Contents

Cover

About the Book

About the Author

Also by Nicholas Blake

Title Page

I: The Assistant Commissioner’s Tale

II: The Airman’s Tale

III: A Christmas Tale

IV: A Dead Man’s Tale

V: A Twisted Tale

VI: The Don’s Tale

VII: Telltale

VIII: A Tale of Woe

IX: A Tale Curtailed

X: Told In A —

XI: The Traveller’s Tale

XII: Tales From the Past

XIII: The Old Nurse’s Tale

XIV: ‘As a Tale That is Told’

XV: The Tale Retold

Thou Shell of Death

The Assistant Commissioner’s Tale

A WINTER AFTERNOON in London. Twilight is descending with the same swift and noiseless efficiency as the lifts in a thousand hotels and stores and offices. Electric signs, winking, shifting, unrolling, flaring and blaring, announce the varied blessings of twentieth-century civilisation, proclaim the divinity of this port and that actress: a few stars, which have had the temerity to appear, seem to have quickly retired from the competition into higher air. In the streets a preponderance of children and brown paper parcels shows that Christmas is near. The shop windows, too, are piled with that diversity of obscene knick-knacks which nothing but the spirt of universal goodwill could surely tolerate—calendars to suit every bad taste or every degree of personal animosity, chromium-plated cigar cutters, sets of ivory toothpicks, nameless articles in fancy leather, illuminated and perhaps illuminating texts, bogus jewels and synthetic foods—an orgy of the superfluous. Men and money circulate with feverish activity. Even the traffic seems to pulse with greater din and violence through the main arteries, as though the whole city was sprinting desperately down a last lap.

Vavasour Square lay out of the main currents of this Christmas spate. Its superb eighteenth-century houses stood aloof amidst the gathering darkness, like aristocrats deprecating the gaudy, loud-voiced spirit of the times. The clamour of the big streets reached them subdued to a whisper, abashed by the chill hauteur of their facades. In the garden of the square, plane trees sketched leisurely and consummate gestures against the sky, like the arms of noble ladies in brocade, and the grass held all the suavity of old tradition. Even the dogs that had the privilege of inhabiting this exclusive neighborhood seemed to address their friends or their lampposts with the courtly grace of Beaus and Corinthians. Nigel Strangeways, looking out of the window of No. 28, muttered to himself a couplet from Pope. He looked down at his waistcoat and was vaguely astonished to find it West-of-England cloth, not flowered silk. He would have been far more astonished had he been told that out of this backwater he was shortly to be swirled into the strangest, the most complicated and the most melodramatic case in all his career.

Nigel, after a brief stay at Oxford, in the course of which he had neglected Demosthenes in favour of Freud, had turned to the profession of criminal investigator—the only profession left, he was wont to remark, which gave scope for good manners and scientific curiosity. His aunt, Lady Marlinworth, with whom he was having tea this afternoon, took good manners for granted. As to scientific curiosity she was more doubtful: it had a flavour of the banausic, the not-quite-quite. There were other things about Nigel that made here uneasy; such as his habit of taking his teacup for walks with him round the room and leaving it on the very edge of whatever article of furniture happened to be handy.

‘Nigel,’ she said, ‘there is a little table beside you; it would be more suitable than the seat of that chair.’

Nigel hastily removed the offending object and placed it on the table. He looked at his aunt. She was fragile and delicately tinted as one of her own teacups, perfect in this other-worldly setting. He wondered what would happen if she were to be dropped suddenly into the middle of a violent, vulgar situation—a murder, for instance. Would she just smash into a hundred delicate fragments?

‘Well, Nigel, I haven’t seen you for a long time. I hope you haven’t been overworking. Your—er—profession must be very exacting. Still, it has compensations, no doubt. You must come into contact with a number of interesting persons.’

‘Certainly not overworking. I haven’t had a case worth mentioning since that affair down at Sudeley Hall.’

Lord Marlinworth laid down a sandwich with some deliberation and tapped delicately with two fingers on the rosewood table before him. His appearance was so identical with that of the earl in a musical comedy, that Nigel could never look at him for long without pinching himself.

‘Ter-tum,’ said Lord Marlinworth, ‘that was the affair at the preparatory school, if my memory serves me. The newspapers made considerable stir about it. I have not had the acquaintance of any schoolmasters, not since my salad days. Excellent fellows, no doubt. Though I can only deprecate the effeminacy which I see creeping into education today. “Spare the rod”, you know, “spare the rod”. I believe a connection of ours is engaged in the teaching profession, headmaster of some quite reputable school—Winchester, is it? or Rugby? The name escapes my memory for the moment.’

