Appleby's End (10 page)

“Awkwardness?” Clarissa turned anxiously to Rainbird. “Rainbird, there are plenty of eggs, and so forth? Coffee-beans, even – and something for luncheon?”

“Oh, yes, marm. At least a dozen eggs. Coffee I'm rather doubtful of, marm, but there's still a little tea in the last chest. Potatoes is going to be our trouble, marm. Cook had arranged with Heyhoe – with the late Heyhoe, as I should say, marm–”

“Let Cook prepare abundance of cabbage. Everard, there will be no awkwardness – not until we have to think about that funeral. Perhaps Billy Bidewell or Peggy Pitches had better be sent over with a note to the Vicar's in the morning. He must have a very good idea of what to do with the dead.”

“Potatoes?” said Everard. “Did I hear somebody say something about potatoes?
Patagonia to Potat
o is going to be out on Thursday. And the doggy letter still a chaos! Really, this could not have happened more unfortunately. And I fear, Clarissa, that you do not quite apprehend what I mean by awkwardness. The awkwardness will be with the police, and people of that sort.”

“No doubt there will be policemen.” Clarissa peered into an empty coffee-pot. “But Rainbird is perfectly competent to entertain them in the servants' hall. Judith, why are you making faces at me?”

“Because of Mr Appleby, Aunt Clarissa. Mr Appleby is a policeman.”

“Is he, indeed?” Clarissa was not at all disconcerted. “Nowadays there are so many interesting careers, are there not? But I was referring to the local constabulary. And I shall suggest that Cook makes a nourishing cabbage soup. If there aren't enough cabbages, Heyhoe must go over and fetch some from the Hall farm.”

“Heyhoe,” said Luke, “doth inherit the vasty hall of death.”

“Dear me, yes – how stupid of me! That is what this is all about. And will somebody tell me, by the way, why the police should be interested in Heyhoe's death? Now, if it had been Rainbird–”

Everard coughed. “My dear, it appears to be the general opinion that it is impossible to bury oneself up to the neck in a snowdrift. Only some species of avalanche would produce such an effect. It would seem, therefore, that somebody must have deliberately dug the unfortunate old man in.”

Clarissa looked at her kinsman in mild surprise. “Everard, do you mean that Heyhoe has been
murdered
?”

“It rather looks as if it must be called that.”

“Then I think it ought to be investigated. If such things are allowed to occur nobody is in the least safe. It might happen to Rainbird! Rainbird, you had better not venture far from the house until there is a thaw.”

“Very good, marm.”

“No doubt it is Hannah Hoobin's boy. Only last month he stole a turkey from the Murcotts. Everard, I told you it was a mistake to keep him out of gaol. First, the Murcott's turkey – a remarkably fine one, Mrs Murcott says – and now this. Judith, why should you give that hysterical laugh?”

“I'm only yawning – by way of preparing to go to bed.” Judith had got rather unsteadily to her feet. “Rainbird, Mr Appleby has been most kind to me. Do see that he has soap as well as towels, or towels as well as soap.”

“Very good, Miss Judith.”

“Good night, everybody. Aunt Clarissa, come along.”

The two ladies of Dream Manor were gone; Robert saw them out of the long room; Mark's eyes, Appleby noted, again never left his sister until the door closed behind her.

Everard moved towards the fireplace. “As I say, I think we ought to be off too. Or shall we have a cigar? The
New Millennium
people send down a box every time we tick off a letter. Remarkably attentive they are – in little matters of that sort. Mark, be a good fellow and fetch them in.”

Mark left the room with alacrity and appeared to be away rather a long time. Rainbird moved softly about clearing the table, or rather making such redispositions as he appeared to think requisite for breakfast. Every now and then he murmured “Heyhoe,” softly; but Appleby, after listening carefully, decided that this was a mere ejaculation, made without reference to the dead coachman. Presently Mark returned; he looked relieved – perhaps only because he had succeeded in finding the cigars. Everard opened the box with an air, disclosing the largest Romeo and Juliettas that a leisured smoker could wish to see. It looked as if at least an hour's further confabulation with the Raven menfolk lay ahead. Appleby, forlorn in borrowed clothes, considered the prospect without enthusiasm. But at least it would give Rainbird ample time to add soap to the towels or towels to the soap. And now Everard remembered that Clarissa might find the cigar-smoke oppressive in the morning, and that it would be better to move to the library. So they all left the dining-room – a large apartment hung with innumerable oil paintings which the light was inadequate to distinguish – and passed across what was already familiar to Appleby as an excruciatingly draughty hall. Robert Raven padded as if through a zone in which skill in unarmed combat might at any moment be required; Luke's lips moved in an inaudible threnody; Everard, who had put on a faded rose-pink jacket salvaged from some wine club of his youth, toddled ahead like a careworn cockatoo; and Mark contrived to stand aside and view the whole procession with his most
louche
grin.

