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  These thoughts angered Miss Pringle very much, and it is surely an instance of the largeness of spirit in this noble woman that she saw nothing in them to occasion alarm. Cold prudence would doubtless have suggested that she heed the first sign-post pointing in the direction of Worcestershire; that she should, in fact, cut her losses (which were in the main merely of time and, perhaps, self-conceit), lie low for a month or two, and do her best never to think of Long Canings again. Captain Bulkington had proved in the event, indeed, less lethal than she had hoped, but the record displayed him clearly enough as an eccentric, unreliable, malicious, and perhaps tricky character: somebody to give a wide berth to unless in the interest of some positive benefit to oneself. Such a benefit to Miss Pringle was no longer in question. She was seeking out the Captain now to no better purpose than that of permitting herself the luxury of giving him a piece of her mind. Yes – there can be no doubt whatever that Miss Pringle would have done better to go home.

  ‘My fair temptress, ’pon my soul!’ Captain Bulkington said – and produced a high cackle of a laugh which Miss Pringle did not recall quite to have heard before. He had opened his front door himself. ‘Come to lighten my solitude. Capital thing. Come in.’

  ‘Your solitude?’ Miss Pringle echoed. Instinctive propriety, as ever, was strong in her. ‘But I take it that your housekeeper–?’

  ‘Sleeps in the village, my dear. And as for those two louts, they’re both past history, praise God. Jenkins has absconded, and Waterbird has walked out. There’s a difference, you know – what you might call a technical difference. Jenkins slunk off. It upset Waterbird, and he had a word with me. He’d have had words with me if I’d given him the chance. As it was, he got in one or two disobliging things. If I’d been thirty years younger, he said, he’d have left me a couple of black eyes to remember him by.’ Rather surprisingly, Captain Bulkington chuckled again on a frankly joyous note. ‘Good riddance, eh? And leaves you my only resource, my dear. So come into my sanctum. Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly. Ha, ha!’

  It was suddenly borne in upon Miss Pringle that she was now closeted with a near-madman in an empty house in a retired situation. She had rather forgotten the madness of Bulkington. It seemed pretty apparent now. Suddenly too, there was borne in upon her a realisation of the irrationality of her own present position. She had come to denounce Bulkington. But for what? For failing to murder a harmless if tiresome neighbour? Or for failing to allow himself to be detected and apprehended in an attempt at such a murder? The second of these reproaches (if overheard by third parties) would surely sound even dottier than the first. There was, of course, what might be called the formal position: she had provided – all-trustingly – a kind of correspondence course in detective literature, and Bulkington had made perverted use of her ideas by using them to launch at least a minor campaign of terror against Sir Ambrose Pilkington, Bart. But that didn’t, somehow, now seem a very promising line. She would really do better simply to hit Bulkington on the head with her umbrella, and go away. Unfortunately she wasn’t provided with an umbrella so this course wasn’t practicable. So what line was she to take?

  The problem proved to be one she didn’t have to face, since Captain Bulkington took a brisk initiative himself. He looked Miss Pringle up and down – rather in the manner of a woman expertly deciding where another woman does her shopping, or perhaps of the sort of person who guesses your age or your weight at a fair.

  ‘£5,000,’ Captain Bulkington said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ There was perplexity in Miss Pringle’s voice. She didn’t take this in at all.

  ‘You can run to it easily.’ Captain Bulkington knew what he was talking about. ‘Even if it’s not in your current account, the bank will make no bones about protecting your interest by honouring the cheque.’

  Miss Pringle was about to say, ‘I think you must be insane’. But a writer dislikes the enunciation of lame half-truths, and she decided to hold her peace.

  ‘Times change,’ Captain Bulkington said comfortably. ‘It was a mere £500 we talked about before. And that trifle was to pass in the other direction – ha-ha! Tempus fugit, tempus edax something-or-other.’

