“Said they were having a long week-end,” said the youth, for the fifth time, as his visitors prepared to depart. He watched them all the way up the alley before he left his post at the window. Then he retrieved the chewing-gum with a slight yelp of pain, because it had been in position long enough to have adhered fairly firmly to his skin, seated himself, put his feet up on the table and took out and counted the three pound and four ten-shilling notes which had been sent to his home by registered post that morning. With them there was a note of a different kind. It was written in a foreign hand on thin, yellow paper with a Frankfurt watermark.
“You must try again as soon as you can,” it read. “Twenty-five pounds for success in this simple enterprise. Remember that I blow every gaff if you betray me to your employers.”
“Sez you,” observed the youth, stowing away his treasure and taking out a threepenny blood. Carey, who had reentered the premises by way of the broken window at the rear, found little difficulty in obtaining possession of the envelope and its contents. He handed the money back, but impounded the letter and the envelope.
“Exhibit A,” he pronounced, letting the youth get up.
“Sez you,” observed the youth, whose vocabulary seemed to be limited.
• CHAPTER 8 •
The Nudist Sanctuary
“‘… we have seen strange things to-day, but stranger still remain.’”
•1•
“Another visit to Mrs. Saxant is indicated, I suppose,” said Bassin.
“Oh, lor!” said Carey, who did not like her very much. This opinion seemed to be shared by his aunt, who announced that she was not going to visit Mrs. Saxant that afternoon, but proposed to combine business with pleasure and see whether she could obtain permission to carry out an experiment in psychoanalysis at a large nudist colony which she understood existed in the neighbourhood.
“Nothing to do with the murders?” Carey enquired.
“Time alone will determine that,” she replied, with a hearty cackle.
“Well, I think I’d better call on Mrs. Saxant,” said Bassin. “I’ll let you both know how I get on.”
“And I,” said Carey, “am going to dig out Mr. Simplon and find out what he thinks he’s up to, setting fire to Saxant’s printing press.”
Bassin had been visited by one of those simple, profound ideas which always seem exciting, and often sustain the touchstone of being put actually to the test. He returned to the “Lion” with the others, changed his collar, took the uncorrected proofs out of the drawer, and carried them with him to the House on the Ridge.
Here, as he had supposed would be the case, he found Geoffrey Saxant. The senior partner was in a deck-chair smoking a pipe. He was looking at a magazine, flipping the pages idly, and lacking interest, it seemed, in his occupation; for he looked up the moment that Bassin began to walk across the lawn, although he could not have heard him.
“Good morning, Mr. Saxant,” said Bassin. “My name’s Bassin, of Bassin, Lillibud and Bassin, solicitors to the late Fortinbras Carn. Don’t get up, sir, please. I’ve come over to know whether you’d do me a favour.”
“With pleasure,” Geoffrey Saxant, a large man with a luxuriant moustache and piercing eyes—the whole face and embellishments singularly reminiscent, Bassin thought, of the late Lord Kitchener, of whom he had seen several photographs—got up out of the deck-chair ponderously and with unusual care, and, nipping the creases of his elegant trousers between finger and thumb, waggled them into shape before bestowing his full attention upon his visitor.
“It’s like this,” Bassin said. “Our late client, as you know, was expecting to have a book come out from your press, a thing called—”
“The Open-Bellied Mountain. Quite right. He was.”
“He never suggested to you that the order might be cancelled?”
“Good lord, no! He was fearfully keen on the thing. Talked about making it a bestseller. Under pressure from Senss, I always thought, although nothing was ever said about that to me.”
“Your partner did not want to print the book? He would have preferred to have another firm handle it?”
“Oh, Senss didn’t mind the book. His idea was to buy the copyright, and run off thirty thousand of the thing. Absolute nonsense, with the kind of plant we’ve got, and so I told him. Lyle’s might tackle it; they’re a commercial firm; but my little press is my hobby, and I was damned if I could see any point in our trying to print a bestseller of sorts, as Senss suggested. Besides, in my opinion, the thing was filthy. I said—and I still maintain that I was right—that we undertook to print a hundred copies merely to oblige Carn, and that if he weren’t satisfied he could cancel his order and indemnify us as to costs. Quite simple and quite straightforward.”
