Appleby's End (24 page)

For a time Appleby moved silently and attentively from composition to composition. It was an austere world and markedly superior to Gaffer Odgers'; even its nightmares – and he glanced back at Xerxes – had their lurking meaning – which Gaffer Odgers assuredly never had… He stopped before an effort of Theodore's which appeared to represent a charging buffalo. “Have you,” he asked, “missed a cow, and a boar, and a dog?”

Judith puffed dust from the buffalo's threatening horns. “There's a cow and a boar and a dog missing,” she said carefully.

Appleby moved on, and paused again before one of Theodore's vainly soliciting goddesses. “Mark said it was a bit thick,” he said.

“A bit thick? One has to thicken the neck and the ankles and so on, so as not to break the line.” And Judith stared at Theodore's goddess with a grave innocence.

“But then you said just the same last night. That it was a bit thick, and a false position. And do you remember how you told me that you have a compact with Mark not to tell each other fibs? Is that going to apply to me?”

“Yes.”

“Then isn't it going to be–”

“I'm marrying you for your wits – partly.” Judith, who had appeared troubled, was now looking at him again in simple mischief. “I expect to see you work it out for yourself. And I don't need to tell you either fibs or otherwise. I can just keep mum.”

“But can you keep mum – for instance, about last night? That Heyhoe business gave you a bit of a shock?”

They were now standing before one of Theodore's works in a sentimental mode: a mother with a child in her arms. But the child had been chiselled down to represent a skeleton, and the mother's head had become a skull. “The Heyhoe business?” said Judith gravely. “Well, I did find it rather macabre.”

“And disconcerting in that it didn't hitch on to any Ranulph story?”

“Quite so.”

“I've discovered it hitches on to what might well be a Ranulph story – only he doesn't seem to have written it. Billy Bidewell–”

“Ranulph did write it.” For a moment Judith seemed tired and impatient. “Only it was never published. Everard told me this morning.” She looked at the statue before them in evident distaste and ran a finger cautiously along one of the child's ribs. “My salad days,” she said, “when I was green in judgement. But whatever shall I do when Theodore is all used up?” She paused. “John, what first struck you about this whole business?”

“That it was the work of an artist – and therefore quite probably of somebody with Raven blood. Perhaps of somebody interested in dreams because brought up at a place called Dream. For dreams, you know, use whatever is lying about. A dream takes up a hundred hints from the common business of the day and weaves them into whatever structure it has on hand. A man called Appleby and a place called Appleby's End: there's pure dream material in that – and it's not been missed.” He paused and looked seriously at Judith. “Only, of course, this is a thoroughly practical and businesslike dream – or was meant to be.”

“And you seem to be a thoroughly businesslike analyst.” Judith looked at her watch. “Only ten minutes to get into other clothes.” She moved towards the door, and then halted. “If I
were
marrying you for your wits it looks as if I should be getting a bargain. For I take it you have the whole affair taped?”

“I don't understand it all, by any means. And – what's more – I doubt if anybody does.”

Judith looked at him, open-eyed. “Is that just being oracular? Is it the professional manner?”

“It is not. I'm not bringing anything professional into all this. You see, there's enough trouble been brought in already. Heyhoe's death, chiefly – which is what has brought down all that mob of journalists and reporters. It's exciting, no doubt. Quite wakes the place up, doesn't it? Heyhoe died, and there was his body lying in some lane, and the dream-artificer promptly exploited the fact and made the correct move. It was a bit macabre, as you were pleased to say. It was also a mistake. This ingenious dreamer overreached himself. In England one can't do that with a body – however dead – and get away with it. The explanation will be demanded – and will continue to be demanded, even if half a dozen of my colleagues are sent down from the Yard in turn and fail. Not that they would fail, for there are lots of them a good deal smarter than I am.”

Appleby was now pacing up and down the chill studio with a vigour that sent little clouds of marble dust eddying round his feet. Judith had sat down on the stomach of a Dying Gaul and was eyeing him warily – and at the same time with rather more satisfaction than wariness.

“That's the first spot of trouble, Judith Raven. It's either awkwardness at the next Assizes or compounding a felony – if it can be done.”

