Appleby Plays Chicken (13 page)

‘The chap who sprang up when First Murderer here blew his whistle?’

‘Just that. And my instinct tells me that he is most unpromising. So who else?’

David considered this. ‘The Death Riders.’

‘Meaning the two men on motorbikes?’ Appleby smiled. ‘Will you forgive me if I say I don’t terribly believe in – well, their relevance? They came on the scene when you yourself you know, had every reason to be exercising what one may call a vigorously stimulated imagination.’

‘But they stopped their bikes as soon as I tumbled off that hay wagon. And the last I saw of them – before I jumped on poor old Ian’s horse – they were coming right at me on either side of the road.’

Appleby shook his head. ‘I’m sorry – but for the moment I shall persist in considering them mere supers. They realized that races were going forward, and they proposed to find a gap in the hedge and have a look. So what?’

Thus challenged, David took a deep breath. ‘The girl.’

‘I’ll give you the girl – and even, provisionally, call her the Leading Lady. But there, you see, the cast stops off. It’s unpromising. I don’t like it.’

David took a look at this odd policeman from Scotland Yard. He continued to think he might be rather nice. At the same time he acknowledged to himself that the wholesome instinct to rebel against the elder generation was strong in him at the moment. ‘What a thumping lie,’ he said. ‘You like it enormously.’

Appleby laughed aloud – and so spontaneously that the sound didn’t seem in the least improper in the vicinity of the dead man.

‘You like it more and more,’ David added. ‘Although I can’t think why.’ He paused to consider. ‘I believe I rather bored you at first – myself and my whole adventure. Not that you didn’t go out of your way to pick it – and me – up.’

Appleby nodded, decently sober. ‘You are a pick-up, all right. I acknowledge it. Any unusual appearance attracts me instantly. And then, when you told your story, I wasn’t terribly keen. I acknowledge that too. You had stumbled upon some nasty local crime. And I meet too many crimes. But of course I had to see you through – and give a hand in clearing things up. A busman’s holiday. Not attractive. But now it’s different. You’re quite right.’

‘And what has made it different is danger?’ David was rather pleased with this. It struck him as an extraordinarily acute psychological perception.

But Appleby was looking at him once more in an infuriatingly elderly way – half astonished, half amused. ‘Danger? Dear me no. I used to go in for it a lot. It was quite horrid – although with its fascination, I admit. But I can’t say it appeals to me now. No’ – and he shook his head in what seemed a drift of oddly sombre feeling – ‘it’s not a resource that lasts, you know. Nothing really lasts, except the queer urge to make a little knowledge when one can.’

‘I think I know about that.’ David said this quite honestly. He wasn’t old Pettifor’s pupil for nothing. ‘But does this’ – and he gestured, first at the dead man and then at the solitude and silence around them – ‘does this have anything to do with that?’

‘Only in the humblest way.’ Appleby had knocked out his pipe, and was kneeling again by the body. ‘You see, whe
your
corpse changed to
this
corpse, the affair ceased to be just a crime. It became a mystery. And that’s something challenging our instinct to worry things out a bit. So I like it enormously, as you have very accurately observed.’

David said nothing – and in the silence a lark struck up again, like a punctual sound effect tuned in by a conscientious BBC producer. Appleby was turning out the pockets of the dead man. There was something rather horrible in the sight of it. It was like an inglorious aftermath of battle, a pillaging of the dead. And then David noticed Appleby’s face. It was gentle and absorbed, so that he was reminded of Pettifor when you caught him in a library, poring over a book that contained goodness knew what. To solve this business would, of course, be to make knowledge – although in an uncommonly macabre field. But how did one begin? With this problem in his head, David waited until Appleby got to his feet again, and then asked a question. ‘I suppose it will somehow be possible to…to identify this chap?’

‘Identify him? I’ve done that already. As a matter of fact, I know him quite well.’

‘You know him!’

‘His name is Charles Redwine. We worked together once. He was my chief during the first years of the war.’

David’s first emotion on hearing this extraordinary statement was of simple alarm – as if the man who made it was boldly unmasking himself as a criminal. Then he became incredulous. ‘It’s impossible!’ he cried. ‘Of course I can’t be certain he killed the first chap. But he tried to kill me, all right.’ He turned and stared at the corpse. ‘It’s true he looks everything he should be. But I just can’t, can’t believe he’s not a bad hat!’

