Appleby's Answer

by Michael Innes

  Three small girls and a small boy appeared in the choir. The girls stared at Miss Pringle, and then turned to each other, whispering and giggling. The boy also stared at her, but with unrelaxed gravity, and while picking his nose. And then, quite suddenly, the officiating clergyman – doubtless the rector – was advancing from the vestry, with his prayer-book held open before him. If one discounted the children (who had small appearance of being capable of serious devotion) and the tortoise (who had sat down at the back of the church and was unfolding a Sunday newspaper), it seemed that Miss Pringle herself was to be the only worshipper.

  But this was a false alarm. For now the church-door opened – to admit, in the first instance, only the sounds of an indignant female voice, vigorous whackings seemingly delivered with an umbrella or parasol upon a thick hide, and a quick succession of loud protesting squeals. By means which would have distressed St Francis of Assisi, the Gloucester Old Spot was being persuaded of the impropriety of its proposing to attend divine service. The creature could be heard retreating with injured grunts, and its assailant, breathing a little heavily from her just exertions, passed up the aisle and sat down immediately in front of Miss Pringle. She was of about Miss Pringle’s age, and her attire attested to a position in the upper ranks of society. Nevertheless the smell of embrocation and saddle-soap was immediately intensified. Miss Pringle, who was of course a woman of notably acute intelligence, recalled that this region of England was much given to equestrian pursuits.

  The door opened again – and Miss Pringle, glancing round, was a shade disconcerted to see that Captain Bulkington had arrived. She had indeed thought it probable that he would be a church-goer, but had envisaged a congregation numerous enough to enable her to escape his observation if she wished to. This was plainly far from being the case; in fact the Captain now sat down within six feet of her, and after placing a bowler hat carefully under the pew proceeded to kneel with great propriety and his familiar creak. And almost immediately it turned out that he was not alone. There was the sound of a second mild disturbance just outside the church: the smack of a stone on stone, a second and duller smack immediately followed by an anguished squeal, a loud laugh and a shout of ‘Got him!’ from a young and triumphant male voice. Then they entered with complete decorum, and took their places beside the Captain, two youths in impeccable Sunday clothes. They looked round the church, detectably offered each other an expressive glance, and sat back with an air of stoically controlled suffering. Whereupon Captain Bulkington coughed significantly and they tumbled rather lumpishly on their hassocks, conscientiously screwing their eyes very tight meanwhile.

  Since these must be pupils (and presumably postulants for the Brigade), Miss Pringle covertly eyed them with a good deal of curiosity. They belonged to contrasting types. One was very tall and very fair, and would no doubt have been handsome in a thoroughly patrician way if he had not also been very weedy (Miss Pringle believed that was the word) and devoid of either a brow or (it seemed) a jaw-bone. The second began like the other (if, that was to say, one started one’s inspection from the top), but then quite dramatically diverged from his fellow, since he was more jaw-bone than anything else. Furthermore he was short and burly and his arms seemed unnaturally long. Miss Pringle was almost certain that he must own a lurching gait and bandy legs. The gaze of the first was vacant; and of the second, ferocious. It seemed likely, however, that their common denominator would readily be discovered by an educational psychologist.

  But now there was another – and, as it proved, final – incursion of the faithful. A lady of imposing presence swept into the church, exchanged a passing greeting with the embrocation-and-saddle-soap lady, glared stonily at Captain Bulkington and stonily at Miss Pringle, and made her way to a pew of superior pretension immediately in front of the lectern. She was followed by a florid gentleman so patently endowed with Miss Pringle’s favourite attribute of perfect diffidence that Miss Pringle was able to tell at once that here was the proprietor of the adjacent mansion which she had glimpsed before entering.

  And now the service began.

  ‘Hymn two hundred and three.’

  ‘Hymn three hundred and two.’

