Buried for Pleasure (27 page)

CHAPTER 23

T
HERE
was a prolonged silence when he had finished speaking. It was growing dark. The crescent light of a moon just past the full was chasing the last red streaks of the sunset down over the western horizon. The birds, their nightly valedictions completed, were silent. A silver mantle began to take shape on the tree-tops. All colour drained away, leaving only the black and white of a harlequinade. In a nearby coppice Philomela, deliquescent in grief, mourned the infidelity of Tereus and the unshareable joys of Procne.

A little stiffly, Myra got to her feet. ‘Time, gentlemen, please,' she called. ‘Time, gentlemen,
please
.'

With deliberation the villagers finished their drinks and departed, their voices receding along the road.

‘I'm tellin' 'ee, Fred, that ketch, 'er's luffin'.'

‘Danged if oi think Bert knows what luffin' is.'

‘Ah, Tell us what 'tis, Bert.'

‘Why, luffin', 'tis when a yacht goes zigzag to catch the wind.'

‘Tackin', 'e means.'

‘When oi means bloody tackin', oi'll say bloody tackin'.'

‘Now, see 'ere, that brig . . .'

The voices were annihilated in distance. On the lawn of the inn the group surrounding Fen alone remained, lulled by the nascent magic of the summer night into oblivion of such squalid enactments as the Licensing Laws. Groaning slightly with the effort, Mr Judd rose and crossed to the window of the bar to talk to Jacqueline; his interest in politics, Fen thought, seemed to have evaporated as quickly as it had begun; he had reverted, by a Circean metamorphosis, to the mild and diffident little man whose unpromising exterior enshrined the lurid imagination of Annette de la Tour.

Clearing his throat uneasily, Captain Watkyn said:

‘It's just as well the affair ended as it did. Saved a lot of trouble and expense. And you never know what'll happen when these things come into the courts. A court of law's not much better than a den of iniquity, in my opinion.'

‘Or a din of inequity, of course,' said Fen. ‘Myra, have you any champagne?'

‘There's half a dozen bottles of Heidsieck in the cellar, my dear.'

‘Then let's empty them. I need cheering up.'

‘Well, it's appropriate really, isn't it?' said Myra. ‘What with Diana and Lord Sanford getting engaged, and now Mr Judd and Jacqueline.'

‘Mr Judd and Jacqueline?' Fen was startled.

‘Oh, yes, my dear. Didn't you know? He asked her this afternoon, and she accepted.'

‘What a waste of Jacqueline,' said Fen, disgusted.

‘Well, my dear, most marriages are a waste one way or another, aren't they?'

‘I suppose so,' said Fen rather drearily. ‘What has happened about Samuel, Myra? Did you succumb to that evil-smelling chicken?'

‘I did not.' Myra was firm. ‘And poor old Samuel's met his Waterloo since then.'

‘His Waterloo?'

‘His wife,' Myra explained, ‘has broken his jaw for him.'

‘Good God!' This brutal intelligence momentarily roused Fen. ‘I suppose he deserved it, but still . . . She didn't try to attack you, did she?'

‘Oh, no, my dear. She wasn't annoyed with me. She came round and talked to me about it, friendly like. “I don't mind 'im rolling in the bushes with the village girls,” she said, “but I'm not going to have him pestering respectable women like you, Mrs Herbert”.'

‘Very proper,' Fen murmured. ‘Very proper indeed.'

‘Well, I'll get the champagne then,' said Myra, and departed.

Fen relapsed into brooding. It appeared to his peevish imagination that everyone had come well out of the week's events except himself. Humbleby, by now on his way back to London, could feel nothing but satisfaction at so conclusive a finish to the case. Diana and Lord Sanford were united at last. Jane Persimmons – whom they had seen that afternoon – was much better, and would almost certainly be persuaded to settle down with them. Mr Judd was to have the freedom of Jacqueline (Fen found himself unable to conceive the affair in terms more elevated than these) and Jacqueline had presumably some arcane justification for being satisfied with this arrangement. Captain Watkyn had achieved a professional triumph in the face of considerable odds. Boysenberry's reputation was more or less salvaged. Elphinstone would again be receiving such treatment as his egregious condition required. Mr Beaver had largely succeeded in his object of destroying his own inn.

