‘That’s something else we have in common.’
‘Your imagination, Mr Gently-’
‘Is something that doesn’t topple busts!’
Savagely he threw open doors along the corridors, revealing nothing but dark, empty and cobwebbed rooms. On the other hand, the door at the top of the stairway to the main floor swung mockingly ajar
…
Somerhayes, like a marble-eyed spectre, stood watching him in his fruitless activity.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The interrogation room in the north-east wing was empty; Sir Daynes and Inspector Dyson, Gently was told, had jointly carried off the offending Welshman to durance vile.
‘Did they get anything fresh from him?’ enquired Gently perfunctorily.
‘Oh yes, sir,’ replied his constable informant. ‘He admitted that he was in the wartime Special — knew all about the handling of truncheons, he did. The chief constable wants to give him one to see how he would go about it, only our inspector don’t much like it, so the CC scrubs round it.’
‘Just as well for Inspector Dyson.’ Gently permitted himself a grin. ‘And that was all — after two hours’ interrogation?’
‘Well, they trips him up a bit, sir — you know how it is. And there was something about him killing a sheepdog with a bottle when he was a nipper — dog jumps out at him, and he fetches it a clout with a pop- bottle.’
Gently clicked his tongue. ‘I wouldn’t have said that was habit-forming. There was no charge made, was there, other than for assault and battery?’
‘No, sir. Not yet. But between you and me, sir, it’s working up to it.’
Gently stood brooding in the empty room with its settling fire and suggestive disposition of chairs and table. With the light switched off, it looked doubly depressing. The corners were full of gloom which the north-facing window failed to dispel. What effect did it have on the character of its inhabitant, this mighty museum of perished vanity? How did one, tethered here, adjust oneself to the rushing current of the world outside? ‘A hymn of the eighteenth sounding sweet in the ears of all centuries succeeding’ — that was the quotation the author of the guidebook had dug up out of somewhere. But it was a hymn with forgotten music, a hymn of which only the antique words remained. And, in the meantime, a godless generation had camped at the gates of antiquity, unleashing its Jepsons and Brasses to sound chaos through the halls of pomp and circumstance. Would not the last lonely chorister be baffled by the universal shout? Would he not waver and lose the thread, and lose himself, and lose his balance…?
Unconsciously Gently shook his head at the dying fire. But you couldn’t put history in the witness-box, either for the defence or the prosecution! A number of the cruder facts and a presumption of responsibility… that was the substance of justice in a court of law. But what were the facts of this case, and how far dare one to presume? What blindness and double-blindness awaited the trier-on of justice?
‘You are not returning to the Manor House for lunch, sir?’
Thomas had stolen noiselessly in with a fresh chute of coal.
‘I’d forgotten about it, Thomas… Any prospect of a bite here?’
‘We keep an excellent table, sir, in the south-east wing. In the usual way his lordship patronizes it, but today he is being served privately with his cousin.’
‘Thanks for the tip, Thomas… His lordship and I have temporarily exhausted our small-talk.’
Without much appetite, Gently made the diagonal journey through the forsaken building, and by trial and error discovered the south-east dining room. He was apparently late, since Percy Peacock and his wife, with Norah, the dark girl, were just leaving as he entered, and Brass was the solitary remaining occupant. The artist sat gloomily cracking nuts and drinking port. He made a weary gesture as Gently took a seat opposite him.
‘God, what a bloody Christmas! It’s giving me the willies. I wish I was in Kensington, and a thousand miles away!’
Gently made a face and poured himself an aperitif from a bottle that stood on the table. A face looked through the service-door, and a moment later a plate of julienne soup was placed before him.
‘Last year I made an excuse to get out of this dump — there was only Anne and Norah here then. This year there was more of a crowd, so I was brain-sick enough to give it a whirl. Never again, Chief Inspector Gently, never again in this damned round of existence!’
Brass cracked a nut so viciously that a fragment flew half across the room.
‘Of course, the circumstances are exceptional…’
‘I wonder,’ retorted Brass. ‘Yes, I really and truly wonder! You say it’s exceptional, because we’ve got an unexplained corpse on our hands. Well, I think his lordship would make like he had an unexplained corpse on any blasted Christmas, and in that strong belief I’m going to Kensington next year.’
He finished his port, and poured another. His fiery beard stuck out discontentedly from a stubborn chin. This was Brass having the blues, his aspect seemed to say, and woe-betide the mere mortal who came between the man and his grouch.
‘You’ve seen his lordship?’ hazarded Gently.
‘Yes, I’ve seen the damned fellow. Came moaning into the workshop, looking as though he’d seen the ghosts of his benighted ancestors. I tell you, the man’s up the pole. It’s inbreeding, or some bloody thing. Once I used to be charitable and think he was just a harmless eccentric, but the more I see of his lordship, the more I’m convinced that he’s crackers — and so was I, when he talked me into this infernal set-up!’
Another nut distributed its shell impartially about the south-east dining room.
‘Do you know what he had the crust to ask me?’
‘No?’ Gently rested his spoon.
‘He asked me if I’d toppled that bust over last night — serious you know, just like a blasted judge! I mean, what do you make of a man who goes round asking things like that? If I wanted to have a spree I wouldn’t stop short at one bloody bust.’
There was a fresh-air nature about Brass that, in spite of his ill-humour, was a welcome relief in that house of shadows. Here, at least, was a boisterous and aggressive sanity, a mind determined to stand square on its shameless egoism. If you bounced a question on Brass, it would come back clean without a wherefore…
‘Seriously, though… do you think his lordship is quite himself?’
‘Seriously, my son.’ Brass screwed his large features up over a refractory Brazil. ‘You know what I’ve said — and I’m not going back on it. But I’ve been thinking around, as I pottered over my dye-vats, and there’s one thing that struck me which I think ought to go on the record. Somerhayes never told you about his will, I suppose?’
‘His will?’ Gently sat up.
‘Yes — I can see he didn’t get round to it. And that convinces a suspicious mind like mine that there might be a reason for it. Wait a minute, old man, till they’ve brought in your pheasant.’
The serving maid appeared with the dish Brass predicted, and Gently contained himself in some impatience while she performed her various ministrations. Brass watched her with unconcealed interest. She was quite a pretty serving maid…
‘As you were saying before we were interrupted?’
Brass nodded and tossed off his second glass of port.
‘It’s not so much the will — I imagine that’s pretty straightforward. It’s what hangs to it that makes the thing suggestive. You’ve got a fair inkling by now, have you, of where the sixth baron and myself stand with each other?’
‘He appears to admire you very highly.’
‘Admires me — huh!’ Brass gave an expressive snatch of his head. ‘Gently, my son, that cock-eyed page of Debrett worships the bloody ground I walk on — like a damned heathen! He’s got a fix about artists. They do the one thing no Feverell has ever been able to do — make something. And so here I am, the tin god of the last of the Feverells, the sacred calf cherished and worshipped in the high places of Merely — with Somerhayes, of course, my
