Appleby at Allington (18 page)

‘Oh, dear!’

‘You may well lament your husband’s near senility. If we had come on it half an hour later yesterday, shut and locked it would have been. And shut and locked it was the night before.’

‘Well, that’s that.’

‘Quite so. A most judicious conclusion, Judith. Incidentally, the excellent Mr Mudway remembers the unfortunate affair of the hay-wain, although it was before he was in any authority. He told Pride’s people he had no doubt its driver had got tight on cider, and that he wasn’t going to have another drunk landing in the lake in the darkness or the dusk. Do you think it theologically tenable that Mr Mudway was Martin Allington’s Guardian Angel? He was ensuring that there was at least
one
accident that couldn’t befall the poor chap.’

‘So where are we now?’

‘I can tell you where Pride is. He’s swapping, with due compunction, my feasible accident for the much less likely-looking one with which we started. And he’s right. There’s no other way–’

‘Common-sense way.’

‘Exactly. There’s no other common-sense way of looking at it. Martin wasn’t misled by the disappearance of the first gate from its hinges. He turned into the drive, all right, just as he should. Or rather, just as he shouldn’t. For he at once took a wild and unaccountable swerve to the right, and did a kind of running dive, car and all, into the lake.’

‘Knockdown.’

‘Yes, indeed. But just what and how?’

‘He was lurking, as we now know. Perhaps with some intention of stealing electrical stuff, or perhaps just curious about it. And we’re told now that he’d been drinking.’

‘Not a great deal.’

‘Well, enough. And he staggered out in front of that rather fast-moving car, just as it turned into the drive–’

‘And Martin swerved to avoid him – and that was curtains for Martin.’ Appleby paused. ‘It’s most convincing.’ Once more, he began his restless pacing about. ‘Only, what happened then? Knockdown was
not
knocked down. He was left on his feet – and treated to the spectacle of a car and its driver disappearing into the lake. What does he do? Potters on unconcernedly to what we called the gazebo, climbs into it, and deftly electrocutes himself.’ Abruptly, Appleby came to a halt again. ‘It won’t do. I give it up. Common-sense, that is. It won’t take us through this thing. The true solution is going to be a mad solution. A freakish solution. Think of the treasure.’

‘It doesn’t seem to me that
you’ve
been thinking much about the treasure.’

‘Perfectly true, in a way. I keep on shoving it out of my head. You see, it leads to something just
too
bad. Martin Allington was diving for it.’

‘
Diving for it?
’

‘Metaphorically speaking. Madly interpreted. Freakishly regarded. Don’t you see?
Why just like that?
He died where he did because the treasure was where it is – or was, or was fabled to be. There! Are you surprised that I try to thrust such insane imaginings out of my mind?’

‘Talk of madmen!’ Judith had moved to the window. ‘There’s a very old car coming up the drive. And its occupant is Mr Scrape.’

‘I don’t know why you should insist that
he’s
mad,’ Appleby said.

‘Perhaps I’m just being freakish.’

‘Or why he should take it into his head to call on us. We have our own vicar – and I’m bound to say he’s about enough.’

‘John, dear, you’re getting out of temper. You’ll be ever so much better when you’ve mopped up the Allington mystery – a clear length ahead of Tommy Pride. And now, do go and meet Mr Scrape. He’s arrived just in time for tea.’

‘They always do,’ Appleby said gloomily, and left the room. He composed his features as he did so into a decorous expression of pleasurable surprise.

Mr Scrape had every appearance of merely having strayed inadvertently beyond the boundaries of his own field of pastoral care. Appleby wondered vaguely whether he had, in fact, taken charge of the parish of Long Dream with Linger as a result of some sudden upheaval in diocesan affairs. Or perhaps Mr Scrape was a Rural Dean, with a roving commission in these parts. However this might be, he imbibed tea and emitted clerical chit-chat as if his visit was self-evidently on a regular basis. Along with this, however, he did betray faintly the air of a man biding his time. He had a good deal to say about the kindness of the Applebys in having attended the Allington fête and supported it so generously. Appleby remembered that it hadn’t occurred to him to buy a thing. This had certainly been most reprehensible, and he recalled Wilfred Osborne’s carpet slippers with proper shame. Perhaps Mr Scrape spoke consciously as an ironist. Perhaps he was presently going to ask for a subscription. It was a little odd that he had said nothing at all about the fatality in the lake. So eventually Appleby said something about it himself.

