Detection Unlimited (3 page)

Henry Haswell had bought The Cedars in a dilapidated condition from the last surviving member of a very old County family; and to such persons as Thaddeus Drybeck it was ironic and faintly displeasing that he should have set it in order, and done away with all the hideous anachronisms (including a conservatory built to lead out of the drawing-room, and chocolate-painted lincrusta walton lining the hall and staircase) with which the Brotherlees had disfigured it. It was now a house of quiet distinction, furnished in excellent taste, and set in a garden which had become, thanks to Mrs Haswell's fanatical and tireless efforts, one of the loveliest in the County.

As the three men entered the gates, and walked up the drive towards the house, they saw her approaching from the direction of the tennis-courts, a single salmon-pink poppy in her hand. She at once came to meet them, saying: 'How nice! Now I can arrange a second four! How do you do, Major? How are you, Gavin? I was just thinking of you, Mr Drybeck: how right you are not to keep cats! I don't know why it is that one can train dogs to keep off the flowerbeds, but never cats. Just look at this! The wretched creature must have lain on the plant, I should think. Isn't it a shame? Do you mind coming through the house? Then I can put this poor thing in water.'

Talking all the way, in her gently amiable fashion, she led them into the cool, square hall. She was a stout woman, with gray hair, and clothes of indeterminate style and colour, betraying no sign in her person of the unerring taste she showed in house-decoration, and ; the arrangement of herbaceous borders. Inserting the broken poppy into a bowl of flowers in a seemingly haphazard manner which yet in no way impaired the symmetry of the bowl, she passed on into a sunny drawing-room, where, cut in the side-wall, a glass-panelled door gave access to the rose-garden. 'Of course, we ought to have had this door bricked up,' she remarked. 'Only I do rather like being able to step out of the room into the garden, and you don't see it from the front of the house. The Brotherlees used to have a conservatory beyond it, you remember.'

'One of my more treasured childhood's memories,' said Gavin. 'It had a warm, nostalgic smell, and spiky green things. I loved it!'

'Cacti,' supplied Mrs Haswell. 'Children always love the most dreadful things. I remember despairing of Elizabeth when she was three years old, and went into raptures over a bed of scarlet geraniums and blue lobelias. She outgrew it, of course. She and her husband have just moved into a house in Chelsea. I hope they won't hud it damp, but she's done wonders with her window-boxes. Charles and Abigail Dearham are playing the Lindales, but the Vicar, and Mavis Warrenby have arrived, so we shall be able to get up a second set.'

'Splendid!' said the Major.

Mr Drybeck said nothing. He foresaw that it would fall to his lot to have Mavis Warrenby for his partner, since he was a better player than the Vicar or the Major, and the prospect depressed him.

'Your husband not playing, Mrs Haswell?' asked the Major.

'No, so unfortunate! Henry has had to go over to Woodhall.' re-plied Mrs Haswell.

Mr Drybeck's depression became tinged by a slight feeling of affront. Henry Haswell was the only tennis-player in Thornden whom he considered worthy of his steel, and he had been looking forward to a game with him.

They had by this time come within sight of the two hard-courts which Mrs Haswell had insisted must be placed where they would not mar the beauty of her garden. They had been laid out, accordingly, at some distance from the house, and they backed on to the wall which shut the grounds of The Cedars off from the footpath running from the northern, Hawkshead, road, past the Squire's plantations, directly south to Fox Lane, separated from it by a stile. At this point, the path, skirting the spinney belonging to The Cedars, turned sharply westward until it met Wood Lane immediately south of The Cedars' front gates. A gate set in the wall close to the tennis-courts gave access to the footpath. It was through this gate that the Lindales, who lived on the Hawkshead-Bellingham road, had come to the party. Miss Warrenby and Miss Dearham had also used it, none of these persons being so punctilious in the use of front entrances as Mr Drybeck.

When Mrs Haswell led the three men up to the courts only one was being used. A cheerful and hard-fought set was in progress between the son of the house and Miss Patterdale's niece on the one side, and the Lindales, a young married couple, on the other; while the Vicar, a tall, bony man with a gentle countenance and grizzled hair receding from a broad brow, engaged Mavis Warrenby in desultory conversation on a garden-seat behind the court.

