Appleby Talking (11 page)

Appleby nodded. “Certainly. I regard it as being distinctly of the kind that is worse than death.”

The Vicar considered this seriously. “A pardonable exaggeration,” he presently pronounced. “Do you know that the enormously popular roundabout – you can see them dismantling it now – turns out to have been operating for purely private profit? Deplorable – quite deplorable. You agree, Professor?”

The Professor looked around him with caution. “I have quite clear views upon such occasions, I must confess. But about yesterday’s fête my lips are sealed. Your townsfolk did my wife the honour of asking her to open it.”

“And you went along too?”

“I have to admit that I cut it.” The Professor was apologetic. “The afternoon was lovely, and I simply slipped out of our hotel and went for a tramp. For some time I’ve wanted to see your celebrated cave on the other side of the hill.”

“The cave of Belarius?” The Vicar was interested. “You had a look at it?”

“I did.” The Professor hesitated. “And – do you know? – I had a look at Belarius too.”

“You mean you took a copy of
Cymbeline
along with you and read the later acts on the spot?”

The Professor shook his head. “No,” he said slowly. “I don’t mean that. I mean that I had an adventure…and rather a queer one. Perhaps you would care to hear the story. It illustrates an interesting mechanism of the mind.”

“Appleby and I are all attention.” The Vicar smiled. “And whether the mind be indeed a mechanism is something we can talk about later.”

“In itself as you know, the cave isn’t terribly exciting,” the Professor began. “It starts off as a mere cleft in the rock, becomes an arched chamber of no great size, and then narrows again to a cleft which, by dint of stooping, one can follow for another fifty feet. If Shakespeare’s banished lord had really brought up two young men in it they would certainly have been a quarrelsome couple through sheer irritation at their cramped quarters.

“Nevertheless, I explored the place faithfully enough. Caves are always fascinating. If you are superstitious, you may believe them to be tenanted by the ghosts of your remote ancestors who once inhabited them. If you are a scientist, you know that these ghosts do, at least, still haunt the inside of your own head; they are slumbering there, and special circumstances may at any time prompt them to wake up and walk about. Enter a cave by yourself, therefore, and you have to be pretty strong-minded to remain entirely convinced you are alone. You agree?”

The Vicar nodded. “Certainly. And it was so on this occasion?”

“Not at first. As I explored the place my mind behaved in a thoroughly rational fashion. I wondered how the cave came to be associated with
Cymbeline
, and I recalled what I had read about prehistoric remains found in the district – that sort of thing. Then, upon coming out, I sat down on a boulder in the sun. It’s a pleasant spot, with the cave giving upon a broad, grassy platform on the side of the hill. I reflected that here, perhaps, was the source of the association with Shakespeare’s play, since the effect is very much that of a stage. The sunshine was delightful, and I felt lazy and relaxed. I certainly had no sense of anything unusual or paranormal as being about to happen.”

“Nevertheless it did?” Appleby was looking with some interest at the Professor.

“Decidedly. I was quite alone. For a few seconds I may have closed my eyes. When I opened them, it was to discover that I had a companion. Standing in the mouth of the cave was a Stone Age man.”

“A
Stone Age
man?” The Vicar had sat up abruptly.

“Or, if you prefer it, Shakespeare’s Belarius. He is commonly played as a bearded, skin-clad figure, so it comes to much the same thing. He was carrying something on his back – it might have been the buck or hart that is also traditional with Belarius – and after looking around him for a moment he disappeared into the cave. I was extremely interested. It was a striking instance of the mind’s power to produce eidetic imagery.”

“To produce
what
?” The Vicar was dismayed. “Do you mean, my dear fellow, that you had experienced a hallucination? And were you not very alarmed?”

“Alarmed?” The Professor smiled comfortably. “Dear me, no. Had I seen
myself
I should have had some cause for uneasiness. The
Doppelganger
type of hallucination is rather a bad symptom. But eidetic imagery of this sort, although intensely interesting, is the most harmless thing in the world.”

Appleby was looking thoughtfully at the ground. “And that,” he asked prosaically, “was all that happened?”

