‘I say,’ said Timmy, ‘I don’t think you ought–’ But he was speaking to air. And so from Shoon’s eccentricity they proceeded to wring the experience of danger. The ladder ran up behind the shelter of a long buttress and Patricia’s body was lost in the shadow; only her legs, gleaming palely in their light-toned stockings, worked steadily just above Timmy’s head. And, certainly, Belinda had said something about Patricia having no taste for heights. Timmy noted that beautiful things are not less beautiful, not less desirable, when they dance wantonly within the shadow of danger.
They reached the top quite safely. There was a small platform, comfortably sheltered and walled in. They sat down. ‘Patricia,’ asked Timmy sharply, ‘is that the only route back?’
‘Oh, no. There’s a tiny spiral staircase down the middle. The ladder is only for keeping an eye on the external fabric.’
Timmy shivered in a sudden spasm of nervous relaxation. ‘Curious,’ he said, ‘that you will never be let do quite that sort of thing again.’
Patricia made no reply. The wind had blown nearly all the clouds away and the stars were as bright as in a frost. These were moments of extraordinary happiness and peace. Timmy, leaning back on the chill stone beside Patricia, looked in imagination down from his tower and massively felt the absolute absurdity and incomprehensibility of Shoon Abbey and all else that lay below. He looked down from his tower and below was one great antic jig, one danse macabre. It was a vision, an intellectual clarification of exceptional exactness. It was an intimation of unknown and pleasing powers within himself. He lay still and chanted rhymes.
‘…up unto the watch-towre get,
And see all things despoyl’d of fallacies:
Thou shalt not peepe through lattices of eyes,
Nor heare through Labyrinths of eares, nor learne
By circuit–’
Abruptly Timmy stopped, exclaimed, clutched at air. The west tower had given an ugly lurch.
He heard Patricia’s laugh. ‘Only the wind,’ she said; ‘–the wind and your cousin Archie’s ingenuity. The stonework below is all a fake. We’re slung up here on great steel girders. It’s just as if you had a golf-club standing on its steel shaft, and you vibrated it and we were inside the head. An amusing motion…’
Gently the top-heavy crown of the tower swung to the wind. It was cold. They drew closer together. ‘I’m glad we did that scramble,’ said Patricia. ‘It clears the head. And no more damage’ – she looked at her stocking – ‘than one big ladder.’
Timmy looked at the ladder. ‘Did you ever’, he asked, ‘play Snakes and Ladders? Belinda and I once had a set with little moral lessons thrown in.’
‘I hope you profited.’
‘Moral lessons in pictures. At the head of the biggest snake was Laziness: chaps lounging in a pub.’ Timmy tapped Patricia on the head. ‘You went right down that snake to Failure.’ He tapped her on the toes. ‘Failure was a sort of workhouse ward.’
‘And the ladders?’
‘The biggest stood for Industry.’ And Timmy placed two fingers at the bottom of the ladder on Patricia’s stocking. ‘From there you climbed straight–’
‘I think’, said a practical voice behind them, ‘they’re just going to begin.’
‘Just beginning to come out for the inspection,’ explained John Appleby. ‘No, I believe I’m wrong. But we shan’t have long to wait. And with the bright moonlight this is a capital place for a bird’s-eye view. Don’t, by the way, let me interrupt in the matter of the Snakes and Ladders.’
They stared at him stupidly. ‘John,’ Patricia demanded, ‘why ever–’
‘Our friends will come out of the house and make their way here through the broken shadows of the ruins. Once arrived beneath the tower, they are likely to come to a halt in full moonlight. That will be the moment,’ Appleby paused, and from the shadow in which he stood there came the click of metal. ‘Patricia, do you know that the cellarium which is so carefully guarded by that hermit is nothing less than a little arsenal? Or something between that and a wholesale warehouse? Every type of lethal engine neatly laid out on display. I rather wished I could have nobbled a rifle.’
‘A rifle!’ said Timmy, startled.
Again there came the click of metal. ‘A revolver’, said Appleby placidly, ‘is a tricky thing. Even with a good long barrel like this’ – and now there was the ring of steel tapped on stone – ‘and any amount of practice one can’t do a great deal.’
