The Man Who Wrote Detective Stories
Page 16
“Well, it’s a possibility.” Shopland laughed unresentfully, so that Sir Leonard had a sudden and enraged sense that the young man was positively presuming to be fond of him. “I’ve called the place a morgue – which is a bit rude, you may possibly feel. But I expect you know what I mean. The place is a mausoleum, to my way of thinking. You’re all embalmed, you see, although naturally you’re not aware of it.” He made a quick, curiously compassionate gesture that took in the whole of Great Musters. “And this thing might have hit, say, a boarding-school, or a big maternity hospital. But, instead of that, it’s hit you. So whereas one might have got tragedy, one actually gets macabre comedy. But of course it mayn’t actually come out like that. All this may prompt me to something quite different. Have you noticed there are mushrooms in the park?”
“Mushrooms?” Sir Leonard heard himself repeat the word mechanically. He hadn’t slept well. He was bewildered. It didn’t make sense to him that the young man’s mind should be thus racing.
“There they are, thrusting out through the hard soil, tender and phallic and secret – the symbol of what life will manage if we only let it alone. And then say that you look up and see in the sky, far away over London, the great mushroom-shaped cloud—”
“A wonderfully imaginative conception.” Sir Leonard was so irked by this nonsense that he didn’t pause to reproach himself for the strident note of sarcasm in his voice. He was remembering the coffins trundling past under his window. They had been disgusting and alarming. But the visual image in which he recalled them was of the kind in which one commonly summons up memories from one’s remote past. He himself, that was to say, was in the picture – he himself peering out of his window, and the lorry labouring by. Shopland was entitled – he glimpsed clearly enough how Shopland was entitled – to regard it as macabre comedy. But at least the young man might be reminded that his own wasn’t precisely a seat in the stalls. “I’ve no doubt,” Sir Leonard said, “that you’ll incubate a masterpiece – if you have time. But we must, I suppose, consider plain mundane fact. When are we going to die?”
“To die?” It was satisfactory to see that Shopland was pulled hard up by the straight question. The eager life which the catastrophe seemed paradoxically to have roused him to faded from his face. “Perhaps now,” he said. “Or perhaps a little later. Or perhaps quite a long time on.”
There was a pause. Sir Leonard had caught Shopland’s glance as he spoke, and he experienced a disconcerting sense of some failure of communication between them. This added to his ill-temper, so that he put down his coffee-cup with a bang and frowned morosely at the young man. “And no doubt disagreeably,” he said.
“Yes.”
There was another pause. It was true that Shopland was afraid. His excitement was intense – it was even in some way modifying his personality – but it had generated itself out of a plain stark fear of death. And it was just this that Shopland hadn’t, somehow, passed on. Simple animal fear is an eminently catching thing. But Sir Leonard hadn’t caught it, didn’t feel it. What he felt was a sharp contempt for the young man who did. Or at least that was what he told himself he felt. It wasn’t, he realised, a nice thing to feel. If his own normal personality were in working order he would have been able to produce a heartening word. But it wasn’t. He was upset and confused – unable, even, to be sure of his own responses as he went along.
“On the other hand,” Shopland was saying, “it mayn’t affect us at all. Or not so that we shall ever know. Are you still capable of begetting children? Even if you are, I don’t suppose you any longer have ambitions that way. So that just leaves me – and Grace.”
A twinge of real horror assailed Sir Leonard. “You mean—?”
“Children – or great-grandchildren – with far too many fingers and toes. Or none at all. Post-atomic Pobbles. Or whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders – which to hear would Desdemona seriously incline. And so forth. And so forth.” Shopland laughed – less wildly than before. “I’m glad I can’t have put that girl in the family way. It would be a bit tough on Grace, you’ll agree. Landed with half-wits by God and with monsters by man.”
Sir Leonard was again uncertain how he was responding to this. But he did now know what he had been feeling a little earlier. The hostile impulse prompted in him by Shopland’s vivid fear of death hadn’t been contempt. It had been envy. The young man was alive and therefore kicking. He would go down kicking – even if his kicking was no more than a matter of talking nonsense about morgues and mushrooms. And only the power to kick makes the business of dying other than tiresome and disheartening.
