The Moving Toyshop Page 8

  The haven of the basses achieved at last, a number of further difficulties presented themselves. The Sheldonian is not particularly spacious, and the members of a large choir have to be herded together in conditions not unreminiscent of the Black Hole of Calcutta. When Fen and Cadogan, pushing, perspiring, and creating a great deal of localized pother, had penetrated the basses to a certain distance (Cadogan shedding wicker basket, bootlaces, and dogcollar broadcast as he went) they could literally get no farther; they were wedged, and even the avenue by which they had come was now irrevocably closed and sealed. Everyone was staring at them. Moreover, an old man who had sung in the Handel Society choir for fifty years thrust a copy of the Brahms at them. This was unfortunate, as Fen, seeing no chance of moving for some time and being content to stop where he was and keep an eye on the girl they were pursuing, took it into his head to improve the shining hour by joining in the singing; and Fen’s voice, though penetrating, was neither tuneful nor accurate.

  ‘We STAAAAY not,’ he came in suddenly, ‘but WAAAANDER.’ Several of the basses in front turned round as if someone had struck them in the back. ‘We griefladen,’ Fen pursued unconcernedly, ‘grieee-EEEF-laden mortals!’

  This was too much for Dr Artemus Rains. He banged with his baton on the rostrum, and the choir and orchestra faded into silence. There was a general murmur of interested comment and everyone stared.

  ‘Professor Fen,’ said Dr Rains with painful restraint. A hush fell. ‘You are not, I believe, a member of this choir. That being the case, would you kindly oblige me by going away?’

  Fen, however, was not easily abashed, even by the presence of four hundred vaguely hostile musicians. ‘I think that’s a most illiberal sentiment. Rains,’ he countered across the gaping tiers of choristers. ‘Most illiberal and discourteous. Just because I happen to make one small error in singing an extremely difficult passage – ’

  Dr Rains leaned his spidery form forwards across the rostrum. ‘Professor Fen – ’ he began in a silky voice.

  But he was not allowed to finish. The girl with the blue eyes, profiting by this sudden focusing of attention, had pushed her way through the altos and was now heading at a brisk pace towards the door. Unnerved by this fresh interruption, Dr Rains swung round to glare at her. Fen and Cadogan got on the move again with alacrity, clawing their way back through the basses and the orchestra without ceremony or restraint. But this process delayed them, and the girl had been out of the hall at least half a minute by the time they reached open ground. Dr Rains watched them go with a theatrical expression of sardonic interest.

  ‘Now that the English Faculty has left us,’ Cadogan heard him say, ‘we will go back to letter L.’ The rehearsal started afresh.

  It was nearly one o’clock, so when they emerged again, somewhat hastily, into the sunlight, Broad Street was comparatively empty. For a moment Cadogan could not see the girl; then he caught sight of the Dalmatian loping up the street the way they had come, with the girl a few paces ahead. On the opposite pavement the two men in dark suits were examining the contents of Mr Blackwell’s window.

  Pointing at them: ‘Scylla and Charybdis are still after us, I see,’ Fen remarked with some pleasure. ‘But we haven’t time for them now. That girl must have something pretty weighty on her mind to run away from two complete strangers in a crowded street. Of course, if you hadn’t bawled out: “That must be the girl” – ’

  ‘She may have recognized me,’ said Cadogan. ‘It may have been her that knocked me on the head.’

  ‘We must put the heat on that broad.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Oh, never mind.’

  So the pursuit began again, though more circumspectly this time. Fen and Cadogan followed the girl, and Scylla and Charybdis followed Fen and Cadogan. They turned right into tree-lined St Giles’, passed the car-park and the entrance to Beaumont Street, passed the gate of St John’s.

  And then, to Cadogan’s astonishment, the girl turned into St Christopher’s.

  It is an inconvenient and longstanding tradition of the college of St Christopher that lunch is eaten at 1.30 and that week-day Mattins precedes it at one o’clock. The service had consequently just began when Fen and Cadogan arrived. The porter, Parsons, in addition to the information that the police had once again been and departed, was able to tell them that the girl had gone into the chapel a few moments before, and pointed to the Dalmatian which lingered outside as proof; and to the chapel Fen and Cadogan followed her.

