Appleby's End (15 page)

“Books?” said Sir Mulberry vaguely. “Do you know, that was why I was rattled. Something about a book. But I can't at all remember what. Odd.”

Appleby looked quickly across the table. “You mean one of Ranulph Raven's books?”

“I'm sure I couldn't say.” Sir Mulberry was drifting rapidly away again. He had clasped his hands lightly on the two arms of his chair and was making some calculations as to the right inclination of his head. This time, Appleby obscurely surmised, it was Houdon's celebrated figure of Voltaire.

“If you have finished your coffee,” said Lady Farmer, “we may as well look at the dog.”

They looked at the dog. “Extremely disagreeable,” Lady Farmer said. “Entirely misses the broad splay feet. And look at the tail – no bushy fringe hanging from the dorsal border.”

Appleby, though unable to regard this latest petrifaction with the expert eye thus invoked, felt inclined to agree that no enthusiasm was possible before it. Theodore had lavished much anatomical care upon its production, but unfortunately no gleam of the canine – or even the doggy – had visited his work. Having the bodily form of some species of terrier, it remarkably managed to convey the suggestion of a snake. Lady Farmer was the last person to welcome such a changeling. It appeared, moreover, that the creature it had mysteriously replaced possessed as many virtues as this had vices – having been a dachshund with a body extremely long and cylindrical, legs notably thick and twisted, and quite uncommonly everted paws. Appleby listened to these particulars with forbearance and then proceeded to enquire into the facts of the case. But very little emerged. Lady Farmer's favourite dachshund had been secluded for a time in the stables, and one night the substitution of this stony monstrosity had taken place. A general acquaintance with the lie of the buildings, and the sort of casual information on kennel matters that might be picked up from a groom in a pub, were all that the perpetrator of this particular absurdity would have required. There seemed nothing for it but to pass on to the next exhibit.

And this the party did, in deepening gloom. No doubt it was the gloom that prompted Appleby to offer some remark indicating mild professional confidence. “I think,” he said – they were viewing the cow – “I think it's possible to begin to see a little light in all this.”

“See light?” said Sir Mulberry. “Nothing but grope in the dark, if you ask me.”

Colonel Pike slapped his thigh – with the vehemence of one in whom appropriate intellectual reactions seldom occur. “Jove!” he said. “That's it – just come into my head. Told you I knew some yarn about the old fellow Heyhoe. No particular reason to be called Heyhoe at all. Father unknown – though there's a tale he was Ranulph Raven himself. But mother was old Mrs Grope. Woman they found in the well.”

 

 

Colonel Pike had suddenly remembered that he was invited to tea at Linger Court. This had occasioned his departure in a great hurry, with demands upon Blight for a turn of speed which seemed altogether to ignore the convenience of Kerrisk's cows and Major Molsher's colts. And presently Inspector Mutlow arrived in a modest Morris and retrieved Appleby from the Farmers. He was in a state of considerable excitement. “Very curious things taken to happening in these parts, Mr Appleby,” he said as they drove off. “Very curious, indeed.”

“Well – yes, I suppose so.” Appleby was not sure that he quite liked the tone of Mutlow's voice. “I must say that when it came to the cow and poor old Mrs Ulstrup I did feel that things were becoming a bit out of the way.”

“Cow? Ah – to be sure. But I'm speaking of last night, Mr Appleby. To begin with, a very peculiar thing happened at Tew. The lock-keeper's wife rang up about it less than a couple of hours ago. Didn't at all know what to do. Was she to let the carriage go on, or hold it? Such a thing hadn't happened before.”

“Carriage?”

“Carriage.” Mutlow reiterated the word with severe emphasis. “Turbill, the lock-keeper's name is – and he drinks. Late last night he was out taking a breath of air, no doubt so as to sober up a bit before going to bed. And down the river he sees coming what looks like a small barge with a deck cargo. There was never a light nor a sound from it, and down it came all the same straight for the lock gates, so that this Turbill thinks he'd better swing them open. And open them he does and in floats the craft. There was scarcely a blink of moon now, and he shouts at the thing and still there isn't a sound, so he goes and opens the sluices, and down the thing sinks into the lock until of course he can't see a thing. Well, Turbill hollers again that there's a bob to pay, and when still the folk on board make no reply he damns their eyes and goes off to bed. Thinking – you see, Mr Appleby – that he's served them a nasty turn, since the bottom of a lock isn't the easiest place to get away from in darkness.”