Sir Leonard had just made this discovery – it was to the credit of a continued vitality at least in his reflective processes – when the kitchen door opened. It wasn’t a robot or a space man. It was Grace.
He hadn’t ever really looked at her – or only, and with distaste, at her hideously black-cotton-stockinged legs when Shopland had been so discreditably skylarking with her on the library floor. Now, when he did look – look at this most humble of his fellow lepers – he was revolted. The servant problem was acute. It always would be, while the national economy allowed full employment and an inflated pay-packet for any chit who cared to go after it. But that didn’t excuse Agatha Callaway for employing a moron. The girl even slobbered or slavered. Of course she was terrified, which no doubt made her even more disagreeable than usual, but she was probably equally horrible when feeling happy. Grace ought not to be at Great Musters. Grace ought to be in a home.
“Hullo, Grace old girl! Would you like another cup of tea?” Shopland reached out for the pot, which still stood on the hob. “Plenty here. Good and strong, too.”
Grace made no articulate reply. She stood in the doorway blubbering. Her terrors were obviously increased by the mysterious spectacle of Sir Leonard sitting at the kitchen-table. Shopland got up, walked over to the door and drew her into the room. Then he patted her affectionately behind. “Home sweet home,” he said. “And all the better since old loonie Lumley has taken to her bed. Old loonie Lumley has a comely bumley.”
Grace giggled through her tears. “Poor Jennie Jones,” she said, “bag of skin and bones.” Then she blubbered again. “Send them away,” she cried. “Bad men frighten Grace. Send them away.”
“They’ll go away, all right – don’t worry.” Shopland put an arm round Grace’s shoulders and treated her to a companionable squeeze. “Can you say ‘Agatha, Agatha’?”
Grace gave an enormous sniff and then dabbed her eyes with her dirty apron. “Agatha, Agatha, cheerful and smug—” she began.
“No, no – that’s Sir Leonard.” Shopland gave Grace another pat, and then balanced this with a kiss on her grimy cheek. “Agatha, Agatha, ugly mug—”
Grace gave a squeal of laughter. “Went to the lavvy and pulled the plug!” She clapped her hands with joy. “Went to the lavvy,” she repeated, “and—”
Sir Leonard could stand it no further. That Shopland should teach the wretched girl these coarse and disrespectful rhymes was, if nothing more, a gross breach of hospitality. He stood up and crossed over to the pair. “Leave the room!” he said to Grace. For a moment she stared at him in terror. And Sir Leonard felt a ghastly physical repulsion. It revolted him to think that this girl had handled dishes set before him, had turned over his sheets and made his bed. “Get out!” he shouted.
And then in a flash something shocking happened. Grace’s terror turned to impertinence. She took a step forward and gave Sir Leonard the raspberry. And in an incredible moment, Sir Leonard raised his hand and smacked her face.
She didn’t, in the second that followed, know how to take it. But Shopland did. “The old chap’s cuckoo, ducks,” he said easily. “We’ll go somewhere else.” And he kissed Grace again and led her from the room.
Sir Leonard went back to the kitchen-table and sat down by it. He felt as tired as if he had been through a hard physical tussle. He tried to concentrate his mind on the fear of death, confusedl
y remembering it as something enviable that Shopland possessed. But he was an old man and it wasn’t in him. He was merely aware of dying – which was what he was presently going to engage in – as a great discomfort and inconvenience, like the discomfort and inconvenience of having to apologise to the servant-girl, and make more conversation with Shopland, and play piquet with Agatha, and cancel his dining club in London and his lunch in Balliol, and exist indefinitely on rice pudding prepared by a revived Mrs Lumley. Old loonie Lumlie has a . . .
Sir Leonard checked his mind with an effort. It had been a jolt, a shock, and he was too old to keep his form in face of it. A wave of self-pity swept over him. He felt tears in his eyes.
