Appleby's Answer Read Online Free PDF Page A

.’
    â€˜Just what does that mean?’
    â€˜It means that you report his joints creaked.’ Miss Vanderpump bubbled. ‘Do you think he is a Hussar? Or a Dragoon?’
    â€˜He is certainly neither now. He appears to be a pedagogue.’
    â€˜Which lends rather a sinister resonance to his address.’
    â€˜Kandahar?’ Miss Pringle was perplexed.
    â€˜No, no. Long Canings. He is a most prodigious fustigator of small boys.’
    â€˜Barbara, you are extremely foolish. A crammer takes on nineteen-year-old youths, who have been superannuated from the public schools. Boys who have been hopeless even in an Army Class. He prepares them for Sandhurst, and places of that sort. It must be a depressing means of livelihood.’
    â€˜My dear, we are out of date, don’t you think? It seems probable that, in these egalitarian times, Sandhurst is no longer entered in that way. Your new friend no doubt coaches his charges for admission to strange new universities. Which is worse and worse. Captain Bulkington is a figure of pathos, I declare. Did he seem very hard up?’
    â€˜He offered me five hundred pounds.’
    â€˜Five hundred pounds!’ Miss Vanderpump stared. ‘To–?’
    â€˜It appeared to be to collaborate in a detective novel.’
    â€˜Then he must, as you have conjectured, be a little unhinged. He probably hasn’t a penny.’
    â€˜He belongs to a very good club. One of those in Pall Mall.’
    â€˜However do you know that? Did he propose an assignation there?’
    â€˜He well might have. But it was simply’ – Miss Pringle was a little embarrassed – ‘that I happened to notice a luggage-label on his suitcase.’
    â€˜And you belong to a very good club yourself.’ Miss Vanderpump glanced appreciatively round the drawing-room of the Lysistrata. ‘You must invite him to luncheon here. And invite me as well. I’d love to meet the inamorato .’
    â€˜I will do nothing of the sort.’ Miss Pringle applied herself to her own sherry. She sometimes found Miss Vanderpump’s resolute pursuit of spirited conversation a shade fatiguing. ‘For that matter, he would much prefer to be asked to the Colloquium. He has this thing about crime-writing. I think he would call it crime-writing. An odious expression.’
    â€˜It sounds almost fishy.’
    â€˜Fishy?’ A pause ensued, while Miss Pringle lit a cigarette. ‘Nothing of the kind has occurred to me. He was, in his way, quite an amiable man.’
    â€˜You must not speak of him in a past tense. You and he have a future together. I feel it in my bones.’
    â€˜Then your bones creak, my dear woman. The episode was amusing while it lasted. But I was most careful to deny him any means of following it up.’
    â€˜That was unadventurous. And why not collaborate with him? Of course, Priscilla, you are now so extremely successful that his suggestion of a fee is an absurdity. But you could make your own arrangement about dividing the royalties, after all.’
    â€˜You are talking very great nonsense, Barbara. What rational motive could prompt me to such a course?’
    â€˜It needn’t be strictly rational. It might be a matter of your doing something kind.’
    Miss Pringle was so surprised that she finished her sherry at a gulp. This was a mistake, since at least twenty minutes must elapse before the two talented ladies could usefully set out for the Diner Dupin . Moreover, she was now constrained to notice that Miss Vanderpump’s was also an empty glass. Although far from grudging the cost of a further apéritif , she was conscious of liking, upon formal occasions, to keep a clear head. It was all very well for Barbara, whose line was the artistic temperament and a dashing vivacity. She herself preferred to give an impression of cool intelligence – which is the proper endowment, surely, of writers of the classical