Cocktail Time

  And with a friendly finger he drew their attention to Police Constable McMurdo, who, dressed in the authority of helmet and blue uniform, was plodding across the lawn toward them, the evening sun gleaming on his substantial official boots.

  'I speak as a layman,' he said, 'but I believe the correct thing to do at a moment like this is to say "Cheese it, the cops!" and withdraw with all speed. What a fine, big fellow he is, is he not? Ah, Cyril, were you looking for me?'

  'Yes, m'lord. Mr Pearce said I should find you here. But if your lordship is occupied—'

  'No, it's quite all right,' said Lord Ickenham, sliding from the hammock. 'We had finished our little talk. I am sure Mr and Mrs Carlisle will excuse me. Au revoir, Mr Carlisle. Mrs Carlisle, I kiss your hand. At least, I don't, but you know what I mean. I am wholly at your disposal, Cyril.'

  Police Constable McMurdo was a large man with an agreeable, if somewhat stolid and unintellectual face, heavily moustached toward the centre. He had a depressed and dejected look, and the cause of his mental distress was not far to seek, for while one of his cheeks was the normal pink of the rural constable, the other had taken on a bright scarlet hue, seeming to suggest that a woman's hand had recently landed on it like a ton of bricks. In his hot youth, Lord Ickenham, peering into the mirror, had sometimes seen his own cheek looking like that, and he needed no verbal report to tell him what must have happened at the late get-together in the kitchen.

  'You bring bad news, I fear,' he said sympathetically, as they made their way to the house. 'The Ickenham System didn't work?'

  'No, it didn't.'

  Lord Ickenham nodded understandingly

  'It doesn't sometimes. One has to budget for the occasional failure. From the evidence submitted to my notice, I take it that she busted you one.'

  'Rrrr!' said Officer McMurdo, with feeling. 'I thought my head had come off!'

  'I am not surprised. These nannies pack a wicked punch. How did you leave things?'

  'She said if I ever acted that way again, she'd never speak to me as long as she lived.'

  'I wouldn't worry too much about that. She didn't break off relations?'

  'She nearly broke me.'

  'But not her troth. Excellent. I thought she wouldn't. Women try to kid us that they don't like ardour, but they do. I'll bet at this very moment she is pacing the kitchen floor, whispering "What a man!" and wishing you would play a return engagement. You wouldn't consider having another pop? Striking while the iron is hot, as it were?'

  'I wouldn't, no.'

  'Then we must think of some other way of achieving the happy ending. I will devote my best thought to your problem.'

  And also, added Lord Ickenham to himself, to the problem of how to find a safe place to put that letter. The recent conference had left him convinced that the sooner such a place was found, the better. A far duller man than he would have been able to divine from the attitude of the Carlisle family that things were hotting up.

  Not that he objected. He liked things to hot up.

  CHAPTER 17

  Old Mr Saxby, looking like something stationed in a corn field to discourage crows, stood on the lawn of Hammer Lodge, raking the countryside with his binoculars. At the moment when he re-enters this chronicle they were focused on the island in the middle of the lake.

  The explanation of his presence in Dovetail Hammer, which Lord Ickenham had found mystifying, is a simple one. He was there at a woman's behest. Returning to the office after that brisk constitutional of his, he had been properly ticked off by Barbara Crowe for his uncouth behaviour to Cosmo Wisdom and sternly ordered by her to proceed without delay to Hammer Hall and apologize to him.

  'No, a letter will not do,' said Barbara severely. 'Especially as you would be sure to forget to post it. You must go to him in person and grovel. Lick his shoes. Kiss the hem of his garment. Cosmo Wisdom has to be conciliated and sucked up to. He's a very important person.'

  'He's a squirt.'

  'A squirt maybe, but he wrote Cocktail Time, on its ten per cent of the proceeds of which the dear old agency expects to be able to afford an extra week at the seaside this year. So none of your larks, young Saxby I shall want to hear on your return that he has taken you to his bosom.'

