The Dog It Was That Died

A Play for Radio

Characters

RUPERT PURVIS
GILES BLAIR
HOGBIN
SLACK
PAMELA BLAIR
MRS RYAN
COMMODORE ARLON
MATRON
DR SEDDON
VICAR
CHIEF
WREN

SCENE 1

Exterior.  City.  Night.
PURVIS’S footsteps on the pavement.  An occasional vehicle passing, not very close. 
PURVIS is coming up to retirement age.  As he walks he is singing quietly, disjointedly, cheerfully . . . songs of farewell:  the one beginning ‘Goodbye—ee . . . ’  . . . and ‘Goodbye, Piccadilly. . . ’  . . . and ‘We Don’t Want to Leave You but . . .’
This singing voice is the same time and place as the footsteps and the traffic.  Over this is PURVIS’S own voice reading through a letter he has written.  The singing voice and the footsteps, together with the occasional road and river traffic, continue intermittently underneath.

PURVIS:  (Voice over)  Dear Blair.  I have decided I have had enough of this game and I’m getting out but before I take the plunge . . .  

	(PURVIS chuckles briefly but pulls himself together)  

	 . . . before I take the plunge I thought I’d give you a tip which if you handle it right could put you in the top spot in the Department, assuming that that is what you want.  I have no fastidious scruples myself about the Chief having an opium den in his house in Eaton Square—perhaps that is something more of us should be doing—but I dare say the Prime Minister would take a different view.  That was the tip, by the way.  I wish I had something more on him to give you but gone are the days when a man could be brought down by being named in the divorce courts, even for sexual misconduct with the wife of a subordinate, and I only mention it now because your good lady (is she called Pamela?—I only met her once) may have been pulling the wool over your eyes and you have always been more  than decent to me.  So you will have to do what you can with the opium den, and my only regret is that I won’t be here to enjoy the brouhaha . . . 

	(The here-and-now PURVIS adds a few ha-has to that one) 

	Actually, it’s not my only regret because I was looking forward to taking a belly dancer to Buckingham Palace—if the invitation was anything to do with you, many thanks for the thought.  She’s a splendid girl, and would have made a bit of a splash.  But now it’s left to me to do that.  Thanks, anyway.  There’s something of mine which has been in the family for ages and as I’m the last of the line you may like to have it.  It’s supposed to have belonged to a one-legged sea captain who inspired the character of Long John Silver and I thought you might find a place for it in your folly.  In all honesty, I saw one just like it on a piano in the trophy room at Cork Castle or somewhere, which gives one pause for thought, but I’ll send it round anyway.
	
	(PURVIS is now walking across a bridge over the Thames (Chelsea Bridge) and Big Ben is heard distantly striking the quarter hour) 

	Well, I think that’s about all.  I hope I won’t be bobbing up again so there shouldn’t be any problem about the remains.  I have left enough in the kitty for a plaque on the wall of St Luke’s where I am church warden, and I would be grateful if you could make sure this is done.  The vicar bears a grudge against me but if he starts making trouble you can take it from me that on the subject of that savoury business the choir is lying its head off man and boy, especially Hoskins, third from the end with the eyelashes.  An inquiry would clear my name but I have no wish to see the diocese dragged through the mud.  That is a fate I have reserved for—yours ever, Rupert Purvis. 

	(Now speaking ‘live’)  Well, this seems to be about the middle . . . if I can manage the parapet . . . (He grunts and heaves himself up) . . .  I’m too old for this game . . . nice breeze anyway . . . quiet as the grave and black as your hat— to hell with the lot of them, oh dear me . . .  (He starts to sniffle, all cheerfulness gone) . . . never mind, it’s all over now.   Off I . . . go . . .

	(The last word is extended with PURVIS's plunge, which ends unexpectedly with the sound of a quite large dog in sudden and short-lived pain.)

SCENE 2

Exterior.  City park (St James’s Park).  Daytime.
Big Ben is striking ten.
BLAIR is middle-aged and a gentleman.  HOGBIN is younger and perhaps less of a gentleman.

BLAIR: 		Good morning.  On the dot.

HOGBIN: 	I see the tulips are in glorious bloom.

BLAIR:		Absolutely.  What can I do for you, Hogbin?

HOGBIN:  	I’m sorry—do we know each other?

BLAIR:		I prefer thingummies myself.  What’s all this about?

HOGBIN:	I see the tulips are in glorious bloom.

BLAIR::		So you said.  I prefer hollyhocks myself.  (Pause)  Hibiscus?  (Pause)  Come on, Hogbin.  I’m Blair.  We’ve met.  A couple of years ago up in Blackheath, don’t you remember?

HOGBIN: 	I’m afraid not.

BLAIR:		Two days and nights in the back of a laundry van watching a dead-letter drop for a pigeon who never turned up . . . I’ll never forget Blackheath.

HOGBIN: (Carefully)  I was in Blackheath once.

BLAIR: 		Of course you were.  That was you in the white apron, brought me chicken in a basket.  I mean a laundry basket.  So stop fooling about.  (Pause)  Gladioli?  (Pause)  All right, I’ll just sit on this bench and enjoy the view.  The view north from St James’s Park is utterly astonishing, I always think.  Domes and cupolas, strange pinnacles and spires.  A distant prospect of St Petersburg, one imagines . . .   Where does it all go when one is in the middle of it, standing in Trafalgar Square with Englishness on every side?  Monumental Albion, giving credit where credit is due to some sketchbook of a Grand Tour, but all as English as a 49 bus.

HOGBIN: 	With or without chips?

BLAIR: 		As I remember it was a baked potato in silver foil, and a KitKat.

HOGBIN:	Hydrangeas.

BLAIR:		That was it.  I prefer Hydrangeas myself.

HOGBIN:  	I’m sorry, sir, but . . .

BLAIR: 		Perfectly all right.  Keen gardener, are you?

HOGBIN: 	Do you run a man called Purvis, Mr Blair?

BLAIR:  	Rupert Purvis?

HOGBIN: 	Yes.  He tried to kill himself last night.  He killed a dog instead.

BLAIR:		I see.

HOGBIN:	Sir?

BLAIR: 		I said—I see.

HOGBIN: 	Oh.  Well.  Well, he jumped off Chelsea Bridge at 3.16 this morning, precisely at high tide.  A precise man, Mr Purvis.

BLAIR:		Yes.

HOGBIN: 	Unfortunately he landed on a barge.

BLAIR: 		You mean fortunately.

HOGBIN: 	I was looking at it from his point of view.

BLAIR: 		Of course.

HOGBIN: 	In fact he landed on a barge dog.  The dog broke Purvis’s fall.  Purvis broke the dog’s back.  The barge dropped Purvis off downstream at St Thomas’s.

BLAIR: 		And that’s where he is now?

HOGBIN: 	Yes, sir.

BLAIR: 		Well, I’ll pop down and see him.  Thank you, Hogbin.

HOGBIN: 	There is something else, sir.

BLAIR: 		Yes.  What kind of dog was it?

HOGBIN: 	I don’t know, sir.

BLAIR: 		Well, it wouldn’t be anything special.  Fifty pounds, more than ample, wouldn’t you say?

HOGBIN: 	I hadn’t really thought, sir.

BLAIR: 		I would say fifty.  If your Chief won’t wear it, I dare say mine will.

HOGBIN: 	I didn’t want to mention this to your Chief.

BLAIR: 		Oh, he’s all right for fifty, don’t worry.  You worry too much, Hogbin, if I may say so.  I’m grateful to you for taking this trouble but it would have been quite all right for you to come to the office.

HOGBIN: 	No, sir.  I thought it was better to talk outside.  It’s not about the dog, sir.  It’s about a letter.  Purvis posted a letter a few minutes before he jumped.  We retrieved it.

BLAIR: 		You’ve been following him, Hogbin.

HOGBIN:  	We didn’t know he was one of our own.

BLAIR:		He wasn’t yours, he was mine.  Still is.

