Appleby at Allington (10 page)

‘And perched on the edge of a little precipice which has been manufactured at the same time, I think.’ Appleby walked to the edge. ‘First a mini-mystery, and then a mini-precipice.’

‘What would happen if you fell straight into the water from here?’

‘You would inevitably get very wet, and you might or might not be killed. Look! People are starting to leave the fête, loaded with their spoils. But there are a few latecomers arriving as well.’

They looked across the lake. There were pedestrians on the long drive, and a few cars nosing cautiously past them and past each other; those arriving were mirrored in the clear water with a curiously toy-like effect. Nearer the house the ice-cream van had appeared, perhaps having finally sold out to Richard Cyphus and his deplorable associates. Only the faintest noise came over the water. From this distance, the entertainment at Allington might have been a private garden party of the most decorous sort.

Perhaps from a sense that they were playing truant, the Applebys moved rapidly downhill again. But at a point where the path took a sharp turn, Judith halted suddenly.

‘A spy!’ she said.

It was, of course, a needlessly dramatic exclamation. Still, the facts could be interpreted that way. Straight in front of them, somebody was crouched behind a bush, scanning the surface of the lake with binoculars.

It was a young man. This was plain, because he had risen and faced them. He had been thus prompted – it was embarrassingly evident – as a result of hearing precisely what Judith had said. Fortunately, he seemed unoffended, and indisposed to be at all at a loss.

‘Hullo,’ the young man said cheerfully. ‘Are you bird-watching too?’

The Applebys disclaimed this as their present concern, while at the same time indicating interest in, and approbation of, the pursuit in a general way.

‘Then I don’t suppose you’ll have seen any great grey-shrikes? They’re what I’m out for.’

‘No, we haven’t,’ Judith said, and eyed the young man curiously. ‘And aren’t you a little confused? The great grey-shrike’s an autumn and winter visitor. I’d be very surprised to see one before September. And then probably it would be on the east coast. Perhaps you mean the red-backed-shrike?’

‘Yes, that’s it – or, rather, no.’ The young man appeared to suspect a trap. ‘I’m a beginner, as a matter of fact.’

‘The red-backed-shrike is the butcher-bird. And would be quite in order. It’s here in summer, all over south and central England.’

‘Is that so – the butcher-bird? Jolly interesting!’ The young man was stuffing his binoculars into their leather case, rather as if meditating flight. ‘I’m keen on trees, too,’ he said. ‘Rather better on trees, as a matter of fact. By the way, I hope you don’t think I’m trespassing.’

‘We’ve no title to,’ Appleby said. ‘We’re merely the guests of the owner for the afternoon – at half-a-crown a head.’

‘At half-a-crown – ?’ The young man broke off. ‘Oh, of course. The fête. Did you see the
son et lumière
?’

‘No, neither of us saw that.’

‘A pity.’ The young man seemed dashed. ‘But about my not being exactly a trespasser. Have you met George Barford?’

‘We’ve met Sandra and Stephanie – in a fashion. Perhaps George is their father? If so, we’re to meet him later.’

‘I see.’ The young man appeared to take note of this indication of the standing of the Applebys. ‘Well, George Barford – who’s married, you know, to a niece of Mr Allington – is a kind of cousin of mine. As a matter of fact, it was he who got me the job.’

‘As Allington’s accredited bird-watcher?’ Judith asked. ‘If so, it was a rash appointment.’

‘Of course not.’ The young man appeared decently confused. ‘Writing the script for the
son et lumière
. My name’s Tristram Travis. I’m a historian of sorts, and I come from Oxford.’

The Applebys introduced themselves.

‘But I still haven’t explained,’ Mr Travis said cheerfully. ‘Of course that was all rot about the birds. Do you happen to know a lady called Mrs Junkin?’

‘Yes,’ Judith said. ‘She makes meringues.’

‘That’s right. And she has an astoundingly beautiful granddaughter. Mavis. Mavis Junkin. A marvellous name.’ Mr Travis, who was a good-looking youth, gazed with the largest candour at Judith. ‘I’m madly in love with her. My only object in being here is to catch a glimpse of her. Through these.’ Mr Travis tapped the binocular-case.

‘Do you mean,’ Appleby asked, ‘that you have the unfortunate temperament of a
voyeur
, and can achieve romantic ecstasy only at a remove and through a pair of field-glasses?’ It would clearly be a great mistake, he was thinking, to believe anything that Tristram Travis said.

