A flat clerical hat, battered and of a type no longer much favoured by ecclesiastical outfitters, had been thrown carelessly down in the porch; it was to be conjectured, therefore, that Mrs Ulstrup was in process of receiving spiritual advice. And a voice, resonant, cheerful and eminently of the pulpit, spoke from within. “Just on the boil,” said the voice. “Ready in a jiffy.”
Appleby knocked and the door was opened – or rather manipulated, for it seemed to be possessed of only one hinge – by a red-faced, white-haired clergyman standing some six feet four in badly cracked shoes. “Come in,” said the clergyman; “come in, by all means. I don’t know you from Adam – though I’ve always had a shrewd idea, mark you, that Adam would be eminently recognisable if one passed him in the street. Bother this door! I must tell the village carpenter that here is something very like a work of corporal mercy. A part of the country this, gentlemen, in which opportunity for Works fairly abounds. A wise dispensation, no doubt, since we come rather noticeably short at present in the matter of Faith. Come in. Smith is my name and this is Hodge, my cat.” He pointed to a large brindled creature sedately posed in the crook of his arm. “I was just going to butter the buns.”
They entered what proved to be a stone-flagged kitchen, oddly poised between cosiness and dilapidation. The Reverend Mr Smith appeared to be labouring with some success on behalf of the former quality; his professional outfit consisted of half a pound of butter, a packet of tea and several paper bags. And his voice boomed out again amid much chinking of crockery. “At least you look respectable – but are you gay? Our hostess – who will presently appear – is none too generously dowered either way, I am sorry to say. At a guess” – and Mr Smith glanced up fleetingly from his operations – “I should say that you were a couple of policemen come to enquire into a theft of poultry. If so, I advise you to see that boy who stokes Grope’s engine. I’ve had an eye on him for some time. Not a bad boy, mind you, but decidedly given to what you might call collective farming. Indeed, I don’t know that I could point to a more collective boy in the whole district.” And Mr Smith, chuckling hugely, lifted the kettle from the hob.
“What,” asked Appleby, “of Hannah Hoobin’s boy?”
“Went to work at Tiffin Place,” said Mr Smith. “Didn’t like the job, and therefore left the district. I don’t know why your friend should look so uncomfortable about it.”
Appleby glanced at Mutlow. There was no doubt that the Hoobin affair had been kept altogether quieter than was proper, and that Colonel Pike’s assistant was now feeling uneasy on this score. There was also no doubt that Mr Smith was a person of observation and intelligence – the first intelligent person, Appleby reflected, that he had met since saying goodbye to Judith that morning. And – since observation will go a mile while gossip travels a furlong – he was eminently a man to cultivate. “You are quite right about our calling,” Appleby said. “This is Inspector Mutlow of the Yatter police; my name is Appleby, and I am a detective inspector from Scotland Yard.”
“Can you butter scones?” Mr Smith appeared not at all impressed by this information. “Capital. Both halves, if you please; and don’t stick them together again. Mrs Ulstrup is naturally something of a connoisseur in butter. Mr Mutlow, I will trouble you to put that plum cake on a plate. The plate with the cow. I have sometimes pleased myself with the fancy that our friend’s kitchen is like a Hindu domestic interior – if Hindus have domestic interiors. The sacred animal is everywhere in evidence, as you will have observed.”
This was unchallengeable. Cows and calves decorated such crockery as was in evidence; two large china cows, such as used to distinguish the windows of old-fashioned dairies, stood on each side of the fireplace; smaller china cows lined the mantelpiece; and on the walls hung two large oleographs, presumably after Cuyp, in which cows, milkmaids, pails, joint-stools and enormous, narrow-necked jars were built up into opulent cylindrical compositions. Appleby surveyed the collection with interest. “Can you tell me,” he asked, “if all this is a recent development with Mrs Ulstrup?”
“Dear me, no! It is innate, Mr Appleby – or virtually so. As the Roman twins were suckled by a she-wolf, I have sometimes supposed that Mrs Ulstrup must have been suckled by a Friesian or a Jersey. And since girlhood she has been celebrated in this part of the countryside for her skill in vacimulgence.” Here Mr Smith paused and looked sharply at Appleby.
