Copyright

COLLINS CRIME CLUB

an imprint of HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz 1948

Copyright © Rights Limited 1948

Cover layout design © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2018

Edmund Crispin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it

are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive,

non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen.

No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled,

reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and

retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical,

now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008228064

Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008228071

Version: 2018-01-02

Dedication

For Peter Oldham

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

About the Author

Also in this Series

About the Publisher

Chapter One

‘Sanford Angelorum all change,’ said the station-master. ‘Sanford Angelorum, all change.’

After a moment’s thought: ‘Terminus,’ he added, and retired from the scene through a door marked PRIVATE.

Gervase Fen, dozing alone in a narrow, stuffy compartment whose cushions, when stirred, emitted a haze of black dust, woke and roused himself.

He peered out of the window into the summer twilight. A stunted, uneven platform offered itself to his inspection, its further margins cluttered with weed-like growths which a charitable man might have interpreted as attempts at horticulture. An empty chocolate-machine lay rusting and overturned, like a casualty in some robot war. Near it was a packing-case from which the head of a small chicken protruded, uttering low, indignant squawks. But there was no trace of human kind, and beyond the station lay nothing more companionable than an apparently limitless expanse of fields and woods, bluish in the gathering dusk.

This panorama displeased Fen; he thought it blank and unenlivening. There was, however, nothing to be done about it except repine. He repined briefly and then extracted himself and his luggage from the compartment. It seemed at first that he was the only passenger to alight here, but a moment later he found that this was not so, for a fair-haired, neatly-dressed girl of about twenty emerged from another compartment, glanced uncertainly about her, and then made for the exit, where she dropped a square of green pasteboard into a tin labelled TICKETS and disappeared. Leaving his luggage where it lay on the platform, Fen followed.

But the station-yard – an ill-defined patch of gravel – was empty of conveyances; and except for the retreating footsteps of the girl, who had vanished from sight round a bend in the station approach, a disheartening quietude prevailed. Fen went back to the platform and sought out the station-master’s room, where he found the station-master sitting at a table and sombrely contemplating a small, unopened bottle of beer. He looked up resignedly at the interruption.

‘Is there any chance of my getting a taxi?’ Fen asked.

‘Where are you for, sir?’

‘Sanford Angelorum village. The Fish Inn.’

‘Well, you might be lucky,’ the station-master admitted. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

He went to a telephone and discoursed into it. Fen watched from the doorway. Behind him, the train on which he had arrived gave a weak, asthmatic whistle, and began to back away. Presently it had disappeared, empty, in the direction whence it came.

The station-master finished his conversation and lumbered back to his chair.

‘That’ll be all right, sir,’ he said; and his tone was slightly complacent, as of a midwife relating the successful issue of a troublesome confinement. ‘Car’ll be here in ten minutes.’

Fen thanked him, gave him a shilling, and left him still staring at the beer. It occurred to Fen that perhaps he had taken the pledge and was brooding nostalgically over forbidden delights.

The chicken had got its head out of a particularly narrow aperture of the packing-case and was unable to get it in again; it was bewilderingly eyeing a newish election poster, with an unprepossessing photograph, which said: ‘A Vote for Strode is a Vote for Prosperity.’ The train had passed beyond earshot; a colony of rooks was flying home for the night, dark blurs against a grey sky; flickering indistinctly, a bat pursued its evening meal up and down the line. Fen sat down on a suitcase and waited. He had finished one cigarette, and was on the point of lighting another, when the sound of a car-engine stirred him into activity. He returned, burdened with cases, to the station-yard.

Against all probability, the taxi was new and comfortable; and its driver, too, was unexpectedly attractive – a slim, comely, black-haired young woman wearing blue slacks and a blue sweater.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ she said pleasantly. ‘I occasionally meet this train on the off-chance that someone will want a car, but there are evenings when no one’s on it at all, so it’s scarcely worth while … Here, let me give you a hand with your bags.’

The luggage was stowed away. Fen asked and obtained permission to sit in front. They set off. In the deepening darkness there was little outside the car to repay attention, and Fen looked instead at his companion, admiring what the dashboard light showed of her large green eyes, her full mouth, her fine and lustrous hair.

‘Girls who drive taxis,’ he ventured, ‘are surely uncommon?’

She took her eyes momentarily from the road to glance at him; saw a tall, lean man with a ruddy, cheerful, clean-shaven face and brown hair which stood up mutinously in spikes at the crown of his head. In particular, she liked his eyes; they showed charity and understanding as well as a taste for mischief.

‘Yes, I suppose they are,’ she agreed. ‘But it isn’t at all a bad life if you actually own your car, as I do. It’s been a good investment.’

‘You’ve always done this, then?’

‘No. For a time I worked in Boots – the book department. But it didn’t suit me, for some reason. I used to get dizzy spells.’

‘Inevitable, I should think, if you work in a circulating library.’

A fallen tree appeared out of the gloom ahead of them: it lay half across the lane. The girl swore mildly, braked, and circumnavigated it with care.

‘I always forget that damned thing’s there,’ she said. ‘It was blown down in a gale, and Shooter ought to have taken it away days ago. It’s his tree, so it’s his responsibility. But he’s really intolerably lax.’ She accelerated again, asking: ‘Have you been in this part of the world before?’

‘Never,’ said Fen. ‘It seems very out-of-the-way,’ he added reprovingly. His preferences were not bucolic.

‘You’re staying at the Fish Inn?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I ought perhaps to warn you—’ The girl checked herself. ‘No, never mind.’

‘What’s all this?’ Fen demanded uneasily. ‘What were you going to say?’

‘It was nothing … How long are you here for?’

‘It can’t have been nothing.’

‘Well, anyway, there’s nowhere else for you to stay, even if you wanted to.’

‘But shall I want to?’

‘Yes. No. That’s to say, it’s an extremely nice pub, only … Oh, damn it, you’ll have to see for yourself. How long are you staying?’

Since it was clear that no further enlightenment was to be expected, Fen answered the question. ‘Till after polling day,’ he said.

‘Oh!… You’re not Gervase Fen, are you?’

‘Yes.’

She glanced at him with curiosity. ‘Yes, I might have known …’

After a pause she went on:

‘You’re rather late starting your election campaign, you know. There’s only a week to go, and I haven’t seen a single leaflet about you, or a poster, or anything.’

‘My agent,’ said Fen, ‘is dealing with all that.’

The girl considered this reply in silence.

‘Look here,’ she said, ‘you’re a Professor at Oxford, aren’t you?’

‘Of English.’

‘Well, what on earth … I mean, why are you standing for Parliament? What put the idea into your head?’

Even to himself Fen’s actions were sometimes unaccountable, and he could think of no very convincing reply.

‘It is my wish,’ he said sanctimoniously, ‘to serve the community.’

The girl eyed him dubiously.

‘Or at least,’ he amended, ‘that is one of my motives. Besides, I felt I was getting far too restricted in my interests. Have you ever produced a definitive edition of Langland?’

‘Of course not,’ she said crossly.

‘I have. I’ve just finished producing one. It has queer psychological effects. You begin to wonder if you’re mad. And the only remedy for that is a complete change of occupation.’

‘What it amounts to is that you haven’t any serious interest in politics at all,’ the girl said with unexpected severity.

‘Well, no, I wouldn’t say that,’ Fen answered defensively. ‘My idea, after I’ve been elected—’

But she shook her head. ‘You won’t be elected, you know.’

‘Why not?’

‘This is a safe Conservative seat. You won’t get a look in.’

‘We shall see.’

‘You may confuse the issue a little, but you can’t affect it ultimately.’

‘We shall see.’

‘In fact, you’ll be lucky if you don’t lose your deposit. What exactly is your platform?’

Fen’s confidence waned slightly. ‘Oh, prosperity,’ he said vaguely, ‘and exports and freedom and that kind of thing. Will you vote for me?’

‘I haven’t got a vote – too young. And anyway, I’m canvassing for the Conservatives.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Fen.

They fell silent. Trees and coppices loomed momentarily out of the darkness and were swept away again as though by a giant hand. The headlights gleamed on small flowers sleeping beneath the hedges, and the air of that incomparable summer washed in a warm tide through the open windows. Rabbits, their white scuts bobbing feverishly, fled away to shelter in deep, consoling burrows. And now the lane sloped gently downwards; ahead of them they could glimpse, for the first time, the scattered lights of the village…

With one savage thrust the girl drove the foot-brake down against the boards. The car slewed, flinging them forward, then skidded, and at last came safely to a halt. And in the glare of its headlights a human form appeared.

They blinked at it, unable to believe their eyes. It blinked back at them, to all appearance hardly less perturbed than they. Then it waved its arms, uttered a bizarre piping sound, and rushed to the hedge, where it forced its way painfully through a small gap and in another moment, bleeding from a profusion of scratches, was lost from view.

Fen stared after it. ‘Am I dreaming?’ he demanded.

‘No, of course not. I saw it, too.’

‘A man – quite a large, young man?’

‘Yes.’

‘In pince-nez?’

‘Yes.’

‘And with no clothes on at all?’

‘Yes.’

‘It seems a little odd,’ said Fen with restraint.

But the girl had been pondering, and now her initial perplexity gave way to comprehension. ‘I know what it was,’ she said. ‘It was an escaped lunatic.’