‘Not that at all. Mrs Junkin, who belongs to the virtuous poor, has banished me from her granddaughter’s sight. I’ve been unable to persuade her that my intentions are honourable. It’s terribly unfair. Lady Appleby – I think it is Lady Appleby? – will you help me in my suit?’

‘Certainly not. But I shall look forward to seeing the ravishing Miss Junkin. And now, I think we must walk on. We have to put in an appearance again at the Park before going home. Are you banished from the entire district, Mr Tristram? Does Mr Allington support Mavis’ grandmother?’

‘I don’t think he’d mind my calling. As a matter of fact, we got on quite well. Over the
son et lumière
, that is. I stayed at Allington, you see, to do the research. That’s how I met Muriel.’

‘Mavis.’

‘That’s right – Mavis. I wonder if I might come along with you? Would you mind? I have quite good manners.’

‘And morals to match.’ Judith laughed – causing her husband to conclude gloomily that she had taken a fancy to this idiotic young man. Not, probably, that he was all that idiotic. He was simply putting on a turn – and the point of the joke seemed to be that nobody was expected to be taken in by it. Which was excessively foolish in itself. And this meant that one’s view of Mr Travis appeared to move rapidly in a closed circle. Appleby decided to exercise the privilege of an elderly man and ask some direct questions.

‘Of course you can come along with us,’ he said. ‘You read History at Oxford?’

‘Thank you so much. Read History? Yes, I did.’

‘And took a First Class in the School?’

‘Yes.’

‘So that you are now a junior fellow of a college, or at least on the way to being that?’

‘Yes.’ Travis looked demurely at Appleby. ‘I’m afraid that to a person like yourself it must all be terribly obscure. Will there be drinks at the Park, do you think?’

‘Champagne,’ Judith said. ‘It’s to celebrate the close of an unusually hectic period in the quiet Allington year. There’s even been a corpse.’

‘A corpse, Lady Appleby?’ They were now all three moving down towards the lake together. But Mr Travis appeared sufficiently startled to come momentarily to a halt.

‘An unfortunate man was found electrocuted among the
son et lumière
stuff last night. By my husband, as a matter of fact.’

‘What a queer thing to get out the champagne on top of.’ Travis walked on. ‘But then this chap Allington, you know, is rather a strange character. I didn’t get on his wave-length, at all.’

‘I understood you to say,’ Appleby interposed, ‘that you had enjoyed good relations with him.’

‘That’s perfectly true. He took the historical basis of his blessed entertainment quite seriously. He wouldn’t have hired a chap like me to dig it out and write it up – not if he’d felt any old thing would do. And anything
would
have done, of course. From a historical point of view, it obviously isn’t a very critical audience that rolls in its buses into an affair of that sort. By the way, they’ve left the hell of a mess, haven’t they? And the lorries taking away all that hardware, I suppose. Look over there.’ Travis suddenly got out his field glasses again, and handed them to Judith. ‘Verges chewed up along the drive, and some damage to perfectly decent trees. That big white gate knocked clean off its hinges. Of course you can’t have a show like that without a lot of disturbance and quite a bit of damage. The question I kept asking was, why on earth the chap did it.’

They had arrived near the end of the lake, and were looking across its narrowing extremity towards the high road and the entrance to the drive. Allington Park had a grander approach from another quarter, with a beech-avenue which had arisen like everything else, presumably, at Humphrey Repton’s command. It was this route that Appleby had come and gone by on the previous night. But it was in some decay, and seemed not much used. The alternative entrance was a modest affair without a lodge, and merely signalised by the gate to which Travis had pointed. Judith looked at it now.

‘The gate has merely been lifted clear,’ she said. ‘But I agree there’s rather a mess. You say you’re surprised that Mr Allington went in for it all? I gather it made quite a lot for charity.’

‘I suppose that was it.’ Travis sounded unconvinced. ‘Anyway, he had me do my part of the job pretty thoroughly, as I said.’