  There was nothing Mr Saxby, whose view of Cosmo's bosom was a dim one, wanted less than to be taken to it, but he always did what Barbara Crowe told him to, even when it involved getting his hair cut, and he had set out obediently for Dovetail Hammer, consoling himself with the thought that a few days in the country, with plenty of birds to watch, would not be unpleasant. Nice, too, being next door to Bastable. He always enjoyed hobnobbing with Bastable.

  Sir Raymond, who did not derive the same uplift from their hobnobbings, received him, when he was ushered into his presence by Albert Peasemarch, with a marked sinking sensation. Learning that his old clubmate was not proposing to make Hammer Lodge his headquarters but would be staying at the Hall, he brightened considerably, took him out on to the lawn to see the view and, finding that he had left his pipe behind, went back to fetch it. He now returned, and found the old gentleman, as has been stated, scrutinizing the island on the lake through his binoculars.

  'Watching birds?' he asked, with the heartiness of a man assured that he is not going to have to put Howard Saxby senior up for an indefinite stay.

  'Not so much birds,' said Mr Saxby, 'as that chap Scriventhorpe.'

  'Chap who?'

  'Scriventhorpe. Flannery's friend. I've met him with you at the club. I think you told me he was your son or your brother or something.'

  Sir Raymond collected his wits, which, as so often happened when he was conversing with Howard Saxby senior, had been momentarily scattered.

  'Do you by any chance mean Ickenham?'

  'Didn't I say Ickenham?'

  'You said Scriventhorpe.'

  'Well, I meant Ickenham. Nice fellow. I don't wonder Flannery's fond of him. He's on that island over there.'

  'Oh?' said Sir Raymond without enthusiasm. The only news about his half-brother-in-law that would have brought a sparkle to his eyes would have been that he had fallen out of a boat and was going down for the third time.

  'He's tacking to and fro,' proceeded Mr Saxby. 'Now he's crouching down. Seems to be looking for something. No, I see what he's doing. He's not looking for something, he's hiding something. He's got a paper of some kind in his hand, and he seems to be burying it'

  'What!'

  'Odd,' said Mr Saxby. 'He jumped up just then and hurried off. Must have gone back to his boat. Yes, here he comes. You can see him rowing away.'

  Sir Raymond had never expected that any observation of this clubmate of his would thrill him to the core, but that was what this one had done. He felt as if he had been reclining in an electric chair and some practical joker had turned on the juice.

  The problem of what his relative by marriage had done with the fatal letter was one which for two weeks and more had never been out of Sir Raymond Bastable's thoughts. He had mused on it while shaving, while bathing, while breakfasting, while lunching, while taking his afternoon's exercise, while dining, while putting on his pyjamas of a night and while dropping off to sleep. The obvious solution, that Lord Ickenham had hidden it in his bedroom, he rejected. With determined bedroom searchers like Cosmo Wisdom and Mr and Mrs Gordon Carlisle on the premises, such a policy would be madness. He would have thought of some really ingenious place of concealment – a hollow tree, perhaps, or a crevice in some wall. That he would bury the document on an island, like a pirate of the Spanish Main disposing of his treasure, had never occurred to Sir Raymond. Yet to anyone familiar with Frederick Ickenham's boyish outlook on life, how perfectly in character it seemed.

  Quivering, he grabbed at his companion's arm, and Mr Saxby quivered, too, for the grip of those fevered fingers had affected him like the bite of a horse. He also said 'Ouch!'

  Sir Raymond had no time to waste listening to people saying 'Ouch!' He had seen Lord Ickenham bring his boa
t to shore, step out of it and disappear in the direction of the house, and he was feeling, as did Brutus, that there is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

  'Quick!' he cried.

  'When you say "Quick!"' began Mr Saxby, but got no further, for he was being hurried to where the boat lay at a pace that made speech difficult for a man who was getting on in years. He could not remember having whizzed along like this, touching the ground only here and there, since the afternoon sixty-three years ago when, a boy of twelve, he had competed at a village sports meeting in the choirboys' hundred-yard race, open to all those whose voices had not broken by the second Sunday in Epiphany.

  It was only natural, therefore, that as Sir Raymond bent to the oars, putting his back into it like a galley slave of the old school, silence should have prevailed in the boat. Mr Saxby was trying to recover his breath, and Sir Raymond was thinking.

