Appleby File (5 page)

‘There’s something between him and that man Charles Trevor.’

‘I know there is.’ Appleby was now in his pyjamas.

‘I think Trevor is quite as nasty as Jolly. Perhaps they’re confederates.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘You say something’s going to happen. What?’

‘Well, for one thing, you and I are going to sleep.’ Appleby turned out a light. ‘For another – but this is where I just start to guess – there’s going to be some hard bargaining at Gore. And not of a kind, unfortunately, at which I can very well act as honest broker.’

‘It sounds most unpleasant.’

‘I’m sure it is. But I don’t see there is anything I can do. I must think twice before compounding a felony, I suppose. And that’s why, in a way, I don’t really want to learn more. We didn’t stagger in here out of the snow in order to start blowing police whistles and insisting on open scandal. Or that’s how I see it at the moment. It may be different in the morning.’ Appleby crossed to the window, drew back the curtain a little way, and half-opened a casement. He moved back across the room, got into bed, and turned out the last light. The room was quite dark, with only a narrow band of moonlight falling on a wall and across the bed. ‘And now you’re going straight to sleep,’ he said.

The band of moonlight had moved a little; it now caught the corner of a picture. Otherwise the room was in absolute darkness. The only sound was Judith’s breathing.

‘
Twang!
’

Appleby found that he had come awake with a start, and that his mind was groping for the reason. And the reason came to him, like an echo on the inward ear, as he sat up and switched on a bedside lamp. Judith was still fast asleep.

He picked up his watch and looked at it; the time was just two o’clock. He slipped out of bed, went over to the door and listened intently. He came back, put on his dressing-gown, felt in his open suitcase and produced a pocket torch. Returning to the door, he opened it gently, went out, and closed it behind him. The corridor before him was quite dark and very cold. He let the beam from his torch first play down its empty length, and then circle until it found the door of Jolly’s room. He went over to this, listened for some seconds, and then switched off the torch and cautiously turned the handle. The door swung back with a faint creak upon blackness. He switched on the torch again, and the beam fell on Jolly’s shabby suitcase, open and untidy. The beam circled the room and fell upon the bed. It had been turned down at one corner. But nobody had slept in it.

Appleby closed the door – and as he did so heard faint sounds from the end of the corridor. They might have been slippered footfalls. He turned in time to see a dim form and a flickering light disappear round a corner. Muffling the torch in the skirt of his dressing-gown, he followed.

Under these conditions, Gore Castle seemed tortuous and enormous. Several times he lost all trace of the figure in front of him. And then, suddenly, he oriented himself. The newel by which he was standing belonged to one of the two staircases leading to the long gallery. He looked up. An unidentifiable male figure – like himself, in a dressing-gown, but holding a lighted candle before him – was disappearing into the long gallery itself. Appleby climbed rapidly. The gallery, when he reached it, was part in near-darkness and part floating in moonlight. At its far end stood the target, commanding the long, narrow place. Appleby rounded a screen, and the man with the candle stood before him. It was Frape. His hand was on the door of the ascham.

‘What’s this about, Frape?’

The candlestick in Frape’s hand gave a jump. But when he turned round, it was to look at Appleby steadily enough.

‘The door of the ascham, sir. It seems to have been left unsecured, and to have been banging in the night. The fault is mine, sir. I am deeply sorry that you, too, should have been disturbed by it.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

‘You are talking nonsense, Frape, as you very well know.’

‘I assure you, sir–’

‘Open the door of the thing, and let’s have a look. It’s no more than you were going to do for yourself.’

Silently, Frape turned back and opened the door of the tall cupboard.

‘Commendable,’ Appleby said. ‘Everything as accountable as in a well-ordered armoury. Those two empty places in the rack, Frape – I think they mean two arrows missing?’

‘It might be so, sir. I cannot tell.’

‘Two gone.’ Appleby lifted a third arrow from the rack and poised it in his hand. ‘Simply as a dagger,’ he said, ‘it would make a pretty lethal weapon – would it not?’

‘I really can’t say, sir.’

‘But there’s a bow missing as well?’

‘There may be, sir. I have never counted them, so am not in a position to say.’

‘Frape, drop this. It can do nobody any good. You came up here – didn’t you? – because you were disturbed by the same sound that disturbed me. Somebody shooting one of those damned things. And we both know that nobody practises archery in the small hours just for fun.’

