“Stop!” Richard Poole’s face was bloodless. “You have no right to confront me with these insinuations. It is utterly irregular.”
“My dear sir, I have no official standing in this matter at all. I am speaking to you as a private citizen; and at the same time I am giving you, for your own benefit, an experienced view of certain lines of speculation which the officers who will investigate this business may be prompted to follow.”
“I see. Very well. Go on.”
“It is conceivable that Hiram Poole drove away more or less as you have claimed – but that he had his doubts. Suspicion grew on him; eventually he turned his car and came back to Water Poole; and what he found in the dawn was a derelict house, and his hopeful young heir pottering round clearing up a bit of litter. He wasn’t very pleased, and there may even have been a quarrel. So much for one hypothesis. We needn’t follow it further at the moment.”
“It sounds damnably convincing.” Richard Poole managed rather a harsh laugh.
“It has, as it happens, one weakness. It leaves something out. I think you claim to know certain particulars of Hiram’s existing testamentary dispositions? He had been proposing to leave his fortune to philanthropic organisations?”
“Yes – and to one such organisation in particular. The bulk of his estate was to go to a body advocating temperance reform. I remember thinking it odd in him. It didn’t really cohere with the kind of feelings and attitudes that Hiram revealed when he was over here. But there it was. Prohibition all over again: it was something like that, I gathered, that his money was to go to the support of.”
“Capital!”
Appleby turned in astonishment, to see Mr Buttery emphatically nodding his venerable head. “You approve of such an endeavour?”
“Certainly.” Mr Buttery was quite excited. “I declare Mr Poole’s cousin to have been most enlightened. The attempt to prohibit by law all use of alcoholic beverages is one which interests me very much. I think I can say that I approve of it. I regret that it has never made more headway on this side of the Atlantic.”
“Sir, let me say that you do honour to your calling.” Miss Jones had risen from the box, advanced upon the clergyman, and was now shaking him vigorously by the hand. She turned to Appleby and Richard Poole. “Thousands will take fresh heart when they hear of the noble declaration of this truly reverend old man!”
“Thank you, madam, thank you.” Mr Buttery – perhaps recalling that he had been termed a pale-faced drinker – appeared a little embarrassed by this unexpected effusion.
And Appleby was looking at him in surprise. “What about that burgundy and madeira? Would you propose, sir, that in framing their legislation our prohibitionists should insert a clause exempting the clergy?” He turned to Miss Jones. “I’m not quite certain that you and Mr Buttery are going to be at one in this matter, after all. But, for the moment, we have another sort of concern with it. May I take it, madam, that it would not be incorrect to assert that the urging of temperance reform constitutes your profession? Mr Poole, I think, has already had an inkling of it.”
“It has certainly been hovering in my head for some time.” Poole swung round to survey the American lady, and as he did so he produced a strained smile. “The rival charity – that’s what you are!”
Appleby nodded. “Exactly. Water Poole or water wagon – it might be expressed like that. Which was cousin Hiram’s fortune going to the support of?… And now perhaps Miss Jones will speak.”
“I am not Miss Jones.” The American lady had advanced to the middle of the hall, and her announcement was made with a very sufficient sense of drama. “Let there be no more subterfuge. I am not Miss Jones. I am Miss Brown.”
“Not, surely” – Richard Poole, despite his awkward situation, was prompted to a freak of humour – ”not, surely, the Miss Brown?”
“I guess so.” Miss Brown’s was a wholly modest acknowledgement. “I am Louisa Brown, Vice-President of the Daughters of Abstinence.”
“It sounds like William Blake.” Poole might have been slightly dazed. “Are they something in America?”
“Certainly. They constitute one of our leading temperance bodies, and the one to which the late Hiram Poole has bequeathed almost his entire fortune. And I have been acting as a guardian.”
“Why should Hiram require a guardian? I never heard such nonsense.”
