Death And The Dancing Footman

Chapter X Journey

They had exhausted themselves arguing about the gap in Hart’s story. They had said the same things over and over again. They longed to go to bed and yet were held prisoner in their chairs by a dreadful lassitude. They kept telling Nicholas to go to bed and he kept saying that he would go. They spoke in low voices to a vague background of drumming rain. Mandrake felt as if it was William himself who kept them there; William who, behind locked doors, now suffered the indignities of death. He could not help but think of that figure in the chair. Suppose, with those stealthy changes, William’s body were to move? Suppose they were to hear, above the murmur of rain, a dull thud in the room next door? Nicholas too must have been visited by some such thoughts, for he said: “I can’t bear to think of him — can’t we — can’t we?” And Mandrake had to explain again that they must not move William.

“Do you think,” he asked Jonathan, “that with this rain the roads will be passable in the morning? What about the telephone? Is there any chance that the lines will be fixed up?”

There was a telephone in the library and from time to time they had tried it, knowing each time that it was useless. “If the roads are anything like passable,” Mandrake said, “I’ll drive into Chipping in the morning.”

“You?” said Nicholas.

“Why not? My club-foot doesn’t prevent me from driving a car, you know,” said Mandrake. This was one of the speeches, born of his deformity, which he sometimes blurted out and always regretted.

“I didn’t mean that,” said Nicholas. “I’m sorry.”

“Why shouldn’t I go?” asked Mandrake, looking from one to another. “Even if we can’t break Hart’s alibi, I suppose none of you will suspect me. After all, I was shoved in the pond.”

“I keep forgetting that complication,” said Jonathan.

“I don’t,” Mandrake rejoined warmly.

“We ought none of us to forget it,” said Chloris. “It’s the beginning of the whole thing. If only you’d gone on looking out of the pavilion window, Nicholas!”

“I know. But I was half undressed and hellish cold. I just saw it was Mandrake and answered his wave. If only I had looked out again!”

“I’ve not the least doubt about what you’d have seen,” Mandrake rejoined. “You’d have seen that infamous little man come up in a flurry of snow from behind the pavilion, and you’d have seen him launch a sort of flying tackle at my back.”

“I’ve made a complete hash of everything,” Nicholas burst out. “You’re all being very nice about it, I know, but the facts stare you in the eye, don’t they? I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that if I hadn’t baited Hart this would never have happened. Well, let him get on with it, by God. He’s messed it up three times, hasn’t he? Let him have another pot at me. I shan’t duck.”

“Nick,” said Hersey, “don’t show off, my dear. Are we never to register dislike of anyone for fear they’ll go off and murder our near relations? Don’t be an ass, my dear old thing. Since we are being candid, let’s put it this way. Dr.Hart was crossed in love and he couldn’t take it. You did the crossing. I don’t say I approve of your tactics, and, as I daresay you’ve noticed, I don’t admire your choice. But for pity’s sake don’t go all broken-with-remorse on us. You’ve got your mother to think of.”

“If anybody other than Hart is to blame,” said Jonathan, “very clearly it is I.”

“Now, Jo,” said Hersey, roundly, “none of that from you. You’ve been a very silly little man, trying to re-arrange people’s lives for them. This is what you get for it and no doubt it’ll be a lesson to you. But it’s no good putting on that face about it. We must be practical. We’ve got a man whom we all believe to be a murderer, locked up in his room, and as we don’t seem to be very good at bringing it home to him the best thing we can do is to accept Mr. Mandrake’s offer and to hope that in the morning he will be able to reach a telephone and find us a policeman.”

“Hersey, my dear,” said Jonathan with a little bob in her direction, “you are perfectly right. Nick and I must bow to your ruling. If Aubrey can and will go, why then go he shall.”

“I thought,” said Mandrake, “that I’d try to reach the rectory at Winton St. Giles. You see, there’s rather a super sort of policeman staying there, and as I know him…”

“Roderick Alleyn?” Chloris cried out. “Why, of course!”

“I thought I’d put the whole thing before him. I thought that when I got upstairs I’d write it all down, everything I can remember from the time I got here. I don’t know what the regulations are but, if I show what I’ve written to Alleyn, at least if he can’t do anything he’ll advise me what to do.”

“I think we should see your notes, Aubrey.”

