Appleby's Other Story (2 page)

They ran over the bridge – a structure which could not quite escape the charge of having been built for ostentation, since it elaborately spanned a channel that need not have been there at all. The waters on either hand were very much of the ornamental order, achieved by a certain amount of excavation and the diverting of a stream. The scene, Appleby reflected, was a pious fraud, since it represented the entire reassuring spectacle – the sparkling lake, the variegated water-lilies, the even more variegated water-fowl, the pendent willow, the soaring pine, the pleasing alternations of boscage and grassy sward – as the regular habitat provided for man by a truly amiable deity: or as this after man himself had applied to it no more than the finger of taste.

So much for the prospect now on Appleby's left. On his right stood Elvedon Court, confidently aloof behind a spreading lawn, a low balustrade, a terrace surveyed by here a robed philosopher and here a naked nymph surprised. Elvedon couldn't, as did its park, pretend to be a mere emanation of great creating Nature, but it did reflect a just repose and confidence in a divinity of eminently mathematical mind, who never got his sums wrong. The place was like an elegant ledger, exactly balanced and therefore perfectly secure.

Esteeming proportion highly can, of course, have social consequences. The house was, for its kind, unusually lofty, so that from the lantern crowning it there must be a splendid view. Superimposed upon a heavily rusticated ground floor were two stories with an identical fenestration, and above this again was some region of lesser consequence beneath the leads. The effect might have been a shade top heavy had the answering basement level not been dug deep into the earth. Because God must be declared the Perfect Cube – Appleby told himself – you condemn your manservants and maidservants to a more or less troglodytic life.

‘Peaceful,' Pride said. And he added, ‘Coming this way, we have to run round the house. The main entrance is on the north side.'

‘Decidedly peaceful. Built by people who felt themselves to be ever so securely in the saddle. But who knows? A molehill or a rabbit hole – and over go horse and rider.'

‘Very true, John.' Pride swung the wheels of the car. ‘Or up jumps beside you the devil knows what, and the rest of your ride isn't to your liking.
Post equitem sedet altra Cura
– eh? Wonderful way of putting things, Horace had. Appeals even to a boy. Like to have another look at him one day. But Latin a bit rusty, I expect.'

‘
Horace still charms with graceful negligence
.' Appleby was watching the west front of Elvedon go by; its mild severity was relieved by a recessed loggia the columns of which were flush with the main walls.

‘So he does, to be sure.' Gratified by this classical turn which he had introduced into the conversation, Pride swung the wheel again, so that the main approach to the house was before them. ‘Money and lands and palaces are no barrier to Black Care, I agree. But no reason to suppose anything of the sort is stalking Elvedon Court at the moment.'

‘Black Care?' Appleby had jerked back in his seat. ‘Well, I don't know about that. But that's certainly what we used to call a Black Maria.'

 

This was true. Bang before the stately flight of steps leading to what, in a humbler dwelling, would be called the front door stood a sinister police van. Its rear windows, latticed in steel, were like the eyes of Justice, blind or indifferent to place or greatness. The doors in which they were set were prepared to open dispassionately, upon due occasion given, for the reception of gentle or simple, rich or poor. But this was not all. Two large police cars stood parked in front of this ominous receptacle. On the roof of one of them a circling electric beacon had been left on to no particular purpose. But it was plain that, for reasons unknown, the local constabulary had arrived in force.

‘God bless my soul!' Colonel Pride, within whose jurisdiction the officers who must have turned on this exercise lay, seemed disposed to regard some official impropriety as having taken place. ‘What the devil are they up to? And not one of the fellows in sight. Anybody could make off with those damned cars.'

‘They must all be inside, grappling with a gang of desperadoes. Heartening for them, Tommy, to have their Chief Constable turn up so promptly to lend a hand.'

‘Don't be absurd. There isn't a sound.'

‘Perhaps they're all dead. The representatives of crime and of the law have eliminated each other to a man. Also Maurice Tytherton and all his quality.' Appleby had climbed from the car. ‘It's more probable, however, that what has happened is entirely prosaic and unremarkable.'