This explanation struck Fen as conventional, and he said as much.

‘No, no,’ she went on, ‘the point is that there actually is a lunatic asylum near here, at Sanford Hall.’

‘On the other hand, it might have been someone who’d been bathing and had his clothes stolen.’

‘There’s nowhere you can bathe on this side of the village. Besides, I could see that his hair wasn’t wet. And didn’t he look mad to you?’

‘Yes,’ said Fen without hesitation, ‘he did. I suppose,’ he added unenthusiastically, ‘that I ought really to get out and chase after him.’

‘He’ll be miles away by now. No, we’ll tell Sly – that’s our constable – when we get to the village, and that’s about all we can do.’

So they drove on, preoccupied, into Sanford Angelorum, and presently came to ‘The Fish Inn’.

Chapter Two

Architecturally, ‘The Fish Inn’ did not seem particularly enterprising.

It was a fairly large cube of grey stone, pierced symmetrically by narrow, mean-looking doors and windows, and surrounded by mysterious, indistinguishable heaps of what might be building materials. Its signboard, visible now in the light which filtered from the curtained windows of the bar, depicted murky subaqueous depths set about with sinuous water-weed; against this background a silvery, generalized marine creature, sideways on, was staring impassively at something off the edge of the board.

From within the building, as Fen’s taxi drew up at the door, there issued noises suggestive of agitation, and periodically dominated by a vibrant feminine voice.

‘It sounds to me as if they’ve heard about the lunatic,’ said the girl. ‘I’ll come in with you, in case Sly’s there.’

The inn proved to be more prepossessing inside than out. There was only one bar – the tiresome distinction of ‘lounge’ and ‘public’ having been so far excluded – but it was roomy and spacious, extending half the length and almost all the width of the house. The oak panelling, transferred evidently from some much older building, was carved in the linenfold pattern; faded but still cheerful chintz curtains covered the windows; a heavy beam traversed the ceiling; oak chairs and settles had their discomfort partially mitigated by flat cushions. The decoration consisted largely of indifferent nineteenth-century hunting prints, representing stuffed-looking gentlemen on the backs of fantastically long and emaciated horses; but in addition to these there was, over the fireplace, a canvas so large as to constitute something of a pièce de résistance.

It was a seascape, which showed, in the foreground, a narrow strip of shore, up which some men in oilskins were hauling what looked like a primitive lifeboat. To the left was a harbour with a mole, behind which an angry sky suggested the approach of a tornado. And the rest of the available space, which was considerable, was taken up with a stormy sea, flecked with white horses, upon which a number of sailing-ships were proceeding in various directions.

This spirited depiction, Fen was to learn, provided an inexhaustible topic of argument among the habitués of the inn. From the seaman’s point of view, no such scene had ever existed, or could ever exist, on God’s earth. But this possibility did not seem to have occurred to anyone at Sanford Angelorum. It was the faith of the inhabitants that if the artist had painted it thus, it must have been thus. And tortuous and implausible modes of navigation had consequently to be postulated in order to explain what was going on. These, it is true, were generally couched in terms which by speakers and auditors alike were only imperfectly understood; but the average Englishman will no more admit ignorance of seafaring matters than he will admit ignorance of women.

‘No, no; I tell ’ee, that schooner, ’er’s luffin’ on the lee shore.’

‘What about the brig, then? What about the brig?’

‘That’s no brig, Fred, ’er’s a ketch.’

‘’Er wouldn’t be fully rigged, not if ’er was luffing.’

‘Look ’ere, take that direction as north, see, and that means the wind’s nor’-nor’-east.’

‘Then ’ow the ’ell d’you account for that wave breaking over the mole?’

‘That’s a current.’

‘Current, ’e says. Don’t be bloody daft, Bert, ’ow can a wave be a current?’

‘Current. That’s a good one.’

At the moment when Fen first set eyes on this object, however, it had temporarily lost its hold on the interest of the inn’s clients. This was due to the presence of an elderly lady in a ginger wig who, surrounded by a circle of listeners, was sitting in a collapsed posture on a chair, engaged, between sips of brandy, in vehement and imprecise narration.

‘Frightened?’ she was saying. ‘Nearly fell dead in me tracks, I did. There ’e were, all white and nekked, lurking be’ind that clump of gorse by Sweeting’s Farm. And jist as I passes by, out ’e jumps at me and “Boo!” ’e says, “Boo!”’

At this, an oafish youth giggled feebly.

‘And what ’appened then?’ someone demanded.

‘I struck at ’im,’ the elderly lady replied, striking illustratively at the air, ‘with me brolly.’

‘Did you ’it ’im?’

‘No,’ she admitted with evident reluctance. ‘’E slipped away from me reach, and off ’e went before you could say “knife”. And ’ow I staggered ’ere I shall never know, not to me dying day. Yes, thank you, Mrs ’Erbert, I’ll ’ave another, if you please.’

‘’E must ’a’ bin a exhibitor,’ someone volunteered. ‘People as goes about showing thesselves in the altogether is called exhibitors.’

But this information, savouring as it did of intellectual snobbery, failed to provoke much interest. A middle-aged, bovine, nervous-looking man in the uniform of a police constable, who was standing by with a note-book in his hand, said:

‘Well, us all knows what ’tis, I s’pose. ’Tis one o’ they loonies escaped from up at ’all.’

‘These ten years,’ said a gloomy-looking old man, ‘I’ve known that’d ’appen. ’Aven’t I said it, time and time again?’

The disgusted silence with which this rhetorical question was received indicated forcibly that he had; with just such repugnance must Cassandra have been regarded at the fall of Troy, for there is something distinctly irritating about a person with an obsession who turns out in the face of all reason to have been right.

The adept in psychological terminology said: ‘Us ought to organize a search-party, that’s what us ought to do. ’E’m likely dangerous.’

But the constable shook his head. ‘Dr Boysenberry’ll be seeing to that, I reckon. I’ll telephone ’im now, though I’ve no doubt ’e knows all about it already.’ He cleared his throat and spoke more loudly. ‘There is no cause for alarm,’ he announced. ‘No cause for alarm at all.’

The inn’s clients, who had shown not the smallest evidence of such an emotion, received this statement apathetically, with the single exception of the elderly lady in the wig, who by now was slightly contumelious from brandy.

‘Tcha!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s just like ’ee, Will Sly. An ostrich, that’s what you are, with your ’ead buried in sand. “No cause for alarm,” indeed! If it’d bin you ’e’d jumped out at, you’d not go about saying there was “no cause for alarm”. There ’e were, white and nekked like an evil sperrit…’

Her audience, however, was clearly not anxious for a repetition of the history; it began to disperse, resuming abandoned glasses and tankards. The gloomy-looking old man buttonholed people with complacent iterations of his own foresight. The psychologist embarked on a detailed and scabrous account, in low tones, and to an exclusively male circle, of the habits of exhibitors. And Constable Sly, on the point of commandeering the inn’s telephone, caught the eye of the girl from the taxi for the first time since she and Fen had entered the bar.

‘’Ullo, Miss Diana,’ he said, grinning awkwardly. ‘You’ve ’eard what’s ’appened, I s’pose?’

‘I have, Will,’ said Diana, ‘and I think I may be able to help you a bit.’ She related their encounter with the lunatic.

‘Ah,’ said Sly. ‘That may be very useful, Miss Diana. ’E were making for Sanford Condover, you say?’

‘As far as I could tell, yes.’

‘I will inform Dr Boysenberry of that fact,’ said Sly laboriously. He turned to the woman who was serving behind the bar. ‘All right for I to use phone, Myra?’

‘You can use the phone, my dear,’ Myra Herbert said, ‘if you put tuppence in the box.’ She was a vivacious and attractive Cockney woman in the middle thirties, with black hair, a shrewd but slightly sensual mouth, and green eyes, unusually but beautifully shaped.

‘Official call,’ Sly explained with hauteur.

Myra registered disgust. ‘You and your official ruddy calls,’ she said. ‘My God!’

Sly ignored this and turned away; at which the lunatic’s first victim, becoming suddenly aware of his impending departure, roused herself from an access of lethargy to say:

‘And what about me, Will Sly?’

Sly grew harassed. ‘Well, Mrs ’Ennessy, what about you?’

‘You’re not going to leave me to walk ’ome by meself, I should ’ope.’

‘I’ve already explained to you, Mrs ’Ennessy,’ said Sly with painful dignity, ‘that there is no cause for alarm.’

Mrs Hennessy emitted a shriek of stage laughter.

‘Listen to ’im,’ she adjured Fen, who was contemplating his potential constituents with a hypnotized air: ‘Listen to Mr Knowall Sly!’ Her manner changed abruptly to one of menace. ‘For all you knows, Will Sly, I might be murdered on me own doorstep, and then where’d you be? Eh? Tell me that. And what’s me ’usband pay ’is rates for, that’s what I asks. I got a right to pertection, ’aven’t I? I got—’

‘Now, look ’ere, Mrs ’Ennessy, I’ve me duty to do.’

‘Duty!’ Mrs Hennessy repeated with scorn. ‘’E says’ – and here she again addressed Fen, this time with the air of one imparting a valuable confidence – ‘’e says ’e’s got ’is duty to do … Fat lot of duty you do, Will Sly. What about the time Alf Braddock’s apples was stolen? Eh? What about that? Duty!’

