’ he said presently. ‘The idea’s there. It’s a sequence.’ He took a couple of steps forward, and without explaining this gnomic utterance. ‘Your clothes, you say?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, they are. A bit of a puzzle, that. Of course I turn things out from time to time – or my wife does – for the church jumble sales, and so forth. No objection at all to seeing some honest fellow going around the place in my old tweeds. Better than he’d get in some cheap shop or other. But, in fact, these things seem to have been burgled or pilfered from my dressing-room. Clothes pile up, rather. Tend to, haven’t you noticed, if one stops employing a valet? Idle fellows, though. Not worth their keep. Lady Appleby, I hope this isn’t too disagreeable to you?’

  ‘Not in the least.’ Judith spoke not entirely candidly. It would be rational to regard the display as merely bizarre and therefore amusing. In fact, she wasn’t sure there wasn’t something alarmingly sick about it. What it seemed incumbent to display, however, was cool interest. ‘I take it,’ she asked, pointing, ‘that the far one was the first?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Sir Ambrose nodded nervously. ‘There suddenly it was – dangling.’

  ‘In air,’ Appleby said.

  ‘Exactly so. Hanging from the cedar on the lawn – where I came on it myself. With its neck broken’ – Sir Ambrose abruptly produced a handkerchief and mopped his brow confusedly – ‘or at least looking like that. And looking like me. Appleby, I admit to you that it gave me a turn.’

  ‘Most natural,’ Appleby said.

  ‘And there’s the confounded notice, still pinned on its chest. “Elementary, my dear Watson.” By Jove – I forgot! Just have a look at the other side.’

  Appleby did as he was urged – advancing upon the spurious hanged man and turning the paper over. It showed four pencil strokes, one of which had been crossed through.

  ‘Three little nigger boys,’ Appleby said. ‘Or is that to put a wrong complexion on the matter? We move on.’

  They moved on – as far as was necessary for making an adequate inspection of the second red-faced dummy. This one had been extracted from a shallow ornamental water in a corner of the park, and a good deal of dried mud and duckweed still adhered to the antique knickerbocker suit in which it had been encased. There was again a kind of label: this time a scrap of cardboard on which Sherlock Holmes’ celebrated remark had been inscribed in indelible ink. On the back were two crosses and two straight lines. Appleby looked as if he was about to say ‘Two little nigger boys.’ All he produced, however, was the single word ‘Water’, before moving on.

  And for the third dummy the code word, as it were, was decidedly ‘Earth’. It had been lightly buried in Lady Pinkerton’s favourite rose-bed, from which it had been dug up by the successor to the subversive Lurch.

  ‘Well, well,’ Appleby said when he had examined it. ‘It is at least fairly clear that the four elements are involved.’

  ‘The four elements?’ Sir Ambrose repeated the words with deep suspicion. ‘What’s that – one of those pop groups you read about?’

  ‘Not exactly that – although it’s possible that a species of what may be called popular entertainment is in the picture. The Case of the Four Elements, perhaps. For there are four, you know. Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. It would thus appear that, at the moment, the series is incomplete. Death by fire is missing.’

  The silence following upon this pronouncement prolonged itself. Appleby appeared to have no more to say, nor any wish to extend his inspection of the grubby exhibits on view. Judith, who had now decided the joke to be quite as disgusting as she had first felt it to be, made a firm move towards the door. Whereupon the Pinkertons, whom renewed contemplation of the red-faced intruders appeared to have rendered a little dazed, ushered their visitors out. Nobody spoke until they were back in the drawing-room. There Sir Ambrose, having got his hand firmly round the gin bottle, presently found himself capable of more or less articulate speech.

  ‘Did you say “incomplete”?’ he asked. ‘Damned thing likely to go on?’

  ‘I’d suppose so.’ Appleby signified lack of interest in the gin.

  ‘Another of those things going to turn up, and be found in a bonfire?’

