Appleby Talks Again (11 page)

“My dear Appleby – no more colours, I beg!”

“Very well. They were Long, Short and Stout. Long worked at Quickpak’s, and was going on early duty. He was rather a sad case – a healthy, strapping lad, and the son of an admiral. For some reason he himself had been turned down by the Navy – and he just hadn’t recovered, but drifted from job to job, and done a spell in gaol for fraud. Short and Stout had bad records too, having been confederates in various petty pilferings. They explained themselves by saying that they had been going after rabbits on the embankment, and they claimed never to have gone far along that road at all. They certainly had the paraphernalia, and a couple of live ferrets and several dead rabbits as well. So there you are. Not really much of a teaser.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or be annoyed. “You mean,” I demanded, “that this information was enough? You
knew
?”

“Dear me, yes.” Appleby appeared surprised that I wanted to hear anything more. “If a perfectly healthy lad is refused by the Navy, colour blindness is a likely cause. Long, in fact, suffered from one of the two common varieties of Daltonism, or red–green blindness. To such a person, red appears dark green. Long was expecting that mail-van, carrying thousands of postal orders for Quickpak. And he mistook Green’s van for it. You can guess the rest.”

“Well, yes.” I thought for a moment. “At least, I can see that you had a very pretty case against Long. But surely it would have been stronger if you could have got some way towards eliminating Short and Stout.”

Appleby smiled. “We got all the way, as it happens. One hears a lot about up-to-date scientific detection. But one oughtn’t to forget the old classical standbys. It isn’t difficult to interest a couple of bloodhounds in two gentlemen who have been going around with ferrets. And in this instance the sagacious creatures were quite certain that Short and Stout had been no further up that road than they claimed.”

Appleby stood up as Lady Cantelupe entered his room. But he noticed that he had almost been so unmannerly as to sit tight. This was perhaps because of an obscure persuasion that he had suddenly been transported from New Scotland Yard to some West End theatre, and was occupying a good seat in the third row of the stalls. Lady Cantelupe had an air of projecting herself – firmly controlled agitation and all – over invisible footlights. This wasn’t necessarily a matter for suspicion. It was just a reminder that, before she married the famous scientist, she had been an actress of some note.

But that – Appleby reflected as he placed a chair – had been quite some time ago. The lady was still extremely smart, but she was no longer instantaneously captivating. “I’m afraid the sun’s in your eyes,” he said. “Let me just pull down that blind.”

Lady Cantelupe inclined her head – a little wearily, as if acknowledging that a notably clear daylight was no longer among her best friends. “Thank you,” she said – and added flatly: “My husband has disappeared. He hasn’t been seen since Thursday.”

“And you’ve spent nearly a week thinking about it?”

The question could hardly have taken Lady Cantelupe by surprise. But she contented herself with saying: “It has been difficult.”

“These things sometimes are.” Appleby was cautious. “But Lord Cantelupe’s colleagues – didn’t they wonder?”

“Arthur had been unwell during the previous week – nervous and strained through overwork. There was some misunderstanding, and it was thought that he’d taken a holiday.” Lady Cantelupe looked straight at Appleby. “I have often thought that a person like Arthur should be watched – guarded.”

Appleby smiled grimly. “It’s not a thing that everybody takes to very kindly. May I have the particulars, please?”

Lord Cantelupe, it appeared, was of a taciturn disposition, and more than once he had gone off for a brief period with very little explanation. Lady Cantelupe believed – or professed to believe – that these were confidential occasions of high national importance, and that her husband had taken the shortest way to saying nothing about them. “But
entirely
without notice?” Appleby asked. “Has your husband ever gone off and left no word at all?”

“Certainly not when I have been at home. And if it had happened while I was away, I am sure that Butt would have told me. Butt is our butler. Or Mrs Davis, the cook, would have mentioned it. They would neither of them have been silent if Arthur had ever occasioned alarm. The younger servants would be different.”

“And that is your whole household, Lady Cantelupe?”

“Except for our secretary, Charles Diamond.”

“He helps with Lord Cantelupe’s work?”

“Dear me, no. Arthur brings nothing of that sort home with him.” Lady Cantelupe spoke with energy, as if she considered her husband’s scientific work as some dangerous monster. And that – Appleby thought – mightn’t be a bad way of conceiving it, if one was a little poetically inclined. “Mr Diamond is simply our social secretary. He sends out invitations, and orders things, and staves people off. He has been with us for not quite a year, and is most satisfactory. He succeeded a young woman called Parsonage.”

