The Daffodil Affair (22 page)

Hudspith puffed as the ascent grew steeper. ‘Then I don’t think much of her taste.’

‘I mean that her mind can cope with it. It gives her intellectual satisfaction, just as it does you or me.’

‘It’s not likely to give you any other.’

‘Be thankful for small mercies.’ To the west the sky was molten, so that the great river seemed to pour from a cauldron of gold. ‘I still keep on remembering things that fit in. I remember how Wine once told me Beaglehole and he were only acquaintances – something of the sort. He wanted to make sure – Cobdogla or not – that you and I were fast pals. Friendship was a prominent element in both the Hawke Square hauntings; it was to a more or less intimate friend that the full manifestations were accorded. The ghost of Colonel Morell spoke only to his friend Captain Bertram, and the ghost of Mr Smart only to his brother-in-law and friend Dr Spettigue. So when Wine saw that we were troublesome policemen and at the same time friends, he took the opportunity of killing two birds with one stone.’

‘Or of throwing two birds to one alligator.’ And Hudspith laughed – morosely but at greater length than the witticism justified. ‘Not that one brace of friends would yield sufficient material for the great Hawke Square experiment. I don’t doubt that a whole series of incidents is planned. Come to think of it, what about Mrs Gladigan and Miss Molsher? Perhaps they were really used that way. Perhaps Miss Molsher’s ghost and mine will play hide and seek up and down that staircase.’

Hudspith, it struck Appleby, was developing quite a vein of fantasy. Doubtless it was the exotic environment at work. They were at the top of the hill now, and the river, still golden to the west, flowed dark and unreal beneath them. Mamey and papaw, castor-oil plants and feathery palm were casting long shadows; the chatter of the chaja and the bien-te-veo was dying; soon it would be night and a universe of fireflies and stars – fireflies multitudinous and fleeting; stars remote and enduring, like the abstract ideas of these, laid up in a heaven of dark deep nocturnal blue. ‘Miss Molsher?’ said Appleby prosaically. ‘But Hawke Square has only just gone up. You and I are guinea pigs one and two.’

‘Unless–’

‘Unless he can be headed off the whole thing. After all, this geniune experimental side to the man makes only part of the picture. His racket, his Spook Church, his preparing his grotesque instruments of power: the greater part of the man is in that. And all of Beaglehole; he cares wholly for the practical and nothing for the speculative side. He regards it as the boss’ weakness, and so perhaps it is – though it is his fascination too. Now, suppose the major project in some sort of danger–’

Hudspith shook his head. ‘At the moment it appears to me invulnerable.’

‘Don’t be so sure of that. If the major project were imperilled, then Hawke Square, costly though it must have been, would no doubt go by the board for a time.’

Hudspith sat down and leant his back against the now almost invisible Ñandubay. ‘Would you say,’ he asked dryly, ‘that you and I are making plans?’

‘Certainly. And we have a good deal of freedom of action – and shall have as long as we succeed in giving the impression we believe in Radbone. We are unlikely to do anything desperate so long as we think one of us is to be let leave this place to negotiate with him. For instance, here are you and I conspiring together in solitude and nobody trailing us. I have a revolver in my suitcase and nobody has rifled it. We could kill Wine. We could kill both Wine and Beaglehole. Might not that break the back of the whole thing?’

‘Not necessarily.’ Faintly Appleby could see his companion shaking his head. ‘We don’t know what able lieutenants, what carefully nominated successors, what absentee directors there may be. But it would certainly be the end of us. There must be a pretty big gang of scoundrels scattered over these islands to control what Wine is pleased to call his material. We’d never shoot our way out.’

‘I agree.’

‘Of course we might contrive a revolution and organize the material behind barricades. But for the most part it’s unknown, loopy and unreliable. Except for Lucy – and she’s material no longer, according to you.’

Appleby said nothing. It was very quiet on the island and the river made no sound. Within scores of miles there might have been stirring nothing but the indefatigable mole. And yet the island was full of noises – the obscure noises of the South American night, seeming to come always from unknown distances, like murmurings indistinguishable whether of hope or fear.

‘The sober truth,’ said Hudspith, ‘is that we must hope for something from without.
A deus ex machina
to wind the thing up happily after all.’

Again Appleby said nothing. It was dark and, far below, the mole was groping like a spirit perturbed.

PLOP.

Perhaps Hudspith shivered. ‘Alligator,’ he said.

