Appleby's Answer (20 page)

‘The well?' Appleby repeated this on so sharply interrogative a note that Detective-Inspector Graves might have been observed to jump and then hastily commit some thought to his notebook. ‘Just what had Ralph Jenkins to say about Bulkington and the well?'

‘It was far from clear. But I found myself persuaded that this, rather than the absurd theft of Ambrose's old clothes and the using them to dress up dummies and so forth, was what had really broken the miserable Jenkins' nerve. And then a walloping from his precious friend earlier this evening had been a last straw.'

‘I don't know what all this is about,' Sir Ambrose said, ‘and for either of the man Bulkington's precious pupils I couldn't care less. But what's this about a well? Graves, do you make any sense of it?'

‘I can't say that I do, sir. Except that, before my time in the district, there was some fatality, I believe, connected with a well in the grounds of the Old Rectory – “Kandahar”, as it now is.'

‘Gad, yes!' Sir Ambrose was enlightened. ‘Fellow called Pusey – young Howard's predecessor. Managed to drown himself in the thing. Rum business.'

‘Precisely so,' Miss Anketel said. ‘Of course, it was before Henry came here, and it is something he has never much cared to discuss. Tonight he appeared almost upset by the drivel this gutless young Jenkins was talking about it.'

‘Can you be a little more explicit about that, Miss Anketel?' Appleby asked. ‘I think the Inspector may have a very good reason for being interested in it.'

‘Thank you, sir – precisely so,' Graves said stoutly. And he licked the point of his pencil.

‘It appeared to be something like this,' Miss Anketel said, absently pushing her emptied glass in the direction of her host. ‘Some months ago Jenkins and the even more disagreeable Waterbird had an encounter with the scribbling woman – whose name escapes me.'

‘Pringle,' Appleby said. ‘And we expect her here at any moment. But that is by the way. Please go on.'

‘Expect her here? Good God!' Miss Anketel was properly astonished. ‘But the gist of the matter was that this encounter with the woman represented an obscure stratagem on Bulkington's part. The young men had instructions to present this Pringle person with alarming facts – or supposed facts – about their tutor. In particular, they were to assure her that he had himself made away with the unfortunate Pusey – I suppose actually by pushing him down the well.'

‘Drowned him, in fact?' Sir Ambrose demanded. ‘I call that a deuced high-handed thing to do. Always knew the fellow was a scoundrel. Often said so. Cecily will back me up.'

‘Jenkins,' Miss Anketel pursued, ‘is accustomed to having to regard much that goes on round about him as incomprehensible and therefore not usefully to be worried about. That, I imagine, would frequently be his condition in any environment. But it has been particularly so in Bulkington's broken-down mad-house.'

‘You view it as a mad-house?' Appleby asked. ‘And Bulkington as mad?'

‘At least Jenkins does. But he appears to be less impressed by his tutor's imbecility than by his inebriety. He maintains that Bulkington has been mysteriously keyed up of late, has been drinking heavily, and has been behaving in some very alarming ways when drunk. For one thing, he visits the well.'

‘Ah!' Appleby said.

‘Ah!' Graves echoed – and appeared to write down this ejaculation in his little book. Then an original thought struck him. ‘Returning to the scene of the crime, perhaps? It's said to be a common thing. But then, of course, it's unlikely' – Graves contentedly finished his brandy – ‘that there
was
a crime.'

‘No crime?' Appleby queried – and inwardly concluded that the Detective-Inspector was no fool.

‘Well, sir, not just
that
crime. If you push a man down a well and drown him, you don't oblige a couple of young men to inform a lady of the fact many years later. No sense in that.'

‘But the point may lie just there,' Judith said. ‘There
is
no sense in Captain Bulkington. He's off his head. He imagines he murdered his predecessor, this unfortunate Dr Pusey. He nourishes beautiful fantasies of achieving further drownings. The well has become a kind of wishing well, and that's why he haunts it.'

‘In fact, the fellow's a harmless, although damned offensive, crack-pot?' This was offered rather hopefully by Sir Ambrose. ‘Put our heads together, and see how we might get him quietly put away. Just a matter of nobbling the right mad-doctors, if you ask me.'

