Honeybath's Haven (14 page)

‘I'd rather you didn't break off your holiday, Charles.'

‘Nonsense! It has been
our
holiday. And I've enjoyed it.' Honeybath spoke robustly. But in this he was only echoing Edwin's own tone. Edwin was being quite as commanding about this return to England as his friend had been about quitting it. There could be no doubt that the Italian interlude was over. At noon next day they were a few thousand feet above Mont Blanc. They parted at Heathrow, Edwin having revealed a disinclination to be returned to Hanwell Court as it were under convoy.

Back in London, Honeybath resolved to let a couple of days pass before contacting Edwin by telephone. For Edwin, his resolution taken, seemed reasonably composed, and he might be irritated by any too obtrusive determination to keep on holding his hand.

But on the third morning Honeybath called Hanwell Court, and asked if he might be put through to Mr Lightfoot. The request produced a moment's odd silence, and he repeated it.

‘I'm afraid not,' a voice then said. It was the kind of voice that, normally, is briskly secretarial. But on this occasion it sounded not so much at a loss as on the verge of panic. ‘Mr Lightfoot isn't available,' the voice said. The effect of this was of a seizing of the first familiar formula to hand.

‘He has left Hanwell Court?' It sounded to Honeybath as if there had been an awkward bust-up and Edwin had departed in a stink of sulphur.

‘Well, yes in a sense. I'm terribly sorry, Mr Honeybath.' The agitated young woman at the other end of the line appeared to take a deep breath. ‘Mr Lightfoot died last night. He was found drowned this morning.'

 

 

 

The strange manner of Edwin Lightfoot's death was eventually to strike an enterprising journalist as good for a write-up in a Sunday paper; and this elevating of the fatality to the status of a spurious ‘sensation' was eventually to have a wholly unexpected sequel of a genuinely sensational sort. But that lay a little in the future. When Honeybath reached Hanwell Court the atmosphere (as might have been foretold) was all reticence and a sustained decorum. It was true that there were several policemen around, but Honeybath felt at once that they were disposed (in the current phrase) to present a low profile to the affair. One of them, although in plain clothes and known as plain Mr Adamson, suggested himself as of higher rank than a rural constabulary might have been thought able to turn on at short notice. Mr Adamson seemed very willing to confer with Honeybath without much inquiring into his standing in the matter. Honeybath, he might have been conceding, was a person of consequence and to be deferred to. And as Honeybath had lately been travelling on the Continent with the dead man anything he had to say might be of help in clearing up any element of the mysterious that might conceivably lurk in this distressing occurrence.

‘These things do tend to happen late at night,' Adamson said. ‘A man dines well, and so on. Then he has bad luck, and the accident happens. If he has very bad luck, as in Mr Lightfoot's case, the accident is unhappily fatal.'

‘Quite so.' Honeybath paused for a moment, and decided that there had been an implication in this that must be challenged. ‘Only there is no reason to suppose that Lightfoot “dined well” – or not in the sense you suggest. He could be a convivial man in congenial company. But I doubt whether there is much conviviality at Hanwell Court. You have to think of Lightfoot sitting at his own small table, eating his meal, and drinking a glass – or perhaps a couple of glasses – of wine. Certainly not as living it up.'

‘He was a habitually temperate man?'

‘He certainly wasn't a drunk.' Honeybath felt considerable indignation at the line Mr Adamson was developing. ‘Am I to understand that he was observed by anybody last night in an intoxicated condition?'

‘I haven't heard of anything of the sort so far.'

‘Then the whole speculation is gratuitous.'

‘Fair enough, Mr Honeybath.' Adamson wasn't at all ruffled. ‘But you must remember our position. There are more or less routine questions which the coroner may feel it his duty to raise. And we have to credibilize what happened, if I may put it that way. A perfectly sober man might stumble into a pond like that in the dark. But it's hard to believe that a perfectly sober man wouldn't simply climb out again. You've seen the pond, Mr Honeybath?'

‘No, I have not. I happened never to have made my way there, although I have visited Hanwell Court on a number of occasions. I suppose it is the saltwater pond in which a woman called Lady Munden amuses herself by growing or cultivating seaweed?'