  ‘Do you have the impertinence to suggest that there is some pressing reason why I should pay you a large sum of money?’ Miss Pringle spoke boldly, but she was not really feeling very bold. What she was feeling might best have been described as the menace of the unknown. Bulkington was extravagantly pleased with himself, and she couldn’t at all guess why. Of course the whole situation was extremely awkward and delicate – but then it was surely that for this dreadful man quite as much as for herself. Had he something up his sleeve? She very much feared that this must be the state of the case. ‘If there is any question of compensation,’ Miss Pringle continued somewhat wildly, ‘it ought certainly to be the other way round. For several months now, I have been put to much trouble and expense.’

  ‘Ah! And to what purpose, my dear? Just tell me what you think it has all been in aid of.’

  ‘I undertook to supply you with the materials for a harmless romance. Greatly to my embarrassment, you have used them – or part of them – for the outrageous purpose of harassing an inoffensive gentleman. A landed gentleman’ – Miss Pringle amplified with emphasis – ‘resident in this county.’ For a moment it seemed to her that this was quite a hopeful line to take, after all. ‘And I am by no means certain that you might not have gone further still.’

  ‘I’ll bet you’re not.’ Captain Bulkington produced his spine-chilling chuckle. ‘Just a few red-faced dummies littering the old idiot’s park! There wouldn’t be much in that for you to base your blackguardly blackmail on.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘It’s what you’ve been after, isn’t it? I saw it in your face, the first time we met. I even saw it in the face of Orlando your cat.’ Captain Bulkington found this imbecile and offensive pleasantry so amusing that he roared with laughter. ‘Well, I thought I’d have you on. Lead you a little up the garden path, my dear. See just how far you would go. And I’m full of admiration, mind you. You’ve been most fiendishly clever.’

  Miss Pringle, although remaining sufficiently rational to question the justice of this commendation, could not suppress a small glow of gratification. Still, it was beginning to look as if, to escape from this developing nightmare, she would have to be very clever indeed.

  ‘You’ve kept your options open,’ Captain Bulkington said, ‘and that’s always a great thing. Your weakness, if I may say so, has been on the psychological side. I’m a very simple fellow, you know, and at the same time what you might call the very type of the rational man.’ As the Captain thus characterised himself he looked – it seemed to Miss Pringle – rather more indisputably mad than he had ever done before. ‘You thought of me as an unbalanced sort of chap, who had developed a senseless hatred of that idiot Pinkerton, and who might be coaxed into the commission of nothing less than un crime gratuit.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Miss Pringle recognised the feebleness of her remark even as she uttered it. She did, of course, know perfectly well what is meant by this French expression, nor ought she to have been surprised that Captain Bulkington (engaged, as he was, in the higher education of the young) commanded it. She was surprised, all the same. And she was becoming thoroughly unnerved as well.

  ‘Your idea was that, if you played your cards cleverly, there would be either the most splendid publicity in the affair or a good round sum in your pocket to induce you to keep me out of the picture. That’s what I mean by keeping your options open.’

  ‘I never for a moment–’ Miss Pringle fell silent, baffled. She had never, of course, considered the remote possibility of extracting money from Bulkington. It was only too clear, for one thing, that he hadn’t any. But it seemed that her actual intention had been lucid to him almost from the first. And this humiliated Miss Pringle. It was like having a reader tumble to the solution of one of her baffling mysteries
not much further on than Chapter Four or Five.

  ‘What you failed to consider,’ Captain Bulkington went on, ‘was that the endeavour to coax me into crime might well be criminal in itself.’

  ‘The endeavour to coax you–?’ It came to Miss Pringle that she had, in fact, done something very like this. Fortunately, it had been on an occasion strictly tête-à-tête. ‘You are talking utter nonsense,’ she said coldly.

  ‘Then let us hear a little of the evidence, my dear.’ As he spoke, Captain Bulkington moved across his sanctum and made some small movement of a hand which, for the moment, Miss Pringle was unable to interpret. And, immediately, a third voice was heard in the room. But it wasn’t, strictly, a third voice. It was Miss Pringle’s own voice – unrecognisable except by an effort, as one’s own recorded voice commonly is.