‘Yes, duty,’ said Sly, much aggrieved at this unsportsmanlike allusion. ‘And what’s more, the next time I catch you trying to buy Guinness ’ere out of hours—’

Diana interrupted these indiscretions.

‘It’s all right, Will,’ she said. ‘I’ll take Mrs Hennessy home. It’s not far out of my way.’

The offer restored peace and a semblance of amity. Sly went to the telephone. Fen paid Diana and retrieved his luggage from the taxi. Myra called time. The company grudgingly finished its drinks and departed, Diana enduring with angelic patience a new and more highly-coloured account of Mrs Hennessy’s adventure.

Fen introduced himself to Myra, signed a register, and was shown to his room, which was comfortable and scrupulously clean. He ordered, obtained, and consumed beer, coffee, and sandwiches.

‘And I should like,’ he told Myra, ‘to be allowed to sleep on till ten tomorrow morning.’

At this, to his mystification, Myra laughed very happily, and, controlling herself at length, said: ‘Very well, my dear: good night,’ and tripped gracefully from the room, leaving him theorizing gloomily about what her unexpected reaction might mean.

There remained, for that evening, only one further incident which interested him. His visit to the bathroom gave him a glimpse of someone who was vaguely familiar – a thin, auburn-haired man of about his own age whom he saw vanishing in a dressing-gown into one of the other bedrooms. But the association which was so certainly in his mind refused to reveal itself, and though he pondered the problem while getting into bed, he soon abandoned it for lack of inspiration, and by the time the church clock struck midnight was sound asleep.

Chapter Three

He was horribly awakened, in what seemed about ten minutes, by an outbreak of intensive hammering somewhere in the regions below.

He groped for his watch, focused his eyes with difficulty on its dial, and perceived that the time was only seven. Outside the bedroom windows the sun was shining brilliantly. Fen eyed it with displeasure. He was temperamentally a late riser, and the panache of virgin daylight made little appeal to him.

Meanwhile, the noise below was increasing in volume and variety, as if fresh recruits were arriving momently. And now it became clear to Fen’s fuddled mind that in this lay probably the reason both for Diana’s gnomic warning and for Myra’s irrepressible hilarity of the previous evening, when he had said he wished to sleep late. He uttered a groan of dismay.

It acted like a signal.

There came a tap on his door, and in response to his croak of invitation a girl entered so superlatively beautiful that Fen began to wonder if he were dreaming.

The girl was a natural platinum blonde. Her features were flawless. She had a figure like the quintessence of all pin-up girls. And she moved with an unselfconscious and quite unprovocative placidity, which made it evident that – incredible though it might seem – she was quite unaware of her perfections.

With a radiant smile she deposited a tray of tea on the bedside table; left the room, returned presently with his shoes, beautifully polished; smiled at him again; and the next moment, like a fairytale vision – though he could imagine no princess of the Perilous Realm capable of offering her lover such nuptial joys as this – was gone.

Dazed, Fen lit his early-morning cigarette; and the familiar unpleasantness of smoking it restored him to something like normality. He sipped tea and brooded over the hammering, which continued unabated. Soon it was interrupted by a noise which sounded like a very large scaffolding giving way.

Fen got up hurriedly, washed, shaved, dressed, and went downstairs.

The whole household was astir – as unless heavily drugged it could hardly fail to be. Fen found Myra Herbert out in the yard, contemplating a small, greyish, unalluring pig which seemed to be trying to make up its mind how to employ the day.

‘Good morning, my dear,’ Myra greeted him brightly. ‘Sleep well?’

‘Up to a point,’ said Fen with reserve.

She indicated the pig. ‘Did you ever see anything like him?’ she asked.

‘Well, no, now you mention it I don’t think I have.’

‘I’ve been cheated,’ said Myra, and the pig grunted, apparently in assent. ‘I like a young pig to be nice and pink, you know, and cheerful-like. But him – my God. I feed him and feed him, but he never grows.’

They meditated jointly on this phenomenon. A passing farm-labourer joined them.

‘’E don’t get no bigger, do ’e?’ he observed.

‘What’s the matter with him, Alf?’

The farm-labourer pondered. ‘’E’m a non-doer,’ he diagnosed at last.

‘A what?’

‘Non-doer. You’re wasting your time trying to fatten ’im. ’E’ll never get no larger. Better sell ’im.’

‘Non-doer,’ said Myra with disgust. ‘That’s a nice cheerful ruddy thought to start the day with.’

The farm-labourer departed.

‘I’ll say this for him, though,’ said Myra, referring to the pig, ‘he’s very affectionate, which is a point in his favour, I suppose.’

They turned back to the inn. Myra suggested that Fen might now like to have breakfast, and Fen agreed.

‘But what is happening?’ he demanded, indicating the hammering.

‘Renovations, my dear. They’re renovating the interior.’

‘But workmen never get started as early as this.’

‘Oh, it isn’t workmen,’ said Myra obscurely. ‘That’s to say…’

They came to a door in a part of the ground floor with which Fen was not yet acquainted, and from behind which most of the din seemed to be proceeding. ‘Look,’ said Myra.

The opening of the door disclosed a dense cloud of plaster dust in which figures could dimly be discerned engaged, to all appearance, in a labour of unqualified destruction. One of these – a man – loomed up at them suddenly, looking like a whitewash victim in a slapstick comedy.

‘’Morning, Myra,’ he said with disarming heartiness. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Oh, quite, sir.’ Myra was distinctly bland and respectful. ‘This gentleman’s staying here, and he wondered what was going on.’

‘Morning to you, sir,’ said the man. ‘Hope we didn’t get you up too early.’

‘Not a bit,’ Fen replied without cordiality.

‘I feel better already’ – the man spoke, however, more with determination than with conviction – ‘for getting up at six every morning … It’s one of the highroads to health, as I’ve always said.’

He fell into a violent fit of coughing; his face became red, and then blue. Fen banged him prophylactically between the shoulder-blades.

‘Well, back to the grindstone,’ he said when he had recovered a little. ‘I’ll tell you this much, sir, there’s a good deal to be said, when you want a thing done, for doing it yourself.’ Someone caught him a glancing blow on the arm with a small pick. ‘Careful, damn you, that hurt…’

He left them in order to expostulate in more detail. They closed the door and continued on their way.

‘Who was that?’ Fen asked.

‘Mr Beaver, who owns the pub. I only manage it for him. He’s a wholesale draper, really.’

‘I see,’ said Fen, who saw nothing.

‘Have your breakfast now, my dear,’ Myra soothed him, ‘and I’ll explain later.’

She conducted him to a small room where there was a table laid for three. Here, to his elation, she provided him with bacon, eggs, and coffee.

He had finished these, and come to the marmalade stage, when the door opened and he was surprised to see the fair-haired girl who had been his sole fellow-passenger on the train.

He studied her covertly as she sat down at the table. Though she had neither Diana’s fresh, open-air charm nor Myra’s vivacity nor his blonde visitant’s filmic radiance, she was none the less pretty in a shy, quiet fashion; and her features showed what seemed to be a mingling of two distinct strains. The nose, for instance, was markedly patrician, while by contrast the large mouth hinted at vulgarity; the set of the eyebrows was arrogant, but the eyes were timid; and it occurred to Fen, in a burst of rather dreary fancifulness which only the unnaturally early hour can excuse, that if a king were to marry a courtesan, a daughter very much like this might be born to them.

It seemed to him, too, that the girl was nervous, rather as if she were about to face some new and testing experience of which the issue was uncertain. And her clothes confirmed this notion. They were good and tasteful, but something in the way she wore them suggested that they were her cared-for best, that she could not always afford to dress thus, that she was wearing them now – yes, that was it – in the hope of making a good impression.

On whom? Fen wondered. A potential employer, perhaps. Her being here to be interviewed for a coveted job would explain her nervousness plausibly enough…

Or, after all, would it? Somehow he sensed that the testing was to be at once more urgent and more intimate than that.

They talked a little, on conventional topics. Fen asked her if she had heard about the lunatic, and on discovering that she had not, explained the situation to her. However, her responses, though polite and intelligent enough, showed that she was too preoccupied to be very much interested in the subject.

He noted that she watched him steadily whenever he spoke, as if trying to assess his character from his expression. And in the fashion of her own speech there was further matter for surmise, since she pronounced her words in a slightly foreign fashion, which he found himself unable to identify. She was not – to judge from that – German or Italian or French or Dutch or Spanish; nor was there any immingled trace of dialect which might account for the oddity of the effect. Analysed, it came to this, that while her vowel sounds were pure and accurate, there was a very slight tendency to blur and confuse the individual constituents of each group of consonants – labials, gutturals, sibilants. Thus, ‘p’ was not entirely distinct from ‘b’, nor ‘s’ from ‘z’.

Fen discovered that he was incapable of explaining this, and the effect was to make him slightly peevish.

He finished his coffee and looked at his watch. Half past eight. In three hours he had an appointment with his election agent, but until then he was free to do what he pleased. And since the tumult of renovation made ‘The Fish Inn’ uninhabitable for long at a time, he decided to go out into the sunshine to inspect his constituency at first hand. He therefore took his leave of the girl, suspecting – though without rancour – that she was not sorry to be rid of him.

