“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.”
“Not his lordship’s style at all.” Mrs Davis offered this.
“First a smuggled parcel and then a lady who has to be pushed into a cupboard?” Appleby rose, shaking his head. “There’s something to think about there, I agree – and I’m much obliged to you. And now I think I’ll go and see this Mr Diamond.”
The Cantelupe’s social secretary was in the library – the room, in fact, in which Butt maintained that the young person had been thrust into hiding. Although he wasn’t exactly rugged – not, Appleby told himself, a rough Diamond – he did have something more than the smooth manners and small-scale competence that one might have expected. Yet he was discernibly uneasy and puzzled. He might have been labouring under the persuasion that things had not only gone wrong, but had gone wrong in quite the wrong way. His speech however, was direct and entirely open. “I’m glad you’ve come, sir. This is the deuce of a fix.”
“It’s something that you’re aware of that.” And Appleby looked at the young man stonily. “Your behaviour has been most irresponsible. Six days ago, your employer disappeared. I believe your concern is only with his, and with his wife’s, private affairs. But you must have as good a general notion as I have of his position in scientific research in this country. Something had happened that might be of the gravest moment. Instead of bringing this home to Lady Cantelupe, or yourself taking the responsibility of informing the authorities, you set about deceiving the household with the statement that Lord Cantelupe had left suddenly for Washington. Was there a word of truth in that?”
“No – there wasn’t.” Diamond had turned pale. “I might as well tell you the facts, I suppose. There’s no point in keeping dark about something you’ll learn as soon as you contact Cantelupe’s lab.”
“That might be called self-evident.” Appleby was unsmiling.
“Oddly enough, Lady Cantelupe doesn’t know herself – yet. Nothing I mean, specific. But she’d guessed, you know, what the picture was in general terms. That’s why she’s kept quiet for a week, hoping for the best. Hoping, you might say, for the return of the prodigal.” Diamond paused, frowning. “My God,” he said, “a thing like this turns even one’s language dead common.”
“No doubt. But it’s a point, if I may say so, of a very minor interest. Will you get on with what you have to say?”
“It’s simply that there’s a girl that’s cleared off too, and from Cantelupe’s lab. A secretary who works for him. Marian something. Marian Page. It happened on Monday. That was three days before Cantelupe vanished in his turn. Or rather the lab got a telephone message on the Monday, saying that this girl Page was ill. I believe there ought to be some sort of doctor’s certificate within a week, but I should think they’re only beginning to make inquiries about her now. The reason why I have this information is very simple. I don’t know the girl, and I don’t think I’ve ever set eyes on her. But as she works for Cantelupe there, I’ve spoken to her on the telephone from time to time. I tried to get her on the Thursday afternoon, as soon as I heard about the queer way Cantelupe had walked out of this house. They said she’d been away sick since the Monday. They also said Cantelupe himself wasn’t about. And at that I rang off and did a little thinking.”
“Did you, indeed? Well, it’s what I’m doing myself.” And Appleby gave the young man a long, straight look. “Suppose these two absences, or disappearances, actually to have been connected. Suppose, to put it bluntly, that Lord Cantelupe and this Miss Page had gone off together in the reckless pursuit of an intrigue. Do you consider that you had the faintest right to treat it as a purely private matter, to be kept quiet about in the interest of avoiding scandal and so forth?”
“I’d a strong suspicion that Cantelupe had involved himself in similar indiscretions before – and without the slightest repercussions on his work, or his loyalty, or anything like that.”
“Very well, Mr Diamond. Now take the mere supposition itself – the supposition that Cantelupe’s disappearance and this girl’s absence from work were related. Isn’t it extremely arbitrary?”
“There’s this reason why it isn’t: Cantelupe’s relationship with the girl wasn’t a straightforward professional one. For instance, he’s got her photograph in this room – there, on the mantelpiece.”
The room was entirely lined with books, but over the fireplace there was a large mirror. Against this half-a-dozen unframed photographs were perched. Appleby walked over to them. “This middle one?” he asked – and saw in the mirror Diamond nod his head.
Appleby picked up the photograph, looked at it for a moment, and then turned and walked back with it to the middle of the room. He laid it on a table. “A good-looking girl,” he said impassively – and suddenly added: “Where’s the cupboard?”
“The cupboard?” For a moment Diamond was bewildered. Then he walked to a section of the bookshelves and gave a tug. “I suppose you mean this. It’s one of those concealed affairs behind dummy books. Doesn’t spoil the symmetry of the room. But I can’t think–”
“Never mind.” Appleby stepped inside the small square space and spent a couple of minutes making a careful inspection. “Miss Page,” he asked when he emerged, “never came and worked here? This library has a lot of office stuff: filing-cabinets, tape-recorder, those desk telephones, that typewriter. Yet you say Cantelupe never did any of his real work in the place?”
“Never.” Diamond had looked startled. “And if the girl ever turned up here, it was without my knowing it.”
“And you say you never set eyes on her?”
“Never.”
“Then how do you know that this is her photograph?”
Diamond laughed a shade contemptuously. “I know because she’s written on the back of the thing.”
Appleby turned the photograph over. Pencilled in a neat script were the words: Lord Cantelupe from Marian P. Appleby looked at them thoughtfully. “Well,” he said, “it’s perfectly decorous.”
Diamond laughed
again – this time more easily. “It’s certainly discreet. But, even so, it’s a bit out of the way. Secretaries don’t commonly give a nice photograph of themselves to the boss.”
“Does Lady Cantelupe know Miss Page, would you say?”
“I haven’t the slightest reason to suppose so. Incidentally, she makes a point of never coming in here – which may explain Cantelupe’s sticking up the girl’s photograph in this casual way.”
“Then it won’t perhaps be tactful to give Lady Cantelupe a receipt for it.” And Appleby picked up the photograph of Marian Page. “But you can be a witness that I’m making off with it. And now I must go and make some inquiries elsewhere.”
Diamond seemed surprised that their interview was over. “Well,” he said – and his voice was ever so slightly jaunty – “I hope you’ve learned something here for a start.”
“As a matter of fact I have. Quite a lot. Good morning.”
Late that evening, as the two men dined together, the Minister listened moodily to Appleby’s account of his investigations during the day. “And the girl – this Marian Page?” he asked.
“She has certainly disappeared. The lab got a telephone message on the Monday, saying that she was unwell and would be away some days. And her landlady got a similar message that afternoon, saying that Miss Page had heard that her mother was dangerously ill, and had gone at once to join her in the country. I’ve checked that the message was false. Miss Page’s mother is quite well.”
“People seem to have been a bit casual about the girl. Do you think it sounds like her running away with Cantelupe? I don’t.”
Appleby shook his head. “I don’t believe it for a moment. And I don’t believe that he shoved her, or any girl, into a cupboard. It’s not the way that a man like Cantelupe makes an ass of himself. And what is suggested to me by the manner in which he left his house is something quite different.”
Appleby Talks Again Page 9