Buried for Pleasure (14 page)

Fen sighed. ‘It didn't occur to you that it was the lunatic?'

This possibility had clearly not struck Olive before ‘Lor', no!' she exclaimed, wide-eyed. ‘We would 'a' up and runned if we'd thought 'twere the daftie. This Form, see, 'e lit a fire in 'ut, an'. I says to 'Arry, “'Tis nowt but a tramp,” I says, and 'Arry, 'e says – –'

‘I says, “Shut up talkin'”. Harry observed. ‘“Shut up talkin'”. I says.' He felt, obviously, that the masterfulness of this injunction might serve to elevate him, in Fen's eyes, from the disrepute into which he had fallen.

‘So we watches the 'ut for near on an hour,' Olive went on, ignoring the interruption, ‘an' then, near midnight, along comes another chap, a lean un, lookin' back over his shoulder as 'e walks. An' 'e goes into 'ut, and then there's a kind o' noise.'

‘A kind of noise?'

‘Like a scuffle. An' 'Arry, 'e says, “Lor',” 'e says, “they'm fightin'. We'd better get out of'ere, quick.”' Wincing at this pitiless comment on his manhood, Harry mumbled something indistinguishable. ‘But afore we could move,' Olive continued with rising excitement, ‘out comes the first chap, and off 'e goes. An' then a minute after,
you
comes along 'an looks in the 'ut an' 'urries away again. An' after that,' she concluded with simplicity, ‘we goes off an' finishes our lovin' elsewhere.'

‘'Tweren't none of our business,' said Harry defensively.

Fen sighed anew. ‘And you don't think you'd recognize this first man if you saw him again?'

‘No,' said Olive promptly. ‘'E didn't come the way you and the lean un came, so we couldn't see 'im proper.'

‘You said you watched the hut between the time the first man arrived and the time the second man arrived. Did anyone –
anyone
– enter or leave the hut during that hour?'

Olive shook her head, emphatically. ‘We'd be certain to 'a' seen if anyone 'ad.'

‘But surely, if you were – ah – mollocking, your attention – –'

‘We'd 'a' seen,' Olive reiterated with great certainty. ‘We'd 'a' seen, 'cos 'Arry's afeared me Dad'll be after 'im with a knife, an' 'e knows it if anyone's comin' towards 'im even so much as a mile orf.'

‘I ain't afeared o' your Dad,' said Harry pettishly. ‘Don't you go sayin' I'm afeared o' your Dad.'

‘That you are, 'Arry 'Itchin.' Olive repudiated this slur on her veraciousness with vigour. ‘That you are. Why, what about the time – –'

Fen intervened hurriedly. ‘Yes, well, never mind that now,' he said. ‘The point is that your story's extremely important, and must be told to the police.'

‘Don't want to get mixed up with no police,' Harry muttered. But now Olive rounded on him with considerable savagery.

‘You'll do what I says,' she informed him uncompromisingly. ‘An' what I says is, we go to the police, like the genulman tells us to.'

At this, the poor remnants of Harry's self-assurance vanished like smoke before a gale. ‘Ur,' he assented feebly.

‘And I think you'd better do it straight away.' His point gained, Fen became more genial. ‘Can either of you drive a car?'

‘Ur,' said Harry with dawning interest.

‘Well, mine is round in the yard, and you can drive to Sanford Morvel in it if you like.'

‘Ur,' said Harry eagerly.

‘But be sure to bring it back in good time. I'm not providing it for you to mollock in half the night.'

‘Olive's Grammer,' Harry remarked, ‘she allus says . . .'

‘“When swallows be leaving, girls be conceiving.”' said Fen. ‘Will you kindly finish your drinks and go?'

They obeyed, departing hand in hand. Fen watched in silence as with a horrid grinding of gears they set off to face their ordeal. Then he ordered another whisky – this time a large one.

‘What a couple,' said Myra resignedly. ‘Daft as they come.'

