The Snark was a Boojum Read online

  His unruly hair was the rich colour of a ripe horse-chestnut and he was the possessor of a bristling and belligerent beard of the same lurid hue. Earlier in the evening his booming voice, which matched his large bulk, had dominated the table, but some time before Arnold Hope had begun his pointless story of the complex share deal. He had fallen into a glowering silence, twining his restless fingers in his beard and staring at his plate with an expression of the most fiendish malignancy that I have ever seen on a human face.

  Except that his name was Simon Gale, and that he appeared to be someone of importance, I know nothing about him, but he definitely had a most remarkable personality and not one that I particularly liked.

  Later, I was to change this first impression.

  Although they had no premonition of it at the time, these were the people who were to become involved with murder in its most fantastic and terrible form. That’s not quite true. As I afterwards learned there was one person present who certainly had . . .

  Arnold Hope’s story at last came to an abrupt end; the shares had somehow sorted themselves out to his immense advantage. With a grunt, his red face shining, he looked round the table triumphantly. He said, with a note of challenge in that strangled voice:

  “What do you think of that, eh? What do you think of that?”

  I felt an almost irresistible desire to tell him, but the only words that would have described what I thought were barred in polite society, so I refrained.

  Simon Gale growled something into his beard which ended in a suspicious sibilance, and Bellman gave him a quick sidelong look with an unexpected glint of humour in his small eyes. There was a swift unintelligible murmur from the others, whether of appreciation or relief I wasn’t sure, and Lance Weston almost immediately began to relate an incident which, he declared, had happened to him during the war.

  It was a good story and he told it well. Even Bellman added a dry chuckle to the general laughter.

  “I don’t believe it for a moment,” asserted Mrs. King, shaking her dark head. “Not for a moment!”

  “I assure you,” protested Weston solemnly, “that it’s the absolute, unvarnished truth!”

  “Would you be prepared to confirm that under oath?” asked Cranston heavily, as though dealing with a hostile witness.

  The fat woman, whom I suddenly remembered was the wife of the boring Mr. Hope, bulged a little further out of the puce dress as she leaned forward. With a roguish look in her prominent and rather washed-out blue eyes, she said:

  “It isn’t fair, is it, Mr. Weston? I’m sure so many things happen that you’d never believe possible, yet you know they did. Sometimes the most peculiar things . . . You’ve only got to read the newspapers, haven’t you? Only the other day a man cut up all his wife’s hats and threw them at the milkman!”

  “I’d find it harder to believe,” boomed Simon Gale, “if the man had cut up the milkman and thrown the pieces at his wife’s hats!”

  “Some of the hats I’ve seen,” said Mrs. King, with professional disparagement, “deserve to be cut up! Ridiculous hats! Really awful!”

  “Ursula was wearing one the other day,” grunted Bellman mischievously, “that looked like a poached egg!”

  Mrs. King gave him a venomous look. “I designed that hat for your wife, Mr. Bellman!”

  “He knows you did Hilary,” said Ursula, in her low and altogether captivating voice. “He’s teasing. Anyway, men have no idea what suits a woman.”

  “Precious few women have either,” remarked Arnold Hope, eyeing his wife gloomily. “Look dreadful most of ’em.”

  “Men are so ungrateful,” insisted Mrs. Hope, to the table in general, oblivious that her husband’s remark has any relevance to herself. “We dress to please them and they seldom appreciate our efforts, do they?”

  “The majority of women,” retorted Lance Weston, with the air of uttering an original and profound piece of wisdom, “dresses with one object—to create the envy of other women!”

  “I really don’t think that is true, Mr. Weston,” put in little Miss Beaver in a gentle voice. “It makes a woman feel better if she knows she is well dressed. It gives her confidence. Don’t you agree?”

  “You’re absolutely right, Agnes,” agreed Ursula with a meaningful glance at her husband. “Men really don’t know much about us, do they?”