“Dear me,” said Appleby. “And what did these people say in the morning?”

Inspector Mutlow, who was engaged in steering his way with all proper caution through Little Boss, glanced sideways at Appleby with the frankest suspicion. “There wasn't anybody. Turbill came out in the morning – with a nasty hangover, I don't doubt – and what he saw floating in his lock was an empty carriage. What you might call a gentleman's travelling-carriage of the old-fashioned sort.”

“Ah,” said Appleby.

Inspector Mutlow heavily respired. “The result was that this fellow Turbill thought he'd got the horrors, and down he fell in a sort of fit and has been carried off to hospital.”

“It appears to me,” said Appleby, “that there is much nervous excitability in your district, my dear inspector. Old Mrs Ulstrup goes off her head when required to milk a marble cow, and now this Turbill–”

“No doubt, Mr Appleby, you will have your little joke. We understand that you have a bit of a fondness for that sort of thing.” Mutlow paused on this dark saying. “But that's not all the queer doings,” he presently proceeded, “that I've heard of last night. This carriage was seen earlier, mark you, floating down the Dream in clear moonlight. There happens to be a road-mender–”

“Who lives at the end of Noblet's Lane.”

Mutlow frowned. “A road-mender called Scrase. And I must say that for a stranger you've come by a queer knowledge of these parts, Mr Appleby. Well, this Scrase was making his way home late at night, and he saw the carriage floating down the river. Two people were sitting on the roof of it – a man and a woman.”

“Dear me,” said Appleby mildly.

“They were pretty well undressed–”

“
What
?”

“–and Scrase saw quite clearly that they were waving a couple of bottles–”

“Well, of all the infernal–”

“–and presently he heard them a-hollering and singing at the top of their voices–”

Words had failed Appleby; he was looking at the abominable Mutlow aghast.

“–all manner of filthy songs. This Scrase is an extremely godly man, it appears, and he was very much shocked.”

“Was he, indeed? I shouldn't be surprised if another severe shock came his way quite soon.”

Mutlow appeared uncomfortable. “It must be admitted, Mr Appleby, that stories tend to get a bit exaggerated when they begin to circulate in these parts, For instance, there's that lad, Billy Bidewell. It seems he's been saying that last night you and Miss–”

“I want to find Gregory Grope.” Appleby's interruption was decided. “Where is he likely to be?”

“The engine-driver?” Mutlow, evidently surprised, looked at his watch. “If he's on time, he'll be just about drawing into Sneak. But he may be well on the way to Linger. Unless, of course, he's running really
late
– in which case he'll still be at Snarl.”

“Find him.”

“Find him, Mr Appleby?”

“There's a road within sight of the railway line, I suppose? Cruise along it, inspector, until you spot Gregory Grope. He may take us a little way in our investigation.” Appleby looked wrathfully at Mutlow. “Which is probably more than the vulgar gossip to which you have been listening will do.”

Mutlow swung the car obediently down a by-lane. “No offence, Mr Appleby, I hope. It's simply that something very queer has happened over at your friends' place at Dream. As I don't doubt you know. And now all sorts of strange stories are being built round it of what happened in the night. A regular sensation, the thing is like to cause. There's half a dozen reporters about the place already. And as soon as the Colonel gets wind of it we'll have him over, drinking Mr Raven's port and barking about dictaphones.”

Ahead of them now could be discerned the line of a railway embankment. Appleby searched it for the puff of smoke by which the late Mrs Grope's grandson might be located. “You think there's the makings of a sensation in the Heyhoe affair? No doubt you're right, and it will put the little matter of the Tiffin Place petrifactions in the shade. Particularly as the Ravens probably haven't the advantage of being related to the
Banner
and the
Blare
… Has Heyhoe's body been competently examined?”

“Well, there was our local police surgeon this morning–”

“Humph.”

“–but Mr Raven, it seems, made a bit of a fuss, and they're having some big-wig over later.”

