Appleby Plays Chicken (20 page)

‘Always?’

‘Well, he was what might be called a weekend squire down here. He couldn’t manage much more than that.’

Appleby shook his head. ‘That’s not what I meant. He went into the civil service late?’

‘Oh, certainly. Arthur had a scientific training; like so many fellows, he went into the civil service in a temporary way during the war. But he decided to stay. It surprises me that you should know about him.’

‘Well, I do – a little. And I found out rather more, when I was making a number of inquiries on the telephone before dinner.’

Pettifor frowned. ‘You don’t waste time. Arthur hadn’t entered the picture then.’

‘Ah – so you do now feel he’s in it?’ Appleby asked this mildly. ‘In any case,
you
were, you know. So I thought I’d just freshen up on your brother.’

‘Freshen up on him?’ Pettifor flushed. ‘Are you suggesting that you ever had any professional concern with him before?’

Appleby shook his head. ‘Please be patient. And let your patience extend to going back to the idea of suicide.’

‘I tell you, sir–’

Appleby held up his hand. ‘I know you feel very strongly about its blank impossibility. But suppose it not impossible. Set aside your conviction, and grant me that. Is it necessary to admit that one of those promptings to suicide that I was detailing to you might apply in your brother’s case?’

For a moment Appleby thought that he was going to be turned out of Tremlett there and then. But Pettifor, although this time he flushed more darkly, answered quietly enough. ‘You mentioned marital difficulties. Well, my brother’s marriage was dissolved. But that was many years ago now.’

‘His emotional constitution was not altogether normal?’

‘Arthur was a man of the strictest and highest moral principles.’ Pettifor now spoke hotly. ‘Nobody has ever questioned it.’

‘Nevertheless the dissolution of his marriage had perhaps some painful background which has never been fully revealed?’

‘That is so. His bride left him – she was not a woman who would have made a man a satisfactory wife in any circumstances – and later suffered a breakdown during which she embarked upon a course of deeply culpable conduct which I need not particularize. And her end was a most unhappy one. Unfortunately the tragedy never healed itself in my brother’s mind. He became with the years only the more morbidly sensitive about it. It was the occasion of his going very little into society, and seldom receiving guests here at Tremlett. He felt himself – although utterly without justification – to be deeply responsible and disgraced.’

‘And all this, you say, about circumstances which never became fully public?’

‘That is so.’

‘Surely, Mr Pettifor, you realize that you are describing to me what is virtually the classic background to blackmail?’

‘Perhaps so. But you are talking nonsense, nevertheless. If my brother had been twenty times blackmailed, Sir John, he would not have taken his own life. He might have come to the brink of it. But he would not have done it.’

‘I see.’ It was Appleby’s turn to pace the length of the library. ‘Would it surprise you to learn that there is a known blackmailer staying in your hotel now?’

‘Holding the opinion I do, I cannot be interested in whether there is or not.’

‘Well, there is.’ Appleby was now gazing into an empty fireplace, and he spoke without turning round. ‘A little time ago, you gave me your word of honour – on a matter of faith or conviction. Well, I give you my word of honour on a matter of sober fact. You have been in conversation with an extremely ruthless blackmailer this afternoon.’

Pettifor made a restless movement. ‘Must this go on? The deep of night is crept upon our talk.’

Appleby turned round. ‘Do you know, it’s sometimes very dangerous to quote the poets? But I agree we’ve talked enough. Action may get us further. Will you allow me to search this room?’

‘To search this room?’ Pettifor was astounded.

‘Certainly. And I’d propose to begin with your brother’s desk, if I hadn’t suddenly become rather more interested in his fireplace. Will you come over here?’

Pettifor strode across the room. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ he said.

‘No fire – just those two big logs. I suppose the place is centrally heated, and that there’s a fire only in winter? Your brother seems to have had excellent servants.’ And Appleby glanced around the room. ‘Everything in order, and not a speck of dust. So they wouldn’t, I think, have left
that
very long.’ And Appleby pointed into the hearth. ‘Would you agree, by the way, that I couldn’t have contrived that effect myself?’

Pettifor followed the direction of Appleby’s finger. ‘Not unless you came in here earlier.’