  Bellman cut in with a remark deliberately intended to change the subject. The conversation became split up among little, isolated groups. Lance Weston began talking to Gifford about the state of the local golf-course, a hazard at the ninth hole—a discussion which, after listening for a moment or two in silence, Ursula joined in.

  They argued happily, with Ursula holding a kind of watching brief, until she got tired of the subject and started talking across them, to Agnes Beaver.

  Cranston, Hope, and Mrs. King began a three-sided discussion concerning a recent divorce case, which appeared to be chiefly notable for the fact that the outraged husband had cited no less than three co-respondents in a matter of a little of six weeks. Considering that the wife in question was a woman of nearly sixty, this seemed to me to be pretty good going.

  Mrs. Hope, to my dismay, singled me out for her special attention. She prattled merrily on about a number of quite uninteresting subjects, mostly connected with local events which I knew nothing about. I listened patiently, secure in the knowledge it was quite unnecessary to answer.

  It was in the midst of all this that Simon Gale dropped his bombshell.

  There was a slight lull for a second in the chatter going round the table. In the silence, Ursula’s voice, soft but with clarity, could be heard addressing part of a sentence to Miss Beaver. “. . . yards of lovely lace. I do think you’re so clever to make lace like that . . .”

  That did it!

  There was a sudden and startling crash as Simon Gale brought his fist down on the table beside his plate. The flames of the candles wavered. The glass and china rattled and rang.

  “By all the Bulls of the Borgia’s!” he roared, his beard quivering excitedly, “I’ve got it!”

  There was an awful and complete silence.

  Mrs. Hope gave such a frightened jump that she nearly came completely out of her puce dress. Twelve outraged and astonished faces turned towards the perpetrator of this unexpected and wholly reprehensible interruption.

  “What exactly is it that you’ve got?” asked Mrs. Hope swallowing.

  Gale appeared unmoved by the sensation he had caused. By the gleam in his eye I think he was enjoying himself.

  “It’s been worrying me all evening, d’you see?” he told them. “I couldn’t make out what all you people reminded me of . . .”

  Mrs. Hilary King eyed him without friendliness. She said caustically: “Really? What is it we remind you of Mr. Gale?”

  “It was the lace that triggered it, d’you see?” he explained, looking at Ursula. “The lace, linking with Beaver and the rest . . .”

  Arnold Hope ran a podgy hand over his thinning hair. His eyes, small and astonished, stared in bewilderment. “I don’t understand. What you are driving at?” he demanded.

  A huge and delighted grin spread over Simon Gale’s face. He looked like an overgrown and cheeky schoolboy. “You’re not real,” he cried. “D’you see? None of you. You’re all out of a book!”

  He rubbed his huge hands together gleefully, but his own obvious enjoyment was met with thinly disguised hostility.

  It was quite evident that nobody understood what he was talking about. For a wild moment I thought that he must have had too much to drink. Looking around I’m quite sure that was the general opinion.

  “By the snores of the Seven Sleepers, you must see it. It’s so obvious d’you see?” He leaned forward and stabbed at each of them in turn with a massive forefinger. “There’s you Bellman, there’s Miss Beaver who makes lace, there’s a Mrs. King, a maker of bonnets and hoods, there’s Hope, a stockbroker . . .”

  “Retired,” interrupted Mrs. Hop
e quickly, as if there was some stigma in not being retired.

  “. . . there’s a banker and a barrister,” Gale continued passionately, ignoring the interruption. “And finally . . . this makes it complete . . . A Baker!” He pointed to the sandy-haired little man between Mrs. Hope and Gifford.

  I suddenly remembered. Of course, that was his name, William Baker . . .

  Then it came to me. I saw what Gale was getting at. What an extraordinary coincidence!

  “The Hunting of the Snark!” I exclaimed.

  Simon Gale gave a whoop of delight. “You’ve seen it! Yes that’s it!” He couldn’t restrain his enthusiasm. In a voice that thundered through the room he quoted:

  “The crew was complete: it included a Boots—a Maker of Bonnets and Hoods—a Barrister brought to arrange their disputes—and a Broker to value their goods.” He paused frowning. “How does it go on?” He ruffled his unruly shock of hair impatiently. “Something about a Banker engaged at enormous expense . . .”

