‘Air-eye-awf,’ shouted the voice, and round the far corner of the Square came a horse-drawn cart, nodding with tulips and led by a red-faced man. He passed No. 1 and looked up.
‘Any time. All fresh,’ he bawled directly at Mr Whipplestone who hastily withdrew.
(His big red glass goblet in the bow window, filled with tulips.)
Mr Whipplestone was a man who did not indulge in histrionics but under the lash of whatever madness now possessed him he did, as he made to leave the window, flap the air with two dismissive palms. The gesture brought him face to face with a couple, man and woman.
‘I beg your pardon,’ they all said and the small man added. ‘Sorry, sir. We just heard the window open and thought we’d better see.’ He glanced at the youth. ‘Order to view?’ he asked.
‘Yar.’
‘You,’ said Mr Whipplestone, dead against his will, ‘must be the – the upstairs – ah – the –’
‘That’s right, sir,’ said the man. His wife smiled and made a slight bob. They were rather alike, being round-faced, apple-cheeked and blue-eyed and were aged, he thought, about forty-five.
‘You are – I understand – ah – still – ah –’
‘We’ve stayed on to set things to rights, sir, Mr Sheridan’s kindly letting us remain until the end of the week. Gives us a chance to find another place, sir, if we’re not wanted here.’
‘I understand you would be – ah –’
‘Available, sir?’ they both said quickly and the man added, ‘We’d be glad to stay on if the conditions suited. We’ve been here with the outgoing tenant six years, sir, and very happy with it. Name of Chubb, sir, references on request and the owner, Mr Sheridan, below, would speak for us.’
‘Quite, quite quite!’ said Mr Whipplestone in a tearing hurry. ‘I – ah – I’ve come to no conclusion. On the contrary. Idle curiosity, really. However. In the event – the remote event of my – be very glad – but so far – nothing decided.’
‘Yes, sir, of course. If you’d care to see upstairs, sir?’
‘What!’ shouted Mr Whipplestone as if they’d fired a gun at him. ‘Oh. Thank you. Might as well, perhaps. Yes.’
‘Excuse me, sir. I’ll just close the window.’
Mr Whipplestone stood aside. The man laid his hand on the french window. It was a brisk movement but it stopped as abruptly as if a moving film had turned into a still. The hand was motionless, the gaze was fixed, the mouth shut like a trap.
Mr Whipplestone was startled. He looked down into the street and there, returning from his constitutional and attended by his dog and his bodyguard, was the Ambassador for Ng’ombwana. It was at him that the man, Chubb, stared. Something impelled Mr Whipplestone to look at the woman. She had come close and she too, over her husband’s shoulder, stared at the Ambassador.
The next moment the figures animated. The window was shut and fastened and Chubb turned to Mr Whipplestone with a serviceable smile.
‘Shall I show the way, sir?’ asked Chubb.
The upstairs flat was neat, clean and decent. The little parlour was a perfectly respectable and rather colourless room, except perhaps for an enlarged photograph of a round-faced girl of about sixteen which attracted attention on account of its being festooned in black ribbon and flanked on the table beneath it by two vases of dyed immortelles. Some kind of china medallion hung from the bottom edge of the frame. Another enlarged photograph of Chubb in uniform and Mrs Chubb in bridal array, hung on the wall.
All the appointments on this floor, it transpired, were the property of the Chubbs. Mr Whipplestone was conscious that they watched him anxiously. Mrs Chubb said: ‘It’s home to us. We’re settled like. It’s such a nice part, the Capricorns.’ For an unnerving moment he thought she was going to cry.
He left the Chubbs precipitately, followed by the youth. It was a struggle not to re-enter the drawing-room but he triumphed and shot out of the front door to be immediately involved in another confrontation.
‘Good morning,’ said a man on the area steps. ‘You’ve been looking at my house, I think? My name is Sheridan.’
There was nothing remarkable about him at first sight, unless it was his almost total baldness and his extreme pallor. He was of middle height, unexceptionally dressed and well-spoken. His hair, when he had had it, must have been dark since his eyes and brows and the wires on the backs of his pale hands were black. Mr Whipplestone had a faint, fleeting and oddly uneasy impression of having seen him before. He came up the area steps and through the gate and faced Mr Whipplestone who, in politeness, couldn’t do anything but stop where he was.
‘Good morning,’ Mr Whipplestone said. ‘I just happened to be passing. An impulse.’
‘One gets them,’ said Mr Sheridan, ‘in the spring.’ He spoke with a slight lisp.
‘So I understand,’ said Mr Whipplestone, not stuffily but in a definitive tone. He made a slight move.
‘Did you approve?’ asked Mr Sheridan casually.
‘Oh, charming, charming,’ Mr Whipplestone said, lightly dismissing it.
‘Good. So glad. Good morning, Chubb, can I have a word with you?’ said Sheridan.
Mr Whipplestone escaped. The wan youth followed him to the corner. Mr Whipplestone was about to dismiss him and continue alone towards Baronsgate. He turned back to thank the youth and there was the house, in full sunlight now, with its evergreen swags and its absurd garden. Without a word he wheeled left and left again and reached Able, Virtue & Sons three yards in advance of his escort. He walked straight in and laid his card before the plump lady.
‘I should like the first refusal,’ he said.
From that moment it was a foregone conclusion. He didn’t lose his head. He made sensible enquiries and took proper steps about the lease and the plumbing and the state of repair. He consulted his man of business, his bank manager and his solicitor. It is questionable whether, if any of these experts had advised against the move, he would have paid the smallest attention but they did not and, to his own continuing astonishment, at the end of a fortnight Mr Whipplestone moved in.
He wrote cosily to his married sister in Devonshire: ‘– you may be surprised to hear of the change. Don’t expect anything spectacular, it’s a quiet little backwater full of old fogies like me. Nothing in the way of excitement or “happenings” or violence or beastly demonstrations. It suits me. At my age one prefers the uneventful life and that,’ he ended, ‘is what I expect to enjoy at No. 1, Capricorn Walk.’
Prophecy was not Mr Whipplestone’s strong point.
III
‘That’s all jolly fine,’ said Superintendent Alleyn. ‘What’s the Special Branch think it’s doing? Sitting on its fat bottom waving Ng’ombwanan flags?’
‘What did he say, exactly?’ asked Mr Fox. He referred to their Assistant Commissioner.
‘Oh, you know!’ said Alleyn. ‘Charm and sweet reason were the wastewords of his ween.’
‘What’s a ween, Mr Alleyn?’
‘I’ve not the remotest idea. It’s a quotation. And don’t ask me from where.’
‘I only wondered,’ said Mr Fox mildly.
‘I don’t even know,’ Alleyn continued moodily, ‘how it’s spelt. Or what it means, if it comes to that.’
‘If it’s Scotch it’ll