“Who was
not
satisfactory?”

“Decidedly not.”

Appleby didn’t pursue this. A glance at
Who’s Who
before his visitor was shown in had told him that the Cantelupes had no children. It didn’t seem to be in any sense what could be called an abundant marriage. When Arthur Cantelupe as a provincial professor had found a bride in a leading West End actress it must have looked, in a sense, quite a brilliant affair. But then Cantelupe had gone to the top, and the stage had gradually found that the lady’s services were dispensable. He had been decidedly a rocket while she might be unkindly described as a falling star. Of course their union might have been a gorgeous success, all the same. But Appleby doubted if it had quite that feel. Moreover, for a scientist, it had been a little out of the way. It seemed possible that Lord Cantelupe’s temperament deserved investigation. “I suppose,” Appleby said diplomatically, “that your husband has one of the finest minds we possess in England today.”

“So they say, I wouldn’t know. But I do consider that – except when he gets worried – Arthur wears very well.”

She had spoken dryly, but with a sort of down-to-earth loyalty by which Appleby was impressed. “Is he often worried?” he asked.

“He has these times when his problems – I mean his scientific problems – seem to cling to him. It happens when he ought to have taken a holiday, and hasn’t.”

“But apart from his work?”

“I don’t worry about Arthur.” Lady Cantelupe spoke crisply, and again with a direct glance. “He has – well, susceptibilities. But basically, I’d say, things aren’t too bad.” She paused. “Of course, to get at what’s basic in this life, you sometimes have to go pretty deep. Or that’s my experience.”

Appleby smiled. “Deeper than the Miss Parsonages?”

Although rather faintly, Lady Cantelupe smiled back. “Put it that I’ve always treated Arthur’s moods as reflecting difficulties in his work. They’ve been manageable that way. And it seemed no different this time. Until, that is, two or three days before – before it happened. Then, suddenly, he seemed desperate.”

“And then he vanished?”

“Yes – on Thursday morning. Farris, our chauffeur, was waiting with the car after breakfast, just as usual. And Arthur went out just as usual, too. But instead of getting into the car he simply turned aside and walked off.”

“Hat and coat?”

“Yes – but nothing else.”

Appleby rose. “I think, Lady Cantelupe, I’d better come round and make some inquiries on the spot. But I’ve one or two things to clear up. I shall be at your house in half an hour.”

Five minutes later, on the other side of Whitehall, Appleby was shown into the presence of a tall, grey-haired man who stood by a high window thumbing a file of papers in the bleak London daylight. The tall man turned and spoke with an automatic geniality that was belied by his jaded air. “It’s no good, my dear Appleby. I haven’t ten seconds for you. Not if it’s the Crown Jewels.”

“It’s not the Crown Jewels, Minister. It’s Lord Cantelupe.”

“What’s wrong with him? Got into trouble with a copper?”

“He’s vanished.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” The jaded man tossed his file on a table. “Eminent scientists don’t vanish – or only in rubbishing films.”

“Cantelupe’s vanished – nearly a week ago. And his wife only turned up with the story this morning.”

Impatience and incredulity seemed to drain from the jaded man. “You mean the woman’s only just found out?”

“No, Minister – I don’t. She simply kept quiet about it.”

The Minister shrugged his shoulders. It was a gesture at once of relief and distaste. “My dear man, I know nothing about Cantelupe’s morals, and care less.”

“That’s how one’s mind goes to work, I agree.” Appleby shook his head sombrely as the Minister pushed forward a cigarette-box. “The only normal explanation of the lady’s keeping quiet in that way is that she supposed her husband’s disappearance to be more discreditable than dangerous. But there are possibilities that aren’t discreditable at all. For Cantelupe, I suppose,
is
some rather special sort of scientist? It’s what I’ve come to ask you about, before I take the matter over myself.”

“You’re supposing that Cantelupe carries the vital formula about town with him in his tobacco-pouch?” The Minister was again genially caustic.

“It’s a picturesque way of putting it.”

