Death at the Chase
Death At The Chase
First published in 1970
© Michael Innes Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1970-2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of Michael Innes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 0755120930 EAN: 9780755120932
This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.
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Michael Innes is the pseudonym of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, who was born in Edinburgh in 1906. His father was Director of Education and as was fitting the young Stewart attended Edinburgh Academy before going up to Oriel, Oxford where he obtained a first class degree in English.
After a short interlude travelling with AJP Taylor in Austria, he embarked on an edition of
Florio’s
translation of
Montaigne’s Essays
and also took up a post teaching English at Leeds University.
By 1935 he was married, Professor of English at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and had completed his first detective novel,
Death at the President’s Lodging
. This was an immediate success and part of a long running series centred on his character Inspector Appleby. A second novel, Hamlet Revenge, soon followed and overall he managed over fifty under the Innes banner during his career.
After returning to the UK in 1946 he took up a post with Queen’s University, Belfast before finally settling as Tutor in English at Christ Church, Oxford. His writing continued and he published a series of novels under his own name, along with short stories and some major academic contributions, including a major section on modern writers for the
Oxford History of English Literature
.
Whilst not wanting to leave his beloved Oxford permanently, he managed to fit in to his busy schedule a visiting Professorship at the University of Washington and was also honoured by other Universities in the UK.
His wife Margaret, whom he had met and married whilst at Leeds in 1932, had practised medicine in Australia and later in Oxford, died in 1979. They had five children, one of whom (Angus) is also a writer. Stewart himself died in November 1994 in a nursing home in Surrey.
A Near Thing at Ashmore Chase
When out walking by himself, Appleby commonly obeyed his wife Judith’s rules. These – perhaps picked up from her American connections – could be summarized in the injunction, ‘Go on till you’re stopped’. When, on the other hand, he was accompanied by Judith, he still, after more than thirty years of companionable pedestrianism, made intermittent attempts to check her more obviously unlawful and even hazardous courses.
That a stile had not necessarily been constructed for her use, nor a fence been allowed to fall into disrepair for her convenience, were propositions which Lady Appleby was indisposed to entertain, nor could she be brought to believe that the presence of a readily negotiable hunting-gate did not of itself guarantee the absence of an unnegotiable bull. Appleby for his part, although not much given to taurophobia, had no fancy for enforced tauromachy either, and he moreover owned a pronounced dislike of engaging uncivil landowners and surly farmers in fruitless disputation over field paths and rights of way.
But the paradox remained, and was operative with Appleby in his unaccompanied condition now. For here was this rather high wall – beginning to crumble in places, but formidable nevertheless – and inset in it a zigzag of protruding stones which made scaling it easy enough. These no doubt attracted Appleby as forming a stile more in the manner of his own north country than of this southern England where he had spent most of his working life. Perhaps because of this, or perhaps simply because it promised access to a line of higher ground from which he could hope to orient himself on his map, Appleby hoisted himself briskly to the top of the wall. It was very improper; the stile clearly existed for somebody’s shepherd or keeper, and not in the least for a retired policeman, however respectably circumstanced in the county; but Appleby was, if anything, now rather pleased with the impropriety of his proceeding. He was also pleased with the sense that his weight was right, and that his muscles were therefore more than adequate to this small athletic occasion. He celebrated this sense of well-being by not bothering to feel for the steps on the other side of the wall. He simply jumped. So he was in mid-air – a vulnerable posture – when the howl of rage assailed him.
Or had it merely been a cry of alarm? Appleby wasn’t sure. But he found he had taken the precaution – by a kind of second nature, acquired in more adventurous days – of landing with his back reassuringly against the high wall he had just tumbled over. This was of course absurd. And the appearance he now saw before him, although oddly ambiguous, stopped short of being in any degree alarming. It was not for example an infuriated bull. It was only an infuriated old gentleman. But
was
he infuriated? Or was the visible trembling of his stooped and scraggy frame occasioned by some violent and senseless alarm? It was in this that the point of ambiguity lay. The old gentleman’s first utterance would no doubt resolve the problem.