“Of course, Jonathan. I hope you’ll be able to add to them. It seems to me that when you write things out they have a way of falling into place. Perhaps when we read our notes we may see a still wider gap in Hart’s alibi. I think we should concentrate on the time Jonathan was in the downstairs cloak-room, and the moment or two after Jonathan returned and before Lady Hersey went into the smoking-room. I think we shall find that the gaps are there all right. If we don’t perhaps Alleyn will.”

“I’m afraid I don’t believe he will,” said Chloris slowly. She reached out her hand and touched Mandrake’s arm. “Don’t think I’m crabbing your idea. It’s a grand idea. But somehow, I can’t tell you how I hate to say it, somehow I don’t believe we will find a big enough gap. I don’t think there is one.”

“I won’t have that,” said Jonathan loudly, “there’s plenty of time. There must be.”

He stood up and the others rose with him. At last they were going to bed. With dragging steps and heavy yawns they moved uncertainly about the room. The men had a last drink. Desultory suggestions were made. Nicholas, with a return of nervousness which contrasted strangely with his recent mood of heroic despondency, started an argument about leaving Hart’s door unguarded. Hart might try to break out, he said. Mandrake pointed out that if they kept their own doors locked it wouldn’t much matter if he did. He, as much as they, was a prisoner in the house. “Anyway,” added Mandrake, “we’re not going to sleep through a door-smashing incident, I suppose. Here’s your automatic, by the way, Compline.” And for the life of him Mandrake couldn’t resist adding: “You may feel more comfortable if you have it at your bedside.” Nicholas took it quite meekly.

“Well,” he said in a small desolate voice, “I may as well go up, I suppose.” He looked towards the locked door into the smoking-room and Mandrake saw his rather prominent eyes dilate. “He offered to swap rooms with me,” said Nicholas. “Decent of him, wasn’t it? In case Hart tried anything during the night, you know. Of course, I wouldn’t have let him. I’m glad we sort of got together a bit this evening.” He looked at his hands and then vaguely up at Jonathan. “Well, good night,” said Nicholas.

“We’ll come up with you, Nick,” said Hersey, and linked her arm in his.

“Will you? Oh, thank you, Hersey.”

“Of course we shall,” said Chloris. “Come on, Nick.”

Jonathan and Mandrake followed, and as Mandrake, weary to death, limped up those stairs for the last time on that fatal day, he thought, and detested himself for so thinking: “He would go up between the two women. I bet he’s got hold of Chloris’ hand.” Jonathan said good-night on the half-way landing and turned off to his own wing. Only then did it occur to Mandrake that since his flare-up with Hart, Jonathan had been unusually quiet. “And no wonder,” he thought. “They can say what they like but after all if he hadn’t thrown his fool party…”

They went with Nicholas to his room. Moved by an obscure mixture of contrition and genuine sympathy, Mandrake shook hands with him and instantly regretted it when Nicholas, with tears in his eyes, kissed the two women and said in a broken voice: “Bless you. I’ll be all right. Good night.”

“Good night,” said Hersey in the passage and stumped off to her room.

“Good night,” said Chloris to Mandrake, and then rather defiantly: “Well, I am sorry for him.”

“Good night,” said Mandrake; “so am I.”

“You do look tired. We’ve all forgotten about your horrid plunge. You won’t tackle those notes tonight?”

“I think so. While it’s still seething, don’t you know?”

“Well, don’t treat the subject surrealistically or we’ll none of us be able to contradict you. You ought not to have had all these games thrust upon you. Are you all right?”

“Perfectly all right,” said Mandrake. “But I approve of you feeling sorry for me.”

So Chloris gave him a kiss, and in a state of bewildered satisfaction he went to his room.

It was one o’clock when he laid down his pen and read through his notes. At the end he had written a summary in which he attempted to marshal the salient facts of the three assaults. He re-read this summary twice.

At this point Mandrake, remembering that the others would read his summary, lost his nerve and scored out the next three lines and the preceding words from “No motive” onwards. He then read on —

Here the summary came abruptly to an end. Mandrake sat very still for perhaps a minute. Then he took out his cigarette case, put it down unopened, and reached again for his pen. He added six words to his summary —

When he lifted his hand he saw that he had left a small red stain on the paper. He had washed his hands as soon as he came upstairs but his mind jumped, with a spasm of nausea, to the memory of the red star that had fallen from William’s mouth. Then he remembered that when he took out his cigarette case he had felt a prick and there, sure enough, on the tip of his middle finger, was a little red globule. He felt again in his pocket and found the drawing-pin that had penetrated the sole of his shoe. He put it on the paper before him. Across the back of the drawing-pin was a dry white ridge.