  This part of the college was well restored at the end of last century. Death-watch beetles would be out of place in it, but at the same time it does not look objectionably new. The glass is pleasant if undistinguished, the organ pipes, painted gold, are arranged in a simple and attractive geometrical pattern, and the pew-ends – as in most collegiate chapels, the pews face each other like the seats in a railway compartment – are neither objectionably florid nor plain and dull. The only unusual feature is a separate enclosure for women, locally known as the Witches’ Kitchen, which possesses an entrance of its own.

  On this particular morning the President of the college, isolated like a germ in his private pew, was feeling disgruntled. For one thing, Fen’s erratic manoeuvres earlier on with Lily Christine III had shaken him more than he would have liked to admit; for another, the Sunday Times had refused to print a poem he had offered them; for a third, accustomed since boyhood to lunching at one o’clock, he had never since his appointment become used to its postponement to 1.30. When the one o’clock service began, his stomach was crying out for food; by the second lesson, his gastronomic misery had reached its apex; and for the rest of the time he settled down to a dull, aching misery, extremely prejudicial to his devotions. As a consequence, he frowned when a young woman with golden hair and blue eyes entered the Witches’ Kitchen during the first hymn; he frowned still more when, a few moments later, Fen and Cadogan arrived, noisily whispering; and he openly scowled when after a brief interval they were followed by two men in dark blue suits whose knowledge of the Anglican liturgy was plainly sketchy to a degree.

  In order to get as near to the girl as possible, Fen and Cadogan made their way up to a public pew by the choir. Scylla and Charybdis settled themselves nearby. The ritual went its way with an effortless grace, and until it was over no one moved. Fen, who disapproved of congregational singing, occupied himself with staring at anyone who opened his mouth. Cadogan, abandoning reflection on the tortured series of events in which he was involved, joined the President in a muted craving for lunch (by an unfortunate chance, the First Lesson was largely concerned with the comestibles in favour with ancient Jewry). The girl worshipped unobtrusively. Scylla and Charybdis rose and fell with evident unease. Only the Lord’s Prayer seemed to strike a chord, and then they were unhappily unaware that at one point in the proceedings it is curtailed, and so said ‘For Thine is the Kingdom’ when everyone else was pronouncing the Amen.

  But only at the end did the real problems of the position present themselves. Strict rules of precedence govern the exodus from St Christopher’s chapel, and they are rigidly enforced by the ushers, who are chosen from the undergraduate scholars in rotation. The women, already segregated like an Asiatic seraglio, leave by their own door. The choir and chaplain process to the vestry at the East end while all stand. And the body of the congregation go out of the west door in the order of their proximity, beginning with the President and Fellows. Matters are further retarded by the habit of genuflexion. Anyone uncertain of these things will do best to cower in his seat, and pretend to be listening to the organ voluntary, until everyone else has gone.

  The trouble in the present instance was this: that whereas the girl with the blue eyes could leave immediately, and without delay, neither Scylla and Charybdis, who were far enough from the door, nor Fen and Cadogan, who were even farther, could hope to be outside within about three minutes; since Fen was not sitting with the other Fellows, he could not push through and join them. Obviously, the girl
was aware of this. If she had left during the service they could have feigned illness and followed her at once. But when the service ended nothing short of an apoplectic fit could get them from the building in anything but their proper order.

  She went, in fact, immediately the Blessing had been spoken, just as the organist was launching into the so-called Dorian Toccata, and just as Fen and Cadogan were becoming clearly conscious of the problem which faced them. Three minutes would give the girl ample time to lose herself somewhere in the rambling college precincts, and they might for all they knew never see her again. The ushers, very grim and muscular, forbade any exhibition of disorder. There was only one thing to do, and at a whispered instruction from Fen they did it. They joined themselves on to the end of the choir, and, with an empurpled chaplain bringing up the rear, processed out with it. Out of the corner of his eye, Cadogan saw Scylla and Charybdis, starting from their seats, held back by one of the ushers. The other was taken unawares by this abnormal mode of exit, and made no movement until it was too late. His eyes fixed on the scrawny neck and surpliced back of the Cantoris bass in front of him, Cadogan pursued his way at a solemn and deliberate shuffle to the vestry.

