‘How?’
‘Found shot – in the church of all places in the world. It seems he used to go down and play the organ – had a key, and used to go in just when he liked. He was living out at a house called Prior’s End with Madoc, the concentrated food man. It was he who rang me up. He said Harsch had supper with them – there’s a sister, Miss Madoc, and a girl secretary – and after that he went out. Madoc said he always did unless the weather was too bad – he liked walking at night. Odd taste, but I daresay it helped him to sleep, poor chap. When he wasn’t back by half-past ten, they didn’t do anything. Of course, it’s easy to say that they should have, but – well, they didn’t. Madoc and his sister went to bed. They said Harsch had a key, and they never thought that anything could have happened to him.’
‘Well, sir, you don’t do you?’
‘I suppose not. Anyhow they went to bed. But the girl sat up. By half-past eleven she was really frightened. She took a torch and walked down into the village. No sign of Harsch. She knocked up the verger and made him come along to the church with her. She said she thought Harsch might have been taken ill. Well, they found him fallen down by the organ, shot through the head – pistol just where it might have fallen from his hand. I went down and found everyone quite sure he’d shot himself. I am quite sure he didn’t.’
Garth Albany said, ‘Why?’
Sir George stopped twirling the pencil and put it down. ‘Because I don’t think he would. He’d made an appointment with me, and he was always very punctilious about keeping his appointments. He was going to hand over the formula and his notes. I wasn’t going down alone either – I was taking Burlton and Wing. He wouldn’t have walked out on us like that.’
Garth Albany nodded. ‘He might have had a comeover. You know how it is – people do.’
‘ “Suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed”!’ Sir George quoted the words with irony. ‘That’s what the verdict at the inquest will be.’ He brought his fist down suddenly on the table. ‘It’s damnably probable, quite irrefutable, and damnably untrue. Harsch was murdered. I want to find out who murdered him and see that he doesn’t get away with it. And that’s not just the natural reaction to murder. It goes a lot deeper. If Harsch was murdered, it was because someone had a motive for getting him out of the way at just this time. Not six months ago when harschite was still in the unstable stage, not a month ago when he was in good hope that he had overcome the instability and still had to put his hopes to the proof, but a few hours after the proof had been achieved, and within a few hours of his demonstrating it to me. Is that a likely time for a man to commit suicide? Isn’t it a likely time for a man to be murdered? Some strong interest was engaged to prevent the transfer of harschite.’
Major Albany looked up. ‘I don’t know. He’d been working on the stuff for a long time, you know. I expect it kept him going. Then when he’d finished he might have felt there was nothing to go on for. And as to his being murdered to stop your getting the formula – well, it doesn’t stop it, does it?’
Sir George picked up the pencil again.
‘That, my dear Garth, is exactly what it does do. Because three years ago Michael Harsch made a will which named Madoc his sole executor and sole legatee. He hadn’t anything to leave except his notes, his papers, the results of any discoveries or inventions he might make. It’s a pretty big exception, you see.’
‘But surely Madoc-’
Sir George laughed without amusement.
‘It’s evident that you don’t know Madoc. He’s a crank with an infinite capacity for going to the stake for his opinions – he asks for nothing better. If no one will oblige him with a stake, he will find one for himself, pile up the faggots, and hold his right hand in the fire in the best traditions of martyrdom. He is one of the most belligerent pacifists in England. I wouldn’t mind backing him for the world’s championship myself. He naturally won’t have anything to do with the war effort, and only pursues his very valuable researches into Food Concentrates because he feels it is a duty to be prepared for a period of post-war starvation on the Continent. Now do you see him handing over the formula of harschite?’
‘Do you mean he won’t?’
‘I mean he’ll see us all at Jericho first.’
CHAPTER FOUR
GARTH ALBANY WENT back to his hotel and rang up Miss Sophy Fell. That is to say, he asked for her number, but the voice which answered him was a deep contralto.
‘Miss Brown speaking – Miss Fell’s companion.’ This wasn’t the companion he remembered. Her name wasn’t Brown, and she twittered. Miss Brown and her voice suggested a marble hall with a catafalque and wreaths. Sombre music off. Not awfully cheerful for Aunt Sophy. He said, ‘Can I speak to Miss Fell?’
‘She is resting. Can I take a message?’
‘Well, if she isn’t asleep perhaps you could switch me through. I am her nephew Garth Albany, and I want to come down and see her.’
There was a pause which he felt to be a disapproving one, and then a little click, and Aunt Sophy saying, ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s Garth. How are you? I’ve got some leave, and I thought I might run down. Can you put me up?’
‘My dear boy, of course! But when?’
‘Well, leave doesn’t last for ever, so the sooner the better. I could get down in time for dinner – or do you sup?’
‘Well, we call it dinner, but it’s only soup and an economy dish like buttered eggs without the eggs, or mock fish-’
‘What’s on earth’s mock fish?’
‘Well, I believe it’s rice with a little anchovy sauce. Florence is really very clever.’
‘It sounds marvellous. I’ll bring my bacon ration and the other doings, and you can cash in on my meat ration when I get down – I draw the line at steak in the pocket. So long, Aunt Sophy.’
Bourne has no station of its own. You get out at Perry’s Halt and walk two and a half miles by the road if you don’t know the short cut, and a mile and a quarter across the fields if you do. The only thing that had changed since he was a boy was that, step for step with him across the fields, there ran the tall pylons and stretched cables of the Electric Grid, hideous but undeniably useful. Bourne itself had not changed at all. The stream still ran down one side of the village street, bridged at each gateway by a flat stone lifted from the Priory ruins. The cottages, low-roofed, small-windowed, were inconvenient and picturesque, as they had always been – front gardens ablaze with dahlia, nasturtium, phlox, sunflower, and hollyhock; back gardens neatly stocked with carrot, onion, turnip, beet, and all the cabbage family, and guarded by ancient fruit trees heavy with apples, pears, and plums. A good fruit year, he noted.
There were not many people about – one or two who looked and smiled, one or two who nodded and spoke, and old Ezra Pincott, the disgrace of the large Pincott clan, sidling out of the Church Cut on his way to the Black Bull, where he would spend the rest of the evening. Garth reflected that Ezra at least hadn’t changed by a hair. There was, of course, not a great deal of room for change, except in the direction of reform, a direction in which he had never been known to cast even a fleeting glance. Dirtier and more disreputable he could hardly become – but a genial rascal and tolerably well pleased with life and his own reputation as the leeriest poacher in the county. No one had ever caught Ezra poaching, but he had been heard to say that their old meat ration didn’t bother him, and Lord Marfield, the Chairman of the Bench, once gave it as his opinion that Ezra had pheasant for dinner a good deal more often than he did himself.