He heard William’s voice speaking gravely in the drawing-room: “Very thick oil paint.”

He put the drawing-pin in a match-box and locked the box in his attaché-case, together with the Charter form which he had got from Jonathan.

Then he went to bed.

It was some time before he slept. Several times he came to the borderland where conscious thought mingles fantastically with the images of the subconscious. At these moments he saw a Maori mere, like Damocles’ sword, suspended above his head by a hair which was fixed to the ceiling by an old drawing-pin. “It might hold,” said William, speaking indistinctly because his mouth was full of blood. “It might hold, you know. I use very thick oil paint.” He couldn’t move because the folds of the Tyrolese cape were wrapped round his limbs. A rubber bird, wearing a god-like leer, bobbed its scarlet beak at him.

“It’s snowing harder than ever,” said the bird, and at that precise moment Hart cut the hair with a scalpel. “Down she comes, by Jupiter,” they all shouted; but Chloris, with excellent intentions, kicked him between the shoulder-blades and he fell with a sickening jolt back into his bed and woke again to hear the rain driving against the window-pane.

At last, however, he fell into a true sleep — and was among the first of the seven living guests to do so. Dr. Hart was the very first. Long before the others came upstairs to bed, Dr. Hart’s dose of proprietary soporific had restored his interrupted oblivion; and now his mouth was open, his breathing deep and stertorous.

His wife was not so fortunate. She heard them all come upstairs, she heard them wish each other goodnight, she heard door after door close softly and imagined key after key turning with a click as each door was shut. Sitting upright in bed in her fine nightgown, she listened to the rain and made plans for her own security.

Hersey Amblington, too, was wakeful. She kept her bedside lamp alight and absent-mindedly slapped “Hersey’s Skin Food” into her face with a patent celluloid patter. As she did this, she tried distractedly to order her thoughts away from the memory of a figure in an armchair, from a head that was broken like an egg, and from a wireless cabinet that screamed “Boomps-a-Daisy.” She thought of herself twenty years ago, afraid to tell her cousin Jonathan that she would marry him. She thought of her business rival and wondered quite shamelessly if, with the arrest of Hart, Madame Lisse would carry her piratical trade elsewhere. Finally, hoping to set up a sort of counter-irritant in horror, she thought about her own age. But the figure in the chair was persistent and Hersey was afraid to go to sleep.

Chloris was not much afraid. She had not seen William. But she was extremely bewildered over several discoveries that she had made about herself. The most upsetting of these was the discovery that she now felt nothing but a vague pity for Nicholas and an acute pity for William. She had never pretended to herself that she was madly in love with William, but she had believed herself to be very fond of him. It was Nicholas who had held her in the grip of a helpless attraction; it was from this bondage that she had torn herself on a climax of misery. She believed that when Nicholas had become aware of his brother’s determined courtship he had set himself to cut William out. Having succeeded very easily in this project, he had tired of her; and, in the meantime, he had met Elise Lisse. She thought of the letter in which she had broken off her engagement to Nicholas and, with shame, of the new engagement to his brother; of how every look, every word that was exchanged between them, for her held only one significance, its effect upon Nicholas; of the miserable satisfaction she had known when Nicholas showed his resentment, of the exultation she had felt when again, he began to show off his paces before her. And now it was all over. She had cried a little out of pity for William and from the shock to her nerves, and she had seen Nicholas once and for all as a silly fellow and a bit of a coward. A phrase came into her thoughts: “So that’s all about the Complines.” With an extraordinary lightening of her spirits she now allowed herself to think of Aubrey Mandrake. “Of Mr. Stanley Footling,” she corrected herself. “It ought to be funny. Poor Mr. Stanley Footling turning as white as paper and letting me in on the ground floor. It isn’t funny. I can’t make a good story of it. It’s infinitely touching and it doesn’t matter to me, only to him.” And she thought: “Did I take the right line about it?”

