Landed Gently csg-4 Page 13

  ‘Hmn!’ Gently tossed off his Scotch. ‘And he would pick today! Well, lead on, Macduff, and let’s have a look at these historic tiles.’

  A spiral stairway just off the great hall led them up to the attics above the state apartments, than which nothing could have been emptier, darker and more depressing. Through these ran a straight, narrow corridor, lit only by a few meagre roof-lights, and at the end of it a door, which shielded a further spiral stair.

  ‘This leads directly to the roof, sir,’ chattered Thomas, shivering in his monkey-suit.

  ‘Righto, Thomas… no need to come any further.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. It is excessively cold. I would persuade his lordship to come down, sir, if you intend a lengthy interview.’

  Gently huddled his ulster about his ears. ‘I’ll meet him on his own ground. Just one request, though, Thomas.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’ Thomas lingered reluctantly.

  ‘If we’re not down by lunch it’s because we’ve frozen to a chimney-stack… You might have a rescue-party standing by to chip us off!’

  The second stairway was a short one, and as he climbed it, Gently could hear the wind whistling at the door to which it led. He lifted the latch and pushed the door open. He had come up through a brick hatch projecting above the roof, backing on a sheer drop of fifty feet or so into the well of a courtyard. On either side of him the chimney-forested roofs stretched away in a gigantic rectangle. They were shallow and covered with lead, and the low coping that surrounded them offered no cover from the scourging talons of the wind. Inward, the mass of the rectangle was pierced by two wells, the one near the hatch oblong, its fellow, some distance off, a square. As far as Gently could see, he had the entire, blizzard-swept desert to himself. There was not a sign of Somerhayes.

  Squinting his watering eyes, he set off stubbornly to make the round of the roofs. The wind, once he left the shelter of the hatch, pierced through his thick ulster like knives. A mad place to be… a dangerous place! If you lost your balance, you could be blown over the coping in a moment. And how did the man expect Gently to find him up here, amongst the chimney-stacks, hatches, sky-lights and whalebacks of lead? Or had he expected to be found… was this Somerhayes’s way of going to earth? Gently crouched by a stack for a moment. It could be that Somerhayes had cleverly got rid of him for an hour. A fine fool he would be, clinging up here to these chimneys and copings, while Somerhayes, down below…

  But then, what could the fellow be up to?

  He was halfway round before he spotted his quarry. By that time he had begun to feel that he would never thaw out again. His best trilby had blown away, his fingers were dead in their thick, wool-lined gloves, and his whole body felt shrunken and aching with cold. Then, as he rounded the coping at the corner of the square well, he saw the maddest thing of the whole mad interlude. At this point he had come to the back of the great triangular cornice that surmounted the columns of the portico at the front of the house. From this cornice was reared a flag-staff, and clinging to the flag-staff, his foot on the apex of the cornice, his body exposed to the full range of the blast, was Somerhayes. He did not turn as Gently rounded the corner. He was facing outwards, towards the wind, towards the distant, ice-flecked sea. And he was wearing nothing but the lounge suit he wore about the house. He had not even gloves on his blue, clutching fingers.

  Incredulously, Gently plodded up a grey roof-back and down to the back of the cornice. The apex where Somerhayes was standing was a good twelve feet above the roof.

  ‘Hey!’ he shouted up. ‘Come down before you freeze solid!’

  Somerhayes glanced down over his shoulder. ‘No… you come up, Mr Gently!’ he called back.

  It was a palpable challenge, and Gently looked about him for some way to meet it. There was no ladder up the back of the cornice, but at some period a series of rough hand- and foot-holds had been chiselled into the stone, and these, though badly worn, appeared to be the means by which Somerhayes had reached his dizzy peak. Slowly, obstinately, Gently began to climb.

  ‘Use the flag-staff as a handrail… You’ll get stuck if you don’t.’

  Gently grunted and felt across for it. Near the apex, the chiselled hollows were nearly worn away. By a final effort he got his arm round the staff where it cleared the apex, and by hugging it tight could just peer over into the airy gulf below.

  ‘What do you think of the view, Mr Gently?’

  ‘I can’t think of views when I’m being flayed to death!’

