‘Push-bikes,’ Ralph said. ‘Kids’ tricycles, too, they say.’ He, perhaps in imitation of his dominant friend, also shook a gloomy head. ‘It’s bloody murder.’
‘Murder?’ For a moment Miss Pringle was startled. Then she recovered herself. ‘You have some alternative career in mind, Mr Jenkins?’ It sometimes pleased Miss Pringle to be a mistress of delicate irony.
‘I wouldn’t mind doing the Monte Carlo Rally. Or the Monaco Grand Prix. But here we are instead.’ Ralph’s vacant stare for a moment hinted helpless perplexity. ‘The fact is, we haven’t had a hope since the Bulgar found out–’
‘Ralph maunders,’ Adrian said. ‘The worst part of it is, you see, that we don’t really think Bulkington is a proper coach at all. Or I don’t. Thinking isn’t much Ralph’s line.’
‘Do you mean,’ Miss Pringle asked as if with mild interest, ‘that the establishment at “Kandahar” is simply a cover for some other activity?’
‘I suppose it might be put that way.’ Adrian had now absorbed most of his double gin, but its only effect was to superimpose what might have been a look of cunning on the alarming ferocity which his habitual expression suggested. ‘Certainly his mind is on other things. Perhaps he was quite a good crammer long ago. But I’ve decided he knows next to nothing about the job as it is now. That stuff about decisive battles, for instance. It’s completely old-hat. He might as well have told us to go out and clean the windows, like the schoolmaster in Scott’s novel.’
‘Dickens,’ Miss Pringle said.
‘All right, Dickens’. And this business of saying he’s preparing us for something or other at Oxford. It seems that as things are there nowadays that’s just false pretences.’ Adrian Waterbird removed the slice of lemon from his glass, and for a moment sucked it sombrely. ‘Ralph ran into his old housemaster last holidays, and told him about this Balliol Scholarship thing. The chap just roared with laughter.’
‘How very rude and unkind.’
‘It was candid, anyway. Ralph?’
‘That’s right – candid. He said the Bulgar must be a madman.’ Ralph fished out his own piece of lemon. ‘I said no – just a maniac.’
‘A maniac!’ Miss Pringle exclaimed.
‘Well, yes.’ Adrian chucked his scrap of lemon expertly at the chained dog, catching it in the eye. ‘We think you ought to know. And we think you ought to keep away. It’s all right for men. We can take it. Even Ralph can take it. But it wouldn’t be at all nice for a lady, if you ask me.’
‘We think you oughtn’t to take it,’ Ralph Jenkins said.
‘To take it?’
‘Well, the job. Doesn’t the Bulgar want to hire you for something? That’s been our guess.’
Miss Pringle was obliged to reflect that it wasn’t a bad guess. Circumspection, however, was required.
‘There is no question of anything that could be called employment,’ she said with dignity. ‘But Captain Bulkington and I have had a little business to discuss. May I ask just what sort of maniac you suppose him to be?’
‘A homicidal maniac, of course.’ Adrian seemed surprised. ‘Ralph and I are pretty sure he did in the last chap.’
‘The last chap?’ Any undue excitement, Miss Pringle hoped, was absent from her voice. But, of course, she was excited. Here, at least, were two independent witnesses who believed Captain Bulkington to be not a mere visionary but the real thing. ‘Who was the last chap?’
‘The crammer the Bulgar took over from, of course.’
‘But Captain Bulkington’s predecessor in “Kandahar” – who I do happen to know met some sinister end – was a clergyman. In fact he was the rector of Long Canings, and the house was the rectory.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Adrian Waterbird glanced into his almost empty glass. ‘Can I get you another half pint of that beer?’ he asked.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Then I’ll just freshen this up a bit. Half as much again, you know. That’s a very good rule when drinking.’ Having offered this serious adult communication, Adrian rose and made for the bar. There was something ape-like in his gait, Miss Pringle reflected. She was almost surprised to be surveying a pair of well-tailored pin-stripe trousers and not a purple and orange behind.
