Jean Howe accompanied the tour for the most part in silence. Appleby felt that it had her guessing too, and that she was trying to suppress a mounting uneasiness. Ailsworth Court was certainly not a house that any normal owner would show off with pride. Several more rooms were given over to birds of various sorts, but the rest were simply mouldering away. Appleby’s earlier impression, it was clear, had been simply of the two or three that were kept habitable. Nobody could believe that there was a single housemaid in the place – and on this occasion even the decayed Cowmeadow was invisible. Jean must know well enough that she was involved in a state of affairs that couldn’t continue indefinitely. But she was rather a dogged girl. And she was also a distinctly observant one. It seemed inherently improbable that much was going on even in this very large house that she wasn’t aware of.
‘One is never quite easy about captives,’ Lord Ailsworth had once innocently remarked to Appleby. It didn’t seem likely that he could be at all easy about having a couple of them directly under the nose of his acute granddaughter. Turning all this over in his mind, Appleby was beginning to suspect that his problem wasn’t precisely as he had conceived it. But it was just at this moment that Lord Ailsworth said something rather surprising.
‘I am terribly afraid,’ he said, ‘that I can’t show you the attics.’
Of course – Appleby thought – there is a mania nowadays for prowling round great houses, commonly at half a crown a time. And sometimes the tour doesn’t stop short of the kitchens and larders and dairies. But whose curiosity about high life ever extended to the servants’ bedrooms? Or what polite nobleman, showing a group of acquaintances over the more notable features of his mansion, would announce with regret that he couldn’t trail them around beneath the leads? Lord Ailsworth’s apology in this matter was so odd as to deserve – Appleby decided – a little prodding.
‘I confess that to be disappointing,’ he said. ‘Attics and roofs are a great hobby of mine.’ He looked plaintively at Lord Ailsworth – with a disingenuousness, he reflected, that Judith herself could not excel. ‘I was hoping to have a look at your Mansard roof at close quarters. Slated, I noticed. But would it be large ladies?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Lord Ailsworth was bewildered – which was not perhaps surprising.
‘Large ladies are 16 by 8. Countesses, of course, are 20 by 10. And duchesses are 24 by 12. Do you think we could just take a peep?’
‘The point about the attics,’ Jean said, ‘is that they’re given over to wild duck. And of course they’re very shy.’ She was looking rather coldly at Appleby. ‘If you want to search the whole house,’ she added in a low voice, ‘why don’t you say so, straight? We shan’t demand your warrant, or whatever it’s called.’
But Lord Ailsworth appeared to have been intrigued. ‘Slates,’ he said, ‘are really called large ladies and duchesses?’
‘Certainly they are.’ Appleby, as it happened, could make this reply with a good conscience. You never can tell, he was thinking, what utterly useless bit of stray information may turn out useful after all.
‘I
would
rather like to examine them.’ Lord Ailsworth paused. And then something appeared on his face that Appleby had never detected before. It was an open, if fleeting, look of cunning. ‘Yes, let us go up. Not on the south side, of course. We really must not disturb the young ducks there. But on the north. And we can certainly manage a look at the slates.’
‘I think this is great nonsense,’ Jean said. ‘We badly want to have, straight out, what this visit is in aid of.’
Lord Ailsworth seemed much embarrassed by this breach of hospitality. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘if you are not very interested in our little trip to the attics – the north attics, of course – I wonder whether you would seek out Cowmeadow and consult him about something to eat? It is a matter which worries me, I confess. But no doubt something can be provided. And, meanwhile, I will take our friends upstairs.’ Again Lord Ailsworth paused, and again the cunning expression flitted across his face. ‘Not on the south side, you know. Not on the south side, at all.’
Jean went off without a word. Appleby, Clandon and Cudworth were left glancing at each other curiously. There seemed to be only one possible explanation of this odd development. Lord Ailsworth really had something to conceal in his ramifying attics. And with childish guile he was proposing to avert suspicion by the careful display of some innocent section of them. It wasn’t a reading of the situation that Appleby much liked. Even in a large house – he was thinking as he followed his host up narrowing stairs – it surely isn’t possible to conceal the presence of two live prisoners in one set of attics while trailing an exploring party through another?