‘Extremely sad,’ Mr Scrape said. He had put down his teacup, and it would have been possible to imagine that his stringy form had stiffened. ‘So promising a young man, and so beloved by his uncle. A brilliant career cut off. And one who, at Allington, would in the fullness of time inherit so large a potentiality for doing good. We can only bow the head.’

Mr Scrape bowed his head as he spoke, but it proved to be only for the purpose of selecting a piece of fruit-cake. Appleby found himself wondering whether perhaps he really
was
mad. Or mad, at least, in the sense of having a totally unreal vision of people and their qualities. And Mr Scrape wasn’t so much parsonical as ultra-parsonical. He was, in fact, a shade unnerving.

‘And we must not forget the other unfortunate man,’ Mr Scrape said. ‘In a sense, indeed, it is for the hapless Knockdown that we should chiefly pray. The circumstances of his death were such that it is to be feared he was among the reprobate.’

Appleby’s feeling of alarm grew. If one believed in the doctrine of Reprobation could one with any theological consistency talk about praying for the souls of the dead? Perhaps Mr Scrape led so absorbed a life organizing parish teas – not to speak of Bingo orgies – that he was a little rusty on the theoretical side of his employment.

‘The man was known to me,’ Mr Scrape said. ‘But not, apparently, to Mr Allington. Or so, Lady Appleby, I seem to recall your mentioning. On good authority, I suppose?’

‘I gathered it was self-evident.’ Judith was surprised. ‘John, wasn’t that so?’

‘Certainly it was. Indeed, Allington has told me he had not so much as heard of him. It seems he hadn’t been in these parts for very long. Incidentally, he had a criminal record.’

‘A
criminal
record?’ For a moment Mr Scrape held his fruit-cake suspended in mid-air. ‘You horrify me. Knockdown had performed small tasks for me, and was moderate in the wage he required.’

‘Had you employed him recently?’ Appleby asked.

‘Ah, no. Not, I judge, for several weeks.’

‘And you won’t have run across him since then?’

‘Let me think. No, I have had no conversation with him at all.’

‘I don’t mean quite that. Did you have as much as a glimpse of him during the past few weeks?’

‘Lady Appleby, this is most delicious tea. I shall know where to come in future when the little tea-bell rings. But, my dear Sir John, I beg your pardon! No, I have no clear recollection of catching sight of the man Knockdown recently. But what you say about his criminal past disturbs me. One should invariably require references even from persons whom one takes into the most casual employment.’

‘Not,’ Judith said, ‘that it wouldn’t be one who had strayed whom you would naturally be most anxious to help.’

‘Precisely. It is what I was saying. But I must go on my way, I fear. I have to call on our schoolmaster, Mr Pinn, to report yesterday’s shocking behaviour on the part of Richard Cyphus. Indeed, Lady Appleby, I must apologize for it.’

Judith showed such clear signs of not receiving this well, that Appleby felt it judicious to interpose hastily.

‘I hope,’ he asked, ‘that the proceeds of the fête answered your expectations?’

‘I believe they will prove to be such as to be a very great help.’ Mr Scrape had got to his feet. ‘But there is so much to be done! The upkeep of the chancel is, of course, a charge upon Mr Allington, as patron of the living. I need hardly say that he discharges it most punctiliously. How fortunate I am to have such a man to support me! But the nave must definitely have a new anthracite stove before winter is upon us. And the state of the village hall is, as you know, a grave matter indeed. Moreover, the re-identification of the conventual buildings is imperative.’

‘The conventual buildings?’ Judith asked. She was entirely at sea.

‘My dear Lady Appleby, as one whose family has held property immemorially in an adjoining parish, you must know that Allington was originally an abbey-church.’

‘Yes, of course, I have heard that.’

‘But just as Oliver Cromwell demolished the greater part of the castle in the seventeenth century, so did his devilish namesake, Thomas, not only dissolve the monastery a century before but actually proved instrumental in tearing the vast fabric asunder. Today, not a stone remains.’

‘And you are going to build it again?’ Appleby asked.

‘Assuredly. It is my inflexible resolution.’

‘And re-establish a community of regular clergy?’

‘That is as yet undetermined – a detail which will come later.’

‘It will be rather a costly undertaking?’