Outside the door he encountered Myra, and asked for news of the lunatic.

‘Well, they haven’t caught him, my dear,’ she said, ‘though the asylum people have been traipsing about the neighbourhood all night.’

‘It actually was a lunatic, then?’

‘Oh, yes. I didn’t think it was at first. Mrs Hennessy’s just the sort of daft old woman to have – what d’you call them? – sexual delusions about naked men jumping out at her in the dark.’

‘But I saw him, too,’ Fen pointed out.

Myra’s expression suggested that only politeness had prevented her from attributing sexual delusions to Fen also.

‘Anyway, he’s real enough,’ she said, ‘and they’ve put out he’s harmless, though, of course, they couldn’t very well say he was homicidal for fear of creating a panic. And what I say about lunatics is this: they wouldn’t be lunatics if you knew what they were going to be up to next.’

With this sombre prognosis she left Fen, informing him parenthetically that the bar would be open at eleven.

He was about to go out when his attention was caught by the inn register, which lay on a table almost at his elbow. Opening it, he found that the girl with whom he had breakfasted was named Jane Persimmons, that she was British, and that she lived at an address in Nottingham. And it struck him that here also he might get enlightenment about the man he had glimpsed the previous evening and whose appearance had seemed vaguely familiar.

He turned back the page and read with some interest the entry immediately preceding his own. It ran:

Major Rawdon Crawley, British, 201 Curzon Street, London.

‘Good God,’ Fen murmured to himself. ‘Either he just doesn’t care, or else he imagines that no one in this district has ever read Thackeray… Well, well, it’s none of my business, I suppose.’

He noted that the soi-disant Crawley had arrived two days previously, closed the book, and went out into the inn-yard.

There was no cloud in the sky, but a brief shower during the night had mitigated the dust accumulated during weeks of drought, and painted grass, leaves, and hedges, a fresher and more lively green. The non-doing pig was noisily eating potatoes. Fen crossed the yard and came out into the main street of the village.

Before setting out for the district he had studied Ordnance Survey maps, and so he was able to orientate himself fairly easily. The district is an agglomeration of Sanfords, presided over by Sanford Hall, which stands isolated on one of the few eminences which that very level country can claim. Rich pasture extends uninterruptedly almost as far as the Marlock Hills, though here and there you may see little rashes of barley, to which the soil is unsuited, but which protesting farmers have been obliged to put in by ill-informed fiats from the Ministry of Agriculture. The River Spoor, here only twenty miles from its source, meanders amiably between willows and alders, its waters reputedly inimical to fish. It is fed by a small, erratic tributary, very liable to drought, which runs down from a lake in the grounds of Sanford Hall.

Sanford Morvel is the chief town. It has no function except as a market for neighbouring farmers, and this parasitic existence gives it a blustering, unconfident air. Four miles to the south-east of it is Sanford Condover, less a defined community than a fortuitous collection of small farms loosely plastered together by some cottages, a Baptist chapel, and an unsightly pub. Six miles to the south of that is Sanford Angelorum.

A small branch line of the Great Western Railway proceeds reluctantly as far as Sanford Morvel, and an even smaller branch line proceeds even more reluctantly from Sanford Morvel to within two miles of Sanford Angelorum (taking in an almost totally disused halt at Sanford Condover on the way), where it suddenly peters out, the Company, with the optimism engendered by nineteenth-century industrial progress, having built the line thus far on the assumption that the then Lord Sanford would allow them to continue right up to the village. This supposition, however, proved to be mistaken, since the then Lord Sanford was a disciple of William Morris and nourished a fanatical hatred of railways. The station at which Fen had arrived consequently stands, futile and alone, at a place from which no human dwelling is even visible, and though amended laws would now permit the railway to carry out its original project, it has long since lost interest in the matter.

In the normal way Fen would have made Sanford Morvel his headquarters, since it is admittedly the central point of the constituency. But he had entered the political arena cavalierly and late, to find the housing shortage in Sanford Morvel so acute that neither a committee room nor a bedroom could be found for him. He had therefore been obliged to choose between Sanford Angelorum and a slum-like place, twelve miles to the north of Sanford Morvel, named Peek. Peek, an affair of mean, grey, semi-detached houses, sprang up in the eighteen-fifties as a result of the discovery of a seam of inferior coal. It declined, some twenty years later, as a result of the working out of that seam, which to the irritation of those who had financed it proved to be minute. The mining community, for which Peek had been built, departed; the more thriftless elements of the district took over and Peek, its raison d’être gone, decayed with startling rapidity.

Of all this Fen had deviously apprised himself. Peek, for his purposes, was clearly impossible. And, surveying Sanford Angelorum in the clear summer light, he was glad he had elected to stay in that charming, unpretentious village.

He admired it as he walked along the main street in the direction opposite to that of the railway station. Like most such places, it was assembled, he saw, round the church, a medium good example of the decorated style, whose ornamental conceits, being carved in red sandstone, were a good deal blurred by weathering. The Rectory, built large for an age more opulent and more philoprogenitive than this, adjoined it. There were one or two shops; there was a green with a war memorial; there was a row of delightful eighteenth-century cottages; there was, obstinately Victorian, ‘The Fish Inn’.

Outside the gate of one of the cottages Fen saw Diana talking earnestly to a young man in shabby tweeds. She waved to him, but her conversation seemed engrossing, and he did not venture to interrupt it.

Before long he reached the edge of the village and came to a spot which he suspected might be the scene of Mrs Hennessy’s encounter on the previous evening. Resisting the temptation to root about for traces of the lunatic, he passed on, and soon arrived at a miniature cross-roads, with a sign-post which added to its total illegibility the even graver defect of pointing in no particular direction.

After some hesitation he entered the lane on the left.

It was the height of summer. The hips of the dog-rose were ripe in the hedges. Barley was being cut, flecked with the scarlet of poppies. Copper butterflies roamed fragile as thistledown through the hot air. Spiders’ webs draped the twigs and leaves. In the distance a heat haze was forming, but a line of white smoke enabled you to follow the progress of a distant train.

Fen began to walk more briskly. The country, a place with which he was not normally infatuated, seemed particularly winning today…

But he had not gone a hundred yards before a startling spectacle halted him in his tracks.

Chapter Four

He had come to a five-barred gate giving access to a large, irregularly-shaped field. Its hedges were mainly of thorn. It had a dank-looking pond – much diminished now by the lack of rain – in the middle of it. And at the pond’s margin a duck, its snow-white plumage somewhat marred by the green slime which clung to its underside, was hobbling slowly about.

But it was not these things that had caught Fen’s attention. It was a man who was entering the field through a gap on the far side.

He was short, stout, harassed-looking, middle-aged. He wore gloves, a reefer jacket inside out, and pale purple trousers tucked into large black gumboots. And he was moving in a crouched, furtive manner, like one who tries to evade pursuit.

On reaching the edge of the pond, however, he straightened up and glanced quickly about him; then produced from the pocket of his coat a large, antique service revolver which seemed to be attached by a length of string to his braces. This he levelled at a wizened sapling which was growing by the hedge.

‘Bang,’ he said. ‘Bang, bang, bang.’

Now a look of satisfaction appeared on his face, and, turning, he suddenly hurled the revolver, still attached to its string, into the centre of the pond. After a moment’s pause he hauled it out again, like a fish on the end of a line, removed the string both from it and from his braces, wrapped this string in a piece of newspaper, crammed it into his pocket and, leaving the revolver where it lay, hurried across to the sapling, where with much difficulty he shouldered an imaginary burden and tottered with it in Fen’s direction. The duck, which had ambled into his path, gave him one look and then fled away before him, quacking angrily, like a leaf driven by an autumn gale.

It was clear that the man had not yet become aware of Fen’s presence. He staggered almost as far as the gate, lowered his invisible load to the ground with a sigh of relief, pulled off his coat, removed the paper-wrapped length of string from its pocket, turned the coat delicately right side out, and with much groaning and effort began putting it on to whatever it was he imagined was lying at his feet.

He was thus engaged when, becoming abruptly conscious that he was not alone, he looked up and caught Fen’s fascinated eye.

He stood upright, slowly, and expelled his breath in a long gasp of dismay.

‘A – aaaaaah,’ he said.

They gazed rigidly at one another for a moment longer. Then the man, recovering the power of articulate speech, remarked: ‘I’m not mad.’

This discouraging social gambit touched Fen. He said kindly: ‘Of course you’re not mad.’

The man became frantic. ‘I’m really not mad, I mean,’ he said.

‘I quite believe you,’ said Fen. ‘You needn’t imagine I’m just trying to humour you.’

‘You see,’ the man nervously explained, ‘there’s a lunatic at large, and I was afraid that you, being a stranger, might assume—’

‘No, no,’ Fen assured him. ‘I never had any doubt about what you were doing. But I imagine few detective novelists can be as scrupulous.’

The man relaxed suddenly, and began wiping his forehead with a brightly coloured handkerchief. He picked up the reefer jacket and put it on.

‘One’s plots are necessarily improbable,’ he said a trifle didactically, ‘but I believe in making sure that they are not impossible.’ His utterance was prim and selfconscious, like himself. ‘Short of murder itself, I try everything out before finally adopting it for a book, and really, you would be surprised at the number of flaws and difficulties which are revealed in the process.’