“But in Sherlock Holmes there's a man who conceals the body of his wife after she dies in a vault or something until he can meet his creditors by winning a horse-race. He even gets somebody to impersonate her – and nobody has impersonated Heyhoe, have they? And he doesn't get into any trouble at all. The coroner is most sympathetic.”

“Bother Sherlock Holmes. And you may take it from me that the judge won't be sympathetic – quite contrariwise. And that's only trouble number one. Trouble number two concerns the habits of hares.”

“Of
hares
?”

“Of hares. That's the unknown element at the moment. And trouble number three is that it looks as if the engineer is going to be hoist with his own petard.” Appleby halted. “I suggested to the local police inspector that perhaps in the burying of Heyhoe there was a sort of poetic justice. That's as may be – and Mutlow will go away and chew on it. But possibly poetic justice isn't going to stop there.” Appleby paused. “Judith, how would you describe the whole business from the
Coach of Cacus
incident down through Luke's tombstone to the present moment?”

“Describe it, John? I think I should describe it as blocking out. But that's a sculptor's word. Call it spadework.”

“Precisely. But what if it's labouring another man's ground?”

“I don't understand you a bit.”

“Or if the spade went right into a nest of hornets?” Appleby opened the door. “You know what's been happening at Tiffin Place?”

Judith hesitated for a moment. “You're asking too many questions. But, yes – I do.”

“Our reporter friends will be on to that in no time. And to much else – for the thing ramifies like anything, as you very well know. A great big rambling mystery – if not too complex – is just meat and drink to them. But – mark you – it needs a focus. And that's where Heyhoe was to come in. A sound instinct there, no doubt. Still, I don't know that Heyhoe will quite do – or not now. You see, for newspaper purposes the core of the thing ought to be murder.” Appleby was pacing up and down again. “A blood-soaked hatchet. Brains scattered about the carpet. Something going bad inside a trunk. Dismembered–”

“Shut up, for goodness sake.”

“Very well. But what's
not
wanted is something finical, and merely finical. A series of odd happenings, linked together in rather a complicated way by an obscure and rather literary thread, a booksy thread–” Appleby paused and stared thoughtfully into the gathering darkness of the studio, where Judith was now extinguishing the lamps. “It's not really satisfactory – or not without a centre in some brute and readily intelligible fact. And Heyhoe isn't quite that – or not now. But the whole thing has possibilities still, they'll feel. And so they'll cast about… Judith, do you remember old Mrs Grope?”

“You mean Gregory Grope's grandmother?” Judith looked puzzled. “I remember her very well. She had some sort of accident.”

“She came to a mysterious end on a dirty night.”

“Like Heyhoe, you mean? Is that what you're driving at?”

“Exactly so. And she was Heyhoe's mother.”

Judith looked completely startled. “
Heyhoe's mother
? I had absolutely no idea–”

“I know you hadn't. There's quite a lot in this business that you had no idea of. In fact, that none of you had any idea of. And that's the trouble. Moreover, there are still mysterious things happening that I don't understand myself – though I'm beginning to have a glimmering. So we have two jobs in front of us.”

“Two? I should have thought one was enough.”

“Two. Getting to the heart of the mystery.” Appleby chuckled. “And getting away again.”

They returned down a long corridor hung with vast canvases dimly discerned. Broken wheels, the bellies of horses, gleaming steel, patches of scarlet and gold, cannon mouths flowed endlessly past them; once they came to a corner and were abruptly confronted with a line of bayonets; a little farther on, the rays of a solitary lamp fell dramatically on a soldier who brandished a sword in one hand while with the other, and with two rows of admirably regular teeth, he contrived to tie a bandage round an extensively shattered knee.

“Great-aunt Elizabeth,” Judith said. “She admired Lady Butler and tried the same line herself. She was a friend of Tennyson's, and particularly good at breaking down in the right place when he read his poetry aloud. We don't know whether he broke down when she showed him her battle-pieces… Hullo, Rainbird seems to be holding the fort. And against the police, too. Does that mean we are all going to be rounded up?”

A flurry of cold air blew down the cavernous hall where the Kurds and Tartars, in ranks as stiff and unwavering as one of Great-aunt Elizabeth's British regiments under fire, opposed a hostile immobility to a constable who was talking urgently to Rainbird through an open glass door.