  On the faces of those gathered around the table appeared a few feeble and polite smiles.

  “Very amusing,” remarked Cranston, ponderously. He echoed my own thoughts. “What a remarkable coincidence . . .”

  Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem was coming back to me now. I’d learned it by heart as a boy for a school recital. I wracked my brain to remember it. ‘Just the place for a Snark!’ the Bellman cried, as he landed his crew with care; Supporting each man on the top of the tide by a finger entwined in his hair. Gale was right, the analogy was remarkable. Another verse popped into my head: There was also a Beaver that paced on the deck, or would sit making lace in the bow: And had often (the Bellman said) saved them from wreck, though none of the sailors knew how. I smiled to myself at the humour. A Beaver who sat making lace in the bow . . . How extraordinary!

  “We haven’t a Boots or a Billiard-marker . . .” Gale continued with his theme.

  “Or a Butcher,” I added.

  “Or a Snark,” remarked Lance Weston with a curl of the lip. “Is there a Snark among us?”

  For the first time since we had sat down to dinner, Merridew spoke. He said with a slight stammer: “P-perhaps that’s just as well. It wouldn’t be good for Mr. Baker would it?”

  “Why?” asked Ursula, looking at him with a completely blank expression on her lovely face.

  I already knew the answer. I watched in amusement the reactions of those in front of me.

  Merridew reddened slightly and touched his glasses. “It-it might be a B-Boojum,” he answered with a nervous smile on his lips. “Wasn’t it the Baker’s uncle who w-warned his nephew about the Snark being a Boojum?”

  “You’re dead right . . .” declared Gale with great gusto, waving his arms about to the immediate danger of the glasses near his plate. “But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day, if your Snark be a Boojum! For then, you will softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again!”

  Outside, on the terrace, there was a little scurry and rustle of dried leaves. The flames of the candles flickered and swayed . . .

  Ursula Bellman shivered in the sudden draught.

  Bellman saw it and turned sharply to Trenton, the butler, who was hovering in the shadows.

  “Close the windows,” he ordered curtly.

  Cranston turned to the little, sandy-haired man who was looking rather bewildered. “Better be careful, Baker,” he said facetiously grasping the lapels of his dinner jacket as though it were a gown. “Search your house thoroughly when you get home in case there should be a Boojum lurking about.” He gave a dry laugh.

  Swiftly, but with a smooth and graceful movement, Ursula rose to her feet.

  “Coffee will be in the drawing room,” she announced.

  Chapter Two

  The dinner party, the details of which were to become etched on our minds, took place on the Friday. It was not until the following Monday that the incredible thing happened that turned the hitherto peaceful village of Lower Bramsham into a place where terror stalked the ancient streets, and people who had never bothered before, locked their doors at night.

  What had only existed in one person’s warped mind as a vague and formless shape, like something half seen, emerging from a mist, had been brought into sharp and hideous focus by Simon Gale’s allusion at the dinner party. The desire to kill, as we knew afterwards, had been present for a long time, but had lacked a coherent design until that moment.

  *

  The weather remained fine until the Monday afternoon, and I spent the greater part of the week-end in exploring the amenities of Lower Bramsham; Bellman having, rather to my relief, decided not to start work on the details of his acquisition until the beginning of the week.

  Lower Bramsham proved to be nearly all Tudor, which means that it consisted of a great deal of old oak and whitewash. There was a fine old church and a charming High Street that ran down to a white-railed Green, round which clustered a number of cottages. Facing them was the Golden Crust.

  The pub had started out as a bakery until around the beginning of the century, when an enterprising firm of brewers had converted the bake-house into a saloon bar, retaining the original name. The barmaid, a buxom blonde with suspiciously golden hair, and glittering with fake jewellery like a crystal chandelier, exuded an exotic perfume from the deep recesses of her ample figure every time she moved. She went by the name of Beatrice Umble. In spite of an ultra-refined accent, into which she occasionally introduced a completely unnecessary aspirate, she was warm-hearted, good humoured, and immensely popular. She and Simon Gale became fast friends almost on sight.

