There Came Both Mist and Snow by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page B

realization that the man was not bragging. It was his imagination, not his pride, that had been engaged by this incident. That he and the professor from Cambridge should have got together over canaries was natural; the oddity consisted in the way it had happened.
    ‘It’s curious,’ continued Cudbird, becoming metaphysical and confirming this interpretation, ‘how one thing does follow on another. You never know’ – he raised his head and his eye left us to sweep round the ruins – ‘what your ball won’t set rolling. That talk with the professor meant a contribution to genetics – a thing I’d scarcely thought of before, though I’ve read about it since a fair amount. And it would never have happened’ – his eye returned to us humorously or ironically – ‘if Jim Meech hadn’t thought to deliver potatoes… But, Sir Basil, you’ll want to be getting on with the morning’s sport.’
    Some of us undoubtedly wanted to employ ourselves that way. And I myself had another preoccupation; I was beginning to feel the need for reflection on a number of things which had happened at the Priory since my arrival. Nevertheless I was pleased – as were, I think, the others – when Wale said with suave encouragement: ‘I feel a good deal of curiosity, Mr Cudbird, about Jim Meech.’ Nobody could have been less like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner than this prosperous, cheerfully plebeian but by no means vulgar little brewer. But he had something very like the Mariner’s trick. He commanded attention. Any amount of pistol-popping would have been as powerless upon us as was, upon the wedding guest, the loud bassoon.
    ‘When I was a lad I always wanted canaries. Not just one canary but a little aviary of them, so that I could watch how they behaved. The question was how to get them; there wasn’t any money, of course.’ Again we got a slightly ironical glance.
    ‘Down at the lower end of the market, where you go in by Stonegate, there was a fellow who sold them; I watched him for a time and saw he didn’t sell any too many. I made a bargain with him. For every ten canaries I sold for him I was to have one for myself. I think now I could have got him down to one for every five – but of course in those days I didn’t well know my way about at that sort of thing.’
    Basil, who was clearly pleased with Horace Cudbird, gave a rare chuckle. ‘I dare say you’ve learnt since.’
    ‘Yes, Sir Basil, I have. We all must, unless…’ His eyes flickered disconcertingly towards Geoffrey Roper, who did contrive to give rather obviously an impression of being one of the lilies of the field. He broke off. ‘But now the question was: how to sell any more canaries than the fellow was already selling himself? It was then I heard Jim Meech having started to deliver his potatoes. Jim had a vegetable stall hard by and he’d seen what heavy baskets the women had by the time their marketing was over. It occurred to him he might make pretty well a corner in potatoes – about the heaviest thing – if he’d undertake to deliver them, just as if he had a shop. So he took orders and when market was over he’d get the donkey and round he’d go. It was hard work but it did the trick.’
    ‘Mr Meech too,’ said Cecil, a little too graciously, ‘was of the learning sort.’
    ‘No doubt. Well, I took on Jim’s deliveries – for nought.’ Cudbird paused and looked at Cecil. ‘For nothing, that is to say.’
    I was pleased to see Cecil slightly confused. Cudbird, friendly though he was, had all his defences in order.
    ‘And so I got to know the womenfolk in all that part of the town. I’d hear if their men were in work and what they were making, and I’d hear about their kids and I’d give them a bit of a ride in the donkey-cart by turns. I borrowed a cap.’
    ‘A cap?’ said Anne.
    ‘Yes, Miss Grainger. I borrowed a cap from some other lad who was made to wear one and didn’t like it. And then I’d walk about those