The hall of Dream Manor, as well as being draughty, was long, narrow, and sadly disproportioned as the result of the injudicious addition of a pretentious Regency staircase. But what made it really odd was the Mongolians. For each Mongolian had a glass case to himself, and these were disposed in a quincunx pattern all over the available floor space. There is something markedly disconcerting in a miniature Madam Tussaud's deposited in a country gentleman's hall, and where there has been loving concentration on the more inscrutable Oriental types this effect is accentuated. The Mongolians – they had been collected by Ranulph's third brother, Adolphus, a person of some talent who had joined the Romish Communion and become a bishop
in
partibus
, but who was later converted on his death-bed to the religious system of the Zend-Avesta – the Mongolians eminently possessed that creepy half-life which all waxworks share, and which analysis shows to proceed from our conviction that they are uneasily aware of their own mere waxiness. The Mongolians, then – tirelessly exacting this obscure psychological manoeuvre – stood dotted about the hall and Everard, threading his way between them, explained to Appleby that they were arranged according to the best ethnological knowledge of the eighteen-eighties. “A landmark,” he said. “In its day our uncle Adolphus' collection was something of a landmark in its own field. Pray notice the ferocious countenance of the Kurd. And only a few years ago (this one is a Tartar, and I think the force of the expression
to catch a Tartar
will immediately come home to you), only a few years ago the whole thing was wanted by a museum. In Idaho, I think, or perhaps it was Oregon. Only there was a hitch at the last moment.”

“They didn't,” said Luke, “see their way to
pay
.”

“And here we are.” Rather hastily Everard threw open a door. “How pleasant to see an excellent fire.”

The library fire was really not at all bad. But any cheerfulness which this might have imparted to the room was countered by the noticeable absence of some ten or fifteen thousand books. The library, that is to say, was lined with shelving from floor to ceiling, but, with the exception of islanded volumes and groups of volumes here and there, the shelves harboured nothing but dust, empty cigar boxes and tobacco tins, pipes, carpet slippers, fragments of dog biscuit, some foils, a fencing mask, ink bottles and a small model horse, hinged at the tail and opening so as to display the muscular system and internal economy of the animal. But if the Muses as most classically conceived had taken flight from Dream, they lingered as patronesses of the most oppressively permanent of the plastic arts. Ranged round the room were some dozen life-size figures and groups in gleaming white marble. The Rape of Europa was immediately distinguishable – Europa being in high spirits and needing only a frilly skirt to present the appearance of a bare-back rider in a circus. A companion piece, in which a bull and a glossy lady were yet more inextricably entangled both with each other and with two astoundingly contorted young men, Appleby identified provisionally as a Punishment of Dirce. He was looking round with some apprehension for a Pasiphaë when Everard Raven patted him amiably into a chair.

“Ah,” said Everard, “I see you are looking at poor uncle Theodore's work. Most of it, of course, is in Judith's studio, but the choicer pieces were brought in here. The youth clasping what Mark insists is a beer barrel is Genius guarding the Secret of the Tomb. Theodore's
chef d'oeuvre
, however, is generally taken to be the one opposite the fireplace. It is called Struggle between a She-Bear and a Man of the Old Stone Age. A bear was brought specially from Russia and accommodated, it is said, in the butler's pantry. And the Old Stone Age Man was inspected and approved by Charles Darwin.” Everard paused and unexpectedly chuckled. “Of course, this sort of thing is not exactly in a modern taste. I myself prefer Judith every time. Indeed, a few years ago we explored the possibility of selling Theodore up. But there were unexpected difficulties.”