She had gone to her room determined to break Dr. Hart’s alibi, but a whole hour had passed and not once had she thought of Dr. Hart.

Jonathan Royal clasped his hot-water bag to his midriff and stared before him into the darkness. If the top strata of his thoughts had been written down they would have read something like this: “It’s an infernal bore about Thomas but there must be some way out of it. Aubrey is going to be tiresome, I can see. He’s half inclined to believe Hart. Damn Thomas. There must be some way. An ingenious turn, now. My thoughts are going round in circles. I must concentrate. What will Aubrey write in his notes? I must read them carefully. Can’t be too careful. This fellow Alleyn. What will he make of it? Why, there’s motive, the two attempts, our alibis — he can’t come to any other conclusion. Damn Thomas.”

Nicholas tossed and turned in the bed his brother had offered to take. He was unaccustomed to consecutive or ordered thinking, and across his mind drifted an endless procession of dissociated images and ideas. He saw himself and William as children. He saw William going back to school at the end of his holidays — Nicholas and his tutor had gone in the car to the station. There was Bill’s face, pressed against the window-pane as the train went out. He heard Bill’s adolescent voice breaking comically into falsetto: “She’d like it to be you at Penfelton and me anywhere else. But I’m the eldest. You can’t alter that. Mother will never forgive me for it.” He saw Chloris the first time she came to Penfelton as William’s guest for a house-party. “Mother, will you ask Chloris Wynne? She’s my girl, Nick. No poaching.” And lastly he saw Elise Lisse, and heard his own voice: “I never knew it could be like this. I never knew.”

Sandra Compline laid down her pen. She enclosed the paper in an envelope and wrote a single word of direction. Outside on the landing, the grandfather clock struck two. She wrapped her dressing-gown more closely round her. The fire was almost dead and she was bitterly cold. The moment had come for her to get into bed. The bed-clothes were disordered. She straightened them carefully and then glanced round the room, which was quite impersonal and, but for the garments she had worn during the day, very neat. She folded them and put them away, shivering a little as she did so. She caught sight of her face in the glass and paused before it to touch her hair. On an impulse she leant forward and stared at the reflection. Next, she moved to the bedside table and for some minutes her hands were busy there. At last she got into bed, disposed the sheet carefully, and drew up the counterpane. Then she stretched out her hand to the bedside table.

It was an isolated storm that visited Cloudyfold that night. Over the greater part of Dorset the snow lay undisturbed, but here in the uplands it was drilled with rain and all through the night hills and trees suffered a series of changes. In the depths of Jonathan’s woods, branches, released from their burden of snow, jerked sharply upwards. From beneath battlements of snow, streams of water began to move and there were secret downward shiftings of white masses. With the diminution of snow the natural contours of the earth slowly returned. Towards dawn, in places where there had been smooth depressions, sharp furrows began to take form, and these were sunken lanes. In Deep Bottom beneath the sound of rain was the sound of running water.

The guests, when at last they slept, were sometimes troubled in their dreams by strange noises on the roofs and eaves of the house where masses of snow became dislodged and slid into gutters and hollows. The drive, and the road from Highfold down into Cloudyfold Village and up into the hills, began to find themselves. So heavy was the downpouring of rain that by dawn the countryside was dappled with streaks of heavy greys and patches of green. When Mandrake woke at eight o’clock his windows were blinded with rain and, through the rain, he saw the tops of evergreen trees, no longer burdened with snow.

He breakfasted alone with Jonathan who told him that already he had seen some of the outdoor staff. His bailiff had ridden up from his own cottage on horseback and had gone out again on a round of inspection. Jonathan had told him of the tragedy. He had offered to ride over Cloudyfold. It meant twelve miles at a walking pace, supposing he did get through.

“If I stick,” said Mandrake, “he can try. If I’m not back in three hours, Jonathan, he had better try. What sort of mess is the drive, did he say?” The Bewlings, it seemed, had been down to the front gates and reported that the drive was “a masterpiece of muck” but not, they thought, impassable. You could get over Cloudyfold on a horse, no doubt, but a car would never do it.

“How about the road down to the village?” asked Mandrake.

“That’s in better case, I understand.”

“Then if I got through Deep Bottom I could drive down to Cloudyfold Village and telephone from there to the rectory at Winton St. Giles?”