Of course there was the distraction of all these birds. As they finished climbing and began to move along a narrow corridor with doors on either side, it became clear that birds were indeed in very substantial occupation of this part of the house. Although invisible, their fluttering, flapping and squawking could be heard everywhere. If Lord Ailsworth’s human captives were incapable of more than, say, a knock or moan, they would have very little chance of drawing attention to themselves. And, of course, they might both be dead…
‘Here we are.’ Lord Ailsworth had paused before a door at the end of the corridor, and now he threw it open. ‘There’s an excellent view of the roof from here.’
He stood aside to let his guests pass. Appleby, Cudworth and Clandon filed into a small empty room with a steeply pitched ceiling. Whereupon Lord Ailsworth shut the door on them from the outside, shot home a bolt, gave a loud happy chuckle, and walked away.
‘How extremely childish!’ Clandon was much amused. ‘I suppose this is what he’s done with the other fellows too.’
‘I can’t see it quite like that.’ Appleby had walked over to the window of the small attic room. ‘You can’t play such a primitive trick successively on a couple of perfectly able-bodied men, and expect them to stay put. But it may exhibit the general outline of Ailsworth’s proceedings, all the same. Cudworth – can we break out?’
Cudworth was examining the door. ‘Not a doubt of it.’
‘My guess is that the granddaughter will be up in a minute or two, explaining that the old gentleman plays these pranks from time to time. Meanwhile, there’s at least an extensive view.’
Clandon joined him at the window. ‘Striking enough, in a lonely way,’ he said. ‘Not a sign of life. Except that smoking chimney.’
‘Smoking chimney?’ Appleby frowned. ‘Now, just what is that queer structure?’
Cudworth, who had been giving the door a final irritated shake, crossed the room and looked out. ‘Isn’t it one of those observation towers?’ he asked. ‘The more remote and elaborate one?’
‘Then it’s on fire,’ Appleby said. Suddenly he turned and stared at his colleague. ‘Good heavens – what an ass I’ve been!’
‘An ass, sir?’ Cudworth appeared to question the propriety of this self-accusation. ‘You can’t mean–?’
But at this moment there was the sound of a bolt being drawn back, and the door was flung open. As Appleby had foretold, Jean stood in the corridor, flushed and angry. ‘It’s too absurd!’ she said. ‘You see, my–’
Appleby was already past her, and calling to the others to follow. The narrow corridor seemed interminable, the narrow staircase hard to make any speed on. Then the going was easy, but on the ground floor he had to pause to orientate himself. The others were still some way behind him as he ran through the long, disgraced drawing-room. The Tibetan Donkey Ducks flapped and quacked indignantly; they were unaccustomed to such rude behaviour. In the dusty, gloomy hall Appleby halted again. There were glass doors giving on a lobby, and then solid wooden ones. They all looked forbiddingly secured. He remembered the open window of the gunroom. That would take him out on the side of the house he wanted. Cudworth was now up with him, and Jean was a little way behind. Clandon was still lumbering down the main staircase.
They were halfway through the gunroom when Cudworth came to a dead halt and pointed to the rack on the wall. There was a shotgun missing. ‘Perhaps we’d better hold on and think a moment, sir. It looks as if the old chap may be more immediately dangerous than we’ve been reckoning.’
Jean ran up. ‘What is it?’ she said.
Appleby pointed. ‘A gun gone. We think your grandfather–’
She shook her head. ‘It must have been the man who was lurking on the terrace. I saw him just for a moment before I ran up to the attics. I thought vaguely he must be another of your people. I’d never seen him before.’
Appleby frowned. ‘There’s certainly nobody else with us.’
‘Grindrod!’ Cudworth said.
They tumbled out on the terrace. There was now a tall thin column of smoke on the horizon. And the air seemed suddenly to be full of birds. Clandon, who had gained his second wind, was now up with Appleby. He ran surprisingly easily for so lumbering a man. ‘Ailsworth’s away ahead,’ he said. ‘I caught a glimpse of him from a landing.’
‘His maps. They’re all in that tower.’ Jean seemed to be angry still as well as anxious. ‘It’s a frightful disaster for him.’
‘There’s the prospect of much more frightful disaster than that.’ Appleby spoke grimly as he ran. ‘Is there anything to fight a fire with out there?’
