Appleby's End (19 page)

Mr Smith looked mildly surprised. “I fear I don't follow you. Perhaps you mean all the other bats in the belfry? For the whole affair has a bizarre quality which suggests madness at every turn. I am not confident that a great deal of harm has been done, so far. We must ask ourselves, however, if the matter has now reached some critical stage.”

Appleby looked curiously at the acute and comfortable Mr Smith. “I think it has,” he said.

“Dear, dear!” Mr Smith took out his watch. “I see that presently I must be off. My two lads are down from Oxford for the Christmas vacation, and at such seasons I like to be home at a reasonably early hour. However, a few minutes remain. Inspector, pray make way for our friend.”

Mrs Ulstrup had finished her tea, and appeared to feel that there was no further occasion for the discomforts of the circus. Abandoning, therefore, the chair on which she had been somewhat awkwardly perched, she now moved across to the fireplace and lay down comfortably on the hearthrug. Mr Smith watched this proceeding with perhaps a shade of helplessness. “Really,” he said, “I could wish that she had taken it into her head to be not a cow, but a sheep. I should then have been sustained in my professional labours by a good deal of Scriptural metaphor. For whoever heard of the parable of the lost cow?” Mr Smith glanced at Mutlow, whose disapproval of this fancy was evident, and then back at Mrs Ulstrup as she lay placidly disposed in opulent curves. “Like Cleopatra's ladies in the play, she may be said to make her bends adornings. But the inspector, I see, is impatient for conference more serious than this. I repeat, therefore: madness at every turn. Consider, for example, Mr Luke Raven's tombstone. For you have doubtless heard of that.”

Appleby nodded, “I have. Or consider Sir Mulberry Farmer. His behaviour has become first cousin to Mrs Ulstrup's – only decidedly more protean. At one moment he toys with the idea of having become the Hermes of Praxiteles, and at another he feels strongly drawn to some barbaric and megalithic art in the South Seas. For other things have happened at Tiffin Place, you will understand, besides the translation of Mrs Ulstrup's cow.”

“You scarcely surprise me.” Mr Smith paused and looked thoughtfully at the fire. “Do you know, I am strongly reminded of something I have not read for a long time – one of Ranulph Raven's stories.”

Appleby sat up with a jerk. “You mean some one specific story?”

“No, I cannot say that. Indeed, I have no very clear memory of one of his stories as distinct from another. Such things do not dwell in the mind. As you grow older, Mr Appleby, you will find that you turn more and more to your Chaucer and your Horace.”

Mutlow grunted impatiently. “Now, sir, tell us just what you mean, if you please. Not that it sounds at all likely to be important, if you ask me.”

“In all probability you are right.” Mr Smith was quite unoffended. “It is no more than a stray thought that has floated into consciousness.”

“Do you mean,” asked Appleby, “that what you have called the bizarre elements in our case are reminiscent of Ranulph Raven's writing?”

“Very possibly they are. I have a notion that his short stories in particular are full of inexplicable circumstances strangely resolved. But I am thinking of the honest and commonplace melodramatic writing which is the basis of most of his novels. It is stuff in an accepted Victorian taste, and runs on through Dickens to the end of the century. Lost heirs and missing wills and clandestine marriages, Mr Appleby. That sort of thing.”

 

 

It was now dusk and Mrs Ulstrup's kitchen, lit chiefly from the flickering grate, was a place of dull reddish light and dancing shadows – much like Cinderella's kitchen in the pantomime before the dramatic entrance of the Good Fairy. Perhaps this lady would presently appear and transform Mrs Ulstrup either back into an elderly woman or through some yet further metensomatosis? It seemed scarcely a probability worth waiting for – and meanwhile there were other tasks before the end of the day: and notable among them an interview with Hannah Hoobin, mother of him who appeared to be known only as Hannah Hoobin's boy. But one or two matters remained on which Mr Smith might have valuable information, and Appleby now addressed himself to eliciting these. “I am staying with the Ravens,” he said, “simply because I made their acquaintance quite fortuitously last night. I suppose you know them fairly well?”