“The lines may be down between the village and Winton. They go over the hills. I think it most probable that they are down. As far as the Bewlings went they found nothing the matter with my own line.”

“Can’t I get to Winton St. Giles by way of the village?”

“A venture that is comparable to Chesterton’s journey to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head, my dear Aubrey. Let me see. You would have to take the main road east, turn to your right at Pen Gidding, skirt Cloudyfold hills and — but Heaven knows what state those roads would be in. From Pen Gidding there are only the merest country lanes.”

“I can but try.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Jonathan,” said Mandrake, “do you like the idea of leaving William Compline’s body in your smoking-room for very much longer?”

“Oh, my dear fellow, no! No, of course not. This is horrible, a nightmare. I shall never recover from this week-end, never.”

“Do you think one of the Bewling brothers could come with me? If I did come to a standstill it would be helpful to have someone, and if I don’t, he could direct me.”

“Of course, of course. If you must go.” Jonathan brightened a little and began to make plans. “You must take a flask of brandy, my dear boy. James Bewling shall go with you. Chains, now. You will need chains on your wheels, won’t you?”

“There’s not by any chance a police station at Cloudyfold Village?”

“Good gracious, no. The merest hamlet. No, the nearest constable, I fancy, is at Chipping, and that’s beyond Winton St. Giles.”

“At any rate,” said Mandrake, “I think I’d better see Alleyn first. I only hope he’ll consent to run the whole show and come back with me but I suppose I shall run into an entanglement of red tape if I suggest such a thing.”

“Dear me, I suppose so. I scarcely know which prospect is more distasteful — the Chipping constabulary or your terrifying acquaintance.”

“He’s a pleasant fellow.”

“Very possibly. Perhaps I had better send for old James Bewling before he plunges out-of-doors again.”

Jonathan rang the bell, which was answered by Thomas— who was unable to conceal entirely an air of covert excitement. He said that the Bewlings were still in the house, and in a minute or two James appeared, very conscious of his boots.

“Now, James,” said Jonathan, “Mr. Mandrake and I want your advice and assistance. Dry your legs at the fire and never mind about your boots. Listen.”

He unfolded Mandrake’s project. James listened with his mouth not quite shut, his eyes fixed upon some object at the far end of the room, and his brows drawn together in a formidable scowl.

“Now, do you think it is possible?” Jonathan demanded.

“Ah,” said James. “Matter of twenty mile it be, that road. Going widdershins like, you see, sir. She’ll be fair enough so furr as village and a good piece below. It’s when she do turn in and up, if you take my meaning, sir, as us’ll run into muck and as like as not, slips, and as like as not if there bean’t no slips there’ll be drifts.”

“Then you don’t think it possible, James?”

“With corpses stiffening on the premises, sir, all things be possible to a man with a desperate powerful idea egging him on.”

“My opinion exactly, Bewling,” said Mandrake. “Will you come with me?”

“That I will, sir,” said James. “When shall us start?”

“Now, if you will. As soon as possible,” And as he spoke these words Mandrake was moved by a great desire for this venture. Soon he would meet Chloris again, and to that meeting he looked forward steadily and ardently, but in the meantime he must be free of Highfold for a space. He must set out in driving rain on a difficult task. It would be with bad roads and ill weather that he must reckon for the next hour or so, not with the complexities of human conduct. His eagerness for these encounters was so foreign to his normal way of thinking that he felt a sort of astonishment at himself. “But I don’t like leaving her here. Shall I wait until she appears and suggest that she comes with us? Perhaps she would not care to come. Perhaps I have embarrassed her with my dreary confidences. She might be afraid I’d go all Footling at her on the drive.” He began to horrify himself with the notion that Chloris thought of him as underbred and overvehement, a man whom she would have to shake off before he became a nuisance. He went upstairs determined that he would not succumb to the temptation of asking her to go with him, met her on the top landing, and immediately asked her.

“Of course I’ll come,” said Chloris.

“It may be quite frightful. We may break down completely.”

“At least we’ll be out of all this. I won’t be five minutes.”

“You’ll want layers of coats,” cried Mandrake. “I’ll get hold of old James Bewling and we’ll have the car round at the front door as soon as he’s found me some chains.”