‘There is the possibility of a bet, sir. Gentlemen have their peculiar ways.’

‘For heaven’s sake, man, stop behaving like a stage butler. You know, even better than I do, that there’s some devilry afoot in this place.’

‘Yes…yes, I do.’ Frape passed a hand over his forehead, like a man who gives up. ‘Only, I must–’

At this moment the creak of a door made itself heard from the far end of the gallery. Appleby was about to turn towards the noise, when Frape restrained him.

‘Don’t turn round,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I can see – without being detected as doing so. I think somebody is watching us through the door.’ He began to fiddle with the door-handle of the ascham. ‘Yes,’ he said in a louder tone. ‘The catch is defective, sir, and so the door has simply been blowing to and fro. There is always a draught in the gallery.’ Once more he lowered his voice. ‘He’s opened it wider. It’s Mr Trevor. He’s shut it again. He’s gone.’

‘You mean to say’ – now Appleby did turn round – ‘that this fellow Trevor has come up here, peered in at us in a furtive manner, and made himself scarce again?’

‘Yes, sir. And it is certainly another indication that things are not as they ought to be.’

‘Quite so. And the question is, where do we go from here? Have you any idea where we might find that fellow Jolly?’

‘In his bed, I suppose.’

‘Jolly’s bed hasn’t been slept in. Were you aware of any coming and going about the place after the company broke up last night?’

‘I have an impression, sir, that there was some talking going on in the library until about midnight. Whether Mr Jolly was concerned, I don’t know. But would I be correct in assuming that you are aware of something seriously to his disadvantage?’

‘That puts it mildly, Frape. The man’s a professional criminal.’

‘Then I suggest that he may have left the Castle. Mr Darien-Gore may have detected him in some design that has resulted in his beating a hasty retreat. It would be perfectly possible. The wind has dropped, and I think there has been no more snow.’ As he said this, and as if to confirm his impression, Frape crossed over to a window.

‘It’s a possibility, certainly,’ Appleby said. ‘And I wonder–’

‘Sir’ – Frape’s voice had changed suddenly – ‘will you be so good as to step this way?’

Appleby did so, and found himself looking obliquely down into the moonlit inner bailey. It was a moment before he realized the small change that had taken place in the scene. Between the well and one side of the surrounding courtyard there was a line of tracks in the snow.

‘Mr Darien-Gore’s binoculars, sir. He keeps a pair in the gallery.’

Appleby took the binoculars and focused. There could be no doubt about what he saw. A line of heavy footprints led straight to the well. There were none leading the other way.

‘Ought I to rouse Mr Darien-Gore, sir?’ Frape asked, as Appleby put down the binoculars and turned away from the window.

‘Certainly you must.’ Appleby moved across the gallery to the great fireplace. ‘And everybody else as well. But it will be rather a chilly occasion for them – particularly for the ladies. Would you say, Frape, that this fire could be blown up quickly?’

‘Decidedly, sir. A little work with the bellows will produce a blaze in a few minutes.’

‘Then this will be the best place in which to meet. You had better get on to the job… But one moment.’ Appleby held up a hand. ‘You could not have been mistaken about the identity of the man peering in on us a few moments ago?’

‘Certainly not. It was Mr Trevor.’

‘Nor could you have had any motive for…deceiving me in the matter?’

‘I quite fail to understand you, sir.’

‘Do you think that Mr Trevor – if Mr Trevor it is – may have some reason for entering the gallery? Might he be outside that door still, hoping that we shall leave by the other one?’

‘I can’t imagine any reason for such a thing.’

‘Can’t you? Well, I propose to put it to the test, by going down the one staircase, through the hall, and up the other one now. You will stay here, please, blowing up the fire.’

‘I don’t see that–’

‘Frape, you’re far from being in the dark about what we’re up against. Please do as I say.’

This time, Appleby waited for no reply, but left the gallery by the door beside the target, and ran downstairs, playing his torch before him. As an outflanking move it seemed a forlorn hope, but in fact it was startlingly successful. When, a couple of minutes later, he returned breathlessly into the gallery by the other door, he was hustling before him a figure who had in fact still been lurking there. It wasn’t Charles Trevor. It was Robert Darien-Gore.