‘Not excessively so. I am assured that less than a quarter of a million may suffice. Lady Appleby, thank you for so delicious and timely a refreshment. There is work in the vineyard. An immediate task, indeed. I must take my leave.’

And Mr Scrape departed. His ancient car went backfiring down the drive. The Applebys for some moments eyed each other in silence.

‘I did tell you – didn’t I?’ Judith said presently. ‘It’s the dynamic behind even his Bingo palace. Mad as a hatter.’

‘But it’s fantastic! He’s the perfect type of the Erastian cleric.’

‘Mr Gladstone said that many most respectable persons have been Erastians.’

‘Don’t be absurd. He’s the sort that gets along very happily on the basis of a kind of muddled conflating of the squire and the deity.’

‘Perhaps he’s what is called a disassociated personality.’

‘Perhaps. Anyway, he has some sort of fanaticism bottled up in him. You realize why he came?’

‘I don’t think I do.’

‘It was to make quite sure that Owain Allington had declared himself unacquainted with Knockdown.’

‘Why should he want to make sure of that?’

‘It could only be for one reason. He knows it to be a lie.’

Appleby spent much of the later afternoon on the telephone. There are some matters on which it is not very easy even for a retired Commissioner of Police to gain information – or not except discreetly in appropriate clubs. He was a shade out of patience by the time the process was concluded, and he was rather pleased when he spied Wilfred Osborne making his way through one of the nearer fields with the evident intention of dropping in at Dream for drinks. Osborne wasn’t in a hurry. He had, in fact, paused to hold a short conversation with one of Judith’s elderly horses. Appleby had time to go and find a rather more respectable sherry than was lying around. Osborne, although a man of very simple mind, probably had a hereditary knowledge of sherry. If you imported tallow in one generation, you probably imported sherry, port and madeira as a profitable sideline in the next.

Osborne, however, asked for beer. It had been, he pointed out placidly, another uncommonly warm day.

‘I haven’t noticed it,’ Appleby said morosely. ‘I can’t get Allington out of my head. Did you meet Judith, by the way? She’s gone out to palm off some of those jams and pickles on the defenceless poor. She could have taken your carpet slippers as well.’

‘I didn’t see her. And I thought of giving the slippers to Hoobin, if that’s all right. He’s one of my oldest acquaintances.’

‘Excellent. It may suggest to him that his time for slippered ease has come. He has shown no signs of retiring, so far. And it isn’t a thing I’d care to suggest to him.’

‘No, of course not. It’s even more difficult than with dogs.’ Wilfred Osborne shook his head sombrely. ‘
Fugit hora. Tempus edax rerum
. All that. Wonderful way these old fellows had of putting things.’

‘Yes, indeed.
Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis
.’ Appleby paused – by way of agreeing that proper tribute should be paid to Ovid, Virgil, and others. ‘Wilfred, how would you have felt, when you sold Allington, if you’d known that the purchaser had just scraped past some shocking scandal? Or perhaps you
did
know?’

‘My dear John, I’ve certainly no notion of what you’re talking about. It’s possible that I’d have been most upset. I think I’ve told you that, just at the time, I took some comfort from the fact that the place was going back to an Allington. Old and honourable stock. One gets these feelings, eh? But what sort of scandal? Acting badly by a woman?’

‘Nothing like that. They don’t call that scandalous nowadays.’

‘Perfectly true, my dear fellow. Rotten times. Haven’t heard the word cad uttered these twenty years. Nor bounder either. Proves it, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Certainly it does.’ Appleby wasn’t concerned with Wilfred Osborne’s logical processes. ‘But about Owain Allington. You told me how he had gone into industry. It seems he was involved with atomic energy at a pretty high level. And a feeling got around that he was doing a little horse-trading in that line.’

‘Good God! You don’t mean with the Bolsheviks?’

‘No, not that. But with some inquiring gentlemen from the Near East. I suspect his nephew may have been in on it too.’

‘They ought to have been put in gaol.’

‘We can’t be sure of that. There was no evidence of an actual deal. You can at least be tolerably certain that he didn’t buy Allington out of the fruits of treason. I’ve only had this in a rather cautious way over the telephone less than an hour ago. It can’t be put stronger than that there were some ugly thoughts going round. And then Allington, so to speak, asked for his cards. That finished the matter.’