HOGBIN: 	That’s what I meant.

BLAIR: 		Well, who did you think he was?

HOGBIN: 	We thought he was one of theirs.

BLAIR: 		I see.

HOGBIN: 	He was followed from Highgate Hill to a house in Church Street, Chelsea.

BLAIR: 		He lives there.

HOGBIN: 	Yes, so I gather.  He left the house again just before three, leaving all the lights on. He knew he wouldn’t have to pay any more bills.  He walked to the river.

BLAIR: 		Posting a letter on the way.  Whereabouts in Highgate did you follow him from?  Highgate Hill Square?

HOGBIN: 	You obviously know all about it.

BLAIR: 		Everybody knows their safe house.  Red Square we call it.

HOGBIN:  	We call it Dunkremlin.

BLAIR: 		Why?

HOGBIN:	Sir?

BLAIR: 		Why did you follow him?  Was he acting suspiciously?

HOGBIN: 	Not exactly suspiciously.  He walked out of the front door, slamming it behind him.

BLAIR: 		Well, I give him a pretty free rein.  When did you realize he was Q6?

HOGBIN: 	It was the letter.  Here you are, sir.  You understand, sir, that we had to open all the letters in the box in order to ascertain .

BLAIR: 		Yes, of course.  Thank you.  I’ll read it later.  Anything else?

HOGBIN:	Sir?

BLAIR: 		I said—anything else?

HOGBIN: 	Well, the letter’s a bit . . .  Would you say that Mr Purvis had been overworking lately?

BLAIR: 		Well, I haven’t been overworking him.  But of course I can’t speak for them.

SCENE 3

Interior.  Hospital.

BLAIR: 		Well, Purvis, this is all very silly.  What on earth did you think you were doing jumping off bridges?

PURVIS:	Oh, hello, sir.  How good of you to come.

BLAIR:  	Not at all.  Are you quite comfortable?

PURVIS:	Yes, thank you.  I’m grateful for the private room.

BLAIR:		I meant with your feet winched up like that.  You put me in mind of a saucy postcard.

PURVIS: 	I put the nurses in mind of midwifery.  But I appreciate your not mincing words. You’re the first person who has mentioned the word jump or bridge since I got here.  I thought I must have imagined it all.  By the way, was there something about a dog?

BLAIR:		Yes.  You’re the first person to jump off a bridge on to a dog.  The reverse one often used to see at the Saturday morning cinema, of course.

PURVIS:  	Men jumping off dogs onto . . . ?

BLAIR:		No, dogs jumping off bridges on to . . .

PURVIS:  	Oh yes.  What a relief anyway.  I was beginning to think I’d gone cuckoo.

BLAIR:		Your relief may be premature.  There’s nothing cuckoo about imagining things.  Cuckoo is jumping off bridges.  Are you in any sort of trouble?

PURVIS:	Well, one had a bit of a crise, you know.

BLAIR:		Yes.  Do you remember writing me a letter?

PURVIS:	Have you received it already?

BLAIR:		Special delivery.

PURVIS:	I wasn’t going to mention it.

BLAIR:		I shouldn’t have done so.

PURVIS:  	A bit of a shaker, I expect.

BLAIR:		Well, these things happen in all families.

PURVIS: 	You mean that business about your wife.  I’m sorry.  It’s the last thing one would have expected of a woman who runs a donkey sanctuary—concubine to an opium addict.

BLAIR:  (Huffily)  Now look here, Purvis—

PURVIS: 	Yes, I’m so sorry—one loses all one’s social graces when one expected to be dead.

BLAIR: 		I didn’t mean my family.  I meant Q6.  People having what you call a bit of a crise.  I suggest we draw the veil, eh?  Least said, soonest mended.

PURVIS: 	You must do as you think fit.  Personally I think you’d make an excellent number one, but I can quite see that you might take the view that it’s nobody’s business what the Chief gets up to in his own time so long as he doesn’t bring his pipe to the office.  Perhaps you think I’m a bit of a cad for sneaking?

BLAIR:		These decisions are never easy.  By the way, where did this story come from?

PURVIS: 	It’s all over Highgate.

BLAIR:		I see.

PURVIS:	I was up there last night actually.

BLAIR:		Really?

PURVIS: 	I went to visit my friend.

BLAIR:		Oh yes?

PURVIS:	He was none too pleased.

BLAIR:		No?

PURVIS:	I was after some information.

BLAIR:		And did you get it?

PURVIS: 	No.  I said to him, look, I said, can you just remind me— what is the essential thing we’re supposed to be in it for?—the ideological nub of the matter?  Is it power to the workers;  is it the means of production, distribution and exchange;  is it each according to his needs;  is it the expropriation of the expropriators?  Know what he said?  Historical inevitability!  Historical inevitability!  You’re joking, I said.  Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.  No, you’ll have to do better than that.  Something can’t be good just because it’s inevitable.  It may be good and it may be inevitable, but that’s no reason, it may be rotten and inevitable.  He couldn’t see it.  So I left.  None the wiser.  Perhaps you could help me on this one, Blair.

BLAIR: 		Oh . . .   I don’t know . . .  they did give us a run-down on it years ago . . .  one of those know-thy-enemy lectures . . .   I didn’t take much notice.  There was something called the value of labour capital which seemed to be important but I never understood what it was.

PURVIS: 	No, I mean from your side of the fence.

BLAIR:		Mine?

PURVIS: 	Yes.  It’s important to me.  Can you remind me, what was the gist of it?—the moral and intellectual foundation of Western society in a nutshell.

BLAIR: 		I’m sorry, my mind’s gone blank.

PURVIS: 	Come on—democracy . . .  free elections, free expression, free market forces . . .

BLAIR:		Oh yes, that was it.

PURVIS: 	Yes, but how did we deal with the argument that all this freedom merely benefits the people who already have the edge?  I mean, freedom of expression advantages the articulate . . .  Do you see?

BLAIR: 		You’re going a bit fast for me, Purvis.  I never really got beyond us being British and them being atheists and Conunumsts.  There’s no arguing with that, is there?  Are you quite sure you aren’t in any sort of trouble?

PURVIS:	Depends what you mean by trouble.

BLAIR:		Your letter mentioned some unsavoury business with choirboys.

PURVIS:	Savoury business, not unsavoury business.

BLAIR:		Savoury business?

PURVIS:	Yes.  You know what a savoury is.  Mushrooms on toast . . . sardines . . . or, in this case, Welsh rarebit.

BLAIR:		I see.  Well, you just have a jolly good rest, Rupert, take the weight off your feet .

PURVIS:	As you see.

BLAIR:		Yes, of course.  But we’ll soon have you back on them.  You were lucky.

PURVIS:	Luckier than the dog.

BLAIR:		Yes.  It was the dog that died.

SCENE 4

Exterior.  Garden.

BLAIR:		I admit it looks odd.  The question is does it look odd enough?

SLACK:		It looks odd enough to me, sir.

BLAIR:		I’m not convinced, Mr Slack.  I do like the mullioned window between the Doric columns—that has a quality of coy desperation, like a spinster gate-crashing a costume ball in a flowered frock . . . and the pyramid on the portico is sheer dumb insolence.  All well and good.  I think it’s the Gothic tower that disappoints.  It isn’t quite there.  It’s Gothic but not Gothick with a ‘k’.  Should we ruin one of the buttresses?

SLACK: 	Ruin it, sir?

BLAIR:		Mm . . .  Make it a bit of a ruin.  Or should we wait for the ivy to catch up?

SLACK: 	I should wait for the ivy, sir.  We’re going to have our hands full with the obelisk.  Is it all right to lower away?

BLAIR:		Yes, lower away.

SLACK:  (Calls out)  Lower away!

BLAIR:		The crane has to swing it over slightly to the right.

SLACK: 	No, sir, it’s centred on top of the tower.

BLAIR:		But it’s lop-sided.

SLACK: 	Only from where we’re standing.