  ‘Look… the sea! And the Wind of God coming off it!’ Somerhayes raised his arm and pointed outward.

  Gently blinked the water out of his eyes and looked. Directly below was the terrace with the cars, Repton’s artful drive snaking beautifully away from it into the gloomy grove of holm-oak. To the left extended the park and the lake, hemmed in with forbidding reefs of chestnut and oak, a driveway at the extremity stretching to the pale cupola of the folly elevated on its gentle knoll. And beyond this, over the regiments of trees, behind a strip of rough salt marsh and a white-fringed ribbon of beach, lay the iron-grey, iron-cold sea, its horizon scarcely to be distinguished from the iron-grey, iron-cold sky.

  ‘That way came the Northmen!’ exclaimed Somerhayes in a strange, ringing tone. ‘On a day like this, on a wind like this, in ships without decks they sailed that sea, Mr Gently. A thousand years ago one saw their dragon sails, and a few last descendants of those ships still sail the Northshire rivers. Go into any fishing village along this coast, and look, and look, and you will see the Northmen… We Feverells come of Norman stock, but whence came the Normans to set their standard in France?’

  Gently screwed up his eyes and tried to get some cover behind the weather-roughened coping.

  ‘We must have degenerated a good deal since those days…’

  ‘But have we, Mr Gently, have we?’ The crazy fellow was ripping open the front of his shirt. ‘Look… this wind is no stranger to me. You shrink from it down there, but I can receive it with a bare bosom, steel to steel, element to element — and all I feel is its fire, scorching me as it scorched the conquerors who came here long ago. It is the world that has degenerated; we are still the men we once were.’

  ‘Come down,’ urged Gently. ‘Let’s talk about it in comfort.’

  Somerhayes laughed, the sound of it whipping away on the lashing wind. ‘Look below!’ he cried. ‘Do you see those steps down there, immediately below, near where that constable is stamping his feet?’

  Gently poked his head over.

  ‘There’s an answer, Mr Gently — I could have it in just two seconds.’

  ‘What answer is that?’

  ‘The answer to everything that troubles a mortal soul. See — it’s in my hand’ — he let himself swing out over the void — ‘five frozen fingers are all that hold the veil between myself and the perfect truth. Shall I accept it, Mr Gently? In your present knowledge, do you advise me to accept it? Or are there still some things which only I can tell you?’

  Like a reversed weathercock he hung there, smiling down at the crouched Central Office man. With a sense of shock Gently realized that the nobleman meant what he was saying. In two seconds, he could be a lifeless heap on the steps beneath. A mis-move, a wrong word…

  ‘Come down,’ he repeated. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘But we can talk up here… Surely this is the ideal situation?’

  ‘It may be for you… Me, I’m just a bloody bourgeois. I’m going down — I’ll see you later on.’

  ‘Wait!’ exclaimed Somerhayes, swinging in again.

  ‘Sorry, I’ve had enough of it — see you when you get down.’

  Deliberately, without looking back, he began feeling for the worn toe-holds. He could hear nothing except the moaning of the wind and the flap of the halyard against the flag-staff. Regaining the roof, he clambered over the shallow pent behind the cornice, and taking cover in the lee of the nearest stair-hatch, began to fumble with Dutt’s pipe. The seconds stole by. Re
solutely he packed the tobacco, his fingers stiffened like claws. He was just scrabbling in his pocket for a match when there was a footfall on the lead beside him, and Somerhayes was standing there, something like reproach in his grey eyes.

  ‘Are you the man I took you for?’

  Gently tried to keep the relief out of his brief shrug.

  ‘I felt sure I could depend on you…’

  ‘Cup your hands round this match, will you… It’s like trying to get a light in a wind tunnel.’

  Somerhayes complied with a touch of disdain. His small, fine hands looked ugly from the savage exposure they had undergone. Gently got his pipe going after three attempts. For some reason, he was being particularly clumsy about it.

  ‘The winters you get in this godforsaken county!’

  ‘Our summers are correspondingly fine, Mr Gently.’

  ‘They’ve got a lot to make up for…Do people die young?’

