Mr. Sheringham Lectures on Neo-Platonism
“Alec,” interrupted Roger plaintively, “if you say one more word to me
about bulls, cows, or any other farmyard impedimenta, I shall burst at
once into loud tears. I warn you.”
They were walking once more along the white, dusty road; but the
springy exhilaration of the outward journey had gone out of their
steps. A short but pithy conversation with the ancient rustic,
conducted mostly in ear-splitting yells, had speedily shown the
crestfallen Roger the precise nature of the wild goose (or should it
be wild bull?) he had been chasing. Alec, it might be noticed in
passing, was not being at all kind about it.
“If ever anything could have been more obvious!” Roger pursued
mournfully. “My reasoning was perfectly sound. It almost looks as if
Mrs. William and that idiot of a landlord were trying deliberately to
deceive me. Why couldn’t they have said straight out that the
disgusting animal was a bull and have done with it?”
“I don’t expect you gave them a chance,” Alec remarked with an
undisguised grin.
Roger gave him a dignified look and relapsed into silence.
But not for long. “So here we are, back again at the precise point we
had reached before we ever came across that miserable piece of paper,”
he resumed unhappily. “A whole valuable hour wasted.”
“You’ve had some exercise, at any rate,” Alec pointed out kindly.
“Jolly good for you, too.”
“The point is, what are we going to do next?”
“Go back to tea,” said Alec promptly. “And talking about wasting
valuable time, I believe that’s all we’re doing at all with regard to
this business. If such a clear clue as that fizzles out in this way,
why shouldn’t the whole thing be equally a mare’s nest? I don’t
believe there ever _was_ a murder, after all. Stanworth committed
suicide.”
“Let’s see,” Roger went on, completely disregarding this interruption,
“we were setting out to get on the trail of a Mysterious Stranger,
weren’t we? Well, that’s where we shall have to take the thing up
from. Luckily I kept my wits about me enough to put a few questions
about strangers to those two, and we drew a blank. We will now visit
the station.”
“Oh, no!” Alec groaned. “Tea!”
“Station!” returned Roger firmly; and station it was.
But even the station did not prove any more fruitful. On the plea of
making inquiries for a friend, Roger succeeded in extracting with some
difficulty, from a very bucolic porter, the information that only
half-a-dozen trains in a day stopped there (the place was indeed
little more than a halt), and none at all after seven o’clock in the
evening. The earliest in the morning was soon after six, and no
passengers had been picked up so far as he knew. No, he hadn’t seen a
stranger arrive yesterday; leastways, not to notice one like.
“After all, it’s only what we might have expected,” Roger remarked
philosophically, as they set off homewards at last. “If the fellow
came by train at all, he’d probably go to Elchester. He’s no fool, as
we knew very well.”
Alec, now that the prospect of tea and shade was definitely before
him, was ready to discuss the matter rather more amicably.
“You’re quite sure now that he is a stranger, then?” he asked. “You’ve
given up the idea that it’s anybody actually in this neighbourhood?”
“I’m nothing of the sort,” Roger retorted. “I’m not sure of any
blessed thing about him, except that he wears large boots, is strong,
and is no ordinary criminal; and that he corresponds closely with the
quite distinct mental picture I had formed of the late lamented Mr.
John Prince. He may be a stranger to the neighbourhood, and he may
not. We know that he was still in it during the morning, because he
managed to communicate with the occupants of the household. But as for
anything more definite than that, we simply can’t say, not knowing his
motive. By Jove, I do wish we could discover that! It would narrow
things down immensely.”
“I tell you something that never seems to have occurred to us,” Alec
remarked suddenly. “Why shouldn’t it have been just an ordinary
burglar, who got so panic-stricken when he found he’d actually killed
his householder that he hadn’t the nerve to complete what he came for
and simply hurried off? That seems to me as probable as anything, and
it fits the facts perfectly.”