Fen put his elbows on the top bar of the gate and leaned there comfortably.

‘And of course’, he said, ‘it must enable you to get to some extent inside the mind of the murderer.’

An expression of mild repugnance appeared on the man’s face. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, it doesn’t do that.’ The subject seemed painful to him, and Fen felt that he had committed an indiscretion. ‘The fact is,’ the man went on, ‘that I have no interest in the minds of murderers, or for that matter,’ he added rather wildly, ‘in the minds of anyone else. Characterization seems to me a very over-rated element in fiction. I can never see why one should be obliged to have any of it at all, if one doesn’t want to. It limits the form so.’

Fen agreed, with no special conviction, that it did, and particularly in the case of detective stories. ‘I read a good many of them,’ he said, ‘and I must know yours. May I ask your name?’

‘Judd,’ the man replied, ‘my name is Judd. But I write’ – he hesitated, in some embarrassment – ‘I write under the pseudonym of “Annette de la Tour”.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Fen. Annette de la Tour’s books, he remembered, were complicated, lurid, and splendidly melodramatic. And certainly they made no concessions to the Baal of characterization. He said: ‘Your work has given me a great deal of pleasure, Mr Judd.’

‘Has it?’ said Mr Judd eagerly. ‘Has it really? I’ve been writing for twenty years, and no one has ever said anything like that to me before. My dear fellow, I’m so grateful.’ His eyes sparkled with innocent pleasure. ‘And it’s all the better coming, as it evidently does, from an intelligent man.’

Upon this shameless quid pro quo he paused expectantly, and Fen, feeling that he was required to identify himself, did so. Mr Judd clapped his hands together with excitement.

‘But how splendid!’ he exclaimed. ‘Of course I’ve followed all your cases. We must have a very long talk together, a very long talk indeed. Are you staying here?’

‘Yes.’

‘For long?’

‘Until after polling day. I’m standing for Parliament.’

Mr Judd was taken aback.

‘Standing?’ he repeated dazedly. ‘For Parliament?’

‘It is my wish to serve the community,’ Fen said.

Confronted with this pronouncement, Mr Judd showed himself either more credulous or more courteous than Diana had been.

‘Very commendable,’ he murmured. ‘To tell you the truth, I had rather forgotten there was a by-election in progress… What interest do you represent?’

‘I’m an Independent.’

‘Then you shall have my vote,’ said Mr Judd, narrowly forestalling a primitive attempt at canvassing on Fen’s part. ‘And if I had fifty votes,’ he added lyrically, ‘you should have them all. Tell me, which of my books do you think the best?’

Fen rummaged in his mind, seeking not for that book of Mr Judd’s which he thought the best, but for the one which Mr Judd was likely to cherish most. ‘The Screaming Bone,’ he said at last.

‘Admirable!’ said Mr Judd, and Fen was pleased that his diagnosis had been correct. ‘I’m so glad you enjoyed that one, because the critics were very down on it, and yet I’ve always thought it the finest thing I’ve done. Mind you, the critics are down on all my books, because they haven’t any psychology in them, but they were particularly harsh about that one… You’re very perceptive, Professor Fen, very perceptive indeed.’ He beamed approval. ‘Still, we mustn’t waste time talking about my nonsense,’ he concluded insincerely. ‘Where are you heading for?’

‘I think’ – Fen glanced at his watch – ‘that it’s about time I was strolling back to the village.’

Mr Judd’s face fell. ‘What a pity – I have to go in the opposite direction, or we could have walked along together and talked,’ he said with great simplicity, ‘about my books. Still, you must come and have a meal with me – I live in a cottage only a quarter of a mile from here. What about lunch today?’

Fen said: ‘I’m afraid, you know, that I’m going to be very busy during the coming week,’ but Mr Judd’s disappointment was so manifest and poignant that he was moved to add: ‘But I dare say we can fit something in.’

‘Please try,’ said Mr Judd earnestly. ‘Please try. My telephone number is Sanford 13, and you needn’t hesitate to ring me at any time. Where are you staying?’

‘The Fish Inn,’ said Fen.

These words produced, unexpectedly enough, a marked change in Mr Judd. A new light appeared in his eyes – a light which Fen could not but associate with the more disreputable antics of satyrs in classic woods. In tones of reverence he said:

‘The Fish Inn… Tell me, have you come across that beautiful girl?’

‘The blonde?’

‘The blonde.’

‘Well, yes. She brought me my early morning tea.’

Mr Judd drew in his breath sharply.

‘She brought you your tea,’ he said, somehow investing Fen’s prosaic statement with the glamour of a phallic rite. ‘And was she wearing that powder-blue frock?’

‘I can’t really remember,’ said Fen vaguely. ‘It was something tight-fitting, I think.’

‘Tight-fitting,’ Mr Judd repeated with awe. He looked at Fen as he might have looked at a man who had lit a fire with bank-notes. ‘Do you know, I think she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen… Do you think she reads my books? I’ve never dared ask her.’

‘I doubt if she’s intelligent enough to read anyone’s books.’

Mr Judd sighed. ‘It’s just as well, perhaps,’ he said, ‘because she mightn’t like them…’ He veered from the topic with obvious reluctance. ‘Well, well, I mustn’t keep you.’

‘Don’t forget your revolver,’ said Fen.

‘No, I’d better not do that. Apart from anything else, I haven’t got a licence for it.’

‘And by the way – what is the point of throwing it into the pond and pulling it out again?’

‘That,’ Mr Judd explained, ‘is because the murderer wants to give the impression that he left it there at the time of the murder, and only retrieved it a good deal later, for fear of its discovery. The detective, of course, finds it somewhere quite different.’

‘But why should the murderer want to give that impression?’

Mr Judd became evasive. ‘I think you’d better read the book when it comes out. I’ll send you a copy… You realize about the coat, of course. It belongs to the victim, and the murderer wears it inside out so that when he carries the body the coat gets bloodstains on it where they ought to be, on the inside.’

‘Yes,’ said Fen. ‘Yes, I’d grasped that.’

‘Very quick of you. Well, you’ll let me know when you can pay me a visit, won’t you? I shall look forward to it, look forward to it enormously. I live a very solitary life, because there’s no one intelligent to talk to in Sanford Angelorum except the Rector, and his interests are confined to theology and birds and gardening, about all of which his information is tiresomely complete. Yes, you must certainly come and have a meal, and I shall be interested to hear any criticisms you may have to make about my books… Yes. Well, goodbye for the present.’

‘Goodbye,’ said Fen, shaking him by the hand. ‘I’ve very much enjoyed meeting you, and I hope I didn’t interrupt your test.’

‘Not in the least,’ Mr Judd assured him. ‘All I had left to do was to take the body into the village and put it on top of the War Memorial… Well, then, I shall hope to be seeing you.’

Chapter Five

They parted cordially, Mr Judd to retrieve his revolver and Fen to return to the village, full of regret at having missed seeing Mr Judd hoisting an imaginary corpse on to the War Memorial, and speculating on Mr Judd’s murderer’s motives in performing this laborious and public act.

He had reached the point provisionally identified as Sweeting’s Farm, and had worked out a rambling, intricate theory about Mr Judd’s murderer which involved the propinquity of an expatriate tulip-grower from Harlingen, when he saw approaching him, at a slow and thoughtful pace, the self-styled Crawley, who was now wearing a tweed cap and a tweed knickerbocker suit and carrying a fishing-rod in a manner which suggested that he was unused to it.

The conviction of having seen or known this man in some other context returned to Fen with redoubled force. He decided to accost him and, if possible, resolve the problem.

In this project, however, he was over-sanguine. The man looked up, observed his purposeful approach, glanced hurriedly about him, and in another moment had bounded over a stile and was hastening precipitately away across the field to which it gave access.

Shaken at being thus obviously avoided, Fen halted; then resumed his walk in a less cheerful mood. At one time and another he had made contact with various persons whom the law regarded with disfavour, and it was not impossible that ‘Crawley’ was one of them. In that case Fen had a responsibility for preventing whatever mischief might be contemplated – only the trouble was that he could not be sure that any mischief was contemplated…

He inspected the miscellaneous lumber-room of his mind in the hope of enlightenment, but vainly. He was still inspecting it, still vainly, when he arrived back at the inn.

His walk had taken him longer than he imagined, and it was already ten past eleven. The bar, however, got little custom before midday, and it was empty except for Myra, for the blonde, and for a sullen-looking Cold-Comfort-Farmish sort of man who was looming across at Myra and speaking slowly but with great vehemence.

‘I’ll ’ave ’ee,’ he was saying, ‘I’ll get ’ee, see if I doan’t.’

He pointed a dramatic finger at Myra who, nevertheless, did not seem much perturbed. ‘Don’t be so ruddy daft, Sam,’ she said.

‘I doan’t mind you’m being a barmaid,’ the Cold-Comfort-Farmish man resumed graciously. ‘I’m not one o’ your proud ’uns. Come on, Myra, be a sport. ’Twoan’t take not five minutes.’

Myra, unmoved by this promise of despatch, indicated Fen.

