Appleby at Allington

by Michael Innes

  ‘Travis. Don’t be surprised, by the way, if he gets your name wrong too.’

  ‘My name?’

  ‘Mr Travis may call you Mavis, or even Muriel.’

  ‘I should regard that as entirely strange, Sir John.’

  Miss Hope Allington turned away. She was very young, but she was well practised in holding her champagne glass close to her right shoulder while employing her left to make a way through the crush. For a moment Appleby looked after her thoughtfully. He wondered why on earth she and young Mr Travis should conduct a love affair – for that was surely it – amid such elaborate subterfuge. That Travis was already married was one prosaic and rather squalid possibility. But if he was, it certainly wasn’t to the granddaughter of Mrs Junkin.

  Appleby continued on his anti-clockwise course.

  And presently it struck him that he was looking for someone. He was looking for the nephew whose arrival the Reverend Mr Scrape had spoken of as almost a solemn event. Martin Allington, the heir of Allington – whom Appleby had last seen struggling for his life against a self-inflicted wound, and before a background of goodness-knew-what: espionage, treachery, blackmail, murder. Rather strangely, he wanted to see Martin Allington again.

  This was in his mind when he ran into the Barfords, the parents of Sandra and Stephanie. George Barford was some sort of business man, and played golf. His wife Faith – so far as Appleby had been able to determine in a first conversational sally – just played golf. And just playing golf seemed to be the destiny of their daughters, whose schooling they now began to discuss strictly from this point of view. Did Appleby know of any suitably superior girls’ boarding-school at which golf was made the chief thing? Appleby didn’t. He had some vague information about comparative ratings in point of hockey, lacrosse, tennis. But he didn’t happen to know of a school where the girls played golf all day. The eyes of George and Faith Barford began to stray away from Appleby in search of potentially more interesting company. And Appleby had produced a final meaningless murmur preparatory to moving on when it occurred to him that the Barfords might have information about their kinsman.

  ‘Do you happen to know,’ he asked, ‘whether Martin Allington has arrived yet?’

  Mr Barford’s response to this was surprising; it consisted of a kind of short, savage bark which for a moment caused Appleby to look round for Rasselas. But Rasselas, of course, could be relied upon not to make such noises in company. The topic of golf does not particularly lend itself to savage ejaculation, and so far Appleby had failed to remark that George Barford was a man of vehement nature. But this now clearly appeared. The mention of his wife’s brother (which was presumably what Martin Allington was) had produced what could only be called a ferocious response.

  ‘Martin isn’t here yet,’ Faith Barford said. She was looking at her husband rather apprehensively, much as if he were a golf-ball in a definitely difficult lie.

  ‘Broken his rotten neck, perhaps,’ Barford said. ‘And a damned good–’

  ‘George, dear, there are Colonel and Mrs Pride. I believe they have a daughter of just Sandra’s age. We positively must speak to them.’ And Mrs Barford led her explosive husband away. She didn’t appear by nature to be a woman apt for prompt action – unless, perhaps, in the way of choosing between one approach shot and another. But necessity had constrained her, presumably, to cope with moments like this.

  Appleby moved on once more. If he had to talk to people, he would balance up on the Barfords by seeking out the Lethbridges, to whom he had already made a fleeting bow. He thought of it as balancing up presumably because there was a kind of equipollence between these two families. Faith Allington had married George Barford and presented him – during brief absences from the links – with the two daughters, Sandra and Stephanie, who had passed so instructive an afternoon at the bathing-place. Charity Allington had married Ivon Lethbridge, and for long they had been prominent names in the world of lawn tennis – so prominent in mixed doubles, indeed, that it would have been a natural expectation that their marital partnership should produce a girl and a boy. The result, in fact had been Eugene and Digby, identical twins now seemingly about fourteen years old, and at present refreshing themselves in a corner from a number of not quite empty champagne bottles. Sandra and Stephanie were observing this raffishness with awe. They had been shoved into clean frocks. They were certainly having a wonderful afternoon.

