Appleby's End (17 page)

“No doubt, inspector, no doubt. You will have your photograph in the national press, wearing your best bowler hat and pointing to the spot where you eventually found the body. I know the feeling. I had it years ago in the case of an old person called Gaffer Odgers.”

“Find the body!” Mutlow was startled. “You found the body, I gather. You and this young Miss Raven between you.”

“I mean the body of Hannah Hoobin's boy. Do you realise that this boy – a helpless, idiot boy – disappeared quite a while ago and that you've done virtually nothing about it? That you've moved in the matter only because a local big-wig has taken to feeling creepy, and to fancying himself the Discobolus or the Medici Venus? It's very bad, inspector, very bad. Colonel Pike may protect you to some extent, but I fear that the Home Secretary will take a serious view of it. Let us hope that Hannah Hoobin's boy is alive, after all. Let us hope that the whole affair is of a sort that can be – um – composed.”

“Composed?” said Mutlow – somewhat weakly.

“Composed. And, now that we are beginning to see our way through it, we shall soon know.”

“See our way through it?” Mutlow sounded his horn petulantly at an irresolute hen crossing the road. “The whole thing is plainly sinister, but just doesn't make sense.”

“Possibly so. Or possibly contrariwise.”

“Contrariwise?”

“Might be useful as a damned dictaphone.”

“Really, Mr Appleby–”

“I know, I know. And you must forgive me. My nerves are very bad.” Appleby shook his head solemnly. “A presentiment, inspector. Shall I be turned into a ferocious waxen Kurd? Or, puzzling over the case, shall I be made marble with too much conceiving – as happened, you will recall, to Milton when he started reading Shakespeare?”

Mutlow accelerated. “I don't know,” he said, “that I see the joke. If it is a joke, that is.”

“Ah – that's the question. The whole thing looks like a series of jokes – and so may Appleby's End.”

“Appleby's–” Mutlow checked himself. “We have a station called that down here.”

“Precisely. I got off a train there last night – and immediately stepped into a freakish universe in which such a coincidence will most assuredly not pass unexploited. There will be another Appleby's End as certain as Paxton's Destined Hour.”

Mutlow opened his mouth – and once more checked himself. “I never,” he said carefully, “heard of Paxton's Destined Hour. Would it be of any use asking about it?”

“Very little. Paxton's Destined Hour is merely one fragment of the nonsense by which we are surrounded in this affair. But I suppose you've heard of the alphabet murders?”

“I don't know that I have.”

“Dear me. Well, they began with the murder of Mr Archer of Abernethy – a horrid business. And then it was the turn of Miss Bell of Bolsover. Poor old Sir Christopher Catt of Coldstream followed, and then a certain Mrs Dawes, who lived at Dover–”

“I don't believe a word of it.”

“Quite so; I'm making it up. But what is the point of the story? Obviously that only poor old Sir Christopher was really aimed at, and that the murderer began with Mr Archer, and ended with Mr Ziesing–”

“Really!”

“–just to make things confusing. What do you think of that?”

“Very little.” Mutlow spoke with conviction. “Very little indeed. Unless you were a scribbler looking for a short way to a long yarn, that is to say.” Mutlow paused on this, apparently disconcerted by its approximation to the epigrammatic. “And I don't see what you're getting at, anyway.”

“Then consider this. Suppose that it is to your prosaic, practical interest to do something uncommonly odd – and not be found out. The difficulty is clear: oddity almost automatically betrays itself. The needle gleams in the haystack, and can't possibly be missed.”

Something seemed to strike Mutlow. “Talking of haystacks–” he began.

“So what you do is to stuff the haystack full of needles. You see? Oddity wherever the perplexed investigator turns. Now, this affair – the Tiffin Place–Dream Manor affair – may very well be like that. A great many odd things have been happening; a good many more than you've heard of yet, inspector. They're strung together, very roughly, on a string which is itself pretty odd too – a string that leads back to Ranulph Raven, the father of the present elder Ravens, who wrote mystery stories and the like half a century ago. But there may be nothing in that but a desire to lead us up the garden path. And just one of these queer happenings – it may be – makes sense. The others are like the deaths of Miss Bell of Bolsover and Mrs Dawes of Dover – just extra needles in the haystack for the sake of muddling things up.”