‘All right, Frape,’ Appleby said. ‘Get everybody in here. But give them a few minutes to get dressed – and get dressed yourself.’ He turned to Robert, who was wearing knickerbockers and a shooting-jacket. ‘You mustn’t mind my staying as I am,’ he said. ‘It might be a mistake if you and I were to waste any time in beginning to work this thing out.’

‘Good God!’ General Strickland said, and put down the binoculars. He was the last of the company to have accepted Appleby’s invitation to scrutinise the inner bailey. ‘The fellow walked deliberately out and killed himself. And in that hideous way.’

‘It isn’t,’ Mrs Strickland asked, ‘some…some abominable joke? He can’t, for instance, have tiptoed back again in his own prints in the snow?’

‘I’m afraid not.’ Appleby, who was planted before what was now a brisk fire, shook his head. ‘Robert Darien-Gore was good enough to accompany me down to the inner bailey a few minutes ago. We didn’t go right out to the well – I want those tracks photographed before any others are made – but I satisfied myself – professionally, if I may so express it – that nobody can have come back through that snow. Whatever the tracks tell, they don’t tell that.’

‘The snow on the parapet,’ Trevor said rather hoarsely, ‘–on the low wall, I mean, round the well – seems to have prints at one point too.’

‘Precisely. And the picture seems very clear. There is one person, and one person only, missing from the castle now – a chance guest like myself: the man Jolly. Whether deliberately or by accident, he has…gone down the well. And I believe you all know what
that
means.’

‘By accident?’ Strickland asked. ‘How could it be an accident?’

‘I can’t see how it could possibly be,’ Judith Appleby said. ‘No sane man would take it into his head to go out in the middle of the night–’

‘He was a bit tight,’ Jasper Darien-Gore said. ‘I don’t know if that’s relevant, but it’s a fact. Frape – you noticed it?’

‘Most emphatically, sir. Although not incapacitated, the man was undoubtedly tipsy.’

‘He must have decided to go back to his car.’ Prunella Darien-Gore broke in with this. ‘He thought he’d go outside the castle, and he went blundering through the snow–’

‘It’s not impossible,’ Appleby said. ‘Only it doesn’t account for Jolly’s climbing up on the lip of the well. Face up to that, and suicide is the only explanation. Or it would seem to be. But Mr Robert has another theory. You may judge it bizarre, but it fits the facts. Frape, do you remember saying something to me about a bet?’

‘Yes, sir. It was in a slightly different connection. But the point is a very relevant one.’

‘And I think you remarked that gentlemen have their peculiar ways?’

‘I did, sir. I trust the observation was not impertinent.’

‘According to Mr Robert, Mr Darien-Gore himself happened to recount at the dinner-table some legend or superstition about the well. It was to the effect that notable good luck will be won by any man who makes his way to the well at midnight, stands on its wall, and invocates the moon.’

‘Does
what
?’ General Strickland exclaimed. ‘Some pagan nonsense, eh? God bless my soul!’

‘It’s perfectly true.’ Jasper spoke slowly. ‘I did spin that old yarn. And I can imagine some young man – a subaltern, or undergraduate, for instance – who might have received it as a dare. But not that fellow Jolly. He wasn’t the type. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Unfortunately, something further happened.’ Appleby still stood in front of the fireplace; he might almost have been on guard before it. ‘Mr Robert – so he tells me – made some sort of wager with Jolly. Or perhaps he did no more than vaguely suggest a wager. He was trying, as I understand the matter, to entertain the man – who was not altogether in his element among us. Have I got it right?’

Most of the company were standing or sitting in a wide circle round Appleby. But Robert had sat down a little apart. He might have been taking up, quite consciously, an isolated and alienated pose – rather suggestive of young Hamlet at the court of his uncle, Claudius. He had remained silent so far. But now he replied to Appleby’s challenge.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Just that. I said something about a bottle of Jasper’s Margaux if Jolly could tell me in the morning that he had done this stupid and foolhardy thing. I repent it bitterly. In fact, I hold myself responsible for the man’s death.’

‘Come, come,’ General Strickland said kindly. ‘That’s a morbid view, my dear Robert. You were doing your best to entertain the fellow, and what has happened couldn’t be foreseen.’