He supposed that he had been just in time to brush them away as Shopland returned to the kitchen. The young man seemed to have no disposition to utter reproaches. He busied himself clearing up the breakfast things. And soon Sir Leonard found the silence oppressive – the more so as it had faintly for a background the pounding machine in the park. “I suppose,” he said, “that Chowder’s dead?”
“Shot.”
“I don’t see how he can have done it.” Sir Leonard recognised his own voice as thinly querulous. “I mean, got at those utterly lethal things. It’s disgraceful. It’s appalling.”
“A ventilating shaft, they say. No doubt there will be a tremendous row.”
For some minutes Sir Leonard managed to say nothing. But resentment, anger which he knew to be senseless, mounted in him. “Damn and blast the dog!” he cried.
Shopland looked up from the frying-pan he was scouring. “No, no,” he said gently. “Poor Chowder.”
Works of J.I.M. Stewart
‘Staircase in Surrey’ Quintet
These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels
The Gaudy (1974)
Young Pattullo (1975)
Memorial Service (1976)
The Madonna of the Astrolabe (1977)
Full Term (1978)
Other Works
Published or to be published by House of Stratus
A. Novels
Mark Lambert’s Supper (1954)
The Guardians (1955)
A Use of Riches (1957)
The Man Who Won the Pools (1961)
The Last Tresilians (1963)
An Acre of Grass (1965)
The Aylwins (1966)
Vanderlyn’s Kingdom (1967)
Avery’s Mission (1971)
A Palace of Art (1972)
Mungo’s Dream (1973)
Andrew and Tobias (1980)
A Villa in France (1982)
An Open Prison (1984)
The Naylors (1985)
B. Short Story Collections
The Man Who Wrote Detective Stories (1959)
Cucumber Sandwiches (1969)
Our England Is a Garden (1979)
The Bridge at Arta (1981)
My Aunt Christina (1983)
Parlour Four (1984)
C. Non-fiction
Educating the Emotions (1944)
Character and Motive in Shakespeare (1949)
James Joyce (1957)
Eight Modern Writers (1963)
Thomas Love Peacock (1963)
Rudyard Kipling (1966)
Joseph Conrad (1968)
Shakespeare’s Lofty Scene (1971)
Thomas Hardy: A Critical Biography (1971)
Plus a further 48 Titles published under the pseudonym ‘Michael Innes’
Select Synopses
Staircase in Surrey
The Gaudy
The first volume in J.I.M. Stewart’s acclaimed ‘A Staircase in Surrey’ quintet, (but the second in time), ‘The Gaudy’ opens in Oxford at the eponymous annual dinner laid on by the Fellows for past members. Distinguished guests, including the Chancellor (a former Prime Minister) are present and Duncan Pattullo, now also qualified to attend, gets to meet some of his friends and enemies from undergraduate days. As the evening wears on, Duncan finds himself embroiled in many of the difficulties and problems faced by some of them, including Lord Marchpayne, now a Cabinet Minister; another Don, Ranald McKenechnie; and Gavin Mogridge who is famous for an account he wrote of his adventures in a South American jungle. But it doesn’t stop there, as Pattullo acquires a few problems of his own and throughout the evening and the next day various odd developments just add to his difficulties, leading him to take stock of both his past and future.
Young Pattullo
This is the second of the ‘A Staircase in Surrey’ quintet, and the first in chronological order. Duncan Pattullo arrives in Oxford, destined to be housed off the quadrangle his father has chosen simply for its architectural and visual appeal. On the staircase in Surrey, Duncan meets those who are to become his new friends and companions, and there occurs all of the usual student antics and digressions, described by Stewart with his characteristic wit, to amuse and enthral the reader. After a punting accident, however, the girl who is in love with Duncan suffers as a result of his self-sacrificing actions. His cousin, Anna, is also involved in an affair, but she withholds the name of her lover, despite being pregnant. This particular twist reaches an ironical conclusion towards the end of the novel, in another of Stewart’s favourite locations; Italy. Indeed, Young Pattullo covers all of the writer’s favourite subjects and places; the arts, learning, mystery and intrigue, whilst ranging from his much loved Oxford, through Scotland and the inevitable Italian venue. This second volume of the acclaimed series can be read in order, or as a standalone novel.
