Appleby at Allington

by Michael Innes

  ‘And finally’ – Lady Killcanon said after some fifteen minutes – ‘let me remind you (and I know that it need be no more than that) of the words which my late father–’

  ‘Hear! Hear!’ This time, William Goodcoal flourished a small Union Jack, hastily snatched from the grasp of his son and heir.

  ‘–of the words which my late father uttered in the Upper Chamber upon the occasion of the Third Imperial Conference in London – which took place, as we all know, from the 15th of April to the 14th of May, 1907–’

  ‘Hear! Hear! Hurrar for her Ladyship!’

  ‘“ Let nation speak peace unto nation” – these were my father’s magnificent words – “ and let a despicable administration resign forthwith”.’ Lady Killcanon paused impressively. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have great pleasure in declaring your beautiful new hall open.’

  There was a moment’s bewildered silence. Among those present, the more impressionable even raised their eyes and looked about them, as if expecting that at this august personage’s summons, as at the decree of Kubla Khan, some stately pleasure-dome should at once create itself in air. Mr Goodcoal, however, saved the situation.

  ‘Hurrar for her Ladyship!’ shouted Mr Goodcoal. ‘Hip, hip, hurrar for Lady Killcanon, God bless her!’

  Adequate cheering ensued. Little Alice Mellors (the keeper’s daughter), a born exhibitionist who had been straining at the leash for some time, marched perkily forward and presented Lady Killcanon with a bouquet. Owain Allington proposed a vote of thanks. Mr Scrape seconded it with becoming brevity. The fête had begun.

  6

  The dog Rasselas, Appleby noticed, was bearing a dignified part in the proceedings. He had accompanied the personages of principal consideration to their platform. Now, with a money-box strapped to his back, he was moving purposively among the company at large. Rasselas was an almost depressingly well-trained dog, and his technique in the cause of charitable endeavour was simple and effective. He simply came to a halt dead in front of you. If you took evasive action, he made a little detour of his own and then planted himself firmly in your path once more. Determined that there should be no mistake about buying himself off, Appleby produced a florin, held it firmly before the creature’s nose, and then dropped it as noisily as possible into the box. Rasselas gave him a polite nod and walked away. And he showed no further interest in Appleby during the remainder of the afternoon.

  Judith had been detected by Lady Killcanon, and constrained to form part of her entourage as she made her ritual round of the several stalls. Although Lady Killcanon appeared now to be under the impression that she had just successfully launched a liner (‘And God bless all who sail in her,’ she had said suddenly to the astonished Mrs Pecover the cow-man’s wife), she preserved a marked acuity as a purchaser – holding up jars of jam firmly to the light, and further bewildering Mrs Pecover by referring to her gingerbread as parliament-cake and questioning her closely about the ingredients. Appleby felt it justifiable to slip away from this progress. Judith would no doubt buy more than enough of this and that to uphold the reputation of Long Dream.

  As he made a general survey of the scene, he found it hard not to feel something slightly uncanny in its complete transformation from the night before. All that was left of the whole elaborate lay-out of the son et lumière was, so to speak, a shadowy presence constituted by various trodden or discoloured areas of the turf. And now, rapidly obliterating even that, was this harmless jamboree. Would its paraphernalia, in turn, be cleared away as expeditiously? The marquee and some of the tents would presumably stand until the following morning. What if there was a dead body in one of them by then?