A small spate of customers entered the bar. Myra and Jacqueline served them. And Fen, perched on a stool, brooded. If Olive and Harry were telling the truth – and he saw no reason for supposing that they were not – then apart from Bussy and himself only one person, the murderer, had been at the hut on the previous night; which meant that the hypothesis of Elphinstone's having camped, decamped and been replaced by the rational
X
was no longer tenable. Either the murderer had been
X
, or he had been Elphinstone. And he must – Fen argued – have been Elphinstone, for the simple reason that by no possible means could
X
have known that Bussy was due to appear at the hut. And yet . . . Fen shook his head; a coincidence so thoroughly convenient for the murderer of Mrs Lambert surely deserved to be probed further. But in what direction was one to look? It was conceivable, he decided after a good deal of thought, that in a detailed knowledge of Elphinstone's lunacy some discrepancy might be found – as, for instance, that he abhorred tinned ham. . . . And that necessitated an interview with the person in charge of the asylum at Sanford Hall. What was the name? Boysenberry. Fen finished his drink and went to the telephone.

CHAPTER 13

S
ANFORD
H
ALL
, viewed in the morning radiance of that continuing summer, was discreet rather than arrogant, demure rather than impressive – and this in spite of its considerable dimensions. Approaching it, at eleven o'clock on the Wednesday, Fen saw that it lay along the crown of the hill like an elegant toy, its carefully spaced sash windows tactful and unobtrusive, its main door solid and dignified, its plain chimney stacks neatly massed against the porcelain sky. It spoke – to those capable of interpreting such wordless messages – of the spacious and dignified days in which, Anne being on the throne and Marlborough away at the wars, it had been built; and to fill it with lunatics, Fen thought, argued an aesthetic obtuseness rare even in a Government official . . . And yet, on further reflection, it was possible to modify this opinion; for it was likely, after all, that the architect would have preferred to have his lovely design associated with the often cheerful irresponsibility of madmen rather than with the fitful bureaucratic zeal of some meddlesome Ministry.

The permitted outlay for care of the gardens must have been small, since apparently it served for little more than to keep the lawns and paths tidy. And there was, Fen noted, no apparent provision for safely immuring the patients – nothing, that is, in the way of barbed wire or palisades. Nor, indeed, was there any sign of patients, except where, a good way off, a white-coated attendant was wheeling a wrapped, motionless figure about in a bath-chair. The Hall seemed asleep – and the impression of drowsiness was enhanced rather than disturbed by the thin tones of a portable gramophone which seeped from somewhere in the interior.

Fen came to the main door and, since it stood open, walked in. A porter, who but for the lack of both coat and cap might have been said to be uniformed, was sprawled on a kitchen chair in the hall. At Fen's entry he looked up from a sporting paper and asked without enthusiasm to be told Fen's business.

‘I have an appointment,' said Fen, ‘to see Dr Boysenberry.'

The porter was clearly relieved at not being required to grapple with any affair more complicated than this. ‘Keep straight on,' he said affably, ‘first corridor on your left, second door on your right.' Then he retired again into his paper. ‘Wily Wilkie,' he read out to himself. ‘Filomela; Fiddle-de-dee, ten to one.'

Fen left him, and by following his instructions came to a door upon which was a brass plate bearing the inscription
A. C. BOYSENBERRY, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.S.
The sound of the gramophone proceeded from behind it. ‘
I think that I shall never see
,' sang the gramophone, ‘
a poem lovely as a tree
.' Fen knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again. There was again no answer. Tiring of the delay, he opened the door and went in.

The room in which he found himself was enormous, so large, indeed, as to be almost certainly the Hall's ballroom. And its vastness was accentuated by the fact that only one remote corner of it was furnished at all – so that the effect was of a minute encampment in a gigantic desert. Far away across an expanse of polished floor Fen could see a flat-topped desk, with a telephone, a gramophone, and a litter of papers on it. In front of the desk was an elaborately bedizened
pouf
; behind it sat a man whose greying hair was disordered and whose pince-nez hung askew on the bridge of his nose; behind him stood a very small book-case containing about five books; above this hung a signed photograph of the man at the desk; to the left of the photograph was a stupendous metal filing-cabinet with a typewriter and a pile of gramophone records perched on top. And there was nothing else in the room whatever.

