Free Buried for Pleasure by Edmund Crispin

was rather casual than cordial, but then, they had never been greatly attached to one another.
    Bussy, his eye on the closing door, said: ‘I’m afraid I must ask for your discretion. I shan’t be here very much longer, but I want to remain incognito if possible.’
    â€˜I shall say nothing.’ Fen reached for the toast. ‘I shall be too busy to gossip, in any case.’
    â€˜But you’re curious?’
    â€˜My dear chap, of course I am. Are you in a position to tell me why you’re here?’
    Taking a pipe from his pocket, Bussy separated it into several pieces and began poking about in them with a bedraggled gull’s feather. In this prolonged and devout ritual of preparation, Fen recalled, he had always indulged.
    â€˜I don’t see why not,’ he said slowly. ‘Most of the facts you could get from the papers, anyway. Perhaps you have got them from the papers, already.’
    â€˜Perhaps I have,’ Fen agreed. ‘But until you tell me to what they relate, I can scarcely be sure of it.’
    â€˜A murder,’ said Bussy. ‘The murder of a woman called Mrs Lambert.’
    Fen shook his head. ‘I don’t remember reading about that. Following crime in the papers isn’t very rewarding, because there’s no space for details: so I don’t do it.’
    â€˜But you yourself’ – Bussy looked at him with some calculation – ‘have been involved in a certain number of investigations. Those two murders at Castrevenford, for instance.’
    â€˜I solved them,’ said Fen, with the impregnable air of one who asserts that the earth is a globe.
    â€˜But all your cases have been rather recherché . I’m not sure that there’s much for you in this. Or rather – –’
    Bussy paused, again in calculation, and Fen tapped the mustard spoon impatiently on the side of his plate. ‘The facts,’ he said balefully. ‘Unless, of course, the solution’s already settled and obvious. Finished histories don’t appeal to me greatly.’
    â€˜I’ll tell you this much.’ Bussy spoke now with rather more emphasis. ‘There’s one curious aspect of the evidence which seems to me to point pretty directly to a certain conclusion.’ He paused, while Fen struggled to assimilate this uncommonly nebulous statement. ‘Only no one else seems to see it.’
    â€˜Ah,’ said Fen reservedly.
    â€˜Yes, you’re quite right to be sceptical,’ said Bussy, not without gloom. ‘I’ve wondered myself if I’m imagining things. Of course, when I say that others don’t see it, I don’t mean that I’ve expounded it to them and they still don’t see it.’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜I just mean that it hasn’t occurred to them. And that’s what mystifies me, because to me it’s so self-evident that I can’t see why it hasn’t occurred to them.’
    â€˜It would be better,’ said Fen with commendable patience, ‘if we clothed these bones with a little flesh. My mind isn’t at all adapted, at this hour of the day, to deciding why an undefined set of people confronted by an undefined set of facts should not have arrived at an undefined conclusion. It’s altogether too metaphysical. Expound Mrs Lambert, please.’ He poured out coffee.
    â€˜All right.’ Bussy nodded, with a brisk movement substituting for the gull’s feather a small pen-knife, with which he proceeded to scrape about inside the bowl of the pipe. ‘See if you see what I’m getting at.’
    He subjected the little room to a heavily professional scrutiny. The single sash window was open, but the table at which they sat was so near to it that no eavesdropper outside could hope to evade observation. The door was firmly shut. There were no places of concealment. The walls were admittedly thin, but the tireless labours of the Beaver ménage