Sheiks and Adders (19 page)

At the moment Hafrait was presumably still within the house, together with its owner and the Chief Constable and Professor McIlwraith. And now there was the bizarre circumstance that the house was being gaped at by some two or three hundred persons awaiting the ridiculous mumbo-jumbo of the Basingstoke Druids. It was possible that Richard Chitfield had asserted himself sufficiently to call off the Perlustration, but it was equally possible that the Druids were already in occupation of the dwelling, and that their ritual was about to begin.

Appleby (attired as he still was) felt it desirable to enter as unobtrusively as he could. This meant taking the route through the string of greenhouses and the monstrous conservatory beyond them. The Druids were perhaps not interested in such vitreous excrescences. The Chief Constable (armed with his little automatic) might have decided to constitute the conservatory his last redoubt. Only it wasn’t going to come to that. Appleby wondered how Tommy Pride was going to receive the news that the Emir Hafrait’s departure from Drool Court was to be by hot-air balloon.

Given reasonable luck, that was to say. And for a start he now made a circumspect detour round the motley crowd sitting and standing in front of the house. It was a move that suddenly confronted him with a small group of persons who were rather ostentatiously holding themselves aloof from the current centre of interest. Here, in fact, were Richard Chitfield’s son and two daughters, together with that foiled desert lover, Tibby Fancroft.

‘Good heavens! Whatever has become of Robin Hood?’ It was Cherry Chitfield who had recognized Appleby first.

‘Sir John is going to annoy our poor father,’ Mark Chitfield said, ‘by stepping into Tibby’s shoes and carrying you off on the back of a dromedary. There’s no other possible explanation. Wouldn’t you agree, Patty?’

‘Mark, dear, will you ever stop being a fool?’ The elder Miss Chitfield alone seemed to acknowledge that something not decently compatible with routine frivolity had taken place at Drool that afternoon – and indeed that there was rational cause to fear that further outrage of a similar sort might bob up at any moment.

‘I certainly had this get-up from Tibby,’ Appleby said briskly. ‘But if anybody’s going to be carried off it isn’t me. Tibby, you must consent to be an unremarkable young Englishman for the rest of the day. Do you mind?’

‘I do think it’s a bit odd.’ Tibby Fancroft appeared genuinely perplexed rather than offended. ‘Did you really make me take off that stupid stuff because you wanted it for yourself, Sir John?’

‘No, I didn’t. It was as I said: making your apology to Mr Chitfield still togged up in it would have been a failure in tact. It was only later that I thought of nobbling it. But can anybody tell me if the Druids have got going yet?’

‘See for yourself,’ Mark Chitfield said rather crossly. ‘It’s still pretty well broad daylight. But you can see them arsing around with torches and candles. There in the upper windows. If they set the place on fire I doubt whether the insurance people will stand for it. Not from somebody like our dear papa.’

Appleby had no difficulty in disregarding this last remark. If Richard Chitfield had really allowed the Druids the sole occupancy of his abode, this almost certainly meant that he and his three companions were in the conservatory still. Or four companions, if they still had the company of the constable from the Panda car. He glanced at his watch. Accurate timing, he told himself, was going to be the whole thing.

So he walked on. But before he reached the old stable yard and the first of the greenhouses he met with a further encounter – and one of a more agitated sort. The constable from the Panda car was in fact sweating and out of breath. So much was this so that words failed him for a moment, and Appleby spoke first.

‘Well met,’ he said. ‘Just lend me your whistle, will you?’

‘Sir?’

‘Your whistle. It’s in a good cause.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Much perplexed, the constable unclipped the whistle from its lanyard, and handed it to Appleby. ‘But I was to find you, sir, and get you back to that glass place. I’ve been hunting everywhere.’

‘Well, here I am. So just what was your Chief Constable’s order?’

‘Just as I said, sir. To find you and let you know.’

‘Let me know! Let me know what?’

‘About the foreign gentleman, sir. He has just vanished. Into thin air, as they say.’

‘Well, that’s premature, to say the least. Has your reinforcement arrived yet?’

‘Not yet, sir. But in five or ten minutes they should be here. After finding you, I was to go on and find them. To guide them here like, since they’re coming through the woods.’

‘So they are. Well, off you go, constable. And tell them not to hurry.’

‘Sir!’

‘Just that. You know who I am?’

‘Yes, sir. Of course I know.’

‘Then take it as an order, although a shockingly irregular one. I’ll see you through any difficulty. But the order is precisely that. I want no massive uniformed police presence for at least a quarter of an hour. Law, yes – but order, not. Do you understand that?’