BLAIR:		But surely, Mr Slack, if it’s centred on top of the tower, it should look centred from everywhere.

SLACK: 	That would be all right with a round Norman tower, sir, but with your octagonal Gothic tower the angles of the parapet throw the middle out.

BLAIR:		Throw the middle out—?

SLACK: 	The obelisk will look centred from the terrace, sir.

BLAIR:		But it has to look centred from my study window as well.

SLACK: 	Can’t be done now—you’d have had to have one side of the tower squared up with the window.

BLAIR:		Hold everything.

SLACK:  (Shouts)  Hold everything!

BLAIR:		This obviously needs the superior intelligence of Mrs B.  I’ll go and fetch her from the paddock.

SLACK: 	She’s in the drawing room, sir.

BLAIR:		I thought she was operating on one of the donkeys.

SLACK: 	That’s right, sir.

SCENE 5

Interior.
Modest donkey noises.

BLAIR:	 (Entering)   Pamela . . .
	
	(The donkey brays and kicks the floor.)
PAMELA: 	Hang on, Mrs Ryan.

BLAIR:		I say, do be careful of my clocks. 
	
	(The room is going tick-tock rather a lot.)

PAMELA: 	You’ve come just at the right moment.  Mrs Ryan, you’re doing very well but I can’t do the stitches if there’s so much movement. 

MRS RYAN:   	Right-ho, dear.

PAMELA: 	Giles, you hang on to her legs.

BLAIR:		I haven’t really got time for all this.

PAMELA: 	Not Mrs Ryan’s legs, Giles, Empy’s.

BLAIR:		Sorry.

PAMELA: 	There, there, Empy.  Soon be over.

BLAIR:		Look, Pamela, the donkey sanctuary is supposed to be the paddock.  The drawing room is supposed to be sanctuary from the donkeys.

PAMELA: 	This is the only fire lit today and I needed it to sterilize the instrument.  Hold her neck, Mrs Ryan.

MRS RYAN:   	Right-ho, dear.

PAMELA: 	Poor Empy got into a fight with Don Juan.  It’s only a couple of stitches . . .  here we go, everybody . . .
	
	(Silence, except for the ticking and tocking. Then the donkey brays and kicks.)

BLAIR:		For God’s sake—she nearly kicked over my American Townsend.

PAMELA: 	Well, hold her still.

	(Tense silence, marked by an orchestra of ticks and tocks.)
	
	How long have I got before they all go off?

BLAIR:		About a minute.

PAMELA: 	I don’t see why they have to be going all the time.

BLAIR:		If they weren’t going they wouldn’t be clocks, they’d be bric-à-brac.  The long delay in the invention of the clock was all to do with the hands going round.  If the hands didn’t have to go round, the Greeks could have had miniature Parthenons on their mantelshelves with clock faces stuck into the pediments permanently showing ten past two or eight thirty-five . . .

MRS RYAN:   	Were you expecting a clock today, sir?  A package came for you, special delivery, sender’s name Purvis.

BLAIR:		Oh yes.  Do you remember Purvis, Pamela?

PAMELA: 	Don’t talk to me while I’m stitching.  Isn’t Empy being brave?  Good girl.

BLAIR:		I introduced you to him at the Chief's Christmas drinks.  You said there was some-thing funny about him.  Pretty sharp.  He tried to kill himself the other night.  He killed a dog instead.  He’s sent me a family heirloom.  I suppose I’ll have to send it back now.

PAMELA: 	That must be what the note from Security was about.  They opened your parcel in transit.  They thought it was suspicious.

BLAIR:		No, no I know all about it.  Purvis has sent me an old sea captain’s wooden peg-leg.

PAMELA: 	No he hasn’t, he’s sent you a stuffed parrot.

BLAIR:		That’s what I meant.  There’s one just like it on the piano in the trophy room at Cork Castle.  That reminds me, there’s a serious problem with the obelisk on the tower.  It’s going to look lop-sided depending on where one is standing, even though it’s in the middle.

PAMELA: 	That’s because of the corners.  You should have had a round tower.

BLAIR:		Why didn’t you tell me?

PAMELA: 	I didn’t think it mattered.  The whole thing is fairly loopy anyway.

BLAIR:		It’s the old story—never change anything that works!  I had in mind the obelisk at Plumpton Magna where they have a round tower but I thought I would go octagonal.  It’s entirely my own fault.

PAMELA: 	You mean your own folly.  Can you reach the forceps?

BLAIR:		Where are they?

PAMELA: 	On the grate.

BLAIR:		Right.
	
	(BLAIR  yelps as he drops the forceps.  He yelps louder as the donkey kicks him.  The donkey brays.  All the clocks starts to chime and strike.  The donkey gallops across the wooden floor and then out of earshot.)
	
	She kicked me!

PAMELA: 	I know just how she felt.

BLAIR:		Well, the forceps were red hot.
 	
	(The clocks are still going strong.)

MRS RYAN:   Is it all right if I get on now, dear?

PAMELA: 	Yes, all right, Mrs Ryan.  Good job the french windows were open.
	
	(MRS RYAN switches on a vacuum cleaner.  
	PAMELA fades out calling for Empy as she leaves the room.)

MRS RYAN:   	Can you lift your leg, dear?

BLAIR:		No, I can’t.  The knee is swelling visibly.

MRS RYAN:   	Don’t you worry, dear.  I’ll vacuum round you. 
	
	(The clocks continue to strike.)

SCENE 6

Exterior.  City park (St James’s).  Day.
Big Ben is striking.

BLAIR:		Good morning.  I see the tulips are fighting fit.

HOGBIN: 	There’s no need for that, sir.

BLAIR:		No, no, just a passing remark.  I thought you were keen on the things.  Anyway, what’s up?

HOGBIN: 	You remember that letter Purvis wrote you?

BLAIR:		Yes?

HOGBIN: 	It’s been on my mind.

BLAIR:		You really do worry too much.

HOGBIN: 	Didn’t it worry you, Mr Blair?

BLAIR:		Well, some of it of course . . .  but every family has occasional problems.

HOGBIN: 	You mean about Mrs Blair?

BLAIR:		No, I don’t mean anything of the sort.  I really don’t understand how some people’s minds work.  I was talking about Q6.  We’re a small department with, I like to think, a family feeling, and we have occasional problems, that’s all.

HOGBIN: 	I’m sorry.  I didn’t believe a word of it, of course.  The whole letter was raving mad.  I never read anything so obviously off its trolley.  That’s what worries me about it, as a matter of fact.  That’s why it’s on my mind.

BLAIR:		What do you mean, Hogbin?

HOGBIN: 	Well, sir—the opium den in Eaton Square, the belly dancer at Buckingham Palace, the sea captain’s piano leg—

BLAIR:		Parrot—it was a stuffed parrot.

HOGBIN: 	Well, whatever.  And some scandal with an entire male-voice choir.

BLAIR:		I asked Purvis about that.  He said it involved a Welsh rarebit.

HOGBIN: 	You see what I mean.

BLAIR:		No.

HOGBIN: 	I think the letter smells.  I think he overdid it.  I think he’s shamming, Mr Blair.

BLAIR:		Shamming what?

HOGBIN: 	I think Purvis wanted you to think he’d gone off his trolley.

BLAIR:		But Hogbin . . .  he did jump off Chelsea Bridge.

HOGBIN: 	At high tide.  The absolute top.  To the minute.

BLAIR:		Exactly.

HOGBIN: 	When there was the shortest possible distance to fall.

BLAIR:		Everybody goes too fast for me nowadays.

HOGBIN: 	Think about it, sir.  There he is in the Soviet safe house in Highgate.  What he’s doing there I leave an open question for the minute.  He makes a conspicuous departure, practically begging to be followed.  He walks all the way home just to make it easy.  He comes out flashing a letter which he posts, and then off to the bridge and over he goes—just as a handy barge is there to pick him up.

BLAIR:		But he landed on the barge.