“I gathered she has been a milkmaid.”
“Capital!” Much pleased with this little test of the literacy of the Metropolitan Police Force, Mr Smith lifted the lid from the teapot and stirred vigorously with a spoon. “I maintain,” he said, “that it assists the infusion. Now, where were we. Ah, milking, to be sure. You will remember that Horace in the Georgics – But stay! I think I hear Mrs Ulstrup coming from her room. As King Duncan said of an altogether more formidable lady: See, see our honoured hostess. Inspector Mutlow, be so kind as to open the door.”
From some room beyond the kitchen there had come a very slow step, and now Mutlow opened the door to reveal an elderly woman of ample proportions who paused on the threshold. Mrs Ulstrup, framed against a further vista of bovine portraiture on the wall of what appeared to be her bedroom, raised one foot from the ground and then slowly put it down again where it had stood; after this she turned her head very gradually from side to side – rather as if performing some exercise in a beauty manual; then she put out her tongue and contrived to lick her nose; and, finally, she simply stood where she was, rhythmically moving her jaws. Just as it was evident (once more) that Dr Watson imagined himself upon a battlefield of the Civil War, so was it evident that Mrs Ulstrup imagined herself in the middle of a nice daisied and buttercupped field. The melancholy fact was patent. The lady believed herself to be a cow.
“Excellent!” said Mr Smith, and looked as delighted as if the door had opened upon a dryad of the grove. “Come along, my good soul. Admirably buttered scones and not at all a bad plum cake.” And then, since Mrs Ulstrup showed no sign of stirring, “Coop!” said Mr Smith vigorously; “coop, coop!” And slowly Mrs Ulstrup responded. Heavily, on a slightly zigzag course, and dipping her head at each step, she crossed the room and sat down by the fire. Mr Smith began pouring tea. “What might be termed a vacillating nature,” he said. “Now, if the old lady had devoted her life to Sturrock’s goats, no doubt she would have turned capricious.”
Mutlow, upon whom learned little jokes were not likely to make any impression, picked up the scones and walked over to Mrs Ulstrup. “Seasonable weather,” he said encouragingly.
Mrs Ulstrup, who had been exercising her lower jaw in a slow rotary motion, reared her head slightly in air and once more licked her nose.
Mutlow frowned. “And nice,” he said more severely, “to see a little bit of sunshine.”
Mrs Ulstrup blankly stared.
Mutlow took a deep breath and his voice became frankly threatening. “Turnips ought to do grandly,” he said.
Widely and dramatically, Mrs Ulstrup opened her mouth. Then she inserted a scone, closed her jaws upon it, and fell to her rotary manner of chewing once more.
Mr Smith took a slab of plum cake. “I fear,” he said, “that Mrs Ulstrup will not have a great deal to say to us. Indeed, I must admit that even the common courtesies of speech have of late begun to fail her. But it is often so with people of ruminative habit.” Mr Smith chuckled again at this, placed a large cup of tea before Mrs Ulstrup, and patted her affectionately on the nose. Whereupon Mrs Ulstrup made a contented noise and took another scone.
“I understood,” said Appleby, “that the – the disorder we are witnessing had its origin quite recently, in a distressing experience to which Mrs Ulstrup was subjected at Tiffin Place. But it appears from what you say, and from the decorations and embellishments of the house–”
“Quite so, quite so.” Mr Smith bit with zest into his plum cake, and nodded a vigorously affirmative head. “Mrs Ulstrup’s misfortune – for so, I suppose, we must regard it – has been much exacerbated since her return from Tiffin Place. But she has always been this way inclined. I have sometimes wondered whether there is not some anatomical abnormality. Looking down from the pulpit – for Mrs Ulstrup is an excellent churchwoman, I am happy to say – and viewing her ceaseless masticatory activity, it has occurred to me to wonder whether perhaps there might not be two stomachs?” And Mr Smith looked enquiringly at Appleby, as if out of a great scientific innocence.
