A Night of Errors (25 page)

‘To be sure it is.’ Appleby sighed. ‘But not nearly so complicated as the truth.’

It was at this moment that a constable approached. He was holding before him, rather in the manner of a servant who has been bidden to handle some repellent object, a single battered and muddy boot. He placed it on the table before Hyland. ‘Sergeant’s orders, sir,’ he said, ‘that you were to see this.’

Hyland eyed the object without enthusiasm. ‘Well,’ he demanded, ‘what of it – and where did you find it?’

‘In a ditch, sir, about half-way down the main drive.’

‘And what the deuce were you doing in a ditch, man? Did you expect to find this madman lurking in it?’

‘I wasn’t in the ditch, sir.’ The constable spoke reproachfully. ‘I was just passing by, like, and my eye fell on it. So I thought I’d better show it up.’

‘Show yourself up, I should say. Ditches are full of old boots. What do you expect us to do? Fit it triumphantly to the vital footprints?’ Hyland’s frayed temper was making itself evident again.

‘Well, sir, I did think it might be some sort of clue.’

‘Good lord! Well, I dare say you acted very properly. And now’ – and Hyland turned the constable’s clue distastefully over – ‘take it away again. It’s nothing but an old boot abandoned by a tramp. Some mud sticking to it, and some feathers. It’s no more a clue than is the nose on my face.’

‘Excuse me. I wonder if I might–?’

They turned in surprise. Mr Greengrave, who had been standing beside Appleby, was advancing and peering at the boot. Hyland picked it up and handed it to him with a sigh. ‘Yes, sir?’ he asked patiently.

‘I hope you will not – that is, I should hate to claim any power of observation in matters of this kind. But – well, yes, I am sure of it.’

‘We are glad to hear of anybody being sure of anything round about Sherris these days.’ Hyland, not venturing to glower at a clergyman, glowered at the unfortunate constable instead.

‘You see, it is like this. Last night I happened to be planning out the heads of a sermon, and it occurred to me to wonder whether I might not judiciously animadvert upon certain minor misdemeanours which have been troubling the parish of late–’

‘Well, sir, you have more than minor misdemeanours to speak of, I’m afraid, next Sunday. And I hardly see–’

‘The fact is that old Mrs Marple has missed a couple of her Khaki Campbells. And the feathers on this boot are from a Khaki Campbell. I think it not possible that I could mistake them. And I know of nobody else who keeps that particular sort of duck.’

‘But this is interesting.’ Appleby spoke decidedly. ‘Does Mrs Marple live near Sherris?’

‘No. She lives at the other end of the parish, on the Sherris Magna road.’

‘Then it would be wise to visit her Khaki Campbells at once. Hyland, have you got a car? Your men have borrowed mine.’

Hyland appeared to swallow with difficulty. ‘Of course I have a car. But do you really think–’

‘Certainly I do. It may bring us no nearer to your criminal. But just conceivably it may confirm a hypothesis – in rather a grim way.’

‘You mean that you are beginning to get this affair clear?’ Hyland’s voice sounded incredulous but faintly hopeful.

‘It comes clear in bits. Have you got a map?’

Hyland picked up a sheet from his table. ‘Here you are. Leave the main road at this fork, and Mrs Marple’s is the first cottage with a patch of land on the right. You can’t miss it.’

‘Thank you. And now have you got one of the whole country?’

This too was produced and Appleby studied it silently.

‘Fellow has almost certainly got a car,’ Hyland said ‘–and a powerful one too. But we have no description of it, and by the time a blaze is reported he may be fifty miles away. It’s awkward.’

‘You think he will go driving about England, firing things indefinitely?’

‘I’m sure he will. You’d know he was mad as a hatter just from that laugh we heard – let alone from the accounts of what he’s up to now. Of course it can’t last. He probably looks as much of a chimneysweep as we do, and his manner will be strange. Quite soon he will be spotted, the car described, and then we shall have him within a couple of hours. But there will have been the deuce of a lot of damage meanwhile. And when I think that we let that young fellow Gollifer slip through our fingers too–’

‘Never mind Geoffrey Gollifer. Stick to Dromio – whether One, Two, or Three. Just where has he been reported so far?’

‘There, and then there.’ Hyland’s finger ran over the map. ‘And this is Sherris here.’

‘It looks a random progress.’

‘Of course it’s a random progress. Just where he goes is all the same to him. One piece of incendiarism is as satisfactory as another, no doubt.’