‘No, sir – not one bit.’

‘A very good reply. I like to meet a thoroughly reliable officer. Now off you go.’

The Range Rover was still parked in the old stable yard; its engine was gently ticking over; its owner was in the driving seat, and momentarily engaged in stuffing a pipe with tobacco.

‘Not long now,’ Appleby said. ‘But I’m sorry to keep you hanging around.’

‘Oh, not a bit. Actually, I’ve been having quite a useful time, trying to decide whether the little fellows’ – and Dr Gillam jerked a thumb towards the rear of his vehicle – ‘can at all be detected as responding to that military band. It’s a moot question, you know, whether any animals can distinguish one musical phrase from another, and react correspondingly. Did Orpheus charm snakes? We just don’t know. But I expect you’ve seen those Saadia chaps in Egypt put up an uncommonly convincing turn with serpents. They tootle away in the minor key, and the snakes keep time to it in what one can’t help feeling is a congruously melancholy way. But I mustn’t detain you with that sort of thing at the moment, Sir John. Just when do I get the green light?’

‘Within the next twenty minutes at the very most, I’d say. Only it won’t be a light. I’m going to blow a whistle. And it will all be a bit tricky, you know. I’m sorry that circumstances don’t permit of a rehearsal.’

‘I’ve been turning it over, of course. In my mind, that is to say. And I think we’ll bring it off – the little fellows and myself. Just a single blast on a whistle?’

‘Yes, a single blast. And now I must get back inside again, and see how it goes with the Druids. Have you had a glimpse of them, Dr Gillam?’

‘One or two glimpses as I wandered round.’

‘What do you think of them?’

‘I don’t believe many of them would recognize Avebury or Stonehenge if they woke up in the middle of it.’

‘We are at one there,’ Appleby said, and walked on.

In the big conservatory, and beside the imprisoned palm tree, Appleby found only Richard Chitfield and the Chief Constable. And he put the less important question first.

‘Where’s McIlwraith?’

‘Taken himself off to join the crowd.’ Colonel Pride made this reply. ‘He said he didn’t feel he could be of any further help to us. As none of the villains around the place seem to have it in for him as they have for the Emir, it’s no doubt a discreet withdrawal from the limelight.’

‘Well, that’s rational, if not exactly heroic. But your constable has just told me that the Emir has vanished too – which is a different thing altogether. Have you hidden him away somewhere, or has he simply taken himself off? I’d put nothing beyond our friend Hafrait. But it would be uncommonly inconvenient.’

‘I can’t say I agree,’ Richard Chitfield said. ‘And it’s what has happened. He has simply walked out on us too. And I’m bound to say I’d be glad never to set eyes on him again.’

‘Do you mean to say’ – Appleby sounded justly indignant – ‘that the two of you simply let him give you a nod and walk away through these greenhouses?’

‘It wasn’t quite like that, John.’ Colonel Pride spoke as if under a slight sense of injury. ‘Chitfield had to decide about those blasted Druids, and whether they should be let go ahead in the deserted house. As we still seem to be under some obligation to play the whole thing down, I advised him to let it go ahead. To cancel their turn would set everybody talking and mystery-mongering. So the two of us made our way to the front door, and contacted that Grace-to-Maleldil chap straight away, and told him to go right ahead. It was when we’d got back here from doing just that that we found Hafrait had disappeared. Folded his tents like the Arabs, you might say, and silently stolen away.’

‘Rather as
being
an Arab, my good Colonel. And here I am, back again.’

Very properly astonished, these three conferring persons swung round – to find themselves indeed confronted once more by the Emir Hafrait. He was standing beside the trunk of the palm tree, and to this he now gave an affectionate pat. And when he spoke it was at once apparent that some quite new mood possessed him.

‘My dear friends,’ he said, ‘it is something I used to take great pleasure in as a boy. I had our peasant lads teach me the technique of it. They themselves were for ever scrambling up the date palms, stuffing themselves with the things, and then scampering down again. And I am delighted to find that I have retained the art. It is not perhaps a very courtly accomplishment. But it solves our problem, does it not?’

‘What the devil do you mean?’ Colonel Pride considered this demand, and presumably decided that it, too, was on the uncourtly side. ‘What the devil does Your Excellency mean?’