Nigel escaped any further memories of Lord Marlinworth, for at this moment his uncle, Sir John Strangeways, was shown in. Sir John had been the favourite brother of Nigel’s father, and on the latter’s death Sir John had become the boy’s guardian. In a few years a bond of the deepest attachment had grown up between the two. Sir John was a man of rather less than medium height: he had a thick sandy moustache and large hands, and his clothing gave one always the impression that he had just changed, hastily and unwillingly, out of an old gardening coat. His bearing, on the other hand, was brisk, compact, self-assured and somehow invigorating, like that of a family doctor or a competent psychiatrist: contrasting in turn with this were his eyes, which held the remote horizon look of the dreamer. Whatever deduction as to his calling one might have made from these contradictory characteristics, one would almost certainly not have hit on the correct one. Sir John was neither a landscape gardener, a poet, or a physician: he was, in actual fact, Assistant Commissioner of Police.

He stumped briskly into the room, kissed Lady Marlinworth, clapped her husband on the back, and cocked his head at Nigel.

‘Well, Elizabeth! Well, Herbert! Been looking for you, Nigel. Rang up your flat, and they told me you were over here. Got a job for you. Ah, a cup of tea. Thanks, Elizabeth. So you’ve not got into the habit of cocktails at teatime yet.’ His eyes twinkled quizzically at the old lady. He was in some ways a simple soul, and could never deny himself the pleasure of a leg-pull.

‘Cocktails at teatime! My dear John! What a horrible idea! Cocktails, indeed! Why, I remember my dear father practically turning a young man out of the house because he asked for one before dinner. My father’s sherry, of course, was famous all over the country, which made it still worse. I’m afraid Scotland Yard is getting you into bad habits, John.’

The old lady bridled, secretly delighted to be thought capable of the excesses of fast young things. Lord Marlinworth tapped discreetly upon the table and spoke with the air of one who understands all and can pardon all.

‘Ah, yes; cocktails. A drink imported, I am told, from America. The custom of drinking cocktails at all hours of the day is on the increase, undoubtedly, amongst certain sections of society. I have always found a good sherry sufficient for my needs, but I dare say these American beverages are not unpalatable. Tempora mutantur. We live in times of rapid change. In my young days a man had time to savour life, to roll it round his tongue, like an old brandy. But now these bright young people take it in gulps. Well, well. We must not stand in the way of Progress.’

Lord Marlinworth sat back again and made a benign gesture with his right hand, as though permitting Progress to resume its advance.

‘Are you going down to Chatcombe for Christmas?’ asked Sir John.

‘Yes, we are leaving town tomorrow. We think of going in the car: the trains are so disagreeably full at this time of the year.’

‘Come across your new tenant at the Dower House yet?’

‘We have not had the pleasure of meeting him personally yet,’ replied Elizabeth Marlinworth. ‘He had unexceptionable references, of course; but, really, he is quite an embarrassingly famous young man. We seem to have done nothing but answer questions about him since he took the house. Don’t we, Herbert? It quite taxes my powers of invention.’

‘And who is this famous young man?’ asked Nigel.

‘Not so young as all that. Famous, if you like. Fergus O’Brien,’ said Sir John.

Nigel whistled. ‘Great Scott! The Fergus O’Brien? The legendary airman. The Mystery Man who Retired from Life of Daredevil Adventure to Seclusion of English Countryside. I’d no idea that he’d made the Dower House his hermitage—’

‘If you had come to visit your aunt lately, you would have heard,’ Lady Marlinworth rebuked mildly.

‘But how wasn’t it in the papers? They generally follow him about like a private detective. All they said was that he’d retired somewhere into the country.’

‘Oh, they were squared,’ said Sir John. ‘There were reasons. Well, you two,’ he continued, ‘if you’ll excuse us. I’ll take Nigel into the study. We’ve got to confabulate.’

Lady Marlinworth gave a gracious consent, and Nigel and his uncle were soon ensconced in huge leather armchairs, Sir John smoking the foul cherrywood pipe which was the bane and embarrassment of his official colleagues.

The two made an odd contrast. Sir John sat solid and upright in his chair, dwarfed by it, economical of phrase and gesture, looking now rather like an extraordinarily intelligent, tow-haired little terrier, except for that impressive longsightedness in his blue eyes. Nigel’s six feet sprawled all over the place; his gestures were nervous and a little uncouth; a lock of sandy-coloured hair drooping over his forehead, and the deceptive naïveté of his face in repose gave him a resemblance to an overgrown prep schoolboy. His eyes were the same pale blue as his uncle’s, but shortsighted and noncommittal. Yet there was an underlying similarity between the two. A latent, sardonic humour in their conversation, a friendlines and simple generosity in their smiles, and that impression of energy in reserve which is always given by those who possess an abundance of life directed towards consciously realised aims.