David stopped – aware that Appleby’s eyes were once more on him with their peculiar steadiness. Appleby had sprung this as another surprise, as some sort of final test. And only an astonishing self-control – David suddenly realized – had made that possible. His own eyes had been on Appleby when he had turned over the body and first looked at the face of the dead man. The shock of recognition must have been pretty stiff. But he hadn’t let a muscle flicker.

‘Redwine was a bad hat, all right.’ Appleby, although he spoke sternly, seemed to realize the need of being reassuring. ‘In fact, it’s rather satisfactory that he’s dead.’

‘Satisfactory?’

As usual, Appleby caught David’s tone exactly. ‘It’s certainly an indecent thing to say. And perhaps even vengeful. Redwine was one of my failures. He was the biggest of them. I failed to get him into jail.’

‘When he was your chief, sir?’

‘Yes, when he was my chief.’ Appleby had walked to the edge of the rock and was gazing out over the moor. ‘I found out the truth about him. And then I hesitated – for twenty-four hours. It seemed incredible. I mean, it
felt
incredible. There was loyalty, there was decency, there was everything against it. For twenty-four hours I let my emotions in the matter get on top of my intellect – declaring there was still a faint possibility of mistake, and so on.’ Appleby turned round. ‘You have no business to hear this, Henchman. Or rather I have no business to tell it to you. But the circumstances are’ – he smiled – ‘well, exceptional.’

‘I shan’t spread it round, sir.’ David said this rather stiffly.

‘In those twenty-four hours the evidence – the hard core of the evidence – melted away. It was, as they say, liquidated. So Redwine was shifted to unimportant work, and then he was pensioned off. Nothing more could be done. An eye has been kept on him since – that sort of bad hat isn’t forgotten about – but any tricks he’s been up to he’s managed to keep to himself. That he’s ended like this’ – Appleby made a gesture – ‘suggests that honourable retirement hasn’t been exactly his line.’

‘Does this mean that what I came upon this morning had something to do with spying – that sort of thing?’

‘Well, something in that target area, I’ve no doubt.’

‘With this chap Redwine as chief spy?’

‘I don’t know. But clearly he wasn’t on his own.’ Appleby turned and walked back to the centre of the shallow basin of rock. ‘Your story shows he had at least two fellows backing him up this morning. Well, that’s quite in the common run of things, as I think I was explaining earlier. If racecourse toughs work in gangs, espionage people organize themselves in rings. It works a little differently, but the principle’s the same. We may be confronting a ring, Henchman – or even inside one.’

David was startled. ‘Do you mean literally?’

‘Why not?’ Appleby had opened his shooting stick, which somehow he had managed to bring up with him to the summit; found a crevice in the rock for its spike to rest in; and comfortably seated himself. ‘As I see the matter, they’re bound to be pretty interested in you still.’

Although he’d had a hint of this before, David now took it in rather slowly. ‘Here and now?’ he asked presently.

‘Possibly here and now. I should explain that these are almost certainly big people. Whatever they have been up to is likely to have a good deal of significance, viewed from the standpoint of the country’s security.’ Appleby spoke briskly and not at all portentously. ‘This is all right by you?’

‘It’s all right by me.’ David paused awkwardly. He was much concerned to play down any lurking heroics in his strange situation. ‘I’m glad’, he said, ‘I had those sandwiches and cups of tea.’

The spring day would soon be over. Presently dusk – and then, very soon, darkness – would descend on the moor. And Appleby’s idea seemed to be to use David as a decoy. This wasn’t cheerful. But at least it was exciting. David reflected that if he could just hold on to that fact he might acquit himself without utter ignominy.

And now Appleby was studying the small patch of blackened rock which was the only remaining sign of that morning’s mysterious fire. ‘Have the ashes been blown away?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think so. Whoever killed Redwine did a bit of a tidy up at the same time.’

‘Do you think the first dead man – the one I found – was some sort of bad hat too? Might he have belonged to a rival show?’ David didn’t know whether he ought to ask questions. But he had a strong impulse to keep his wits occupied.

