Buried for Pleasure by Edmund Crispin

quasi-maternal solicitude as part of the duties for which he was being paid, advised Fen to return to ‘The Fish Inn’ and rest there for the remainder of the day. ‘Mustn’t overdo it,’ he said. ‘We want you fresh and lively for the final round.’ Fen accepted the advice readily enough; the buttonholing of recalcitrant voters, he had found, made heavy demands on one’s reserves of nervous energy. He drove staidly back into Sanford Angelorum.

CHAPTER 10
    T HE inn, however, had not yet recovered from its initial postmeridian inertia, and promised little in the way of entertainment. For a short time Fen prowled unquietly about it, avid of diversion or company to expunge from his mind the cloying after-taste of the day’s routine affability. But he found nothing and no one, and presently a vestige of physical energy prompted him out of doors again. The sun was already westering, its fires refracted now and kinder to the eye; along the horizon the distant woods lay like a narrow roll of brown smoke; across a sky of Antwerp blue streamed shrilling hordes of unidentifiable birds. Fen paused in the back garden of the inn and contemplated the operations of Nature a shade grimly. Then he set off on a walk.
    It was an hour before he returned. Breasting the far side of the rise behind the inn, his eye was caught by the lean apparition of Bussy – striding, from another angle of the compass, towards the same objective as himself. A moment more and Bussy had seen him, had swerved, and was moving with purposeful rapidity in his direction. They met by the three slim birch trees.
    â€˜I hadn’t hoped to find you so easily.’ Breathing heavily, Bussy nodded his approval of the workings of chance. ‘Fen, I need help. You must help me. There’s a small element of risk, I’m afraid, but you won’t mind that.’
    Fen studied him, diagnosed a wholly conscienceless zeal, and sighed resignedly. Self-respect obliged him to concur in Bussy’s facile assumption of his indifference to risk, but he did so without enthusiasm. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I shan’t mind that.’
    â€˜Good.’ Bussy dismissed the issue from his mind without exhibiting a sign of gratitude. ‘It’s to do with this Lambert affair, of course. Something I can’t manage single-handed. I can’t give you the details now, I’m afraid, because I’ve got to catch a train.’
    Fen was surprised. ‘You’re leaving?’
    â€˜To all appearance, yes. I want it to be thought that I’ve returned to London. But after dark I shall sneak back again, and you must meet me. I can explain the position then.’
    â€˜And where,’ Fen asked, ‘do you propose spending the night?’
    â€˜In the open.’
    â€˜That will be cold and disagreeable,’ said Fen practically. ‘You ought to find a shelter of some kind – if you’re proposing to sleep, that is.’
    â€˜All right.’ Bussy gestured impatiently. ‘No doubt a haystack or a barn – –’
    â€˜Or you might try one of the huts on the golf-course.’
    â€˜Whatever you say.’ Clearly the topic held no interest for Bussy. ‘That would certainly have the advantage of providing a locus in quo for our meeting.’
    â€˜And the time?’
    â€˜Let’s say midnight. I shall almost certainly be back by then, but if I’m not, wait for me.’
    â€˜Yes. I suggest the hut at the fourth green.’ Fen’s walk had familiarized him with the topography of the course. ‘It’s reasonably commodious.’
    â€˜That will do,’ said Bussy. Then a new thought occurred to him. ‘Of course, Fen, you realize,’ he added considerately, ‘that you’re in no way obliged to undertake this.’
    Fen opened his mouth to make some reassuring reply, but Bussy, who patently regarded his declaration as the merest