  This bizarre speculation brought Appleby to a halt. It is not thus that the imaginations of retired policemen are accustomed to start into activity. There must really be something sinister in the atmosphere of Allington to put such an idea into his head. And yet, quite clearly, there was nothing of the kind. Over there was Owain Allington, a modest country squire going to some trouble to keep up a traditional relationship with his simpler neighbours and their kind. Even his grey bowler fitting in quite well – particularly with Lady Killcanon, whose papa had probably worn one on informal occasions. And a little farther away was the former squire, Wilfred Osborne, perfectly easy in not the easiest of situations. Osborne was, of course, all right with the gentry; whether or not he still owned a park and a manor and hunters and a trout-stream was nothing to them, and if he was sociably disposed he certainly needn’t go without a single invitation he had formerly received. But with the village people and the small tenants it was rather different; no doubt they preserved the sterling virtues of the folk, but it was equally certain that they experienced honest satisfaction at the spectacle of a former oppressor fallen into near-indigence. Not that Osborne had really been an oppressor; quite obviously, there was nothing of the sort in his nature. Still, he had owned the broad estates and the hall; and he was a fair target for mild malice in consequence. But then Osborne knew this perfectly well, as any countryman must do. He would also be aware – even if not in a consciously formulated way – that it was only one component in an attitude as complex as anything centuries-old must be. He was having a very good time now, talking to all and sundry. No, it was improbable that in that direction there lay anything sinister at all.

  What was troubling Appleby – it suddenly came to him quite clearly – was the man who had died. And it wasn’t just the fact of the man’s death, or even the macabre unaccountability of its circumstances. It was rather the manner in which it seemed to have been swept rapidly into oblivion. Where was the man’s body now? Presumably in some county mortuary, awaiting or undergoing post-mortem. Just where had he died? Appleby found he couldn’t even exactly place the position of that unlikely glass box. And who was he? Appleby experienced an unaccountable impatience to find out about this. Allington would have the answer; he must have been kept informed – even on this busy day he must have been kept informed – of any facts that had come to light. Appleby looked round for the grey bowler, and found himself confronting a green trilby instead. It was on the head of Colonel Pride – Tommy Pride, according to Osborne – the Chief Constable.

  Appleby recalled with dismay having committed himself to the statement that he didn’t care for Pride. He wasn’t in the habit of saying that sort of thing – and why should he say it about this particular chap? Pride was a quiet man, military-looking but not obtrusively so, with a close-cropped moustache and close-cropped, carefully brushed hair. This last fact was apparent because Pride had now taken off his hat to Appleby – a gesture intended to acknowledge, perhaps in a slightly chilly way, the fact that Appleby had held a job more exalted than, if not exactly comparable with, his own. Appleby, of course, took off his hat in turn. He wanted to say, with reference to the rustic populace surrounding them, ‘And a pretty pair of Charlies we must look.’ He was inhibited partly by suspecting that Pride might find this a mysterious remark, and partly because he had just noticed that his own hat was a green trilby too. Moreover Pride’s tweeds were very like his own tweeds, and Pride’s stature was precisely his. If, after the ceremonial weighing of Owain Allington Esquire, he and Pride were to mount the scale in turn, it was unlikely that there would turn out to be a couple of pounds between them.

  Colonel Pride looked distrustfully at Sir John Appleby, and Sir John Appleby looked distrustfully at Colonel Pride. It was possible that to each the same thought had come in the same moment. But it probably came to Appleby in rather more picturesque form. If he and Pride, he was thinking, were to hunch themselves down on each side of a fireplace, the effect would be very much that of those twinned china dogs still frequently to be found guarding the hearths of the good poor. More learnedly put, here was his Doppelgänger. No wonder he didn’t care for Tommy Pride.

  ‘Afternoon, Appleby,’ Colonel Pride said.

  ‘How are you, Pride?’ Appleby said. ‘Very pleasant show.’

  ‘Very pleasant. Nice a
fternoon for it.’

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘Good turn out,’ Appleby said. ‘People from all over the place.’

  ‘Car park full.’ Colonel Pride paused, as if about to move on. Instead, he made quite a long speech. ‘They go through the house – the people who have come some way in cars. Half-a-crown. The locals don’t, of course. They’ve satisfied their curiosity long ago. A great bore, having people trailing through your rooms, I’d think. Decent of Allington. No call to. Simply for charity, and so forth. Nothing to do with income tax. Treats my people very well, too, I gather. I send in a couple of men, you know, to help keep an eye on the spoons and forks. Always have to have a dinner-table elaborately laid – have you noticed? – when you open up your place like that. And I advised him against hiring private-eye fellows. Heard some very bad things about them. Planting the appearance of pilfering on perfectly innocent half-crowners, you know, just to gain a bonus. We don’t want any of those city rackets down here.’