‘Well, now, Nigel,’ said Sir John, ‘I’ve got a job for you. Curiously enough, it’s to do with the new tenant of the Dower House. He wrote up to us about a week ago; forwarded some threatening letters he’d received lately—three of them—at intervals of a month each. Typewritten. I put a man on to them, but they don’t give any lead. Here are copies. Read ’em carefully and tell me if they suggest anything—anything, that is, except the obvious conclusion that someone is out for his blood.’

Nigel took the carbon copies. They were numbered 1, 2 and 3, presumably the order in which they had been received.

No. 1 read: ‘No, Fergus O’Brien, there’s no use trying to hide yourself in Somerset. Not even if you had the wings of a dove would you escape me, my bold aviator. I shall get you, and YOU WILL KNOW WHY.’

‘Hm,’ said Nigel, ‘all very melodramatic: author seems to have confused himself with Lord God Almighty. And what a literary touch the fellow has!”

Sir John came over and sat on the arm of his chair. ‘There was no signature,’ he said. ‘Envelopes were typewritten also; a Kensington postmark.’

Nigel took up the second note: ‘Beginning to feel a little apprehensive, are you? That iron nerve wobbling a bit? I don’t blame you. However, I shall not keep Hell waiting for you much longer.’

‘Coo!’ exclaimed Nigel. ‘Fellow getting all sinister. And what does this month’s bulletin say?’ He read out the third note aloud:

‘I think we’d better arrange the fixture—I refer, of course, to your demise—for this month. My plans are all completed, but I feel it would be improper for me to kill you till your festive party is over. That will give you over three weeks to settle your affairs, say your prayers, and eat a hearty Christmas dinner. I shall kill you, most probably, on Boxing Day. Like Good King Wenceslas, you will go out on the Feast of Stephen. And please, my dear Fergus, however shattered your nerves may be by then, don’t go committing suicide. After all the trouble I have taken, I should hate to be balked of the pleasure of telling you, before you die, just how much I hate you, you tin-pot hero, you bloody white-faced devil.’

‘Well?’ enquired Sir John, after rather a long silence.

Nigel shook himself, blinked in a puzzled way at the notes, then said: ‘I don’t understand it. There’s something unreal about the whole thing. It’s too like an old-fashioned melodrama rewritten by Noel Coward. Have you ever known a murderer with a sense of humour? That crack about Good King Wenceslas is really most pleasing. I feel I could take to the fellow who wrote it. I suppose it isn’t, by any chance, a hoax?’

‘May very well be, for all I know. But O’Brien must have thought there might be something in it, or why should he send the letters to us?’

‘What are the bold aviator’s reactions, by the way?’ Nigel asked.

His uncle produced another carbon copy and handed it over in silence. It ran as follows:

Dear Strangeways,

I am taking our slight acquaintanceship as an excuse for troubling you with what may very likely be a mare’s nest. I have received the enclosed letters, in the numbered order, on the 2nd of each month since October. It may be a lunatic, and it may be some friend of mine having his little joke. On the other hand, there’s just a chance that it may not. As you know, I’ve had a rackety life, and I’ve no doubt there are a number of people who would like to see me go down in a spin. Perhaps your experts will be able to gather something from the letters themselves. But it seems unlikely. Now I don’t want police protection. I haven’t settled down in the depths of the country in order to be surrounded by a phalanx of policemen. But if you know some really intelligent and reasonably amiable private investigator, who would come down and hold my hand, could you get me in touch with him. What about that nephew of yours you were telling me about? I could give him a few lines to work on—suspicions so vague that I don’t care to put them on paper. If he could come, I am having a house-party over Christmas, and he might come ostensibly as a guest. Let him turn up on the 22nd, a day before the others.—Yours sincerely,

Fergus O’Brien

‘Ah, I see. So that’s where I come in,’ said Nigel ruminatively. ‘Well, I should like to go down there very much, if you think I come up to the required standard of intelligence and amiability. O’Brien sounds a nice sensible fellow, too. I’d always imagined he was one of the neurotic daredevil type. But you’ve met him. Tell me about him.’

