‘It’s damp.’
‘Is it?’ said Philip expressionlessly.
‘I don’t think anyone could have sat on this chair,’ pursued the policeman.
He is telling me I am a liar, thought Philip, and blushed. But the other vigile, anxious to spare his feelings, said:
‘Perhaps it was an impostor whom you saw—a confidence man. There are many such, even in Italy. He hoped to get money out of the signori.’ He looked round for confirmation; the concierge nodded.
‘Yes,’ said Philip, wearily. ‘No doubt that explains it. Will you want us again?’ he asked the vigili. ‘Have you a card, Dickie?’
The vigili, having collected the information they required, saluted and walked off.
Dickie turned to the concierge.
‘Where’s that young whippersnapper who took a message for us?’
‘Whippersnapper?’ repeated the concierge.
‘Well, page-boy?’
‘Oh, the piccolo? He’s gone off duty, sir, for the night.’
‘Good thing for him,’ said Dickie. ‘Hullo, who’s this? My poor nerves won’t stand any more of this Maskelyne and Devant business.’
It was the maître d’hôtel, bowing obsequiously.
‘Will there be three gentlemen, or four, for dinner?’ he asked.
Philip and Dickie exchanged glances and Dickie lit a cigarette.
‘Only two gentlemen,’ he said.
THE TRAVELLING GRAVE
Hugh Curtis was in two minds about accepting Dick Munt’s invitation to spend Sunday at Lowlands. He knew little of Munt, who was supposed to be rich and eccentric and, like many people of that kind, a collector. Hugh dimly remembered having asked his friend Valentine Ostrop what it was that Munt collected, but he could not recall Valentine’s answer. Hugh Curtis was a vague man with an unretentive mind, and the mere thought of a collection, with its many separate challenges to the memory, fatigued him. What he required of a week-end party was to be left alone as much as possible, and to spend the remainder of his time in the society of agreeable women. Searching his mind, though with distaste, for he hated to disturb it, he remembered Ostrop telling him that parties at Lowlands were generally composed entirely of men, and rarely exceeded four in number. Valentine didn’t know who the fourth was to be, but he begged Hugh to come.
‘You will enjoy Munt,’ he said. ‘He really doesn’t pose at all. It’s his nature to be like that.’
‘Like what?’ his friend had inquired.
‘Oh, original and—and strange, if you like,’ answered Valentine. ‘He’s one of the exceptions—he’s much odder than he seems, whereas most people are more ordinary than they seem.’
Hugh Curtis agreed. ‘But I like ordinary people,’ he added. ‘So how shall I get on with Munt?’
‘Oh,’ said his friend, ‘but you’re just the type he likes. He prefers ordinary—it’s a stupid word—I mean normal, people, because their reactions are more valuable.’
‘Shall I be expected to react?’ asked Hugh, with nervous facetiousness.
‘Ha! Ha!’ laughed Valentine, poking him gently—‘we never quite know what he’ll be up to. But you will come, won’t you?’
Hugh Curtis had said he would.
All the same, when Saturday morning came he began to regret his decision and to wonder whether it might not honourably be reversed. He was a man in early middle life, rather set in his ideas, and, though not specially a snob, unable to help testing a new acquaintance by the standards of the circle to which he belonged. This circle had never warmly welcomed Valentine Ostrop; he was the most unconventional of Hugh’s friends. Hugh liked him when they were alone together, but directly Valentine fell in with kindred spirits he developed a kind of foppishness of manner that Hugh instinctively disliked. He had no curiosity about his friends, and thought it out of place in personal relationships, so he had never troubled to ask himself what this altered demeanour of Valentine’s, when surrounded by his cronies, might denote. But he had a shrewd idea that Munt would bring out Valentine’s less sympathetic side. Could he send a telegram saying he had been unexpectedly detained? Hugh turned the idea over; but partly from principle, partly from laziness (he hated the mental effort of inventing false circumstances to justify change of plans), he decided he couldn’t. His letter of acceptance had been so unconditional. He also had the fleeting notion (a totally unreasonable one) that Munt would somehow find out and be nasty about it.