  ‘Kidnapping?’ Miss Pringle heard herself say – unmistakably on a note of disappointment.

  ‘Kidnapping? I’m afraid that kidnapping wouldn’t interest me very much. I’d scarcely consider myself competent to work out anything of the kind, or to give you an effective hand at it. Murder is another matter. I could put you on the rails there.’

  ‘Ha, ha! We understand each other, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I am sure we do. Sir Ambrose is to be your victim. He is going to be killed, and the killer is going to get away with it. But just who – I mean, what sort of person – is going to commit the crime? Have you at all thought, for instance, of somebody rather like yourself?’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha! Kidnapping and murder! How about that?’

  ‘Arson could be got in, too.’

  ‘Arson’s quite an idea. Yes, arson attracts me.’

  ‘Captain Bulkington, have you considered what means we might take to launch this joint enterprise?’

  ‘Suggest you move in here.’

  ‘It would be best to proceed differently. I suggest that we correspond, but there is one condition which must be observed. We have been led into talking at times almost as if we were contemplating real crime–’

  ‘Good Lord! But you’re entirely right. Extraordinary thing.’

  ‘A mere shorthand, of course.’

  ‘Just that. You express it deuced well.’

  ‘A façon de parler, in fact.’

  ‘Quite so, quite so.’

  ‘My own letters will be strictly about the writing of a book. Your own will observe a similar discretion.’

  ‘Damned good tip. About the money now. Remember some mention of £500? Would that be about right, if we brought the thing off?’

  ‘For the mere technical know-how for a single simple murder it would be a most adequate remuneration.’

  Thus confusedly did there come to Miss Pringle an ingeniously cut version of what had been a rambling and predominantly scatty conversation. Such was her perturbation, she was hearing it only imperfectly, perhaps, in its edited form. But two impressions remained with her. It had been reduced to something more or less businesslike in tone. And her own voice, intermittently at least, was heavy with a coarse conspiratorial irony!

  ‘Interesting, eh?’ the Captain was saying. ‘Two ways of taking it, of course. Either, my dear, you were selling murder and are of interest to the police as a consequence, or you had some crackpot notion in your head that would make you the laughing stock of England. So – as I said – £5,000.’

  22

  The situation was one which a lower-class criminal (uncommon in Miss Pringle’s fictions) might have pronounced a fair cop. Miss Pringle was amazed that the extreme vulnerability of her grand design had not been evident to her from the first. The least disastrous issue of it now appeared to be that she would presently figure in the public prints as a harmless crackpot. ‘Crackpot’ had been Captain Bulkington’s word, and it was rankling. It was doing this because, through all her confusion and dismay, Miss Pringle quite clearly perceived that it was the Captain who was really mad. Cunning, yes – but also deeply mad as well. Sooner or later, they would have to lock him up. And they wouldn’t have to lock her up – or not, at least, in any institution for the mentally deranged. To think of Captain Bulkington ending his days in such a place (perhaps years after having had £5,000 out of her) was really rather sad. Was it not – come to think of it – unbearable? At this point Miss Pringle recalled that she had an emergency plan.

  ‘Very well,’ Miss Pringle said composedly. ‘We must talk. But not in this room. It has been bugged once, and may be bugged again.’ She paused on this, pleased that, even in crisis, the technical terminology of her craft did not desert her. ‘And not in this house, either. We’ll settle things up, if you please, in the open air.’

  ‘After 1 a.m.?’ Captain Bulkington said dubiously. ‘Mild weather, of course. Still, perhaps a bit chilly for a lady – eh?’ He paused on this really rather touching solicitude. ‘And particularly for a lady of uncertain years.’ Achieving this gratuitous piece of malice at the expense of his intended victim of hideous blackmail, Captain Bulkington laughed loudly. He laughed again – and this time his laugh turned into the maniacal cackle. Miss Pringle, if intimidated, was encouraged as well.