‘Just so – and a singularly futile hobby, it seems to me. But it appears that the lady has had considerable success in acclimatizing – if that's the word – various exotic varieties. I had a man from a Marine Institute looking into it a couple of hours ago.
Fucus giganteus
, he said, which is the biggest of the lot. Stems as thick as a cable. But what proved really treacherous and fatal was bullhead Kelp. It seems that the Red Indians make fishing-lines of it. But I still don't believe that a quite sober man could have tangled himself up in it.'

‘That's what happened?' Not unnaturally, Honeybath was appalled by this revelation. ‘Edwin – Lightfoot – died that way?'

‘Yes, indeed. The body had to be cut out of the stuff.'

‘Good God!' There had been occasions upon which Honeybath had indulged a vein of macabre fantasy about possible sudden death at Hanwell: one of the Misses Pinchon going the way of Admiral Emery at a touch on Colonel Dacre's trigger; Mr Gaunt running amuck with a poisoned dagger; even some harmless inmate wandering into the maze and never being seen again. But Lady Munden's saline pool as a hazard had never occurred to him.

‘But do you know?' Mr Adamson was saying. ‘There came into my head this morning something I'd once read about the poet Shelley.'

‘About Shelley? What can Shelley have to do with it?' Asking this reasonable question, Honeybath was confirmed in his suspicion that Adamson emanated from the superior echelons of the police, among whom there may be supposed individuals conversant with polite literature.

‘Shelley took it into his head on some occasion that it would be quite nice just to drown.'

‘I doubt whether it was a view he maintained to the end of his life.'

‘One supposes not.' Adamson clearly took this reference without effort. ‘Well, Shelley simply lay down on the bottom of a pool and calmly stayed put. I forget how he was rescued. But it must have been a difficult thing to do – just lying there quietly. If he'd been in Lady Munden's pond, of course,
Fucus giganteus
and bullhead Kelp would have helped.'

‘Great heavens! You don't suggest…'

‘Just wriggle into the stuff, and you wouldn't quickly wriggle out again. Mr Honeybath, would you describe your friend as of melancholic or depressive temperament?'

‘You had better ask Dr Michaelis.' Honeybath at once thought better of this evasive reply. ‘I'd say that Edwin Lightfoot went up and down a good deal. “Cyclothymic”, I believe, is the technical term.'

‘And how was he during your visit to Italy together? Would you say he was under any particular stresses and strains?'

‘He had been, undoubtedly. He was dissatisfied with his work.'

‘With his painting, that is? Had he reason to be? Objective reason, I mean, such as another painter like yourself would judge well founded. Or was it a matter of his having set himself an impossibly high standard, and being dejected because he couldn't attain to it?'

‘His work was undoubtedly deteriorating.' Honeybath had been a little surprised by Adamson's string of questions. But there could be no doubt about what prompted them. Indeed, Adamson now came out with it forthrightly.

‘Mr Honeybath, you will see that here is a question I have to ask. Were you ever apprehensive of Mr Lightfoot's taking his own life?'

‘Yes – but only as something, so to speak, on the verge of possibility. Moreover I think others may have entertained the same thought. But as an explanation of Lightfoot's death under the circumstances in which it has taken place, suicide appears to me quite ludicrous. Can we conceivably believe, Mr Adamson, that he climbed into a comparatively shallow pool, and there so deliberately entangled himself in all that abominable stuff as to ensure that it would be beyond his power to free himself were he prompted to do so? It is the sheerest nonsense, and we don't make it less so by talking about Shelley.' Honeybath hadn't finished uttering these last words before regretting them as discourteous rather than merely tart, and when Adamson's response was a very genuine laugh he was considerably relieved. ‘But I take it,' he added, ‘that you're thinking once more about that coroner?'

‘And his jury, Mr Honeybath. But I don't really expect much trouble ahead. This and that will be canvassed; and it will become clear that nobody knows or is going to know; and these worthy people, after being dragged away from their desks and counters for the better part of a day, will bring in what is called an open verdict, and go home to their teas and suppers.'

‘You don't think there's anything more to find out?' It seemed to Honeybath that Adamson's last remarks, although they established him yet more firmly in that superior echelon, had been on the cavalier side.