“Well, no – as a matter of fact it was not. I sat for some time looking fixedly at the mouth of the cave, determining my pulse-rate, estimating the distance at which the hallucinatory appearance had seemed to stand, and that sort of thing. Reported occurrences of this sort by trained scientific observers, you will realise, are uncommon and can be important. Then it struck me that I had better traverse the cave again, and verify its being, in fact, completely empty. I had just reached its mouth when another figure emerged from it.”

“Bless my soul!” The Vicar appeared yet more disturbed. “Another hallucination hard upon the first? I wonder whether you ought not really to consult–”

“Nothing of the sort. This second figure was flesh and blood – as I happen to know from the very simple fact that he bumped straight into me. And he was, oddly enough, an unmistakable parson in mufti – a rather haggard, clean-shaven fellow in well-worn clerical grey flannel. He made me a civil apology and then walked straight down the hill. I called after him, but he didn’t stop. I was disappointed, because an extraordinarily interesting possibility had struck me.”

“A possibility?” Appleby had suddenly looked up.

“This fellow was certainly agitated. I had remarked that. So what occurred to me was this. Perhaps there had been a small group hallucination – the formation of a joint eidetic image, common to us both, and involving some form of telepathic communication between us.”

“You mean” – the Vicar took this in slowly – “that the parson too may have fancied he saw Belarius?”

“Precisely so. And, being no scientist, he was upset about it.”

“As I should certainly have been.” The Vicar chuckled. “And did you, in fact, then inspect the cave again?”

“Most certainly. And it was, of course, empty. There are a few cracks in which you could hide a dog or a cat, but there is certainly no lurking-place for a man. That Belarius had no material existence, therefore, we can take to be a matter of certainty. You agree?”

The Vicar looked doubtful, and then appeared to decide that the best reply would be humorous in tone. “I’ll agree,” he said, “if Appleby will agree. Appleby–” He broke off. “Dear me – where
is
Appleby?”

“Perhaps he has been taken ill. But no – how very odd! I think I can hear him using your telephone.”

“Belarius,” said Appleby five minutes later, “broke prison across the moor early yesterday morning. At Sheercliff he hung about the fringes of the fête, penetrated into a tent with the costumes for the pageant, and got himself up as an ancient Briton. That gave him a respite, since scores of people were going about in historical costume. He used the opportunity to stalk something which would excite less remark elsewhere, and managed to get away with some of the Vicar’s old clothes from the jumble sale. With these in a bundle he made off across the hill, spotted the cave, and slipped into it to change. When he had done so, he thrust the Stone Age dress into a crack, came out, was startled to meet the Professor, and made off as fast as he could.”

The Vicar shook his head solemnly. “How very dull the truth can be.”

Appleby, staring across the moor beyond the town, nodded. “Quite so. It’s no fun hunting down a poor devil of an escaped convict. But it would be rather enchanting to capture an eidetic image.”

“A capital game.” The Vicar gave a final brisk rub to his niblick. “And all the more pleasant, my dear Appleby, for coming after a long day’s work. A round of parish visiting makes me feel like Macbeth.”

“Macbeth?” Appleby drew the cover over his own clubs. “You surprise me.”

“Lady Macbeth described her husband as too full of the milk of human kindness. I finish my duties far too full of its tea. Towards a clergyman, common benevolence expresses itself largely through the medium of a nice strong cup. Sometimes I feel like Mr Tony Weller’s acquaintance when similarly regaled – a-swelling wisibly before the eyes. Policemen escape this inconvenience.”

“As it happens, I’ve known something like it in my time.” Appleby sat down on the bench overlooking the eighteenth green. “And if it wasn’t as a policeman that I started in on it, there was undoubtedly a professional twist to its close. It began, of course, with my aunt.”

“The Yorkshire aunt? A pertinacious and strong-minded woman, to judge from your accounts of her.”

“Quite so, Vicar. And it was her pertinacity and strength of mind that set me off.

“Retired and pensioned retainers are one of Aunt Jane’s special lines. I doubt whether either she or her parents ever lived in a particularly large way, but nobody who was once in the family employment is ever dropped off the list. Aunt Jane visits them all about once a month, with a great unloading of admonition, devotional reading, tinned soup, and sacks of firewood. Aunt Jane is honestly domineering and honestly benevolent – a frank anachronism that one can’t very decently turn down. So when I’ve stopped with her from time to time, I’ve lent a hand with the visiting.”