So he did the best he could for himself; looked out the latest train that would get him to Lowlands in decent time for dinner, and telegraphed that he would come by that. He would arrive at the house, he calculated, soon after seven. ‘Even if dinner is as late as half-past eight,’ he thought to himself ‘they won’t be able to do me much harm in an hour and a quarter.’ This habit of mentally assuring to himself periods of comparative immunity from unknown perils had begun at school. ‘Whatever I’ve done,’ he used to say to himself, ‘they can’t kill me.’ With the war, this saving reservation had to be dropped: they could kill him, that was what they were there for. But now that peace was here the little mental amulet once more diffused its healing properties; Hugh had recourse to it more often than he would have admitted. Absurdly enough he invoked it now. But it annoyed him that he would arrive in the dusk of the September evening. He liked to get his first impression of a new place by daylight.
Hugh Curtis’s anxiety to come late had not been shared by the other two guests. They arrived at Lowlands in time for tea. Though they had not travelled together, Ostrop motoring down, they met practically on the doorstep, and each privately suspected the other of wanting to have his host for a few moments to himself.
But it seemed unlikely that their wish would have been gratified even if they had not both been struck by the same idea. Tea came in, the water bubbled in the urn, but still Munt did not present himself, and at last Ostrop asked his fellow-guest to make the tea.
‘You must be deputy-host,’ he said; ‘you know Dick so well, better than I do.’
This was true. Ostrop had long wanted to meet Tony Bettisher who, after the death of someone vaguely known to Valentine as Squarchy, ranked as Munt’s oldest and closest friend. He was a short, dark, thickset man, whose appearance gave no clue to his character or pursuits. He had, Valentine knew, a job at the British Museum, but, to look at, he might easily have been a stockbroker.
‘I suppose you know this place at every season of the year,’ Valentine said. ‘This is the first time I’ve been here in the autumn. How lovely everything looks.’
He gazed out at the wooded valley and the horizon fringed with trees. The scent of burning garden-refuse drifted in through the windows.
‘Yes, I’m a pretty frequent visitor,’ answered Bettisher, busy with the teapot.
‘I gather from his letter that Dick has just returned from abroad,’ said Valentine. ‘Why does he leave England on the rare occasions when it’s tolerable? Does he do it for fun, or does he have to?’ He put his head on one side and contemplated Bettisher with a look of mock despair.
Bettisher handed him a cup of tea.
‘I think he goes when the spirit moves him.’
‘Yes, but what spirit?’ cried Valentine with an affected petulance of manner. ‘Of course, our Richard is a law unto himself: we all know that. But he must have some motive. I don’t suppose he’s fond of travelling. It’s so uncomfortable. Now Dick cares for his comforts. That’s why he travels with so much luggage.’
‘Oh does he?’ inquired Bettisher. ‘Have you been with him?’
‘No, but the Sherlock Holmes in me discovered that,’ declared Valentine triumphantly. ‘The trusty Franklin hadn’t time to put it away. Two large crates. Now would you call that personal luggage?’ His voice was for ever underlining: it pounced upon ‘personal’ like a hawk on a dove.
‘Perambulators, perhaps,’ suggested Bettisher laconically. ‘Oh, do you think so? Do you think he collects perambulators? That would explain everything!??
?
‘What would it explain?’ asked Bettisher, stirring in his chair.
‘Why, his collection, of course!’ exclaimed Valentine, jumping up and bending on Bettisher an intensely serious gaze. ‘It would explain why he doesn’t invite us to see it, and why he’s so shy of talking about it. Don’t you see? An unmarried man, a bachelor, sine prole as far as we know, with whole attics-full of perambulators! It would be too fantastic. The world would laugh, and Richard, much as we love him, is terribly serious. Do you imagine it’s a kind of vice?’
‘All collecting is a form of vice.’
‘Oh no, Bettisher, don’t be hard, don’t be cynical—a substitute for vice. But tell me before he comes—he must come soon, the laws of hospitality demand it—am I right in my surmise?’
‘Which? You have made so many.’