‘John,’ interrupted Patricia, ‘just what is this about? Who is going to attack whom?’
‘Have you ever practised with one?’ Appleby took a brother’s licence to go his own conversational way. ‘The principle is that you don’t aim but point. You hold it head-high, bring it down as if it were a pointing forefinger, and fire at the moment your instinct dictates. If you’re lucky you really hit the haystack. But of course my business will be to miss.’
Timmy peered at the ground, immensely remote below. ‘It doesn’t just sound as if in the coming fracas you are going to bear an immensely effective role. I should rather expect you to be shadowing poor old Rupert round.’
‘Rupert? Oh, I don’t think that anybody except Rupert thinks that Rupert is in any deadly danger.’ There was a spurt of a match as Appleby lit a cigarette. ‘Not that he mayn’t be in deadly danger – but that will be his own fault.’ There was a chuckle from the shadows. ‘You don’t mind my beguiling this wait by murmuring enigmas? Patricia knows I don’t make a vice of it.’
‘Not at all,’ said Timmy gloomily; ‘not at all.’
‘Rupert, by the way, has been securely locked up. A kindly ministering to his nerves on a plan suggested by your father. As nine o’clock approaches he has been put quietly to browse in the Collection. Even if somebody were out for his blood they wouldn’t get at him there.’
‘They might from the roof,’ said Patricia sharply. ‘There’s a trapdoor–’
Her brother shook his head. ‘Well and truly bolted from within.’ He stiffened, peered towards the house. ‘Another false alarm. I rather wish they’d hurry up.’ He paced the little platform. ‘I confess to some mild anxiety on behalf of Winter.’
‘Winter!’ Timmy and Patricia simultaneously exclaimed.
‘Something might happen to Winter almost at any time. But the risk is small and he must run it. Of course I may be wrong, but what I’m expecting in the next few minutes is something else.’
‘You don’t think’, said Timmy quickly, ‘that daddy–’
‘Your father has never been in danger of attack. And he isn’t now.’
Patricia stood up. ‘John,’ she said curiously, ‘you really think there is to be attempted murder down there?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that coming up here gives you your best chance of stopping it?
‘Yes.’
‘There isn’t a more certain way? Warning somebody? Arresting somebody?’
‘My dear child, the whole affair is utterly shadowy. I’ve climbed up here on a scaffolding of hair-raising hypotheses which at the moment simply wouldn’t face the light of day. The metaphor is old, but you may see what I mean.’
‘And if you can’t stop this – this murder?’
‘Then’, said Appleby very placidly, ‘it can’t be helped.’
‘See’, said Timmy – and the histrionic trick was used perhaps to conceal a slightly unsteady voice – ‘where they come!’
From the direction of the house rose a fitful murmur of voices; a few seconds later a little group of figures appeared far away among the ruins.
‘Winter’, said Appleby softly, ‘burgled the Birdwire.’
The figures disappeared; the wind caught their voices and there was silence. Timmy and Patricia peered curiously at the still figure beside them. ‘The Collection,’ said Appleby – again softly, as if he were feeling his way. ‘Your father’s reactions; Rupert’s talk; the curiosa.’
The figures reappeared – a good way nearer – from the st
raggling shadow of a mouldering wall. Sharply foreshortened and threading their way through crumbled masonry and beneath broken arches, they were like a reconnaissance party disastrously clumped together in some near-obliterated town. The murmur of their voices rose and eddied about the tower; the voice of Miss Cavey, the first to disengage itself, chattered meaninglessly of the moon and the night.
‘New Zealand,’ said Appleby; ‘what happened in Grand Tarantula; the career and conversation of Adrian Kermode.’
The party below, advancing between narrowing walls, was only fitfully touched by moonlight. Faintly there came up the sound of somebody stumbling; a little fuss of concern, sympathy, assistance.
Appleby planted himself carefully against the parapet. ‘The husband’, he said with sudden confidence, ‘of our dear queen.’
They were almost directly below; motionless; caught and held in an arena of coldly pricking light. Shoon’s voice, bland and explanatory, floated up; was sharply cut by Appleby’s.
