Bithel rocked himself backwards and forwards.
‘What happened on the run?’
‘It was through the woods.’
‘Scorp was leading of course. Did Ken feel ill when he got outside?’
‘Lord Widmerpool seemed recovered at first, they said. There was a warm mist. It was cold enough, they told me, but not as bad as they thought it would be.’
‘So they set off?’
‘Then Lord Widmerpool shouted they weren’t going fast enough.’
Henderson showed amazement at such a thing happening.
‘Why should Ken have done that? It was never a race. The slow pace was to give a sense of Harmony. Scorp always made a point of that.’
‘When Lord Widmerpool shouted, they said Scorp sounded very angry, and said no. They were going fast enough. To increase the speed would disrupt the Harmony. Lord Widmerpool didn’t take any notice of Scorp.’
‘That was unlike Ken.’
Bithel lay back, so far as doing so were possible, in the pop-art armchair. The Scotch had greatly revived him, calmed his immediate fears, enabled him to tell the story with a kind of objectivity.
‘If Lord Widmerpool disagreed with Scorp he’d always say why. They quite often argued. Lord Widmerpool seemed to enjoy a tussle, then giving in, and being given a penance. Never knew such a man for penances.’
Abandoning his narrative, at the thought of Widmerpool’s penances, Bithel sighed.
‘Did Widmerpool increase his own speed?’
‘Not at first, they told me. Then he began complaining again that they weren’t running fast enough. He started to shout “I’m running, I’m running, I’ve got to keep it up.” Everybody thought he was laughing, trying to get himself warm. After shouting out this for a while, he did increase his pace. Some of the others went faster too. Scorp wouldn’t allow that. He ordered Lord Widmerpool to slow down, but of course he couldn’t stop him. He was way on ahead by then. Somebody heard Lord Widmerpool shout “I’m leading, I’m leading now.”‘
‘How did it end?’
‘It was rather a twisty way through the woods. Nobody could see him, especially in the mist. When they came round a corner, out of the trees, he was lying just in the road.’
‘Collapsed?’
‘Dead.’
Bithel held out his glass for yet another refill. Henderson topped it up. There was quite a long silence.
‘How did they carry the body back?’
‘They managed somehow.’
‘It must have been quite a way.’
‘You bet.’
‘What did Scorp say?’
Henderson’s voice shook a little when he asked that. I felt disturbed myself. Bithel seemed glad to leave the more macabre side of the story, for its administrative elements.
‘I was sent to London to ask Canon Fenneau what should be done.’
‘That’s why you came up?’
‘I couldn’t find Canon Fenneau till this afternoon. He wasn’t too keen on being mixed up with it all. In the end he said he’d do what he could to help.’
‘And the drawing?’
‘Scorp said the first thing was for all Lord Widmerpool’s things to be ritually burned. There wasn’t much. You know there was hardly anything, Barnabas, except the picture you told me to try to get hold of, if ever Scorp, in one of his destructive moods, insisted on throwing it out. You said it was between the cupboard and the wall, bring it along, if you’ve half a chance. It looks like a rough scribble to me, but I’m sure it’s the one you said. I hope it’s the right picture, and you’ll make me a nice bakshee for bringing it along. I got it off the fire without Scorp seeing, just as he was going to set everything alight with the ritual torch. I stuffed it away somewhere, and here it is. God, I’m tired. Bloody well done in. I haven’t had any sleep since they got back at five this morning.’
Henderson snatched the parcel, and began to open it. Bithel lay still further back in the pop-art armchair. He closed his eyes. Henderson threw away the brown paper. He held the Modigliani drawing up in front of him. The glass of the frame was cracked in several places; the elongated nude no worse than a little crumpled. It had been executed with a few strokes running diagonally across the paper. The marvellous economy of line would help in making it hard to identify — if anybody bothered — as more than a Modigliani drawing of its own particular period. It was signed. In any case, no one was likely to worry. It had hung in Stringham’s London flat in early days; then passed to Stringham’s niece, Pamela Flitton; on Pamela’s demise, to her husband, Widmerpool. Pictures had never been Widmerpool’s strong point. For some reason he must have clung on to this one. It was odd that he had never sold it. Henderson, even at the period of his renunciation of such vanities as art, must have marked it down, as it lay about somewhere in the commune. Now the agent, even at second-hand, of its preservation, he deserved his prize. Bithel gave a terrible groan in his sleep.
He had begun to slip from the exotically shaped armchair; would soon reach the floor.
‘I shall have to be going.’
‘I’ll come and let you out.’
‘What will you do about Bithel?’
‘I’ll ring up Chuck. He’ll lend a hand. Chuck won’t be too pleased. He doesn’t like Bith. This has happened before. We put him on the late train.’
‘You’ll send him back?’
‘Of course. Where else can he go? He’ll be all right.’
‘Will Fenneau do the clearing up down there?’
‘Everything he can. He’s very good about that sort of thing. He understands. Now I know about it, I’ll get in touch with him too.’
We said goodbye. Henderson was right about the temperature dropping. It was getting dark outside, and much colder. A snowflake fell. At first that seemed a chance descent. Now others followed in a leisurely way. The men taking up the road in front of the gallery were preparing to knock off work. Some of them were gathering round their fire-bucket.
The smell from my bonfire, its smoke perhaps fusing with one of the quarry’s metallic odours drifting down through the silvery fog, now brought back that of the workmen’s bucket of glowing coke, burning outside their shelter. For some reason one of Robert Burton’s torrential passages from The Anatomy of Melancholy came to mind:
‘I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken, cities besieged, in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Poland, &c., daily musters and preparations, and suchlike, which these tempestuous times afford, battles fought, so many men slain, monomachies, shipwrecks, piracies, and sea-fights, peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarms. A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances, are daily brought to our ears. New books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, &c. Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays: then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, burials, deaths of Princes, new discoveries, expeditions; now comical then tragical matters. Today we hear of new Lords and officers created, to-morrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned, one purchaseth, another breaketh; he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps, &c.’