‘I mean that what he goes abroad for, what he fills his house with, what he thinks about when we’re not with him—in a word, what he collects, is perambulators?’
Valentine paused dramatically.
Bettisher did not speak. His eyelids flickered and the skin about his eyes made a sharp movement inwards. He was beginning to open his mouth when Valentine broke in:
‘Oh no, of course, you’re in his confidence, your lips are sealed. Don’t tell me, you mustn’t, I forbid you to!’
‘What’s that he’s not to tell you?’ said a voice from the other end of the room.
‘Oh, Dick!’ cried Valentine, ‘what a start you gave me! You must learn to move a little less like a dome of silence, mustn’t he, Bettisher?’
Their host came forward to meet them, on silent feet and laughing soundlessly. He was a small, thin, slightly built man, very well turned out and with a conscious elegance of carriage.
‘But I thought you didn’t know Bettisher?’ he said, when their greetings had been accomplished. ‘Yet when I come in I find you with difficulty stemming the flood of confidences pouring from his lips.’
His voice was slightly ironical, it seemed at the same moment to ask a question and to make a statement.
‘Oh, we’ve been together for hours,’ said Valentine airily, ‘and had the most enchanting conversation. Guess what we talked about.’
‘Not about me, I hope?’
‘Well, about something very dear to you.’
‘About you, then?’
‘Don’t make fun of me. The objects I speak of are both solid and useful.’
‘That does rather rule you out,’ said Munt meditatively. ‘What are they useful for?’
‘Carrying bodies.’
Munt glanced across at Bettisher, who was staring into the grate.
‘And what are they made of?’
Valentine tittered, pulled a face, answered, ‘I’ve had little experience of them, but I should think chiefly of wood.’
Munt got up and looked hard at Bettisher, who raised his eyebrows and said nothing.
‘They perform at one time or another,’ said Valentine, enjoying himself enormously, ‘an essential service for us all.’
There was a pause. Then Munt asked—
‘Where do you generally come across them?’
‘Personally I always try to avoid them,’ said Valentine. ‘But one meets them every day in the street and—and here, of course.’
‘Why do you try to avoid them?’ Munt asked rather grimly.
‘Since you think about them, and dote upon them, and collect them from all the corners of the earth, it pains me to have to say it,’ said Valentine with relish, ‘but I do not care to contemplate lumps of human flesh lacking the spirit that makes flesh tolerable.’
He struck an oratorical attitude and breathed audibly through his nose. There was a prolonged silence. The dusk began to make itself felt in the room.
‘Well,’ said Munt, at last, in a hard voice, ‘you are the first person to guess my little secret, if I can give it so grandiose a name. I congratulate you.’
Valentine bowed.
‘May I ask how you discovered it? While I was detained upstairs, I suppose you—you—poked about?’ His voice had a disagreeable ring; but Valentine, unaware of this, said loftily:
‘It was unnecessary. They were in the hall, plain to be seen by anyone. My Sherlock Holmes sense (I have eight or nine) recognized them immediately.’
Munt shrugged his shoulders, then said in a less constrained tone:
‘At this stage of our acquaintance I did not really intend to enlighten you. But since you know already, tell me, as a matter of curiosity, were you horrified?’
‘Horrified?’ cried Valentine. ‘I think it a charming taste, so original, so—so human. It ravishes my aesthetic sense; it slightly offends my moral principles.’
‘I was afraid it might,’ said Munt.
‘I am a believer in Birth Control,’ Valentine prattled on. ‘Every night I burn a candle to Stopes.’
Munt looked puzzled. ‘But then, how can you object?’ he began.
Valentine went on without heeding him.
‘But of course by making a corner in the things, you do discourage the whole business. Being exhibits they have to stand idle, don’t they? you keep them empty?’
Bettisher started up in his chair, but Munt held out a pallid hand and murmured in a stifled voice:
‘Yes, that is, most of them are.’
Valentine clapped his hands in ecstasy.
‘But some are not? Oh, but that’s too ingenious of you. To think of the darlings lying there quite still, not able to lift a finger, much less scream! A sort of mannequin parade!’