Olive and Harry Hitchin would be mollocking in some secluded spot, their enjoyment impaired only by the remote possibility of Olive's father coming at them with a knife. Myra was neither better nor worse off than she had been before. The Rector's poltergeist was now public property, and the Psychical Research Society would be after him at any moment, but that was no more than he deserved for deceiving Mrs Flitch. Constable Sly had been slightly wounded, but that was on account of his own stupidity, and in any case he would be about again in a day or two. . . . Fen gazed at the stars, and inquired of them wordlessly why he alone should be afflicted with such condign and unmerited punishment.

Captain Watkyn looked up at him.

‘Look here, old boy, there's something I've got to tell you,' said Captain Watkyn.

‘If it's about the election,' said Fen, ‘I don't want to hear it.'

‘Well, yes, it is, but you've just
got
to hear it, d'you see? . . .

You know the law only allows you to spend a certain amount of money on election expenses?'

‘Yes, I'm aware of that, thank you.'

‘Well, I forgot to carry nineteen pounds.'

‘Watkyn, what
are
you talking about?'

‘I forgot,' Captain Watkyn repeated stoically, ‘to carry nineteen pounds from the units to the tens. So we've spent seven pounds more than we ought to have done, and the Returning Officer's pounced on it. I'm sorry, old boy, but I'm afraid you're disqualified. And the other two tied, so the Returning Officer has the casting vote, and he's a Conservative, and that's why he's being so nasty about what after all is only a ruddy silly little technical error. . . . You might,' Captain Watkyn suggested gloomily, ‘go to law about it.'

Fen shook him warmly by the hand. ‘Have a drink, Watkyn,' he said.

‘You mean you don't mind?' said Captain Watkyn dazedly.

‘Your mathematical incompetence has probably saved my reason.'

‘I don't understand it,' said Captain Watkyn with pathos. ‘I just don't understand a single thing about the whole extraordinary business.'

The champagne was brought. The glasses were filled. ‘A toast,' said Fen, ‘to those who are to be married.' They drank.

‘And now' – Fen's eye lit upon the despondent and taciturn figure of Mr Beaver – ‘a toast to the rejuvenation of “The Fish Inn”.'

In the moonlight Mr Beaver wanly smiled.

They raised their glasses.

‘To the rejuvenation of “The Fish Inn”.' they said.

The ground trembled under them. In the back wall of the inn a crack appeared, widened, gaped. There was a sound of smashing glass. The chimney pots toppled and the tiles fell like rain. With an earthquake roar, in an enveloping mushroom of dust, the walls of ‘The Fish Inn' bulged and collapsed.

Upon the wreck of his hopes Mr Beaver stood staring with incredulous horror.

‘This damned Government,' he whispered. ‘Oh, this damned
Government
.'

The villagers assembled to view the prodigy; but in an hour or two, tiring of the spectacle, they returned to their beds. Like looters in a devasted city, Fen's party wandered among the ruins in the moonlight, their champagne glasses still in their hands. Then Diana and Lord Sanford melted away into the night, and Mr Judd and Jacqueline followed them, and the simultaneous disappearance of Myra and Captain Watkyn suggested that they, too, had resolved to make much of time. Fen was left alone with Mr Beaver, who sat on the iron roller at the edge of the lawn with his head buried in his hands, and who in this emergency would not, Fen thought, be very congenial company. . . . He went to see if his car was undamaged. It was. A jagged lump of stone, he observed, had given the non-doing pig its quietus, but he did not feel impelled to mourn; the non-doing pig's fidelity had, in his opinion, never adequately compensated for its basic lack of charm. Fen climbed into the car and drove to Sanford Morvel to look for a room for the night.