HOGBIN: 	It went slightly wrong.  Especially for the dog.

BLAIR:		You’re not serious?

HOGBIN: 	No, I’m not.  It’s just not on.  Apart from anything else the bargee and his family have been scudding about the river for three generations, real Tories, can’t abide foreigners, wouldn’t even eat the food.  So that one is a non-starter.  I’m just showing that the facts would fit more than one set of possibilities.  There’s something wrong with that letter.  I know there is.  You wouldn’t like to tell me what Purvis was doing up in Highgate?

BLAIR:		He was discussing political theory.

HOGBIN: 	I suppose you people know what you’re doing.

BLAIR:		Well, one tries.

HOGBIN: 	Where is Purvis now?

BLAIR:		Convalescing.  We maintain a house on the Norfolk coast, as a rest-home for those of our people who . . .  need a rest.  Sea breezes, simple exercise, plain food, TV lounge, own grounds, wash-basins in every room . . .  It’s like an hotel, one of those appalling English hotels.  So I’m told—I’ve never been there.

HOGBIN: 	A rest-home for people who crack up?

BLAIR:		You could put it like that.  Or you could say it’s a health farm.

HOGBIN: 	A funny farm?

BLAIR:		I think that’s about as much as I can help you, Hogbin.

HOGBIN: 	How is Purvis now?

BLAIR:		I’m going to go and see him in a day or two.  I’ll let you know how I find him.

HOGBIN: 	If you find him.  Is there a gate to this place?

BLAIR:		No, as far as I know Purvis could make a dash for it in his wheelchair any time he chooses.

HOGBIN: 	I’m sorry if I seem to be obstinate.  But there is something funny about that letter, sir.  I don’t know what it is.

BLAIR:		Well, I’m afraid I must be getting back.

HOGBIN: 	Thank you for coming out to meet me . . .  You seem to have been in the wars.

BLAIR:		Got kicked on the kneecap, nothing serious.  Goodbye—careful with my hand, burned my fingers . . .   Oh, how I love this view!—what a skyline!  All the way up Whitehall from Parliament Square, Trafalgar Square, St James’s . . .  It’s like one enormous folly.

SCENE 7

Exterior.  Car arriving on gravel.  Motor mower at work in background.
The car draws up and comes to a halt.  The car door opens and slams.
ARLON is an old buffer who is mowing the lawn not far off.

ARLON:		Ahoy there!

BLAIR:		Er—good afternoon.

ARLON:  (Approaching)  Spanking day!

BLAIR:		Yes, indeed.  Where would I find . . . ?

ARLON:		Quite a swell.

BLAIR:		Thank you.

ARLON:		Force three, south-sou’-west, running before the wind all the way down from London, just the ticket.

BLAIR:		Where would I find Dr Sed—?

ARLON:		Hang on, let me turn this thing off.

	(The engine of the mower is cut to idling speed.)

	That’s better. Welcome aboard.

BLAIR:		I don’t want to interrupt your mowing.

ARLON:		Glad of the excuse to heave to, been tacking up and down all morning.

BLAIR:		You’re doing an excellent job here.

ARLON:		Good of you to say so.

BLAIR:		Deeply satisfying, I should think.

ARLON:		Well, it’s not everybody’s idea of fun, running a bin for a couple of dozen assorted nervous wrecks and loonies, but I suppose it’s better than cleaning spittoons in the fo’c’sle—even when London won’t give us the money to pay a proper gardener.  Still, there we are—you must be Blair.  What happened to your fingers?  Ice in the rigging?

BLAIR:		How do you do?  I’m sorry, I didn’t realize . . .  You are the warden here?

ARLON:		I prefer the term keeper, just as I prefer the term loony.  Let’s call things by their proper name, eh?

BLAIR:		Yes . . .  Dr Seddon, isn’t it?

ARLON:		Commodore.

BLAIR:		Commodore Seddon?

ARLON:		You’ve come about Purvis, the scourge of the tidal bestiary, the one-man mission to keep the inland waterways dog-free, correct?

BLAIR:		Well, yes.

ARLON:		These secret service types, once they crack they can’t stop babbling.  Are you a member of the Naval and Military Club?

BLAIR:		I don’t recall.

ARLON:		I used to be.  But after certain words exchanged between myself and a brother officer in the card room it was not possible for me to remain.  I said to the secretary—look chum, I said, the Arlons have been gentlefolk in Middlesex for five generations.  We kept our own carriage when Twickenham was a hamlet and the Greenslades were as dust under our wheels, and I will not be called a jumped-up suburban card-sharp by a man whose grandfather bought a baronetcy from the proceeds of an ointment claiming to enlarge the female breast—a spurious claim moreover as an old shipmate of mine, now unhappily gone to her Maker, might have attested.  Her Maker having made her the shape of an up-ended punt.  Wouldn’t you have done the same—?

BLAIR:		I . . .

ARLON:		I know you would.  As far as that nine of hearts was concerned I accept that salting it away behind one’s braces for a rainy day does not fall within the rules of Grand National Whist as the game is understood on land, I accept that without reservation, but certain words were uttered and cannot be unuttered, they are utterly and unutterably uttered, Blair, and if you want to do a chap a favour the next time you find yourself in Pall Mall, I’d like you to take out your service revolver and go straight up to Greenslade and—

BLAIR:		Absolutely.  Consider it done.

ARLON:		Thank you, Blair.  I shall sleep easier.

BLAIR:		Don’t mention it.  By the way, do you happen to know where I might find Dr Seddon?

MATRON: 	(Approaching across the gravel)  Good afternoon!

ARLON:		I expect Matron will know.  Say nothing about this.  Take in a couple of reefs and batten the hatches.

BLAIR:		Thank you very much.

MATRON: 	Mr Blair?

BLAIR:		Good afternoon.

MATRON: 	Thank you, Commodore—please continue with the mowing.

ARLON:		I don’t take orders from you, you’re just a figure-head and I’ve seen better ones on the sharp end of a dredger.

MATRON: 	Now, Commodore, do you want your rum ration with your cocoa or don’t you?

ARLON:		If I mow the lawn it is because it pleases me to do so. 

	(The mowing continues.)

MATRON: 	Welcome to Clifftops, Mr Blair.  I saw you talking to the Commodore from the window.  He’s one of our more difficult guests.  I do hope it wasn’t too awkward for you.

BLAIR:		It’s all right.  He caught me on the wrong foot for a moment.

MATRON: 	You’ll be wanting Dr Seddon.  Let’s go inside.

BLAIR:		Thank you.

	(They walk a few yards of gravel and then they are in interior.)

MATRON: 	He’s probably looking in on the ping-pong players in the library.

BLAIR:		Ping-pong in the library?  Isn’t that rather disturbing?

MATRON: 	I suppose it is but most of them are already rather disturbed when they get here.  See that one over there?  He’s dangerous.  Let me take your coat.

BLAIR:		I haven’t got a coat. 

MATRON: 	Never mind—in here—quick!

	(BLAIR is pushed through a door which then closes.)

BLAIR:		What—?

MATRON: 	Sssh.

BLAIR:	 (Whispering)  Where are we?

MATRON: 	In the coat cupboard.  We haven’t got long so don’t waste a minute.

BLAIR:		Really, Matron . . .

MATRON: 	Don’t Matron me, I blew your cover the moment you showed your limp.  I’m match fit and ready to go—parachute, midget submarine, you name it.  The last show wasn’t my fault, the maps were out of date.

BLAIR:		Will you please open the— 

	(The door is opened.)

SEDDON: 	Who is in there?

BLAIR:		Ah, good afternoon— I’m looking for Dr Seddon.

MATRON:  (Sweetly)  And this, of course, is the coat cupboard.

BLAIR:		Awfully nice.

SEDDON: 	Thank you, Bilderbeck.  You may leave our visitor to me now.

MATRON: 	Matron to you, if you don’t mind.

SEDDON: 	Have you had your tablets?

MATRON:  (Receding)  Mind your own business.

