Appleby's Other Story (6 page)

‘Dear me! I am sorry to hear that. It must have been a most distressing experience.' The facts of the case, Appleby thought, were coming to him all out of order and in an almost luxuriously amateur way. He would have been perfectly happy pottering round Elvedon all day, simply picking up here and there pleasing pieces of information like this. Being closeted with one of Pride's senior men and presented with a well-ordered narrative wouldn't be half the fun.

‘Thank you, yes – it was most distressing. It is probably best that dead bodies should be found by servants. They are less sensitive, and therefore less easily upset.'

‘Dead bodies are very frequently found by butlers,' Appleby said gravely. ‘That is perhaps the best arrangement. Butlers are phlegmatic. They preserve an impassive demeanour in midst of the most trying circumstances. However, it was not as bad as it might have been. For I can perceive, Miss Kentwell, that you are a strong-minded woman. I believe you may even be possessed of what is called an iron nerve.'

‘Really, Sir John, I would hardly claim–'

‘Think if it had been, say, the depressed widow of a higher clergyman who discovered Mr Tytherton's corpse. The poor soul would have had hysterics on the spot.' Appleby pulled himself up. Being an amateur was going to his head, as these irresponsible and scandalous witticisms showed. And he mustn't let a rash frivolity offend Miss Kentwell. ‘And were you by yourself,' he asked, ‘when you made the discovery?'

‘Not exactly. I was with Mr Ramsden. But, naturally, he had opened the door for me, and allowed me to pass in first.'

‘In fact, you were ushered in on the corpse?'

‘That is an odd way of expressing it, Sir John. But perfectly accurate.'

‘Then, I take it–' Appleby broke off, his eye having been caught by a small stir of activity in front of the house. The ambulance was driving up to the foot of the steps leading to the front door. It was doing this at a crawl, as if the driver was conscious of being involved in what was in fact the first stage of a funeral. Several people had emerged from the house, and were standing awkwardly in a line, as if for some muted formal occasion. Appleby recognized only Pride, Mark Tytherton, and Catmull the butler – a circumstance persuading him that, if he was really going to be involved in the affair, the time had come to stop wandering round its periphery. And now the body had appeared, swathed and on a stretcher. There was a pause for some sort of consultation about getting it down to ground level.

Appleby had sat down beside Miss Kentwell, and he now felt something uncomfortable about this species of spectatorship from a middle distance. Maurice Tytherton was leaving home. Appleby, after a fashion, was his guest. It would be only decent to participate in this leave-taking.

‘I think I'll walk over,' he said.

‘Then let me not detain you, Sir John. I shall remain here – but with the serious thoughts such an occasion suggests.' And Miss Kentwell offered Appleby a composed bow.

 

The stretcher and its burden were already being got into the ambulance when he reached the near side of the gravel sweep. So he simply stood and watched the doors being closed on it. He rather supposed he had no wish himself to view the body, although no doubt it would be available for the purpose in some proper place. And there would be plenty of photographs – the grim sort of photographs that are never seen except by policemen and lawyers and the unfortunate members of juries. Perhaps among the group of people who had come indecisively down the steps and were now standing pointlessly at the foot of them there was somebody who was going to study the faces of a jury from the dock. Perhaps it was all as good as determined already; just what had happened was by now known to every policeman in the house; tomorrow's newspapers would inform a not very curious world that this or that individual at Elvedon was ‘assisting the police in their inquiries'.

The very phrase, Appleby told himself, had been invented since his time – which was why he didn't like it. And now he watched the ambulance drive away, and the knot of mourners or spectators or whatever they were to be called begin to climb the steps again. He noticed the absurd circumstance that Catmull was carrying a neatly folded travelling-rug. It had been part of the regular ritual of seeing his employer off the premises, no doubt, and he had automatically gone through with it on the present occasion.

Only Tommy Pride was left – and Tommy was signalling to him urgently, was striding across the gravel, had taken him by the arm.

