An Awkward Lie (16 page)

Neither living nor dead had Nauze – Bloody Nauze – ever been within Appleby’s view. But now, suddenly in his own garden, Appleby seemed to see Nauze very clearly indeed – as a dead body with a good part of its head shot off. And this, one might say, was the measure of the savagery of the affair in which Bobby – under a vast illusion which made him hideously vulnerable – had gone hurtling off to involve himself. Not, of course, that there was any crisis. Even on the assumption that the dead man was indeed Nauze, all that Bobby was at present engaged upon was trying to pick up at Overcombe what would almost certainly be a very cold trail upon that long-departed Latin master. It was true that it mightn’t be healthy for Bobby if the obviously ruthless people involved in the crime got to know that a young man was chasing them up even at that remove. But there was not the slightest reason to suppose that Overcombe was any longer in the picture at all. The probability was that Bobby would return unscathed but baffled from what had proved to be a wild-goose chase. The important thing, meanwhile, was to make rather more sense of the mystery than either Appleby himself or anybody else had yet been able to do.

The telephone call.
The spurious telephone call which had represented itself as coming from the Home Office, and by which Sergeant Howard had not unnaturally been taken in. As Appleby found his mind going back to this, he reflected that Howard had at least come to an acute conclusion about it. Bobby’s adventure had got in rather an imprecise way into an early edition of an evening paper – and almost at once some unknown person had attempted to check up on it. The affair of the bunker was far from being a one-man show, Howard had said. And there were villains who weren’t trusting one another very far.

It was a good inference – and, if only uncertainly, one could get a little further on the basis of it. Indeed, Appleby had already done so. The body had been put where it
had
been put with a definite purpose in view – and that purpose looked like being the ensuring of its discovery within a certain limit of time. But there had been a hitch – and that hitch was Bobby. The body was to be found; it was not to be identified. Because of the danger of that, it had been snatched away again.
And this had left somebody – presumably not one of the snatchers – in doubt about some vital point.
Had Nauze (to call him that) been killed at all? If he had, had he been safely dead by the time somebody was claiming he had been safely dead? But what could be the context of such a situation? Appleby had made a shot or two at guessing. But he didn’t feel that, so far, he had come upon a hypothesis that satisfied him.

Could anything be arrived at by simply considering the
dramatis personae
? The trouble was that any persons who could be so described were uncommonly thin on the ground. It was no good perpending the character and situation of Robert Appleby. That Robert Appleby had a hinterland (scrum-half Appleby, author-of-
The-Lumber-Room
Appleby) was neither here nor there, since the entry of Robert Appleby into the affair had plainly been purely fortuitous. That left Nauze (
if
Nauze) and the girl. Nauze lacked a finger. Nauze had once possessed a gym-shoe. Nauze had been an usher in a superior academy for young gentlemen. Nauze had taught Latin notably well. End of information on background of Nauze. The girl had been capable of powerfully attracting Robert Appleby (aforesaid). End of information on the girl.

Or not quite.
The girl who had powerfully attracted Bobby had been mixed up in funny business with the corpse of a murdered man.

Sir John Appleby, remaining stock-still on the garden side of Long Dream Manor, stared very hard (if metaphorically) at this solid fact (for it was a solid fact) of the situation. He then broke into notably rapid motion, gained thereby the modest but eastward-facing apartment in which he had breakfasted, and stared very hard (but non-figuratively, this time) at the newspapers he had lately abandoned there. Not a word.
Not a word
. For the first time, there glimmered on the verges of the affair of the bunker a faint penumbra of sense. People foxing each other. And a girl –
that
sort of girl capable of seducing Bobby Appleby even when she didn’t at all mean mto – running around disposing of corpses. Yes! Just conceivably, it added up.

Mrs Colpoys was in the breakfast-room.

‘Sergeant Howard, sir,’ she said.

And Howard was shown in. He entered with an air entirely proper in a warrant-officer (as it might be) seeking an interview with (say) a retired Adjutant-General or Chief of the Imperial General Staff. But this did not for a moment disguise the fact that Howard was a very angry man.

‘Sir,’ Howard said, ‘I have no business here. None at all.’

