Appleby at Allington (17 page)

‘That’s right.’ Appleby put down his cup. ‘Judith, just what is this in aid of?’

‘You see perfectly well what it’s in aid of.’

‘Yes, I do. You still want to present Allington as a homicidal maniac.’

‘I don’t think he’s a maniac.’ Judith paused to light a cigarette. ‘But I
am
wondering about those white gates. And all I’m saying is that, if you’d happened to go or come by the lake-drive and not the old avenue, you’d know a bit more about one of them than you now do. Perhaps a vital bit more.’

‘I’m taking a little too much for granted?’ Appleby asked mildly.

‘Something like that. You’re supposing, I think, that the gate on the drive was taken off its hinges and put right aside
for
the
son et lumière
– probably when the heavy stuff for it was being brought in – and that it remained like that for some weeks. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was removed when the stuff was
brought
to the Park, put back again during the period of the show, and removed again only to get the stuff away? Or perhaps
only
when they were getting the stuff away. That seems to have been a rush job, and it’s then that they may have felt they required a little additional space to manoeuvre in.’

‘Which would be only yesterday morning, long after Martin Allington was dead. So what may be called my two-gate theory would be nonsense. All this is exceedingly acute in you, Judith.’

‘Thank you very much.’ Judith glanced at her husband suspiciously. ‘John, I believe–’

‘Well, yes. Inquiries are being made. I pointed out the importance of the matter to Pride’s chief henchman when I walked back to tell him of what I’ll still call my discovery. The
son et lumière
people will have been contacted by now. So will the locals who use that road. The result – gate there or not there – may turn out a topic of shockingly conflicting testimony. It’s often like that, but we’ll hope for the best. Don’t tell me, though, after all this, that you haven’t got something further in your head.’

‘Of course I have. The gate mayn’t have been removed in aid of the
son et lumière
at all. It may have been removed in order to bring about what, according to your theory, it
did
bring about: the death of Martin Allington.’

‘In other words, poor old Owain Allington went and lugged the thing off its hinges?’

‘Oh, not necessarily him at all. Some other maniac.’

‘Barford, perhaps – or Lethbridge?’

‘They’re not maniacs. They’re only bores.’

‘Hope Allington, then. I’m not sure that she isn’t a kind of young Lady Macbeth.’

‘Not Hope either. I think I’d put my money on poor Mr Scrape.’

‘Scrape?’ Perhaps by way of rebuking his wife for this descent into mere frivolity, Appleby reached for
The Times
. ‘You would describe Scrape – even outside his Bingo palace – as a maniac?’

‘I’m not really quite certain what a maniac is.’ Judith seemed perfectly serious. ‘But Mr Scrape is certainly as mad as a hatter.’

Mid-morning brought a second telephone-call from the headquarters of the County Constabulary. The subordinates of the admirable Tommy Pride had been instructed to let Appleby know at once that a thorough examination had now been made of Mr Martin Allington’s car. It was without mechanical defect of any kind. Both brakes and steering, in particular, were in excellent order.

Appleby hung up the receiver, and took a brooding turn round the garden. It was the two-gate theory or nothing, he told himself. And there was a little more to be said for it than he had fired off at Judith. Her notion of the Reverend Mr Scrape or another lifting the first gate from its hinges and tossing it into the grass was absurd. Conceivably two men could do the job, but certainly not one. And Appleby had managed to study the grass in which it lay. He was pretty sure that the grass had
grown
since the gate arrived among it. Dirty work with the gate on the actual day, or night of Martin Allington’s death really seemed exceedingly improbable.

But, of course, there was another possibility. Some ill-wisher might simply have
seen
the hazard the missing gate constituted for Martin,
and done nothing about it
. There was something particularly nasty in this thought. It was so nasty, indeed, that Appleby sought briefly to distract his mind from Allington Park by a little conversation with the aged Hoobin. The aged Hoobin, he found, was resolutely opposed to the idea of putting the soft fruit inside cages. Man and boy at Dream, he could remember nothing but nets over the raspberries. It appeared, moreover, that the garden boy regarded such birds as got under the existing nets as a kind of perquisite. They couldn’t, indeed, be put in a pie. But the boy enjoyed catching them and wringing their necks.