“I suppose there may be something in that.” Mutlow visibly brightened. “The only sense in the whole affair might be this Appleby's End business you've been speaking of. Yes, I think it's a very likely idea. And simplifies matters a lot. Ninety per cent of what has happened is strictly meaningless and can be ignored.”

“Just that. Only, you have to fix just
which
ninety per cent. And that makes it not so simple after all. In fact, that's the idea.”

“I suppose so.” Mutlow, thus briefly taken a turn round Robin Hood's barn, was dashed again. “You don't think it
might
be Appleby's End? Figure it that somebody wanted to get you down to this district, Mr Appleby. It's in this person's prosaic, practical interest – wasn't that your expression? – to get you down here and do something uncommonly odd – I think uncommonly odd was what you said. And sinister, of course.” Inspector Mutlow's voice was faintly wistful. “Well now, if this person can create a whole bunch of queer doings and bring you down on the strength of them – which is where the usefulness of your belonging to the Yard comes in – and if then something equally queer happens to
you –
why, it's very unlikely that we shall be able to solve the matter.”

“I agree with you there, inspector.”

‘Because we shall be beginning at the wrong end, and nothing will make sense. Suppose, Mr Appleby – no offence, you understand – that there happens to you something like what has happened to Sir Mulberry's pig. Or to this Heyhoe, if you prefer it.”

“Take it that I have no preference.”

“We should naturally suppose that – that your sad misfortune, Mr Appleby, was the
consequence
of your having come down and got mixed up with whatever the mystery was. Whereas it would really be the
cause
of the whole affair – and Heyhoe and old Mrs Ulstrup's cow and the rest would simply be the additional needles stuffed in the haystack. Billy Bidewell” – this association of ideas seemed inevitable with Mutlow – “says there are some of those Ravens that are uncommonly interested in you. You're sure you have had no connection with any of them before? Suppose that some previous case of yours had resulted in bringing a friend or relation of theirs to the gallows, and vengeance had been sworn–”

“Good heavens!” Appleby looked in frank astonishment at a Mutlow who was proving thus unexpectedly prolific of ideas, “You speak with the voice of old Ranulph Raven himself. This is just, I imagine, how his yarn-spinning mind worked. ‘Vengeance had been sworn.' Who can doubt that the phrase is endemic in his works?”

“That's just it!” Mutlow tapped his steering-wheel incisively. “Something in the blood, as you might say. Their minds work just as this tale-spinning old man's did. In fact, I think we've got a line on this whole case. Only, of course, we'll have to wait.”

“To wait, inspector?”

“Certainly. You see, it hasn't happened yet. The real needle is still missing from the haystack. Only the red herrings have been displayed so far. They're still planting the trees that are going to prevent my seeing the wood.” Mutlow, his imagination evidently afire, swung hazardously towards the ditch. “But presently the hour will strike. Presently, Mr Appleby – mark my words – the real blow will fall. And I must say” – Mutlow was suddenly handsome – “that I shall be uncommonly sorry not to have the benefit of your collaboration in clearing the thing up.”

“I see.” Appleby looked at this rural colleague, genuinely impressed. “Well, well. And do you know, one of those Ravens has already offered to do me a memorial? As a joke, of course. But the sinister underlying irony is now revealed.”

“A
memorial
? You mean something
carved
– and out of
marble
, or something like that?” Mutlow was now deep sunk in a sort of detective ecstasy. “Well – there now! Once one just gets a hold on cases of this sort it's astonishing how quickly everything links up. Which one is the sculptor?”

“The girl. And she's going to do the John Appleby Memorial for Scotland Yard. Only it may, perhaps, just be called Object.”

“Object?”

“Miss Raven's work is modernist in manner.”

“Is that so?” With Mutlow this seemed to clinch the matter. “I'm inclined to think we may set about getting a warrant.”

“Possibly so.” The late afternoon air was chill, and Appleby buried his nose in Mark Raven's shapeless tweeds. “Of course, I haven't had the opportunity for much conversation with Miss Raven. But I do not think it would misrepresent the situation to say that she and I are engaged.”

“Engaged! But you say it was only yesterday–”

“That's how I see the matter.”