“This bovine behaviour,” said Appleby, “is more likely to be the reflection of some conflict in the unconscious mind.”
“Is that so?” Mr Smith was largely impressed.
“A traumatic incident in the early years of childhood–”
“Dear me! Like little Harpad.”
“Little Harpad?” Appleby was puzzled.
“You will read about him in a fellow called Freud – a wonderful fellow, though as much an artist as a scientist, I should be inclined to say. This little Harpad, when more or less a baby, had an adventure in the fowl-yard, and for years afterwards he would do little save crow like a cock. Now, Mrs Ulstrup appears to fall roughly within the same category of human behaviour, does she not? So what you say about the Unconscious interests me very much. What, Mr Mutlow, is the Unconscious?” Mr Smith reached for the kettle and watered the teapot. “What we think of as the Unconscious is very much what the Romantics thought of as the Child – but, of course, stood on its head. Now, a child, whether standing on its head or not, should be treated firmly and kindly – which is no more than the wisdom of one’s grandmother or one’s nurse. I would be a little more precise, however, and postulate a sort of wary indulgence. And there you have the rules, too, for coping with the Unconscious.” Mr Smith took up a knife and cut the whole remaining plum cake into large chunks. “Wary indulgence, Mr Appleby – and plenty of plum cake. Be so kind as to pass Mrs Ulstrup the plate.”
Appleby did so and Mrs Ulstrup, rather as if she were a creature of the circus, neatly helped herself with her forehoof. “But surely,” said Appleby, “her condition had changed suddenly for the worse when she came back from Tiffin Place?”
“Most decidedly so. And I see you know something of the affair. Sir Mulberry Farmer had a beautiful white cow – a South Ham, I believe – which he had great hopes would prove a champion milker and win a cup at our local show. Sir Mulberry, I am glad to say, strongly supports that sort of thing. Well, Mrs Ulstrup here, since highly expert in these mysteries, was engaged for the milking, and moved over to Tiffin Place. But within a week she was back, and in this – um – untoward condition. Moreover, before lapsing into silence she told, I am sorry to say, a regular tale of a cock and a bull.”
“A bull?” said Mutlow hopefully.
Mr Smith frowned. “My dear sir, it is a common phrase – and most notably occurs in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. Mrs Ulstrup came back with a fantastic story. She went in to milk the cow one morning and there it was as usual, gleaming white in its stall. But when she endeavoured to carry out her purpose and applied herself to the creature’s udder, she received the unconscionable shock of discovering that the brute had been turned to marble in the night. A sufficiently queer fantasy, gentlemen, and concomitant doubtless with the unfortunate posture of affairs which you now witness. Mr Appleby, pass Mrs Ulstrup’s cup. Inspector Mutlow, be so good as to replenish Hodge’s saucer with milk.”
“It’s true,” Appleby said.
Mr Smith reached for the sugar basin. “Dear me! I confess that it seems to me a singularly purposeless suspension of the operation of natural law. A marble cow! Could it be some prank of the stable-lads? But no – to me at least it suggests a somewhat sophisticated mind. Literature holds many myths about being stricken to stone, whereas I judge it a thing not current in folklore. And why has not more been heard of this? Our unfortunate friend here has been needlessly under the odium of prevarication. Give her another piece of cake.” Abstractedly, Mr Smith took another chunk himself. “And what became of the changeling cow?”
“I suspect that Sir Mulberry simply locked the door on it.” Did anything of this talk, Appleby wondered, penetrate to Mrs Ulstrup’s dreaming mind? “Over this and other matters he has been much upset, and disposed to have as little idle talk as possible. There have been other odd happenings. Hannah Hoobin’s boy, whom you suppose to have left the district, was changed into a waxwork.”
“A waxwork? It probably came from Dream Manor, where they have poor old Bishop Adolphus’ collection. And – dear me, how a life of simple pastoral care dulls one’s wits! – the marble cow is doubtless from Dream too, and will be one of Theodore Raven’s amiable ineptitudes. The plot thickens, Mr Appleby! Or shall we say solidifies? See if Mrs Ulstrup would care to go back to the scones.”