‘They certainly seem more complete with an occupant,’ Munt observed.
‘But who’s to push them? They can’t go of themselves.’
‘Listen,’ said Munt slowly. ‘I’ve just come back from abroad, and I’ve brought with me a specimen that does go by itself, or nearly. It’s outside there where you saw, waiting to be unpacked.’
Valentine Ostrop had been the life and soul of many a party. No one knew better than he how to breathe new life into a flagging joke. Privately he felt that this one was played out; but he had a social conscience; he realized his responsibility towards conversation, and summoning all the galvanic enthusiasm at his command he cried out:
‘Do you mean to say that it looks after itself, it doesn’t need a helping hand, and that a fond mother can entrust her precious charge to it without a nursemaid and without a tremor?’
‘She can,’ said Munt, ‘and without an undertaker and without a sexton.’
‘Undertaker . . . ? Sexton . . . ?’ echoed Valentine. ‘What have they to do with perambulators?’
There was a pause, during which the three figures, struck in their respective attitudes, seemed to have lost relationship with each other.
‘So you didn’t know,’ said Munt at length, ‘that it was coffins I collected.’
An hour later the three men were standing in an upper room, looking down at a large oblong object that lay in the middle of a heap of shavings and seemed, to Valentine’s sick fancy, to be burying its head among them. Munt had been giving a demonstration.
‘Doesn’t it look funny now it’s still?’ he remarked. ‘Almost as though it had been killed.’ He touched it pensively with his foot and it slid towards Valentine, who edged away. You couldn’t quite tell where it was coming; it seemed to have no settled direction, and to move all ways at once, like a crab. ‘Of course the chances are really against it,’ sighed Munt. ‘But it’s very quick, and it has that funny gift of anticipation. If it got a fellow up against a wall, I don’t think he’d stand much chance. I didn’t show you here, because I value my floors, but it can bury itself in wood in three minutes and in newly turned earth, say a flower-bed, in one. It has to be this squarish shape, or it couldn’t dig. It just doubles the man up, you see, directly it catches him—backwards, so as to break the spine. The top of the head fits in just below the heels. The soles of the feet come uppermost. The spring sticks a bit.’ He bent down to adjust something. ?
??Isn’t it a charming toy?’
‘Looking at it from the criminal’s standpoint, not the engineer’s,’ said Bettisher, ‘I can’t see that it would be much use in a house. Have you tried it on a stone floor?’
‘Yes, it screams in agony and blunts the blades.’
‘Exactly. Like a mole on paving-stones. And even on an ordinary carpeted floor it could cut its way in, but there would be a nice hole left in the carpet to show where it had gone.’
Munt conceded this point, also. ‘But it’s an odd thing,’ he added, ‘that in several of the rooms in this house it would really work, and baffle anyone but an expert detective. Below, of course, are the knives, but the top is inlaid with real parquet. The grave is so sensitive—you saw just now how it seemed to grope—that it can feel the ridges, and adjust itself perfectly to the pattern of the parquet. But of course I agree with you. It’s not an indoor game, really: it’s a field sport. You go on, will you, and leave me to clear up this mess. I’ll join you in a moment.’
Valentine followed Bettisher down into the library. He was very much subdued.
‘Well, that was the funniest scene,’ remarked Bettisher, chuckling.
‘Do you mean just now? I confess it gave me the creeps.’
‘Oh no, not that: when you and Dick were talking at cross-purposes.’
‘I’m afraid I made a fool of myself,’ said Valentine dejectedly. ‘I can’t quite remember what we said. I know there was something I wanted to ask you.’
‘Ask away, but I can’t promise to answer.’
Valentine pondered a moment.
‘Now I remember what it was.’
‘Spit it out.’
‘To tell you the truth, I hardly like to. It was something Dick said. I hardly noticed at the time. I expect he was just playing up to me.’
‘Well?’
‘About these coffins. Are they real?’
‘How do you mean “real”?’
‘I mean, could they be used as—’
‘My dear chap, they have been.’
Valentine smiled, rather mirthlessly.