“It’s a precaution we are accustomed to take with potential major benefactors. Particularly when they go overseas.” Miss Brown spoke with confidence. “Temptations are manifold. Haven’t we just heard that Mr Hiram Poole was seduced, in this very house, into drinking a glass of champagne? Disgusting! Revolting!”
This view of the hospitality of Water Poole appeared to strike the owner of the mansion as decidedly offensive. “As a self-appointed bodyguard, madam, you have been thoroughly inefficient. Hiram is dead, and when you get back to your own country I sincerely trust that all the other Daughters will give you a thoroughly bad time.”
“You haven’t got the picture quite right.” Appleby intervened dryly. “It wasn’t Miss Brown’s business to keep your cousin alive. Her guardianship consisted in ensuring that, if he died, it wasn’t with the wrong sort of last will and testament immediately behind him. It is a consideration in which there is food for thought. But we still haven’t had Miss Brown’s story. Will you please proceed?”
“I certainly will.” Miss Brown put her hands behind her back and eyed the three men before her as if they had been a large assembly of recalcitrant brewers or vintners. “It was well known to me that Mr Hiram Poole had these unwholesome interests in family history and a feudal past. So when upon his arrival in England he made the acquaintance of Mr Poole – this Mr Poole – I realised that the utmost vigilance would be required of me. As a matter of routine, I got to know all about Water Poole. I got to know all about Mr Richard Poole’s feelings for it – or lack of feelings for it.”
Richard Poole exploded. “The woman’s crazy!”
“For instance, I have in my file – it struck me as worth paying for – a letter from Mr Richard offering to sell this house for the purpose of what is called an approved school. He also had a project for turning the place over to a syndicate to run as a scientific pig farm.”
“Crazy?” Appleby looked rather grimly at the owner of Water Poole. “I’d be inclined to say myself that there’s method in her madness.”
“Madness in her method, if you ask me.” Poole was gloomy. “But go on, madam – go on.”
“Murray’s is an excellent hotel, and the servants don’t gossip. But it was a different matter with the firm from whom Mr Hiram hired a car, and I was soon in a position to know most of his movements a day or so in advance. That’s how it came about that, when he set out for Water Poole in his fancy dress last night, I was on the road in my own car a hundred yards behind.”
Appleby was looking at Miss Brown in admiration. “That was very efficient, I’m bound to say. And just what did you know about what was going forward?”
“I knew that Mr Richard had been dashing round the firms that provide stage furniture, and that he had been holding long meetings with large numbers of his theatrical friends. I think I may say that I had the greater part of the picture already in my head. When we got down here, of course, I let Mr Hiram get a good lead, and then I parked my own car and explored the ground. I guess I hadn’t got hold of the fancy-dress aspect of the affair, and the significance of that puzzled me a good deal. But the rest was clear enough. I saw that the moment to expose Mr Richard Poole had arrived.”
“You were probably right.” Appleby contributed this soberly. “And how did you propose to set about it?”
“I thought at first of simply walking in upon the feast and denouncing it – denouncing the imposture and denouncing the champagne. Then it occurred to me that I might, as a consequence, put myself in considerable personal danger. I might be thrown in the river and drowned, and the Daughters of Abstinence would never so much as kn
ow what had become of me.”
“Bless me!” Richard Poole stared. “The woman might believe herself to be on the banks of the Niger, not of the–”
“Mr Richard and his friends were flown with wine.” Miss Brown interrupted brusquely. “The expression is that of the great English poet Milton, justly celebrated for confining himself at the supper-table to a few olives and a glass of water. Any insolence, any outrage might be expected of them. I therefore skulked.”
“I bet you did.” Richard Poole breathed heavily.
“I was almost at Mr Richard’s elbow when Mr Hiram made the shameful speech.”
“The shameful speech?” For a moment Appleby was at sea.
“About making this dishonest and intemperate young man his heir. Then Mr Hiram drove off, and I hurried to my own car and followed. But he had a good lead and was driving very fast. It was many miles before I overtook him and signalled him to stop. He took no notice. I therefore passed him and edged him almost into the ditch. One sees it done on the movies. He stopped, but I found it very hard to open communication with him. I have an idea that he took me for a person of disreputable character.”