“Everard Raven and Miss Clarissa – who, I believe, is only a distant relation – are among the most regular of my congregation, and with the former I frequently discuss matters of common interest. Of late he has been giving increasing thought to religious matters, I am glad to say.” Mr Smith chuckled. “Or I
should
be glad to say, were I not cognisant of the fact that what he likes to call the doggy letter is hard upon him. He has also discussed Romanticism and Representative Government with me, just as he has discussed Railways with Gregory Grope. I feel that Gregory and I have some title to be considered among the many scholars and men of science whom the
New Millennium
declares itself as drawing upon.”

“But it appears that – apart from picking other people's brains – Everard does all the work himself. He must be a most industrious person.”

“Eminently. Have you seen what he calls his Scriptorium? It is in most marked contrast with the rest of the house, and suggests notable efficiency. And yet I don't know whether Everard Raven really possesses that. Is he, as Byron so admirably describes Gibbon, ‘laborious, slow, and hiving wisdom with each studious year'? I really couldn't say. Only I see from Mr Mutlow's kindling eye that
Childe Harold
is a favourite with the Yatter constabulary.”

Mutlow scowled at this innocent badinage. “Byron?” he said. “Didn't he get himself into trouble over–”

Mr Smith held up a hand in which a last fragment of plum cake reposed. “Ah, my dear inspector, the professional angle again! Let us pass on to the other Ravens. The melancholy Luke is very fond of our church and churchyard – but not at service time, I am sorry to say. He is a friend of the Longers – the Marquis, as you may know, is of somewhat saturnine temper himself – and visits frequently at Linger Court. As a consequence, he has been given a key to the Linger vault, and sits there amid the bones of long-dead Longers, composing poems. Poetry, of course, is in the Raven family. You will have heard of Herbert Raven, well known for his revival of the madrigal and the aubade.”

“A gifted family running to eccentricity,” pronounced Mutlow heavily. “Just the place to look for trouble, if you ask me.”

“But I notice,” said Mr Smith benignly, “that your London colleague does
not
ask you. Possibly he is conscious of your own marked disinclination to ask
him
? You must forgive my interest in the organisation of the police force. It is something quite new to me.”

“And Robert Raven?” asked Appleby. He was obscurely aware that Mr Smith, still amiably discoursing, had concentrated his mind on some pressing business of his own. “What sort of a man is Robert?”

“A delicate water-colourist, Mr Appleby, and one with a considerable reputation in embroidery.”

“Embroidery?”

“Ah, I perceive that you have not penetrated much below the ferocious outer integument of Robert – though you must have marked too, I think, his gentle manners. I sometimes associate him in my mind with the Tchambuli.”

Mutlow tapped his notebook with a pencil. “Come, come, sir,” he said. “There are no gentry of that name in this part of the country, I very well know.”

“My dear inspector, the Tchambuli live in New Guinea, south of the mountain-dwelling Arapesh and west of the cannibal Mundugumor. A most interesting culture. The men, although of virile appearance and demeanour, spend their time indoors in the pursuits of weaving and painting, while the women–”

“
Who's been eating my cake
?” In the shadowy kitchen a new voice broke in upon Mr Smith's ethnological discourse. The three men looked round, startled. And then, with even more emphasis, the voice spoke again. “
Who done it
?” demanded the recumbent Mrs Ulstrup. “
Who's been and pinched my cake?”

“It's gone, all right,” said Mutlow.

“You're sure she didn't eat it herself?” Appleby asked.

“Quite sure. She left a bit on that plate there, and I shoved it to the corner of the table nearest the door.”

“Then you must have shoved it too far, so that it fell on the floor.” Appleby peered under the table. “Better bring the lamp over and look for it. Mrs Ulstrup seems quite upset.”

Mutlow brought the lamp and grovelled. “Nothing here,” he said. “Nothing at all. Must have been mice.”

“Nonsense – mice can't make away with a sizeable chunk of plum cake. Look again.”

“I tell you, it isn't here.” Mutlow rose, red-faced and wrathful. “Must have been the cat.”

“Hodge? He hasn't stirred.”

“Well, then, Mr Appleby, a rat. At any rate it's gone. Good heavens! Where's Mr Smith?”