The jaded man paced restlessly across the room. Then he turned. “There’s no doubt that Cantelupe’s confoundedly well-informed. If something happened to him, if he cracked up and went to pot and jabbered, it would be most unfortunate. No need, of course, to be melodramatic. I don’t think we’d all suddenly go up in a nasty green vapour. But unfortunate – yes.”

Appleby considered. “There would be enough in this to make quite a big drive on Cantelupe well worth some crook’s while?”

“Lord yes! What the spy-story people used to call the Chancelleries of Europe would pay up like a shot.”

Appleby got to his feet. “Then,” he said, “Cantelupe had better be found. Even, I suppose, if he’s dead.”

“Yes – even if he’s dead.” The Minister was unemotional. “Dining at the club tonight? I’ll be glad to hear how you’ve got on.” He pushed a button on his desk and picked up his file. “If you at all have, that’s to say.”

Lady Cantelupe must have brought her husband a considerable fortune from the stage, since their house was a large one in a fashionable square. Appleby’s behaviour on reaching it was eccentric. He dived down the area steps and didn’t pull up until he arrived in a roomy kitchen. “Good morning,” he said briskly.

Two men and a woman were drinking tea with an air of considerable leisure. The elder man rose in an indignation that turned a little uncertain as he remarked the intruder’s appearance. “And who,” he asked heavily, “may you be?”

“I am Sir John Appleby, an Assistant Commissioner of Police. Mr Butt, I think? And Mr Farris? Just so.” Appleby laid his hat and stick on a dresser and sat down. “Mrs Davis, I’ll be very glad of a cup of tea.” He nodded pleasantly. “And of some explanation of your conduct.”

“Our conduct?” Mrs Davis, although she spoke in some displeasure, reached obediently for the teapot.

“Lord Cantelupe disappeared six days ago, and none of you took any steps in the matter. You could see Lady Cantelupe didn’t know her own mind, couldn’t you? She needed a lead. Think of the state Lord Cantelupe has been in for days.”

“That’s a true word.” Mr Butt the butler spoke in a deep husky voice. “What they call a regular breakdown, to my mind. But I don’t think we’re fairly to blame, sir – that I don’t. There was what Mr Diamond said: that his lordship had left suddenly for Washington top secret. Of course, we talked it over between ourselves, and agreed it was said just to cover up.” Butt paused uneasily. “I suppose you are what you say you are, sir?”

Farris spoke for the first time. “He’s Sir John Appleby, all right. I’ve seen his photo. You’d better tell him.”

“I’d never have expected it – not in good service.” Butt shook his head scornfully. “A gentleman’s own establishment is sacrosanct. There’s an unwritten law. Mrs Davis, you’ll bear me out in that?”

“That I will. A gentleman respects the purity of the home.”

“Yet there the young person was.” Butt sighed. “An assignation. And in his Lordship’s own library. It was a great shock.”

There was a moody silence. Appleby, sipping tea, let it mature. “You surprise me,” he presently said.

“It was on Tuesday, sir – Tuesday afternoon. I was about to enter the library myself. But I paused. There was the voice, sir, of a female. In fact, a lady.”

“But there wasn’t anything so very out of the way in that?”

“I knocked at the door, sir, and the voice of the young person abruptly stopped. When I entered, what was my surprise to find nobody in the room.”

“Nobody?” Appleby stared.

“Only his lordship, that is to say. And there’s no other way out. In fact” – and Butt paused with a marked sense of drama at the climax of his narrative – “there’s nothing but a cupboard.”

Appleby finished his tea. He somehow found it easier to swallow than the tale he had just heard. “You suggest,” he said, “that Lord Cantelupe, realising that he was going to be disturbed, stuffed his visitor into a cupboard?”

“Yes, sir. Trembling his lordship was. His brow was clammy.”

“It must have been most distressing.” Appleby looked at the butler with a certain sober doubt. “And what did you do?”

“I made up the fire and withdrew. Then I came straight downstairs and talked it over with Mrs Davis here. It had been distressing, as you say. And it was the start of his lordship’s being taken really bad. He had been upset for some time before. But after that he was a different man – really desperate.”

“And that’s the only odd incident you can recall lately?”

“Except the taxi.” It was Farris who spoke. “On the morning of the same day, that was. His lordship called himself a taxi, quietly like, and came back an hour later, slinking into the library with a great parcel. Nobody would have known, if it hadn’t been for one of the maids poking around.”