Mutlow, who had been making a gloomy study of one of his numerous notebooks, looked up sharply. “You seem pretty quick at the bearings of all this, sir.” He regarded Mr Smith with the uncompromising suspicion which he seemed to reserve for those capable of cerebration. “Quite on the spot, as one might say.”
“Thank you, inspector, thank you! I chance to know the Ravens very well. This is a straggling parish, and my rectory is, as it happens, the nearest habitation to theirs. I must have been one of the first to hear the strange news of the man Heyhoe this morning. Miss Clarissa was good enough to send a message over by Peggy Pitches. And Peggy Pitches told me that Billy Bidewell had told her how Miss Judith and our young friend here” – and Mr Smith bowed politely to Appleby – “had been benighted. In a haystack, I think she said.”
“Quite so,” said Appleby firmly. “A commodious haystack, Mr Smith.”
“I should have judged it to be more Mrs Ulstrup’s line. I remember how my dear father was accustomed to define any forward young woman as the haystack going after the cow.” And Mr Smith’s features disposed themselves in lines of emphatic merriment around shrewdly observant eyes. “He meant to indicate that an impulsive girl is sometimes an embarrassment. It may be so. Certainly she is always a responsibility.”
“No doubt,” said Appleby.
“As for Heyhoe, his fate tacks on to other untoward matters at Dream. A strange place. I never knew the old squire, who died long before my present incumbency here. And the family – why, I know not – seldom speaks of him. He was a writer of romances, as you are doubtless aware, and he made something of a fortune and lost it again. Ranulph Raven – a good name for a railway bookstall. I wonder when the railways started bookstalls? Gregory Grope would know.”
“Gregory Grope knows quite a lot.” Appleby stretched out his hands to the excellent fire burning in Mrs Ulstrup’s grate. “For example, that his grandmother liked spying on lovers.”
Mr Smith raised his eyebrows. “It is a common disorder,” he said placidly.
“And less harmful than incendiarism.”
“Incendiarism?”
“Incendiarism – which was at one time the diversion of Hannah. Hoobin’s boy. Both are decidedly degenerate forms of sexual behaviour. So it is interesting, perhaps, that Gregory Grope’s grandmother and Hannah Hoobin’s boy are conceivably blood relations.”
“Dear me!” Mr Smith turned to poke the fire – but his expression, it struck Appleby, was that of a man rapidly thinking. “I must confess that you take me out of my depth. And even in your colleague I believe I perceive an inner floundering.”
Mutlow nodded. “I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why we are here at all.”
“My dear inspector, every day I meet people who are in precisely that predicament. I commonly recommend getting a start on clearing the backyard. But let us return to Hannah Hoobin’s boy. And let us hope that he returns to us. For the plot thickens still.” Mr Smith looked grave. “And by no means so agreeably, this time.”
Appleby nodded. “Quite so. And the relevant facts seem to be these: Gregory Grope’s grandmother was by way of bestowing her favours on the local gentry, and on more than one occasion she disappeared for a time, as if she were being kept by somebody in another part of the country. Now, the man Heyhoe is admitted to have been the illegitimate son of Ranulph Raven, and the chronology of the matter at least does not exclude the possibility of Gregory’s grandmother’s having been the mother. And next we have the fact – or rather statement by Gregory, for it is no more than that – that Heyhoe in his turn was the father of Hannah Hoobin’s boy.”
“I see.” Mr Smith pushed away his teacup and looked thoughtfully at Appleby. “And old Mrs Grope fell down a well, Heyhoe has been buried in snow, and Hannah Hoobin’s boy has been changed into one of Bishop Adolphus’ waxworks. Finally, you, my dear sir, appear from Scotland Yard, drop in to tea with the good Mrs Ulstrup and myself, and invite me to make sense of these matters.” Mr Smith paused. “I believe that your colleague here, if he thinks hard, will be able to make sense of them. But, for my own part, I emphatically declare myself unable to do so.”