'Well, I don't have to introduce any of you,' said Mrs Haswell, smiling generally upon her guests. 'Or ask you what sort of games you play, which is such a comfort, because no one ever answers truthfully. Mavis, I think you and Mr Drybeck ought to take on the Vicar and Major Midgeholme.'

'I'm not nearly good enough to play with Mr Drybeck,' protested Mavis, with what that gentleman privately considered perfect truth. 'I shall be dreadfully nervous. I'm sure they'd much rather have a men's four.'

'Not, I imagine, if you are suggesting I should make the fourth,' interpolated Gavin, throwing her into confusion, and watching the result with the eye of a connoisseur.

They will be able to make up a men's four later,' said Mrs Haswell, quite unperturbed. 'I'm sure you'll play very nicely, my dear. It's a pity your uncle couldn't come.'

'Yes, he was so very sorry,' said Mavis, her face still suffused with colour. 'But some papers have come in which he said he simply must deal with. So he made me come alone, and make his excuses. I don't feel I ought really to be here.'

'Yes, dear, you told me,' said her hostess kindly. 'We're all very glad you have come.'

Miss Warrenby looked grateful, but said: 'I don't like leaving Uncle to get his own tea. Saturday is Gladys's half-day, you know, so he's alone in the house. But he wouldn't hear of letting me stay at home to look after him, so I just put the tray ready, and the kettle on the stove, and ran off to enjoy myself. But I do feel a little bit guilty, because Uncle hates having to do those sort of things for himself. However, he said he didn't mind for once in a way, so here I am. It was really awfully kind of him.

Her pale gray eyes hopefully scanned the circle, but this recorded instance of Sampson Warrenby's consideration for his niece failed to elicit comment from anyone but Mrs Haswell, who merely said: 'It won't hurt your uncle to get his own tea. I shouldn't worry about him, if I were you.'

She then handed Mr Drybeck a box of tennis-balls, saw all four players pass through the wire gate on to the court, and sat down on the garden-seat, inviting Gavin to join her there. 'It's, a pity Mrs Cliburn is late,' she observed. 'If she were here they could have proper mixed doubles, and it would make a more even game. However, it can't be helped. I'm glad Samspon Warrenby didn't come.'

'You said you were not.'

'Yes, of course: one does say that sort of thing. I had to ask him, because it would have looked so pointed if I'd left him out. You can't leave people out in a small community: it makes things awkward, as I told Henry.'

'Oh, is that why he went to Woodhall?' asked Gavin, interested.

'And if I left Mr Warrenby out,' pursued Mrs Haswell, apparently deaf to this interruption, 'I should be obliged to leave Mavis out too, which I should be sorry to do.'

'I wish you had left him out.'

'She leads a wretched enough life without being ostracized,' said Mrs Haswell, still deaf. 'And you never hear her say an unkind word about him.'

'I never hear her say an unkind word about anyone. There is no affinity between us.'

'I wonder what is keeping the Ainstables?'

'Possibly the fear that nothing has kept Warrenby.'

'I'm sure I said half-past three. I hope Rosamund hasn't had another of her bad turns. There, now! the young people have finished their set, and the others have only just begun theirs; I wanted In arrange it so that Mr Drybeck should play with the good ones!. . . Well, how did it end, my dears? Who won?'

'Oh, the children!' said Kenelm Lindalee, with the flash of a rueful smile. 'Delia and I were run off our feet!'

'You are a liar!' remarked Abigail Dearham, propping her racquet a gainst a chair, and picking up a scarlet cardigan. 'We should be still it! it, if it hadn't been for Charles's almighty fluke.'

'Less of it!' recommended the son of the house, walking over to a table which bore a phalanx of tumblers, and several kinds of liquid refreshment. 'A brilliantly conceived shot, executed with true delicacy of touch. What'll you have, Delia? We can offer you lemonade, orangeade, beer, ginger-beer and Mother's Ruin. You have only to give it a name.'