‘Then I wish it were an hour at which I could offer you a drink. Come to think of it, I can. Mrs Colpoys will still have coffee going. I’ll just chase after her.’ Appleby went to the door. ‘No bells left in this house,’ he explained amiably. ‘All torn out by the roots by some Raven or other in a rage. You’re a local man, Sergeant?’

‘Man and boy, Sir John.’

‘Then you know about my wife’s people. I shan’t be a moment. Cigarettes in that box. Or light your pipe. I’ve plenty of time for a talk. You’ll find that yourself, when you retire.’

These composing remarks had a certain effect. When Appleby returned – with Mrs Colpoys hard behind him – Howard had distinguishably calmed down.

‘You mustn’t blame the Colonel,’ Appleby said.

‘Sir?’ There was proper surprise in Howard’s tone.

‘Come, Sergeant. Haven’t you been told to lay off, more or less?’

‘Something like that, Sir John. And I don’t like it. It’s not fair on your son. A nice lad, if I may say so. That’s why I’ve called. I dare say I might be hauled over the coals for it.’

‘I dare say you might. Your Chief Constable’s a very good man. Army background, of course, and all that.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Accepts orders, Sergeant, and expects to have his own accepted.’

‘Orders, sir?’ Sergeant Howard frowned. ‘I take his. But where should his come from? Not from London, unless I have a very wrong notion of the legal position of the Constabulary.’

‘You haven’t. Clearly you haven’t. But sometimes, I suppose, there are overruling considerations.’

‘No doubt, sir.’ Howard’s tone didn’t suggest that he was prepared to allow much to this. ‘There’s no damned body. That’s the mischief.’

‘It would be simpler if there was a body?’

‘Of course it would. The Coroner would have to sit on it. But there’s no body. There’s nothing but a story told by your son. A true story.’

‘You judge it to be a true story?’

‘I thought I’d made that clear to you already, Sir John.’ Howard spoke stiffly. ‘I consider Mr Appleby’s testimony to be wholly reliable.’

‘So does Colonel Pride, doesn’t he?’

‘Well, yes. I think he does. But he takes these orders–’

‘Which are not orders, at all?’

‘Of course they’re not. The Prime Minister himself couldn’t give such an order. I doubt whether the Queen in Council could.’

‘I see you are a student of the Constitution, Sergeant. I was interested in it myself. But, of course, there are other powers.’ Appleby pointed to the newspapers on a table. ‘Not a word.’

‘Just so, sir.’

‘At least it tells us something. You and I.’

‘That’s very true sir.’ Howard had brightened. ‘It does give us a line.’

‘Ought we to have a line? Is it at all our affair?’

‘It’s your son’s affair, Sir John.’

‘So it is.’ For a moment Appleby was silent. ‘It’s also
their
affair. Do you want me to say whether I have any confidence in them?’

‘It wouldn’t be a proper question for me to ask.’

‘No more it would. But – implicitly, at least – you
are
asking it. Well, it’s my impression that they’re better than they were.’

‘That may well be.’

‘Yes. But they keep some of their old vices – or is it virtues? – still. Mum’s the word.’

‘Sir?’

‘A mania for covering up. And – as my man Hoobin says – always the right hand not knowing what the left hand doth. It’s not the technique you and I were brought up in, Sergeant.’

‘Decidedly not. And I’m wondering whether there’s anything you can do, sir. You see what the position is. But for that newspaper report – which is the kind of thing nobody remembers after three or four days – there’s nothing. Nothing public, I mean. And there’s nothing
at all
except your son’s report to us.’

‘And your telephone call that was supposed to come from the Home Office.’

‘Well, yes – but that might just be a joker who had read the paragraph in the paper. So the evidence is simply Mr Appleby’s statement. Now, suppose nothing more ever happens. Anybody who remembers anything at all about the matter will vaguely suppose that some sort of hoax was being played upon the police. There would be nothing which could be called particularly injurious to Mr Appleby’s reputation in that. So one can see that the Chief Constable is rather awkwardly placed when he gets this hint or order or whatever to let be. As I say, it’s the lack of the body that cripples us. If we just had
that
, we could force these people’s hand if we wanted to.’

‘We could do nothing without consultation with them, Sergeant. Ten to one, what we are witnessing is simply their conventional hugger-mugger and instinct to cover up. But it’s just possibly something quite different. They may want no further action, no further publicity, for some very weighty reason indeed.’