‘Adrian will be a drunk a damn sight sooner than he’ll be a BA.’ This was the first independent observation Ralph Jenkins had offered. ‘But an old bastard like the Bulgar would drive anybody to the bottle. The way he got us just where he wants us – not even daring to write home about the bloody farce of his silly battles and all that – it was a trap, if you ask me.’
‘A trap?’
‘He planted her on us. Probably paid her thirty bob for the job. And then in he came.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand you, Mr Jenkins.’
‘That’s just as well.’ Mr Jenkins was eyeing with alarm the unexpectedly quick return of Mr Waterbird from the bar. ‘It’s not a thing for ladies, at all. And please don’t tell Adrian I got going on it. It’s not in what he calls our terms of reference.’
‘Your terms of reference? Whatever do you mean by that?’
‘I really don’t know.’ And Ralph favoured Miss Pringle with his most inane and helpless stare. ‘It’s all a bit deep, you see. I can’t say I’m really with it.’
‘It sounds as if that may be just as well.’ Miss Pringle was aware that she had been shown the tip of something highly discreditable – and not of an order which would be of any use to her in her fastidious fiction. She therefore dismissed it from her mind, and turned to the advancing Adrian. There was quite a lot of something in his replenished glass, but nevertheless the small tonic bottle in his other hand was full. ‘Will you tell me a little more,’ she said, ‘about Captain Bulkington’s coming to “Kandahar”?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Adrian sat down again. ‘You don’t happen to have any cigarettes?’
‘I believe I have.’ Miss Pringle produced a packet from her bag.
‘Thanks a lot.’ Adrian took a cigarette, and Miss Pringle made a professional note inside her head. She had been mistaken, it appeared, in supposing that this idiom could be employed only in the representation of lower-class conversation. ‘He keeps us so bloody short, you see.’ Adrian took a gulp of what he had already had enough of. ‘And – by the way – I’m afraid the barman will be coming out for his money. Do you mind? What the Bulgar calls my allowance was all blued on beer by Wednesday.’
‘I don’t mind at all.’ Miss Pringle did her best to feel amused. ‘But about Captain Bulkington’s arrival,’ she said, ‘and the mysterious event upon which it succeeded.’
‘The point is that this black beetle–’
‘This what?’
‘This rector chap. He took pupils, you see. Poor sods just like Ralph and me. It was quite the thing in those days. You took up the Church, and found the pay-packet was about zero. So you got up a bit of Greek again – and no doubt those fifteen battles as well – and announced in The Times or somewhere that at the rectory, Long Canings, pupils would be received, enrolled, and prepared for entrance to either of the universities. That’s the Bulgar’s formula still. “Enrolled” is what’s important. It commits the poor sucker – the fond parent, that is – to paying up.’
‘I have no doubt it does.’ When in liquor, Miss Pringle remarked to herself, Mr Waterbird was still not quite what could be thought of as a Balliol man. But he expressed his views more resourcefully than seemed compatible with a completely moronic mind. ‘Please go on.’
‘The Bulgar came in as an assistant. What we used to call an usher, where I went to school. And then he worked himself up, or in. He hadn’t a bean of his own. Somebody had got him a commission in a decent regiment, but they’d turfed him out for cheating at cards. Probably it was at baccarat.’
‘This is most interesting, Mr Waterbird. But may I ask how you come to know about it?’
‘Oh, that’s a long story.’ Mr Waterbird produced this dismissive phrase with confidence. ‘Anyway, h
e got together just a little. Probably he ran the alms-house – there was an alms-house – and screwed it out of the almsmen’s porridge. Just enough to buy up the good-will of the cramming racket after he’d rubbed out the rector.’
‘And just how did he rub out the rector?’
‘That’s a long story too. Probably much as he plans to rub out Sir Ambrose.’
‘As what?’
‘It’s an obsession with him. He pretty well can’t think of anything else. I’m surprised you can have had any conversation with him without its all tumbling out.’
8
The normally steady head of Miss Priscilla Pringle was reeling – and it wasn’t from beer. Adrian Waterbird had said the most extraordinary things, and her first impulse was to demand, as it were, chapter and verse for them; to require him to back up his unprompted and heartening assertion about Captain Bulkington’s lethal designs upon his neighbour Sir Ambrose Pinkerton with a decent amount of corroborative detail. Then she suddenly saw that nothing of the kind would by any means do.