At the risk of alienating the aged Hoobin, Appleby placed a peremptory interdict upon this sadistic practice. Hoobin turned gloomily to the subject of the moles. Appleby was quite glad when the faint ringing of a telephone-bell called him back to the house.

It was the Constabulary again. A garage-hand twenty miles away on the London road had identified a photograph of Martin Allington. It was an all-night service station, and Allington had filled up with petrol some time between midnight and one o’clock. The man couldn’t fix it nearer than that. But he had had a little conversation with his customer, and watched him drive away and negotiate a tricky turn. He had had his pint, all right. But nothing to speak of. You wouldn’t swear to his having a totally unimpaired reaction time in a sudden crisis. But he was driving perfectly well… There was as yet no word from the
son et lumière
people, or from anybody else, about that gate.

Appleby resumed his wandering in the garden. He wondered why he was supposed to be bothering about Allington Park. Pride’s men were clearly an efficient crowd. They were making all the running. Appleby recalled that he was a retired person, engaged in moving decently from bed-time to bed-time, from lunch to dinner.

Lunch was rather a subdued affair. Judith appeared to have forgotten the whole business. She had brought what she called a
bozzetto
to table with her, and she studied this small wax object with absorbed attention. As soon as the meal was over, she would certainly disappear into her studio for the rest of the day. Appleby tried
The Times
again. He even tried its business section, that last bulwark against the sin of
accidie
. It appeared that a gloomy autumn was likely as car production fell. Feeling out of sympathy with this
Weltanschauung
, he dropped the paper, and stared out of the window.

Enzo was cycling up the drive.

‘Your young man appears to have got his half-day very promptly,’ Appleby said to Judith. And he looked at her suspiciously. ‘Are you quite sure you haven’t bribed him to take French leave?’

‘Quite sure, as it happens.’ Judith studied the young man as he rounded a corner of the house; he appeared to feel that propriety forbad his presenting himself at the front door. ‘I’d say he looks agitated – wouldn’t you? And I did have a feeling he wanted to say more than he did. It’s hard for him, you know, having so little English.’

‘I see.’ Appleby’s suspicion was undiminished. ‘Did you happen to tell him that I was a great policeman?’

‘The
great policeman.
Il grande poliziotto.’

‘Good heavens! That means a police-spy.’

‘Well, he got the idea, and here he is. We must go and talk to him. Your study will be the most impressive place. Let’s lay out some handcuffs. And perhaps a whip or two and some canes.’

‘Don’t be so exceedingly foolish.’ Appleby was not at all sure that he wanted to interview this young Italian – or not under such false pretences as Judith seemed unblushingly to have engineered. But, as there was no help for it, he submitted with a good grace.

Enzo, however improper his nocturnal occasions, appeared a very well-conducted young man by day. He was reluctant to sit down, but did so immediately upon being bidden to do so a second time. Appleby, to whom elderly and morose English upper servants were not congenial, judged him rather attractive. It was perhaps odd that Owain Allington, whose notions appeared conventional, should not employ somebody more like a stage butler. But if the rest of the staff at the Park was Italian, Enzo was no doubt an effective choice for running it. He was intelligent. And, at the moment, he was plainly perturbed. The reason appeared almost at once. The
polizia
had shown him a photograph of the dead man.

It was another instance of Pride’s men being on their toes, Appleby thought. Summoning such Italian as he had, he asked Enzo whether he had recognized Mr Martin Allington. But at this the young man was at a loss, and Judith had to clear up the misunderstanding. The photograph had been of
l’altro morto
, the other dead man. And he had recognized the other dead man? Yes, Enzo had recognized him – although he had seen him only once and in the dark.
Prese lungo l’albereto
.

‘He was going along the avenue,’ Judith said. ‘Something like that. Knockdown, apparently. Perhaps–’ She broke off. Enzo was now saying something about the
parroco
.

And then, rather slowly and laboriously, Enzo’s small story emerged. He had served his employer and the General (who was Appleby) with dinner and with coffee. He had been instructed that he was then free
andare a far una breve passeggiata
in the agreeable summer night. But, for reasons with which he would not trouble the
nobiltà
, he had not set out at once.

