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Автор Эдмунд Криспин
THE MOVING TOYSHOP
Edmund Crispin
1946
CHARLES WESLEY,
FOR
PHILIP LARKIN
IN FRIENDSHIP AND ESTEEM
A—Toyshop (second position)
B—St. Christopher’s
C—St. John’s
D—Balliol
E—Trinity
F—Lennox’s
G—The ‘Mace and Sceptre’
H—Sheldonian
I—Rosseter’s office
J—Market
K—Police Station
L—Toyshop (first position)
Note
None but the most blindly credulous will imagine the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and noble city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of unlikely events and persons. But there are limits.
E. C.
1. The Episode of the Prowling Poet
Richard Cadogan raised his revolver, took careful aim and pulled the trigger. The explosion rent the small garden and, like the widening circles which surrounded a pebble dropped Into the water, created alarms and disturbances of diminishing intensity throughout the suburb of St. John’s Wood. From the sooty trees, their leaves brown and gold in the autumn sunlight, rose flights of startled birds. In the distance a dog began to howl. Richard Cadogan went up to the target and inspected it in a dispirited sort of way. It bore no mark of any kind.
“I missed it,” he said thoughtfully. “Extraordinary. ”
Mr. Spode, of Spode, Nutling, and Orlick, publishers of high-class literature, jingled the money in his trousers pocket—presumably to gain attention. “Five per cent on the first thousand,” he remarked. “Seven and a half on the second thousand. We shan’t sell more than that. No advance. ” He coughed uncertainly.
Cadogan returned to his former position, inspecting the revolver with a slight frown. “One shouldn’t aim them, of course,” he said.
“One should fire them from the hip. ” He was lean, with sharp features, supercilious eyebrows, and hard dark eyes. This Calvinistic appearance belied him, for he was as a matter of fact a friendly, unexacting, romantic person.“That will suit you, I suppose?” Mr. Spode continued. “It’s the usual thing. ” Again he gave his nervous little cough. Mr. Spode hated talking about money.
Bent double, Cadogan was reading from a book which lay on the dry, scrubby grass at his feet.
“Why have you developed this mania for pistols?”
Cadogan straightened up with a faint sigh. He felt every month of his thirty-seven years. “Look,” he said. “It will be better if we both talk about the same subject at the same time. This isn’t a Tchekov play, Besides, you’re being evasive. I asked for an advance on the book—fifty pounds. ”
“Nutling… Orlick…” Mr. Spode gestured uncomfortably.
“Both Nutling and Orlick are quite legendary and fabulous. ” Richard Cadogan was firm. “They’re scapegoats you’ve invented to take the blame for your own meanness and Philistinism. Here am I, by common consent one of the three most eminent of living poets, with three books written about me (all terrible, but never mind that), lengthily eulogized in all accounts of twentieth-century literature…”