She mustn’t take this conversation seriously. She must adopt the line – or be prepared at a future date to adopt the line – that these boys talked light-hearted nonsense which simply wouldn’t stick in one’s head. That she had received any responsible or persuasive or memorable opinion to the effect that the Captain was potentially a dangerous criminal might put her in a very delicate situation in certain circumstances which she envisaged later on. And there was a corollary to this. She must stop fishing around. Unless Messrs Jenkins and Waterbird were shocking young liars – or dwellers in an infantile fantasy world – she now knew as much as she needed to know. It would be awkward, of course, if throughout Long Canings and beyond it was soberly known to all men that Captain Bulkington had once killed a rector and now proposed to kill a baronet. But not too awkward, provided she quickly reduced her own communications with the place to a minimum. She would be able to maintain that she had simply happened never to hear a breath of these suspicions; that the Captain existed for her only as an agreeable if slightly eccentric acquaintance who had taken an odd fancy to collaborate with an acknowledged expert in the fabricating of a little detective fiction. That must be her public line all through. Her satisfactory knowledge that he was authentically a bizarre public menace with nothing but sensational headlines at the end of his road: this she must keep to herself.
Miss Pringle picked up her bag. It was extremely fortunate that she had so firmly told Captain Bulkington that their project was, for a time at least, to be furthered only by epistolary correspondence. Until the climax of her dimly discerned grand design, Long Canings had better not see her again. Captain Bulkington must, so to speak, be led up the garden path by remote control.
As she stood up, she looked appraisingly at Adrian Waterbird. (To expend appraisal on Ralph Jenkins would be absurd.) The barman, it occurred to her, would be obliged at a pinch to testify that the young gentleman with the glare and the scowl and the jaw had fairly rapidly consumed two large gins. After that, very little credence would be accorded to what Adrian said he had said. (And Ralph in a witness-box would be mere tragi-comedy.)
‘You boys must have great fun together,’ Miss Pringle announced, reverting to her jolly-aunt note. ‘You say anything that comes into your heads. And now I must be off. I hope that you are both deservedly successful in your examinations, and that New South Wales and the bicycle factory become no more than uncertainly remembered threats. And our memories are mercifully selective. For instance, we have had a most amusing talk, but one having nothing to do with the serious business of life. It will have vanished from my head tomorrow morning – which I hope won’t be true of your grip of Sir Edward Creasy’s Battles three, eight, and twelve. Goodbye.’
And Miss Pringle shook hands. She was rather pleased with this parting speech. Ralph Jenkins had, of course, merely gaped at it. But Adrian Waterbird, she thought, had for a moment gaped too.
It was in the middle of Gibber Porcorum – if Gibber Porcorum could be said to have a middle – that one of Miss Pringle’s front tyres collapsed with an old-fashioned bang. She drew up beside a hedge, got out, and surveyed the mischief. The nail was plain to see. She supposed, although the point was irrelevant to her plight, that it had come out of a horse-shoe. And out of a horse, for that matter. As a child Miss Pringle had often watched and sniffed while the blacksmith was at work. His had appeared a most barbaric craft, but the horses didn’t seem to mind. Horses are less sensitive to nails than are motor cars.
Miss Pringle was conscious of an irrational unease. She wanted to get safely back to Worcestershire – where she could think again, and decide whether or not to embark upon a first preceptorial letter to Captain Bulkington. She wanted, at least for the present, no more encounters with Captain Bulkington’s circle; she wanted to get away from what her friend Miss Vanderpump would have called his ambiance.
But this was not to be.
‘Hullo! Can I be of any help?’ It was the rector of Gibber Porcorum (and Long Canings) who spoke – and from over the hedge in the shade of which Miss Pringle’s car reposed. It was the rectory hedge, and Dr Howard was trimming it in what was no doubt a perfectly proper employment for a clergyman on a Sunday afternoon.