‘Ah – I was with young Timothy Dumble when I peered in here before meeting you. So this isn’t a matter of a wicked policeman planting clues. If this
is
a clue, that is to say. We may be looking at a mare’s nest. But it’s worth investigating. Don’t you agree?’

‘That little heap of ashes and charred paper?’ Pettifor’s voice was now perplexed and uneasy. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Can you honestly say that?’ Appleby spoke dryly. ‘Here we are, sir, talking about blackmail and suicide. And there, behind those logs in the grate, are some hastily destroyed papers. These are elements that compose together very readily, you know. I’m not sure I haven’t met them today already.’

‘You talk in riddles. If there’s anything that can be fished out of the hearth, fish it out. And then search the room if it pleases you.’

Without a word Appleby stepped forward and fished in the fireplace. Pettifor watched him gloomily. What had been burnt appeared to be a few crumpled papers. One of these was imperfectly consumed; Appleby picked up the unburnt part carefully, carried it to the desk, and smoothed it out. The two men looked at it in silence. It was a triangular fragment, bearing a few lines of typescript, thus:

will

you £2,000 in

this to the summit

Tor punctually at noon

and see that you come alone.

The silence continued. Pettifor seemed stupefied; he walked away and stared through the French window into the night. Very faintly, the sound of the sea washed into the room. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said presently. ‘Two thousand pounds! There’s no sense in it.’

‘There’s a great deal of sense in it.’ Appleby had produced a pocket magnifying glass and was examining the scrap of typescript carefully. ‘There’s a great deal of enlightenment. It takes us right out of the dark.’

Pettifor turned round. ‘I think it takes us straight into it. Darkness and disgrace. Oh, my God!’

‘However that may be, we can now start getting one or two things clear. You will admit, Mr Pettifor, that your brother met his death this morning on Knack Tor?’

‘I will admit nothing, sir. Nor be questioned further. This interview must now end.’

Appleby said nothing. He reached across the desk for a clean envelope, and carefully inserted into it the fragment of typescript. ‘The moving finger writes,’ he murmured.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line.’

Pettifor frowned. ‘I’d expect my pupils’, he said, ‘to amuse themselves from time to time by imitating my mannerisms – although scarcely in my presence. But that you, sir–’

‘I’m sorry. But there’s always, you know, some sort of associative process at work, is there not, when one seems to indulge in random quotation?’ Appleby tapped the envelope. ‘It’s certainly true that nothing will cancel what’s written here. Do you remember, by any chance, the first occasion during our acquaintance upon which you quoted a scrap of the
Rubaiyat
?’

‘I do not. And I can’t think what this idle talk is leading to.’

‘It was very much a scrap. I didn’t, indeed, catch on to it. It was only later, when I found the poem running in my own head, that it came to me, and that I realized I had caught something odd in your words. The occasion was this. You were remarking on your impression that David Henchman in fact knew the identity of the man whose body he and I found this afternoon on Knack Tor, but that he would not discuss the matter, so that you were still ignorant of the man’s identity yourself. And what you said to me was: “David’s lips are locked.” It was pretty clearly a tag from something – but I didn’t, as I say, catch on to it. However, I can quote the stanza now. Shall I do so?’

Pettifor had turned pale. ‘You can do as you please,’ he said shortly.

‘Very well:

“And David’s lips are locked; but in divine

High piping Pehlevi, with ‘Wine! Wine! Wine!

Red
Wine!’ – the nightingale cries to the rose

That yellow cheek of hers to incarnadine.”

You knew the man’s name as well as I did. And by a trick of association you betrayed yourself.’

There was a long silence before Pettifor spoke. ‘This is quite fantastic,’ he said.

‘On the contrary, Mr Pettifor, it is quite conclusive. You had – and have – information which you were determined to conceal. This man Redwine was found shot dead in circumstances which led directly to an affray in which the lives of your pupils – and particularly the life of your own nephew, Julian Ogg – were put at imminent hazard. And yet you remained silent on something which you knew about him: his name. That is an act of extraordinary irresponsibility. You must have had some very grave motive for it.’

‘It is perfectly true.’ Pettifor sank down on a chair.