“You must remember it was in the dark.” Richard Poole produced this with obscure but massive irony. “And then?”
“It took what must have been hours – but at length I did contrive to explain to him the imposture to which he had been subjected. He refused to believe it. Finally I persuaded him to drive back to Water Poole. When we arrived, the place was already in darkness. I got out a torch and led him on a tour of inspection. It was then that he began to behave very queerly.”
“What do you mean?” Poole’s voice held real anxiety. “Was he very angry – or upset?”
“He wouldn’t speak. We went over almost the whole place with the aid of a torch he had brought from his car. And he wouldn’t speak a word to me. I thought it most discourteous. There was one particularly striking instance. We had glanced into a small pantry – one from which a staircase runs down to some of the cellars – and it simply reeked of spirits. No doubt it was your disgusting champagne and so on. I drew Mr Hiram’s attention to it as evidence of the depraved society into which his acquaintance with you had brought him. He simply stared at me without uttering a syllable. And then, when we had emerged again into the open air, we parted.”
“Parted?” Appleby was surprised. “In what circumstances?”
Miss Brown hesitated. “He told me to go away.”
Richard Poole laughed again – less harshly this time. “Hiram, you know, had very good taste. When he did speak, he said the sensible thing. He asked you to clear out. And you did?”
“I did.” Miss Brown flushed. “I considered that my good offices had been scorned, and that I had been personally insulted. I got into my car and drove away.”
“Leaving Hiram alone at Water Poole?”
“I guess so. Unless you were still here yourself, Mr Poole.”
Appleby looked up sharply. “Have you any reason, Miss Brown, to suppose anything of the sort?”
Miss Brown hesitated. “I can’t swear to Mr Poole here. But I did have a hunch that there was somebody lurking around.”
“I see. Now, when you left Water Poole, however much you may have felt personally insulted, you must have supposed your work there to be done. Mr Richard Poole was wholly discredited. May I ask you why, in these circumstances, you returned here this morning?”
“Because I was uneasy. Mr Hiram Poole was an old man, whom I knew to be in poor health. And I had left him here in the small hours, after subjecting him to painful disillusion. I returned in order to make quite sure that nothing had happened to him.”
“Well – it had.” Appleby uttered this shortly and then took one of his brief walks to a window. “In the ruined part of this house there is a staircase that mounts through two storeys and then goes on to end nowhere. From that hazardous eminence, some time in the small hours, Mr Hiram Poole was precipitated. And there are still a good many possibilities. For example, we don’t know – at least I don’t know – what was in the dead man’s mind. How did he take the revelation which it is agreed was made to him? Miss Brown, the only person to be in his company after the truth was revealed, quite failed to get any change out of him. That, at least, is her story. Suppose it to be true… Do you hear a car? It will be my wife with a doctor.”
“I am not in the habit of prevarication.”
“Very well. Your story is gospel, so far as it goes. But there may have been – indeed, if it is gospel, there must have been – a further and distinct act in the drama. Mr Richard Poole may have been lurking around – or he may have returned after you left, encountered his cousin, and become involved in some altercation with fatal consequences. In the circumstances it is a possible picture.” Appleby paused. “I mentioned the chance of Mr Richard’s being already, in some degree, Hiram Poole’s heir – and knowing it. On that, the actual truth must, of course, eventually become available. For what my own opinion is worth, it is slightly improbable. But one fact is admitted. As matters stood last night, and still stand now, the Daughters of Abstinence are very large beneficiaries under Hiram Poole’s will. And this bring us back to Miss Brown. Her story may not be gospel. It may be quite untrue.”
“I am not in the–”
“No doubt, madam. But there are tight corners in which the most inflexibly truthful persons find themselves a little inclined to stretch a point. Suppose that this investigation of the true state of Water Poole brought both Hiram Poole and yourself to the top of that staircase. He had been silent. You became vehement in your denunciation of Mr Richard. And then Hiram Poole did something which surprised you very much, but which in fact was thoroughly consonant with human nature. He cried a plague on both your houses.”