  ‘I expect your boys are keen on tennis?’ Appleby asked Ivon Lethbridge. He felt that he was beginning to pick up the right conversational tone with Owain Allington’s kinsfolk. It wouldn’t have been at all the right tone with Owain Allington himself. Perhaps this explained why it was Martin Allington who was to inherit the Park.

  ‘Keen as mustard, the idle little beggars. Can’t get them to stop. Can’t get them to open a book. School reports positively shocking. Get themselves tanned for negligent work about once a week. They don’t give a damn. Tough as they come, the graceless little brutes.’

  ‘Do you coach them yourself?’ It didn’t seem to Appleby that Lethbridge was exactly dispraising his children.

  ‘Good Lord, no. Have a fellow in for that. Caesar and the geography of South America just now. But they pay no attention to him. Laugh at him. I ought to tan them myself.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. Do you coach them at their tennis?’

  ‘Heavens, yes, Carrie takes the one, and I take the other. Turn about. Six hours a day. It’s the only method, you know. And one thing at a time. These hols, it’s top-spin. Digby’s coming on. But Eugene’s going off.’

  ‘That must be very disturbing. Perhaps he should be tanned.’

  ‘No, no.’ Ivon Lethbridge rebutted this suggestion seriously. ‘It’s like dogs, you know. Tap ‘em on the nose with a rolled newspaper, but don’t lam into them.’

  ‘I see. But Eugene doesn’t seem to have much nose to be tapped. Nor Digby, for that matter, since they’re alike as two peas. But I’m glad it’s all done by kindness.’

  ‘Of course it is.’ Appleby was aware of a glance of something like dim suspicion from Lethbridge. ‘Latin and geography are one thing. You can whack ’em in with a stick, if you think it worth the effort. But tennis is an altogether more delicate affair. Here’s Carrie. Carrie, Sir John is keen to know how to teach kids tennis.’

  ‘Uphill work in our family.’ Charity Lethbridge was a large and ruddy woman with a loud and jolly laugh. She was producing this laugh now. To Appleby there came a distinct remembrance that her game had been based on an annihilating first serve, backed at need by ferocious forehand drives. And she certainly didn’t seem a woman who made any very subtle approach to things now. ‘Ghastly little bookworms,’ she said amid further laughter. ‘You can hardly drag them on the court.’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear it.’ Lethbridge père et mère, it seemed to Appleby, held markedly divergent views on what constituted an excessive addiction to intellectual pursuits. But no dispute now ensued. As with many happy married couples, neither probably paid much attention to what the other said. ‘Eugene and Digby,’ Appleby went on, ‘must be very good companions for their cousins. Sandra and Stephanie also strike me as thoughtful children.’

  ‘That’s the egg-head strain in the Allingtons.’ Mrs Lethbridge made this announcement amid gusts of laughter, but nevertheless managed to convey that she was now touching upon a sort of hereditary family taint, like epilepsy, or haemophilia, or one of the larger lunacies. ‘They used to say that my uncle Owain was a scientific genius – although, of course, he did retire from it. And Martin was always brainy. Do you know my brother Martin? It was what made him so nasty, we always thought.’

  ‘Martin?’ It seemed that Ivon Lethbridge had just caught the name. ‘Hasn’t turned up. Inside, probably.’

  ‘But we are inside.’ Appleby produced this misunderstanding with the largest innocence. It seemed to be the Allington habit to speak disagreeably about other Allingtons to virtual strangers. Perhaps it was another inherite
d frailty, like the sporadic outcropping of brains. ‘You mean that Martin may be in another room?’

  ‘Quod. Jug. Clink.’ This time it was Ivon Lethbridge who laughed – as if there was something wonderfully funny in offering these colloquial terms for a place of incarceration. ‘These breath tests. They’re going to get chaps like Martin every time.’

  ‘Uncle Owain would have heard by now. Because of going to bail him out.’ Mrs Lethbridge positively roared with laughter this time. She seemed to have resented her husband’s emulating her in merriment. ‘Unless he’s calling himself John Smith or William Brown.’

