Cyril Hare - An English Murder

Warbeck Hall is reputed to be the oldest inhabited house in Markshire. The muniment room in the north-eastern angle is probably its oldest part; it is certainly the coldest. Dr. Wenceslaus Bottwink, Ph.D. of Heidelberg, Hon.D.Litt. of Oxford, sometime Professor of Modern History in the University of Prague, corresponding member of half a dozen learned societies from Leyden to Chicago, felt the cold sink into his bones as he sat bowed over the pages of a pile of faded manuscripts, pausing now and then in his reading to transcribe passages from them in his angular foreign script. He was accustomed to cold. It had been cold in his student's lodgings in Heidelberg, colder yet in Prague in the winter of 1917, coldest of all in the concentration camps of the Third Reich. He was conscious of it, but so long as he could keep his fingers from growing too stiff to hold a pen, he did not allow it to affect his concentration. It was no more than a tiresome background to his work. The real obstacle that was worrying him at the moment was the atrocious handwriting in which the third Viscount Warbeck had annotated the confidential letters written to him by Lord Bute during the first three years of the reign of George m Those marginalia! Those crabbed, truncated interlineations! Dr. Bottwink had begun to feel a personal grievance against this eighteenth-century patrician. That a man who had been the recipient of such important information, the guardian of secrets of state of such inestimable value to succeeding generations, should have had sufficient sense of his duty to posterity to preserve them intact, and then should choose to record the most precious confidences of all in illegible scribbles—it was unbearable! It was entirely due to him that the investigation of the Warbeck papers had taken more than twice the time that had been set aside for it. And time was so precious to an ageing scholar whose health was not what it had been! It would be his fault if the work that was to lay bare the development of the English constitution between 1750 and 1784 remained incomplete at its author's death. Dr. Bottwink stared in angry bewilderment at the hieroglyphics before him and across two centuries muttered maledictions on Lord Warbeck and his ill-mended quill pen.

There was a discreet knock at the door, and, without waiting for an answer, a manservant came into the room. He was a stout, elderly man, with the non-committal expression common to butlers in good houses.

"I have brought you your tea, sir," he said, depositing a tray on the table in the middle of the room.

"Thank you, Briggs," said Dr. Bottwink. "That is very kind of you. You really should not take the trouble."

"It is no trouble, sir. I generally have a cup myself about this time, and this is only one flight of stairs up from the pantry."

Dr. Bottwink nodded gravely. He was sufficiently familiar with English customs to know that even today a butler does not normally give his reasons for serving tea to a guest in the house. It was precisely because he was not quite on the footing of a guest that Briggs found it necessary to explain why it was no trouble to climb a flight of stairs. Dr. Bottwink savoured the delicate social distinction with a certain wry pleasure.

"None the less, it is kind of you, Briggs," he insisted, in his careful English. "Even though we are such close neighbours. Between us, we are the only inhabitants of the original building of Warbeck Hall."

"Quite so, sir. This part of the house was actually built by Perkin Warbeck himself in the year——"

"Ah, no, Briggs!" Dr. Bottwink paused in the act of pouring himself a cup of tea to correct him. "You may say that sort of thing to visitors and tourists, but you must not say it to me . In fact, Perkin Warbeck is a myth—not historically speaking a myth, I mean, but in regard to Lord Warbeck's family. There is no connection at all. This branch of the Warbeck's has a quite different origin and a much more respectable one, I assure you. It is all in the documents up there." He nodded towards an oak press against the wall behind him.

"Well, sir," replied Briggs suavely, "that is what we say in Markshire, at any rate."

Whatever retort Dr. Bottwink was about to make, he thought better of it. Instead, he murmured quietly to himself, "What we say in Markshire today ..." and gulped his tea. Aloud he said, "This tea is very comforting, Briggs. It warms the cockles." He glanced a little proudly at the butler to see if his command of English idiom was appreciated.

Briggs permitted himself the ghost of a smile.

"Just so, sir," he said. "It is very cold. There seems to be snow in the air. To judge from the forecast, we may expect a white Christmas."

"Christmas!" Dr. Bottwink put down his cup. "Is it as late in the year as that? One loses all account of time in a place like this. Are we really near to Christmas?"

"The day after tomorrow, sir."

"I had no idea. I have been so much longer on this job than I intended. I have trespassed on Lord Warbeck's hospitality long enough as it is. Perhaps it will be inconvenient for him to keep me here at such a time. I should ask him."

"I took the liberty, sir, of raising the subject with his lordship just now when I brought him his tea, and he expressed the desire that if it met with your convenience you should remain as his guest over the festive season."

"That is very kind of him. I shall take the opportunity of thanking him personally, if he is able to see me. How is he today, by the way?"

"His lordship is better, thank you, sir. He is up, but not yet down."

"Up, but not yet down," repeated Dr. Bottwink thoughtfully. "Up, but not down! English is a beautifully expressive language!"

"Quite, sir."

"By the way, Briggs, you spoke just now of the festive season. I imagine that in present circumstances the festivities will be of a purely notional character?"

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"I mean, there will in fact be no junketings, no—no——" He snapped his fingers impatiently as the phrase eluded him.

"—No high jinks?"

"I am unable to say, sir, precisely what form the celebrations will take; but I think it may be assumed that Christmas will be quiet. His lordship has only invited a few members of his family."

"Oh! There are to be guests, then? Who, for example?"

"Sir Julius arrives this evening, sir, and tomorrow——"

"Sir Julius?"

"Sir Julius Warbeck, sir."

"But he is Chancellor of the Exchequer in the present government, is he not?"

"Precisely, sir."

"I thought, from my conversations with him, that Lord Warbeck's political views were of a very different character." "His politics, sir? Sir Julius is coming here, I understand, simply in his capacity as Lord Warbeck's first cousin."

Dr. Bottwink sighed.

"After all these years," he said, "I sometimes feel that I shall never understand England. Never."

"Will you be requiring me any further, sir?"

"I apologize, Briggs. My vulgar continental curiosity is keeping you from your work."

"Not at all, sir."

"Then if you can bear to remain in this ice-house a moment longer, I should be glad if you would tell me something else which is of some importance to me. How exactly do I stand in the house during these Christmas festivities?"

"Sir?"

"It would be as well that I should efface myself, would it not? Lord Warbeck has been good enough to treat me as his guest while I have been here, but naturally I should not expect to be on quite the same footing as members of his family—particularly while his lordship is up and not down. It is rather a delicate situation, eh, Briggs?"

The butler coughed.