Mutlow beamed. “No doubt it takes the professional angle,” he said. “And I must say I’m beginning to see some possibilities.”
But Appleby was looking keenly, almost hopefully, at Mr Smith. “You honestly find it doesn’t make sense?”
“That is what I find. The sequence of events we have just reviewed is, of course, susceptible to a certain rational explanation – and Mr Mutlow, it would appear, is on the track of it. But there has been a number of other circumstances – circumstances of which I suppose you to be pretty well informed – which simply do not cohere.”
Inspector Mutlow, rather as one who would direct traffic at an intersection, held up a heavy hand. “The needles,” he said oracularly. “What you’re talking of now is all the other needles in the haystack.”
Mr Smith looked mildly surprised. “I fear I don’t follow you. Perhaps you mean all the other bats in the belfry? For the whole affair has a bizarre quality which suggests madness at every turn. I am not confident that a great deal of harm has been done, so far. We must ask ourselves, however, if the matter has now reached some critical stage.”
Appleby looked curiously at the acute and comfortable Mr Smith. “I think it has,” he said.
“Dear, dear!” Mr Smith took out his watch. “I see that presently I must be off. My two lads are down from Oxford for the Christmas vacation, and at such seasons I like to be home at a reasonably early hour. However, a few minutes remain. Inspector, pray make way for our friend.”
Mrs Ulstrup had finished her tea, and appeared to feel that there was no further occasion for the discomforts of the circus. Abandoning, therefore, the chair on which she had been somewhat awkwardly perched, she now moved across to the fireplace and lay down comfortably on the hearthrug. Mr Smith watched this proceeding with perhaps a shade of helplessness. “Really,” he said, “I could wish that she had taken it into her head to be not a cow, but a sheep. I should then have been sustained in my professional labours by a good deal of Scriptural metaphor. For whoever heard of the parable of the lost cow?” Mr Smith glanced at Mutlow, whose disapproval of this fancy was evident, and then back at Mrs Ulstrup as she lay placidly disposed in opulent curves. “Like Cleopatra’s ladies in the play, she may be said to make her bends adornings. But the inspector, I see, is impatient for conference more serious than this. I repeat, therefore: madness at every turn. Consider, for example, Mr Luke Raven’s tombstone. For you have doubtless heard of that.”
Appleby nodded, “I have. Or consider Sir Mulberry Farmer. His behaviour has become first cousin to Mrs Ulstrup’s – only decidedly more protean. At one moment he toys with the idea of having become the Hermes of Praxiteles, and at another he feels strongly drawn to some barbaric and megalithic art in the South Seas. For other things have happened at Tiffin Place, you will understand, besides the translation of Mrs Ulstrup’s cow.”
“You scarcely surprise me.” Mr Smith paused and looked thoughtfully at the fire. “Do you know, I am strongly reminded of something I have not read for a long time – one of Ranulph Raven’s stories.”
Appleby sat up with a jerk. “You mean some one specific story?”
“No, I cannot say that. Indeed, I have no very clear memory of one of his stories as distinct from another. Such things do not dwell in the mind. As you grow older, Mr Appleby, you will find that you turn more and more to your Chaucer and your Horace.”
Mutlow grunted impatiently. “Now, sir, tell us just what you mean, if you please. Not that it sounds at all likely to be important, if you ask me.”
“In all probability you are right.” Mr Smith was quite unoffended. “It is no more than a stray thought that has floated into consciousness.”
“Do you mean,” asked Appleby, “that what you have called the bizarre elements in our case are reminiscent of Ranulph Raven’s writing?”
“Very possibly they are. I have a notion that his short stories in particular are full of inexplicable circumstances strangely resolved. But I am thinking of the honest and commonplace melodramatic writing which is the basis of most of his novels. It is stuff in an accepted Victorian taste, and runs on through Dickens to the end of the century. Lost heirs and missing wills and clandestine marriages, Mr Appleby. That sort of thing.”