‘My dear John, I was afraid you had found means to quit the place. Walk in the grounds. eh? Delightful morning for it. But now, for the Lord's sake, come in and have a word about this damnable business. Of course I haven't positively promised Henderson–'

‘Who is Henderson?'

‘My senior man on this criminal side of things. Thoroughly agreeable, unassuming fellow. As I say, I wouldn't in the least put you in a false position. We came across in a purely social way–'

‘Did we? Wasn't there – honestly, Tommy – some notion that I might talk to Tytherton about his stolen pictures?'

‘Well, yes – as a matter of fact I suppose there was. But that's all blown sky-high now. Poor fellow's gone where pilfered Poussins are not, eh? Well, as I was saying, I don't remotely want to – '

‘Tommy, if I'm coming in on this thing, don't let me give the impression of being dragged in screaming. Treat me as straining at the leash. It will feel nicer that way.'

‘My dear fellow, I knew I could count on you.' Pride was at once delicately uneffusive. ‘Let's go inside.'

They mounted the steps together. There was still a constable at the front door, and the saluting business was gone through with again. Pride seemed to feel that he ought to apologize for it.

‘Odd thing,' he said. ‘I find myself not liking them doing that quite so smartly. Don't approve of the police going para-military. Old-style copper, bringing his finger to his helmet in any wandering way he fancied, much more my idea of the thing. Don't want Wellington Barracks all over again. But of course one has to keep such outmoded feelings under one's hat.'

‘Very prudent.'

‘Don't much care for having a chap at the door like that, either. Army of occupation, eh? But one has to think of the reporters and press-photographers, you know. They'll be turning up any time now – all assurance and BBC English and old school ties. You have to have a stout fellow at the gate, or the impertinent bastards are all over the place. Of course it's their living, poor devils. When I see them retreat baffled, I feel I've denied them a square meal.'

‘That's very compassionate of you.'

‘But, John, I think I ought to warn you.' They were now in Elvedon's imposing hall again, and Pride had lowered his voice – less at being impressed by the surrounding splendours, perhaps, than from a realistic sense of their treacherous acoustic properties. ‘It may be rather a nasty business.'

‘Nasty?'

‘Sexual.' Pride had lowered his voice still further, so that Appleby had a momentary dim vision of unspeakable depravities. ‘Spot of adultery going on here, it seems. Not a decent thing in a private house, at all. A hotel the place for that sort of thing among honest people, eh? Sorry to say it. But the whole damned mansion smells to me of pretty poor form.'

 

 

They went straight to the room in which Maurice Tytherton had died. Or in which – to make an elementary point – the dead body of Maurice Tytherton had been found. Since Elvedon was no Blenheim or Castle Howard, one consequence of its over-imposing hall had been the hoisting of a number of rooms of principal consequence up to the first floor. This seemed to Appleby to produce a slight sense of muddle, and must certainly conduce, as in a town house, to a good deal of laborious trotting up and down stairs. But as the main staircase was a singularly daring and graceful circular affair of finely poised masonry, perhaps that was no hardship. For footmen and housemaids of an earlier age, toiling with water, coal, and refreshment whether light or heavy on more constricted arteries virtually buried within a wall, it must have been a different matter. But then servants (as the philanthropic Miss Kentwell had remarked) are by a wise dispensation of providence created less sensitive than their employers. In this present age there was presumably a certain amount of mechanical conveyance in the form of hoists or lifts.

What Tytherton had called, it seemed, his workroom was on the first floor, and looked down on the terrace before the south front of the house. It wasn't particularly large or elaborately furnished, but this made all the more striking the fact that over the mantelpiece there was something really splendid: a three-quarter length portrait of a nobleman by Goya. Appleby noticed it with a start of surprise which had nothing to do with the late Maurice Tytherton and his affairs. He had owned a much-prized colour-print of it as a boy – at which time, he seemed to remember, the original had been in the possession of the Duke of Horton. Tytherton must have acquired it at the great sale at Scamnum. He must have been quite a high-flying collector if he went in for that sort of thing.