But Appleby put a hand on his arm. ‘Listen.’

And there was a new sound – a nearby sound from the river below. Silence succeeded and then it came again. There could be no mistaking it.

‘Yes,’ said Hudspith soberly. ‘A horse.’

Everlasting Bonfire

The horse whinnied in the dark. At the sound, a third time repeated, the tuco-tuco beneath their feet ceased like a demon charmed. Stillness was round them like an unruffled pool – a pool beyond whose margins hovered uncertain presences, the enigmatic murmurings of vagrant winds through distant colonnades of grass. The horse coughed.

‘It’s swimming,’ said Hudspith.

Below – far below, it seemed – lights shone in the late Schlumpf’s residence in the Californian style. One light might be Wine’s and Beaglehole’s; they would be sitting with papers before them, augmenting their strange plot. One might be Mrs Nurse’s – Mrs Nurse feeling nice, feeling all hollow, feeling tired. And one, Appleby knew, was Lucy’s – illiterate real Lucy with a big book before her, spelling out with concentrated intelligence the significant history of 37 Hawke Square. Lights shone on farther islands. Far away a beam of light briefly circled as a launch moved about the upper fringes of the colony – Australia Island, Asia Island, the lord knew what. Something splashed. Something slithered and heavily respired. A single clipped word was spoken by a human voice. Silence fell again and was prolonged.

‘A horse and rider.’ Hudspith spoke low. ‘But who would put a horse in that infested river?’

Against darkness the fireflies flickered, tiny inconsequently roving points of light like a random molecular peppering revealed by some laboratory device.

‘Who indeed?’ said Appleby. ‘Or who but a crazed Yorkshire girl!’

They waited, straining their ears. Somewhere on the island a radio had started disgorging the hollow and bodiless bellowings of an announcer tuned too loud – news from the China Sea, from Samara, from San Francisco ceaselessly circling the world, flooding it at the flick of a switch. The faint and hollow bellowing came up to them like the sound of water aimlessly bumping and bouncing in distant caves, but they listened only for a footfall or the quick clop of hoofs. They heard still the bodiless booming and the distant pampas sounds, and once the tuco-tuco stirred briefly below, and then, startlingly near, they heard in the darkness an intermittent short crisp tearing crunch – a noise baffling for seconds, and then suddenly not misinterpretable; the noise of a graminivorous creature cropping as it moved. And then they smelt horse.

The creature stood beside them: a presence, a faint whitish cloud – a warm horse-smelling cloud. If it was saddled and bitted it had been wandering with the reins on its neck; if it had a rider the rider was invisible, dark against the night. Appleby’s eye followed the uncertain upper outline of the cloud and rested where the background lacked its powdering of stars. There was indeed a rider, a rider who sat immobile, gazing down on the scattering of lights which marked the headquarters of Emery Wine.

‘Good evening,’ Appleby said.

A faint jingle, as if a hand had tightened on a rein, was the only reply.

‘Good evening,’ Appleby repeated. ‘Do you remember the shop in York, where they sold the things from old Hannah Metcalfe’s cottage? It must be nearly four months ago now.’

Again there was no reply, but the whitish cloud moved. The whitish cloud which was horse elongated itself at the tip and four times dipped in air. The Daffodil of Bodfish and Lady Caroline had not lost his skill.

‘And now,’ said Appleby, ‘here we are on the isle of Capri.’

‘Mock.’ The voice was husky and deep and not unmusical. ‘Go on mocking. But come no nearer. I am not alone.’

Hudspith was scrambling to his feet. But Appleby put a restraining hand on his arm. ‘Not alone?’ he said. ‘Well, there’s Daffodil, of course.’

‘There are the demons of earth and water and air.’ The girl’s voice was deep, assured, level. ‘You think that in your little room with the cameras and the trembling floor you command the demons. But you are wrong. They are commanded by me.’

‘We are not the friends of Wine. And we have no interest in demons. We don’t believe in them. We are going to get you safely away – back to the Haworth you were foolish enough to leave.’

The answer was a low laugh, and when the voice spoke again the laughter was in it still – malicious, triumphant. ‘You are the friends of Wine. All here are the friends of Wine – or all except the demons in whom you don’t believe.’

