Read Online There Came Both Mist and Snow by Michael Innes - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Innes
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finger just short of the farthest crumbled buttress of the west wall. Meanwhile we stood with the discordant centuries thus hovering about us, a little knot of people watching a clash between the representatives of those great concerns which, fronting each other here across the narrowing triangle of the park, seemed perpetually to threaten the very existence of Belrive. Cambrell’s dry canteen, Cudbird’s cascading bottle, the ruins in their tranquillity and the park in its winter shroud: for a moment all these seemed to me to be suspended in some dramatic relationship. Then the significance evaporated, the tension dissolved. A revolver popped. A whiff of acrid smoke blew across the range. The shooting match was on again.
Wilfred Foxcroft had produced a magnifying glass and secured a handful of spent bullets; sitting with Lucy Chigwidden on a stone coffin and in a corner faintly warmed by the December sun, he was endeavouring to persuade her that he would group the bullets according to the weapons from which they had been fired. Geoffrey and Anne had drifted off; their voices, raised in excitement as if they were about some foolery of their own, could be heard occasionally from the direction of the house. To the right of the range, in the open park, Sir Mervyn Wale and Horace Cudbird were pacing to and fro in what appeared to be mutually satisfactory casual talk. Hubert Roper and Cecil Foxcroft were also isolated together: Hubert facing his nephew and gesticulating persuasively; Cecil looking, as I thought, somewhat pettishly displeased: it might be guessed that the proposed portrait was being discussed. I was myself turning back towards the range after an uneasily meditative stroll. Basil and Cambrell were in front of me, competing together in alternate shots at rather short range. I noticed that for perhaps a minute they had been silent: Basil absorbed in the targets; Cambrell puffing at a pipe. Just as I drew near they had a brief conversation. Of this and its immediate sequel I was, I believe, the only observer. Cambrell’s rather baffling trick was the subject of general speculation afterwards. Basil and I alone saw the thing happen.
They had been practising taking aim, shutting their eyes and firing after a count of five or ten – a searching test, apparently, of a steady arm. It was Cambrell’s turn. He stood looking fixedly at the target, his hands by his sides. Suddenly he turned right-about with military precision, so that the range was directly behind him. His right arm went up and across his chest; his revolver disappeared under his left armpit. There was a report; I heard Basil exclaim; I saw Cambrell still staring straight before him, a faint curl of smoke from the pipe in his left hand. Basil strode towards the target and I somehow expected him – Cecil’s habit, I suppose, was in my mind – to exclaim: ‘Oh, good shot!’
Basil said: ‘A gunman’s trick. I think I could do it myself.’
7
Of luncheon that day what sticks in my mind is Cecil Foxcroft eating roast duck.
There is, I suppose, no reason why roast duck should not appear on a luncheon table, particularly in chilly weather a few days before Christmas. There was clearly no reason why, when this dish was offered, Cecil should not address himself to it. But while doing so he might have kept off the theme of Sabine fare.
Cecil was sitting next to Horace Cudbird. And Cudbird, I saw, was a novelist in posse . What was in a man he had an instinct to extract and weigh. From Lucy Chigwidden he had extracted the interior monologue and I don’t doubt that he had been able to estimate accurately enough the degree of penetration which Lucy brought to the subject. From Cecil he was extracting a number of propositions on public schools. Moulding character, the team spirit, trusting the boys, the healthy mind in the healthy body: these hoary counters – to Cudbird perhaps as unfamiliar as Lucy’s equally well-worn dicta on the craft of
Wilfred Foxcroft had produced a magnifying glass and secured a handful of spent bullets; sitting with Lucy Chigwidden on a stone coffin and in a corner faintly warmed by the December sun, he was endeavouring to persuade her that he would group the bullets according to the weapons from which they had been fired. Geoffrey and Anne had drifted off; their voices, raised in excitement as if they were about some foolery of their own, could be heard occasionally from the direction of the house. To the right of the range, in the open park, Sir Mervyn Wale and Horace Cudbird were pacing to and fro in what appeared to be mutually satisfactory casual talk. Hubert Roper and Cecil Foxcroft were also isolated together: Hubert facing his nephew and gesticulating persuasively; Cecil looking, as I thought, somewhat pettishly displeased: it might be guessed that the proposed portrait was being discussed. I was myself turning back towards the range after an uneasily meditative stroll. Basil and Cambrell were in front of me, competing together in alternate shots at rather short range. I noticed that for perhaps a minute they had been silent: Basil absorbed in the targets; Cambrell puffing at a pipe. Just as I drew near they had a brief conversation. Of this and its immediate sequel I was, I believe, the only observer. Cambrell’s rather baffling trick was the subject of general speculation afterwards. Basil and I alone saw the thing happen.
They had been practising taking aim, shutting their eyes and firing after a count of five or ten – a searching test, apparently, of a steady arm. It was Cambrell’s turn. He stood looking fixedly at the target, his hands by his sides. Suddenly he turned right-about with military precision, so that the range was directly behind him. His right arm went up and across his chest; his revolver disappeared under his left armpit. There was a report; I heard Basil exclaim; I saw Cambrell still staring straight before him, a faint curl of smoke from the pipe in his left hand. Basil strode towards the target and I somehow expected him – Cecil’s habit, I suppose, was in my mind – to exclaim: ‘Oh, good shot!’
Basil said: ‘A gunman’s trick. I think I could do it myself.’
7
Of luncheon that day what sticks in my mind is Cecil Foxcroft eating roast duck.
There is, I suppose, no reason why roast duck should not appear on a luncheon table, particularly in chilly weather a few days before Christmas. There was clearly no reason why, when this dish was offered, Cecil should not address himself to it. But while doing so he might have kept off the theme of Sabine fare.
Cecil was sitting next to Horace Cudbird. And Cudbird, I saw, was a novelist in posse . What was in a man he had an instinct to extract and weigh. From Lucy Chigwidden he had extracted the interior monologue and I don’t doubt that he had been able to estimate accurately enough the degree of penetration which Lucy brought to the subject. From Cecil he was extracting a number of propositions on public schools. Moulding character, the team spirit, trusting the boys, the healthy mind in the healthy body: these hoary counters – to Cudbird perhaps as unfamiliar as Lucy’s equally well-worn dicta on the craft of
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