  Simon and I were the only guests staying at Hunter’s Meadow and in consequence we saw quite a lot of each other that weekend, and quite a lot of the Golden Crust. I’ve never known anybody who could down beer in such large quantities as Simon Gale . . . I got to know him quite well and, in spite of all his bounce and bluster not to mention other eccentricities, I liked him. He was completely uninhibited and had an enormous zest for life. Everything interested him. There was scarcely any subject that he didn’t know something about and was prepared to discuss in the loud booming voice that was part of his vivid personality. What seemed at first to be affectation, I found upon knowing him better, was a natural characteristic of the man which he could no more help than the colour of his hair. His vanity was colossal. I’m convinced that he would have tackled anything in the world with the complete assurance that he could make a success of it.

  I discovered to my surprise that in addition to being an artist of some repute, he was the inventor of the well-known breakfast cereal, Gale’s Golden Flakes, and that it was through this asset that he first became acquainted with Joshua Bellman.

  “When the stuff caught on, d’you see?” he explained to me on one occasion when we were heading to the Golden Crust, “orders were pouring in faster than we could cope with ’em, and I made the decision to get out while I was ahead and enjoy life a bit. So I leased the world manufacturing rights to Bellman for a thundering lump sum down an’ a whacking big royalty. He tried to whittle me down but I refused to accept a ha’penny less than I originally demanded. He’s got great respect for me ’cause of that.” He chuckled delightedly.

  I thought this must have been a considerable achievement. Joshua Bellman was noted as a driver of a hard bargain.

  “Ever since then, d’you see?” Gale went on, “I’ve had a kind of standing invitation to come an’ stay at Hunter’s Meadow whenever I felt like it.”

  I was glad that he had felt like it at that particular time. If it hadn’t been for Gale and the Golden Crust, I should have found it pretty dull. Bellman spent most of that weekend shut up in his study, an austere room on the second floor, furnished with the bare necessities of an office, and only put in an appearance at lunch and dinner. I didn’t see much of Ursula, either. She was out a lot, playing golf with Lance Weston, Cranston and Mrs. King. I can’t say I blamed her for wanting to get out of that house. There wasn’t much fun t
o be had in Hunter’s Meadow.

  *

  On the Monday morning Gale and I had just finished breakfast. Ursula and old Joshua always had theirs sent up on trays to their respective rooms, so there were just the two of us chatting when Merridew came in with a message from Bellman that he’d like to see me in his study as soon as possible.

  I left Gale deftly rolling one of his acrid cigarettes from the battered tin of strong, black tobacco that he usually carried in his jacket pocket, and followed the secretary upstairs.

  Bellman was sitting at his desk with an open file in front of him, and for the rest of the morning we tackled the details of the acquisition, the purchase of a number of shops, two warehouses, and a factory, from a Mr. Benjamin Fisk.

  We kept at it, with a break for lunch, during the whole of the afternoon but, even by then, we hadn’t made very much headway. Bellman was as stubborn as a jammed window-frame, and argued over every clause, and I soon saw that it was going to take a long time before I came in sight of anything like a final draft and the end of my ordeal.

  It had been raining steadily since mid-day from a sky of unbroken grey, but during the evening it cleared up a little.

  Ursula had a headache and dined in her room, and Bellman, who looked thoroughly exhausted and more dried up than normal, muttered an excuse after the coffee was served and left Gale and myself to our own devices.

  Suddenly without warning Gale leapt from his chair with an expression of exasperation. “Come on young feller,” he cried, his mind made up. “We’re going out.” He strode into the hall and struggled into a disreputable raincoat. “Fresh air and beer, hey?”

  It had been a depressing day and I welcomed his suggestion with relief.

  A thin mist was rising from the sodden ground when we left Hunter’s Meadow, but it had stopped actually raining, which was just as well because it was a good mile and a half walk to the Golden Crust.