SEDDON: 	That’s Bilderbeck.  She used to dress up as a matron to oblige a chap she got mixed up with in Washington.  When she was confronted with the photographs she insisted that she was giving him first aid and she’s been sticking to her story ever since.  It’s the only uniform we allow here.  We found that they tended to set people off.  So we’re all in civvies.  Not even a white coat, as you see.  You must be Blair.  I’m Dr Seddon.

BLAIR:		How do you do.  Giles Blair.  Look, don’t take this amiss but would you have any form of identification?

SEDDON: 	First sensible remark I’ve heard today, counting the ones by the staff.  Let’s go to my office and have a cup of tea.

BLAIR:		Thanks very much.

SEDDON: 	This way.  How are things in London?

BLAIR:		Relatively sane.

SEDDON: 	I know what you mean.  My time with the firm was excellent preparation for Clifftops.

BLAIR:		Oh . . . were you—?

SEDDON: 	Q10.

BLAIR:		Code-breaking?

SEDDON: 	Code-making.  You may have heard of consonantal transposition.  Scramble your own telephone.  That was my contribution to the fun and games.

BLAIR:		Really?  No, I . . .

SEDDON: 	We go up these stairs now.  Yes, they never took it up.  Said it was too difficult, or too simple, one or the other.

BLAIR:		How did it work?

SEDDON: 	Posetransing stantocons, titeg?

BLAIR:		Sorry?

SEDDON: 	Transposing consonants—get it?

BLAIR:	 (Faintly)  Ingenious.

SEDDON: 	The trick was that there were no rules as such.  You had to do it like improvising music.  It just needed a little tackpris but cos fork the cuffing ditios dookn’t tag the feng tif of.

BLAIR:		What?

SEDDON: 	Moo yee sot I wean;  tackpris!  Well too yot, Blair . .

BLAIR:		Yot?

SEDDON: 	You see—pick it up in no time!  Come up to the belfry, I’ve got something up there which will interest you.

BLAIR:		What?

SEDDON: 	Bats.

BLAIR:		Bats in the belfry?

SEDDON: 	Had them for years without knowing it.  I say, not that way . . .

BLAIR:		Excuse me—I’ve got to find someone. 

	(BLAIR starts huriying back down the stairs.)

SEDDON: 	Blair—?

BLAIR:		Terribly sorry—I really have to go. 
	(He gallops down the stairs. We go with him.)

SEDDON:  (Distantly)  Blair . . . !

	(At the bottom of the stairs there is a collision.)

BLAIR:		I’m terribly sorry!

PURVIS: 	Blair!

BLAIR:		Purvis!  Thank goodness.

PURVIS: 	I’m very glad to see you.

BLAIR:		I’m not sorry to see you.  I’m damned if I can flush out anyone in authority.  Where’s the chap who’s supposed to be running this show?

PURVIS: 	You mean Dr Seddon?  I’ll see if I can raise him for you.

BLAIR:		Just as a courtesy . . .  It was you I came to see, of course.

PURVIS: 	Really?  That’s awfully nice of you.  I was about to have my constitutional.  Care to accompany me?

BLAIR:		Glad to give you a shove.  Front door?

PURVIS: 	Can’t do the steps.  This way is better.

BLAIR:		How do you feel?

PURVIS: 	Like a mermaid on wheels.  Did I hurt your leg?

BLAIR:		That wasn’t you.  Burnt my fingers pulling Pamela’s chestnuts out of the fire, nearly knocked my Hilderson lantern clock off the mantel and got kicked by the donkey for my pains.

PURVIS: 	I’m awfully grateful to you for coming.  It’s impossible to have a sensible conversation with anyone in this place. 

	(They move to the exterior,  garden.)

	There’s a path through the rhododendrons to a view of the sea.

BLAIR:		Tip me off if we run into Seddon.

PURVIS: 	He’s probably up in the bell tower collecting guano for the rose-beds.

BLAIR:		Quite a decent clock up there.  Reminds me a little of St Giles’s in Cambridge.  If it’s a turret movement, I’d like to have a look at it.  Did you say guano?

PURVIS: 	Yes.  Seddon discovered a colony of bats up there the other day.

BLAIR:		Bats in the belfry?  Oh dear.

PURVIS: 	What’s up?

BLAIR:		Perhaps it would be better if I didn’t see him.  I’ll drop him a note.

PURVIS: 	This is my favourite path.  You can follow the top of the cliffs all the way round nearly to Cromer.  At least you could if it wasn’t for the wheelchair because of the boundary fence.  Whoa!

BLAIR:		Sorry.

PURVIS: 	Don’t worry, this thing has got brakes.  I don’t come down this far if I’m on my own.

BLAIR:		It is rather dangerous.

PURVIS: 	Not that.  It’s just a question of getting back up.  You need strong wrists.  There’s a little flat bit to the side here, you could sit on that stump.

BLAIR:		Fine.  This is very pleasant.  Do you mind if I pollute the atmosphere?
	(BLAIR lights his pipe and sucks on it.) 
	Which way are we looking?

PURVIS: 	About north-east.  That’s the Dogger Bank out there, over the horizon a bit . . .  the scene of the last occasion on which the Russian battle fleet engaged the British.

BLAIR:		Really?  When was that?

PURVIS: 	Ages ago.  The Russian navy fired on some British trawlers.

BLAIR:		Why?

PURVIS: 	It was a mistake.  They thought the trawlers were Japanese torpedo boats.

BLAIR:		In the North Sea?

PURVIS: 	As I said it was a mistake.  I think it was a bit foggy, too.

BLAIR:		It must have been.

PURVIS: 	It damned nearly led to war.

BLAIR:		I should think it did.

PURVIS: 	The Tsar had to apologize to the King.

BLAIR:		Oh . . .

PURVIS: 	Different Russia, of course.

BLAIR:	 (Regretfully)  Yes, indeed.

PURVIS: 	They’re getting there slowly.

BLAIR:		Sorry?

PURVIS: 	Two steps forward, one and a halfback.  Narrowing the gap between rich and poor.  That’s what it’s all about.

BLAIR:		What?

PURVIS: 	Money, wealth.

BLAIR:		I thought it was about freedom.

PURVIS: 	That’s a luxury which has to be paid for.  That’s why the rich have always had it.

BLAIR:		There’s nothing in English law about what a man is worth.

PURVIS: 	There doesn’t have to be.  People only desire the freedom that is within their imagination.  When you limit their horizon economically you limit their imagination.  That’s why the proletariat need the intellectuals—the failure of the masses to act is a failure of the mass imagination.

BLAIR:		Purvis, what are you doing?

PURVIS: 	Just trying it out.  How does it sound?

BLAIR:		Like balderdash.

PURVIS: 	Really?

BLAIR:		Doesn’t it sound like balderdash to you?

PURVIS: 	Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.  That’s my problem.

BLAIR:		Well, we knew you had a problem, Purvis.  What exactly is it?

PURVIS: 	Blair . . .  you know how it is when you telephone someone and say, shall we meet at the Savoy Grill or Simpson’s, and he says, I don’t mind, make it Simpson’s if you like, or do you prefer the Savoy, and you say no, that’s fine, eight thirty suit you?, and he says fine, eight thirty, and you hang up—and suddenly you think—did he say Simpson’s or the Savoy?  It’s gone, you know.  You’ve lost it.  Well, that’s what’s happened to me.

BLAIR:		The Savoy or Simpson’s?

PURVIS: 	No, it isn’t really like that, except that when you try to remember back, both ways sound equally right.  I’m going back thirty-five years now, when I was still being run by Gell, or Rashnikov.  Now Gell is dead and Rashnikov is probably dead too.  They set me going between them like one of those canisters in a department store, and they disappeared leaving me to go back and forth, back and forth, a canister between us and you, or us and them.

BLAIR:		I didn’t quite follow that last bit.