“Yes, certainly,” said Bassin, beginning to feel a degree of sympathy for Mrs. Saxant which he had not supposed that that loving lady’s circumstances would ever have had power to extort from him. “What happened, then, about the cancelled order?”
“Well, that’s so odd, you know. Fellow was dead keen on the book. Thought it a great work. Of course, so it was, in a sense. Magnificently written. Then his wife—nice woman, that; too good for an oaf like Carn—fellow was an artist but no gentleman—very seldom the two things do go together—did all his typing, too. Shouldn’t have cared for my wife to type a thing like that. Remember Caliban? ‘You taught me language, and my profit on’t is I know how to curse.’ Or words to that effect. Quotation not my strong point.”
“Look here, Mr. Saxant,” said Bassin. “You know Carn’s signature, I take it?”
“Pretty well. There was the devil of a lot of correspondence over this beastly book. Personally, I wish we’d never touched it, commission or no commission. It wasn’t worth it.”
“Well, what do you think about that cancellation order?”
“Phoney, my dear fellow, absolutely phoney. Why should it turn up suddenly like that, just when the book was due to come out? Why, the day before his wife was killed, Carn was in the office blethering at us about the beastly thing. Mind you, I do recollect one thing. He did ask Senss how much harm would it do us to have such a book under our imprint. Did he think there could possibly be political repercussions? But that anyone ought to be prepared to die in the cause of art. You never heard such a lot of silly rot in all your life.”
“But was it such rot? After all, the chap was murdered all right.”
“Yes, yes. Yes, he was, by Jove, wasn’t he? Damn, I never thought of that. Never connected it, I mean. Jove, yes of course. Well, look here, what do you particularly want to know?”
“First, I want to know whether I can get hold of a printed copy of that book. I’ve got proofs, but they’re an uncorrected set.”
“Sorry, my dear chap, no. Senss and I have had some discussion about that. I know you were promised, but we’ve no authority to supply a copy of that book to anybody but the subscribers, and not even to them now, until we get the OK about that signature on the cancellation order.”
“Suppose that the signature is declared to be a forgery, who holds the copyright of the book?”
“You ought to know. You’re a lawyer. It would be the author’s next of kin, Mr. Thomas Carn, the man at present living in the House by the Brook, I should imagine.”
“Yes. Has he read the book, do you happen to know?”
“I don’t see how he can have done, unless his brother showed him the manuscript.”
“You mean the typescript, don’t you?”
“No, no. No, I mean what I say. Carn was an extremely careful man. Every word he wrote went into ordinary longhand, with a fountain pen, before he had anything typed. Then his wife did his typing for him, and from that typescript we set up the book.”
“What happens to a typescript when the printers have done with it?”
“It is returned to the author with the proofs.”
“And when the proofs are corrected?”
“Goodness knows. One set of c
orrected proofs comes back to us, and the author holds on to the other set, but the typescript is of no value.”
“So that somewhere, unless they have been destroyed, there should be a longhand manuscript and a typescript of The Open-Bellied Mountain?”
“Presumably. But don’t depend upon being able to make very much of either, my dear fellow. The human being doesn’t live, now Mrs. Carn’s gone, who can decipher Carn’s manuscripts. They are nothing but a mass of corrections, marginal notes, interpolations, alterations, additions, blots, and beer-stains. The typescript is also pretty well scribbled over and corrected by the time we get it. That’s the worst of these stylists. Never satisfied.”
“You can’t remember, I suppose, any obvious alterations, printers’ errors included, which Carn had made when he sent the galleys, can you? I’ve got an uncorrected set of galleys here, if your memory wants any jogging.”