‘And I think you have realized for some time that the whole obscure situation has developed in a way that you have no hope of controlling. The death of Redwine, the death of the man who was killed in Timothy Dumble’s car this afternoon, the inescapable fact that some sort of ruthless blackmail has been going on, information which I have myself acquired about your brother: these all represent, in your own words, deep water which you have no chance of keeping afloat in. The time has come for a showdown, has it not?’

Pettifor had buried his head in his hands. Now he raised it again. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I believe it has.’ Slowly he put a hand in a pocket and brought out a wallet. ‘And for the production of another document.’ He broke off suddenly. ‘What’s that?’

There was a sound of running footsteps on the terrace, and a moment later Timothy burst into the room. ‘Ian,’ he panted. ‘I’ve found him.’

Appleby swung round. ‘He’s here?’

‘Yes – I’ve got him in your car. He’s done up.’

‘And David?’

‘He went on. He went on when Ian had to drop out. On the motorbike, I mean. But he knows where David’s making for, so I thought I’d better bring him back here and collect you, sir.’

‘Quite right.’ Appleby turned to Pettifor and pointed to the wallet. ‘What you have there may be vital,’ he said. ‘But it will keep. So put it away, please, and come along.’

‘Come along?’

‘Certainly. This is the crisis. Particularly for David Henchman. He’s in danger – deadly danger.’

‘Good God!’ Pettifor sprang to his feet. ‘I shall never forgive myself if–’

‘Probably not. But you have a pat phrase for it, have you not? Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.’ And Appleby glanced at Timothy as he hurried across the room. ‘You have the hang of this?’

Timothy, who was still panting, seemed bewildered. ‘Ian’s nattering about a girl.’

‘Exactly. And we’ve got to find her.’

Once more Appleby’s car was rushing through the night. And once more Timothy Dumble was studying the map. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘here it is. Farthing Bishop. About eight miles. It seems a tiny place.’

‘It must have a post office, anyway.’ From the back of the car, Ian Dancer spoke in the carefully controlled voice of somebody in pain.

‘So it must – if your whole story’s not crackers.’ Timothy paused. ‘You just had to get off?’ he asked cautiously.

‘No help for it. I was rocking about on the back of the bike, and wrecking the whole show. The beastly doctors were right. I thought they were talking rot.’

‘It was madness, Ian.’ Pettifor, also at the back, steadied the injured youth as the car swung round a corner.

‘I thought I’d be all right, just hanging on behind. But the bloody thing made me howl whenever we bumped. David had to stop. And then we decided he must go on to this Farthing Bishop place by himself. I sat by the roadside for a bit, and managed to get a cigarette going. That made me feel a lot better. I began to think I’d been damned soft not to hold on. Then I saw I must get somewhere where I could get hold of the police and tell them about David.’

‘Did you, indeed?’ Appleby, intent over the wheel, spoke grimly. ‘It was a somewhat belated thought, if I may say so.’

‘I’m sorry. Well, I managed to get on my feet again and reach the high road. I thought I’d thumb something. And what I was lucky enough to thumb was Timothy here in your car, making back to Nymph Monachorum. We decided the best thing was to turn round and contact you at Tremlett.’

‘You were quite right. But what about the start of the business? Just what put it into your thick heads – yours and David Henchman’s – to go off into the blue without a word?’

‘Hear, hear!’ Timothy didn’t seem to feel that his friend’s agony deserved much consideration. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, you low hound?’

‘You?’ Ian was scornful. ‘That would have meant the whole gaggle in an instant. I expect we’d have told Sir John, if we’d known he was at the George.’

‘And just what would you have told me? What put his notion about the girl in David’s mind? Was it something Faircloth said?’

‘It was a little more than that, sir. You see, the old boy had been expecting his daughter all day, and she just hadn’t turned up.’

‘But didn’t he have a telegram?’

‘That was later. Actually, it was the telegram that gave David his suspicion of the truth. Or rather, it was the telegram that strengthened it. He had a first glimpse of the thing when he was having a bath before dinner.’

‘I see.’ Appleby’s voice was patient. ‘Of course there’s nothing more reliable than the sort of sudden notion that comes to one in a hot bath after an utterly exhausting day. Go on.’