own a flat in Cannes when so many other people don’t. So he’s invited all his less fortunate friends — that is to say, all those who do not have flats in Cannes — to come and stay there during the Christmas holidays. I’ve no idea how many have accepted — neither, I suspect, has Benjamin. But I’m one of them and so, I gather, is Terry — he’s supposed to be advising on the refurbishment of the flat. So I hope I shall have a chance to talk to him, kindly but firmly, and remind him of his professional obligations.”
The prospect of Terry Carver sitting in idleness by the Mediterranean while the bookcases were still unfinished provoked comments from Selena which it would not be right for me to report: she had much to bear.
“I propose,” she continued, when she grew calmer, “that you take with you to Cannes a pair of handcuffs. That you fasten them on his wrists. And that you refuse to release him until he comes back to London and finishes our bookcases.”
“I fear,” said Ragwort, “that that may not be entirely practical. I’m not sure that Terry would be able to do his best work if he were in handcuffs. But I will at least scold him severely and hope to bring him to a sense of his responsibilities.”
“It sounds to me,” said Julia, “as if Benjamin has arranged an extremely decorative little gathering for himself, if you and Terry are both going to be there. Isn’t he at all concerned about the inequity of having two delightful profiles to gaze at while some people have none at all?”
“My dear Julia,” said Ragwort, “if he has not invited you to join the party, I am sure it is an oversight. If you would like me to remind him that you also do not have a flat in Cannes—”
But Julia had made other arrangements: her aunt had invited her to spend the Christmas holidays in Parsons Haver and was counting on her to be there.
“Do you mean,” said Ragwort, with a note of dubiety unflattering to Julia’s domestic skills, “that she is relying on you to help her to stuff the turkey and make the mince pies? If so, of course, you must on no account fail her, but I would have rather thought—”
“No,” said Julia. “No, I don’t think that’s quite what she wants me for. But she seems to be hoping that I can help to cheer up Maurice — she says he’s ill and depressed and she’s very anxious about him. Quite how one cheers up a depressed clergyman I don’t know. I shall write to you for guidance, Ragwort, as an expert on all matters clerical.”
It was not, however, until several weeks after Christmas that I read the correspondence which ensued. Visiting London in the first week in February, I found my friends much occupied; but Ragwort invited me, while waiting for them in the Corkscrew, to read the letters which he and Julia had exchanged during the period of the holidays.
24 High Street
Parsons Haver
West Sussex
Friday, 17th December
Dear Ragwort,
I write this, you will be pleased to hear, in performance rather than derogation of my duty to assist my aunt in her preparations for Christmas. I was told, having asked what I could do to help with these, that I could stay out of the way and keep myself harmlessly amused: I have accordingly withdrawn to the little sitting room which adjoins my bedroom and am applying myself to these tasks with the utmost diligence.
In the matter of cheering up Maurice, however, I fear I am not doing well: all that I seem to have achieved so far is an appalling scene with Daphne. If you ask me how a quiet, peace-loving woman such as myself could manage to have an appalling scene with anyone after so brief an acquaintance, I am rather at a loss to answer; but I will give you a full account of all that has happened since my arrival here yesterday evening.
My aunt had been hoping that Maurice would join us for supper, but Daphne telephoned from the Vicarage to say that he wasn’t well enough to go out. Reg seemed not to find this unduly surprising: he had been, she said, in very poor health for the past three months — that is to say, since the Virgil frontispiece was stolen — and nowadays went out seldom.
“So as it turns out,” she said, “it’s rather a blessing that Daphne’s available and willing to look after him.”
It was the first chance I had had to ask in any detail about the theft of the frontispiece, and in particular why everyone was so sure that Derek Arkwright had stolen it; she said that there was no room for doubt.
“It was the day they collected their holiday photographs from the place in Brighton where they were being developed. They had dinner in Brighton and didn’t get home until quite late. Then they sat in Maurice’s study and had a nightcap, looking through the pictures to see how they’d come out — you know how one does. And then Maurice put the photographs and the negatives away in the drawer where he kept the frontispiece, and took that out so that they could admire it for a few minutes. Then he put it back in the drawer with the photographs. So you see, there’s no chance that he’s made a mistake about when he last saw it.
“Well, next morning they had breakfast together and after that Derek left to go back to London. Half an hour or so later Maurice went into his study, to fetch the notes for his sermon, and noticed that the drawer with the frontispiece in it was slightly open. And then he saw that it was empty — everything gone, the photographs as well as the frontispiece. And there’d been no one else in the house the whole time, apart from Derek and himself.
“So you see, it must have been Derek who took it. He doesn’t seem to have cared that Maurice was bound to find out — I suppose he knew that Maurice wouldn’t dream of going to the police.”
I could understand his not going to the police; but I thought that in Maurice’s position I would have made some attempt to trace the young man or at least communicate with him.
“He wrote to him at an address that Derek had once given him, of a friend who he said would pass on letters, but he never tried to find out whether it was a genuine address or whether Derek ever got the letter. We haven’t seen Derek here since, but he’d obviously decided when he took the frontispiece that he wasn’t coming back. And Maurice, I’m afraid, has never really got over it.”
This morning she suggested that if I felt like going out I might call in at the Vicarage and see how he was. “And do see,” she said, “if you can persuade him out for a walk — it isn’t very cold and it can’t really be good for him to stay cooped up indoors all day.”
My ring at the Vicarage doorbell took so long to be answered that I began to think he was not receiving visitors. When the door at last opened, I was shocked to see how changed he was. He has become as thin as a skeleton, and similarly pale: if one met him walking in the churchyard of an evening one could all too readily mistake him for one of the permanent residents.
He seemed pleased to see me, however, and asked if it were too early to offer me a gin and tonic. On the point of accepting, I remembered my aunt’s concluding instructions.
“In view,” I said, “of the excesses I seem likely to commit during the next week in the way of eating and drinking, I had intended that my first gin and tonic of the day should be the reward for a health-giving walk as far as the George and Dragon. Can I persuade you to join me?” Rather to my surprise, he said that I could.
Few people would accuse me, I think, of any excessive enthusiasm for strenuous outdoor exercise in adverse weather conditions; but I found the walk rather enjoyable. The George and Dragon is in Little Haver on the other side of the river, only about a mile away, and the cold was brisk rather than biting. It seemed to me that Maurice also enjoyed it: it gave him, at any rate, sufficient appetite to order bacon and eggs, and eat them with more relish than one expects of a skeleton.
It had not occurred to me that we might be at a loss for a subject of conversation. Maurice, I assumed, would share my indignation at the outrageous cluing of 18 across in the
