“The quantum theory,” said Claud, “is assimilated without trouble by bird-brained undergraduates. I can’t see any difficulty…”
“That is very unjust, Claud,” Ramona put in severely.
“What is?”
“The way you disparage the brains of birds. You know as well as I do that a number of them are remarkably well-developed.”
“True, my dear,” agreed Sir Claud, “a nicely taken point. So much of our idiom is slipshod and inaccurate, even if picturesque. Now, if I were to say ‘chicken-brained,’ I think you would agree that the epithet was justified.”
“Chicken?” remarked Edwin from the depths of his chair. “Again? Violet’s being a bit extravagant, isn’t she?”
“Chicken-brained, Edwin,” said Ramona, enunciating even more clearly than usual.
“Chicken brain? What a bizarre notion.” Intrigued, Edwin laid his puzzle on his lap and slewed around in his chair to face the room. “Chicken livers I have had frequently, even in Bugolaland. But never chicken brain. You’d need more than one to make a decent meal, I imagine. Perhaps you were thinking of calves’ brains.”
“I was thinking of nothing of the sort,” said Claud briskly. “George and I were discussing the quantum theory.”
“The connection with chicken brain,” said Edwin, “seems remote.” He set a pair of pince-nez on his hawk-like nose.
“I don’t understand a word of it,” said George plaintively. “Claud should discuss that sort of thing with Maud and Julian.”
“Peaches,” said Edwin. He looked sternly at Henry.
“I beg your pardon, sir?” said Henry.
“Peaches. Reminded me of Julian. Other way around, I should say. A hundred in bad shape, including English.”
Henry had just begun to say, “You mean, a hundred peaches went rotten,” when his eye fell on the crossword puzzle. “Ah,” he said, “peaches.”
“That’s right. 14 down.”
“Where does the English part of it come in?”
“E,” said Edwin.
“E?”
“Yes, of course. Recognized abbreviation for English. All the compilers use it. C is a hundred, of course. Roman numeral.”
“And the rest of the word is an anagram of shape?”
“Naturally. I had just filled it in when George mentioned Julian, and that reminded me.”
“Reminded you of what, sir?”
“By Jove!” Edwin exclaimed suddenly. He sounded really excited. “Listen to this, Claud. Push along with a pole…”
“What?”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. I haven’t finished. Push along with a pole? Well — er — it’s a theory.”
“Quantum!” exclaimed Claud.
“Quantum!” cried Edwin, filling in the letters in bold black ink on the checkered squares.
“Quantum!” agreed Henry, struck by the coincidence.
“Don’t understand a word of it,” said George.
“Humphrey,” said Edwin, “couldn’t abide peaches. Wouldn’t have them in the house. The boy was the same. Most peculiar. Runs in families. Of course, they had Christmas pudding in the east. I was just telling Mr. Tibbett. A hundred in bad shape…”
“Yes, I heard you,” said Claud. He walked over to his brother, looked down at the puzzle, and said, “Seventeen across is antidote.”
“How do you make that out?”
“A female relative, we hear, died, with a broken toe. But this should cure her.”
“Yes — yes, you’re right. Wait till I write it in. How remarkable. The man who compiled this puzzle must be an Irishman. The English say ‘Arnty’ rather than ‘Anty.’ ”
“Or an American,” said Claud. “Americans say ‘Anty.’ ”
“I don’t think so,” said Edwin, “No, I don’t think so. An American wouldn’t know what a quant pole was.”
“An Irishman might not know what a quant pole was either,” said George. “It’s an East Anglian term.”
“Which means,” said Edwin triumphantly, “that this puzzle was compiled either by an American or an Irishman who lives in East Anglia. In view of the use of C for a hundred, E for English, and D for died, I am certain that the fellow is Irish. Those abbreviations are not typically American.”
“What would an American be doing in East Anglia anyway?” said Ramona.
“Air bases,” said Claud. “Plenty of them in Norfolk.”
“Nonsense,” said Edwin. “Who ever heard of an American airman contributing to The Times? No, the man is Irish. The whole of his work proclaims his nationality.” There was a little pause, and then Edwin added, “Poor Aunt Dora. She would have enjoyed the funeral so much. Ah, well, we must trust that she will be with us in spirit.”
Henry had always, in his long career with the C.I.D., tried hard to be a conscientious officer. He had followed the procedures laid down; he had made the interminable and often fruitless routine inquiries; he had paid attention to detail; he had used and trusted the excellent facilities for scientific analysis available to Scotland Yard; and he knew that more murderers are caught by tracing a dry-cleaner’s label or analyzing the fluff in a trouser cuff than by all the haphazard intuition of fiction. Nevertheless, there remained his “nose.” And as he stood in the drawing room of Cregwell Grange, with a glass of pale sherry in his hand, watching the three Manciple brothers — so alike physically, so different in character and mentality, and yet all of them so indelibly Manciples — something clicked inside his brain. Whether it was intuition or deduction or observation, he could not be sure; perhaps it was an amalgam of all three. But a picture had presented itself to his mind, and it was not a picture he liked.
Not for the first time Henry found himself faced with the sort of decision which he loathed. His idea was only a hunch. He was under no obligation to continue with inquiries of any kind. He could go quietly back to London and forget the whole thing. On the other hand, the truth was the truth, and the future was the future, and if his idea should prove to be right…
The Manciples, of course, had no notion of Henry’s moment of revelation, nor of the inward struggle that followed it. So they all looked considerably surprised when he put his glass down on the table with a clatter and said, “I’m afraid I have to go now, Major Manciple.”
“Already? My dear fellow, it’s early. Vi will be back in a jiffy. Have another drink.”
Henry’s throat felt dry, and he would have welcomed a refilled glass; but he said, “No, I’m afraid I must go.”
“Well, we shall see you at the funeral. Two-thirty sharp at the Village church…”
“I’m afraid,” said Henry, “that I shan’t be able to come to the funeral after all. I’m very sorry.”
“Not come to the funeral?” Ramona sounded outraged. “But Mr. Tibbett, you said in the car…”
“And tea afterward,” added Edwin enticingly.
“Violet will be most upset,” said George.
“I really am sorry,” said Henry, “but I can’t. My time isn’t my own, you see. I’m a working man, and I have no more to do in Cregwell. I’m going back to London.”
***
So Henry Tibbett went back to London. But Emmy Tibbett stayed in Cregwell. Because, as she said, a promise was a promise, and she couldn’t let Mrs. Manciple down. Somebody had to cope with the Vicar’s weight, and that was that. She also went to the funeral and was the only person who cried. The tea afterward was excellent.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SATURDAY MORNING DAWNED with thin, horizontal streaks of cloud in the blue sky, and over a hundred or more breakfast tables in and around Cregwell there was anxious speculation. Would the fine weather hold for the Fête or were the elements planning a typical coup de théâtre in order to wreck Cregwell’s biggest day of the year?