‘Proust,’ said Appleby – and it was as if the light had flooded full on him too – ‘and perhaps the anatomy of the camel.’
He was staring fixedly down; suddenly he braced himself as with the consciousness of unexpected emergency; his tongue clicked; Timmy and Patricia, following his gaze, saw the party below divided in two unequal groups. The majority were huddled together staring dutifully up at the tower. At about five yards distance, as if standing apart for the purpose of declamation, was Shoon. Close by Shoon was Winter.
Appleby swung half round. Shoon and Winter were seen to spring apart, and in the same second a report, instantly followed by another, shattered the silence. Shoon disappeared like a flash behind the shelter of a wall; Winter with the barest pause followed his example; the party scattered in panic. Timmy heard a rustle beside him; it was the arm of Appleby dropping; there was a crashing detonation by his ear; the arm swiftly rose and fell; crash after crash tore the night.
Silence, more bewildering than the uproar it succeeded, abruptly fell. Below, everyone had disappeared, making for the house under what cover they could secure. Appleby was looking at his watch. ‘Ten to nine,’ he said – and his voice came thin and flat to their numbed ears.
Patricia scarcely heard. She was staring in perplexity at that long wall, rising and falling like a switchback in some ghostly Luna Park, on which she and Timmy had crazily scrambled half an hour before…
‘Five to nine,’ said Appleby. He seemed to be methodically cleaning his revolver; with a sense of being under orders Timmy and Patricia sat quite still.
‘Almost on nine.’
Timmy stirred uneasily. ‘Had we better be getting down? It seems all quiet.’
As he spoke the tower beneath them lurched like a live thing at the cut of a whip. For a split second they were caught and shaken as by a mountainous surf. The concussion became shattering sound. It rose, unbearably flooded their senses, ebbed away. There succeeded – faint-seeming as a handful of pebbles scattered by a child – the rattle of falling masonry, the tinkle of thousands of fragments of shattered glass.
Appleby took Timmy and Patricia by the arm. Through a pall of smoke they stared at a chaos where, seconds before, the roof of Shoon Abbey had shone tranquilly in the moon.
‘Clearly’, said Appleby, ‘the moment for a tidy-up.’
4
‘Look here,’ said Winter, appearing in Shoon’s hall, ‘I really do object.’
‘Object?’ Appleby, as if the tidy-up before him could very well bide its time, sat down on a bench.
‘I object to being mysteriously singled out as Hamlet after all.’
‘Hamlet?’ An absent tone in Appleby’s voice suggested that his air of leisure cloaked concentrated thinking.
‘You told us that a murder had been arranged and dropped a genial hint or two that it might be Shoon who was after me. But you quite failed to mention that he employed gunmen. I reckoned that if I fairly hugged him and kept my eyes open I should be all right. And then he just gets somebody to loose off at me from a convenient eminence in the ruins. I heard that bullet whiz by. My nerve’s gone. I’m all bewildered.’ Winter, who was obviously wholly undisturbed, shook an indignant head.
‘You see why you’re Hamlet after all?’
‘In a dim way, yes – though I must say our amiable host’s precautions seem overdone. And in the lord’s name what was that appalling explosion? Has he been eliminating someone else? And where is he now? The man’s a menace and ought to be nobbled.’
Appleby got briskly to his feet. ‘It will do. If the tempo goes right it will do… All questions will be fully and systematically answered in about fifteen minutes. Or nearly all.’ He grinned at Winter’s bewilderment. ‘I’m going to find Shoon. Go into the tribune – Patricia, Timmy, go with him too – and keep everyone together. There may be some danger of fire after such a big bang, but no doubt Shoon’s staff will control it. Yes, we’ll have it all out now. But wait a minute. Yes – I’ll come with you.’
‘You seem’, said Winter resentfully, ‘extraordinarily cheerful.’
‘My dear man, cheerfulness is most important in an affair like this.’
In the tribune cheerfulness was conspicuously lacking. The party was suffering – not unnaturally – from shock. Miss Cavey was lying on a sofa moaning. Mr Eliot, very pale and very still, was standing beside Belinda. The air was heavy with helpless bewilderment. The only person usefully employed was Chown. He was applying improvised bandages to Rupert Eliot – a Rupert Eliot who was singed, bloody and terrified. Of Shoon there was no sign.
