Cyril Hare - An English Murder

So far as the rest of the inhabitants of Warbeck Hall were concerned, the coming of the rain brought nothing but a blessed sense of relief. They stood together at the dining-room window, watching the white world outside transform itself before their eyes. The smooth coverlet that had masked lawns and flower-beds was already pitted by little dark holes. Vague hummocks of snow revealed themselves as rose-bushes. Wherever there was a depression in the ground, a dark, shallow pool began to form, widening and deepening as they looked. The air was filled with the heavy plash of water falling in cascades from the gutters of the roof.

"The pipes are still choked with snow," remarked Julius. "The attics will be all flooded at this rate." But he made no move.

"I trust that the muniment room is watertight," said Dr. Bottwink. "It would be a major disaster to scholarship if anything were to happen to the manuscripts there." But even this thought could not tear him from the window.

"Isn't it a wonderful sight?" Mrs. Carstairs breathed. "It seems wrong to say so after all that has happened, but I feel almost happy at this moment."

"Paradoxically enough," said Dr. Bottwink, "now that the whole visible world seems to be dissolving in water, I feel very much as the passengers on the Ark must have felt when the flood began to abate." He sighed and added, "It is unfortunate that we shall not, like them, emerge into a world in which all other life is extinct, but instead into one very thickly peopled with highly inquisitive individuals, who will put to us a great number of questions to which at the moment we have no answers."

Nothing, Julius's expression said, could have been in worse taste than this observation. Its depressing realism certainly had the effect of stifling further conversation. For some time, however, they continued to stand looking out at the fascinating spectacle as the snow crumbled like a sand-castle before an advancing tide. Then Camilla uttered a huge yawn.

"God! I'm tired," she said. "I'm going up to my room to lie down. I think I could sleep now."

Not long after she had gone the three watchers who were left became aware that the light in the sky was growing stronger. The clouds were thinning, the rain diminished to a mere drizzle, and there was a glimpse of a pale, dispirited sun.

"I'm going out," Julius suddenly announced.

"Out!" exclaimed Mrs. Carstairs. "But, Sir Julius, that's impossible!"

"Nonsense! One can't stay shut up in here for ever. I want a breath of fresh air."

"You will be up to your knees in water before you have gone a yard," Mrs. Carstairs objected.

"I shall borrow a pair of waders. Briggs will know where to find them. I shall stick to the drive, of course. If I can, I shall make my way towards the village. I may even be able to get across the bridge, and if so, I can send for help. It's worth trying anyway. At the worst, I shall have had some exercise."

"You will be careful, won't you?" said Mrs. Carstairs anxiously. "After all that has happened, we can't face any more——" Her voice trembled. "—any more disasters. And your life is very precious to the country."

"I can take care of myself," said Julius in a confident tone. "Ah, Briggs, there you are!"

"Yes, Sir Julius, I had come to clear away luncheon. I am afraid it has been much delayed, but——"

"Never mind it now. I'm going out, and I want you to find me his lordship's waders. The thigh-length pair will do. ..."

The two men left the room together.

"The new Lord Warbeck seems to be very cheerful and energetic all at once," said Dr. Bottwink, when he had gone. "It's the reaction, no doubt. By the way, madame, I observed that you continued to address him as Sir Julius. Is that correct?"

Quite correct—until the funeral.

"I am obliged. There are nuances in these matters which are not easy for a foreigner to understand."

"I think it is a great pity that you foreigners concern yourselves so much with what is out of date in this country," said Mrs. Carstairs severely. "As I think I have pointed out to you before, we are living in an advanced, democratic state, far more advanced in all the things that matter than any of your so-called people's democracies. Such things as titles and peerages are interesting relics of the past, no more, and you would be far better occupied in studying our unrivalled system of social welfare, for example, than in brooding over trifles like the proper way to address a fellow citizen."

"I stand corrected," said Dr. Bottwink humbly. "I am, of course, aware that England has progressed in many ways towards egalitarianism. It is interesting, and perhaps at this moment pertinent, to observe that you have just the other day abolished the privilege of peers to be tried for murder by a different process of law to that employed for us humbler folk. None the less, to an outsider like myself, it would appear that in some respects you are still under the power of the dead hand of the past. I encountered a most interesting example of this only this morning. Perhaps you would like to hear it."

Dr. Bottwink suddenly realized that he was talking to an empty room. He sighed and turned away. In a few moments he was once more climbing the steep ascent to the muniment room where the unchanging past awaited him with all its treasures.

Wearing an old fishing hat of his cousin's, a mackintosh several sizes too large for him and a pair of waders and stout brogues, Julius splashed his way down the drive. Mud-coloured slush alternated with patches of soft snow into which he sank over his knees. The land-drains were choked and the ditches had spilled over into large yellow pools wherever there was a depression. But towards the farm, in the direction which he was taking, the general trend of the land was downhill; so that he was in effect walking most of the way along the bed of a shallow, fast-flowing river, travelling downstream. From his right, where the ground rose steeply, the melting snow was discharging a series of rivulets which had already scored deep channels in the gravel surface of the drive. To his left the overspill of water was plunging down to turn the meadow below into a quagmire. The snow was disappearing with astonishing rapidity. Already, he could see, there were one or two bare patches on the hillside to the right. He was puzzled that they showed up brown and not green, until, at a nearer approach, they proved to be composed, not of bare earth, but of hordes of famished rabbits, which had gathered there to feed on the newly exposed grass.

It was not easy walking, hampered as he was in his heavy gear, but Julius made good progress until he came in sight of the farm on his left. He did not approach the house but held straight forward towards the village. A man came out into the farmyard and shouted something as he passed. Julius waved to him and pressed on unheeding. He was sweating hard with the unaccustomed exercise. His face was scarlet with exertion. If it was a breath of fresh air that he had come out to seek, he had already achieved his purpose; but he plunged steadily onward, as though his life depended on it.

Rounding the farmyard wall, he was confronted with a short slope beyond which, he knew, the way led downwards again to the river and the village beyond. He saw at once what the man at the farm had been trying to tell him. The wind of the last two days had piled the snow in a deep drift against the slope, and here, before the advent of the thaw, the farm-hands had endeavoured to cut their way through to the outer world. He found himself walking up a narrow passage between banks of snow, higher than himself. They were oozing moisture at their base, but still stood, solid and compressed, hardly as yet affected by the rise in the temperature. It was slippery underfoot, where the snow had been hardened to ice by the coming and going of the men working there. Soon he was at the end of the cleared passage and had reached the point where work had been abandoned. Here his troubles really began. He was confronted with a wall of snow—not so very high, after all, three or four feet at the most, but a wall of rotting snow, quite different from the man-made banks which he had just traversed, a wall up which it was impossible to climb, through which it was well-nigh impossible to pass.