‘Well, that's a much more sensible remark.' Pride had joined Appleby before the steps of the mansion. ‘Somebody had another go at Tytherton's confounded pictures – that's my bet.'

‘And, after their former ill success, your people are mounting a really impressive operation. Tumbling over each other, Tommy, in their haste to obliterate anything that could be called a clue.' It was half seriously that Appleby spoke; he had never much gone in for spectacular parades. ‘Perhaps we'd better go away. The circumstances don't seem propitious for a polite call.'

‘My dear chap, whatever it is, I must obviously muck in.'

‘Then I'll take a turn round the lake, and hope to see you emerge in about half an hour.'

‘No, no – we must carry on together. Dash it all, John, it may be something absolutely up your street.'

‘So much the worse. I haven't retired from the Yard, you know, to play Sherlock Holmes.'

‘Perhaps not. But there was that affair–'

‘There have been several affairs, I admit. But the general proposition holds.'

‘Really, John, we're making too much of this.' It was with a considerable effect of cunning that Pride thus shifted ground. ‘We'll just drop in, pay our respects to the Tythertons, and find out what these theatricals are about. Then we'll come away. Later on, I can return officially, if there seems any point in it.'

‘Very well.' Appleby spoke with resignation. ‘But just remember, please, that I'm not interested in stolen pictures. Repeat
not
.'

‘Then that's agreed.' Pride had already begun to climb the flight of broad steps before them. ‘And we'll start by behaving as if we'd noticed nothing out of the way.'

This last appeared to Appleby an implausible proposal. But Pride stuck to it. Pausing before an impressively massive door, he rang a bell, and waited. The door opened almost at once upon the figure of a sombre manservant.

‘Is Mr Tytherton at home?' Pride asked formally.

‘Yes and no, sir.'

‘What's that?' Not unnaturally Pride was startled by so absurd a response from a well-trained butler.

‘Mr Tytherton is in the house, sir, but unfortunately he is unable to receive visitors.' The butler paused, and it suddenly came to Appleby that he was conceiving himself as breaking something gently. This proved true. ‘I regret to say that Mr Tytherton is the
late
Mr Tytherton. He was shot dead last night.'

 

 

One must look on the bright side, Appleby told himself as he stepped into the hall of Elvedon Court. He had been entertaining a notion – perhaps baseless, yet supported by a good deal of experience – that there had existed, as it were, wheels within the innocent wheels of Tommy Pride's car; that the morning's expedition had owned a basis in some desire expressed by the late Maurice Tytherton to confabulate with the country's acknowledged authority on art robberies. The man hadn't really reconciled himself to the loss of whatever had been filched from him; he had heard of Appleby as a friend of Pride's; and he had taken it into his head that here was a chance of getting a fresh and better-directed hunt started. Some nonsense like that. However, Tytherton
was
now the late Tytherton – as his butler had with a kind of mournful satisfaction announced. Perhaps he would recover his missing pictures in heaven. It was said to be a well-ordered place; perhaps an efficient lost property bureau operated there.

If Appleby was conscious of disapproving of this profane fancy in himself, the reason was possibly that he had suddenly become aware of being in the presence of a clergyman. He had firmly sat down in an unobtrusive corner of the hall, and let Pride go about his inquiries on his own. The statistical probability was that the proprietor of Elvedon had made away with himself. It is a good deal more common to contrive
that
, or even to contrive a sheer imbecile accident with a lethal weapon, than it is to get oneself murdered. Anyway, in whatever fashion Tytherton had died, Appleby felt not the slightest disposition to get involved in the matter. So down he had sat. And now here was a parson, showing some inclination to converse. Appleby stood up.

‘Sir John Appleby?' the parson said.

‘Yes. I came over with Colonel Pride to call on Mr Tytherton – a man I'd never met.'

‘Ah, yes. May I introduce myself? My name is Voysey, and I am the vicar here.'