“Ye-es; we did rather touch on the burglar idea at the very beginning,
didn’t we? Do you realise that it was only five hours ago, by the way?
It seems more like five weeks. But that was before the curious
behaviour of all these other people impressed itself upon us.”
“Upon you, you mean. I still think you’re making ever so much too much
of that side of it. There’s probably some perfectly simple
explanation, if we only knew it. I suppose you mean Jefferson and Mrs.
Plant?”
“_And_ Lady Stanworth!”
“And Lady Stanworth, then. Well, dash it all, you can’t expect them to
take us into their confidence, can you? And that is the only way in
which their part can be cleared up. Not that it seems to me in the
least worth clearing up. I don’t see that it could possibly have
anything to do with the murder. Good Lord, it’s practically the same
thing as accusing them of the murder itself! I ask you, my dear chap,
_can_ you imagine either Mrs. Plant or Lady Stanworth—we’ll leave
Jefferson out for the moment—actually plotting old Stanworth’s murder!
It’s really too ludicrous. You ought to have more sense.”
“This particular topic always seems to excite you, Alexander,”
observed Roger mildly.
“Well, I mean, it’s so dashed absurd. You can’t really believe
anything of the sort.”
“Perhaps I don’t. Anyhow, we’ll shelve it till something more definite
crops up. It’s quite hot enough already, without making each other
still more heated. Look here, let’s give the whole thing a rest till
we get back. It will clear our brains. I’ll give you a short lecture
on the influence of the Platonic ethics on Hegelian philosophy
instead, with a few sidelights on neo-Platonism.” Which, in spite of
Alec’s spirited protests, he at once proceeded to do.
In this way the time passed pleasantly and instructively till they had
passed the lodge gates once more.
“So you see,” concluded Roger happily, “that while in mediæval
philosophy this mysticism is in powerful and ultimately successful
opposition to rationalistic dogmatism, with its contemptuous disregard
for all experience, the embryonic science of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries was actually in itself a logical development of
neo-Platonism in this same opposition to barren rationalism.”
“Was it?” said Alec gloomily, registering a secret but none the less
fervent prayer that he might never hear the word neo-Platonism again
as long as he lived. “I see.”
“You do? Good. Then let us seek out and have speech with friend
William.”
“Are you going to give him a short lecture on rationalistic
dogmatism?” Alec asked carefully. “Because if so, I’m going indoors.”
“I’m afraid it would be wasted on William,” Roger replied seriously.
“William, I feel sure, is a dogmatist of the most bigoted type if ever
there was one; and to lecture to him on the futility of dogma would be
as ineffective as to harangue a hippopotamus on the subject of
drawing-room etiquette. No, I just want to sound William a little. Not
that I think it will really be of much help to us, but just at present
I’m turning every stone I can see.”
In due course William was run to earth in a large greenhouse. He was
mounted unhappily on an exceedingly rickety pair of steps and engaged
in tying up a vine. On seeing Roger he hastily descended to firm
ground. William did not believe in taking chances.
“Good-afternoon, William,” said Roger brightly.
“Arternoon, sir,” William responded suspiciously.
“I’ve just been having a chat with your wife, William.”
William grunted noncommittally.
“I was telling her that a friend of mine, whom I expected to come up
to the house to see me last night, never turned up; and I was
wondering if you’d seen anything of him down at the lodge.”
William ostentatiously busied himself with a small plant.
“Never see’d no one,” he observed with decision.
“No? Never mind, then. It doesn’t really matter. That’s an interesting
job you’ve got on hand, William. You take a plant out of its pot,
sniff its roots and put it back again; is that it? Now what operation
do you call that in the science of horticulture?”
William hastily relinquished the plant and glowered at his
interlocutor.
“Some folks mayn’t have no work to do,” he remarked darkly; “but other
folks ’ave.”
“Meaning yourself, I take it?” Roger said approvingly. “That’s right.