‘A kind of research job?’ Appleby asked. ‘And here at Allington? I’d hardly have supposed there would be much to examine. The castle was destroyed during the Civil War, and the Allingtons seem to have disappeared–’

‘It wasn’t quite like that. Some of the Cavalier families, of course, lost estates, and their descendants never recovered them. The then Lord Allington – Rupert – took himself off to France, and died long before 1660. But there were others around, and one of them did a good deal in the way of collecting family records and so forth. Much later – in the mid-nineteenth century – all that was bought up by the second Mr Osborne, who had antiquarian interests and a desire to possess himself of anything connected with the place. When the last Osborne–’

‘Wilfred?’ Judith asked.

‘Yes. When he sold the Park to Owain Allington, he threw all that stuff in. The contents of what may fairly be called a respectable muniment-room. That’s what I had the run of, and it was quite interesting. Not that there was really a great deal that helped with the
son et lumière
. That had to be an affair, as you can guess, of pretty broad effects. I think the doddering old Wilfred–’

‘Mr Osborne,’ Judith said, ‘is a very old friend of mine.’

‘Oh, I see. I’m sorry.’ Mr Travis was not distinguishably abashed. ‘What I was going to say was that it was very decent of him to let the Allington records go with the place. It can only have been because an Allington – and in the direct line from Rupert, you know – was taking over again. Showed a nice feeling, all the same.’

‘What about that treasure?’ Appleby asked abruptly.

‘Treasure, Sir John?’

‘There’s a tradition, or legend, of buried treasure, and Allington tells me you made quite a thing of it in your script.’

‘Oh, yes – of course. People like that sort of thing. Awful rot, needless to say.’

‘So Allington seems to feel. Still, you didn’t actually make it up. I mean, it’s there?’

‘There?’ Travis stared blankly at Appleby.

‘In the records, I mean. You came on material about the treasure when working in this muniment-room?’

‘Good Lord, no!’ Travis was amused. ‘I haven’t at all traced the story to its origin. It exists in the county histories, and local antiquarian books. I wrote it in from stuff like that. I didn’t at all go after its provenance.’

‘You disappoint me.’ Appleby smiled amiably at Tristram Travis. ‘I’d have expected more curiosity in a rising young Oxford scholar. But one forgets, of course. You were being a good deal distracted.’

‘Distracted?’

‘A fickle swain,’ Appleby said to Judith. ‘The beautiful Mavis Junkin has passed from your young friend’s mind.’

‘Oh, I say! I call that jolly unfair.’ Injury and reproach positively vibrated in the voice of the ingenuous Mr Travis.

‘You’re a complete young humbug,’ Appleby said – cheerfully and inoffensively. ‘Now let’s go and find that drink.’

Owain Allington peered cautiously out of one of the long windows of his drawing-room. There was still a good deal of activity to be seen. Those who remain grimly through the tail-end of sales in the hope of bargain prices at the last were plentifully in evidence. One or two old women, hardened characters, even carried completely empty baskets still. The Reverend Mr Scrape, who was continuing conscientiously to frequent the humbler of his flock, could be glimpsed in negotiation over a jar of pickled onions. (The beans in their bottle had been counted; the draw for the gin, lemon squash, tomato ketchup and whatever had taken place; Owain Allington Esquire had been weighed.)

‘That’s right, Enzo.’ Allington had turned back into the room, and was nodding to the Italian youth who appeared to be on his promotion as butler at the Park. Enzo had begun to pour champagne. ‘A haven of peace in the midst of turmoil,’ Allington continued to his guests in general. He glanced at Wilfred Osborne. ‘
Pax in bello
, eh?’

The effect of this speech was surprising – or at least it surprised Appleby, who happened to be watching. For Osborne – a benign elderly presence, although not, as Travis had called him, exactly doddering – had flushed darkly, and turned away with some curt word. It was necessary to suppose that a joke had been intended, and that it had decidedly failed to come off.

‘Judith,’ Appleby murmured to his wife, ‘what on earth was that about?’

‘It was about the motto of the Duke of Leeds.’ Judith had secured one of the first glasses of champagne.

‘I don’t see why that should nettle Wilfred.’

‘Osborne was the family name of the Leedses. And the first Mr Osborne –
our
first Mr Osborne, I mean, who imported all that tallow – pinched the Leeds arms and motto. Not that he mayn’t have been a relation. The dukes were descended from a London merchant.’

‘I see.’ It was one of the occasions upon which Appleby marvelled at the amount of useless information of this kind that Judith stored in her head. ‘Well, I suppose it was a tactless quip of Allington’s. This was Wilfred’s own drawing-room only a few years ago, after all.’