‘Thank you,’ Miss Pringle said, and was about to add: ‘I can perfectly easily change a wheel myself’. But this is something which a lady may not roundly say to a gentleman without the imputation of an aggressive feminism. This is unfair, but it remains a social fact. It can be said, of course, to a husband, brother, or nephew, but not to any other male (except, perhaps, to an officious tramp). ‘Thank you,’ Miss Pringle repeated, ‘but I really mustn’t trouble you. I am sure there is a garage close by.’
‘There is nothing of the kind.’ Dr Howard dropped his shears, strode to his garden gate, and vaulted it. The ease of this performance made it perfectly clear that pushing a diminutive car around was something that would afford him no trouble at all. ‘Have you got a jack,’ he asked briskly, ‘or shall I fetch mine?’
‘It’s in the boot.’ Miss Pringle was constrained to accept the role of helpless female with a good grace. ‘The spare is properly blown up. I always see to that.’
‘Wise virgin,’ Dr Howard said.
Miss Pringle discerned that her rescuer was disposed to prize the natural authority which enabled him to say anything that came into his head. His was an unassuming station within the Anglican Church. But he was, in the metaphorical sense of the term, a large man – and he genuinely possessed that aristocratic quality which she had once, in a railway compartment, so mistakenly attributed to Captain A G de P Bulkington. This didn’t make her any the more willing to have much conversation with him now.
‘I thought you were lunching with Bulkington,’ Dr Howard said.
‘That was a misunderstanding. I had other plans.’
‘You must be uncommonly hungry by this time. Or have you had something to eat?’
‘Thank you. I had a substantial sandwich at the Jolly Chairman.’ Miss Pringle made this awkward admission only because she had been in fear of being led into the rectory, regaled on cold roast beef and pickles, and peremptorily questioned the while.
‘Just pull on the hand-brake now, will you?’ There could be no doubt of Dr Howard’s expertness as a mechanic. ‘No damage to the wall of the tyre, I think. You pulled up pretty quick. Smart girl.’
The rector was much too young thus to address Miss Pringle with any propriety. But since it was a long time since anybody had so addressed her she accepted this venturesomeness with a laugh.
‘By the way,’ Dr Howard said, ‘I know who you are, and I’ve enjoyed some of your stories. But they’re busman’s holidays, rather, so far as I’m concerned. Why not get away from all those parsons for a time? Write a story about somebody like Bulkington. There’s plenty of scope there.’ Dr Howard tapped the spare wheel firmly on its studs. ‘There, and in Long Canings in general. Or any English village, for that matter. Homic
idal feeling in every hall and hovel, court and cottage, manor and–’
‘I make it a rule,’ Miss Pringle interrupted with some severity, ‘in no circumstances to take as a starting-point for fiction anyone who has come within the range of my own acquaintance.’
‘That can’t be other than nonsense, you know. You can’t begin from the moon. But perhaps you just take your characters from other people’s books?’
‘I do nothing of the kind.’ Miss Pringle was intelligent enough to see a weak argumentative position in front of her. ‘Of course one writes from one’s own experiences. But the imagination, Dr Howard, is always at work. It is a deep, transforming power. Of course actual people – people one has known – play their part. But they sink down, you must understand, into the deep well of unconscious cerebration, to come up transformed. One begins to write on the basis of this transformed material. So there can be no question of actual portraiture.’
‘That is very reassuring. I’ve always thought, incidentally, that real portraits must be much more difficult than fancy ones. That was certainly true of drawing and painting when one was a child, and tried to do Daddy or Mummy, and not just a pirate or a highwayman. So perhaps it’s a factor in work like yours.’
‘It may be so.’ Miss Pringle again spoke a little stiffly, since she was uncertain that she wasn’t being laughed at. ‘Ought I to get out the pump?’
‘Quite unnecessary. The spare is fully inflated, as you said. I just have to tighten the nuts. Did you encounter anybody interesting in the Jolly Chairman?’
‘It was far from busy.’ Miss Pringle hesitated. Was this a trap? That we weave for ourselves a tangled web when first we practise to deceive was something which she suddenly had an ominous premonition as possibly to be proved on her own pulse. But she was (it must be reiterated) a courageous woman, and she would not lightly turn back. ‘The two young men I met after matins were there. I think they are among Captain Bulkington’s pupils? I didn’t catch their names.’
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