  The problem that confronted him, the one that so often bothers murderers, was what to do with the body – viz: Mr Saxby's. He had brought the old gentleman along because, having witnessed Lord Ickenham's activities, he would be able to indicate the spot where the treasure lay, but now he was asking himself if this had not been a mistake. There are men – the salt of the earth – who, if they see you searching islands on lakes, preserve a tactful silence and do not ask for explanations, but Mr Saxby, he was convinced, was not one of these. He belonged rather to the more numerous class who want to know what it is all about, and Sir Raymond had no desire for a co-worker of this description. Explanations would be foreign to his policy. By the time they reached their destination he had arrived at the conclusion that the less Mr Saxby saw of what was going on, the better.

  'You stay in the boat,' he said, and Mr Saxby thought it a good idea. He was still in the process of trying to recover his breath, and was well content to be spared further exercise for the moment. His stamina was not what it had been in his choirboy days.

  'Woof!' he said, meaning that he fully concurred, and Sir Raymond set out into the interior alone.

  Alone, that is to say, except for the swan which was at the moment taking it easy in the undergrowth beside the bijou residence where its mate was nesting. It was unexpectedly meeting this swan that had caused Lord Ickenham to revise his intention of burying the letter on the island and take to his boat with all possible speed. The Ickenhams were brave, but they knew when and when not to be among those present.

  For some minutes after his companion's departure Mr Saxby, whose breathing apparatus had now returned to normal, gave himself up to thought. But though nothing could be fraught with greater interest than a detailed list of the things he thought about, it is better perhaps to omit such a list and pass on to the moment when he felt restored enough to take up his binoculars again. It was as he scanned the mainland through these that he observed Cosmo Wisdom smoking a cigarette on the gravel outside the front door of the Hall, and the sight reminded him that he was a man with a mission. Long ere this, he felt guiltily, he should have been seeking the young squirt out and kissing the hem of his garment, in accordance with Barbara Crowe's directions.

  Though what there was to kiss hems of garments about, he was thinking, as, having completely forgotten Sir Raymond Bastable's existence, he started to row ashore, was more than he could tell you. Young squirt barges in on a fellow while he is knitting his sock and needs every ounce of concentration for the successful turning of the heel. Fellow receives him with the utmost cordiality and civility, though most men, interrupted at such a moment, would have bitten his head off, and they chat pleasantly for a while of this and that. Finally, having threshed out all the matters under discussion, fellow bids squirt a courteous farewell, and goes for his brisk constitutional. Nothing wrong with that, surely? But Barbara Crowe seemed to think there was, and women had to be humoured. As he rowed, he was throwing together in his mind a few graceful expressions of apology which he thought would meet the case.

  These, a few minutes later, he delivered with an old-world charm. Their reception was what a dramatic critic would have called adequate. Cosmo did not take him to his bosom, but, the wound to his dignity apparently more or less healed, he offered him a cigarette, and they smoked in reasonable amity for a time, while Mr Saxby, always informative on his favourite subject, spoke at considerable length of birds he had watched. It was mid-way through a description of the peculiar behaviour of a sand martin he had once known in Norfolk – impossible to insert here owing to considerations of space – that he broke off suddenly and said:

  'Bless my soul!'

  'Now what?' said Cosmo rather sharply He was finding Mr Saxby on sand martins a little trying.

  'Exactly,' said Mr Saxby. 'What? You may well ask. There was something Barbara Crowe told me to tell you, and I've forgotten what it was. Now what could it have been? You don't happen to know, do you?'

  At the name Barbara Crowe Cosmo had given a start. For the first time since their conversation had begun he was feeling that this Edwardian relic might be on the verge of saying something worth listening to.

  'Was it about the movie end?' he said eagerly.

  'The what?'

  'Has there been another offer for the film rights of my book?'

  Mr Saxby shook his head.

  'No, it was nothing like that. Have you written a book?'

  'I wrote Cocktail Time.'

  'Never heard of it,' said Mr Saxby cordially. 'I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go in and telephone her. She is sure to remember what it was. She has a memory like a steel trap.'