‘The Applebys are on the up and up,’ Appleby said cheerfully. ‘But what the young blackguard means is that it was no go until he could be sure the girl’s parents were fast asleep.’

‘No doubt,’ Judith said. ‘But let him go on.’

Enzo went on. He had taken the road by the
lago
, and at the foot of it he had come upon a man. It had been impossible to see him clearly, but he had the appearance of pacing up and down while waiting for somebody, and he was smoking a cigarette. He was restless and uneasy, like an animal going round and round its cage.
Attorno attorno
, Enzo said graphically. Enzo, the guardian of Allington, had felt that the intruder must be accosted. Whereupon the intruder had retreated rapidly to the high road. It was still not possible to see much, since the moon had not yet risen. But that was where the
parroco
came in.

There could be no doubt who the
parroco
was. He was the Reverend Mr Scrape. He had appeared on a bicycle – perhaps returning, Enzo said as he crossed himself devoutly, from some sacred occasion.
El viatico
, perhaps. The
parroco
had a very good lamp on his bicycle, and for a moment its beam had fallen full on the face of the prowling man. Enzo had seen the face clearly, and no doubt the
parroco
had seen it clearly too. It was the same face as in the photograph shown to him by the
polizia
. The face of Knockdown. Enzo had then gone on his way. Knockdown was now on the public road, and there was nothing to be done about him.

‘He was scared, wasn’t he?’ Judith asked, when Appleby had returned from seeing the young man out of the house.

‘Yes, I suppose he was.’

‘Do you think there was something more, that he didn’t tell us?’

‘I don’t know. But probably not.’

‘But why should he be so uneasy?’

‘He’s a long away from Pescocalascio. And perhaps he’s another who feels something rum in the atmosphere of that place.’

‘Allington?’

Appleby nodded. He had been speaking so absently that Judith realized that the Allington affair had really got John hooked at last. And now he began walking restlessly up and down the room.

‘I still want to stick to the second-gate theory,’ he said. ‘And not any monkeying with Gate One in order to lure that car through Gate Two. It happened as it did through sheer accident. That’s the common-sense of the thing.’

‘Knockdown.’

‘Yes, I know. Knockdown lurking down there, within yards of where Martin Allington was to die. And then Knockdown dead. Damnably oddly dead. But give up the theory of accident –
my
theory of accident, the plausible second-gate theory – and chaos is come again. No sense to be seen in the thing at all. And, for good measure, a really fantastic theme of sunken treasure thrown in. It needs thinking out. What that chap in Baker Street called a two-pipe mystery.’

‘Two gates, two pipes.’

‘Just so.’ Appleby came to a halt by the window, and stared out into the early afternoon. ‘At least there’s a little time to think about it all. Nothing more will happen today.’

But in this Sir John Appleby was wrong. For everything did.

Just before teatime, the second-gate theory was blown sky-high. It was blown sky-high with a devastating simplicity and finality. And it was Pride’s men who did the job.

‘What do you expect?’ Appleby said, when he had once more turned away from the telephone. ‘I’m only a superannuated meddler, neither in the thing nor out of it.’

‘John, whatever are you talking about?’ Judith had seldom seen her husband so ruffled. It was as if his pride were hurt.

‘If I’d been in charge, I’d have done just that. Straight away. And saved myself from talking a great deal of nonsense.’

‘What would you have done straight away? I didn’t hear what they were saying, you know.’

‘I’d have walked over to the home farm, and had a word with Allington’s manager. That’s just what
they
did – rather belatedly, an hour ago. A reliable character with the appropriate name of Mudway, long known and much respected in the district. And he doesn’t like my gate.’

‘Your
gate?’

‘The second gate. He regards it as dangerous – with the lake dead in front of it like that, and the track turning sharp to the right. Last year, he took down a decayed and inadequate bit of fencing dating from Osborne’s time, and he’s been meaning to put up something better. Meantime’ – Appleby suddenly grinned wryly – ‘he closes and padlocks that gate every night.’