  ‘On the contrary, this county is celebrated for longevity.’

  Finally, the pipe was lit, and Gently, setting his back against the hatch-door, puffed it till the warming bowl softened the initial harshness of flavour. Somerhayes stood by him, ignoring the friendly shelter of the hatch.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me, Mr Gently?’

  ‘Mmn — just as you expected.’

  ‘Naturally, after my cousin had spoken to you-’

  ‘It’s up to you to clarify her somewhat onerous position.’

  Somerhayes glanced at him with sarcasm. ‘You realized, then, that I should be able to?’

  ‘Otherwise, you wouldn’t have known enough to have advised her to make a clean breast, would you?’

  Somerhayes nodded, looking away. ‘Perhaps I’ve mistaken you after all, Mr Gently…’

  The wind whipped over the hatch-top, scuffing the smoke from Gently’s pipe. He moved up a little to make room for Somerhayes, and now the nobleman accepted the threadbare protection of the tiny structure.

  ‘You were in the hall that night, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I was sure you must have guessed it.’

  ‘Would you like to say why you didn’t mention it?’

  ‘You may think, if you like, that it was because I didn’t know how much Janice would admit to.’

  ‘Suppose I don’t choose to think that?’

  Somerhayes’s queer little smile was back. ‘You are the detective, Mr Gently; what you think must be entirely governed by your discoveries.’

  Gently puffed sombrely for a few moments, his hands dug hopefully into the ulster’s pockets. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy it. Tell me just what you want to tell me. But before we go any further, can’t we get off this murdering roof?’

  Somerhayes shook his head and edged away a little.

  ‘We’ll stay here, if you don’t mind… it is a place where I have always made decisions.’

  Gently grunted and tried to get his back yet further into the comfortless door.

  ‘In the first place I knew of Earle’s assignation — that must certainly have occurred to you. I was very anxious about his pursuit of my cousin, and I took steps to overhear what passed when he went to the door with her that night… The rest is quite simple. I merely took my stand at the corner of the gallery, opposite to where Johnson emerged. I was witness to the meeting. I can vouch, like Johnson, that my cousin left Earle in the way she will have described to you. I can also vouch that Johnson retired a few moments after my cousin left. Oddly enough, Mr Gently, I suspected that you would have guessed these trifling points without any prompting.’

  ‘They may have run through my mind.’ Gently grimaced behind his pipe. ‘And after Johnson retired… when you and Earle were left in the hall?’

  ‘What else can I say? The interlude was over, and like Johnson, I went back to bed.’

  ‘Leaving Earle alone?’

  ‘Leaving Earle alone.’

  ‘And the hall, of course, quite empty?’

  ‘To the best of my observation, quite empty.’

  Gently shook his head gravely. ‘Well… that certainly seems to clear Johnson, doesn’t it?’ he said.

  Somerhayes said nothing, but gave the Central Office man a rueful, almost reproachful look. His shirt-front was still open, his customary neat bow-tie dragged apart and hanging loose at each side. How could he stand it, that crushing, warping cold? How could he remain there, apparently so alert, when his face was grey, his neck and bosom bloodless, his neat hands swollen and all the colours of the rainbow? He had to be crazed, this fey question mark of a man!

  ‘Just what was your attitude toward Earle?’ Gently could almost hear the perplexity of his own voice.

  ‘Why, surely I was jealous… You will not have forgotten that I am in love with my cousin?’

  ‘It doesn’t fit in. Jealousy won’t sit square on your record.’

  ‘I assure you that I was jealous, Mr Gently-’

  ‘I know, I know! But it wasn’t the right sort of jealousy… Couldn’t you have had it in for Earle because he was an American or something?’

  Somerhayes looked gratified. ‘You are restoring my faith, Mr Gently. Yes, you are quite right. His being American had a great deal to do with it. It was nothing against him per se, you understand. I have the greatest admiration both for America and the Americans — they are magnificently young, intoxicatingly virile. Purely at a surface level, one would say that nothing could be more fitting than the mating of fresh American blood with a scion of English aristocracy. But that is leaving out the personal element, and I am afraid that in this instance it cannot be lightly dismissed. I know my cousin, Mr Gently. She is a Feverell, with all the family strengths and weaknesses. It is, unfortunately, a Feverell characteristic to be swept off one’s feet, and Janice, in spite of her constancy to her husband’s memory, was being swept off her feet by Earle.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be her business?’ interrupted Gently.