He went joyfully to his own room, put on an extra sweater, a muffler and his raincoat. He snatched up the attaché-case containing his notes, the drawing-pin and the Charter form. He remembered suddenly that the others were to have gone over the notes before he took them to Alleyn. Well, if they wanted to do that they should have got up earlier. He couldn’t wait about half the morning. They would have plenty of chances to argue over his account when he came back with Alleyn. Now, for the car.

But before he went out-of-doors he found Jonathan and nerved himself to make a request. The thought of revisiting the smoking-room was horrible, but he had promised himself that he would do so. He half hoped Jonathan would refuse, but he did not. “I won’t come with you, that’s all. Don’t ask it. Here are the keys. You may keep them. I simply can not accompany you.”

“I shan’t touch anything. Please wait by the door.”

He was only a few minutes in that room. They had thrown a white sheet over the chair and what was in it. He tried not to look at that, but he was shaken when he came out and said goodbye, quietly, to Jonathan.

He went out by the west door and walked round the back of the house to the garages. The whole world seemed to be alive with the sound of rain and wind. Much of the snow lying in exposed places had gone, everywhere it was pocked and crenellated. From the eaves of Highfold, it hung in strange forms that changed continually and tapered into falling water.

Using his stick vigorously, Mandrake reached the garages to find James Bewling, assisted by his brother, engaged in fitting chains to the car-wheels. They seemed to Mandrake to be incredibly slow about this. The chains were improvised arrangements and one set kept slipping. At last, however, they were ready and he prepared to drive out.

“They’ll hold now, sartin sure. Lucky we had ’em,” said James. “Us’ll need ’em up-along, never fear. Now then, sir, if you be agreeable I reckon car’s ready to start. Us’ve filled her up with petrol and water and there’s hauly-chains and sacks in the back.”

“Come on men,” said Mandrake.

James climbed in the back. As they left the garage his brother bawled at them: “If ’er skiddles, rush ’er up.” He drove round to the front doors and found Chloris there. The collar of her heavy coat was turned up and she had a gay scarf tied round her head so that he saw her face as a triangle. It was a very white triangle and her eyes looked horror-stricken. As soon as she saw the car she stumbled down the steps and, leaning against the wind, ran round to the passenger’s door. Before he could get it open she was struggling with the handle and in a moment had scrambled in beside him.

“What now?” asked Mandrake.

“I’d better tell you. before we start, but Mr. Royal says we’re to go anyway. Another ghastliness. Mrs. Compline. She’s tried to kill herself.”

Mandrake turned with his hands on the driving-wheel and gazed at her. James Bewling cleared his throat stertorously.

“Please start,” said Chloris and without a word Mandrake engaged his first gear. To the sound of slapping chains, driving wind and rain, and with a cold engine, they moved across the wide sweep and round the west side of the house.

“She did it herself,” said Chloris. “One of the maids went up with her breakfast and found the door locked. The housekeeper thought she ought not to be disturbed but the maid had seen lamplight under the door when she went up with early tea. So they told Mr. Royal. It seemed queer, you see, for the lamps to be going after it was light. In the end they decided to knock. It was just after you went out. They knocked and knocked and she didn’t answer. By that time Nicholas was there and in an awful state. He insisted on Mr. Royal forcing the door. She’d left a note for him — for Nicholas. There’s been a frightful scene, it seems, because Mr. Royal said Nicholas should give the note to somebody. He won’t let Nicholas keep it, but he hasn’t read it himself. I don’t know what was in the note. Only Nick knows. She’s unconscious. They think she’s dying.”

“But — how?”

“The rest of that sleeping draught and all the aspirins she’d got. She’d told Lady Hersey she had no aspirins. I suppose she wanted to get as much as possible. You’d feel sorry for Nicholas if you could see him now.”

“Yes,” said Mandrake sombrely. “Yes, I do feel sorry for Nicholas, now.”

“He’s gone to pieces. No more showing-off for poor old Nick,” said Chloris with a catch in her voice. “There couldn’t be any doubt at all that it was suicide, and he agreed that Dr. Hart should be asked to see her. Pretty queer, wasn’t it? They all agree that he murdered Bill, and yet there he was working at artificial respiration, and snapping out orders with everybody running round obeying them. I think the world’s gone mad or something. He’s given me a list of things we’re to get at the chemists in Chipping. It’s not far beyond Winton St. Giles. I could take the car on if you like while you see Mr. Alleyn. And the police surgeon. We’ve got to try and find him, but the important thing is to get back as quickly as possible.”