‘Well, I can see that. But a totally illegal embargo on a normal police investigation doesn’t please me. Particularly when its effect is to brand a respectable young man like Mr Appleby as either deluded or frivolous.’

‘My dear Howard, I very much appreciate your feeling that way.’ Appleby paused, and glared through the high mullioned window of the breakfast-room. Solo Hoobin had finished clearing the lawn of its litter, and was now preparing to ride up and down it on the mowing-machine. It was having been given the freedom of this exciting implement within the secure boundaries of Dream that had first put into Solo’s head the more hazardous ambition of owning a moped. Solo swung the engine as Appleby watched, and then stood back with a kind of proprietary pride at the resulting roar. The ancient Hoobin had now appeared, and had plainly appointed as his morning’s task the onerous business of directing his nephew’s further progress. Appleby got up and closed the window. ‘So there is something I must tell you,’ he said.

‘Sir?’

‘What you would like to have – say, what you and the Chief Constable would both like to have – is a little independent evidence. Evidence, I mean, that there was a body – that there was a body and a girl and a motor-car with a trailer-caravan and a couple of strange men. The whole set-up that we know perfectly well Bobby did
not
imagine. I think that’s right?’

‘It wouldn’t come amiss, Sir John. Of course, we wouldn’t act irresponsibly. But it would be satisfactory, shall we say, to have something of the kind under our hand.’

‘As a matter of fact, we have.’ Appleby pointed through the window. ‘Do you know that lad of mine out there – Solo Hoobin?’

‘Yes, I do – although nothing against him.’ Howard sounded doubtful. ‘A bit of a natural, isn’t he?’

‘Well, Sergeant, that’s our old-fashioned word for it. They’d now call Solo ESN. Educationally subnormal. I dare say he was never much of a candidate for the Eleven Plus. Still, he has eyes in his head.’

‘You mean, sir, that this young man saw–?’

‘The body in the bunker. And then the two men and the girl making off with it. It was on a poaching expedition on Monday night and Tuesday morning.’

‘Good heavens!’ As he uttered this exclamation, Sergeant Howard sprang to his feet. ‘If I’d known–’

‘It came to me only half-an-hour ago, Sergeant. It was pure chance that I started getting it out of Solo at all. He didn’t want trouble.’

‘They never do.’ Howard frowned. ‘He wouldn’t – would he? – make much of a witness, sir.’

‘He had a companion of his own age called Jem Puckrup, whom I haven’t seen. Quite a different type is Jem. As sharp as they come. No magistrate could take it into his head that Jem had been dreaming something up.’ Appleby paused. ‘Will you have another cup of coffee?’ he asked.

Howard had sat down again, but not without evident reluctance. He had been given a lead, and it was his impulse to follow it up at once. Solo Hoobin, in fact, had come very near to being whisked off to the police station at Linger – an event which would have alarmed him very much. Given his head, Howard would have had Jem Puckrup in too – and Jem would in consequence be in a position to enjoy several glorious evenings of free beer at the Killcanon Arms on the strength of his experience. Appleby judged this undesirable. It would, of course, be entirely impossible for him to withhold from either Howard or Colonel Pride the information he had come by from Solo. But, as an interim measure at least, he wanted his own way with it now.

‘Would you think of having a word with those two lads, Sergeant?’ he asked diplomatically.

‘Well, yes. It would only be in order, sir, if I may say so.’

‘Perfectly right. Would you care to ring through to the Chief Constable now? You’ll find the telephone in the library entirely private.’

‘You think I ought to have his authority, Sir John?’ It was unmistakable that Howard wasn’t too pleased.

‘Well, I do think that you and I, Sergeant, must both mind our step. This is a delicate matter, whether we like it or not. And perhaps we should consider where we stand with these two lads now. The major likelihood is that we already know everything material that they have to tell. But I don’t put it higher than that, mark you. You might well pick up from Solo out there something that I let slip by me.’

‘I don’t think that’s at all probable, sir.’ Howard was already mollified.

‘But there’s another side to the thing. As the matter stands, both Solo and Jem will continue to keep quiet. Solo thinks of me as reliable. He probably won’t let on to Jem Puckrup that he’s told his story. And their chief thought, as I said, is to keep out of trouble. Once the police tackle them, and they know they’re involved, their motive for keeping their mouths shut will be gone. They’ll have a high old time spinning their yarn.’