Sir John sucked noisily on his pipe. ‘I’d rather you formed your own impressions. Of course, he’s a bit of a nervous wreck—that last crash of his, you know. Looks damned ill; but you can see the spirit shining through all right still. He has never consciously courted publicity, I should say. But, like all really great Irishmen—take Mick Collins, for instance—he’s a bit of a playboy; I mean, it is their nature to do things in the most romantic and colourful way possible; they just can’t help it. I should say he had the long memory of the Irish, too—’

Sir John paused, and wrinkled his brow reflectively.

‘Is he real Irish?’ asked Nigel. ‘One of the Brian Boru Clan? or just West British?’

‘Nobody really knows, I don’t think. His origin is shrouded in mystery, as they say. Turned up suddenly in the R.F.C. early in the war, and never looked back. There must be a good deal to him. Genuine integrity, I mean. Popular heroes, particularly in the air, are two a penny nowadays: they flame up and then are forgotten tomorrow. But he’s different. Even allowing for the playboy, romantic element in all his adventures, he couldn’t have kept his grip on the popular imagination unless he was something out of the ordinary run of “heroes”. It must be some greatness of integrity that keeps the fires of hero worship burning still for him.’

‘Well, as you say, you’d rather I formed my own impressions,’ said Nigel provocatively. ‘But I’d be glad of the outside dope, so to speak, if you’ve got time. I’ve rather lost touch with the O’Brien saga.’

‘I expect you know the salient points all right. He had a bag of sixty-four Germans by the end of the war: used to go out alone and sit up in a cloud all day, waiting for them. The Germans were quite convinced he had a charmed life: used to attack anything of theirs short of a circus. The chaps in his squadron really began to be a bit afraid of him themselves. Day after day he’d go out, and come back with the fuselage looking like a sieve and half the struts nearly shot through. MacAlister in his mess told me it looked as if O’Brien deliberately tried to get killed and just couldn’t bring it off; might have sold his soul to the devil, for all anyone knew. And what’s more, he did it without drink. Then, after the war, there was his solo flight to Australia in an obsolete machine, flying one day and every other day tying the pieces together after the crack-up. And, of course, there was that incredible exploit of his in Afghanistan, when he took a whole native fort single-handed. And the stunting he did for that film company, chucking his machine all over the place between the peaks of a mountain range. I suppose the culminating feat was his rescue of that explorer woman, Georgia Cavendish. Went looking for her all over some godless part of Africa, landed in impossible country, picked her up out of it and brought her home. That seems to have sobered even him a bit. The crash at the end of it may have had some effect, too. Anyway, it was only a few months after that he decided to give up flying and bury himself in the country.’

‘Um,’ said Nigel, ‘a colourful career all right.’

‘But it isn’t these spectacular feats—the things every schoolboy has heard about—that have made the legend, so much as the things the public hasn’t heard of—officially, that is to say, the things that never got into the newspapers, but were passed from mouth to mouth; dark hints, rumours, superstitions almost—some of them fiction, no doubt, and most of them exaggerated, but the greater part founded on fact. All these have swelled up to make a really gigantic mythical figure of him.’

‘Such as?’ asked Nigel.

‘Well—one absurd little detail: they say he always fought best in carpet slippers—used to keep a pair in his plane and put ’em on when he got to a thousand feet or so; no idea if there’s any truth in it, but those slippers have become as legendary as Nelson’s telescope. Then there was his hatred of brass hats—common enough, of course, amongst those who had to do the fighting—but he took active steps about it. Later on in the war, when he had become a flight commander, some B.F. at Wing Headquarters ordered his flight out to do some ground strafing in impossible weather conditions over a nest of machine guns. You know the idea—just to keep ’em busy and justify the brass hat’s existence. Well, they were all shot down except O’Brien. After that, they say he spent most of his spare time flying about behind the lines looking for the staff cars. When he saw one, he’d chivvy it all over the countryside, with his wheels a couple of feet above the brass hat’s monocle. They say he used to drop homemade stink bombs into the tonneaux, too; fairly frightened ’em out of their wits. But they couldn’t exactly prove who it was; and anyway, O’Brien being the popular idol he was, I doubt if they’d have dared to take action. Authority always has been a red rag to him—he didn’t give a damn for orders. Went too far, finally. After the war, when his flight was out East, he was ordered to bomb some native village. He didn’t see why the natives should have their village blown to pieces just because some of them hadn’t paid their taxes, so he made his flight loose off their bombs in the middle of a desert and then flew low over the village, dropping one-pound boxes of chocolates. The authorities couldn’t overlook that—he took full responsibility, of course—so he was politely asked to resign. It was soon afterwards that he did his flight to Australia.’