  When he returned, he had a slip of paper in his hand, and was beaming.

  'You were perfectly right,' he said. 'It was connected with what you call the movie end. I wrote it down, so that I should not forget it again. She said... Do you know Mrs Crowe?'

  'I've met her.'

  'Charming woman, though she bullies me unmercifully. Makes me get my hair cut. You don't know what the trouble was between her and your uncle, do you?'

  'No.'

  'They were engaged.'

  'Yes.'

  'She broke it off.'

  'Yes.'

  'Well, who can blame her? I wouldn't want to marry young Bastable myself

  Cosmo spurned the gravel with an impatient foot.

  'What did she say?'

  'Ah, that we shall never know. What do women say on these occasions? Take back your ring and letters, do you think, or something of that sort?'

  'About the movie end.'

  'Oh, the movie end? Yes, as I told you, I have her very words here.' He peered at the paper. 'She said "Have you apologized?" and I said "Yes, I had apologized," and she said "Did he take you to his bosom?" and I said, "No, the young squirt did not take me to his bosom, but he gave me a cigarette," and she said "Well, tell him that Medulla-Oblongata-Glutz have offered a hundred and fifty thousand, and our man in Hollywood has gone back to Superba-Llewellyn to bump them up." Does that convey anything to you?'

  Cosmo inhaled deeply.

  'Yes,' he said. 'It does.'

  And suddenly Mr Saxby, for all his fishy eye and flattened-out-by-a-steam-roller appearance, looked almost beautiful to him.

  Sir Raymond Bastable, meanwhile, questing hither and thither like a Thurber bloodhound, had begun to regret that he had not availed himself of his shipmate's co-operation. Having no means of knowing whereabouts on this infernal island Mr Saxby had seen Lord Ickenham tacking to and fro and crouching down, he was in the position of one who hunts for pirate gold without the assistance of the yellowing map which says 'E. by N.20,' '16 paces S.' and all that sort of thing, and anyone who has ever hunted for pirate gold will tell you what a handicap this is. The yellowing map is of the essence.

  The island was rather densely wooded – or perhaps under-growthed would be a better term – and was rich in spiky shrubs which caught at his ankles and insects which appeared to look on the back of his neck as the ideal rallying ground. 'Let's all go round to the back of Bastable's n
eck' seemed to be the cry in the insect world. He had become very hot and thirsty, and there was a hissing sound in his ears which he did not like. It suggested to him that his blood pressure was getting out of control. He was always a little nervous about his blood pressure.

  It was as he straightened himself after his thirty-second attempt to find one of those spots, so common in fiction, where you can see, if you look closely, that the earth here has been recently disturbed, that he found he had wronged his blood pressure. This hissing sound had proceeded not from it but from the lips of a fine swan which had emerged from a bush behind him and was regarding him with unmistakable menace. There are moments when, meeting a swan, we say to ourselves that we have found a friend. This was not one of them. The chances of any fusion of soul between the bird and himself were, he could see at a glance, of the slightest.

  It is always important at times like this to understand the other fellow's point of view, and the swan could certainly have made out a case for itself. With the little woman nesting in the vicinity and wanting to be alone with her eggs, it is not to be wondered at that it found intruders unwelcome. Already it had had to take a strong line with Lord Ickenham, and now, just as it was thinking that the evil had been stamped out, along came another human pest. It was enough to try the patience of any swan, and one feels that the verdict of history will be that in making hissing noises, staring bleakly, spreading its wings to their fullest extent and scrabbling the feet to indicate the impending frontal attack this one was perfectly justified. Swans, as every ornithologist knows, can be pushed only so far.

  Sir Raymond, like Lord Ickenham, was not a pusillanimous man. If burglars had broken into Hammer Lodge, he would have sprung to the task of hitting them over the head with his niblick, and he had frequently looked traffic policemen in the eye and made them wilt. But the stoutest-hearted may well quail before an angry swan. It is possible that Sir Raymond, as he now started to withdraw, thought that he was doing so at a dignified walk, but actually he was running like a choirboy intent on winning the hundred yards dash. His one idea was to return as speedily as possible to the boat in which Mr Saxby was awaiting him.