Mark struck a match and lit Appleby's cigar. “You see, we left it too late. Until recently these things could be put in vast machines and ground into powder for making a very superior sort of bathroom tiles. But now it appears that they use sour milk. Books, on the other hand, always have their price. We have found that a folio volume of eighteenth-century sermons is a reasonably good breakfast all round. And the works of Voltaire in full calf it isn't easy to eat one's way through under a month.”

“Mark,” said Everard, “is referring to the fact that the library has been – um – in part dispersed. We have kept a working library upstairs in the Scriptorium. But the books down here were not of much interest to any present members of the family. It seemed a pity, therefore, to – ah – keep them idle.”

Mark flung himself into an ancient sofa. “So we passed 'em through the larder. Mr Appleby is at present in process of digesting a volume of Dodsley's
Miscellany
or a badly cropped copy of Dryden's
Fables
.

Everard Raven looked mildly pained. “Mark,” he said, “when I was a boy I was taught that gentlemen don't talk money after dinner. And even if that good habit has fallen into desuetude–”

The conversation of Mark Raven, it seemed to Appleby, was in even poorer taste than the marble statuary of his great-uncle Theodore. Perhaps the Heyhoe affair had got this odd young man badly rattled. Anyway, a change of subject would be all to the good. “I don't suppose,” asked Appleby, “that any word has come in about the carriage yet?”

Everard shook his head. “Nothing at all. And I am afraid that it will have gone over Tew Weir and that the battering will be the end of it.”

“A great loss,” said Mark. “For Spot, that is to say.”

“The carriage was in very poor repair.” Robert Raven, whose features under the influence of warmth and cigar smoke were beginning to lose the extremity of ferocity which had hitherto distinguished them, seemed to put this as a comforting suggestion to Everard. “It would have fallen to pieces of its own accord, in time.”

“Which,” said Mark, “goes for Heyhoe too.”

“Time?” Luke Raven, who had been leaning against the mantelpiece and gazing in a melancholy way at what was evidently Theodore's idea of the Rape of the Sabines, came forward like an actor who has been presented with his cue. “Time with a Gift of Tears,” said Luke. “And Grief with a Glass that ran.”

“There were potatoes.” Everard's voice held a harassed note. “And cake for the cow. Billy Bidewell must be asked how long cows will go without cake.”

“Pleasure, with Pain for leaven,” said Luke.

“When one comes to think of it, of course, the carriage would be of little use without Heyhoe–”

“Summer, with Flowers that fell.”

“–or Heyhoe without the carriage. But it is extremely distressing, all the same. I can see that Judith has had quite a shock–”

“Remembrance, fallen from Heaven.”

“–and that Clarissa, too, is upset. The events of the evening have been–”

“Madness risen from Hell.”

Mark Raven gave a yell of laughter. “One to the poet!” he cried. “Luke has hit the nail on the head. Somebody grabs a half-witted old coachman, yanks him along to a snowdrift, buries him up to the neck and leaves him to the operation of the laws of thermodynamics. Everard says it is extremely distressing. Luke says–”

“Swinburne,” said Luke with gloomy modesty.

“Swinburne says it is Madness risen from Hell. Let Mr Appleby, who is entirely unprejudiced in the matter, decide which is right.”

Appleby remained silent. It was clear that the Ravens enjoyed desultory conversation among themselves and were capable of keeping it up indefinitely. No need to interrupt. And there was – surely there was – much about them that required a little quiet thinking out. Were they really birds as queer as they now seemed to be to a strayed policeman at the end of a long day first of massive monotony and latterly of fantastic incident? And where had they all been between the serio-comic episode of the ford and the ghastly discovery of Heyhoe? Appleby frowned. Where had he himself been? Floating down the river in an ancient carriage and in the company of an unaccountable girl – a ludicrous performance which circumstances had decreed should now, in all probability, become a front-page story. Inspector Appleby, what happened when visibility became so poor that you could momentarily proceed no further? We climbed into a haystack. Into a haystack, Inspector? A haystack. And, I suppose, fell asleep there? I'm afraid I really don't know; perhaps so; certainly not for very long… Decidedly it sounded silly. And
had
he conceivably been asleep? Had Judith been asleep?