The Vicar chuckled. “My dear fellow, this is a new light on your character. One thinks of you as banging on the doors of thieves’ kitchens and shouting ‘Open in the name of the Law’. And here you are, tinkling the bells of old women and disgorging tinned soup. The more credit to you. But proceed.”

“Sometimes it was entertaining enough. If I ever heartily regretted being my aunt’s emissary, it was the afternoon I visited Nannie Moggs. I believe she had been no more than temporary nursery maid in some remote branch of the family sixty years before, and she was too peripheral, so to speak, to be among the pensioners in any substantial way. Her circumstances were dismal, and so was she.

“She inhabited what they call a back-to-back house of the most meagre sort – one room up and one room down, with the upper one let off to another penurious old person like herself. The only vestiges of comfort she rejoiced in – or rather was lugubrious over – were an emaciated cat, distinctly disposed to spit, and a minute gas-fire that seemed incapable of as much as singeing the cat’s whiskers. It occurred to me that the old woman would do better to scrap the thing and apply to Aunt Jane for a sack of firewood. Meanwhile I planked down those tins of soup and made what conversation I could.

“The wickedness of some local burial society proved to be the main field of Nannie Moggs’ interest. Indeed, I could get her to talk of nothing else. For years, it seemed, she had subscribed ninepence a week, and the man who collected the money had assured her at the start that this meant solid brass handles and an inscribed plate. But when one of her neighbours – a ninepenny neighbour – died some months before, Nannie Moggs had contrived a personal inspection of the coffin and satisfied herself that no plate was provided, and that the handles would be a disgrace at fourpence.”

The Vicar shook his head. “Deplorable. There is undoubtedly much exploitation of the importance which the simpler classes attach to matters of that sort.”

“No doubt. Well, we had this sort of chat for some time, and if the old lady didn’t get any less dismal, at least she managed to get more excited. I pointed out that there was a metal shortage, and that perhaps it was unpatriotic to insist on carrying lumps of the stuff into the grave. As old Sir Thomas Browne insisted, the commerce of the living is not to be transferred unto the dead.”

The Vicar shook his head. “Appropriate,” he said. “But not perhaps persuasive.”

“Quite so. And of course Nannie Moggs was in the right in the matter. She had paid her ninepences, and was entitled to corresponding riches in the adornment of her ashes. Fortunately all her pennies hadn’t gone the one way. She had a secret to reveal, and the nearer she got to it the more excited she became. She banged the floor with a stick, and her voice rose to a screech that might have made the cat bolt from the room. ‘Three-pun ten under the third stair’, she said. ‘And a letter to the Royal Fambly respekfully demanding that justice be done.’

“It wasn’t clear to me how the letter was to reach its august destination, or even that seventy shillings would pay for the brass handles. But Nannie Moggs’ spirits began to rise as she surveyed her posthumous triumph, and I did my best to confirm her in this improved nervous tone. Presently I was congratulating myself on having the makings of a successful district visitor after all. The cat had begun to purr, the gas-fire was burning brighter, the tins of soup took on the appearance of a magnificent benefaction, and the old lady was crowing away merrily over her nest-egg. So it was rather disconcerting that, when she hobbled out of the room to let me have a peep at it, it proved to have disappeared.

“So my visiting, Vicar, had ended much like yours: in what might be called a nice cup of tea. Alternatively, you might say that we were in the soup – the tinned soup – or that the fat was in the fire.”

“Nannie Moggs was upset?”

“It was clear that seventy bob out of my own pocket would get us nowhere. She cried aloud for vengeance. So I had to abandon my charitable character, turn back into a policeman, and investigate.

“When had she seen the money last? Apparently it had been not long before I arrived. Her main occupation was taking furtive peeps at it whenever her upstairs lodger, Mrs Grimble, was out of the way. As you can guess, Mrs Grimble seemed to me the first person due for interview, and I climbed straight to her room. It was pretty well a replica of Nannie Moggs’ – the same cat, the same miserable little gas-fire, the same suggestion of horrible poverty.