‘A couple of fire extinguishers among all the stuff on the ground floor, I think. But I haven’t been out there for a long time. He hates anybody going near that tower.’
‘No doubt.’
The distance to the tower was very considerable, and it seemed incredible that one so old as Lord Ailsworth could keep steadily ahead of them. But when they reached the great stretch of marshland that merged finally in the estuary they could see him wildly running, his long white hair floating strangely behind him.
‘And there’s the other man!’ Jean pointed. ‘Almost up to the tower now.’
‘Grindrod or not, he’s got the gun, all right,’ Cudworth said. ‘Why should he take that to a fire? There’s no sense in all this – and never has been.’
The fire itself was puzzling, Appleby thought. A single column of grey smoke appeared to be issuing from the tower about halfway up. There was as yet no sign of flame. Suddenly it flashed on him that this towards which they were running was, in fact, not an accidental conflagration. It was a signal. It was
only
a signal. Or only that, so far.
The leading figure disappeared round the side of the tower. Lord Ailsworth was no more than a hundred yards behind him. Appleby put on speed, and found himself a little ahead of his companions. The going was tricky. There was water on each side of him and the path turned several times at right angles among a system of dykes. So the actual distance to be traversed was greater than it looked. To splash ahead on a straight line seemed too risky; it might involve one in quagmire in which going would be hopelessly slow.
Lord Ailsworth too had vanished. Appleby covered the last couple of hundred yards of his own course at a speed that would have surprised him had he enjoyed leisure to reflect on it. He didn’t at all like the thought of that gun. Or of the fellow carrying it. To go careering at a fire clutching a weapon in that way spoke, surely, of some queer and unreasoning panic from which anything might proceed.
There was an open door at the foot of the tower, and a wooden staircase running up one corner of the interior. The whole place was larger and more elaborate than one would have supposed. There was a reek of smoke, but the air was fairly clear. Appleby looked round the lumber crowded on this ground floor to see if he could find the fire extinguishers. But they weren’t immediately visible. And, as he looked, there came a sudden urgent shout from above. He hesitated for the fraction of a second, and then ran up the stairs.
The smoke was thicker here, but there was still no suggestion of immediately dangerous flame. A stoutly bolted door confronted him at the top of the next flight. He was just going to set about flinging this open when he heard again a shout from higher still. This time it was shrill and angry, and he recognized Lord Ailsworth’s voice. Appleby turned away from the bolted door and went up the next set of steps three at a time. He tumbled in the next chamber.
The walls were lined with maps – maps bristling with innumerable coloured pins. The place was untidy. There were wooden boxes, tin drums, an old oil-stove. There was a great deal of smoke. It was pouring up through a small open trapdoor in the middle of the floor. Karl Grindrod was kneeling beside this, taking a downward aim with the shotgun. But the smoke was blinding him.
And there was Lord Ailsworth. As Appleby burst in, he was standing quite still, as if the situation was something beyond him. But then he gave the same cry, shrill and angry, that Appleby had heard seconds before, and threw himself forward. ‘You damned scoundrel,’ he cried, ‘how dare you threaten and insult my guests!’ Appleby leapt forward too, and in the same instant a suffocating puff of smoke poured through the trap. There was an instant of utter confusion and blind struggle. The shotgun went off with what, in the confined space, had the force of a shattering explosion. Then, momentarily, the smoke cleared. Appleby found himself looking down at the body of Lord Ailsworth. The shot bad been grotesquely lethal. Half the old man’s head had vanished. It had been an instantaneous death.
Appleby whirled round. Grindrod was standing upright in the middle of the room. He took a step backwards as Appleby advanced, and kicked over a tin drum. It rolled across the floor and disappeared through the trapdoor. And instantly from below there came up a leaping tongue of flame.
Grindrod gave a meaningless cry and ran to the door. Appleby followed. The flames were now roaring. But voices could be heard from the lower landing, and somebody was shooting back the bolts on the closed door. Cudworth was shouting. ‘Come out, then! This way!’
Grindrod hesitated in the doorway. Then he turned senselessly away from the voices and stumbled up the final flight of stairs. He vanished in smoke. Appleby felt his own head swimming and his clothes singeing. He paused only long enough to make sure once more that Lord Ailsworth was dead. Then he staggered out and down.