‘I think it’s certainly possible.’ Appleby’s reply came readily. ‘Suppose Redwine fixed up a quiet conference with the other fellow in this retired spot. If he did, he expected possible trouble. Otherwise he would hardly have had a colleague lurking on the moor, and another patrolling the track with a rifle. And then suppose that, whether by premeditation or not, Redwine committed murder. If that was so, his next move is significant. He fixes the appearance of a suicide, and then simply walks away. That means that he could apprehend no danger to himself from the subsequent discovery and identification of the body. But then you came along. You hailed him, and he realized that continuing to walk away would be no good. You would certainly go after him and tackle him. So he returned to the summit and – well, discussed the matter with you.’

‘And gave himself away. I mean by working round to a proposition that no honest man would make.’

Appleby nodded. ‘Quite so. But even if you’d agreed to slip quietly out of the picture he’d have been bound to have doubts about you. When you’d recovered from the shock of the whole affair, you’d possibly go to the police. And there was another sense in which he’d given himself away. Once his presence in the neighbourhood of Knack Tor was established, the notion of suicide wouldn’t stand. Investigation, that’s to say, would uncover him – and with all his shady past, mind you – as in some relationship with the dead man. So he decided he had to go after you with his gun too. But I expect this is mostly stuff you’ve already worked out.’

‘Well, yes – it is.’ David said this almost apologetically. ‘But I expect you’ve got a good deal further.’

‘They’ve
got a good deal further.’ And Appleby pointed again at the body. ‘Redwine dropped out of the hunt for you – apparently leaving it to his companions – and came up here again.’

‘Unless he was brought back dead.’

‘That’s a possibility, I agree. Anyway, he was killed – and his body was substituted for the first.’

David shook his head. ‘Does that quite follow?’

‘No, it doesn’t.’ Appleby’s reply was so immediate that David had a fleeting notion he was being put through a sort of oral examination as an apprentice detective. ‘It is just conceivable that
both
bodies were left here by one agency in the affair, and then that the first body was removed by another agency. That makes the timetable rather tight, I feel. But it’s not to be ruled out. There may have been somebody else, acting independently of Redwine and his friends, who couldn’t afford to have the first body identified – but who didn’t mind about Redwine’s body a bit. The vehicle that’s been brought to the foot of this crag may have belonged to that other person – or party.’

‘Party?’

‘The dead man – the
first
dead man – may not have been wholly unsupported. He may have felt it wise to have friends lurking round too. Think of that column of smoke. It may have been a signal.’

David considered. ‘Can’t we go further?’ he asked. ‘Can’t we now say it couldn’t have been anything else? My first notion that somebody was cooking a chop, or boiling a kettle, just doesn’t hold water.’

‘And the kettle doesn’t, either. For there
wasn’t
a kettle. Except what you might call a pretty kettle of fish.’ Appleby smiled. ‘And there was certainly that. I mean there was certainly the devil of a crisis for somebody. But there’s another possibility about that fire, you know. It seems, from your account, to have been quite a small-scale affair. It might have been a matter of the burning of a few papers… No, don’t go up there, Henchman.’

David had been pacing about – without much noticing the fact, for his brain was racing. And he had been just about to climb to the rim of rock that faced the Loaf. Now he stopped, and stared at Appleby. ‘You think–?’

‘The skyline mayn’t be entirely healthy at the moment.’ Appleby dropped this casually. ‘Now, what was I saying?’

David took a long breath. ‘Something about burning papers.’

‘Precisely. Your man – the first man – may have felt himself trapped up here with a batch of papers he was determined shouldn’t fall into enemy hands. So he may have put a match to them.’

‘Not a signal after all!’

Appleby got off his shooting stick. ‘In point of pure theory,’ he said, ‘that doesn’t follow.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

‘Detective investigation, like philosophy in the University of Oxford, has its empyrean, its speculative inane. Scramble up to that empyrean in the present case, Henchman, and you have to admit that your friend may have been killing two birds with one stone. He may have been destroying something. And he may have been making a signal as well.’

‘Then he was damned clever, if you ask me.’ David had experienced one of his quick spurts of impatience.