  The first of these injunctions had been uttered by the rector, and the second – more loudly and not at all diffidently – by the squire. It seemed probable that the squire was right, since a kind of bill of fare depending from a nail near the pulpit declared that 302 it was. Music, approximately organ-like in character, had begun to wheeze encouragingly from somewhere at the back. Miss Pringle wondered whether it was being provided by the tortoise. But a glance assured her that the tortoise was still occupied with his newspaper. So somebody else, charged with the production of this all-important aid to devotion, must somehow have slipped in unobserved.

  The situation was a divisive one. The four children in the choir, whose faces now registered a sort of glazed terror, plunged pipingly into 302. The squire and his lady sang 302. The embrocation-woman, who appeared to be tone-deaf, shouted the words of 302. But the rector stuck to 203, and was splendidly supported by Captain Bulkington and his charges. Miss Pringle, finding her sympathies sundered, solved her problem by a silent opening and shutting of the mouth. After this the service ran on smoothly to the First Lesson, in which the squire, rather in the manner of a chairman of companies making an annual report to shareholders, communicated to his auditory various incidents in a battle between Abijah and Jeroboam. And then there was the Benedicite.

  But at this point a certain amount of disturbance made itself audible from without. In the main it was no more than a matter of the cheerful yelping of small dogs, and Miss Pringle remarked that the congregation took this in its stride. A little puppy-walking was going on in the interest of the local hunt; and it was conceivable that a number of the more polite children in this part of Wiltshire were regularly in the habit of contracting out of the obligation of divine service by undertaking this necessary part of a hunt’s activities round about 11 a.m. of a Sunday morning. But if the juvenile hounds hadn’t disturbed the worshippers they had certainly disturbed the Gloucester Old Spot, which was making a terrible row. They had also disturbed the pheasants, whose alarmed clack-clacking almost drowned the canticle. Or was it by a sinister pop-popping that the pheasants were disturbed? There could be no question as to the fact. Somebody was out shooting something – or indeed several persons were. Rabbits? Or was it a pigeon battue? Or were unspeakable ruffians even discharging illicit shot-guns at the sitting pheasants as they perched piously on those tombstones? These questions were clearly agitating the squire. The Gloucester Old Spot panicked; the puppies yelped, sequacious of as yet non-existent foxes; the pheasants clattered and whirred, fearful of leaving their little lives in air.

  But the congregation rose to the challenge, lustily exhorting the whales, the fowls of the air, the beasts and the cattle, to praise their Creator and magnify Him for ever.

  And quite soon it was over – because the rector, evidently a sensible man, had decided against a sermon. So the tortoise took round a bag – with a gloomy reserve, but nevertheless as one acknowledging that here at last was an activity which at least made sense – and the rector, having pronounced the benediction, disappeared into the vestry, bearing the alms of the faithful with him. By the time that Miss Pringle had reached the door, however, he had reappeared in a quasi-secular character outside the church-porch, clearly for the purpose of conversing with anybody who appeared conversable. But the squire and his lady, together with the embrocation-woman, conscious of having been properly exact in the public discharge of their religious duties, were in full career for the manor house with the air of persons feeling they had earned their sherry. The choir, too, had not stood upon the order of its going; from round a bend in the village street fading but raucous laughter suggested that some wholesome recovery of nerve was going on. This left the organist – an elderly woman, flushed from her exertions, whom Miss Pringle at once distinguished as belonging to some
intermediate order of society – together with Captain Bulkington and his pupils, and Miss Pringle herself.

  Miss Pringle thus stood in a position of some embarrassment. Probably the rector was as astounded as the tortoise had been at the appearance of a total stranger in his congregation, and only good manners were enabling him to conceal the fact. Miss Pringle, therefore, as she shook hands, felt that it was incumbent upon her to explain herself. But what explanation was she to give? She could hardly announce that she had come to Long Canings in the hope of more precisely acquainting herself with a maniacal streak in the composition of Captain A G de P Bulkington of ‘Kandahar’. For one thing, the Captain himself was now standing within a couple of yards of her, with an expression of vague puzzlement on his face. Perhaps he was merely waiting to take a civil farewell of his ghostly counsellor, and to put his pupils through the same obligatory routine. But perhaps he had dimly recognised Miss Pringle, and was determined not to go away until he had recalled where he had seen her before. Miss Pringle was not clear whether or not she wanted the next phase of the affair to inaugurate itself in that way.