‘You’re making a fool of yourself in front of the gentleman, Sam,’ she said. ‘Finish your drink like a good boy and go back to the farm. I know you didn’t ought to be here, and you’ll cop it if Farmer Bligh finds out.’

The passionate rustic turned upon Fen a look of intense hatred, emptied his glass, wiped his mouth, muttered something derogatory to womanhood and strode out of the bar. In a moment he reappeared outside the window, which was slightly grimy, traced on it with his forefinger the words I LOVE YOU in reverse, so that they could be read from inside, glowered at them all, and went away.

‘That’s clever,’ said Myra, in reference apparently to the calligraphic feat. ‘He must have been practising it at home.’

‘Ah,’ said Fen non-committally.

‘Of course, Sam, he’s a chronic case – been carrying on like that for nearly two years now. It’s flattering in a way, but I can’t think how he doesn’t get sick of it.’

‘I suppose,’ said Fen, with hazy recollections of novels about bucolic communities, ‘that time doesn’t mean very much to him.’

‘What would you like to drink, my dear?’

‘A pint of bitter, please. And you?’

‘Oh, thank you, sir. I’ll have a Worthington, if I may.’

Fen settled on a stool by the bar, and while they drank talked to Myra about the people he had met in Sanford Angelorum.

Of Diana he learned that she was an orphan – the daughter of a former local G.P. who had died almost penniless through never sending in bills – that she was much liked by the local people, and that she was reputed to be in love with young Lord Sanford.

Of young Lord Sanford he learned that he was in his last year at Oxford, that he was a zealous Socialist, that he lived not in Sanford Hall itself but in the dower-house attached to it, that the local people would have liked him better if he had not been so conscientiously democratic, and that he might or might not be going to marry Diana.

Of Sanford Hall, he learned that young Lord Sanford had presented it to the nation, and that the nation had promptly turned it into a mental asylum run by the Home Office.

Of Mr Judd, he learned that he kept himself to himself.

Of Myra, he learned that her husband had died five years previously, and that she liked working in pubs.

Of Mr Beaver, he learned that he was a man of great initial determination but little staying-power.

Of Jane Persimmons, he learned that she was very quiet and reserved, that she had not disclosed her business in the village, that Myra liked her, and that she was fairly certainly not well off.

‘Then she’s a stranger in the district?’ Fen asked.

‘Yes, my dear. And the man is, too – Crawley, I mean. Have you seen him yet?’

Fen said that he had.

‘He’s a queer one,’ Myra went on. ‘Come here three days ago. Off on his own all day and every day – sometimes doesn’t even have breakfast. Says he goes fishing, but no one ever comes here to fish: there’s nothing in the Spoor but two or three minnows. And anyway, it’s obvious he knows no more about fishing than my backside. He’s a mystery, he is. Jacqueline mistrusted him from the start – didn’t you, Jackie?’ she said to the blonde barmaid.

Jacqueline, who was patiently polishing glasses, nodded and favoured them with a radiant smile. Fen noted, for Mr Judd’s future information, that she was wearing a plain black frock with white at the wrists and neck, and a rather beautiful old marcasite brooch.

Myra was regarding her with considerable fondness.

‘Isn’t she lovely?’ said Myra with proprietary pride. ‘Talk about dumb ruddy blondes.’

The dumb ruddy blonde, unembarrassed, glowed at them again, like a large electric bulb raised gently to its fullest power and then as gently dimmed.

‘And she’s everything you imagine blondes with figures aren’t,’ said Myra. ‘Goes to church regular, looks after her pa and ma in Sanford Morvel, doesn’t smoke or drink, and hardly ever goes out with men. But, of course, the only thing people want to do is just look at her – almost the only thing, that is,’ Myra corrected herself in the interests of accuracy.

Jacqueline smiled exquisitely a third time, and continued peaceably to polish glasses. A customer came in, and Myra abandoned Fen in order to attend to him. At the time of Fen’s return to the inn, all had been quiet. But now a light tapping from some other quarter of the building indicated that Mr Beaver’s interregnum, whatever might have been its cause, was over. The tapping grew rapidly in vehemence, and was soon joined, fugally, by other similar noises.

‘My God,’ said Myra. ‘They’re off again.’

Fen thought the moment appropriate to demand an explanation of the repairs.

‘It’s quite simple, my dear,’ said Myra. ‘In the normal way we only get the locals in here, and, of course, that means the pub doesn’t make much money. So Mr Beaver decided he’d like to turn it into a sort of roadhouse place, swanky-like, you know, and expensive, and get people to come here in their cars from all over the county.’

‘But that’s a deplorable ambition,’ Fen protested.

‘Well, you can understand it, can’t you?’ said Myra tolerantly. ‘I know there’s some as say the village ought to stay unspoiled, and all that, but it’s my opinion that if people aren’t allowed to make as much money as they can we shall all be worse off.’

Fen considered this fiscal theory and decided that, subject to a good deal of qualification, there was something in it.

‘But still,’ he said, ‘it does seem a pity. You know the sort of customers you’ll get; loud-voiced, red-faced men with Hudson Terraplanes and toothbrush moustaches, and little slinky girls with geranium lips and an eye to the main chance, smoking cigarettes in holders.’

Myra sighed a little at this vision of the coming Gomorrah, but – since unlike Fen she was not prone to aesthetic bigotry – did not seem, he thought, to be seriously dismayed.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘it’s their pub to do what they like with. They tried to get a licence for the renovations, but the Ministry refused it. So they’re doing the whole thing themselves.’

‘Doing it themselves?’

‘There’s a regulation, you see, that if you don’t employ workmen, and don’t spend more than a hundred pounds, you can do up your house, or whatever it is, yourself. Mr Beaver’s got his whole family at it, and some of his friends drop in now and again to lend a hand.’

‘Surely, though, it’s a job for an expert.’

‘Ah,’ said Myra sombrely. ‘You’re right there, my dear. But that’s Mr Beaver all over. Once he gets an idea into his head, nothing’ll stop him. And if you ask me—’

But what more she would have said Fen never learned. Even as she spoke, he had been conscious that a large and noisy car was pulling up at the door of the inn.

And now, with the consciously grandiose air of a god from a machine, a newcomer strode into the bar.

Chapter Six

The newcomer was a man of between thirty and forty, though a certain severity of expression made him seem rather older. He was tall and stringy, with a weather-beaten complexion, a long straight nose, bright, bird-like eyes, and thin brown hair which glistened with bay-rum; and he wore jodhpurs, riding-boots, a violent check hacking coat, and a yellow tie with horses’ heads on it. In his hand he carried a green pork-pie hat with ventilation holes in the top, so that it looked as if someone had been shooting at him.

He stalked to the bar, rapped on it, and demanded peremptorily to be told if Professor Fen were available.

‘I am Fen,’ said Fen.

The newcomer’s manner changed at once to one of great affability. He took Fen’s hand and joggled it up and down prolongedly.

‘My dear sir,’ he said, ‘this is a very great pleasure. Damme yes. Delighted, and all that… What are you having?’

‘Bitter, I think.’

‘A pint of bitter, Miss, and a large Scotch for me.’

‘You are Captain Watkyn?’ Fen asked mistrustfully.

‘You’ve got it in one, old boy,’ said Captain Watkyn with enthusiasm; it was as though he were commending Fen for the solution of a particularly awkward riddle. ‘The old firm in person, at your service now as always… Well, bungho.’

They drank.

‘It’s a good thing you’re a drinking man,’ Captain Watkyn added pensively. ‘I had to act for a T.T. once – Melton Mowbray, I think it was – and between ourselves, I had a pretty sticky time of it.’

‘Did he get in?’

‘No,’ said Captain Watkyn with satisfaction, ‘he didn’t. Mind you,’ he went on hurriedly, perceiving in this anecdote an element which might be interpreted to his own disadvantage – ‘mind you, he wouldn’t have got in even if the King – God bless His Majesty – had been sponsoring him… I tell you what, we’ll go and sit over by the window, where there’s some air.’

Carrying their drinks, they moved to the embrasure he had indicated and settled down there, Captain Watkyn with the relieved sigh of one who, after long and tedious journeyings, has returned home.

‘Snug little place,’ he observed, looking about him. ‘Might be a bit quieter, though, mightn’t it?’

Fen agreed that it might.

‘Well, never mind,’ said Captain Watkyn consolatorily, as though it had been Fen who had complained. ‘You might be very much worse off, if I know anything about it… Well, now, sir, you must let me have your instructions.’

‘What,’ Fen asked, ‘has been happening so far?’

‘A great deal,’ Captain Watkyn replied promptly. ‘A great deal has been happening. In the first place, I’ve induced ten people to nominate you – they’re a job lot, but they’re ratepayers, which is the only thing that matters. So that’s settled. And then, the posters and leaflets have arrived this morning from the printer. He’s taken a devil of a time doing them, but that’s all to the good.’

‘How is it all to the good? I don’t see—’

‘The point is, old boy,’ Captain Watkyn interrupted, ‘that you get quite an advantage by starting your campaign late. You acquire the charm of novelty. Start too early, and you’ll find people get sick of seeing your silly face peering at them from the hoardings (no offence meant). Now, you’re going to come down on them,’ he said, waxing suddenly picturesque, ‘like the Assyrian on whatever it was. They’ll be bowled over. They won’t have a chance to look about. Then along comes Polling Day, and you’re in.’