  ‘Impersonally again — yes, it would. But how can one see with equanimity a beloved person rushing into unhappiness?’

  ‘How do you know it would have been unhappiness?’

  ‘Because, I repeat, Mr Gently — I know my cousin. In many ways she is spiritually delicate and easy to injure. It would have been the height of folly for her to have married Earle and consented to live with him in America — as he would, quite properly, have required her to do. She is completely unfit for any such transplantation. She is a creature of her environment, and if her roots were cut she would wither away. Yet her character is such that Earle might easily have hurried her into that error, and my anxiety at what was transpiring was correspondingly intense. She is the only tie of blood I have in the world, Mr Gently, and I feel for her as a kinsman as well as loving her as a woman.’

  ‘Hmn.’ Gently exhaled a long mouthful of smoke. ‘I like that better, but it still won’t focus any too sharply.’

  Somerhayes flashed him a quick look. ‘Have you no daughter or kinswoman dear to you?’

  ‘No.’ Gently shook his head. ‘Like you, I am rather short on the ties of blood…’

  ‘Ah. I felt we had much in common. But you will still appreciate the powerful emotions involved.’

  ‘Oh yes, to a certain extent…’

  ‘To an overwhelming extent, rest assured.’

  ‘Very well, if you say so. Overwhelming — but not, perhaps, exclusive?’

  Somerhayes pressed his thin lips together and stared out over the heavy-grey expanse of the roofs. Gently noticed the contraction of his multi-coloured hands till white spots appeared over the knuckles.

  ‘Then I will go a little further with you,’ he said slowly. ‘I want you to be quite satisfied, Mr Gently — I want your focus, as you call it, to be as sharp as you can possibly desire. There is another element that enters into this. My cousin, as perhaps you do not know, is an indispensible factor in the success of the tapestry workshop. I myself am no more than an organizer, and an indifferent one at that. Mr Brass is a great creative artist,
and cannot be expected to expend his unique powers in matters of business, even supposing he has the ability, which he has not. The workshop, in effect, is entirely dependent on my cousin’s shrewd head for its business management, and my conviction is that it would quickly come to grief if it lacked this able hand at its helm. You are already aware of the importance to me of this venture. I could never willingly allow the work of Mr Brass to be interrupted or jeopardized. You will see, then, that I had here a strong additional reason to view with concern Lieutenant Earle’s overtures to my cousin. Have I now assisted you, Mr Gently, to get your picture into a definitive focus?’

  He stopped to look at the huddled figure of his companion. There was a far-away expression in the Central Office man’s eyes, and he seemed to be listening to something not comprised by the blustering wind and Somerhayes’s smooth, level voice. Suddenly he whirled round, grabbed the handle of the hatch-door and tried to thrust it open, and, finding it bolted, launched his bulky shoulder at the obstacle with a resounding crash.

  ‘Mr Gently-’ exclaimed Somerhayes.

  ‘Quick!’ bawled Gently, grabbing his arm. ‘Which is the way we came up?’

  ‘The way…? It’s that hatch by the long court. But what in the world is the matter?’

  ‘We’ve been eavesdropped — for the second time — that’s what’s the matter. And I’m getting remarkably curious to know who is taking such a profound interest in our conversations.’

  Lugging the protesting Somerhayes after him, he scrambled off in the direction of the long court. It was a slender chance, and such as it was it was being jeopardized by Somerhayes’s apparent inability to go straight to the hatch with the unbolted door. By the time they were down in the attics Gently realized with chagrin that the listener must have had sufficient interval to make good his retreat. The eternal silence of the great house was all that there was left to hear…

  ‘Mr Gently, I feel certain that you were mistaken,’ panted Somerhayes, catching up with the detective as he whisked along the narrow corridor. ‘I assure you I heard nothing… It is straining probability to suppose that anyone should be accidentally in the attics.’