Buried for Pleasure - Edmund Crispin

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get a look in.’

      ‘We shall see.’

      ‘You may confuse the issue a little, but you can’t affect it ultimately.’

      ‘We shall see.’

      ‘In fact, you’ll be lucky if you don’t lose your deposit. What exactly is your platform?’

      Fen’s confidence waned slightly. ‘Oh, prosperity,’ he said vaguely, ‘and exports and freedom and that kind of thing. Will you vote for me?’

      ‘I haven’t got a vote – too young. And anyway, I’m canvassing for the Conservatives.’

      ‘Oh, dear,’ said Fen.

      They fell silent. Trees and coppices loomed momentarily out of the darkness and were swept away again as though by a giant hand. The headlights gleamed on small flowers sleeping beneath the hedges, and the air of that incomparable summer washed in a warm tide through the open windows. Rabbits, their white scuts bobbing feverishly, fled away to shelter in deep, consoling burrows. And now the lane sloped gently downwards; ahead of them they could glimpse, for the first time, the scattered lights of the village…

      With one savage thrust the girl drove the foot-brake down against the boards. The car slewed, flinging them forward, then skidded, and at last came safely to a halt. And in the glare of its headlights a human form appeared.

      They blinked at it, unable to believe their eyes. It blinked back at them, to all appearance hardly less perturbed than they. Then it waved its arms, uttered a bizarre piping sound, and rushed to the hedge, where it forced its way painfully through a small gap and in another moment, bleeding from a profusion of scratches, was lost from view.

      Fen stared after it. ‘Am I dreaming?’ he demanded.

      ‘No, of course not. I saw it, too.’

      ‘A man – quite a large, young man?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘In pince-nez?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And with no clothes on at all?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘It seems a little odd,’ said Fen with restraint.

      But the girl had been pondering, and now her initial perplexity gave way to comprehension. ‘I know what it was,’ she said. ‘It was an escaped lunatic.’

      This explanation struck Fen as conventional, and he said as much.

      ‘No, no,’ she went on, ‘the point is that there actually is a lunatic asylum near here, at Sanford Hall.’

      ‘On the other hand, it might have been someone who’d been bathing and had his clothes stolen.’

      ‘There’s nowhere you can bathe on this side of the village. Besides, I could see that his hair wasn’t wet. And didn’t he look mad to you?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Fen without hesitation, ‘he did. I suppose,’ he added unenthusiastically, ‘that I ought really to get out and chase after him.’

      ‘He’ll be miles away by now. No, we’ll tell Sly – that’s our constable – when we get to the village, and that’s about all we can do.’

      So they drove on, preoccupied, into Sanford Angelorum, and presently came to ‘The Fish Inn’.

       Chapter Two

      Architecturally, ‘The Fish Inn’ did not seem particularly enterprising.

      It was a fairly large cube of grey stone, pierced symmetrically by narrow, mean-looking doors and windows, and surrounded by mysterious, indistinguishable heaps of what might be building materials. Its signboard, visible now in the light which filtered from the curtained windows of the bar, depicted murky subaqueous depths set about with sinuous water-weed; against this background a silvery, generalized marine creature, sideways on, was staring impassively at something off the edge of the board.

      From within the building, as Fen’s taxi drew up at the door, there issued noises suggestive of agitation, and periodically dominated by a vibrant feminine voice.

      ‘It sounds to me as if they’ve heard about the lunatic,’ said the girl. ‘I’ll come in with you, in case Sly’s there.’

      The inn proved to be more prepossessing inside than out. There was only one bar – the tiresome distinction of ‘lounge’ and ‘public’ having been so far excluded – but it was roomy and spacious, extending half the length and almost all the width of the house. The oak panelling, transferred evidently from some much older building, was carved in the linenfold pattern; faded but still cheerful chintz curtains covered the windows; a heavy beam traversed the ceiling; oak chairs and settles had their discomfort partially mitigated by flat cushions. The decoration consisted largely of indifferent nineteenth-century hunting prints, representing stuffed-looking gentlemen on the backs of fantastically long and emaciated horses; but in addition to these there was, over the fireplace, a canvas so large as to constitute something of a pièce de résistance.

      It was a seascape, which showed, in the foreground, a narrow strip of shore, up which some men in oilskins were hauling what looked like a primitive lifeboat. To the left was a harbour with a mole, behind which an angry sky suggested the approach of a tornado. And the rest of the available space, which was considerable, was taken up with a stormy sea, flecked with white horses, upon which a number of sailing-ships were proceeding in various directions.

      This spirited depiction, Fen was to learn, provided an inexhaustible topic of argument among the habitués of the inn. From the seaman’s point of view, no such scene had ever existed, or could ever exist, on God’s earth. But this possibility did not seem to have occurred to anyone at Sanford Angelorum. It was the faith of the inhabitants that if the artist had painted it thus, it must have been thus. And tortuous and implausible modes of navigation had consequently to be postulated in order to explain what was going on. These, it is true, were generally couched in terms which by speakers and auditors alike were only imperfectly understood; but the average Englishman will no more admit ignorance of seafaring matters than he will admit ignorance of women.

      ‘No, no; I tell ’ee, that schooner, ’er’s luffin’ on the lee shore.’

      ‘What about the brig, then? What about the brig?’

      ‘That’s no brig, Fred, ’er’s a ketch.’

      ‘’Er wouldn’t be fully rigged, not if ’er was luffing.’

      ‘Look ’ere, take that direction as north, see, and that means the wind’s nor’-nor’-east.’

      ‘Then ’ow the ’ell d’you account for that wave breaking over the mole?’

      ‘That’s a current.’

      ‘Current, ’e says. Don’t be bloody daft, Bert, ’ow can a wave be a current?’

      ‘Current. That’s a good one.’

      At the moment when Fen first set eyes on this object, however, it had temporarily lost its hold on the interest of the inn’s clients. This was due to the presence of an elderly lady in a ginger wig who, surrounded by a circle of listeners, was sitting in a collapsed posture on a chair, engaged, between sips of brandy, in vehement and imprecise narration.

      ‘Frightened?’ she was saying. ‘Nearly fell dead in me tracks, I did. There ’e were, all white and nekked, lurking be’ind that clump of gorse by Sweeting’s Farm. And jist as I passes by, out ’e jumps at me and “Boo!” ’e says, “Boo!”’

      At this, an oafish youth giggled feebly.

      ‘And what ’appened then?’ someone demanded.

      ‘I

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