Sir John sat back, looking faintly ashamed of his unwonted verbal exuberance.

‘So you’ve fallen under the spell, too,’ said Nigel, with a humorous cock of the head.

‘What the devil do you mean …? Well, I suppose I have. And I’ll lay ten to one, young man, that you’ll be eating out of his hand by the time you’ve been at the Dower House for a couple of hours.’

‘Yes, I dare say I shall.’ Nigel got up with a sigh and began to prowl with his ungainly, ostrich-like stride round the room. This leather-padded, sporting-print-decorated, cigar-and-good-breeding-redolent ‘sanctum’, into which nothing more violent than a Morning Post leading article could ever have entered—how utterly remote it was from the life he had just been hearing about, the world of Fergus O’Brien, of dizzy tumblings amongst the clouds, of meteoric exploit and topsy-turvy values: a world where death was threadbare and familiar as Herbert Marlinworth’s study carpet. And yet between Lord Marlinworth and Fergus O’Brien there was no more original difference than the excess or deficiency of some little glands.

Nigel shook himself out of these dreamy moralisings, and turned to his uncle again.

‘One or two more points I should like to clear up. You said at tea that there were reasons why the press should have been induced to keep quiet about the exact locality of O’Brien’s ‘retreat.’

‘Yes; besides practical flying, he has interested himself a good deal in theory and construction. He is now at work on the plans of a new plane which, he says, will revolutionise flying. He doesn’t want the public poking about just now.’

‘But surely there is a possibility that other Powers may have got wind of this. I mean, oughtn’t he to be having police protection?’

‘I think he ought,’ replied Sir John in a worried way; ‘but there’s his blasted cussedness. Said he’d throw all his drawings in the fire if he got so much as a smell of police surveillance. Says he’s quite able to look after himself, which is probably true, and anyway that no one else could make head or tail of his plans until they are much further advanced.’

‘I was thinking there might conceivably be a connection between these threatening letters and his invention.’

‘Oh, there might. But there’s no use getting preconceived ideas into your head.’

‘Do you know anything about his private life? He’s not married or anything, is he? And he didn’t tell you who was coming for this house-party, did he?’

Sir John tugged at his sandy moustache. ‘No, he didn’t say. He’s not married, though I should think he must be pretty attractive to women. And, as I told you, nothing is known of him before 1915, when he joined up. It all contributes to the newspaper Mystery Man publicity.’

‘That’s suggestive. The newspapers would have been all out to rake up facts about his boyhood, and he must have had some pretty good reason for keeping them in the dark about it. Those threats might be some of his prewar wild oats come home to roost.’

Sir John threw up his hands in horror. ‘For God’s sake, Nigel! At my time of life the system can’t stand mixed metaphors.’

Nigel grinned. ‘Now there’s only one other point,’ he pursued. ‘Money: he must be well off to be able to rent the Dower House. I suppose nothing’s known about his source of income?’

‘Couldn’t say. He’s had plenty of opportunities of making capital out of his position as Public Idol No. 1. But he’s not made great use of them, as far as I know. But all these questions you’d far better ask him. If he really thinks there’s anything in these threats, he’ll have to open up to you a little.’

Sir John heaved himself out of his chair. ‘Well. Must be off. Got to dine with the Home Secretary tonight—fussy old hen, he’s suddenly developed Communist-phobia; thinks they’re going to put a bomb under his bed. Ought to know they don’t allow acts of individual violence. Wouldn’t mind if they did blow him up, as a matter of fact. His idea of dinner is boiled mutton and grocer’s Graves.’

He took Nigel by the arm and piloted him towards the door. ‘I’ll just pop in and tell Herbert and Elizabeth not to go giving you away as Sherlock Minor while you’re down there. I’ll wire O’Brien you’re coming on the twenty-second. There’s a train from Paddington at 11.45: get you down there in good time for tea.’

‘So you’ve got everything fixed, haven’t you, you old schemer?’ said Nigel affectionately. ‘Thanks very much for the job—and the saga.’

Pausing outside the drawing-room door, Sir John squeezed his nephew’s arm and whispered, ‘Look after him, won’t you? I feel I ought to have insisted more strongly on police protection. Those letters would make things pretty difficult for us if anything should happen. And of course you’ll let me know at once if you find out there is anything behind them. I should simply override his wishes if we had anything definite to go on. Good-bye, boy.’