  ‘Well, no. This is a very literary affair. You get the technique in ballads and fairy-stories.’

  ‘Fairy-stories?’ As he echoed this, Sir Ambrose glanced covertly at his wife. He was obviously soliciting her opinion as to whether Appleby might be mad. ‘Don’t follow you, at all.’

  ‘Historians of that sort of thing,’ Appleby pursued pedantically, ‘sometimes call it the technique of incremental repetition. You simultaneously build up and mislead expectation. It’s done by chronicling a series of events in which the dominant feature of each is a constant. Always big A, as it were, plus small b, c, or d. So one expects that what will next come along will be A plus e. Only it doesn’t. In the final term of the series A has become quite a little a. And there’s a great big X, Y, or Z.’

  The deep learning evinced in these algebraical remarks evidently convinced Sir Ambrose that his suspicion as to his guest’s sanity had been an unworthy one. If he now gaped at Appleby, it was in a wondering and respectful fashion.

  ‘You don’t say so!’ he said. ‘Can’t say I’ve ever come across anything of the kind. But then I don’t read fairy-stories – or the other things you mentioned, either. Interesting, however. Deserves thinking about.’

  ‘It deserves nothing of the kind.’ Lady Pinkerton, who had been somewhat in abeyance, came well into the foreground with this. ‘What it deserves is much firmer action than we have taken so far. What you call X, Y, or Z’ – she had turned to Appleby – ‘may be attempted murder, it seems to me.’

  ‘Very true,’ Appleby said. ‘And arson as well.’

  ‘My husband dislikes anything in the nature of a scandal. He is of a retiring disposition. But when impertinence turns out to be criminal lunacy it is time to make a stand.’

  ‘Incontestably so, Lady Pinkerton. I suppose the local police know about this?’

  ‘Certainly they do. A very respectable man was sent out to us. He described himself as a Detective-Inspector. I am bound to say, however, that he did more inspecting than detecting. My husband instructed him that these incidents were to be treated as strictly confidential. In particular, they were not to be divulged to the press. My husband is
a magistrate – as I have no doubt, Sir John, you are yourself.’ Lady Pinkerton paused, seemingly in the expectation of receiving some grateful acknowledgement of this handsome recognition of Appleby’s probable status in the community. ‘His wishes in the matter have, of course, been respected.’

  ‘Of course. But this means, I suppose, that no very extensive enquiries would be practicable. By the way, when did the trouble start?’

  ‘Three months ago.’ Sir Ambrose commanded this answer with surprising promptitude. ‘Odd thing is, the fellow’s madness goes by the clock – or the calendar. Noticed it on the second occasion, and it remained true of the third. First of the month, every time!’

  ‘But it’s the first of the month today!’ Judith exclaimed.

  ‘So it is, Lady Appleby.’ Sir Ambrose did his best to lend this admission the casual air proper in an English gentleman when contemplating crisis. ‘Uncommonly good thing that your husband has turned up to look into the matter.’

  ‘I’m sure John will do his best. It just occurs to me to wonder whether you ought to have the fire brigade as well.’

  ‘Good Lord! You can’t really suppose–’

  In mid-utterance, Sir Ambrose Pinkerton broke off. The muted sound of a telephone-bell had made itself heard at some middling remove in the mansion. It fell silent, and a couple of minutes later the butler glided sombrely into the drawing-room.

  ‘The telephone, sir,’ he murmured in a confidential voice of great carrying power. ‘Detective-Inspector Graves of the County Constabulary wishes to speak to you. I explained that you were entertaining. But he says that it is an urgent matter. He says that it is very urgent, indeed.’

  Part Four

  THE DENOUEMENT WILL NOT TAKE PLACE

  17

  Miss Priscilla Pringle had followed closely, if at a discreet remove, the course of events which she had so masterfully set in train. She had done more. For several months now she had tirelessly woven a complex web of which the denouement (if webs can be thought of as having denouements) was at last imminent!