  ‘So good of you to come,’ the rector was saying, much as if he had been giving a party. ‘On such a fine morning, too.’

  These might have been judged inane remarks as addressed to a strange sheep which had presented itself, as it were, baaing at the fold. But Miss Pringle was not deceived. Dr Howard (she had now managed to glimpse the name on the church notice-board) was tall and dark, aquiline and ascetic; he was young rather than middle-aged; and although he hadn’t yet been recruited to the higher clergy it seemed probable that this might happen at any time. It was true that he had been a little astray in the matter of that first hymn, but absent-mindedness was probably licensed among bishops, just as it was among professors. Moreover Howard (as Miss Barbara Vanderpump, with her keen historical sense, would have pointed out to her friend at once) was a very grand English surname indeed. Miss Pringle responded to Dr Howard’s civilities graciously but unaffectedly. (These would be the words.) ‘I have always wanted to see this part of the country,’ she added vaguely, ‘and I shall take a little run through it this afternoon. I believe you have a most interesting White Horse near Calne.’

  ‘Whites and bays and greys and roans and sorrels,’ Dr Howard said unexpectedly. ‘And all, it seems, extremely interesting. One hears a great deal about them in these parts. Sir Ambrose’ – he made a restrained gesture in the direction of the Big House – ‘has whole platoons of them. I always try to find him lessons in which something four-footed is getting around. “He saith to the war-horse ‘Ha-ha’” and that sort of thing. You would scarcely believe it, but it livens him up no end. Pity he can’t be told to read the hundred and forty-seventh psalm. “He hath no pleasure in the strength of an horse: neither delighteth he in any man’s legs.” I doubt whether Sir Ambrose would believe his eyes.’

  A narrow mind might have found some impropriety in a beneficed clergyman’s offering these pleasantries to a stranger. But Miss Pringle was impressed. Dr Howard had an air which made it all seem quite in order. And now he had turned to Bulkington.

  ‘Good morning, Captain,’ he said, robustly rather than cordially. ‘These young men of yours going to be hunting this season? Cubbing, I suppose, due to start any day now.’

  ‘Hope not, ’pon my soul, padre. Hard work must be the order of the day. Scholarship class, these two, you know. Not a doubt of it. Jenkins, Waterbird – pay your respects to the rector.’

  Jenkins and Waterbird, thus admonished, advanced and shook hands with what might have been called – it seemed to Miss Pringle – decently if inexpertly dissimulated hostility. They then stepped backwards, with that ghost of a glance between them.

  ‘Must be getting along,’ Captain Bulkington said. ‘Set them to a spot of prep before lunch, eh? While Miss Pringle and I have a glass of madeira. Miss Pringle is lunching at the old shop. Can’t tempt you to come along, padre?’

  ‘Thank you, but I must get back to Gibber.’

  ‘Too bad. Ready, Miss Pringle? We must be making tracks, then. Things to talk about, eh? Morning to you.’

  And Captain Bulkington laid a kindly hand on the elbow of the astonished Miss Pringle, and led her away.

  The walk, of course, was a short one – since of an evening, at least, the shadows of the peaked gables of ‘Kandahar’ must play hide-and-seek among the tombstones through which Miss Pringle was now being conducted. The two young men – for she now realised that neither could be short of nineteen – walked ahead. They seemed to have nothing to say to each other. Their communion, if deep, was of a silent sort.

  6

  Miss Pringle had been taken by surprise. Resolved to spy out the ground unobtrusively before acting (which was Inspector Catfish’s habit), she had found herself not a little confused by the bold initiative adopted by her erstwhile travelling companion. It could not positively be said that, in blandly announcing that she was to lunch with him, Captain Bulkington had not taken an unwarrantable liberty. But then, in proposing this prowl round Long Canings, she had asked for it, after all. The Captain, moreover, was crazed. On just how crazed, the feasibility and desirability of the dim plan that had come to her must wholly depend. And the next hour, she felt, would reveal much.