Mr. Saxant, however, with great geniality but even greater firmness, refused to look at the galleys, and observed that at his press no gross printers’ errors were ever made, since he and Senss, both men of education and experience, set up the books themselves, and that, in any case, he was sure he could not remember the author’s own corrections, of which he believed there had been a very large number.
“Yes, but a thing like this, for example,” said Bassin, obstinately. “‘Bonner’ for Donner; ‘Dowling’ for Bowling—”
“Mrs. Carn’s typing, I should imagine. We copy the typescript exactly, of course, and then our reader—in this case Senss did the reading—goes through and puts a mark of interrogation in the margin against any doubtful point.”
“I see. Yes, thanks very much. By the way, that German friend of Mr. Senss who visits at your office sometimes—”
“Simplon? He isn’t German. I believe he’s a Lithuanian. Funny, fierce little chap.”
“Yes, that’s the man. His name isn’t Simplon, is it?”
“I should imagine not. It’s probably unpronounceable, so he’s simplified it—like that Polish-American sports girl who calls herself Stella Walsh.”
“Oh, yes I see.”
“Well, I don’t know, but I should think it’s very likely. I mean, if Simplon’s anything, it’s French, and the fellow isn’t a Frenchman. Odd little cove. Can’t quite place him. Very thick with Senss.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. Sit and gab away in German to one another. Of course, Simplon’s not a refugee. He’s naturalised. Been over here for years. Well, sorry I can’t help you over your proofs. I’ll tell you what. If there should be a spare copy when we’ve bound a hundred—sometimes one or two are not so good, and we discard them—I’ll slip one along to you if Senss agrees. Bit awkward we can’t get Carn himself to OK it—but then, of course, you wouldn’t be needing it if Carn had not been scuppered, what? Well, well, good-bye, my dear fellow. Very pleased you called. Anything I can do to help clear up poor Carn’s death. A very good fellow, very, take him on the whole.”
A theory that Carn had killed Mrs. Carn because of his admiration for Mrs. Saxant, and that Saxant had retaliated by killing Carn, which had made a neat although unconvincing pattern in Bassin’s orderly mind, now resolved itself into its bits and pieces again, kaleidoscopic and as meaningless as before.
•2•
Carey had very little luck with Mr. Simplon, and when Mrs. Bradley returned to the inn that evening after she had paid her first visit to the nudists, she found him in the lounge with a large-scale map of the district, and a patient, enduring expression which, in him, she knew, meant boredom.
“Poor child,” she said, “wasn’t he at home?”
“Oh, yes, he was at home all right, and he admits he hates Senss like poison. I had a bit of a game finding out where he lived, but that office boy of Saxant’s told me, in the end. The world will be a better place when somebody wrings that youth’s neck. I can’t think why Saxant keeps him. Incidentally, there seems to be something odd about the disappearance of Senss. You wouldn’t suppose another murder, would you?”
“Oh, dear, I hope not, child. Where’s Justus, by the way?”
“Came in and went out again. Gone to see Mabb in quod, I rather think. The poor chap’s very down-hearted—Mabb, I mean.”
“Yes, I expect he is. Well, we can do nothing for him yet. I know who committed the murders, and I know why they were committed, but I have no proof at all that the law would accept. I am expecting Ferdinand down.”
“Oh, heck! When?”
“On Monday. If you wished to avoid meeting him—”
“Well, I do, rather, if you really don’t mind.”
“Of course not, child. I was about to suggest that you take advantage of the really beautiful weather and join the nudist colony on Ampcommon Hill.”
“Do I hear what you say?”
“Yes, child.”
“Nudist colony?”
“If you would be so good.”
“Why?”
“Well,” said his aunt impressively, “I have always thought that if one wanted to hide oneself from the world for a bit in the summer—suppose the police, the bloodhounds, or one’s hereditary foes were on one’s trail—that a nudist colony would offer a very fair means of walking in the water, as it were, for a month or two, while one considered which was the best of several courses to pursue.”
“There’s something behind all this. You can’t deceive me. Is nudity a condition of entry?”
“Well not of entry, but of residence. I may add that you will see me there—”
“Aunt Adela, no! I forbid it.”