PURVIS: 	I remember some of it, no problem.  I remember striking up a conversation with Rashnikov in one of the stacks in the Westminster Library—political economy.  Or perhaps he struck up a conversation with me.  I remember having a few dinners with him, meeting some of his friends, arguing long into the night about politics, and I remember finally being asked to look something up for him in our back-numbers room in Whitehall . . .  You remember that basement we used to have before we had microfilm?  The thing he wanted was perfectly innocuous, but by that time, of course, I knew he was supposedly on the staff of the Soviet Commercial Attaché, so the next time he asked me to look something up, something which wasn’t quite so innocuous, I of course reported the whole thing to Gell who was my superior.

BLAIR:		Of course.

PURVIS: 	Sure enough, Gell told me to pretend to swallow the bait and to await instructions.

BLAIR:		Straightforward enough.

PURVIS: 	It wasn’t.  Rashnikov was playing a subtle game.  He had told me to tell Gell.

BLAIR:		To tell him what?

PURVIS: 	To tell Gell that I was being recruited by RashnIkov.  So that Gell would be fooled into thinking that I was pretending to be Rashnikov’s man while I was really Gell’s man.

BLAIR:		Looking at it from Rashnikov’s point of view.

PURVIS: 	Yes.

BLAIR:		And did you tell Gell that this was going on, that Rashnikov had told you to tell Gell?

PURVIS: 	Yes. I did.  But . . .

BLAIR:		But . . . ?

PURVIS: 	Well, I’m pretty sure that when I told Gell that all this was going on, I was also acting on Rashnikov’s instructions.

	(Pause.)

BLAIR:		But, if that were so, no doubt you told Gell that it was so.  No doubt you told Gell that Rashnikov had told you to tell Gell that Rashnikov had told you to tell him that you were being offered the bait.

PURVIS: 	That’s what I can’t remember.  I’ve forgotten who is my primary employer and who my secondary.  For years I’ve been feeding stuff in both directions, following my instructions from either side, having been instructed to do so by the other, and since each side wanted the other side to believe that I was working for it, both sides were often giving me genuine stuff to pass on to the other side . . . so the side I was actually working for became . . . well, a matter of opinion really . . . it got lost.

	(Pause.)

	Blair?

BLAIR:		I didn’t speak.

PURVIS: 	Well, I just carried on doing what I was told . . . and one day, not very long ago, I started thinking about my retirement.  The sherry party with the Chief.  The presentation clock.  The London Transport senior citizen’s bus pass.  The little dacha on the Vistula.

BLAIR:		Purvis . . . ?

PURVIS: 	Exactly.  Hang on a sec, I thought—hello!—which—? . . . ?  And blow me, I found I had forgotten.

BLAIR:		But you worked for Gell.  For me.

PURVIS: 	I worked for Rashnikov too.

BLAIR:		Only because we asked you to play along.

PURVIS: 	He asked me to play along.

BLAIR:		Let’s not get into that again.  You’re one of us.

PURVIS: 	Well, I’d have to be, wouldn’t I, to be of any use to him.

BLAIR:		You’re a church warden.

PURVIS: 	I thought about that but if one were covering up would one join a left-wing book club instead, for instance?  Obviously not.  Well, I suppose one might as a double bluff.  Or, then again, one might not, as a triple bluff.  I don’t think I’m going to get to the bottom of this, to my infinite regress, I mean regret.

BLAIR:		This is nonsense.

PURVIS: 	Rashnikov said to me once, you’ve got to believe in the lie so strongly that even if you confessed they wouldn’t believe you.  Or was that Gell?  One of the two.

BLAIR:		All you’ve got to do is remember what you believed.

PURVIS: 	I remember I was very idealistic in those days, a real prig about Western decadence.  On the other hand I was very patriotic and really didn’t much care for foreigners.  Obviously one scruple overcame the other, but as to whether it was the Savoy or Simpson’s . . .  At some point it must have ceased to matter to me.  That’s what I find so depressing.  Did they tell you I was depressed?  It’s on my file here:  Purvis is extremely depressed.

BLAIR:		My dear chap..

PURVIS: 	Well, it is extremely depressing to find that one has turned into a canister.  A hollow man.  Like one of those Russian dolls—how appropriate!  Yes, I’m like one of those sets of wooden dolls which fit into one another as they get smaller.  Somewhere deep inside is the last doll, the only one which isn’t hollow.  At least, I suppose there is.  There used to be.  Perhaps I’m not even a set of dolls any more, perhaps I’m an onion.  My idealism and my patriotism, folded on each other, have been peeled away leaving nothing in the middle except the lingering smell of onion.

BLAIR:		Please don’t cry.

PURVIS: 	I’m sorry.  It’s the onion.  Oh stuff it, Blair!

BLAIR:		That’s the spirit.  To the taxidermist with the lot of it. 

	(Sniffles and pause.)

PURVIS: 	Did you get the parrot by the way?

BLAIR:		Oh yes.  I’ll let you have it back, of course.

PURVIS: 	I’d like you to keep it.  Find a place for it in your folly.

BLAIR:		Most kind of you.  Well, I ought to be getting back.

PURVIS: 	Thank you for coming.

BLAIR:		Let me give you a push up the hill.

PURVIS: 	No, I’ll stay here for a while.  I’ll manage.  I like looking at the sea.

BLAIR:		As for that other matter . . . You never told Rashnikov anything which Gell hadn’t told you to tell him, did you?

PURVIS: 	I never knew anything which Gell hadn’t told me.

BLAIR:		Well, there you are.

PURVIS: 	And I never knew anything to tell Gell which Rashnikov hadn’t told me.

BLAIR:		So the whole thing is rather academic, isn’t it?

PURVIS: 	Thank you for understanding, Blair.

BLAIR:		Cheerio, then.

PURVIS: 	Goodbye, Blair.

SCENE 8

Interior.  Funeral service.
A choir.  Then BLAIR and HOGBIN conversing under the singing.

BLAIR:		I thought I might find you here, Hogbin.  Still worrying?

HOGBIN:	Yes, sir.

BLAIR:		Too late to worry now.

HOGBIN:	Too late for Purvis, you mean.

BLAIR:		Yes, poor Purvis.  We were all at fault, especially me.

HOGBIN:	Why?

BLAIR:		Well, one asks oneself. . .  with the benefit of hindsight, was Clifftops the ideal place to put a man who had a tendency to fling himself from a great height into a watery grave.  Of course, one didn’t realize it was a tendency, one thought it was a one-off, but even so . . .

HOGBIN:	You think he jumped?

BLAIR:	 (Sighs.)  What now?

HOGBIN:	Just asking.

BLAIR:		He wheeled.  He rolled.

HOGBIN:	Has anyone thought of checking the brakes on that wheelchair, sir?

BLAIR:		The wheelchair has not surfaced, Hogbin.  Can you think of anyone who required Purvis’s death, or even stood to gain by it?

HOGBIN:	He had friends in High . . .

	(The organ drowns him momentarily.)

BLAIR:		High places?

HOGBIN:	Highgate.  But then one would need to know more about that than I’m allowed to know.  I don’t know anything.  I don’t know what I’m doing here.

BLAIR:		You’re checking out the mourners.  That’s what you’re doing here, Hogbin.  You smell a mystery.  You’re looking for a lead.  And as is often the case after sudden death, a good place to start looking is the funeral.  Any interesting mourners?  Anybody unusual?  Unexpected?  Anybody who looks wrong?  Too aloof?  Too engaged?  Too glamorous?

HOGBIN:	I spotted her.  Any idea who she is?

BLAIR:		None.  Have you spotted Hoskins?

HOGBIN:	Hoskins?

BLAIR:		Third from the end with the eyelashes.

SCENE 9

Exterior.  Churchyard.
The VICAR is saying goodbye to the mourners.

VICAR:		Goodbye . . .  goodbye . . .  sad occasion . . .  would have been so pleased . . .  goodbye  . . .  goodbye..

HOGBIN:	Thank you, reverend.  A beautiful service.  The choristers in glorious voice.