The Airman’s Tale

AS IT HAPPENED, Nigel did not travel by the 11.45. On the night of the 21st he was rung up by Lord Marlinworth’s butler, who said that his master and mistress had been delayed in town and would not be travelling down to Chatcombe till tomorrow. They would be very pleased to give Mr Strangeways a lift down in their car and would call for him sharp at 9.00 a.m. Nigel thought it politic to accept this semi-royal invitation, though four or five hours of Lord Marlinworth’s reminiscences in such a confined space would be likely to give him a headache.

On the stroke of nine the next morning the Daimler drew up outside Nigel’s door. To his aunt and uncle road travel was still a complicated adventure, not to be undertaken lightly. Although the saloon car was as draughtless and dustless as a hospital ward, Lady Marlinworth habitually carried a thick motoring-veil, several layers of petticoat and a bottle of smelling salts for any journey of more than twenty miles. Her husband, in an enormous check ulster, cloth cap and goggles, looked like a cross between Edward the Seventh and Guy Fawkes—a point the cluster of street urchins which had rapidly formed was not slow to take up. A valet and Lady Marlinworth’s personal maid were taking the luggage down by train; but the spacious interior of the car was chock-a-block with enough equipment for a polar expedition. Getting in, Nigel barked his shin on a gigantic hamper, and the way to his seat seemed to be paved with hot-water bottles.

When he was at last settled in, Lord Marlinworth consulted his watch, unfolded an ordnance map, took up the speaking-tube and, with the air of a Wellington ordering the whole line to advance, said, ‘Cox, you may proceed.’

During the journey Lord Marlinworth kept up a ceaseless flow of light conversation. As they passed through the suburbs, he commented unfavourably upon their architecture and drew a parallel between it and the makeshift character of twentieth-century civilisation. At the same time he generously conceded that the people who lived there played no doubt a necessary part in the community and were admirable persons in their way. The country reached, he alternated between calling his companion’s attention to ‘pretty peeps’ and ‘noble vistas’ and recounting anecdotes of the leading families in each county through which they passed, his wife seconding him with involved researches into their genealogical trees. Whenever they approached a fork in the road, Lord Marlinworth would study his map and give directions to the chauffeur, to which Cox responded with a grave inclination of the head—as if this was the first and not the fiftieth time he had driven the route. Torpor and a haze of unreality stole over Nigel. His head nodded. He jerked awake. His head nodded again. Then he fell finally and uncompromisingly asleep.

He was awoken for a light lunch at twelve o’clock. As soon as they had started, he fell asleep again, thereby missing a remarkable tale about the Hampshire Enderbys, the last head of which family had apparently, at the age of fifty, retired to the top of a lofty tower on his estate, and was never seen again except on the anniversaries of King Charles the First’s death, when he used to emerge and fling down red-hot sovereigns to his tenants. When Nigel awoke, they had left the main road and were sliding along a Somerset lane whose hedges almost brushed the sides of the car. Soon they turned left, through a magnificent stone gate. The drive, formally curving and twisting like a hypnotised snake, led them down the side of a combe and up the far slope; there it forked, straight on for Chatcombe Towers, and to the right for the Dower House. Cox was directed to drop Nigel at the Dower House first. As he alighted, Nigel noticed a bizarre addition had been made to the landscape since his last visit to Chatcombe. Fifty yards or so to his right as he faced the front door at the end of the garden, there had been erected an army hut. As he waited for the door to open he wondered idly how O’Brien had managed to persuade Lord Marlinworth to let him erect so unsightly an object on the estate. It also suddenly occurred to him that he had forgotten to let O’Brien know his change of plan, and therefore was not expected till teatime.

The door opened. A very large, very broad, very tough-looking man appeared; he wore a neat blue suit, and his nose was about the shape and size of a small pancake. This worthy gave one glance at Nigel and his suitacse—the car had already driven off—and exclaimed:

‘No, we don’t want no vacuum cleaners, nor yet am I hinterested in silk stockings, brass polish, or parrot seed.’

He began to shut the door, but Nigel stepped forward hastily and said: ‘Nor am I. My name’s Strangeways. I got an offer to drive down from London and hadn’t time to let you know.’

‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr Strangeways, sir. Come in. My name’s Bellamy. Harthur, they generally calls me. The Colonel’s out just now, but he’ll be back before tea. I’ll show you your room. And then I dessay you’d like to stretch your legs around the gawden a bit.’ He added, with a wistful look: ‘Unless you’d care to put on the gloves for a round or two. Limber you up after the drive, it would. But perhaps you ain’t a devotee of the Noble Art.’

Nigel hastily disclaimed it. Arthur looked crestfallen for a moment; but his face soon broke into a craggy grin. ‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘there’s some as is ’andy with their maulies, and others as is ’andy with their serry-bellum.’