But now Inspector Henderson had begun his narrative. He was, as Pride had said, an unassuming man, with plenty of experience which had yet not, perhaps, taken him into the neighbourhood of quite this kind of thing before. He addressed himself to Appleby, since what he had to say the Chief Constable was already familiar with.

‘What we have, sir, is a big house full of valuable things, where a moderately successful burglary is known to have been carried out a couple of years ago. Plenty left for all comers, if they care to have a go at it. So I drive up with this in my head, you may say, when I get word that the owner has been shot dead in the middle of the night.'

‘The middle of the night?'

‘Thank you, sir. Perhaps a misleading expression. Late at night: some time after eleven o'clock.'

‘It sounds a little early for a burglary, even in the country.'

‘I quite agree. But I do have to have the possibility of robbery – of Mr Tytherton surprising one kind of thief or another, say – in my head from the start. It tells me I must waste no time before trying to discover whether anything notable is in fact missing, and whether there are signs of any breaking in. In a sense, you may say, the relations of the various people in the house will keep. But time may be of the essence of stopping valuable property from disappearing for good.'

‘Very true, Inspector. Any results?'

‘Entirely negative, so far. No positive sign of breaking and entering. But it's not easy to arrive at certainty there when you're dealing with a large place like Elvedon. Even without an accomplice in the house, a thief might well be able to prospect a means of entrance which it might take us quite some time to tumble to.'

‘Not a doubt about that. And the question of missing property?'

‘We've worked hard, but it's early days to say. Elvedon's not like a suburban villa, that you can check over with the owner or his wife in fifteen minutes. Then again, you see, there's the question of who really knows.'

‘Walking inventory, eh?' Colonel Pride interjected.

‘Quite so, sir. Mrs Tytherton seems the likeliest person to be well informed in the matter, but it wouldn't be quite the thing to badger her about the details of the Elvedon pictures and porcelain and so on just at the moment.'

‘Absolutely right, Henderson. Very proper. Give her a chance.'

‘Then there's the butler, Catmull. He has checked over what he calls his own province – meaning silver, and the like. He seems quite sound on that, and reports everything present and correct. But I can't call him very co-operative over the larger scene.'

‘I see.' Appleby considered. ‘What about Tytherton's secretary – Ramsden, isn't he called?'

‘Yes, indeed. He's quite a young man, but seems to have lived at Elvedon for a good many years. Has the whole place under his thumb, if you ask me.'

‘What's that?' The Chief Constable was alerted. ‘In some sinister way, do you mean?'

‘Not exactly, sir. But I have a feeling that he has gathered into his own hands rather more control of things than he cares to make evident. And he has been helpful enough. The valuable pictures, like this one on the wall here, are scattered around the house without too much regard to security. Mr Ramsden made a check which I could see was thoroughly well-informed and efficient. And he finds nothing missing.'

‘So it rather looks,' Appleby said, ‘as if Elvedon's unfortunate proprietor didn't perish in defending his possessions against marauders?'

‘At a first glance, yes. But from the first, of course, I've had to think in terms of other possibilities as well.'

‘Suicide, for example.'

‘Yes, sir.' Henderson gave Appleby a swift glance, perfectly aware that he was, in a sense, being tested out. ‘I don't rule out suicide as being involved.'

‘Suicide? God bless my soul!' The Chief Constable was impatient. ‘Every inch of this room has been searched. Do you suggest that the poor chap first shot himself and then swallowed the revolver?'

‘No, I don't,' Appleby said. ‘But people have performed feats almost as remarkable in order to conceal the fact that they have made away with themselves. Remember
Thor Bridge
.'

‘What the devil is that?'

‘I see that the Inspector can tell you.'

‘One of the Sherlock Holmes stories, sir.' Henderson smiled a shade indulgently. ‘The gun is tied to a stone, which is hung over the bridge. When it is let go–'

‘It is whipped over the parapet and into the river.' Appleby had walked over to the window, opened it, and was looking out. ‘Only, it takes a tell-tale chip out of the parapet… Look at Hermes, Tommy.'