Appleby shook his head. ‘In itself that may be true. Nevertheless the movements of our quarry are purposive and strictly controlled. He has set himself what, in the south of England, appears to me a formidable problem. Moreover, he is in a hurry. But fortunately we are not.’

‘Not in a hurry!’ Hyland was impatient. ‘With a maniac roaming the–’

‘The maniac is a very clever man.’ Appleby paused. ‘Cleverer than any criminal I have ever met before.’

‘Dear me!’ It was Mr Greengrave who broke in. ‘That is a most interesting observation to hear you make. Indeed, it gives me an irrational and topsy-turvy sense of some distinction having been conferred upon our neighbourhood. But a sadly sinister distinction, I fear.’

‘A very clever man,’ Appleby repeated, ‘and I don’t think that we have much chance of grabbing him before the next stage of the affair. I don’t know, however, that it is of the first importance. It simply means that the lawyers will have rather more to argue about before a jury. He no longer has a chance of getting clean away.’

‘You are confident,’ asked Mr Greengrave, ‘that the criminal will be taken? Is it not likely that one so demented will rather commit suicide?’

‘I don’t say it won’t turn out rather that way.’ Appleby was preparing to jump into the car which Hyland had summoned. ‘Perhaps you would care to come along? Your introduction to Mrs Marple might be valuable.’

‘By all means.’ Mr Greengrave jumped eagerly at this proposition. ‘I am most interested to know what we shall find.’

Appleby shook his head. ‘I think I can promise you,’ he replied, ‘that we shall find very little.’

The summer day was flawless. Ahead, towards Sherris Magna, a few low clouds lay over the sea; elsewhere the sky was clear and a warm sunlight bathed ample pastures in which cattle paddled in their several pools of shade. Behind them wafts of smoke still hung above Sherris Hall. To their right, and in the middle distance beyond a broad valley, rose a single column of darker smoke.

Mr Greengrave leant forward to peer at this across Appleby as he drove. ‘I suppose–’ he began doubtfully.

‘Most certainly. And over the horizon there will be a little chain of such conflagrations. They are a manifesto, you see – a large writing on the sky such as they used to squirt out of aeroplanes.’ Appleby paused. ‘Yes, this too is a sort of advertising. It pays to advertise. In this case it even pays – or is designed to pay – a murderer… But what about a little song?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Mr Greengrave was startled.

‘It is our habit, isn’t it, when we drive?’

Mr Greengrave smiled. ‘But I am not at all sure–’

‘And let it be something appropriate.’ Appleby pressed the accelerator and began to sing:

‘Fire in the top bucket, fire in the main;

It’s fetch a bucket of water, gals, and put it out again.

Fire in the fore-peak, fire down below…’

Mr Greengrave frowned, laughed, hesitated no longer; his deep voice joined in:

‘Fire in the windlass, fire in the chain;

It’s fetch a bucket of water, gals, and put it out again.

Fire up aloft, and fire down below,

It’s fetch a bucket of water, gals, there’s fire down below.’

Appleby nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s it. That’s what our man has to find – fire down below.’

Mr Greengrave returned to gravity. ‘He is almost sure to, I am afraid.’

‘I mean here and now. Fire down below – it is the remaining condition of his problem.’ Appleby was silent for a moment. ‘And I doubt whether they will catch him until he has fulfilled it. Even’ – and he swung the wheel of the little car – ‘although they’ve borrowed my Bentley to make the better speed. Look there.’ He pointed to another smudge of smoke on the far horizon. ‘The mad Sir Oliver, son of the mad Sir Romeo, perpetrated a crime of calculation. He killed his brother and endeavoured to pass off the body as his own – thereby ensuring himself an unembarrassed withdrawal from various predicaments. But the excitement was too much for his sanity and he at once went as overtly mad as his fire-raising father. That is the picture.’

Mr Greengrave considered. ‘The true picture?’

‘Dear me, no. It is an ingenious picture, but what these fires actually illumine is a picture much more ingenious than that. Of their perpetrator I would be inclined to say’ – Appleby paused – ‘well, that he is one whose fires true genius kindles. They are elements in a deep design. You might almost call them, with King Lear, thought-executing fires.’

Mr Greengrave took a moment to reflect on this. ‘When you fall to sea-shanties and to – um – talking like the
Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations
, does it mean–’

‘Yea, I suppose it does. It means that I feel reasonably near getting home to a quiet dinner… Is this where we turn off?’