‘How do you do.' As Appleby produced this civil formula (with the austerely non-interrogative inflexion which English convention decrees) he noted a look of sharp appraisal on the part of his reverend interlocutor. He was being sized up. The fact struck him as so odd that he made, as it were, a somewhat random grab at appropriate platitude. ‘This,' Appleby ventured, ‘is a very sad business.'

‘For the bereaved persons – if there are genuinely any such – that is undoubtedly so. Of course it is my professional duty to adduce certain countervailing considerations. My dear Sir John, let us sit down.'

Appleby sat down. He sat down almost abruptly. This was because of a feeling – a positively sinister feeling, familiar to him from the past – that the elderly cleric interested him. He found himself trying to think up some inoffensive formula of disengagement. For he did
not
propose to let his mind so much as begin to operate on whatever commonplace thing – crime or mere fatality – had befallen at Elvedon Court. Perhaps, he thought, he could firmly start a conversation on the weather. But Mr Voysey prevented him.

‘A sad business, no doubt. And apparently a bad one into the bargain. But that would not be my own first and spontaneous characterization of the affair.'

‘Indeed?' It occurred to Appleby to wonder whether in his pulpit Mr Voysey indulged himself in this manner of address. If so, he must impress rather than enlighten the more rustic part of his congregation. ‘Then how do you view it?'

‘As a pretty kettle of fish, my dear sir.' Mr Voysey appeared to enjoy his abrupt change to a colloquial note. ‘And what will happen, I ask myself, when the police take the lid off? What, let us say, will be the resulting smell? A very fish-like smell, of course. Conceivably, a variety of ancient fish-like smells. And will they fix on the right one? I am a little worried about that. I could almost wish they should not prise the lid off at all. And perhaps they won't. It has not, of course, been my business to take much note of them, but circumspection strikes me as their chief anxiety.'

‘I don't think I understand you.' Appleby had frowned. ‘Do you mean that the police are dragging their feet?'

‘Something of the sort was how I felt about them when there was an odd business of stolen or missing pictures a couple of years ago. Might one call them respecters of persons? I should judge the general air of this place to slow them down a little.'

‘Colonel Pride will cut through anything of that sort.'

‘It is to be hoped so. Or perhaps you will.'

‘I have nothing whatever to do with the matter.' Appleby was looking at Mr Voysey in astonishment. ‘I suppose you may have heard of me, and be imagining I am still on an active list. I am not. And, even if I were, such an affair as this wouldn't remotely come my way. My presence here is totally fortuitous.'

‘Your reputation is known to me, I confess. But perhaps, Sir John, I am under a misapprehension as to why Colonel Pride and yourself have arrived together, hard upon this grim news.'

‘I think you are. When we arrived at Elvedon just now, neither Pride nor I had a notion of Tytherton's being dead. Haven't I made that clear to you already, Mr Voysey? Quite literally, we came to pay a call.'

‘I see, I see. But at least Pride is now the responsible man. And if he does interest you in the mystery, after all–'

‘The mystery?'

‘I think it will certainly turn out to be that, Sir John. If he does interest you in it, I shall be relieved. I don't know that I greatly care for these people.' Voysey made a gesture as if to embrace Elvedon Court at large. ‘But they are
in
my care, are they not? In a pastoral sense, that is.'

‘No doubt.'

‘And I would not like to see some miscarriage of justice befall.'

‘You have positive reason to fear something of the kind?'

‘It is like this, Sir John.' Voysey paused, as if to collect himself. If there was something mildly eccentric about him, he seemed nevertheless entirely serious. ‘They are a curious crowd. Some of their relations would have to be described, I fear, as not wholly edifying.'

‘The household here at Elvedon?'

‘That – and some of their acquaintance. My fear is that the local police will simply seize upon whatever happens to be the first thing to turn up, and perhaps pursue it to the exclusion of so much as noticing others.'

‘I think they can be relied upon to take a pretty comprehensive view. Police are famous, Mr Voysey, for leaving no avenues unexplored.'

‘It may be so. But take, for instance, Mark.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Mark Tytherton, the dead man's son, and his heir.'

‘Who lives in Argentina, and never visits England?'