It would have been difficult to say whether Appleby's voice indicated resolution or resignation – which was one more enigma for Mutlow to meditate. And for some time he meditated. “You know,” he said eventually, “it
is
a confusing affair. And at times I almost think you're concerned to keep it so.”

“My dear fellow, one gets these fancies after a long day.”

“I suppose that's it.” Mutlow's voice was apologetic… And now the car drew up before the ivy-clad cottage of old Mrs Ulstrup of Drool.

 

 

A flat clerical hat, battered and of a type no longer much favoured by ecclesiastical outfitters, had been thrown carelessly down in the porch; it was to be conjectured, therefore, that Mrs Ulstrup was in process of receiving spiritual advice. And a voice, resonant, cheerful and eminently of the pulpit, spoke from within. “Just on the boil,” said the voice. “Ready in a jiffy.”

Appleby knocked and the door was opened – or rather manipulated, for it seemed to be possessed of only one hinge – by a red-faced, white-haired clergyman standing some six feet four in badly cracked shoes. “Come in,” said the clergyman; “come in, by all means. I don't know you from Adam – though I've always had a shrewd idea, mark you, that Adam would be eminently recognisable if one passed him in the street. Bother this door! I must tell the village carpenter that here is something very like a work of corporal mercy. A part of the country this, gentlemen, in which opportunity for Works fairly abounds. A wise dispensation, no doubt, since we come rather noticeably short at present in the matter of Faith. Come in. Smith is my name and this is Hodge, my cat.” He pointed to a large brindled creature sedately posed in the crook of his arm. “I was just going to butter the buns.”

They entered what proved to be a stone-flagged kitchen, oddly poised between cosiness and dilapidation. The Reverend Mr Smith appeared to be labouring with some success on behalf of the former quality; his professional outfit consisted of half a pound of butter, a packet of tea and several paper bags. And his voice boomed out again amid much chinking of crockery. “At least you look respectable – but are you gay? Our hostess – who will presently appear – is none too generously dowered either way, I am sorry to say. At a guess” – and Mr Smith glanced up fleetingly from his operations – “I should say that you were a couple of policemen come to enquire into a theft of poultry. If so, I advise you to see that boy who stokes Grope's engine. I've had an eye on him for some time. Not a bad boy, mind you, but decidedly given to what you might call collective farming. Indeed, I don't know that I could point to a more collective boy in the whole district.” And Mr Smith, chuckling hugely, lifted the kettle from the hob.

“What,” asked Appleby, “of Hannah Hoobin's boy?”

“Went to work at Tiffin Place,” said Mr Smith. “Didn't like the job, and therefore left the district. I don't know why your friend should look so uncomfortable about it.”

Appleby glanced at Mutlow. There was no doubt that the Hoobin affair had been kept altogether quieter than was proper, and that Colonel Pike's assistant was now feeling uneasy on this score. There was also no doubt that Mr Smith was a person of observation and intelligence – the first intelligent person, Appleby reflected, that he had met since saying goodbye to Judith that morning. And – since observation will go a mile while gossip travels a furlong – he was eminently a man to cultivate. “You are quite right about our calling,” Appleby said. “This is Inspector Mutlow of the Yatter police; my name is Appleby, and I am a detective inspector from Scotland Yard.”

“Can you butter scones?” Mr Smith appeared not at all impressed by this information. “Capital. Both halves, if you please; and don't stick them together again. Mrs Ulstrup is naturally something of a connoisseur in butter. Mr Mutlow, I will trouble you to put that plum cake on a plate. The plate with the cow. I have sometimes pleased myself with the fancy that our friend's kitchen is like a Hindu domestic interior – if Hindus have domestic interiors. The sacred animal is everywhere in evidence, as you will have observed.”

This was unchallengeable. Cows and calves decorated such crockery as was in evidence; two large china cows, such as used to distinguish the windows of old-fashioned dairies, stood on each side of the fireplace; smaller china cows lined the mantelpiece; and on the walls hung two large oleographs, presumably after Cuyp, in which cows, milkmaids, pails, joint-stools and enormous, narrow-necked jars were built up into opulent cylindrical compositions. Appleby surveyed the collection with interest. “Can you tell me,” he asked, “if all this is a recent development with Mrs Ulstrup?”