“You’d — what? Trying to make something out of that, are you?”
“Not in the sense you mean. I’ve always been interested in Xenophanes. He certainly anticipated a great deal of modern radical thinking, and I’d be interested to see how you relate him to Marx.”
“What do you know about it?” said Frank Mason suspiciously.
“Well — take his ridicule of the idea of gods created in men’s images,” said Henry. “That cleared away more cobwebs of superstition than…”
“You surprise me,” said Mason. “I should have thought you’d be a Heraclitean, with your attitude to the Establishment.” In spite of his sneering tone he was obviously intrigued.
Henry laughed, “I’m not quite such a die-hard as that,” he said. “Of course, panta rei…”
“Everything flows,” said Mason. “There’s a great deal to be…” Then he stopped.
Henry said, “You do read Greek, don’t you?”
Mason went a furious red. “So you were simply trying to trick me, were you? Everybody knows what panta rei means. You don’t need to be a Greek scholar…”
“I wasn’t trying to trick you at all,” said Henry. “It wasn’t necessary.”
“What does that mean?”
“Simply that a man as brilliant and as conscientious as you would never embark on such a book if he couldn’t read his original sources.” Mason said nothing. Henry added, “There was no need to lie about it.” He sounded almost sad. “No need at all.” He walked out into the windy garden.
Life at Cregwell Grange was evidently continuing its usual course, regardless of Aunt Dora’s death. As Henry got out of his car, he could hear the sound of firing from the range, indicating George Manciple’s whereabouts. From another part of the garden came the penetrating but tremulous notes of a clarinet, inexpertly played; that could only be the Bishop. The front door stood wide open, and from the inside of the house the whirring of a vacuum cleaner made a continuous obbligato to the soloists in the garden. Nevertheless, for all its air of apparent normality, Henry fancied that he could detect the oppressive atmosphere of a house in mourning. It depressed him profoundly to think that he was about to add a further dimension of distress to that mourning. However, there was nothing to be done about it. He rang the bell.
The tinkling echoes had not died away before there was a clatter of footsteps on the stairs. The vacuum cleaner was switched off, and simultaneously Maud’s voice called from above, “I’ll go, Mother! It’s probably…” At this point she appeared at the bend of the staircase, saw Henry through the open front door, and exclaimed, “Oh! It’s you,” with obvious surprise.
“I’m afraid so,” said Henry. “I’m sorry to have to worry you at a time like this…”
“Don’t apologize,” said Maud. But her voice was slightly edgy. “I expect Mother told you that we don’t go in for mourning.”
“Yes,” said Henry, “she did.” He noticed all the same that Maud was wearing a white dress, and he knew that this was the color of mourning in some countries. It made her look more fragile than ever.
“Well, come in. What do you want?”
Henry went into the hall. At once he was aware of the agreeable, flinty scent of chrysanthemums. The house had been filled with them, great bowls of shaggy blooms, many of them white. It was, of course, September, and the height of the chrysanthemum season; but Henry had remarked that few grew in the gardens of Cregwell Grange, and certainly no specimens like these, whose great heads, the size of grapefruit, proclaimed them as showpieces from an expensive florist. Chrysanthemums, Henry knew, were regarded in most European countries as the flowers of the dead and were by tradition heaped on family graves at the festival of All Souls. It certainly seemed as though somebody at Cregwell Grange was defying the Head’s edict and was mourning Aunt Dora. Henry felt somehow pleased at the fact.
“I’m afraid,” he said, “that I must have a word with Major and Mrs. Manciple.”
Maud gave him a direct look. “Can’t you leave them in peace for a moment?” she said. “Raymond Mason is dead. Surely your investigations, or whatever you call them, can at least wait until after Aunt Dora’s funeral?”
“What I have to say to your parents has nothing to do with Raymond Mason, Miss Manciple.”
“Oh. You mean, it isn’t official business?”
“Yes and no.”
“What on earth does that mean?”
“It means that I have to talk to Major and Mrs. Manciple.”
Maud looked at Henry as though she did not like him at all, and he realized, not for the first time, just how tough she was in spite of her fairy-doll fragility. It also occurred to him what a dangerous enemy she would be, with her beauty, her brains, and her whiplash strength of character — and what a useful ally. He also found himself wondering how George and Violet Manciple had managed to produce such a child, and at once answered his own question. Maud was a direct throwback to her grandparents. He remembered the photograph which George Manciple had shown him, and marveled that he had not noticed at once the strong resemblance between Maud and the long-dead Rose Manciple. He also glanced, instinctively, at the portrait of the Head, which dominated the hall. Maud, following his eyes, said at once, “Yes, I am very like him.”
“You must be a mind-reader,” said Henry. He smiled at her, and she smiled back, dissolving miraculously from a deadly member of the Erinyes into a small, vulnerable girl in a white cotton dress.
As she opened the drawing-room door for him, Maud said, “People often tell me how frightening I can be. I don’t mean it, you know. It must be a trick of the light playing on the Manciple bone structure. Just wait in here and I’ll call Father.”
The drawing room, too, had been embellished by two big bowls of chrysanthemums. Henry watched from the window as Maud made her way down the garden toward the shooting range. As she disappeared behind the privet hedge, Edwin Manciple came up toward the house from the opposite direction. He was wearing khaki shorts and he carried his clarinet, a collapsible music stand, and an untidy collection of sheet music. He saw Henry standing at the window and waved his clarinet in a welcoming manner before disappearing around the corner of the house in the direction of the front door.
A moment later Maud and her father came out from the shelter of the hedge and walked up toward the house. They both looked grave and were deep in conversation. On the lawn outside the drawing-room window, Maud stopped, said something to George, and went off down the garden again. George Manciple sighed, tucked his gun under his arm, and came in through the French windows to the drawing room.
“Maud says you want to see me, Tibbett,” he said.
“I fear so,” said Henry, “you and Mrs. Manciple.”
“Together?”
“That’s largely up to you,” said Henry.
“To me? What do you mean?”
“it’s about Miss Manciple.”
“About Maud?” The Major looked really alarmed.
“No, no. Miss Dora Manciple.”
“Poor Aunt Dora. Surely she may be left in peace, now that she’s dead?”
“I’m afraid she can’t,” said Henry. “I know it will be very distressing for you, but I have to tell you. I’m not at all satisfied about her death and I think there should be a post-mortem examination.”
For a moment George Manciple gaped at Henry as though he were some sort of imbecile. Then he let rip. Henry, he said, in an ever-thickening Irish brogue, had been called in to investigate the death of Raymond Mason. This he had not done. Had as good as told Sir John Adamson that Mason committed suicide, which was arrant nonsense, as anybody with a modicum of intelligence could see. He, Henry, had then proceeded to hang around Cregwell, doing nothing, upsetting everybody, and coming to no sensible conclusions. Now, to crown it all, he was making unfounded and positively indecent suggestions concerning poor Aunt Dora, who had done no more than die quietly in her bed of a weak heart, God rest her soul, and if she hadn’t a right to do that at ninety-three, he, George, would like to know who had.