‘That Bulkington is insane,' Appleby said, looking round him, ‘seems to be almost the majority view. And I think it quite possible myself. But, even if he is mad, is he
ineffectively
mad? It would be rash to suppose so. He may nourish fantasies, as my wife says. But he has a considerable disposition to action, as well. He took action, which I need not particularise, to get these two young men we have been talking about well under his thumb. He made them steal your clothes, Pinkerton, and probably do the job of planting those dressed up dummies as well. There can be little doubt, moreover, that what the inventive Miss Pringle is proposing to reveal to us is further machinations on the Captain's part. Lethal machinations, if my colleague Inspector Graves has understood it aright.'

‘Why do you call this Pringle woman inventive, Sir John?' Miss Anketel asked. ‘Do you suppose that she has been making something up?'

‘At least that is her profession – which it is possible to suspect she has lately been exercising in an unusual way. But we must wait and see.' Appleby looked comfortably round the company. ‘I've never much cared for bizarre hypotheses… Ah, Pinkerton – your door-bell again.'

 

 

Miss Pringle had not, of course, expected to find herself in the presence of Sir John Appleby – whom nevertheless she recognised at once. Hither and thither dividing the swift mind (like the Homeric hero whose guilefulness she might be said to emulate), she tumbled at once to the fact that he must be that ‘man from Scotland Yard' who had so mysteriously entertained Messrs Waterbird and Jenkins to tea. That he had now arrived, equally unaccountably, at Long Canings Hall (principal seat of Sir Ambrose Pinkerton, Bart.) was a circumstance which she saw she was likely to judge either gratifying or alarming according to the amount of nerve she was herself importing into this impressive mansion. The presence of so famous a policeman must surely most notably add to the news-value of the strange and sinister events which were about to transact themselves in and around the place. On the other hand, Appleby – she clear-sightedly acknowledged to herself – might prove to be rather a different cup of tea from even a senior and experienced rural police officer.

Not that Appleby was suggesting himself as at all formidable now. He had the air of a man who, having embarked upon some social occasion of the most commonplace kind, and then discovered himself to have stumbled upon the fringes of a small family
contretemps
or the like, politely effaces himself until the insignificant disturbance has been smoothed away. Something of the same appearance, too, was presented by Lady Appleby, a well-groomed woman who had produced a fragment of crochet-work, from her bag, and was applying herself to it in a mild abstraction which somehow contrived to suggest that she had come to stay with the Pinkertons for a month, and that Miss Pringle's incursion – oddly nocturnal though it was – was an episode of an ephemeral and unimportant kind. It was different with Miss Anketel, who had also instantly recalled herself to Miss Pringle's mind (or better, perhaps, to Miss Pringle's nose, since the same unmistakable high-class effluvium, as of horse embrocation by Chanel, attended Miss Anketel's person in Lady Pinkerton's drawing-room as had done so in Dr Howard's church). Miss Anketel from time to time directed a certain grim attention upon Miss Pringle – rather of the sort (Miss Pringle thought) to which she might be prompted by the sight of some coughing, spavined, or glandered jade. As for the Pinkertons, they combined the verbal expressions of courtesy incumbent upon a host and hostess with the stony stares and the pervasive bemusement to which their upbringing and their intellectual equipment respectively prompted them.

All this added up to the fact that Miss Pringle's sensational communication, although advanced in so unexpectedly numerous a company, seemed effectively to be made to the reassuringly respectful Detective-Inspector Graves alone. And Miss Pringle felt she was not going to be intimidated by a Detective-Inspector. She had, after all, invented such persons by the score.