Memorial Service
This is the third novel in the Oxford quintet entitled ‘Staircase in Surrey’. Duncan Pattullo returns in middle age to his old college. The Provost is heavily engaged in trying to secure a benefaction from a charitable trust which the old and outrageous Cedric Mumford influences. One significant complication is the presence in college of Ivo Mumford, Cedric’s grandson. He is badly behaved and far from a credit to the college. His magazine, ‘Priapus’ proves to be wholly objectionable. Stewart explores the nature of the complicated relationships between the characters with his usual wit, literary style and intellectual precision and turns what might otherwise be a very common and ordinary situation into something that will grip the reader from cover to cover.
The Madonna of the Astrolabe
In the fourth of J.I.M. Stewart’s acclaimed ‘Staircase in Surrey’ quintet the gravity of a surveyor’s report given to the Governing Body is the initial focus. The document is alarming. The Governing Body, an assembly of which Pattullo was in awe, was equally awed by the dimensions of the crisis revealed. It would seem that the consideration was whether there would literally be a roof over their heads for much longer. The first rumblings from the college tower brings the thought well and truly home to Pattullo. ‘Professor Sanctuary,’ the Provost said evenly, ‘favours the immediate launching of an appeal . . .’ And so it begins . . . In J.I.M. Stewart’s superbly melding of wit, mystery, observation and literary prowess a gripping novel develops that will enthral the reader from cover to cover. This can be read as part of the series, or as a standalone novel.
Full Term
The final volume in the ‘A Staircase in Surrey’ quintet. Duncan Pattullo is coming to the end of his term as ‘narrator’ and is thinking of re-marrying, although his former wife continues to cause difficulties. His intended is also providing gossip for the college, but that is as nothing compared to the scandal caused by Watershute, an eminent nuclear physicist. His misdemeanours range from abandoning his family and conducting an affair in Venice, to being drunk at High Table. However, things get very serious when he appears to be involved in activities that might amount to treason. An interesting and convoluted plot, which is a fitting end to this acclaimed series, is carried forward with J.I.M. Stewart’s hallmark skill and wit. Full Term can be read in order, or as a standalone novel.
Other Fiction
Bridge At Arta
Lady Cameron and Charles Hornett had been married
some fifty years before, but Hornett has now forgotten all about it. Embarrassment is therefore evident when they find themselves as part of a party holidaying in Greece. Meanwhile, the Balmaynes realise they nothing about Roland Redpath, who is about to marry their daughter, but he is in fact the son of their onetime dishonest butler. But that isn’t the end of it, as yet more shocks and surprises are forthcoming as the story unfolds. In other stories in the collection there is a hitherto unknown Wordsworth manuscript and sensational development with regard to Coleridge. We are also taken to Vienna and to a rural location in an effort to reveal the identity of an arsonist. Full of wit, humour and suspense, these stories bear all of the hallmarks of the expected first class Stewart penmanship.
Mungo’s Dream
Mungo Lockhart goes up to Oxford and find himself sharing a room with the Honourable Ian Cardower, who is heir to a rich title and estate. Unimpressed by rank or riches, Mungo is nonetheless wary in his exchanges with Cardower, and this is reciprocated. However, the two do become good friends and Cardower takes Mungo on visits to his parents’ home, to visit the head of the family, Lord Audlearn at Bamberton Court – a stately home in the grand style – and then to Mallachie, the true family seat, where the eldest son Lord Brightmony lives in splendid isolation, save for his companion; Leonard Sedley, sometime novelist. All seems well, except for Mungo noticing the interest shown by the family in a young Scots boy of uncertain parentage. The story takes on an obvious twist with the usual suspicions and uncertainties mounting, lawyers being called in, and general acrimony, but the final crisis and confrontation is of a surprising nature and an unusual explanation unfolds. On the way, Stewart of course introduces sub-plots and high comedy in his usual literary style. The novel is thought provoking, teasing, and thoroughly entertaining and fascinatingly descriptive of the various locations; Oxford, Perugia in Italy, and Scotland.