‘Yes.’
‘And the day before yesterday you saw him water it again.’
‘Of course; we all saw him.’
Mr Goodacre was aghast. ‘But, my dear Lady Peter, he couldn’t have done that. The cactus is a desert plant. It only requires watering about once a month in the cooler weather.’
Peter, having emerged to clear up this minor mystery, seemed to be back on his nightmare trail. He muttered: ‘I can’t remember-’
But the vicar took no notice.
‘Somebody has touched it lately,’ he said. ‘I see you’ve put it on a longer chain.’
Peter’s gasp was like a sob.
‘That’s it. The chain. We were all chained together.’
The struggle passed from his face, leaving it empty as a mask. ‘What’s that about a chain, padre?’
Chapter XX. When You Know How, You Know Who
And here an engine fit for my proceeding!
– William Shakespeare: Two Gentlemen of Verona.
To be interrupted at a crisis had become so much a feature of daily life at Talboys that Harriet felt no surprise to see Bunter enter upon these words, as upon a cue. Behind him hovered the forms of Puffett and Crutchley.
‘If it will not inconvenience your lordship, the men are anxious to get these pieces of furniture out.’
‘You see,’ added Mr Puffett, stepping forward, ‘they works on contract. Now, if we could jest slip some of these ’ere things out to them-’ He waved a fat hand persuasively towards the sideboard, which was a massive dresser, made all in one piece and extremely heavy.
‘All right.’ said Peter; ‘but be quick. Take them and go.’ Bunter and Puffett seized upon the near end of the dresser, which came staggering away from the wall, its back festooned with cobwebs. Crutchley seized the far end and backed with it to the door.
‘Yes,’ continued Mr Goodacre, whose mind, once it fastened on anything, clung to it with the soft tenacity of a sea-anemone. ‘Yes. I suppose the old chain had become unsafe. This is an improvement. You get a much better idea of the cactus now.’
The sideboard was moving slowly across the threshold; but the amateurs were not making too good a job of it, and it stuck. Peter, with sudden impatience, pulled off his coat.
‘How he hates,’ thought Harriet, ‘to see anything bungled.’
‘Easy does it,’ said Mr Puffett.
Whether by good luck or superior management, no sooner had Peter set his hand to it than the top-heavy monstrosity abandoned the position and went sweetly through.
‘That’s done it!’ said Peter. He shut the door and stood before it, his face slightly flushed with exertion. ‘Yes, padre-you were saying about the chain. It used to be shorter?’
‘Why, yes. I’m positive it was. Quite positive. Let me see the bottom of the pot used to come about here.’
He raised his hand slightly above the level of his own tall bead.
Peter came down to him.
‘About four inches higher. You’re sure?’
‘Oh, yes, quite. Yes-and the-’
Through the unguarded door came Bunter once more, armed with a clothes-brush. He made for Peter, seized him from behind and began to brush the dust from his trousers. Mr Goodacre, much interested, watched the process.
‘Ah!’ he said, dodging out of the way as Puffett and Crutchley came in to remove the settle nearest the window, ‘that’s the worst of those heavy old sideboards. It’s so difficult to clean behind them. My wife always complains about ours.’
‘That’ll do, Bunter. Can’t I be dusty if I like?’
Bunter smiled gently and began on the other leg.
‘I am afraid,’ went on the vicar, ‘I should give your excellent man many hours of distress if I were his employer. I am always being scolded for my untidiness.’ Out of the tail of his eye he saw the door shut behind the other two men, and his mind, lagging behind his vision, made a sudden bound to catch up with it. ‘Wasn’t that Crutchley? We ought to have asked him-’
‘Bunter,’ said Peter, ‘you heard what I said. If Mr Goodacre likes, you can brush him. I will not be brushed. I refuse.’
He spoke with more sharpness, under his light tone, than Harriet had ever heard him use. She thought: ‘For the first time since we were married he has forgotten my existence.’ She went over to the coat he had thrown off and began to search it for cigarettes; but she did not miss Bunter’s quick upward glance or the almost imperceptible jerk of Peter’s head.
Bunter, without a word, went to brush the vicar, and Peter, released, walked straight up to the fireplace. Here he stopped, and his eye searched the room.
‘Well, really,’ said Mr Goodacre, with a refreshing delight in novelty. ‘Being valeted is quite a new experience for me.’
‘The chain,’ said Peter. ‘Now, where-?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Mr Goodacre took up his thread again. ‘I was about to say, that is certainly a new chain. The old one was of brass to match the pot, whereas this-’
‘Peter!’ said Harriet, involuntarily.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know now.’ He seized upon the ornamental drain-pipe, tossed the pampas-grasses out of it and tilted it up, just as Crutchley came in-this time with the man Bill-and advanced upon the other settle.
‘If you don’t mind, guv’nor.’
Peter jerked the pipe swiftly back and sat on it.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We haven’t finished here. Take yourselves off. We must have something to sit on. I’ll make it right with your employer.’
‘Oh!’ said Bill. ‘Well-right y’are, guv’nor. But mind you, this job’s got to be done today.’
‘It will be,’ said Peter.
George might have stood out; but Bill evidently possessed a more sensitively balanced temperament or a livelier eye to the main chance. He said submissively, ‘Right-ho, guv’nor,’ and went out, taking Crutchley with him.
As the door shut, Peter lifted the drain-pipe. At the bottom of it lay a brass chain, curled together like a sleeping serpent.
Harriet said: ‘The chain that came down the chimney.’
Peter’s glance swept over her as though she had been a stranger.
‘A new chain was fixed up and the other one hidden up the chimney. Why?’ He lilted the chain and looked at the cactus as it hung centred over the radio cabinet. Mr Goodacre was deeply intrigued.
‘Now that,’ he said, taking the end of the chain in his hand, ‘looks remarkably like the original chain. See. It is darkened with soot, but it’s quite bright when you rub it.’
Peter dropped his end of the chain, leaving it dangling in the vicar’s hand. He picked out Harriet from the rest and said to her, as though propounding a problem to the brightest-looking of a not-too-hopeful class:
‘When Crutchley had watered the cactus, which he had watered the week before and which should only be watered once a month-’
‘-in the colder weather,’ said Mr Goodacre.
‘-he was on the steps here. He wiped the pot. He got down. He put back the steps over here by the clock. He came back here to the cabinet. Can you remember what he did next?’
Harriet shut her eyes, once more seeing the room as it had been on that strange morning.
‘I believe-’
She opened them again. Peter laid his hands gently, one on each side of the cabinet?
‘Yes-he did. I know he did. He pulled the cabinet forward to bring it centrally under the pot. I was sitting quite close to him at the end of the settle-that’s why I noticed.’
‘I noticed it too. That’s the thing I couldn’t remember.’
He pushed the cabinet gently back, moving forward with it so that the pot now hung directly over his head and about three inches above it.
‘Dear me,’ said Mr Goodacre, surprised to discover that something of importance was apparently going on, ‘this is all very mysterious.’