‘What the devil do you mean,’ the old gentleman demanded, ‘by pitching yourself into my property like that?’ He took a wary step backward as he spoke, and at the same time raised in air a blackthorn walking-stick of club-like proportions. It certainly wasn’t a gesture interpretable in terms of amiable salutation. The old gentleman was frightened and angry together. These after all were emotions which companioned each other often enough. Only it was hard to find in the present situation much occasion for either of them.
‘I am very sorry,’ Appleby said pacifically. ‘I must apologize for trespassing on your land. It was simply that, noticing the stile, I thought I might venture up to the brow of the hill there, and get myself straight on the map.’
‘A pretty story!’ The old gentleman produced an unexpected and displeasing cackle of dry laughter. ‘A very pretty story, indeed. Do you think I don’t know the date?’
This irrational response to a speech which had been eminently correct naturally occasioned some indignation as well as bewilder-ment in Appleby. And this was rather less than assuaged when he suddenly thought he had a glimpse of what occasioned it. The old gentleman’s laughter had been echoed nearby by a not dissimilar sound: the harsh clattering call of a cock pheasant. This was answered by a second bird on a note of sharper challenge or alarm, and a moment later both were airborne and their dialogue fading amid a whirr of wings. The owner of these creatures – in whose presence Appleby presumably stood – was supposing himself to have apprehended a poacher. There was indeed something in his glance that supported this bizarre suspicion. He could be sensed as, so to speak, peering into Appleby’s pockets as he stood – or at least as endeavouring to assess the bulk and weight of anything they might contain. That was it. This outrageous landed proprietor was supposing them filled with lengths of fishing-line, bread-pellets, and small bottles of gin.
Appleby wondered how to proceed. One possibility was to produce a visiting-card. But there was a flavour of pomposity about that; it was the sort of thing his children made fun of. Perhaps it would be better to give the equivalent information – or some of it – verbally.
‘My name is Appleby,’ Appleby said. ‘I live about twelve miles from here, at a place called Long Dream.’
‘Long Dream Manor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Stuff and nonsense. You’re an impudent impostor. Everard Raven lives at Dream. Old friend of mine. I see him regularly.’
Appleby opened his mouth, checked himself, and spoke gently.
‘Everard Raven died about fifteen years ago. One and another thing has happened since then, and now my wife has inherited the place. We’ve lived there since I retired a couple of years ago.’
‘Retired?’ The old gentleman glowered suspiciously at Appleby as he went off at a tangent. ‘Why should you have retired? You’re a perfectly able-bodied man, so far as I can see. Idleness and mischief, eh?’
‘I was a policeman. It’s thought quite a good thing that they shouldn’t hang on too long.’
‘I don’t believe a word of it. The Raven girls were always a queer lot, but I don’t see one of them marrying a copper. Where was your last beat?’
‘It wasn’t exactly a beat. I was Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. Of course I was other things earlier on. And now, my dear sir, with renewed apologies, I’ll take myself off your land.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort!’ The old gentleman was still studying Appleby’s pockets. And suddenly Appleby was visited by the fantastic notion that it wasn’t a mere poacher’s kit, but rather some lethal weapon, that he was suspected of carrying. Moreover the old gentleman was also
listening
– listening for something that didn’t exist: footfalls, whispers, stealthy stirrings behind a bush or on the other side of the wall. The old gentleman lived in fact in some unfortunate condition of chronic anxiety. It was this perception that governed Appleby’s conduct in the succeeding moments. ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort!’ the old gentleman was repeating. ‘You’ll come with me to the house. This is the sort of thing that must be checked up on.’ He brandished his walking-stick in a feeble but spectacular fashion. ‘In front of me, please. You see the path. Quick march!
Allez-vous en, vite!
’