Mrs Lindale, having given it a name, sat down in a chair beside her hostess, her coat draped across her shoulders, and surreptitiously glanced at her wrist-watch. She was a thin young woman, with pale hair, aquiline features, and ice-blue eyes that never seemed quite to settle on any object. She gave the impression of being strung up on wires, her mind always reaching forward to some care a little beyond present. Since her husband had abandoned a career on the Stock Exchange to attempt the precarious feat of farming, it was generally felt that she had every reason to look anxious. They had not been settled for very long at Rushyford Farm, which lay to the north of Thornden, on the Hawkshead road; and those who knew most about the hazards of farming in England wondered for how long they would remain. Both were energetic, but neither was accustomed to country life; and for Delia at least the difficulties were enhanced by the existence of a year-old infant, on whom she lavished what older and more prosaic parents felt to be an inordinate amount of care and adoration. Those who noticed her quick glance at her watch knew that she was wondering whether the woman who helped her in the house had remembered to carry out the minute instructions she had left for the care of the infant, or whether Rose-Veronica might not have been left to scream unheard in her pram. Her husband knew it too, and, catching her eye, smiled, at once comfortingly and teasingly. He was a handsome, dark man, some few years her senior. He had the ready laughter that often accompanies a quick temper, a pair of warm brown eyes, and a lower lip that supported the upper in a way that gave a good deal of resolution to his face. He and Delia were recognised as a devoted couple. His attitude towards her was protective; she, without seeming to be mentally dependent upon him, was so passionately absorbed in him that she could never give all her attention of anyone else if he were present.

Mrs Haswell, who had seen her glance at her watch, gave her hand a pat, and said, smiling: 'Now, I'm not going to have you worrying over your baby, my dear! Mrs Murton will look after her perfectly well.'

Delia flushed, and gave an uncertain laugh. 'I'm sorry! I didn't mean -- I was only wondering.'

Abigail Dearham, a very pretty girl, with a mop of chestnut curls, and wide-open gray eyes, looked at her with the interest she accorded to everyone who came in her way. 'Have you got a baby?' she asked.

'Yes, a little girl. But I really wasn't worrying about her. That is to say-'

'Do you look after her yourself ? Is it an awful sweat?'

'Oh, no! Of course, it does tie one, but I love doing it.'

'You ought to get out more, dear,' said Mrs Haswell.

'I expect it's fun, having a baby,' said Abby, giving the matter her serious consideration. 'I shouldn't like to be tied down, though.'

'Yes, you would. You don't mind being tied down by your own Inky,' said Charles.

'That's different. I have set hours with him.'

'Not much you don't!' said Charles rudely. 'You're always being kept on after hours because he's in the middle of a chapter, or wants you to manage one of his beastly parties!'

His mother, not betraying the fact that she had received sudden enlightenment, said in an easy tone: 'Abby is Geoffrey Silloth's secretary, Delia. So interesting!'

'No, by Jove, are you really?' said Kenelm. 'What's he like?'

'Oh, quite a toot!' replied Abby cheerfully. 'He's gone off to Antibes for a fortnight, which is why I've got a holiday.'

This description of a distinguished man of letters was received with equanimity by Mrs Haswell, accustomed to the phraseology of youth; with complete understanding by Charles, and the Lindales; and with patent nausea by Gavin Plenmeller, who asked in silken accents to have the term explained to him.

'Ah, here come Mrs Cliburn and the Squire!' said Mrs Haswell, rising to greet these timely arrivals. 'Edith, how nice! But, Bernard, isn't Rosamund coming?'

The Squire, a squarely built man who looked older than his sixty years, shook hands, saying: 'One of her heads. She told me to make her apologies, and say she'd be along to tea, if she feels up to it. I don't think there's much hope of it, but I left the car for her, just in case.'

'Oh, dear, I am sorry! You know Mrs Lindale, don't you? And her husband, of course.'

'Yes, indeed. Glad to see you, Mrs Lindale! And you, Lindale.' His deep-set eyes travelled to the tennis-courts.' Warrenby not here? Good opportunity for the rest of us to talk over this business about the River Board. Where's Henry, Adelaide?'

'Well, I expect he'll be back before you leave.' replied Mrs Haswell. 'Though if it's about this tiresome River Board affair, I do wish -- However, it's not my business, so you'd better talk to Henry. I must say, it does seem a lot of fuss about very little.'

'One does so want to avoid unpleasantness,' said Mrs Cliburn. 'Of course, it isn't anything to do with us either, but Tony and I can't help feeling that it would be a shame to appoint anyone but Mr Drybeck to act for this new River Board. I mean, he always did when it was the Catchment Board, didn't he? And he'd be bound to feel very badly about it, particularly if Mr Warrenby Was appointed instead of him. But I oughtn't to give my opinion,' she added hastily.

'Well, well, it isn't such a great matter, after all!' said the Squire. 'We must see what Haswell thinks.'