He tapped the small portion of his nose that stood out from the level of his face. ‘It’s OK, Mr Strangeways, sir. I know wot you’re down ’ere for. Don’t you worry yourself. Mum’s the word, sir. I can keep me trap shut. Hoyster is my middle name.’

Nigel followed the oyster upstairs. Soon he was unpacking in a cream-washed bedroom, furnished severely but adequately with unstained oak. There was only one picture on the walls. Nigel peered at it short-sightedly, then walked up to it with a cigarette in one hand and a pair of trousers in the other. It was the head of a girl, by Augustus John. Nigel took rather a time to unpack. He was, as he admitted himself, a born snooper. He never could restrain his curiosity about the accessories of other people’s lives. He pulled open every drawer in the chest-of-drawers, not so much to dispose of his own effects as in the hope that the last visitor might have left something incriminating behind. They were quite empty, however. There were Christmas roses in a bowl on the dressing table, he noticed. He opened a box on the table beside his bed: it was full of sugar biscuits. He put three absent-mindedly into his mouth, thinking: ‘A competent housekeeper behind all this.’ He prowled over to the mantelpiece and fingered the row of books arranged there: Arabia Deserta, Kafka’s The Castle, Decline and Fall, The Sermons of John Donne, the last Dorothy Sayers, Yeats’ The Tower. He took down the latter; it was a first edition, with an inscription from the poet to ‘my friend, Fergus O’Brien’. Nigel began to revise his preconceptions about his host; it all fitted in very badly with his notion of the daredevil, harum-scarum pilot.

After a bit he walked out into the garden. The Dower House was a long, two-storeyed, whitewashed building, with an overhanging slate roof. It had been built about one hundred and fifty years before on the site of the original Dower House, which had been burnt down. It looked rather like one of those old-fashioned ample country rectories, whose architects seem to have been obsessed by the reproductive power of the clergy. A veranda ran the whole length of the front of the house, which faced south, and was continued along the east face. As he walked round, Nigel saw the wooden hut again; it stood out, more of an anachronism than ever, its windows filled with the blood-red glow of the huge December sun. He went across the lawn and peered in at one of the hut windows. The interior had been fitted up as a workroom. There was an enormous kitchen table, strewn with books and papers; several rows of bookshelves; an oil stove; a safe; some easy chairs; a pair of carpet slippers on the floor. The whole effect contrasted oddly with the guest room he had just left—the one breathing a quiet, distinguished luxury, the other untidy, ascetic and businesslike. Nigel’s curiosity, insatiable as that of the Elephant Child, got the better of him. He pushed at the door. Faintly surprised to find that it opened, he went in. He poked about aimlessly for a little; then his attention was attracted by a door in the wall on his left. The living-room looked so large, it had not occurred to him that this was a partition wall. He went through this door and found himself in a small cubicle. It seemed to contain nothing but a truckle bed, a rush mat and a cupboard. Nigel was about to go out again, when he noticed there was a snapshot on top of the cupboard. He went over to it. It was the photograph of a young woman in riding clothes; it was growing yellow with age but the girl’s head stood out clearly, hatless, dark-haired, with an expression of sweet madcap innocence on the lips, but in the eyes a shadow of melancholy; a thin, elfish face, promising beauty and generosity and danger.

It was while he was studying this photograph that Nigel heard a voice behind him. ‘My study’s ornament. Well, I’m so glad you could come.’ Nigel wheeled round. The voice was light, almost girlish in timbre, yet of an extraordinary resonance. Its owner stood in the doorway, his hand outstretched, a humorous quirk on his lips. Nigel came forward, stuttering with embarrassment:

‘I … I, really I c-can’t tell you how sorry I am. Quite inexcusable, prying about like this. My cursed habit of inquisitiveness. Probably should be found examining the Queen’s correspondence if I was invited to Buckingham Palace.’

‘Ah, never mind, never mind. That’s what you’re down here for. It’s my fault being out when you came. I didn’t expect you so early. I hope Arthur showed you your room and everything.’

Nigel explained his premature arrival. ‘Arthur was hospitality itself,’ he added. ‘He even offered to give me some sparring practice.’

O’Brien laughed. ‘That’s fine. It means he’s taken to you. Whom he loveth, he chastiseth—or tries to. It’s the only way he can express his emotions. He knocks me down every morning regularly—at least he used to till me health wouldn’t stand it any more.’