Work away. Nothing like it, is there? Keeps you cheerful and bright
and contented. Great thing, work, I agree with you.”
A flicker of interest passed across William’s countenance. “What did
that there Mr. Stanworth want to shoot hisself for, eh?” he demanded
suddenly.
“I don’t know, to tell you the truth,” said Roger, somewhat taken
aback at the unexpectedness of this query. “Why, have you got any
ideas about it?”
“I don’t ’old with it meself,” said William primly. “Not with
sooeycide.”
“You’re absolutely right, William,” Roger replied warmly. “If more
people were like you, there’d be—there’d be less suicides,
undoubtedly. It’s an untidy habit, to say the least.”
“It ain’t acting right,” William pursued firmly. “That’s what it
ain’t.”
“You put it in a nutshell, William; it isn’t. In fact, it’s acting all
wrong. By the way, William, somebody or other was telling me that a
stranger had been seen about the grounds during the last day or two.
You noticed him by any chance?”
“Stranger? What sort of a stranger?”
“Oh, the usual sort; a head and four pairs of fingers, you know. This
particular one, they said, was a rather large man. Have you seen a
rather large strange man round the house lately?”
William cogitated deeply.
“I ’ave an’ all.”
“Have you, though? When?”
William cogitated again. “It ’ud be a matter of ha’-past eight last
night,” he announced at last. “Ha’-past eight it ’ud be, as near as
anything. I was a-settin’ out in front o’ the lodge, an’ up he walks,
bold as brass, an’ nods at me an’ goes on up the drive.”
Roger exchanged glances with Alec.
“Yes, William?” he said warmly. “A man you’d never seen before? A
fairly large man?”
“A very large man,” William corrected meticulously.
“A very large man. Excellent! Go on. What happened?”
“Well, I says to the missus, ‘Oo’s that?’ I says. ‘A-walkin’ up the
drive as if he owned the place.’” William pondered. “‘As if he _owned_
the place,’ I says,” he repeated firmly.
“And a very good thing to say, too. Well?”
“‘Oh, ’im?’ she says. ‘’E’s the cook’s brother,’ she says. ‘I was
interjuiced to ’im at Helchester the other day,’ she says. ‘At least,
she _says_ ’e’s ’er brother,’ she says.” A strange rasping noise in
his throat appeared to indicate that William was amused. “‘At least,
she _says_ ’e’s ’er brother,’ she says,” he repeated with much
enjoyment.
“Oh!” Roger exclaimed, somewhat dashed. “Oh, did she? And did you see
him again, William?”
“That I did. Back ’e come nigh on a quarter of a hower later, an’ cook
with ’im, a-hangin’ on ’is arm like what she ought to have known
better not to ’ave done,” William rejoined, suddenly stern. “I don’t
’old with it meself, I don’t,” added this severe moralist. “Not at ’er
age, I don’t.” His expression relaxed reminiscently. “‘At least, she
_says_ ’e’s ’er brother,’ she says,” he added, with a sudden rasp.
“I see,” said Roger. “Thank you, William. Well, I suppose we mustn’t
interrupt you any more. Come on, Alec.”
Slowly and sadly they made their way back to the house.
“William got his own back then, if he only knew it,” Roger said with a
wry smile. “I did think for a moment that we might be getting at
something at last.”
“You really are a hell of an optimist, Roger,” Alec observed
wonderingly.
Their path took them past the library, and as they reached the bed in
which the footprints had been discovered Roger instinctively paused.
The next moment he darted forward and stared with incredulous eyes at
the bed.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed, clutching Alec’s arm and pointing with an
excited finger. “Look! They’ve gone, both of them! They’ve been
smoothed out!”
“Great Scott, so they have!”
The two gazed at each other with wide eyes.
“So Jefferson _did_ hear what we were talking about!” Roger almost
whispered. “I have an idea that things are going to get rather
exciting very soon, after all.”