They stared round the fire-lit kitchen. Mrs Ulstrup, her weak indignation quickly expended after the manner of her kind, had returned to ruminative ease, and might never have heard either of plum cake or of the divine gift of articulate speech. The door was open. Mr Smith had disappeared.

“Well, I'm blessed!” said Mutlow. “I thought he was a queer customer – coming like that to give the old girl tea! – but who would have thought he'd behave so?”

Appleby frowned. “What do you mean – behave so?”

“Bolt like that, of course. Make off with a piece of cake.”

“My dear man, it was his own cake.” The fatuity of this conversation was reducing Appleby to bewilderment. “And why shouldn't he give the old girl tea? It's what's called the visitation of the sick.”

“I'd call it the visitation by the cracked. Rushing off with a hunk of his own cake! It makes it pottier still.” Mutlow had opened one of his notebooks as if urgently compelled to commit this conviction to writing. Then he shut it again in despair. “It's just awful, all this,” he said. “No sense in it at all. Just one perfectly idiotic thing after another. A clutter of ghastly, disconnected lunacies. It's impossible even to keep them all in one's head. The old man they buried in the snow, for instance. I've almost forgotten about him.”

Appleby laughed. “Pins and needles,” he said. “So many red herrings that the haystack has fairly got pins and needles. But here is Mr Smith back again.”

It was true that the large form of Mrs Ulstrup's pastor was framed in the doorway; he was panting heavily and clasped a stout stick which he must have snatched up from beside his clerical hat in the porch. “Missed her,” he said; “and not for the first time. Got away with a capital selection of
exuviae
too.”

Appleby, who had thrown himself down rather wearily in a chair by the fire, sat up again abruptly. “Section of
what
?” he asked.

Mr Smith laid his stick on the table. “We are in the presence of sorcery.”

This time it was Mutlow who reacted violently. “Sorcery? Of all the damned nonsense–”

“Do not swear, sir!” Mr Smith, suddenly drawn up to his full six feet four, was revealed as a formidable – and angry – specimen of the muscular Christian. Then he turned to Appleby. “Sorcery,” he repeated. “It is not, of course, so common as witchcraft proper. But it does turn up from time to time.”

“I saw her hand come in at the door,” said Mr Smith, “and then she snatched the cake. Of course she must have been watching and so knew who had been eating it. Something left by Mr Mutlow would be useless for her purpose – unless her purpose is to sorcerise Mr Mutlow, that is to say.”

“Sorcerise
me
!” Mutlow peered rather nervously about him in the shadows of Mrs Ulstrup's kitchen. “I never heard of such a thing.”

“Possibly not. But I fear, my dear inspector, that your nescience is scarcely very strong evidence against the objective existence of a phenomenon. I doubt, for example, whether you have ever heard of the planet Pluto. But the planet Pluto exists.”

“I should have thought” – Appleby was frowning into the fire – “that Mrs Ulstup was sufficiently sorcerised already. It is your opinion that we have just been visited by some woman concerned to gain an occult power over her?”

“There is no other explanation. As I pursued her I saw that she had not only the fragment of cake (which would be specially valuable as having come direct from Mrs Ulstrup's lips) but a large bone evidently purloined from the larder. These
exuviae
– a scientific term which I see is familiar to you – would of course, according to the theory of sorcery, be transmitted to the sorcerer, who would then have Mrs Ulstrup within the malign power of his, or her, art. Had I caught the woman I fancy that I should have extorted a confession from her. But, most unfortunately, she eluded me in the dusk.”

Appleby shifted the lamp on the table and looked hard at Mr Smith. “You speak of all this, sir, in a somewhat equivocal way. Do I understand you to mean that what you call the theory of sorcery vindicates itself in practice? In short, do you
believe
in sorcery?”

Mr Smith smiled – a whimsical smile such as he had not before offered. But his words were carefully chosen. “I do not know that I can tell you offhand whether we are required to believe, or required to disbelieve, in sorcery. The subject is dark and intricate.”

“But I'm not seeking theological information.” Appleby shook his head impatiently. “I'm asking whether you yourself believe in such things.”

“My dear Mr Appleby – does the inspector here believe in Pluto? We don't know, and it would be pointless to enquire.” And Mr Smith fell to packing up the tea things. “By the way, Mr Appleby, are you fond of beagling?”