His footsteps echoing noisily around him, Fen walked across to the desk; and as he came near it, the grey-haired man raised a finger to his lips, and pointed to the gramophone, in a pantomimic demand for silence. Fen began to experience misgivings; it seemed to him likely that he was confronted with one of Boysen-berry's patients rather than with Boysenberry himself. Life imitates literature with doggish fidelity, and in literature such situations were common enough. . . . Moreover, the grey-haired man's first remark, after the record was finished and he had taken it off, was not encouraging. ‘Are you,' he inquired, ‘fond of ballads?'

‘Well, no,' said Fen cautiously. ‘I don't think I can say that I am.'

‘Well,
I
am. And the one we've just been hearing is a particular favourite of mine.
Trees
, it's called. Do you know, I don't think I've ever come across a lovelier poem than
Trees
.'

‘Indeed.'

‘
Poems are made
,' said the man, ‘
by fools like me, but only God can make a Tree
. . . . Mind you, in view of recent laboratory experiments the last part of the statement isn't strictly true, but still, it's a very fine sentiment, very fine.'

‘Are you Dr Boysenberry?' Fen asked doubtfully.

‘Yes, yes, of course,' said Boysenberry. ‘Naturally I am. . . . And that particular recording of it is outstandingly excellent. Also, there's
Passing By
on the other side.'

‘Unlike the Good Samaritan.'

‘That's not so satisfactory, though: one of these modernistic things with funny chords. . . .' And here Boysenberry, at last mindful of the duties of hospitality, put the record reluctantly aside. ‘Well, do sit down,' he said. ‘It will have to be the
pouf
, I'm afraid. We've been here for three years, but even now the Ministry of Works hasn't let us have a quarter of the furniture we need.'

‘And your office,' said Fen reservedly, ‘is unusually large.'

‘It's a damned barn, that's what it is. You'd think in a building the size of this I could find a decent office, wouldn't you? But when all the patients and staff have been accommodated, this is practically the only thing that's left. I wanted to have it divided up into several smaller rooms, but they wouldn't let me. Said it had been designed by some famous man and was very beautiful.' Boysenberry stared about him with unconcealed distaste. ‘Grinning Gibbon or some such name.'

Fen sat down on the
pouf
and offered him a cigarette.

‘Thanks,' he said, taking it. ‘Well, now, perhaps you wouldn't mind stating your business.'

‘I telephoned to you,' said Fen. ‘Yesterday evening.'

‘Ah, yes, of course. I made a note of it at the time.' Boysenberry rummaged half-heartedly among the papers on his desk, but without, apparently, discovering anything to the purpose. ‘Perhaps you'd be so good as to repeat – –'

‘I've come,' said Fen, ‘to ask for some information about Elphinstone.'

Boysenberry's manner altered visibly; he became frigid. ‘It is quite impossible,' he said icily, ‘for me to communicate confidential facts of that nature to any unauthorized person, Mr – er – –'

‘Fen.'

‘Mr Fen. You are, I take it, a journalist.'

‘On the contrary,' said Fen. ‘I am the Oxford Professor of English Language and Literature.'

And as Boysenberry assimilated this intelligence, his attitude underwent another rapid and remarkable change. He fluttered his hands agitatedly; his mouth widened in a rictus which was seemingly intended to convey the greatest possible cordiality. ‘Dear me,' he said. ‘How extremely foolish of me. . . .
Professor Fen. Of course
. This is a very great privilege indeed. . . . What will you have been thinking of me, I wonder?' And he idiotically tittered.

The motives underlying this sudden change of front were by no means clear to Fen. ‘Very understandable,' he murmured inconsequently. ‘Very understandable indeed.'

‘And our meeting like this the more delightful,' said Boysenberry, ‘in that by Christmas we may
perhaps
be more closely associated.'

Fen, on the point of denying all charm to such a prospect, restrained himself in the interests of his errand and said ‘Ah' instead.

‘You don't quite catch my meaning, I suspect.' Boysenberry continued to radiate a strenuous and determined good humour. ‘But you will be aware, of course, that the Oxford Chair of Abnormal Psychology is to be filled shortly?' Not being aware of any such thing, Fen said ‘Ah' again. ‘Well, I,' Boysenberry continued modestly, ‘am applying for the job – by which I mean, of course, the position.'