VICAR:		Thank you . . . Mr . . . ?

HOGBIN:	Hogbin.

VICAR:		I noticed you at the back of the church, with the other gentleman.  Were you colleagues of Mr Purvis’s?

HOGBIN:	Mr Blair is representing the firm.  I was following in Purvis’s footsteps.  Perhaps I could walk along with you for a moment?

VICAR:		I’m only going to the vicarage.  We can take the side gate.  We weren’t quite sure what exactly Mr Purvis was doing.

HOGBIN:	Quite.  Incidentally, that lady in the red dress with the fingernails . . .

VICAR:		She lodged with Mr Purvis in Church Street.  Quite innocently, of course.  One has to make the point nowadays, on the rare occasions when one is able to make it.  I only met her once, a Turkish lady.  She’s a ballet dancer.

HOGBIN:	Did you say ballet dancer or belly dancer?

VICAR:		Ballet dancer.  At least, I assumed she said ballet dancer.  But now I come to think of it she does seem rather the wrong shape, and when I asked her where she danced she said Rotherhithe.  Do you think she might possibly be a belly dancer?

HOGBIN:	I’d put money on it.  Let me hold the gate for you.

VICAR:		Would you care for a spot of cheese?

HOGBIN:	Thank you very much.

SCENE 10

Interior.

VICAR:		Try this one, Mr Hogbin.  This is a Caerphilly.

HOGBIN: (With mouthful!)  Welsh?  I was going to ask you—

VICAR:		Hardly any Caerphilly made in Wales any more—mostly in Somerset.  A hundred years ago every farmhouse in that part of South Wales made its own cheese.  A hundred and fifty years ago—what do you think?

HOGBIN:	I don’t know.

VICAR:		It wasn’t made at all!  It’s a newcomer, invented for the miners, makes an ideal meal underground, doesn’t dry up, very digestible, and you can make it in two or three hours using hardly more than its own weight in milk.  A Cheddar needs ten times its own weight in milk.

HOGBIN:	I like toasted cheese.  Welsh rarebit.  Incidentally, Purvis mentioned—

VICAR:		Now your cheese for Welsh rarebit is red Leicester.  It’ll never be so fine as a Cheshire because it doesn’t go on maturing the same way, it’s ready at three months, good for nine, finished at a year.  But it’s the best English cheese for melting.  The orange colour is a tint, of course—carrot juice originally, but since the eighteenth century tinted with annatto, an extract from the Bixa orellana tree from the West Indies.  You need one dram to every two and a half gallons of milk.

HOGBIN:	Amazing.

VICAR:		I’m always glad to meet a man who appreciates cheese.

HOGBIN:	Did Purvis appreciate cheese . . . on toast perhaps?

VICAR:		One doesn’t like to speak ill of the dead, but I tell you now that Purvis may have liked the odd piece of cheese but he knew nothing about it, nothing at all.  Purvis was a man who would melt an Epoisses on a slice of Mother’s Pride as soon as look at you.

HOGBIN:	An Epoisses?

VICAR:		Purvis blamed the choir, but I’m not convinced.  You would have really liked my Epoisses.  I brought it back from Dijon.  I chose one which had been renneted with fennel.  The curd is milled, salted and then refined on rye straw.  As soon as the mould starts forming the cheese is soaked in Marc de Bourgogne, an eau-de-vie distilled from local grape pulp.  A beautiful thing, brick red on the outside, of course.

HOGBIN:	Of course.

VICAR:		I put it in the vestry because it can’t abide central heating.  That was a Wednesday.

HOGBIN:	Don’t tell me Purvis . . . ?

VICAR:		Cut a great wedge out of it.  The electric grill was still warm.  I held up Matins for ten minutes while I searched the vestry for evidence.

HOGBIN:	Did you find any?

VICAR:		A half-eaten rarebit in Purvis’s hymn book.

HOGBIN:	An unsavoury business.

SCENE 11

Interior.
BLAIR’S chiming and striking clocks signal one o’clock.  They require a spread of several seconds between them.

PAMELA: 	Come and sit down, Giles.  Soup’s getting cold.

	(BLAIR grunts.)

	Are you going back to the office after lunch?

BLAIR:		I suppose so.

PAMELA: 	Your funeral seems to have got you down.

BLAIR:		It wasn’t exactly my funeral.

PAMELA: 	Well, don’t stand there brooding and looking out at the rain.  What’s worrying you?

BLAIR:		Just thinking . . . I could have had a rustic pagoda. 

	(A late clock strikes the hour.)

	The Graham bracket isn’t itself, it’s sickening for something.  I’m pretty sure I know what it is.  I’ll have a look at it at the weekend.  I think I’ve run out of copper sheeting
	 . . . if I write down what I need could you pick some up for me from that place in Pimlico?

PAMELA: 	Must I?

BLAIR:		It would be quite convenient for you, if you are in the vicinity, it’s practically next door to Eaton Square.

PAMELA: 	Proximity and convenience aren’t necessarily the same thing.  Well, I’ll try to fit it in.

	(Doorbell.)

	Are you expecting someone? 

BLAIR:		Half expecting.  I’ll go and see.

	(He goes through a door.)

	Don’t worry Mrs Ryan, I’ll get it!

	(He opens the front door.)

	Come in, Hogbin.

HOGBIN:	I’m sorry to . . .

BLAIR:		It’s all right, I was half expecting you.

HOGBIN:	Only half?

BLAIR:		I was half expecting you to come here and half expecting you to telephone me to meet you in the park.

	(He closes the door.)

	Come in. 

HOGBIN:	Thank you, sir.

	(BLAIR closes a second door.)

BLAIR:		An interesting little funeral.

HOGBIN:	Yes.  I hardly know where to begin.

BLAIR:		You talked to the vicar, of course.

HOGBIN:	Yes.

BLAIR:		A parochial scandal, as scandals go.  I don’t think for a moment that Purvis was guilty.

HOGBIN:	Of what, exactly, Mr Blair?

BLAIR:		Purvis wasn’t your left-wing book-club type who would do down his vicar.

HOGBIN:	What type was Purvis?

BLAIR:		I would say he was loyal.

HOGBIN:	Did you know he had an invitation to Buckingham Palace?  To a garden party?

BLAIR:		Yes.  As a matter of fact I rather put it his way.  The Department was due for one and, speaking for myself, I don’t get much of a thrill any more from queueing up for a cup of tea and a fancy cake.

HOGBIN:	He was going to take his lodger.  She was most disappointed that the invitation was not transferable.

BLAIR:		The belly dancer?

HOGBIN:	Exactly.  I said there was something funny about Purvis’s letter.  And that’s what it was—it’s all true.

BLAIR:		Well, of course. 

	(Door opens.)

PAMELA: 	Giles—

BLAIR:		Darling, this is Mr Hogbin, a policeman.  My wife, Pamela . . .

HOGBIN:  (Overcome with embarrassment)  Oh . . . how do you do . . . Mrs Blair . . .

PAMELA: 	How do you do, Mr Hogbin—please sit down.

HOGBIN:	Thank you—oh!  Sorry!  I’m terribly sorry!  I sat on your parrot.

PAMELA: 	It’s not as bad as it looks, he was already dead.  Giles, do remove him.  I’ve given up on lunch.  I’m off to see Don Juan—he hasn’t been getting his oats.  See you later perhaps, Mr Hogbin.

	(She leaves, closing the door.)

BLAIR:		You were saying.

HOGBIN:	Yes.  I’m awfully sorry.

BLAIR:		What about?  Oh, I see, yes.  Would you like to give me the parrot?  Thank you.

HOGBIN:	Look, sir, if everything in Purvis’s letter is true . . .

BLAIR:		Oh, it’s true all right.

HOGBIN:	It’s a situation.  A bit of a bombshell.

BLAIR:		Oh, come now.  What sort of fool do you take me for?

HOGBIN:	You mean you knew it was true?