Obscurely the invisible girl was having it her own way. A spell was forming. Appleby tried to break it. ‘My dear Miss Metcalfe–’

Her laugh came again. His words broke against it. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Listen to the demons of earth.’ Slightly the patch of starless sky shifted, as if the girl were leaning over the neck of her horse. And Daffodil whinnied. And instantly from far below, from beyond the banks of the yellow invisible river, from round the farther islands came a deep faint throb – a throb so deep as to be less a sound than a mere muscular sensation in the ear. ‘The demons of earth,’ Hannah Metcalfe said. And the throbbing – like the distant beat of many drums – died away.

It was odd; it was so very odd that Appleby found himself cautiously testing the control of his vocal organs before he spoke again. ‘And the demons of water?’ he asked.

Once more Daffodil whinnied – and whinnied again. And instantly upon the deepest darkness where the great slow river flowed there floated a hundred streaks of pale fire. The streaks curved to arcs, to circles, to rolling and intersecting wheels of phosphorescent fire. ‘The demons of water,’ said Hannah Metcalfe, ‘and the demons of air.’ As she spoke the dark sky beyond the river became alive as if with meteors, became alive with red and angry smears and shafts of fire. They rose, curved and fell, and the stars were uncertain and pale behind them. For seconds only the thing lasted, and then Night resumed her natural sway. Out of it came Hannah Metcalfe’s voice, graver now. ‘Is one of you Beaglehole?’ it asked.

‘Neither of us is Beaglehole.’ Appleby’s voice was steady. ‘We are the enemies of Beaglehole and Wine.’

‘I do not believe you. Here all except the victims are the friends of Beaglehole and Wine. Are you victims?’

‘We are police officers.’

‘That is nonsense. You are the friends of Beaglehole and Wine. Tell them. But tell Beaglehole above all. Tell him I do not forget. About the ship.’

‘We know nothing of the ship.’

‘The little ship which sailed from Ireland. I would not go. I did not like the men. Beaglehole made them bind me. And he had a whip. Tell him I do not forget. Tell him that only the victims shall escape and be given their rightful place. All the rest of you the demons are going to take.’

‘Miss Metcalfe–’

She laughed. The cloud – the cloud which faintly smelt of Bodfish’s open landau – stirred, faded, dissolved. There was a long silence and then the voice, grave and malicious at once, came faintly up to them. ‘The demons,’ it said. ‘The demons of earth and water and air.’

They groped their way downhill, sober and silent. It was only when the lighted windows took definition before them that Hudspith spoke. ‘I don’t suppose–’

‘Of course not.’

‘In that case–’

‘Quite so.’

Perhaps Hudspith was rubbing his jaw. ‘We don’t know quite when she escaped. But she’s a quick worker.’

‘And with decided powers of organization.’

‘Joan of Arc.’

‘The horse would help.’

‘The horse?’

‘Tricks. A magic horse. When the Spaniards first came quite ordinary horses created no end of a sensation.’

‘Um.’

The veranda was in darkness but from a corner came the glow of a cigarette – a cigarette rapidly and nervously puffed. Appleby addressed it. ‘Hullo,’ he said cheerfully.

The cigarette dipped and took flight into the night. Beaglehole spoke. ‘Is that you two? You’re prowling late. Where have you been? I thought I heard something damned queer. And did you see something in the sky?’

‘We walk by night,’ said Appleby. ‘What could be more appropriate in a haunt of ghosts and spirits? Of course it’s dangerous. The right-valiant Banquo walked too late.’

Beaglehole swore. ‘Did you hear anything, I say? Did you see anything?’

‘We heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. Is Wine about? He would enjoy a little culture. But perhaps it’s time to go to bed – to sleep, perchance to dream.’

‘Damn you,’ said Beaglehole. ‘What the devil are you talking about?’

‘Something queer. They say five moons were seen tonight.’

‘Five moons!’

‘Four fixed, and the fifth did whirl the other four in wondrous motion.’

‘Bah! You must be tight.’ And in the darkness Beaglehole turned away.

‘Take care,’ said Appleby softly. ‘Take care, sirrah – the whip.’

There was silence. They were alone again. ‘Well, well,’ said Hudspith. ‘I never knew excitement took you that way. Quite like Prince Hamlet putting his antic disposition on.’

‘If a man were porter of hell-gate…’

‘What?’

‘I suppose he would be rather like Beaglehole. Don’t you dislike Beaglehole much more than Wine? It’s because he’s without a metaphysical – or superstitious – side to him. A porter of hell-gate with no belief in the everlasting bonfire.’