  Once inside, both he and Fen pushed their way rapidly through the giggling choirboys and out of the door which led into the north quadrangle. The chaplain glowered malevolently. ‘Quiet!’ he said to the boys, and pronounced the final prayer. At the end of it a thought struck him.

  ‘And send down, we pray,’ he added, ‘upon the Professors of this ancient and noble University a due sense of the dignity of Thy house and of their own dignity. Amen.’

  There was no trace of the girl in the quadrangle. Parsons had seen nothing of her, nor had one or two idling undergraduates whom Fen questioned. St Giles’ was a blank in either direction.

  ‘Isn’t there something,’ Cadogan said, ‘which lawyers call a material witness? Well, this girl seems to be an – ’

  Fen interrupted. His lean, ruddy face was perplexed, and his hair stood up more than ever. ‘She must be somewhere in the college, but at the same time I don’t see how we can search every room in the place … Let’s go through to the south quadrangle.’

  They were not in luck’s way. The south quadrangle, with its rococo fountain in the centre and its Jacobean colonnades, was deserted except for a lounging youth, the possessor of spots, a floppy red neck-tie, and green corduroy trousers. From his stammering adolescent embarrassment they got no information whatever.

  ‘Well, we seem to have lost her,’ said Cadogan. ‘What about some lunch?’ He hated missing meals.

  ‘Of course, it may be another instance of the most obvious place,’ Fen answered, ignoring this summons to the fleshpots. ‘That is, the chapel. Let’s go back there.’

  ‘Some lunch would be very nice.’

  ‘Damn it, she can’t have got far. Come on, and stop moaning like an animal about your food. It’s disgusting.’

  So they returned to the chapel. In it, nothing and nobody. Nor yet in the vestry. From the vestry there runs a passage wholly cut off from the light, which leads into a sort of paved hall where one or two of the Fellows of the college have rooms. There is a switch, but no one can ever find it, and no one ever bothers to put it on. It was rather incautiously that Fen and Cadogan entered this brief black gully. Too late, when he felt an arm clamped about his waist from behind like a steel vice, when he heard a sudden muffled exclamation from Fen, did Cadogan remember Scylla and Charybdis. Those unimportant decorations of their pursuit had suddenly burst through the haze of facetious comment into a dangerous actuality. On the two branches of Cadogan’s carotid artery, running beneath the ears, a thumb and forefinger were powerfully and expertly pressed. He tried to cry out, and failed. In the few moments which elapsed before he lost consciousness, he was aware of a faint, a ridiculously faint scuffling beside him. Twisting his head from side to side, in a vain attempt to escape that angry grip, his eyes darkened.

  6. The Episode of the Worthy Carman

  ‘Fen steps in,’ said Fen. ‘The Return of Fen. A Don Dares Death (A Gervase Fen Story).’

  Cadogan moaned and opened his eyes. He was surprised to find that this action made no difference to his vision at all, except that a pattern of green and purple stars disappeared and was replaced by one of orange golf-balls. The background was as black as ever. He closed his eyes, so that the golf-balls were banished and the stars reinstated, and moaned again, rather more self-consciously this time. Beside him Fen’s voice droned on. He became painfully aware of his physical body, bit by bit; he experimented with moving parts of it, but did not get very far with this, as his hands and feet were tied. Then he shook his head and felt suddenly much better. Moreover, he had not, as he initially suspected, been struck blind; over to his left there showed a thin line of white light.

  ‘Murder Stalks the University,’ said Fen. ‘The Blood on the Mortarboard. Fen Strikes Back.’

  ‘What’s that you’re saying?’ Cadogan asked in a faint, rather gurgling voice.

  ‘My dear fellow, are you all right? I was making up titles for Crispin.’

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘I think we’re in the cupboard at the end of the passage where they attacked us. I’m an idiot not to have taken more care. Are you tied up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So am I. But it must have been rather a hurried job, and it ought to be easy enough to get loose.’

  ‘All right, Houdini, get on with it.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Fen, pained. ‘You think of some way of getting us out of here.’