BLAIR:		Of course.  One mustn’t get over-dramatic about these things.  One must try to be civilized about them.  Keep them in the family.

HOGBIN:	But surely, sir . . . the head of Q6 . . . an opium den in his own house. . .
BLAIR:		Oh, that.  That’s a different matter.  On that subject I would be inclined to say . . . that one mustn’t get overdramatic about these things.

HOGBIN:	Over-dramatic?  I don’t see how one can be overdramatic.  You asked me a few days ago who might want Purvis out of the way.  It looks as if the answer is your Chief.

BLAIR:		Why?  I don’t follow.

HOGBIN:	An opium den in Eaton Square?!

BLAIR:		Hogbin, you’re in danger of making yourself look foolish.  Too many tuppenny dreadfuls in your childhood reading.  You and Purvis.  A shiver of delicious horror runs right through your Farnham Royal morality.  Opium den!  The quintessence of moral depravity combined with dubious foreign habits.  The Chief stoned to the eyeballs in a brocade dressing-gown, beating a gong when he is ready for the other half.  Look, I’ve been in his den.  TV, hi-fi, books, writing desk, dead animals poking their heads out of the wall, Axminster on the floor.  It’s not an opium den, it’s a den.  And to him, enjoying an occasional pipe would be simply a souvenir of a Far Eastern posting.  Something brought home in the baggage like a carved ivory elephant.  It isn’t some ghastly secret for which you drive all the way to Cromer in order to tamper with the brakes of a wheel-chair.  You really are absurd, Hogbin.

HOGBIN:	Are you trying to tell me to forget all about it?

BLAIR:		Certainly not.  You must make your report and give it to your Chief.

HOGBIN:	That’s what I intend to do.  Mr Wren may have a different attitude.

BLAIR:		I doubt it.  In any case, if I were you I wouldn’t bother Mr Wren with your murder theory.

HOGBIN:	Why?

BLAIR:		Because I had another farewell letter from Purvis.

SCENE 12

Purvis letter.

PIJRVIS: 	Dear Blair.  Well, goodbye again, assuming that I don’t fall into a fishing boat.  Please don’t feel badly.  Suicide is no more than a trick played on the calendar.  You may like to know that whether or not I left the fold all those years ago when my intellect aspired to rule my actions, I found at the end that my remaining affinity was with the English character, a curious bloom which at Clifftops merely appears in its overblown form.  Looking around at the people I’ve rubbed up against, I see that with the significant exception of my friend in Highgate they all inhabit a sort of Clifftops catchment area;  if we lowered our entry qualifications we would be inundated.  I find this reassuring.  I realize I am where I belong, at last, even though, in common with all the other inmates, I have the impression that I am here by mistake while understanding perfectly why everybody else should be here.  In this respect Clifftops has an effect precisely opposite to being in a Marxist discussion group.  I’m grateful to you for our chat.  It led me to think about Gell and the way he used to wear hunting pink to the office in the season, and the way he used to complain about not being able to eat asparagus without dripping the butter after the first time he broke his neck, and I thought I couldn’t have lied to Gell, not to Gell, not for a mere conviction.  The man was so much himself that one would have been betraying him instead of the system.  I hope I’m right, though I would settle for knowing that I’m wrong.  Oddly enough, my friend from Highgate came to visit me, or rather to meet me at the boundary of the fence, and he tells me that the reason Rashnikov disappeared was that he had been recalled under suspicion of having been duped by Gell and me.  Rashnikov said there was a logical reason why this should have been the impression given, but unfortunately he died of a brainstorm while trying to work it out.  You might say that the same happened to me.  My regards to your good lady.  Yours sincerely, Rupert Purvis.

SCENE 13

Interior.
A cosy atmosphere.  All three men, the CHIEF, WREN and BLAIR are smoking pipes.

BLAIR:		There is something else, sir.

CHIEF: 		Yes.  This dog.  Now let’s be reasonable about this, Wren.  Quite unexpectedly the bargee has sent in a bill for three hundred pounds, claiming that his wretched dog was a member of the Kennel Club and runner up in his class in the South of England Show.  Is that correct, Blair?

BLAIR:		Quite correct, sir, but . . .

WREN: 		I don’t dispute any of that.  I’m only saying that the dog was killed, in effect, by Q6, not by Q9.

CHIEF: 		We killed him but your man Hogbin filed the report confirming the dog’s death as an incident during his own case.  All the paper work is Q9, and, crucially, the bill for the dog was sent to Q9.

WREN: 		Look, I’m good for fifty if it helps.  I’ll put it in under dog-handling.  I suppose Hogbin must have handled the dog.

CHIEF: 		Let’s go halves.  One-fifty each.

BLAIR:		Excuse me, sir.  Why can’t we use Purvis’s money?  After all, he killed the dog.

CHIEF: 		Purvis’s money?

BLAIR:		Highgate kept giving him odd sums for film and bus fares, which we made him accept to preserve his credibility, and which Highgate made him declare for the same reason.  There must be several hundred pounds by now, lying in some account somewhere.

CHIEF: 		Excellent.  Well thought, Blair.  Would you care for a pipe?

BLAIR:		No thank you, sir.  I’ll stick to the old briar.

CHIEF: 		How is your pipe, Wren?  Ready for another?

WREN: 		No thanks, it’s bubbling along very nicely.

CHIEF: 		Jolly good.  Well, that’s that.

BLAIR:		Actually it wasn’t about the dog.  It was about the opium.  And your. . . your private life generally.  Purvis said it was all over Highgate.  I’d like to know how it got there.

CHIEF: 		Purvis took it up there.  I put it into his Highgate package a couple of months ago.  He was coming up for retirement and I thought that if they thought they had something on me I might get a tickle as his replacement . . .  Nothing doing so far.  Perhaps it’s just as well.  These double and triple bluffs can get to be a bit of a headache.  It got to be a bit of a headache for Purvis.

WREN: 		How did it work?

	(The CHIEF speaks, slowly, deliberately, reflectively.  The pauses filled with the gentle bubbling of his pipe.)

CHIEF: 		Well, in the beginning the idea was that if they thought that we knew that they thought Purvis was their man . . . they would assume that the information we gave Purvis to give to them . . . would be information designed to mislead . . . so they would take that into account . . . and, thus, if we told Purvis to tell them that we were going to do something . . . they would draw the conclusion that we were not going to do it . . . but as we were on to that, we naturally were giving Purvis genuine information to give to them, knowing that they would be drawing the wrong conclusions from it . . .  This is where it gets tricky . . . because if they kept drawing these wrong conclusions while the other thing kept happening . . . they would realize that we had got to Purvis first after all . . .  So to keep Purvis in the game we would have to not do some of the things which Purvis told them we would be doing, even though our first reason for telling Purvis was that we did intend to do them . . .  In other words . . . in order to keep fooling the Russians, we had to keep doing the opposite of what we really wanted to do . . .  Now this is where it gets extremely tricky . . .  Obviously we couldn’t keep doing the opposite of what we wished to do simply to keep Purvis in the game . . . so we frequently had to give Purvis the wrong information from which the Russians would draw the right conclusion, which enabled us to do what we wished to do, although the Russians, thanks to Purvis, knew we were going to do it . . .  In other words, Purvis was acting, in effect, as a genuine Russian spy in order to maintain his usefulness as a bogus Russian spy . . .  The only reason why this wasn’t entirely disastrous for us was that, of course, during the whole of this time, the Russians, believing us to believe that Purvis was in their confidence, had been giving Purvis information designed to mislead us . . . and in order to maintain Purvis’s credibility they have been forced to do some of the things which they told Purvis they would do, although their first reason for telling him was that they didn’t wish to do them.

	(Pause.)

	In other words, if Purvis’s mother had got kicked by a horse things would be more or less exactly as they are now. 

	(Pause.)

	If I were Purvis I’d drown myself.

PURVIS:  	PS—Incidentally, Dr Seddon thinks that you ought to be in here yourself, but I’ll leave you to field that one.