‘Simply that up there, at the very crest of the tree, I am totally invisible from below. So there I can tuck myself away until those various disaffected people grow tired of hunting for me and take themselves off. It is true, Chitfield, that they may express their disappointment by burning down your house. But I do not think that fire can have much effect upon conservatories. And it will give me pleasure to pick up some other modest dwelling for you. They are constantly coming on the market. I hear of one or another friend of mine buying one almost every week. Wealthy as we have all become, we retain a taste for an unassuming way of life.’

‘I for one,’ Appleby said, ‘would prefer to see Your Excellency in a more elevated situation. And I have made, indeed, a very simple arrangement to that effect.’

‘Sir John, I have already said that I am your man.’ The Emir, although he could only be described as in an unwontedly gamesome state of mind, said this with sudden seriousness. ‘I will do anything you direct – provided it does not involve surrounding me with phalanxes of British policemen. And you, Colonel Pride, must forgive me this peculiarity. It derives from no disrespect for your constabulary. It is simply that it would become a matter for public jesting among my compatriots. And jesting is best confined to private occasions, such as the four of us enjoy now.’

After this regal graciousness, there was nothing more to be said. Appleby looked at his watch, and then turned to Richard Chitfield.

‘Your wife’s Basingstoke friends,’ he said, ‘had begun their prowl through the house, starting at the top, not more than a few minutes before I joined you here by way of the greenhouses. Have you any idea how long they propose to take over the whole precious business?’

‘Not more than twenty minutes. The fellow said it would take longer with the Asperges – whatever they may be. But I put my foot down. Twenty minutes at the outside, I said, and then they could take themselves off in the motor-coach they arrived in.’

‘I’ve seen the coach. It has been parked somewhere inside your grounds, and it’s waiting for them now.’

‘And a thoroughly good riddance. I don’t expect they’ll hang around. My wife has made me have a ridiculously large cheque waiting for them. It’s an idiotic business. I don’t see any sense in it at all.’

‘I don’t know that I’m altogether sure of that. And now there’s about ten minutes to go. Time for a little briefing, if I may put it that way. In five minutes I shall be returning to the old stable yard, in order to skirt round the back of the house, and so arrive at the west end of the terrace on the main front. The Druids, I imagine, will aim at making a slow and impressive procession to their coach. When that has begun, I shall blow a whistle. If you hear no whistle, you will know that something has gone wrong, and you will stay put here. The whistle, Your Excellency, will, among other things, be your signal to follow my own route rapidly, so as to join me on the terrace. And, you and Mr Chitfield, Tommy, must consider yourselves as a strategic reserve. But there’s no reason why, a minute or two after the whistle, you shouldn’t come round to the front of the house, and see what’s doing. Just given a bit of luck, it’s likely to be quite worth watching.’

The military band at the west end of the terrace was packing up. There was quite a lot of bustle involved, and Appleby felt that for a minute or two he could station himself on the fringe of it without attracting undesirable attention. In any case, having abandoned Tibby Fancroft’s dark glasses and let his head-dress fall back over his shoulders, he was likely to be adjudged a sheik only of the most Pring-like variety, who had a little wandered from the flock. He judged it unlikely that any of the unknown number of kidnappers, assassins, and potential assassins present in the large crowd now assembled would undergo the disturbing experience of recognizing in so harmless a figure an Englishman for long experienced in the detection and prevention of crime.

Mr Pring himself was sitting in the front row, with Joan of Arc (and her banner bearing the Cross of Lorraine) beside him. Several other pseudo-sheiks, whether harmless or murderously disposed, were also in evidence. Even from some way off, it was possible to detect that the majority of Mr Chitfield’s guests were by now either tired, or bored, or both. So why they should thus linger as spectators of a singularly pointless ritual was a mystery not easily to be elucidated. One way and another, the afternoon had presumably involved them in the expenditure of a good deal of hard cash, and they were perhaps merely determined to have their money’s worth to the end. It was also to be observed that, at this jaded late-afternoon hour, birds of a feather were tending to flock together in what must be an entirely unconscious and instinctive way. On the one hand the grotesques had managed to clump themselves: the Teddy bears, the deep-sea divers, the Mickey Mice and the circus clowns were ranged more or less side by side; on the other hand were clustered those whose imaginations had inclined rather to polished society in times past: periwigs and patches and powder, furbelows and knee-breeches, elegant swords and gold-buckled shoes – a whole belle-assemblée (as the dramatist Congreve has it) of coquettes and beaux. A little behind and apart from all these grotesque or polished persons stood the driver of the Druids’ coach and a little army of brawny and plainly sardonic plebeians whose job it would presently be to clear up the mess.