The Mysterious Commission by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page B

less impressive, but still admirably trained manservant – who had entered his room on the first morning, drawn back the curtains, raised the blinds, deferentially enunciated the time of day and the state of the weather, deposited morning tea and a copy of The Times at his bedside, inquired whether he should draw a bath, and withdrawn upon the information that breakfast too was served to Mr Arbuthnot’s guests in their rooms. Honeybath was a man sensitive to these minor graces of life commanded by the well-to-do. So now, when the China tea turned out to be of a quality to the achieving of which Mr Fortnum and Mr Mason in committee might be conceived as having given anxious thought, his confidence in the universe (and in that central feature of it known as Charles Honeybath) was in substantial measure restored to him.
    This didn’t prevent him, as soon as the young man had departed, from jumping out of bed and making his way to a window. He was like a mariner who, while finding his desert island unexpectedly prolific in amenity, yet feels that there would be reassurance in even a distant sail. But there wasn’t a sail; there was just a park.
    A park – a gentleman’s or nobleman’s park – is a comfortable thing. Find such a prospect outside one’s weekend window, and one’s innocent imagination at once identifies oneself with the ownership of it. Here, at last, are one’s own broad acres!
    Not all parks, of course, constitute broad acres in themselves, although they may suggest an agricultural hinterland which may be so described. Honeybath, in his time, had looked out on parks which were in themselves very extensive indeed – for he had painted a duke or two now and then, and it is not to be expected of such grandees that they should clock in at a Chelsea studio. It was on the basis of this experience that he was able to tell himself at once that this park was a modest sort of park. Here was the kind of effect which, in the eighteenth century, country gentlemen whose taste (and pretensions) exceeded their rent-rolls contrived out of a stream, a duck-pond, and a coppice or two within which a few oaks and beeches usefully spread a lordly shade. It was all very pleasant, even august in a moderate way, but it didn’t exactly extend, vista by vista, far beyond a middle distance. At the moment, indeed, the vista was closed (as the landscape gardeners used to say) by a railway-train. And the railway- train, like the rest of the prospect, was in a static state.
    It was also the only visible object to have been created other than directly by the deity. And here is a fact about parks. They needn’t be all that extensive in order to occlude the view of anything other than themselves. You may be able to spot a church tower appearing above one or another grassy swell amid the groves. But then again you may not. On this occasion, it was not. There were just trees, and some sheep, and this railway-train. And now the railway-train went away. It appeared to have been arrested at some rural halt well below its accustomed station in life; to have resented the fact; and now, upon its release by some invisible signal, to be eager to resume its own bright speed once more. As it accelerated, Honeybath was just able to remark, here and there upon its flashing sides, certain small yellow rectangles which he knew must carry the name of its destination. But even if the train had still been immobile it would have been quite impossible to decipher this with the naked eye. Nor, when the train had departed, was anything informative revealed. Behind the railway-line there were simply more trees. What the poet calls blessed seclusion from this jarring world appeared to be the eminent characteristic of Honeybath’s temporary and enforced residence.
    The improvised studio provided for him was also secluded. It lay at a short remove from his own room, at the end of a corridor which appeared otherwise wholly unfrequented. Mr X came up in the lift.