‘Yes,’ said Fen dubiously. ‘I dare say that’s so.’

‘You may depend on it, old boy. The old firm knows what it’s doing, believe you me. Now then, we must get down to brass tacks. The posters have been distributed, and they’ll be up by tomorrow.’

‘What is on them?’

‘Well, your photograph, of course,’ Captain Watkyn replied dreamily. ‘And underneath that they say: “Vote for Fen and a Brave New World”.’

‘I scarcely think—’

‘Now, I know what you’re going to say.’ Captain Watkyn raised one finger monitorily. ‘I know just exactly what you’re going to say. You’re going to say that’s exaggerated, and I agree; I’m with you entirely, make no mistake about that. But we’ve got to face it, old boy: these elections are all a lot of hocus-pocus from beginning to end. It’s what people expect. It’s what people want. And you won’t get into Parliament by saying: “Vote for Fen and a Slightly Better World if you’re Lucky”.’

‘Well, no, I suppose not… All right, then. What about the leaflets?’

‘I have some here.’ Captain Watkyn groped in his pocket and produced a handful of primed matter, which he passed to Fen. ‘The Candidate Who Will Look After Your Interests’ it said on the outside.

Fen studied it bemusedly, while Captain Watkyn went off to get another round of drinks.

‘You’ll like that, I know,’ Captain Watkyn said complacently on his return. ‘It’s one of the best things in its line I’ve ever done.’

‘But all this… it isn’t what I wrote to you.’

‘Well, no, not exactly what you wrote to me,’ Captain Watkyn admitted. ‘But you see, old boy, it’s no use trying to stray away from the usual Independent line: you’ll get nowhere if you do.’

‘But what is the usual Independent line?’

‘Just Judging Every Issue on its Own Merits: Freedom from the Party Caucus: that sort of thing.’

‘Oh. But look here: this says I advocate the abolition of capital punishment, and really, you know, I’m not at all sure that I do.’

‘My dear sir, it doesn’t matter whether you do or not,’ said Captain Watkyn with candour. ‘You must rid yourself of the idea that you have to try and implement any of these promises once you’re actually elected. The thing is to get votes, and with an Independent candidate you have to fill up election pamphlets with non-Party issues like capital punishment, because the only thing you say about major issues is that everything will be Judged on its Own Merits.’

‘I see. Then when I make speeches I have to stick to these non-Party things?’

‘No, no,’ said Captain Watkyn patiently, ‘you mustn’t on any account do that. You must talk a great deal about the major issues, but you must keep to pious aspirations, mainly.’ An idea occurred to him. ‘Let’s have a test. Imagine I’m a heckler. I say: “What about exports, eh? What about exports?” And your reply is—’

Fen considered for a moment and then said:

‘Ah, I’m glad you asked that question, my friend, because it deals with one of the most important problems facing this country today – a problem, I should add, which can be only imperfectly solved by any of the rigid, prejudiced Party policies.

‘“What about exports?” you say. And I reply: “What about imports?”

‘Ladies and gentlemen, there is no need for me to talk down to you. Politics are a matter of common sense – and common sense is that sphere in which ordinary men and women excel. Apply that criterion to this question of exports; cut through the meaningless tangle of Party verbiage with a clean, bright sword. And what do you find? You find that exports mean imports and imports mean exports. If we wish to import, we must export. If we wish to export, we must import. And the same applies to every other people, of whatever race or creed. The matter is as simple as that.

‘“Simple,” did I say? Yes, but vitally important, too, as our friend so rightly suggests. All of us want to see England prosperous; all of us want to build for our children and our children’s children a future free from the hideous threat of war. And I’m sure you won’t consider it a selfish aspiration if I say that all of us would like to see a few years of that future ourselves. And why not? It’s a great ideal we’re fighting for, but it isn’t an impossible ideal…

‘Ladies and gentlemen, the world is at the cross-roads: we can go triumphantly forward – or we can relapse into barbarism and fear. And it is for you – everyone of you – to choose which way we shall go.

‘Well, sir, I think perhaps that answers your question. There may be some points I’ve missed, as the monkey said when he fell over the hedgehog…’

Captain Watkyn was professionally impressed.

‘You’re a natural, old boy,’ he said soberly. ‘Can you keep that sort of thing up?’

‘Indefinitely,’ Fen assured him. ‘The command of cliché comes of having had a literary training.’

‘Then we’re in the money,’ said Captain Watkyn. ‘Here, we must have another drink on that.’

They had another drink, and Captain Watkyn, sighing contentedly, said:

‘Well, I don’t mind telling you now, Professor Fen, that I was a bit nervous at first about how you were going to turn out. I’ve had some queer customers to handle in my time, and sometimes it’s been touch-and-go whether they could put a complete sentence together impromptu. Thank God we don’t have to worry about that.

‘Now let’s map out a plan of campaign. My idea, in addition to the regulation meetings, is to make a separate appeal to each section of the community.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, I’ve been over the ground pretty thoroughly,’ said Captain Watkyn, ‘and I think I’ve got a fair notion of what we’re up against. This is an easy constituency in a way, because it’s completely apathetic: half the people won’t vote at all, for anyone. And a good proportion of that half are the women. These country women tend to think the whole thing’s a lot of idiotic humbug suited only to men, and I won’t say,’ Captain Watkyn added handsomely, ‘that I think they’re far wrong… Anyway, we don’t have to appeal to the women so much as we should elsewhere, so you can tone down the brave-resourceful-queueing-housewife-and- mother angle.’

‘And that leaves what?’

‘It leaves the farmers and farm-labourers, chiefly. Do you know anything about farming?’

‘Nothing whatever.’

‘It’s just as well, perhaps. Your best line with them will be to attack the Ministry of Agriculture, which they all detest. I’ll try and collect some actual local cases of meddling for you to use, but you can always get on in the meanwhile with the usual man-on-the-spot-knows-a-sight-more-about-the-job-than-a-pack-of-Civil-Servants-in-Whitehall angle.’

‘I can manage that all right,’ said Fen. ‘Who else is there?’

‘There’s the Sanford Morvel crowd, mostly shopkeepers. The small-trader-is-the-backbone-of-national-prosperity will do for them, only you’ll have to remember that agriculture’s the backbone of national prosperity, too.’

‘And everything else.’

‘Everything else that goes on in this constituency,’ Captain Watkyn amended. ‘Then there’s Peek. Peek’s not going to be too easy. Peek, between ourselves, is one of the most ruddy awful places I’ve ever come across in my life. The only thing I can think of that’s likely to appeal to Peek is a sort of general prospect of getting something for nothing.’

Fen felt whatever principles he had slipping finally and irretrievably into limbo before Captain Watkyn’s determined and far-reaching doctrines of expediency.

‘Is that the lot?’ he asked weakly.

‘There are still the professional people, upper middle class and so forth. Not many of them, but they tend to vote.’

‘And what tale do I spin them?’

Captain Watkyn seemed hurt.

‘Look here, old boy, don’t you go getting any wrong ideas about me. I know as well as you do what a grand thing democracy is. But the way I look at it is this. You’re obviously the sort of clever, high-minded chap who ought to be in Parliament. Very well, then. But how are you going to get there? Answer: you’ve got to be elected.

‘Now, these Sanford people don’t know you as well as I do,’ Captain Watkyn pursued, with a confidence which their quarter-hour acquaintance did not seem to Fen entirely to justify, ‘and since they’re mostly chronic imbeciles they’re quite likely to elect some scoundrelly nitwit who’ll help send the country to the dogs. Therefore, they’ve got to be jollied along a bit – for their own good, d’you see?’

‘As Plato remarked.’

‘As whatsit remarked, yes. Once you’re elected, then your principles and so forth come into play. See what I mean?’

Fen, on the point of drawing attention to the well-known fact that means determine ends, came abruptly to the conclusion that the moment was inopportune and subsided again.

‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ he said reservedly.

‘Then we’re all set,’ said Captain Watkyn. ‘Now, today’s Saturday. My idea is to concentrate all your meetings as close to Polling Day as possible. This afternoon, of course, there’s the nomination business in Sanford Morvel. Then tomorrow evening I’ve arranged for you to hold a kick-off meeting there after church hours. On Monday morning you’re going hunting—’

‘I’m what?’

‘Hunting, old boy. Cubbing, actually. There’s a very keen hunt in these parts. Get you a lot of votes if you turn up.’

‘But I’ve never hunted in my life,’ said Fen. His knowledge of the subject was derived almost exclusively from Surtees and the Irish Resident Magistrate.

‘That’s all right,’ said Captain Watkyn easily. ‘You can ride, can’t you?’

‘In a way.’

‘Then don’t worry, old boy. I’ll be there to give you moral support. And I can easily get the loan of a couple of quiet nags.’

‘No,’ said Fen.

‘If you went,’ Captain Watkyn urged, ‘it’d give you a lot of pull with a certain sort of people, because neither of the other candidates will be there. The Conservative man can’t ride, and the Labour man daren’t, for fear of offending The New Statesman… Just think it over.’

‘No.’

Unlike Oxford, Captain Watkyn had no time to waste on lost causes. ‘All right, then,’ he said regretfully, ‘we’ll cut that out… Now, let’s see. Most of the rest of the week you’ll have to spend touring about to God-awful places like Peek, and talking at street corners. But, of course, we’ll hold a slap-up final meeting on the evening before Polling Day.’