  ‘Extremely wise of you, if I may say so.’ Appleby fancied he was conscious of people glancing curiously at Pride and himself. Perhaps they were making jokes about Tweedledum and Tweedledee. He himself must be careful to see that these two didn’t have a battle. He was determined to get some information out of Pride, all the same. And presumably Pride had information. Chief Constables are not invariably well clued up on the passing scene within their jurisdiction. But Pride couldn’t have failed to acquaint himself with what had happened on the previous night at Allington Park. He must know about Appleby’s own odd implication in it. Indeed, it would scarcely be possible for him not to refer to it. So Appleby refrained from prompting. And, sure enough, Pride came to the point.

  ‘That business here last night,’ he said. ‘Poor show. Awkward thing. Sorry you tumbled into it. Odd, in a way, that it should have been you. Coals to Newcastle, I mean.’ Pride paused for a moment, as if rather dimly trying to verify the appositeness of this figure of speech. ‘Lucky for Allington, though. To have had your support, that is.’

  ‘I left as soon as your people arrived and I’d told them anything I could. Naturally, the inquiry wasn’t far advanced at that point. The chap hadn’t been identified. Allington felt he’d never set eyes on him.’

  ‘Identified? Ah, yes – important that. Investigation going on, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  It was an impasse, since Pride now seemed to feel that he had said what was necessary. Appleby was constrained to risk at least a sighting shot.

  ‘The son et lumière people have got their junk away pretty smartly,’ he said.

  ‘Needed it elsewhere, no doubt.’

  ‘That may be it – and Allington was anxious it should go. Before the affair this afternoon, that is. I see they’ve even taken the control-room, or whatever they call it. The place in which we found the body.’

  ‘We haven’t got a murder on our hands, you know.’ Pride had stiffened. ‘Would you expect me to object?’

  ‘To the removal?’ For a second Appleby hesitated, considering the precise form of words Pride had just used. It seemed illuminating – and Appleby decided to take a risk. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I would. But you didn’t have a chance.’

  ‘Unless I have occasion to hold an inquiry and deliver a reprimand, I take full responsibility for any decision arrived at by one of my officers.’

  ‘Yes, of course. And this particular decision was taken by one of your–’

  ‘Really, I don’t think that the affairs of the County Constabulary are any concern–’ Rather surprisingly, Pride checked himself. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Relation of confidence should subsist between us, I hope you feel. And, of course, you’re quite right.’

  ‘Allington must have been rather urgent about it, I imagine. And one of your subordinates would be a good deal more impressed by a local magnate than you or I should be. It wasn’t unnatural either, that Allington should want the thing out of the way before this show.’

  ‘No.’ Pride appeared not altogether happy with this conclusion on the matter. ‘Don’t think I’m not concerned about it, Appleby. Mind you, my people worked on it intensively from an early hour this morning. They excluded foul play. If there were any suspicion of that, of course, we’d be judged to have fallen down on the job. In letting the damned thing be taken away, that is.’

  ‘I take it the dead man has not been identified so far?’

  ‘Not when I was last in touch with anyone. It rather tells against his being a local, don’t you think? And one’s pretty sure what happened. Not quite a tramp – they say he didn’t look quite like a tramp – but a fellow drifting across country for one reason or another. Been walking all day–’

  ‘His shoes didn’t suggest that to me.’

  ‘His shoes?’ Colonel Pride was disconcerted; it was as if he had forgotten Appleby’s eye-witness status. ‘Well, it’s not essential to the argument. He was benighted, and that scared him. Suggests a townee, wouldn’t you say? It’s remarkable how reluctant fellows of that sort are to spend even a summer night under the stars. So he climbed up into this affair as the only available shelter, fell asleep on the floor, rolled over and dislodged something, and this live cable got him. Trouble brewing for somebody in the son et lumière business, I suspect. But nothing beyond that. The coroner will sit on the poor chap, and that will be the end of it.’