“He did what?” Miss Brown was both startled and at a loss.
“He declared that Richard should not have a penny of his. And then he said precisely the same thing about the Daughters of Abstinence.”
“He would never do such a thing.”
“I repeat that I think it extremely likely that he would. Your organisation had set a spy on him, and subjected him to an acute humiliation of which you, madam, cannot have the faintest imaginative understanding. So here is another sober possibility. Up there, at the top of that crazy staircase, this old man told you that your organisation would be struck out of his will tomorrow.”
Miss Brown was silent – and suddenly old and spectral. Richard Poole looked at her not unkindly and then turned to Appleby. “I must say you have considerable skill in making it uncomfortable for everybody in turn. Is there more to come? What about Mr Buttery?”
And Appleby nodded. “I’m coming to Mr Buttery now.”
“To me?” Over his steel-rimmed spectacles the clergyman looked at Appleby in naïve alarm. “I fear all this has been incomprehensible to me, and that I am unlikely to be able to assist. Here and there – on the goblin side of the thing – I am fairly clear. But all this of wills eludes me. Mr Poole, it seems, has told one story; this lady who keeps on changing her name has told another; and I suppose you, sir, must choose between them.”
Appleby shook his head. “That may be unnecessary. I have myself ventured some alternative hypotheses which are no doubt mutually exclusive. But the stories of Mr Poole and Miss Brown do not in themselves contradict each other. Both may have told as much of the truth as they know. And now it is up to you to tell the rest.”
Mr Buttery considered this injunction for a moment in silence. Then, disconcertingly, his venerable features assumed an expression of the deepest cunning. “I suppose,” he asked, “that what is called motive is of great importance in a matter of this sort?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“You were asking, for instance, why this lady returned to Water Poole when she did. Stress is put upon things like that?”
“Certainly it is.”
“Awkward. Troublesome. Vexatious.” And Mr Buttery shook his head. “If I
myself had what might be termed a respectable motive–”
“Folk-lore.” Appleby was brisk. “Your own further investigations of Water Poole last night, sir, were prompted entirely by your interest in folk-lore. You were after the goblins, and nothing but the goblins. And now perhaps you can go ahead.”
“I don’t quite follow this.” Richard Poole was curious. “Am I to understand that Mr Buttery–”
“Mr Buttery is a great law-breaker.” Appleby announced this without any appearance of censure. “A little quiet poaching warms the cockles of his heart. But lately he has taken larger flight. He found, I think, a very tempting cellar, to be entered unobtrusively by a cut from the river. Perhaps he found some suitable implements and utensils as well. Anyway, he has been having great fun distilling illicit spirits. Hence the smell remarked by Miss Brown. And hence Mr Buttery’s own enthusiasm for Total Prohibition. He feels that if that came in he might go into business in a large way. But these are irrelevant matters–”
“Really irrelevant?” Mr Buttery was sharply hopeful.
“At least there is a very good chance of it. Last night, sir, you watched the goblins in some alarm until they packed up. And then you came to investigate. They are said, after all, to do terrible things in dairies. Perhaps they might have been behaving equally mischievously in your distillery.”
“I certainly waited in my dinghy until all was dark and silent again.” Mr Buttery now spoke with much placidity. “It was a tedious vigil. I was not however greatly surprised. For goblins, as you know, have a great reputation for keeping it up till dawn. Gradually their lights went out, and I was conscious of intermittent rumblings. Parties of them were returning to the nether world.”
“Or our vans were driving away.” Richard Poole was looking at the clergyman in some perplexity, as if finding it hard to gauge just how deep his eccentricity went.
“When at length I ventured to land they had all vanished – as our national poet puts it, following darkness like a dream. Or all, that is, except the Goblin King.”
Appleby Talks Again Page 5