“Does Hart think…?”

“I’m sure he thinks it’s pretty hopeless. I wasn’t in the room. I waited by the door for orders. I heard him say something about two hundred grains of veronal alone. He was barking out questions to Lady Hersey. How much had she given? How dared she give it? If it wasn’t so frightful it’d be funny. She’s in a pretty ghastly state herself. She feels she’s responsible.”

“I took the stuff away from Hart,” said Mandrake. “God, that’s a touch of irony for you! I was afraid he might try something on himself.”

“You needn’t go all remorseful,” said Chloris quickly. “Dr. Hart said the aspirin alone would have been disastrous. I heard him say that to Lady Hersey.”

They had reached the woods where the drive ran between steep banks. Here the surface, no longer gravelled, was soft, laced with runnels of water and littered with broken twigs and with clods of earth that had been carried away from the banks. In one place there was a miniature landslide across their route. Mandrake drove hard at it in second gear, and felt his back wheels spin and then grip on the chains.

“That’s a taste of what we may expect in Deep Bottom, I suppose,” he called to James Bewling.

“ ’Twill be watter down-along, I reckon, sir.”

“If we stick…” Chloris began.

“If we stick, my dear, they can damn’ well produce a farm animal to lug us out on the far side.”

“It’s dogged as does it,” said Chloris.

Beyond Highfold Wood the drive, where it crossed the exposed parklands, was furrowed and broken by pot-holes. James Bewling remarked that he and Thomas had been telling the master for a matter of ten years that he did ought to lay down a load of metal. The rain drove full on the wind-screen, checking the wiper, splaying out in serrated circles and finding its way in above the dashboard. The thrust of the wind made the car fight against Mandrake’s steering. He drove cautiously towards the edge of Deep Bottom, peering through the blear of water. He recognized in himself an exhilaration, and this discovery astonished him, for he had always thought that he loathed discomfort.

Snow still lay in Deep Bottom. When they reached the lip of the hollow and looked down, they saw the drive disappear under it and rise again on the far side like a muddy ribbon.

“She be gone down a tidy piece,” said James. “Not above two foot now, I reckon, but happen thurr’ll be watter underneath. Happen us’d do better with sack over radiator, sir.”

Mandrake pulled up and James plunged out with his sack. Mandrake stumbled after him. He didn’t want to sit in the car while James fixed up the sack. He wanted to be knowledgeable and active. He tied the sacking over the radiator cap, using his handkerchief to bind it. He looked critically at the way James had tied the corners of the sack. Swinging his heavy boot briskly he came back to the car, smiling through the rain at Chloris. The warmth in her returning glance delighted him and he innocently supposed that it was inspired by his activity. It was the glance, he told himself, of the female, approving, dependent, and even clinging. He would never know that Chloris was deeply touched, not because she saw him as a protector, but because suddenly she read his thoughts. And from that moment, in her wisdom, she let herself be minded by Mandrake.

The car began its crawl down into Deep Bottom.

“For a tidy ten yurr and more,” said James Bewling in the back seat, “my wold brother Thomas and me been telling master as ’ow’ee did oughter put a dinky lil’ bridge across this-yurr bottom. Last winter ’er was in a muck with raging torrents and floods. Winter afore, ’er fruz. Winter afore that, ’er caved in sudden.” Here the car lurched in and out of a pot-hole and James was thrown about in the back seat. “Winter afore that, ’er flooded again. Bean’t no proper entrance to gentlemen’s ’state, us tells ’un. Ay, and us tells bailiff tu. Puff over to your right, sir, by this-yurr puddlesome corner, or us’ll sink to our bottoms.”

The front wheels plunged deep into a welter of slush. The back wheels churned, gripped, skidded and gripped again. Now they were into the snow with James Bewling roaring: “To tha right and rush ’er up.” The bonnet dipped abruptly and a welter of snow spurted over the wind-screen. Mandrake leant out of the driving window and took the whipping rain full in his eyes. “Keep ’er going, sir,” yelled James.

“I’m in a blasted hole or something. Come up.”