O’Brien looked a sick man indeed. As they paced to and fro over the lawn Nigel took stock of him. He had not yet really got over his feeling of guilt at being discovered in the hut, and the mental picture he had formed of what the airman would look like had been shattered so bewilderingly by his real appearance. He had expected something hawk-like, whipcord tough, of more than mortal stature. He saw a smallish man, whose clothes hung loosely on him, as though he had shrunk in the night: an almost dead-white face, with raven hair and a neat black beard that half concealed a terrible scar from temple to jaw; large but delicate hands which somehow fitted his voice. His features were homely—not in the least romantic, in spite of the beard and the pallor. Except for his eyes. O’Brien’s eyes were dark blue, almost violet, in colour, and as changeable as the sky on a windy spring day—animated one moment, and the next moment clouded over and withdrawn, quite dull, as though the spirit in them had gone somewhere else.

‘Look at him now, will you?’ O’Brien pointed excitedly to a robin that was hopping about on the lawn in front of them. ‘He stops quicker than your eye can stop. He stops so dead that the eye can’t brake in time: it overshoots him and stops a foot ahead. Did you ever notice that?’

Nigel hadn’t ever noticed it. But he noticed how the airman’s intonation became more Irish under excitement. And two lines from the ‘Ancient Mariner’ came unbidden into his head:

‘He prayeth best who loveth best

All things both great and small.’

These were about the Hermit. And the airman had become a sort of hermit. Nigel felt that this man could make him see things as he had never seen them before. He knew suddenly, without any possibility of doubt, that he was walking up and down the lawn with a genius.

At that moment two gunshots exploded from some nearby covert. O’Brien’s wrist and hand jerked involuntarily and his head twisted round. He smiled apologetically.

‘Can’t get out of the habit,’ he said. ‘Up in the air that meant some fella was sitting on your tail. Bloody awful sensation. You knew he was there all right, but you couldn’t help looking over your shoulder.’

‘Sounds as if they’re shooting in Luckett’s Spinney. I know this part of the country well. Used to stay every autumn with my aunt when I was a boy. Do you do any shooting down here?’

O’Brien’s eyes clouded over, then twinkled again. ‘I do not. Why would I? I don’t hate the birds. Looks as if someone may be going to do a bit of shooting at me, though, doesn’t it? You’ve read those letters. But I mustn’t spoil your appetite for tea. We’ll get down to business later. Come on in, now …’

Dinner was over. Arthur Bellamy had waited at table, with a deftness and speed surprising in one of his bulk, rather like a performing elephant. He was none of your silent, unobtrusive automatons, though, and enlivened the meal with encomia on the successive dishes and crisp comments on the personal lives of almost every member of the village, from the vicar downwards. Nigel was now sitting with his host, sipping brandy in the lounge hall.

‘Jolly good housekeeper you’ve got,’ he said, looking round at the immaculate order of the lounge, where everything the lounger could possibly require seemed ready to hand, and remembering the Christmas roses and the biscuit tin in his own bedroom.

‘Housekeeper?’ said O’Brien. ‘I don’t keep one. What made you think?’

‘I seemed to detect the trace of a woman’s hand.’

‘Mine, I should think. I like fussing about with flowers and things. Beneath me beard, I’m an elderly maiden lady. So I couldn’t have another one about the place. Too much competition. Arthur does most of the chores.’

‘But don’t you have any staff? Did Arthur cook that admirable dinner?’

O’Brien grinned. ‘The sleuth getting down to it already! No, I have a cook. Mrs Grant. Your aunt recommended her. She has warts, but otherwise she’s a paragon. And there’s a gorm of a girl comes up from the village every morning when we’ve visitors to do the cleaning. Judging from her appearance, she deposits more dirt than she takes away. The gardener’s a local, too. You’ll have to look elsewhere for suspects.’

‘You’ve not had any more letters, I suppose?’

‘I have not. The fella’s saving himself up for the Feast of Stephen, I expect.’

‘Just how seriously do you take these letters?’

The cloud came and went in O’Brien’s eyes. He entwined his fingers in an oddly girlish gesture. ‘I don’t know, shure. I really don’t know. I have had that kind of thing before, often enough. But there’s something about the way this fella expresses himself—’ He cocked his head quizzically at Nigel. ‘Y’know, if I was going to kill someone, I’ve a feeling I’d write to him just that way. The usual dotty threatening letter-writer gets his hate off his chest by the mere writing of the letter. He’s a physical coward. And he has no sense of humour. Mark me words, he has no sense of humour. Now it’s only when you’re in dead earnest that you can afford to joke about it. We Cartholics are the only people that jokes about our religion. Y’see the implication?’