‘Well, of course, this or that may turn up. To go back, for instance, to my first very tentative conjecture. It's possible that the post mortem may disclose in the body whatever it is that is left there after the breakdown of a good deal of alcohol. But, even so, I'd hope that nothing much need be made of it. One always hopes that these things won't attract vulgar curiosity or be made a thing of in the newspapers. And I know Mr Lightfoot's work, as it happens, and regard him as a man of very real eminence. I think we can manage the press.'

‘I'm told there have been several reporters here already this morning.'

‘Oh, yes – and their brief reports will appear. Beyond that, they can be managed.'

‘Managed?' Honeybath felt this to be somehow a mildly scandalous word.

‘They come along, you know, asking for information one isn't in the least obliged to give them. But one plays them on an easy line. “Ah, yes,” one says. “But I don't think there is really much for you in
that
. But listen to
this
.” And one hands them out a good lead on some hardened villain. It's all part, my dear Mr Honeybath, of a policeman's prime duty to protect the respectable classes.'

‘I see.' This urbanely ironical stuff was not alien to Honeybath's taste, but he didn't care for it hard up against Edwin's death. ‘Perhaps I haven't made it clear,' he said firmly, ‘that Edwin Lightfoot was my oldest friend. We had grown a little apart, as it happens, a few years ago, but then came together again. As you do know, the last weeks of his life were spent in my company. It is fair to say that I feel a certain duty to his memory.'

‘A duty, Mr Honeybath?' Adamson was entirely serious again.

‘And I'd wish, as far as it can be done, to clarify the circumstances of his death. There is one possibility, is there not, that we have failed to discuss so far?'

‘Foul play.' Adamson smiled faintly. ‘The papers are going to report that “the police do not suspect foul play.” I sometimes wonder how many criminals are gullible enough to believe it.'

‘Then you
do
suspect foul play?'

‘I acknowledge its possibility.'

‘But not its probability, Mr Adamson? That seems fair enough. There are unlikely, I suppose, to be any hardened villains, as you call them, at Hanwell Court.'

‘That is possibly true.' The faint irony had returned to Adamson. ‘But murder, as it happens, is commonly an amateur affair. Professional criminals have been taking to it rather ominously, it is true, in recent years. But in the main homicide continues to be – shall we say? – a very special sort of crime.' Adamson paused for a moment. ‘However, Mr Honeybath, it is not in our character as philosophers that we are conversing at the moment. Have you any reason whatever to believe that Mr Lightfoot was murdered? If you have, please tell me about it.'

‘I have none. I can certainly say that I have none. But my mind is not entirely at ease, all the same.' Honeybath paused in his turn. He knew that what he had in his head was so vague and shadowy – and so remote from any of the darker forms of crime – that he might stumble badly if he embarked on it now. ‘Edwin Lightfoot was the most honourable of men. To be involved in anything shady would have been wholly alien to his nature. But in these last months of his life he was, I believe, being practiced upon in a manner that remains quite obscure to me. What I have in mind – only very obscurely in mind – may be wholly unrelated to the manner of his death. And I simply can't embark on this now. To do so might be to involve entirely innocent people in senseless and fantastic suspicion. I must think about it – and even a little cast about on my own. I am afraid that I can say no more to you.'

Honeybath had made this speech with an irrational sense that it was going to get him into instant trouble; that he was liable to be sternly admonished about his duty as a liege and a citizen to come clean in the interest of the Queen's peace. That sort of thing. So he was surprised when this formidable policeman didn't take that line at all.

‘I quite understand you, Mr Honeybath,' Adamson said. ‘Perhaps we may have another talk on a later occasion. It may even be that you would wish to communicate with me rapidly. In that case, it would be quite in order to by-pass the county constabulary.' Adamson brought out a notebook, scribbled in it, tore out the leaf, and handed it to Honeybath. ‘This would be the telephone number.' For a fraction of a second Adamson hesitated. ‘Mr Honeybath,' he then said, ‘you are a wholly reliable man. In confidence, then, let me say that it will put you in immediate contact with my office in New Scotland Yard.' Adamson smiled fleetingly. ‘I have strayed in here, you see, from the Metropolitan Police Office. And I'm bound to say the local bobbies are being very nice about it. And – what's more important – very discreet as well.'