Appleby, reaching the doorway and taking one glance round all this, called out: ‘Mr Eliot, are you all right?’ Winter noted that anxiety had come into his voice; the whole room turned round at the ring of it.
‘Thank you, John,’ – Mr Eliot’s reply was faint but calm – ‘I am quite all right.’
‘Good. Nobody need worry.’ Appleby was suddenly confident. ‘All stop here. I’m going to find Mr Shoon.’ Unemotionally, and with the eyes of the whole party upon him, he took his revolver from his pocket. There was a little gasp of surprise. He poised the weapon in his hand. ‘We are all going to have a little talk with our host.’
Brisk and assured, Appleby nodded at the company and was gone.
Minutes dragged by. There had been attempted murder by the west tower. The wind blew coldly through windows which had been shattered by a terrific and unaccountable explosion. Somewhere about the Abbey a detective from Scotland Yard was hunting the Abbey’s owner with a revolver. Against all this the party, worn down by days of discomforts great and small, made no attempt to stand up. Numb and dumb, they waited for what would happen next. Miss Cavey continued to moan. Chown, with a grunt of satisfaction, heaved Rupert into an enveloping easy chair. Once Mr Eliot made to speak, checked himself, put his head between his hands and sighed. Of the whole gathering only Adrian Kermode preserved an appearance of active – and puzzled – intelligence.
Minutes dragged by. A clock struck the quarter after nine. The chimes died away and above them rose the sound of footsteps – one man’s footsteps – in the corridor outside.
The door opened and Appleby came in.
Patricia almost cried out. Her brother was pale – very pale, very controlled. He looked about him without speaking, closed the door, moved rather slowly to the centre of the room.
‘There has been’ – he hesitated – ‘considerable material damage.’
The opening was obscurely ominous; the party stirred uneasily and once more Mr Eliot seemed to make a vain attempt to speak.
‘As you will have gathered from the fact of Sir Rupert’s being wounded, the explosion took place in the Collection. Among the letters. I should imagine that most of them are destroyed.’ Appleby braced himself. ‘Ladies and gentlemen’ – and his voice was at once formal and oddly abrupt – ‘Mr Shoon is dead.’
Upon the instant’s silence – sharply, briefly – Mr Eliot cried out; the sound released a murmur of
horror, of bewilderment… Appleby raised his hand.
‘Mr Shoon has been accidentally killed. And yet – not wholly accidentally. He has perished in an attempt to murder Mr Eliot.’
‘But, John–’ Mr Eliot had stood up, desperate and incredulous.
‘Let me speak.’ Appleby, securing silence, was evidently casting round in his mind how best to proceed. ‘You must understand that our host was a very desperate and determined man. Mr Winter here can witness to that. For an attempt – as some of you have realized – was made to murder him too: the shot in the darkness while you were inspecting the tower. Today’ – Appleby’s eye went to Bussenschutt – ‘Shoon was given reason to believe that Winter might have obtained certain information about questionable early activities of his own. I need not specify how. It is enough to say that the information was in the possession of a lady whom Shoon believed to be discreet, and that when he had reason to think that it had passed to Winter – he acted. That gives you the measure of the man… And Mr Eliot had information about Shoon more dangerous still,’
‘But, John, it isn’t so.’ Mr Eliot’s voice came dully from across the room.
‘Mr Eliot had this information – but without knowing it.’
There was baffled silence.
‘But he might be on the verge of knowing it every moment that he was working on his new book. That is the secret of the whole mysterious – now of the whole tragic – affair. Shoon could not afford to let A Death in the Desert go on,’
Kermode shifted sharply in his seat. ‘But the clairvoyance – the knowledge of things Eliot had thought of for–’
‘Stop.’ Once more Appleby raised his hand. ‘Let me get right through. It is complicated; it had better be got clear once and for all. Part of it can only be conjecture. And for that reason the affair had best be – to put it bluntly – hushed up. I am not here as a policeman. There is no case against anybody except a dead man. That Shoon died a violent death at the hands of one of his own detestable inventions is all that the world need know.’
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