  ‘Make a noise. Shout.’

  ‘I’ve made every sort of noise. The trouble is, there’s seldom anyone about here, particularly at lunch-time. Wilkes and Burrows have rooms outside, but Wilkes is deaf and Burrows is always gadding about in London. We shall simply have to wait until someone comes. This part of the college is too isolated for any noise to be heard elsewhere.’

  ‘All the same, I think we ought to try.’

  ‘How tiresome you are … Well, what shall we do?’

  ‘We ought to shout, “Help”, oughtn’t we? And batter our feet on the door.’

  ‘Very well, only be careful you don’t kick me.’

  They banged and shouted for some time, but without result

  ‘We might as well save our breath, I suppose,’ Cadogan said at last. ‘What do you think the time is?’

  ‘Only about ten or five to two. I never went under completely, and I was vaguely conscious all along of what was going on. I came round properly almost as soon as they’d got us in here.’

  ‘There’s something sticking into my bottom.’

  ‘This is interesting, you know’ – in the darkness Fen’s voice assumed a faintly pedagogic tinge – ‘because it seems to indicate that if we’d caught that girl she could have told us something important; and Scylla and Charybdis were obviously out to stop us hearing it. Also, I have a nasty feeling that at the moment they may be busy silencing her … ’ His voice faded away.

  After a time he resumed: ‘Rosseter, or the fellow who knocked you on the head, could have set them on to us. My money is distinctly on the latter.’

  ‘Sharman?’

  ‘No – he never moved from the bar after we’d met him. If he’d recognized you (and made the arrangement beforehand) he wouldn’t have talked so freely. Sharman is out.’

  There was a long and gloomy silence. In their cramped position, both men were beginning to get pins and needles. Cadogan’s mouth was dry and his head aching and he wished for a cigarette.

  ‘Let’s play “Unreadable Books”,’ he suggested.

  ‘All right. Ulysses.’

  ‘Yes. Rabelais.’

  ‘Yes. Tristram Shandy.’

  ‘Yes. The Golden Bowl.’

  ‘Yes. Rasselas.’

  ‘No, I like that.’

  ‘Good God. Clarissa, then.’

  ‘Yes. Titus– ’

  ‘Shut up a minute. I think I c
an hear someone coming.’

  There were, in fact, footsteps approaching on the stone floor outside – light and erratic footsteps.

  ‘Now, all together,’ said Fen briskly. ‘One … two … three … ’ They let out a deafening, horrible noise. ‘“Like a wind,”’ Fen quoted reflectively, ‘“that shrills all night in a waste land where no one comes…”’

  The footsteps wavered, came near, stopped. The key turned in the lock, the door of the cupboard opened, and a flood of daylight made them blink. A small, deaf, and very aged don, wearing his gown, peered in.

  ‘A rat!’ he squeaked dramatically. ‘A rat i’ the arras!’ He made motions of plunging a sword into them, and this exasperated Fen.

  ‘Wilkes!’ Fen said. ‘For God’s sake let us out of here.’

  ‘What do you think you’re up to, eh?’ Wilkes asked.

  ‘Untie us, you silly old man,’ Fen shouted at him in annoyance.

  ‘Some babyish prank, I suppose,’ Wilkes proceeded without perturbation. ‘Heh. Well, I suppose someone has to save you from the consequence of your follies.’ With shaky but determined fingers, he attacked the knot of the handkerchief which was tied round Fen’s wrists. ‘All this detecting, that’s what it is. People who play with fire must expect to be burned, heh.’

  ‘Prosing away … ’ Fen grumbled. He untied the thick string from his ankles, and hoisted himself stiffly out of the cupboard. ‘What’s the time, Wilkes?’

  ‘Half past kissing time,’ said Wilkes. ‘Time to kiss again.’ He freed Cadogan’s wrists. The college clock whirred and struck two. Cadogan extricated himself and stood upright, feeling very groggy.

  ‘Now, listen, Wilkes,’ said Fen with great earnestness, ‘because this is important – ’

  ‘Can’t hear a word.’

  ‘I said THIS IS IMPORTANT.’

  ‘What’s important?’

  ‘I haven’t told you yet.’