‘That sounds satisfactory,’ Fen agreed. ‘And are there any people who are going to canvass for me?’

‘Well, not yet,’ said Captain Watkyn. ‘There aren’t actually any such people yet. Matter of fact, I tried to rope in the chaps who are nominating you, but they turned a bit nasty. Still, I shall find someone, never fear.’

‘And have I got a loudspeaker van?’

‘Well, yes. It doesn’t work very well, because it’s rather an old one, but there’s an electrician johnny in Sanford Morvel trying to fix it up.’

‘And a car?’

‘I’ve seen to that, too,’ said Captain Watkyn. ‘We’ll pick it up after the nomination.’

‘And do we need a committee room? I dare say I could get a room here if necessary.’

‘Well, we haven’t got a committee, have we, old boy? No, I think we’ll dispense with that for the time being. No point in burdening ourselves with unnecessary expenses – the law only allows us a certain amount of money to play about with, you know… Now, is there anything else, I wonder?’

‘What are the other candidates like?’

‘Oh, they’re not much,’ said Captain Watkyn with contempt. ‘The Conservative – chap called Strode – is a farm-labourer who’s been to night classes. And Wither, the Labour man, is a big industrial magnate from somewhere up north. They’ve been chosen that way to try and make an appeal to the sort of people who aren’t normally expected to vote for their Parties. Of course, it won’t make the slightest difference in the end, but it gives Party H.Q. the illusion of being-up-to-the-minute.’

‘Do you think I’ve got a chance of getting in?’ Fen asked.

‘Not a doubt of it, old boy,’ said Captain Waytkn heartily. ‘Think success: talk success. That’s my motto, and always will be.’

Fen eyed him rather coldly. ‘But apart from sales talk, I mean.’

Captain Watkyn’s cheerfulness abated slightly.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘In the normal way, to be quite candid, I should say you hadn’t got a chance in a million. But politics are funny. They’re like racing. Hundred-to-one outsiders romp home and leave all the experts gaping. So you needn’t despair,’ said Captain Watkyn, resuming his more specious manner. ‘No need for despair at all. Now, I tell you what: we’ll drive into Sanford Morvel for lunch, and then there’ll be the nomination business, and after that you can come back here to’ – he gestured vaguely – ‘to prepare your mind and so forth… How about one for the road?’

Chapter Seven

So they had one for the road and, after Captain Watkyn had ascertained that Fen was provided with the cheque for his deposit, left the inn. Captain Watkyn’s car proved to be a rather old Bugatti sports model, and in it they set off for Sanford Morvel. The journey was without incident except when Captain Watkyn stopped beside a seedy-looking man who was shuffling along the road, gave him two pound notes, murmured: ‘Assyrian Lancer, Newmarket, 3.30,’ and drove on again. ‘Damn silly names these horses have,’ he observed to Fen.

Sanford Morvel looked as if it were trying to be a gracious, peaceful country town and failing very badly. Its main street was wide but vacant-seeming; its Town Hall was old but ugly; its shops and pubs and houses had uniformly succeeded in missing the great periods of English domestic architecture; its church was squat and sullen. Fen and Captain Watkyn lunched on ill-cooked meat and tepid vegetables at the ‘White Lion’, a pretentious but comfortless hotel in the Market Square. Afterwards they went to the Town Hall, where the deposit and nomination papers were given with due form to the Sheriff, and where Fen shook hands with Strode and Wither, neither of whom (since the occasion was not a public one) evinced much cordiality to him or to each other.

Following this ceremony, Fen was introduced by Captain Watkyn to the car he was to use, a lumbering old Morris no longer capable of doing more than twenty miles an hour. In it, having received a promise that Captain Watkyn would collect him in time for the meeting tomorrow night, he drove languidly back to Sanford Angelorum.

On the way he stopped the car in order to look at Sanford Hall. It was a large building, of the eighteenth century apparently, set well back from the road in extensive grounds and partly screened by trees. The sun shone brilliantly; the vista was quiet and unpeopled. Fen left the car, found an entrance to the grounds of the Hall and, undeterred by considerations of trespass, went through it.

Crossing a small coppice of beeches, he came on a curious scene.

By the side of a small stream, about thirty yards off, Diana stood talking to the young man in shabby tweeds with whom Fen had seen her earlier in the day, and whom in default of other evidence he identified as Lord Sanford. It was impossible to tell what the conversation was about, but it did not seem to be a particularly amicable one. Diana was gesticulating vehemently; her eyes flashed, and her mouth, when she spoke, was twisted at the corners with indignation. The young man seemed less angry than harassed; evidently he was on the defensive. Their voices came to Fen’s ears, through the hot summer air, in weak spasms of uninflected sound.

But it was not the apparent quarrel which chiefly interested him. It was the presence among the beech trees of a watcher other than himself.

The fair-haired girl who called herself Jane Persimmons was partly hidden by one of the tree trunks, and the hand she had pressed against it was rigid, with the knuckles white. A narrow shaft of sunlight rested on her cheeks, but her eyes were in shadow and unreadable. All Fen could tell was that what she saw interested her passionately. He thought, too, that she was not deliberately eavesdropping – that like himself she had come here accidentally, and not much before him at that. But the scene, for some reason, had gripped her, and until it was finished she was incapable of moving, whether she would or no.

Now, however, Diana and the young man were moving away, up towards the house. Jane Persimmons stiffened and made a short indecisive movement as if to follow. Then she relaxed and turned slowly away.

And turning, she saw Fen.

It was easy for him to read what was in her mind. Principally, it was shame at being caught in a harmless but equivocal act; secondarily, it was a desperate resolve to try and appear natural, as though she had a right there.

She stumbled a little on a root; attempted to smile; stammered a conventional greeting; and then turned and half ran back through the coppice. More slowly, Fen followed.

Reaching the car, he found her waiting for him there, shifting her small, neat bag from hand to hand. She had decided, evidently, that the occurrence called for stronger measures than mere flight.

‘I – I wanted to see the house,’ she said. ‘It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?’

At that moment she seemed very small and friendless, and Fen was touched. He smiled with reassuring charm.

‘Delightful,’ he answered. ‘I was trespassing, too. Can I give you a lift back to the inn?’

‘N – no, thank you. I came out for a walk, and I shan’t go back yet.’

‘Then I’ll be seeing you later.’

‘Just – just a minute.’ She put out a hand to stop him. ‘I – Do you know Lord Sanford?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Oh!’ She gave a little gasping laugh. ‘Well, I hope – I hope you won’t tell him I’ve been spying on him.’

‘I shan’t tell a soul,’ Fen assured her. ‘And you must do the same for me.’

‘That’s a bargain, then,’ she said. And beneath the outward flippancy he knew that she was desperately in earnest.

‘That’s a bargain,’ he said seriously. ‘You’re sure I can’t take you anywhere?’

‘No, really, thank you.’

‘Goodbye for now, then.’

As he drove off, he saw in the driving-mirror that she stood looking after him until a bend in the road hid him from her. He wondered if he could have done more for her; she had seemed, somehow, so very much in need of help and advice. Better not offer those commodities, though, until he was asked for them…

And of one thing at least he was sure; whatever might have been her motives in watching Diana and Lord Sanford, this girl was incapable of a mean or a flagitious act.

He parked the car in the inn-yard alongside the non-doing pig, which was lying gracelessly on its side in what appeared to be a stupor. The total quietude of the inn made it clear that Mr Beaver and his family had given up for the day and gone home. And Fen, yawning copiously, decided that the most agreeable thing to do now would be to lie on his bed and fall asleep; which accordingly he did. He was slightly troubled by a recurring dream in which Mr Judd, uttering American college cries, pursued a scantily-clad Jacqueline in and out among the Doric columns of a Greek temple, but in spite of this inconclusive drama he awoke at seven in the evening considerably refreshed.

Dinner he ate alone in the room where he had breakfasted, Myra informing him that neither of the other guests was booked to appear. This room evidently adjoined the bar, for he was able to hear the perennial argument going on within a few feet of him.

‘She’m close-’auled, I tell ’ee.’

‘No, no, Fred, you’m proper mazed. See them? Them’s ’er gaff-tops’ls.’

‘Mizzen-tops’ls.’

‘Mizzen, gaff, ’tis all the bloody same.’

‘What I says is, ’er’s runnin’ before the wind.’

‘Look ’ere, see that ship at anchor, see? Now, if ’er was moored fore and aft, you wouldn’t be able to see which way the bloody wind was blowing. As ’tis, she’s facin’ out t’ards sea. An’ that means—’

‘But she is moored aft. You can see it. You can see the buoy.’

‘That’s no buoy, Fred, that’s just a drop o’ bloody paint.’

‘I’m tellin’ ’ee ’tes a buoy.’

‘Well, look ’ere now, if that brig’s close-’auled, that means…’

The meal over, Fen settled down with some beer and a detective story, becoming so engrossed that it was not until nearly closing-time that a sudden outbreak of abnormal excitement in the bar restored him to consciousness of his surroundings. Reluctantly abandoning the heroine to the suspicious circumstances in which she had foolishly contrived to entangle herself, he went to see what was happening.

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