  They went into the hall of ‘Kandahar’, and Captain Bulkington opened the front door. The hall was an ill-lit and gloomy place, and Miss Pringle might well have missed the fact that the Captain had unobtrusively possessed himself of a stout walking-stick. She marked this, however, and immediately rather wished she had something of the sort herself. But within reach there was nothing more suitable for assisting a pedestrian than a medium-sized ebony elephant – trumpeting with upraised trunk – which stood on a table near the door. Captain Bulkington was now for a moment preoccupied with reaching for a deer-stalker hat from a peg. Miss Pringle grabbed the elephant – conveniently by his trunk – and thrust it beneath what was fortunately a voluminous coat. It was a stage in the emergency plan.

  Night, silence, and the untended gardens of ‘Kandahar’ received the late collaborators in a labour of detective literature.

  ‘It is useless,’ Miss Pringle said firmly, ‘to be unrealistic. For either of us to be unrealistic. Compromise must be achieved.’

  ‘Compromise fiddlesticks!’ Captain Bulkington barked into the darkness. Argument had been going on for some minutes, during which the two contracting parties had rounded the house and entered what Miss Pringle uncertainly sensed as an abandoned kitchen garden. A moon of sorts had appeared – punctually, she supposed – on the eastern horizon, and she could now sufficiently distinguish the Captain’s form beside her to bash him tolerably accurately on the head. But just where was the well? On the last occasion of her leaving ‘Kandahar’ (and before making her way to the Jolly Chairman and the unexpected society of Messrs Waterbird and Jenkins) she had taken care to make a rapid survey of Captain Bulkington’s policies. She could not confidently feel, however, that in the near-darkness her bearings were going to be at all easy to find.

  And, meanwhile, she played for time. She talked in a prolix and confusing way about her finances. She protested her inability to find anything like £5,000 – but she was careful to do this on a note of progressively weakening resolve. As a result, she hoped, Captain Bulkington was feeling he could afford to humour her – as he had done, it might be said, in agreeing to these negotiations taking place thus eccentrically en plein air.

  But – once more – where was the well? It was essential to her emergency plan that she should be able to tumble the corpse into it. If a man falls down a very deep well there is nothing more likely than that he should knock his brains out in the process. Miss Pringle’s professional studies had made her quite clear on this point. Whereas if the same man is found merely sprawled in his kitchen garden –

  At this point Miss Pringle’s meditations were interrupted by a scream. She had – she realised, much to her surprise – uttered it herself. And she had done this because she had seen a ghost.

  At least she had seen a white and hovering presence of uncertain dimensions not much more than a dozen
yards away. It might have been a sheeted dwarf. It might have been an ectoplasmic apparition in a state of semi-deliquescence. In fact, it was the ‘Kandahar’ goat. And – quite suddenly – it was no longer hovering. It was hurling itself in Miss Pringle’s direction with almost incredible velocity.

  Well was it for Miss Pringle in that moment that she was under the protection of a military man. The goat had ingeniously swerved in its charge, very much as if indelicately proposing that its impact upon Miss Pringle should be of posterior effect. But Captain Bulkington (who had produced a roar of manly rage) took two steps forward and lashed out at the creature with his stick. And at this the creature gave a yelp of agony (it was almost a human sound, and Miss Pringle, for some reason, didn’t like it at all) before turning and vanishing into the night.

  And now Miss Pringle and Captain Bulkington resumed their deliberations and their stroll. Not that it was exactly a stroll. For the Captain’s pace was quickening, and there was something obscurely purposive about the course he steered. Miss Pringle had a sense of it as a circular or spiral course, narrowing towards a point. Had she been in a condition of mind apt for recalling the English poets, she might have felt herself in the condition of a pern in a gyre.

  And Captain Bulkington was only half-attending to her. She was sure he was determined to have his £5,000. But now there was something else on his mind. He was muttering to himself as he moved. Once or twice he stopped, and produced his weird and gloating cackle of laughter. Then he would press on again, warily but urgently, towards an unseen goal.