‘What dost think of it, Bob?’ asked Mr Colclough in the weird silence that reigned after they had finished. They were standing up and putting on their coats and wiping their faces.
‘I think what I thought before,’ said Mr Brindley. ‘It’s childish.’
‘It isn’t childish,’ the other protested. ‘It’s ugly, but it isn’t childish.’
‘It’s childishly clever,’ Mr Brindley modified his description. He did not ask my opinion.
‘Coffee’s cold,’ said Mrs Brindley.
‘I don’t want any coffee. Give me some Chartreuse, please. Have a drop o’ green, Ol?’
‘A split soda ‘ud be more in my line. Besides, I’m just going to have my supper. Never mind, I’ll have a drop, missis, and chance it. I’ve never tried Chartreuse as an appetizer.’
At this point commenced a sanguinary conflict of wills to settle whether or not I also should indulge in green Chartreuse. I was defeated. Besides the Chartreuse, I accepted a cigar. Never before or since have I been such a buck.
‘I must hook it,’ said Mr Colclough, picking up his dust-coat.
‘Not yet you don’t,’ said Mr Brindley. ‘I’ve got to get the taste of that infernal Strauss out of my mouth. We’ll play the first movement of the G minor? La-la-la—la-la-la—la-la-la-ta.’ He whistled a phrase.
Mr Colclough obediently sat down again to the piano.
The Mozart was like an idyll after a farcical melodrama. They played it with an astounding delicacy. Through the latter half of the movement I could hear Mr Brindley breathing regularly and heavily through his nose, exactly as though he were being hypnotized. I had a tickling sensation in the small of my back, a sure sign of emotion in me. The atmosphere was changed.
‘What a heavenly thing!’ I exclaimed enthusiastically, when they had finished.
Mr Brindley looked at me sharply, and just nodded in silence. Well, good night, Ol.’
‘I say,’ said Mr Colclough; ‘if you’ve nothing doing later on, bring Mr Loring round to my place. Will you come, Mr Loring? Do! Us’ll have a drink.’
These Five Towns people certainly had a simple, sincere way of offering hospitality that was quite irresistible. One could see that hospitality was among their chief and keenest pleasures.
We all went to the front door to see Mr Colclough depart homewards in his automobile. The two great acetylene head-lights sent long glaring shafts of light down the side street. Mr Colclough, throwing the score of the Sinfonia Domestica into the tonneau of the immense car, put on a pair of gloves and began to circulate round the machine, tapping here, screwing there, as chauffeurs will. Then he bent down in front to start the engine.
‘By the way, Ol,’ Mr Brindley shouted from the doorway, ‘it seems Simon Fuge is dead.’
We could see the man’s stooping form between the two head-lights. He turned his head towards the house.
‘Who the dagger is Simon Fuge?’ he inquired. ‘There’s about five thousand Fuges in th’ Five Towns.’
‘Oh! I thought you knew him.’
‘I might, and I mightn’t. It’s not one o’ them Fuge brothers saggar-makers at Longshaw, is it?’
‘No, It’s—’
Mr Colclough had succeeded in starting his engine, and the air was rent with gun-shots. He jumped lightly into the driver’s seat.
‘Well, see you later,’ he cried, and was off, persuading the enormous beast under him to describe a semicircle in the narrow street backing, forcing forward, and backing again, to the accompaniment of the continuous fusillade. At length he got away, drew up within two feet of an electric tram that slid bumping down the main street, and vanished round the corner. A little ragged boy passed, crying, ‘Signal, extra,’ and Mr Brindley hailed him.
‘What IS Mr Colclough?’ I asked in the drawing-room.
‘Manufacturer—sanitary ware,’ said Mr Brindley. ‘He’s got one of the best businesses in Hanbridge. I wish I’d half his income. Never buys a book, you know.’
‘He seems to play the piano very well.’
‘Well, as to that, he doesn’t what you may call PLAY, but he’s the best sight-reader in this district, bar me. I never met his equal. When you come across any one who can read a thing like the Domestic Symphony right off and never miss his place, you might send me a telegram. Colclough’s got a Steinway. Wish I had.’
Mrs Brindley had been looking through the Signal.
‘I don’t see anything about Simon Fuge here,’ said she.
‘Oh, nonsense!’ said her husband. ‘Buchanan’s sure to have got something in about it. Let’s look.’
He received the paper from his wife, but failed to discover in it a word concerning the death of Simon Fuge.
‘Dashed if I don’t ring Buchanan up and ask him what he means! Here’s a paper with an absolute monopoly in the district, and brings in about five thousand a year clear to somebody, and it doesn’t give the news! There never is anything but advertisements and sporting results in the blessed thing.’
He rushed to his telephone, which was in the hall. Or rather, he did not rush; he went extremely quickly, with aggressive footsteps that seemed to symbolize just retribution. We could hear him at the telephone.
‘Hello! No. Yes. Is that you, Buchanan? Well, I want Mr Buchanan. Is that you, Buchanan? Yes, I’m all right. What in thunder do you mean by having nothing in tonight about Simon Fuge’s death? Eh? Yes, the Gazette. Well, I suppose you aren’t Scotch for nothing. Why the devil couldn’t you stop in Scotland and edit papers there?’ Then a laugh. ‘I see. Yes. What did you think of those cigars? Oh! See you at the dinner. Ta-ta.’ A final ring.
‘The real truth is, he wanted some advice as to the tone of his obituary notice,’ said Mr Brindley, coming back into the drawing-room. ‘He’s got it, seemingly. He says he’s writing it now, for tomorrow. He didn’t put in the mere news of the death, because it was exclusive to the Gazette, and he’s been having some difficulty with the Gazette lately. As he says, tomorrow afternoon will be quite soon enough for the Five Towns. It isn’t as if Simon Fuge was a cricket match. So now you see how the wheels go round, Mr Loring.’
He sat down to the piano and began to play softly the Castle motive from the Nibelung’s Ring. He kept repeating it in different keys.
‘What about the mumps, wife?’ he asked Mrs Brindley, who had been out of the room and now returned.
‘Oh! I don’t think it is mumps,’ she replied. ‘They’re all asleep.’
‘Good!’ he murmured, still playing the Castle motive.
‘Talking of Simon Fuge,’ I said determined to satisfy my curiosity, ‘who WERE the two sisters?’
‘What two sisters?’
‘That he spent the night in the boat with, on Ilam Lake.’
‘Was that in the Gazette? I didn’t read all the article.’
He changed abruptly into the Sword motive, which he gave with a violent flourish, and then he left the piano. ‘I do beg you not to wake my children,’ said his wife.
‘Your children must get used to my piano,’ said he. ‘Now, then, what about these two sisters?’
I pulled the Gazette from my pocket and handed it to him. He read aloud the passage describing the magic night on the lake.
‘I don’t know who they were,’ he said. ‘Probably something tasty from the Hanbridge Empire.’
We both observed a faint, amused smile on the face of Mrs Brindley, the smile of a woman who has suddenly discovered in her brain a piece of knowledge rare and piquant.
‘I can guess who they were,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’m sure.’
‘Who?’
‘Annie Brett and—you know who.’
‘What, down at the Tiger?’
‘Certainly. Hush!’ Mrs Brindley ran to the door and, opening it, listened. The faint, fretful cry of a child reached us. ‘There! You’ve done it! I told you you would!’