A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [19]
“I foresee the hell of a row,” said Templer. “Still, one must admit that it was a good idea. Meanwhile, the sooner we get back to the house and supply a few alibis, the better.”
We walked at a fairly smart pace down the road Widmerpool had traversed when I had seen him returning from his run at the end of the previous year: the tar now soft under foot from the heat of the summer sun. Inside, the house was quiet and comparatively cool. Templer, who had recently relaxed his rule of never reading for pleasure, took up Sanders of the River, while Stringham and I discussed the probable course that events would take if the police decided to act as a result of the telephone message. We sat about until the bell began to ring for evening chapel.
“Come on,” said Stringham. “Let’s see if there is any news.”
At the foot of the stairs, we met Widmerpool in the hall. He had just come in from outside, and he seemed unusually excited about something. As we passed – contrary in my experience to all precedent so far as his normal behaviour was concerned – he addressed himself to Stringham, in point of age the nearest to him, saying in his shrillest voice: “I say, do you know Le Bas has been arrested?”
He stood there in the shadowy space by the slab in a setting of brown-paper parcels, dog-eared school books, and crumbs – a precinct of which the moral and physical cleansing provoked endless activity in the mind of Le Bas – and stood with his feet apart and eyes expanded, his panting, as Templer had justly described it, like that of an elderly lap-dog: his appearance suggesting rather some unusual creature actually bred in those depths by the slab, amphibious perhaps, though largely belonging to this land-world of blankets and carbolic: scents which attained their maximum density at this point, where they met and mingled with the Irish stew, which, coming from the territories of laundry baskets and coke, reached its most potent force on the first step of the stairs.
Stringham turned to Widmerpool. “I am not surprised,” he said coldly. “How did it happen?”
“I was coming back from my walk,” said Widmerpool, in spite of his excitement lowering his voice a little, as though touching on a very sacred subject in thus referring to his personal habits, “I was coming back from my walk,” he repeated, dwelling on the words, “and, as I strolled across one of the fields by the railway line, I saw Le Bas lying on the ground reading a book.”
“I hope you weren’t smoking, Widmerpool,” said Templer.
Widmerpool ignored this interpolation, and went on: “Then I noticed that there was a policeman making across the field towards Le Bas. When the policeman – a big, fat fellow – reached Le Bas he seemed to begin reading something from a note-book. Anyway, Le Bas looked very surprised at first. Then he began to get up. I suppose he must have caught his foot in something, because he stumbled. Evidently the policeman thought he was going to try and escape.”
“What happened when he stumbled?” asked Stringham.
“The policeman took his arm.”
“Did he handcuff him?”
“No – but he grabbed him rather roughly.”
“What did Le Bas say?”
“I couldn’t hear. It looked as if he were making an awful fuss. You know the way he stutters when he is angry.”
“And so the policeman led him off?”
“What could he have done?” said Widmerpool, who seemed utterly overwhelmed at the idea that his housemaster should have been arrested.
Stringham asked: “Did anyone else see this?”
“A soldier and a girl appeared from a ditch and watched them go off together.”
“Did Le Bas notice you?”
“I kept behind the hedge. I didn’t want to get mixed up with anything awkward.”
“That was wise of you, Widmerpool,” said Stringham. “Have