‘Yes – and then to the right.’ Mr Greengrave shook his head. ‘Surely it is a crime of an altogether uncommon perplexity.’

Appleby nodded. ‘In one sense crimes are usually simple enough. One comes quickly upon a clear motive, obvious opportunity, sufficient passion. Common sense carries one through. But if this were all – if there were not another factor constantly at work – criminology would hold very little of interest. But there is another factor, and one which constantly tends to surround the simplicities of crime with what psychologists might call secondary elaboration.’

‘They use the term of dreams.’

‘Quite so. And the secondary elaboration may come to occupy almost the whole picture. But it is secondary, nevertheless. And it proceeds…but perhaps I bore you?’

Mr Greengrave shook his head emphatically. ‘On the contrary, I find this strange territory extremely interesting. I only regret that Canon Newton is not with us. You would find his grasp remarkable – very remarkable, indeed.’

‘No doubt. But it is really not so very difficult. All that happens is this. A surprisingly high proportion of human beings harbour criminal impulses just below the threshold of their conscious life. As long as their environment is well-ordered they are themselves well-conducted. But confront them suddenly with a context of violence and the criminal strain may assert itself. It is thus that crime breeds crime – and often with an amazing speed. Moreover there is this to be remarked. Criminal actions released in this way tend to be far more ingenious and bizarre than the initial crimes the shock of which prompts them. The initial crime is likely to be a matter of simple passion such as we can all without difficulty understand; the further crimes elaborated from it tend to the extravagance and fantasy – as also the ingenuity – of dreams. From all this there emerges a good working rule. Find the simplicities of the case – those elements in it which make simple sense in terms of the elementary human passions. Take this as a centre and dispose everything else as best you can round about it. Don’t be seduced into taking as a centre any of the secondary elaboration, however obtrusive and startling it may appear… Is that Mrs Marple’s?’

‘Yes. It will be best to stop just beyond the bridge.’ Mr Greengrave picked up his clerical straw hat and set it firmly on his head. ‘And all this leads you to certain conclusions in the present case?’

‘I think I have got pretty well through the maze. But various things are still lacking. I am hoping for a little quick work by the New York police. And of course we must have the dentist whose importance Sergeant Morris spotted.’

‘You think the evidence of the dentist might expose the truth?’

Appleby chuckled as he brought the police-car to a halt. ‘Here is a mystery turning on incinerated bodies. Do you think it really likely that the villain left the dentist out of account?’

‘Good heavens!’ Mr Greengrave was startled. ‘You don’t mean that some innocent man’s life may be in danger simply because he once attended to Sir Oliver Dromio’s teeth?’

‘No, we can be pretty confident that the dentist is as safe as houses… We had better go straight up to the cottage. Will you lead the way?’

Mr Greengrave, thus bidden, opened Mrs Marple’s garden gate. Then he paused. ‘I think I understand enough of this affair to be distinctly depressed by what you have said. I mean as to finding the centre of the case at that point where simple human passion clearly appears. It is all going to end badly, I am afraid?’

‘Yes, I am afraid it is.’

They walked up a narrow path between untidy box hedges. Mr Greengrave shook his head. ‘When this tramp’s boot was found, and you showed some interest in it, I must confess that my hopes rose. I thought it might prove that the whole horrible business was, after all, the work of some thieving ruffian from outside – one about whom there would be no heart-breaks. But reason tells me that there can be very little possibility of that.’

‘There can be none at all, I am sorry to say. But the owner of the boot may have his grim place in the affair, and as he appears to have been among this woman’s poultry it is just possible that we may find some trace of it. The signs of some physical struggle are what I have in mind.’

‘Dear me! I devoutly hope we are not going to come upon another body.’

Appleby shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There is no chance of that.’

Mrs Marple’s hens were clucking in their yard; her cocks strutted here and there in indecisive promiscuity, crowing the while; her geese cackled from beyond a hedge; at the sight of strangers her children ran screaming into the cottage; with a fog-horn’s persistence her cow provided a melancholic commentary from a byre; of two small muddy curs one yelped while the other snapped in well-drilled alternation. Then Mrs Marple, although herself invisible, began to shout – and at this, with laudable loyalty, all her dependent creatures redoubled their vociferations. To a deaf man, Appleby thought, the whole scene would suggest the deepest rural peace.