“The household,” Rainbird was saying firmly, “is about to dine. Come back, young man, in a couple of hours. And if you want something to do in the meantime go and clear those folk off the lawn. Pitched themselves there without Mr Raven's invitation, they have; and it's plain trespass.” Rainbird peered out into the night. “A good many of them gone, I'm glad to see. But there's three or four cars there still.”

“The cars be no business of mine.”

“Then they ought to be. What's the good of a gentleman paying his taxes if the likes of you can't see that he's permitted to live undisturbed on his own estate?” As he uttered this manorial sentiment, Rainbird endeavoured to edge the door to.

But the constable was obstinate. “Them as wants to live undisturbed,” he said, “ought to avoid carryings-on. And, by all accounts, there's been a power of carryings-on at Dream.”

“There has been untoward circumstances.” Rainbird was dignified.

“There has been untoward circumstances, without a doubt. But your sphere, my lad, is protecting cottagers' poultry. Now, be off with you.”

“I mun see 'un.” Under stress of an offended dignity, the constable was becoming as massively rural as Billy Bidewell. “Here be message for Inspector Appleby.”

“Mr John” – Rainbird pronounced these words presumably for the first time, and with great formality – “Mr John is dressing for dinner and not to be disturbed for the convenience of his professional subordinates. If you care to wait, we shall be pleased to accommodate you with a chair in the servants' hall. In which case you'll kindly step round to the back and enter by the offices.”

Appleby came forward. “All right, Rainbird; I haven't gone to change yet.” He turned to the constable. “Now then, what is it – a message from Inspector Mutlow?”

“Yes, sir. He sent me across as soon as he got in. It's about Woolworth, sir.”

“Woolworth – the threepence-and-sixpence-a-time fellow?”

“No, sir.” The constable looked mystified. “Ten shillings a time, he be.”

“Who be?”

“Woolworth, sir. Woolworth be the Sturrock's bull, over Tew way.”

“I see. Well, what's happened to Woolworth?”

The constable lowered his voice. “Sturrock do say someone put the pins to un.”

“Put the pins to him! Do you mean that somebody has been using this old, 'unhappy creature as a pincushion?”

“Witchcraft!” Judith had come forward and addressed the constable. “They found a model of Woolworth?”

“Yes, miss. Very nicely done in clay, it was, and hid right in Woolworth's straw. And pins, miss, so that Sturrock be afeard that poor Woolworth–”

“When was this discovered?” Appleby was glancing through the outer door and up the long dark drive to where the headlights of a car were sweeping towards Dream.

“Not an hour since, sir. And Inspector Mutlow thought it was important-like–”

“He was perfectly correct. Moreover, it is most vital that the affair should be widely known at once. Did you ever have your picture in the papers? No? Well, here's your chance. Over there on the lawn there are several gentlemen in cars. Tell them you've got something new. Tell them you oughtn't really to mention it–”

The constable scratched his head, much bewildered. “But you just said, sir, as how the affair–”

“My dear man, it's nice to have your picture in the papers – but why not have five pounds as well? Tell them you rather think it's confidential still – and then give them Woolworth hot and strong. Ram home the pins good and hearty. Good night.” And Appleby gave the constable a friendly but decisive shove and shut the door.

Judith was looking at Appleby in complete bewilderment. “Witchcraft,” she repeated. “But it just doesn't fit in or make sense. It's got nothing to do with us. And why should you be so keen–”

“You know my methods, Judith.” Appleby's eye had brightened; he was contemplating Rainbird as if inspiration glinted from every crease of that melancholic serving-man's frayed shirt. “Weren't you citing Sherlock Holmes? Well, he had nothing on this. And – listen! – the next batch of mysterious strangers is arriving. We must seclude ourselves.” And Appleby grabbed Judith by the wrist and hauled her within one of those curious contrivances, midway between a sentry-box and a family sarcophagus, which the eighteenth century considerately provided for the porters in its draughty halls. Rainbird, faintly raising an eyebrow at the skittishness of young engaged persons, opened the door once more. For a car had drawn up outside, and now two men were advancing side by side up the steps. Appleby peered out at them. “Observe,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “that the taller of the two has recently changed his occupation. How do I know, Judith? Elementary, my dear. He has the weaver's tooth and the compositor's thumb; no other deduction is possible! And the shorter – what shall we say of him? Is he a musician or does he work a typewriter? Mark a certain refinement about the features–”