Detective-Sergeant George Felse of the County C.I.D. wandered in off-duty out of pure curiosity. He had often admired the decrepit stone-mullioned house and regretted its steady mouldering into a picturesque and uneconomic slum. Two old ladies had been living in it then, and like so many ancient sisters they had died within days of each other, leaving the place unoccupied for almost a year before their distant heir decided to sell and cut his losses. There was nothing else to be done with a place of such a size and in such a state; the only question had been whether he would ever find a buyer. But he had; he’d found Alfred Armiger, the smartest man on a bargain in three or four counties.
It still made no sense to George, even when he pushed open the new and resplendent Tudor door and walked into a hall all elaborate panelling and black oak beams, carved settles and copper-coloured glass witchballs. He estimated that ten thousand at least must have been sunk in the restoration, and he couldn’t see how Armiger was ever going to get it back, short of shifting the place bodily on to the main road, which was liable to tax even his formidable powers. Even if he could continue to fill it as he’d apparently filled it tonight, which was very doubtful, it would still cost him more to run, with the staff he’d need here, than he’d make out of it.
It was certainly lively enough tonight. In the crowded public bar on the left, lantern-lit and period down to the fire-dogs in the hearth, George recognised most of the Bohemian population of Comerbourne, more especially the young ones. Ragged beards and mohair sweaters gave the place the texture of goats and something of their pungent smell. In the two small lounge-bars on the right the eighteenth century had been allowed a toe-hold, and there were some nice brocade chairs and some comfortable couches, and a fair number of the more sober county posteriors were occupying them. The dining-room seemed to be doing a considerable trade, too, to judge by the numbers of white-coated waiters who were running backwards and forwards for drinks to the saloon bar. Most of them seemed to be strangers to the district, probably newly recruited for this house. He saw only one whom he knew, old Bennie from the White Horse in Comerbourne, no doubt transplanted here for his local knowledge. It would pay to have someone about the place who knew all the celebrities, and all the nuisances, too.
They were a mixed bag in the saloon bar, neither big shots nor Bohemians. The big room had been virtually rebuilt, and Tudorised with a monstrously heavy hand. The ceiling beams were too low and too obtrusive, and hung with far too motley an array of polished copper, much of it shamelessly new. Armiger always knew exactly what he wanted, and if he couldn’t get it in period he’d have it manufactured specially, even if it involved some surprising anachronisms. But at least the customers were genuine enough here, farmers, tradesmen, travellers, local cottagers and workmen, and scattered among them the occasional county elder who still preferred this kind of company.
George inched his way patiently to the bar and ordered a pint of mild, and a blonde with a topknot like the Prince of Wales’s feathers and long pink finger-nails set the pot in front of him and informed him with a condescending smile that tonight everything was on the house, with Mr. Armiger’s compliments. Hence the crowd, he thought, though the evening was yet youngish, and no doubt hundreds more would get wind of the party before closing-time. When drinks were free George stopped at one, indeed if he’d known he would probably have deferred satisfying his curiosity until another night, but he was here now. And the spectacle was undoubtedly interesting. More than half the members of the Borough Council were somewhere in the house, and a good sprinkling of the more widely scattered County Council, too. Armiger crooked his finger and people came running, but how many of them out of any love for him? You wouldn’t need the fingers of both hands to count ‘em, thought George, one would be enough.
He was carrying his pint pot to the most retired corner he could see when a heavy hand thumped him on the shoulder and a voice resonant and confident as brass, but tuned as truly as brass, too, bellowed in his ear: “Well, well, my boy, is this an honour or a warning?”
Speak of the devil, and his bat-wings rustle behind you.
“Don’t worry,” said George, turning to grin over his shoulder at the man who had bought him the beer. “I’m off duty. Thirst brought me in on you. Thanks for this, I wasn’t expecting it. Cheers!”
Armiger had a whiskey in his other hand; he hoisted it to George and downed it in one quick swig. Not a tall man, hardly medium height, but built like a bull, shoulder-heavy, neckless, with a large head perpetually lowered for the charge. He ran head-down at business, at life, at his enthusiasms, at his rivalries, at everyone who got in his way and everything that acquired a temporary or permanent significance for his pocket or his self-esteem. He was dark, with thinning hair brushed across his sun-tanned scalp, and the short black moustache that bristled from his upper lip quivered with charged energy like antennae. His bluish chin and brick-red cheeks gave him a gaudy brilliance no matter how conservatively he dressed. Maybe he’d consumed a fair quantity of his own wares, or maybe he was merely high on his pride and delight in his new toy, and his ebullient hopes for it. Come to think of it, it was very improbable that he ever got tight on liquor, he’d been in command of it and manipulated his fellow-men by means of it too long to be susceptible to it himself at this late stage. He glittered with excitement and self-satisfaction; the bright, shrewd eyes were dancing.
“Well, how do you like my little place? Have I made a good job of it?”
“Terrific,” said George reverently. “Do you think it’s really going to pay for transferring the licence out of the town? Looks to me a costly house to run.”
“You know me, boy, I never throw money away without being sure it’ll come back and bring its relations along. Don’t you worry, I’ll make it pay.”
He slapped George on the back again with a knowing grin, and was off through the crowd head-down, big shoulders swinging, distributing a word here and a handshake there, and radiating waves of energy that washed outward through the assembly and vibrated up the panelled walls to clang against the copper overhead. Self-made and made in a big way, Alfred Armiger; many a lesser mortal had been bowled over in that head-down charge to success. Some of the casualties were here tonight; more than one of the looks that followed his triumphal progress through his Tudor halls would have killed if it could.
“He’s in high fettle,” said a voice in George’s ear. “Always is when he’s been walking on other people’s faces.” Barney Wilson of the architect’s department slid into the settle beside him, and spread lean elbows on the table; a long, saturnine young man with a disillusioned eye. “Don’t take too much notice of me,” he said with a wry smile, catching George’s curious glance, “I’m prejudiced. I once had hopes of taking this place over myself, pulling down the rubbishy part of it and making the rest over into a house for my family. I still grudge it to him. What does he need with another hotel? He has more than he can keep count of already.”
“Biggish job for a private man, restoring this place, the state it was in,” suggested George, eyeing him thoughtfully.
“Biggish, yes, but I could have done the necessary minimum and moved Nell and the kids in, and taken my own time over the rest. And the way sales trends are running these days, a place this size and in that sort of state was the only kind of place I had a chance of getting. Everybody wants a modern, easy-to-run semi or bungalow, they fetch fantastic prices everywhere, but these bigger properties are going for next to nothing. You can’t run ‘em without servants, or so everyone supposes, and they cost the earth to maintain. But the maintenance would have just been my job to me, and Nell was raised on a Welsh farm, she knows all about managing a lot of house-room with a minimum of effort. Oh, we thought we were in. I’d even started drawing plans for my conversion, believe it or not, I was that confident. What a hope! The minute I clapped eyes on his man at the auction I knew we’d had it. If it hadn’t been for him we could have got the place for the reserve, nobody else wanted it.” He gazed glumly into his beer and sighed. “But no, he had to snatch it from under our noses and turn it into this monstrosity. You can expect anything of a man who’d turn The Joyful Woman into The Jolly Barmaid!”