There was something a little daunting, all the same, in the circumstance that it was entirely without comment, and entirely without perceptible change of facial expression, that Graves wrote it all down in a notebook. Miss Pringle wondered whether, when at length she fell silent, she would be invited to sign the record, or perhaps receive some caution required by what are called the Judges' Rules. (In Miss Pringle's romances there was commonly a point at which some shady character was told by Catfish that anything he said would be taken down and might be used in evidence: an incident which her more experienced readers knew to be virtually a verdict of Not Guilty delivered on the spot.) But, on the whole, Miss Pringle was satisfied by her performance. Her only regret was that she had not thought up some stratagem for introducing into Lady Pinkerton's drawing-room (at this crucial stage of the affair) the Crime Reporter of
The Times
. But did
The Times
(the London
Times
)
have
a Crime Reporter? Possibly not. In general terms, however, the idea would have been a good one. It was now close on midnight. But, had there been a journalist on hand, it might just have been possible to make one of the later editions of a national daily before it went to bed. In her mind's eye Miss Pringle was seeing, if vaguely, a banner headline, when she was called to present reality by the voice – still the respectful voice, addressed as to his betters – of Detective-Inspector Graves. It was a voice, however, that held a not altogether agreeable property. Almost, indeed, it appeared to speak of worms and epitaphs.

‘Thank you very much, madam. What you have to tell me is very interesting. Striking, in a manner of speaking. Decidedly striking. And we seem to have a little time in hand. If, that's to say, your calculations are correct, and this gentleman we've been hearing about wholly reliable.' Graves consulted his watch. ‘Just under fifteen minutes. And as Sir Ambrose is with us in this room, his bacon – if I may express it in that vulgar way, madam – appears safe enough.'

‘And how thankful I am!' Miss Pringle said. She remembered to clasp her hands in a kind of secular ecstasy. ‘But we must remember that the incendiary device–'

‘Quite so, madam. But let me remind you that, as a result of your very public-spirited telephone message, I have a number of officers posted round the house. And even one up beside the stable clock itself. You are quite sure that the detonator is sited there?'

‘Perfectly.' Miss Pringle was entirely firm. ‘And contrived so as to be activated by a twelfth stroke only.'

‘Commendably ingenious,' Appleby said. It was the first comment he had offered.

‘Thank you,' Miss Pringle responded, much gratified. Then, bethinking herself, she added, ‘How little I imagined that so harmless a stroke of fiction should be put to–'

‘Quite so,' Appleby said. ‘Absolutely quite so. But my colleague must forgive me for interrupting him.' At this point Appleby accepted a cigar from Sir Ambrose, to whom an exact hospitality appeared to be the one remaining resource. ‘I think he may conceivably have one or two questions to ask. In the interest of subsidiary elucidation, that is to say.' At this Appleby offered Miss Pringle a brief glance – such as perhaps might be due to a performing animal of extraordinary accomplishment in a circus. ‘And I won't interrupt again.'

‘Thank you,' Graves said – quite with the rapid deftness of one practised participant to another practised participant in a television
causerie
. ‘If I may, madam, run over a few salient points?'

‘Please do,' Miss Pringle said composedly. ‘Deeply culpable as I feel–'

‘Quite so. But you have been, if I may say so, extraordinarily acute in tumbling to the abominable deception imposed on you.' Graves, who seemed to learn rapidly, articulated this with a smoothness that would have done credit to the retired Commissioner of Metropolitan Police himself. ‘Captain Bulkington, whose acquaintance you had made quite by chance, had expressed himself as attracted by the idea of entering into the field of detective fiction: a kind of writing – of literature, indeed – in which you are recognised as being something more than in the top ten.'

‘You are very kind,' Miss Pringle said. It occurred to her that Sir Ambrose Pinkerton, so adequate in finding her a chair, had for some reason neglected to offer her brandy. She was beginning to feel the need of it. What she had imbibed earlier in the Jolly Chairman had now failed of its effect. It had probably been of deplorably inferior quality. ‘But go on,' Miss Pringle said. And she added courageously, ‘Time presses.'

‘
Tempus fugit
.' For the first time, Lady Appleby had looked up from her crochet. ‘As Captain Bulkington might say.'

‘So you agreed,' Graves pursued, ‘to suggest to Captain Bulkington, chiefly through a series of letters, the plot of a story which might suitably be entitled
The Three Warnings
, or something of the sort. All this about Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Or, to be more precise, Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. And you little knew – I think that would be your way of expressing the matter – that Captain Bulkington was proposing, in sober actuality–'