Close Quarters Read Online Free

Bloss’ left ear and bellowed, ‘What does it all mean?’ Upon which Bloss turned into Vicar Choral Prynne and answered slowly, ‘It means anything you can make out of it – take it or leave it.’
    When the Dean woke next morning it was bright and cool. He remembered that he had had a disturbed night, but the details were blurred. He knew from experience that he would pay for his broken rest by an overwhelming lassitude at three o’clock that afternoon, but at the moment his mind felt particularly clear and vigorous. He viewed his troubles and found that they had shrunk.
    This cheerfulness lasted him over his solitary breakfast, and it was a summer morning’s face that he turned on the house-maid when she came to clear away the plates, and volunteered the information that “‘Ubbard was in the ‘all and would like to see ‘im.” William Lovejoy Hubbard, the Dean’s gardener and factotum, was a man of parts – a massive north-countryman and a native of the most phlegmatic county in England. He appeared to be faintly upset.
    Without a word he led the Dean out of the front door and across the lawn. A mellow wall, of the same grey stone as had made the cathedral, separated the Dean’s front garden on the east from that of Doctor Mickie, the organist. When he had reached the wall and adjusted his spectacles, the Dean fully understood his gardener’s distress. For painted on it, in great red letters nearly two feet high, was the legend:
WHO FORGOT TO LOCK THE CLOISTER DOOR?
APPLEDOWN, OF COURSE.
    Master and man digested this surprising sight in silence for some seconds.
    â€˜It’ll take a deal of getting out,’ said Hubbard morosely.
    â€˜Has anyone seen this?’ asked the Dean.
    â€˜Not yet,’ said Hubbard. ‘They will, though. I don’t see ‘ow they can ‘ardly miss it.’
    The Dean thought rapidly.
    â€˜You must do your best to scrape it off,’ he said finally. ‘Cover it up for the moment as well as you can.’
    In his guilty haste he felt almost as if they were two Eugene Arams disposing of an unwanted body.
    â€˜What a scandalous thing!’ Absent-mindedly he ran a finger over one of the vivid letters. The wall was still wet from the rain of the night, but the colouring was dry and set.
    With a profound sigh the Dean returned to the house and shut himself in his study. He acknowledged the crisis. Gently but very firmly had fate lain on the last straw.
    The foreboding of the night before, which had vanished for a moment at the touch of the morning sun, were back again now with a vengeance. Where was it going to end? asked the Dean. But all the time he had a most disquieting notion of how it might end.
    Appledown was an old man, and old people were at the same time more susceptible to the barbed shafts of this poisonous sort of persecution and more ready to take the easy way out. Illogically, perhaps, but unpleasantly, the Dean here thought of Canon Whyte’s crumpled body lying on the flagstones. He felt that action was demanded, and for the first time he faced the unpleasant thought of the police. They would have to be brought in – perhaps they should have been brought in before.
    His hand was actually stretched for the telephone when he had an inspiration. Bobby Pollock! Bobby was the Dean’s nephew, the youngest son of his youngest (and favourite) sister. Bobby had joined the Metropolitan Police Force, and not through the pleasant portals of Hendon College either. The Dean had not seen him for some years, but had heard that he was attached to Scotland and doing well.
    A lack of knowledge of police procedure caused the Dean a moment’s hesitation. Could one call in Scotland Yard over the heads of the local police? The Chief Constable of Melchester, the Dean remembered vaguely, was an ex-regular, with strong ideas on the importance of his own position and the necessity of closing licensed