  ‘Is it for the university,’ she asked, ‘that you are preparing Mr Jenkins and Mr Waterbird?’ Conversation had to be made, and this seemed as good a topic as any.

  ‘Certainly. Balliol Scholarships are what I have in mind for them.’

  ‘That is most interesting.’ Miss Pringle was perplexed. Her nephew Timothy had been a Scholar of Balliol, and Messrs Jenkins and Waterbird struck her as young men of quite a different sort. But appearances could be deceptive. Captain Bulkington, even though a bit mad, must have some sort of professional expertness as a coach. Fond parents, or perplexed trustees, were paying quite a lot for the privilege of sending these youths to ‘Kandahar’. They could hardly have failed to make reasonable enquiries about what they were going to get for their money. ‘Do you concentrate on that sort of thing?’ Miss Pringle asked.

  ‘Lord, no – nothing of the kind. Whatever comes along. Common Entrance, GCE–’

  ‘Quite small boys?’

  ‘If I can get hold of them. Competition fairly keen, you know. But older fellows, as well. Ordination, for instance. There’s something in preparing men for that. Serious characters. Dull, I’m afraid. But give no trouble.’

  ‘I see.’ Miss Pringle was again perplexed. It was true that Captain Bulkington had been revealed to her as a devout churchgoer. There was something surprising, nevertheless, in the idea of his preparing young men for Holy Orders.

  ‘And then, of course, there’s the police. Entrance is very tough there – much tougher than for Balliol – but I take a particular interest in it.’

  ‘As part of your interest in crime?’ It was with admirable forthrightness that Miss Pringle put this question.

  ‘Crime?’ Captain Bulkington looked surprised. ‘No, no – not an idée fixe of mine, ’pon my conscience. Jack of all trades, you might say. Army brings one up to it. Turn your hand to this or that. One moment, though! Give these men their orders. Jenkins, Waterbird!’

  ‘Sir?’

  The two young men had turned and spoken on one note. Inanity, indeed, marked the features of Jenkins, and ferocity those of Waterbird. There was something twin-like about them, all the same.

  ‘The principal families of Siena in the sixteenth century. Get them up.’

  ‘We’ve had that one.’ Jenkins spoke helplessly. ‘And there’s nothing about Siena in the house.’

  ‘Vienna, yes. Siena, no.’ Waterbird was warily truculent. ‘But Vienna didn’t go in for principal families. I looked.’

  ‘Very well.’ Captain Bulkington was not disconcerted. ‘The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. By Sir Edward Creasy. Distinguished chap. Made a capital judge in India in my grandfather’s time. History books, top shelf, far left. Battl
es three, eight, and twelve, without fail, by six o’clock.’ He nodded in a military manner. ‘Cut along.’

  Jenkins and Waterbird cut. They would have been not unwilling, it seemed to Miss Pringle, to take a swipe at their preceptor as they did so. But they had been brought up, no doubt, to respect their elders and take it out of their juniors instead.

  ‘Ugly louts,’ Captain Bulkington said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Miss Pringle was startled.

  ‘I said they were nice lads. Come this way. Care to wash? Fetch my housekeeper. Capital woman – has all that at her finger-tips. And then we’ll settle down to our chat.’

  ‘Time for a peg, eh?’ In what he referred to as his sanctum Captain Bulkington was standing before a well-appointed tray. ‘Brandy and soda? Brandy and belattee pawnee, we used to say. Can’t remember why. Tamil, perhaps. Or was it Teligu? Recollection not too strong on all that.’

  ‘I believe you mentioned madeira.’ Brandy before lunch was, to Miss Pringle’s mind, definitely an indulgence for gentlemen.

  ‘To be sure. Here it is. And now, my dear, about our little project.’ The Captain, as he made use of this startlingly familiar form of address, thrust a glass into Miss Pringle’s hand, and waved her to a chair. ‘Deuced glad you’ve come round to it. Have a lot of fun, eh? Cunning ways of going about the thing. That’s what we’re after. Put our heads together.’