  ‘You’re very probably right.’ Appleby judged it was time to be soothing. ‘The only thing I’m not confident about is his not being a local man. The time has been rather short to be sure of that. When a question of this sort turns up in any district, whether urban or rural, it’s astonishing how many respectable male characters turn out to be away from home and unaccounted for.’

  ‘Perfectly true.’

  ‘Of course, when the news of an unidentified dead body gets around, people become scared, and turn up with admissions about missing relatives. Until that happens, they keep dark about a husband or son having a night or two out. And the news of this affair must just be beginning to get around the district now.’

  ‘That’s certainly so.’ Colonel Pride was perturbed. ‘And it’s hard to see why a man should climb into that damned thing if he had a perfectly respectable roof of his own near by.’

  ‘I quite agree, Pride. I’ve thought about it a little – you must forgive me if I do that – and only one possible explanation has come to me so far.’ Appleby was glancing here and there in the crowd. ‘Do you happen to know a citizen called William Goodcoal?’

  ‘Never heard of him. Sounds like a fellow in a book.’

  ‘You’ve heard from him. He was the man who did all that enthusiastic bellowing while the old lady was making her speech. Bellowing is rather his line. He has a machine over in that van which will bellow as loud as you please. I’m going over to have a word with him now.’

  7

  Lady Killcanon having departed with her bouquet and her frugal and judicious purchases in an ancient Rolls-Royce, Owain Allington felt it proper to give a little undivided attention to the woman of next consequence now left on the scene.

  ‘Don’t you think we might take a turn down the terrace, Lady Appleby, and return refreshed to the fracas? We’ve done not too badly, I’d say, on the first round.’

  Judith accepted the invitation; she wasn’t averse to bettering her acquaintance with Allington, whom she hadn’t very frequently met. His mere manner interested her, for one thing. She told herself that he always exhibited a shade more confidence than there was any call for. It couldn’t basically be the product of social uncertainty, although she had once or twice previously heard him talk in a way that almost deliberately suggested something like that. It was much more likely to reflect a sense that he had made a bad guess about himself when he dropped a distinguished scientific career for his present way of life.

  She had known similar things happen before. Or at least she could recall one or two cases of men making their way in exacting and absorbing prof
essions – as lawyers, surgeons, scholars – who had unexpectedly ‘come into property’, as the phrase was, and thrown up their jobs in consequence. It hadn’t, in her experience, worked well, since an able man, after all, can’t delude himself that there is any hard challenge in pottering around an estate. Even so, there had been an element of piety in these cases. An elder brother had died, or something of that sort, and what must be thought of as some peculiarly English mystique had come into play. In Allington’s case the mystique had been the odd one of a quite distant family history. Somehow or other he had made rather a lot of money rather quickly, and he had sunk it in this business of becoming, so to speak, an Allington again. Imaginatively, there was no doubt something attractive about it. He must be an unstable creature, all the same.

  ‘Has all this been a success?’ Judith asked. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Life here?’ If Allington was a little startled by this directness of address, he was too intelligent to pretend to be at a loss. ‘I don’t think I know yet. They say, of course, that as a physicist I was feeling the twitch of my tether, and that I took the chance of a break when it came. It’s a reasonable conjecture. I was rather good. There’s no denying I was rather good. But, as you know, it’s young men who make the running in my sort of thing. Even more than with the poets, and characters of that sort. Year by year, the neurones inside one’s skull become less numerous. And what is affected, oddly enough, appears to be the mind’s more intuitive operations. And physics and maths are damnably intuitive – beyond a modest bread-and-butter level, that is. When that fails, we have to be turfed out into being heads of this and that – like those wise and worried old father-figures, sitting behind desks and directing unfathomable researches by vast teams of young eggheads, that you get in television drama.’