“—from time to time. I am doing some work there. The psychology of nudism is interesting. You, being in—”
“‘See that th’ opposed may beware of thee,’” said Carey, grinning. “They probably will. Me in the buff would cause the stoutest heart to quail. What am I to look out for while I’m there?”
“You might do worse than look out for Fortinbras Carn.”
“What? ” said Carey. “Minus ears and hand? You’re not serious, dear old soul?”
“Time alone will show. Remember to wear your sunglasses if the light in the Sanctuary is strong.”
“Look here, can’t Bassin go?”
“No. Justus might be recognised. He is known.”
“But Carn hasn’t seen him since he was sixteen.”
“It cannot be Justus, dear child.”
“All right. Have it your own way. One comfort, I’ve done a good bit of life-drawing in my time. The human frame has no more surprises for me.”
“I shall be there, at times,” Mrs. Bradley remarked, “as I have told you. But it would make for the success of our plans if you did not appear to know me. And yet—” She meditated. “No, perhaps, after all—”
“What I can’t see,” went on Carey, “is how on earth you deduce that Carn may be in the place.”
“It is a very good hiding-place, child.”
“And you’re going to psychoanalyse the sun-worshippers? Well, don’t go and spoil the nice clean fun. These people are like vegetarians, remember.”
“They are vegetarians,” Mrs. Bradley pointed out.
“Well, I’ll inspect them closely, and try to decide to what extent they’ve shaved off their beards and moustaches. Is that the idea?”
“Yes, dear child, but keep an open mind.”
“The whole function of the artist. Be of good cheer. ‘No prejudice’ is my middle name, as they say in the wilds of Minnesota.”
He yawned, and a little later his aunt had bidden him a sincerely affectionate good night. Then from the deep pocket of her skirt she produced a small revolver and a torch and sat with them in her hands until Bassin returned at midnight. The inn had long since closed its doors, but the lounge door remained on the latch so that he could come in. Mrs. Bradley had promised the servant to lock up after Bassin’s return.
“Oh, Justus,” she said, when he entered, “do you prefer the revolver or the torch? There’s somebody
up the chimney.”
Bassin was a man not easily discountenanced or surprised. He took the torch, switched it on, and together they approached the enormous fireplace. It had the usual ingle-nook seats, very solid and badly worn, and, during summer, used as bookcases. The wide chimney rose black above the fireplace and whitened hearth, soaring, as it were, into night. By standing inside the curb, on the hearth, or when seated in one of the ingle-nook seats, it was possible, craning upwards, to see the sky.
Bassin and Mrs. Bradley, however, made no attempt to obtain this constricted view of celestial space. Advancing cautiously, they moved towards the southern, or left-hand end of the fireplace, and then Bassin switched on the torch and aimed its circular beam up into the chimney recesses.
“Come down, and no funny business,” he observed. “We’ve got a gun.”
There was no response to the invitation or to the warning. Not a sound disturbed the still house until, with some abruptness, the ancient clock in the lounge cleared its throat and struck twelve. Then the cleft silence rolled together again like cloud, and, after a pause, Bassin murmured:
“Are you sure you saw someone?”
“No, but I heard him. Just after half-past eleven; the clock had scarcely struck.”
“Bats, or something do you think?”
“No, it was heavier and more scrambling.”
“Let’s have another go, then.” He advanced a foot nearer, and called upwards.
“Come down. We’re going to shoot.” Again there was no response. “Don’t really want to wake the household,” muttered Bassin. He began to explore with the torch. “Can’t—oh, by heck, there he is!”
He reached up into the chimney and gave a jerk. The effect was alarming and sudden. Into the chimney opening swung a man, his dangling legs proclaiming that something was supporting him from the neck. Mrs. Bradley put down the revolver and took out a knife.
“Keep the light on him, Justus,” she commanded. She picked up a chair, placed it in the fireplace, went over to the switch and lighted up the room. The dangling legs were three feet above the grate.
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