“Very wise.” Appleby was leaning down under Inspector Mutlow's windscreen to light a pipe. “Your friend Billy Bidewell is of the opinion that this old man Heyhoe was simply put away by the Raven family acting in concert – the sufficient reason being that they felt he was a nuisance, and that Billy was now capable of managing Spot.”

“Well, I'm blessed!”

“Quite so; it has your lock-keeper beaten hollow. But you can't see any better reason, can you, why the Ravens should do away with their coachman?” Appleby had sat up again and was looking sharply at Mutlow.

“Dear me, no, Mr Appleby. Of course, I've barely heard the details since I saw you last. But it seems altogether mysterious. Not that one possibility hasn't occurred to me.”

“What's that?”

“That this matter of the old man Heyhoe's death might be connected in some way with these queer doings at Tiffin Place.”

Appleby puffed at his pipe and looked thoughtfully at Mutlow – rather as one might view a chimpanzee manoeuvring a banana towards himself with a stick. “A very ingenious fancy,” he said. “Does great credit, if I may say so, to your agility of mind. But a bit far-fetched, all the same.”

Inspector Mutlow – as no chimpanzee would do – began to whistle with a faintly ironical intonation. He was quite a songster, Appleby noted, and possessed of four or five notes to Billy Bidewell's one.

But a well-made play would have altogether more economy of incident. The old blind man who had so oddly questioned Mark and Judith Raven years ago; the illegitimacy of Heyhoe; the apprehensions of Sir Mulberry Farmer; Mrs Ulstrup's marble milker;
Paxton's Destined Hour
; the Ranulph legend; the family preference for Adolphus, Theodore, and that Latinate Roger who had received the commendations of Dr Jowett: to what neatly dropped curtain could all these lead? A play, the philosopher had sagely discerned, must not concern many actions of many men, or even many actions of one man, but one action of one man – one action, whole and completed. Well, who was the man here? Was he Ranulph Raven, who had followed his own numerous writings into oblivion round about the turn of the century? Ranulph had been stirring in his grave for some time, chiefly for the purpose of playing tricks upon his children. To his son Luke he had delivered a tombstone, and to that Caliban-like Heyhoe whom he had begotten – it was to be presumed – upon the late Mrs Grope, he had offered the whimsical little gesture of a minor practical joke on Spot. What sense was there in all this, and in Heyhoe's macabre burial; where was there discernible a single action, whole and completed?

And now more Ravens were stirring. Theodore's ghost had marched on the stage and begun an exhibition of supernatural legerdemain on a characteristically massive scale. There are séances in which fans and handkerchiefs flutter across the room, in which buttons and coins and matchboxes, hot from the ether, materialise themselves and drop dramatically from the ceiling. But Theodore was playing this sort of game in monumental terms; large chunks of marble, with the faint displeasingness that marked them as authentic from the master's hand, were the counters in this gigantic spiritualist demonstration. And what of Bishop Adolphus – was he not prowling too? The waxwork which had taken the place of Hannah Hoobin's boy: had the ghostly Theodore borrowed it because he had no suitable marble to hand? Or was the wraith of Adolphus, having abandoned for the time its contemplation of the religious system of the Zend-Avesta, beginning to take his part in this tiresome family diversion? And plainly there were still plenty of Ravens in reserve: Grandfather Herbert of the Foreign Office and the madrigals, for example, was no doubt capable of an
outré
posthumous behaviour of his own.

With his eye still on the railway line in quest of Gregory Grope, Appleby sighed – so that Inspector Mutlow glanced at him suspiciously across his wheel. It was, of course, all very confusing. And yet, aesthetically viewed, the whole random composition had its charm. The fact or notion of the Tiffin Place petrifactions was pleasing in itself, and it was almost a pity that hard sense, satisfying to Mutlow, must be screwed from it; that the cellar must be resolutely descended to and the port-drinking footman unmasked. Would it not be pleasant to retire from the elucidating of crime and give oneself to the creating of unashamed fantasies in which champion milkers might turn to marble at one's whim, and no explanation need be required? From these dangerous thoughts Appleby was roused by the whistle of a locomotive engine somewhere ahead.