The car moved bodily to the left, churned, crept forward in a series of jerks and stopped. “Doan’t stop in-gine fur Lawk’s sake,” James implored and was out and up to his knees. He disappeared in the rear of the car.

“What’s he doing?” asked Mandrake. “He’s on your side.”

Chloris looked out on her side. “I can only see his stern. He seems to be stuffing something under the back wheel. Now, he’s waving. He wants you to go on.”

Mandrake engaged his bottom gear, pulled out his choke a fraction, and tried. The car gripped somewhere, wallowed forward and stuck again. James returned for his shovel and set to work in front of the bonnet. Mandrake got out, leaving instructions with Chloris to keep the engine going. The noise of the storm met him like a physical blow and the drive of rain on his face numbed it. He struggled round to the front of the car and found James shovelling with a will in three feet of snow. Mandrake wore heavy driving-gloves, and set to work with his hands. In the centre the snow was still frozen but at the bottom it had turned to slush and the earth beneath was soft and muddy. The front wheels had jammed in a cross-gut which, as they cleared it, began to fill with water. James roared out something that Mandrake could not understand, thrust his shovel into his hands, and plunged away behind the car. Mandrake toiled on, looking up, once, to see Chloris’ face pressed anxiously against the wind-screen. He grinned, waved his hand and fell to again with a will. James had returned, dragging two great boughs after him. They broke them up as best they could, filled in the gut with smaller branches and thrust the remaining pieces in front of the rear wheels.

The inside of the car seemed a different world, a world that smelt of petrol, upholstery, cigarettes and something that both Mandrake and Chloris secretly realized was peculiar to James Bewling, an aftermath of oilskin, elderly man, and agricultural activities. Mandrake slammed the door, sounded his horn as a warning to James, and speeded up his engine.

“Now then, you old besom,” Mandrake apostrophized his car, “up with you.” With a great crackling of branches, an ominous sinking and a violent lurch, they went forward and up, with James’s voice, raised to an elderly screech, sounding like a banshee in the storm. The chains bit into firmer ground. They were going uphill.

“That’s the first hurdle over, I fancy,” said Mandrake. “We’ll wait for James at the top.”

In the rectory at Winton St. Giles, Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn put his head round the study door and said to his wife: “I’ve been looking out of the top windows at the summit of Cloudyfold. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s raining over there. What do you say, Rector?”

The Reverend Walter Copeland turned his head to look out of the window. The lady behind the large canvas muttered to herself and laid down her brushes.

“Rain?” echoed the Rector. “It’s still freezing down here. Upon my word, though, I believe you’re right. Yes, yes, undoubtedly it’s pouring up round Highfold. Very odd.”

“Very odd indeed,” said Mrs. Alleyn grimly.

“My angel,” said her husband. “I apologize in fourteen different positions. Rector, for pity’s sake resume your pose.”

With a nervous start the Rector turned from the window, clasped his hands, tilted his fine head and stared obediently at the top left-hand corner of the canvas.

“Is that right?”

“Yes, thank you,” said the lady. Her thin face, wearing a streak of green paint across the nose, looked round the side of the canvas at her husband.

“I suppose,” she said with a surprising air of diffidence, “you wouldn’t like to read to us.”

“Yes, I would,” said Alleyn. He came in and shut the door.

“Now, that’s really delightful,” said Mr. Copeland. “I hope I’m not a bad parish priest,” he added, “but it is rather pleasant to know that there can be no more services today — Dinah and I had matins all to ourselves, you know — and that for once the weather is so bad that nobody is likely to come and visit me.”

“If I were on duty,” said Alleyn, looking along the book-shelves, “I should never dare to make those observations.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I did, as sure as fate I’d be called out into the snow, like a melodrama heroine, to a particularly disagreeable case. However,” said Alleyn, taking down a copy of Northanger Abbey, “I’m not on duty, thank the Lord. Shall we have Miss Austen?”

“This yurr be Pen Gidding,” said James Bewling. “Just to right, sir. We’m half-way theer. A nasty stretch she’ll be, round those-thurr hills, and by the looks of her thurr’s bin no rain hereabouts.”

“What’s the time?” asked Chloris. Mandrake held out his wrist. “Have a look.” She pushed up his cuff. “Ten past eleven.”

“With any luck well be ringing the rectory doorbell before noon.”