  ‘You can’t get away with that nowadays.’ Ivon Lethbridge shook his head, and for a moment appeared to meditate a reminiscent and nostalgic note. ‘Not if there’s a car in the case.’ Lethbridge suddenly lowered his voice – or at least produced a token effect of this. And at the same time he winked at Appleby. ‘Better a fast woman than a fast car – eh, old boy? It’s the old-fashioned pleasures that never let you down.’

  Appleby was perhaps more offended at being addressed as ‘old boy’ than he was by the lubricious and indecorous character of this sentiment. He was also getting tired of hearing about Martin Allington as a drunk – and indeed he was getting tired of Allingtons as a clan. So he said a few words more, and then moved on – having made a polite bow to Mrs Lethbridge and offered Mr Lethbridge a fairly frigid smile.

  ‘Chin-chin,’ Lethbridge said cheerfully. He wasn’t offended, and Appleby felt rebuked. A decent, vulgar soul, from one of our best public schools, who knew that it is only tennis balls that you tan on a tennis court. Not that it was possible to feel much curiosity about him. Eugene and Digby might be more interesting. Were they, in a secret way, clever boys, in whom was beginning to smoulder an intellectual arrogance, a contempt for the flailing racket, for the flying ball with its everlasting top-spin six hours a day? Or were they untroubled philistines, like Mum and Dad? It would be quite amusing to know. But, just at the moment, tight on flat champagne and showing off to their younger cousins, Eugene and Digby mightn’t be at their best. It would be unfair to investigate.

  Appleby went in search of Judith, and of Wilfred Osborne. It was his turn to be firm. The party was over. And henceforth there would be only intermittent and rather formal contacts between Dream Manor and Allington Park.

  11

  As they left Allington, Judith took the wheel.

  ‘Which way?’ she asked. ‘John, would you like me to take the other drive: the one you came and went by last night?’

  ‘I don’t think so. It was pretty bumpy. I’d rather go out as we came in this afternoon, straight down the lake-side. I’m not sure that I wasn’t being defective as what you call a man of observation as we drove up.’

  Judith made no reply, but turned the car in the direction indicated. Wilfred Osborne was carrying a pair of embroidered carpet-slippers, a random purchase at which he was now looking without confidence.

  ‘An enjoyable afternoon,’ he said. ‘Pleasant to wander round the old place. And Allington isn’t a bad fellow.’

  ‘He’s better than some of his relations,’ Appleby said.

  ‘Well, of course, they’re rather urbansouls – those Leatherbreeches and Bartenders, or whatever they’re called.’ Osborne seemed to have produced these names in honest vagueness, and without derogatory intention. ‘As for Martin Allington, we’ve had no fresh impression of him. He didn’t turn up. But all very pleasant, as I say. Nice to see poor old Scrape enjoying himself. Decent chap.’

  ‘Wilfred, are you being quite honest?’ Judith exercised some caution in edging past a final band of stragglers from the fête. ‘Seeing all these Allingtons, don’t you rather feel the incursion of the lion and the lizard?’

  ‘Of the what, my dear?’

  ‘They say the Lion and the Lizard keep

  The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep.’

  ‘Oh that!’ Osborne was delighted that his memory now reached out to this learned citation. ‘There were Allingtons there long before there were Osbornes, after all.’

  ‘But doesn’t that, in fact, make it more annoying?’

  ‘I really believe it does.’ Osborne’s pleasure this time was in being presented with so surprising a piece of psychological penetration. ‘When I sold the place, I was at particular pains to make it appear otherwise. And I think I really felt that way at the time. It was a satisfaction that, since I had to sell, the purchaser came from that family. But now – yes, it’s perfectly true. I’d prefer an entirely new chap.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t talk about Pax in bello.’

  ‘Fair enough, my dear. But he meant no harm. Lived all his days among test-tubes and things. And you can’t speak out of turn to a test-tube. Lovely light on the lake now.’

  ‘Wilfred’ – it seemed to Appleby that Judith was in one of her perverse moods – ‘if you knew where that treasure was, would you agree to you and me stealing in one night with dark lanterns and things, and nobbling it?’

  ‘Of course not!’ This time, Osborne was really amused. At the same time he peered out, first at the surface of the lake and then up and down the drive, as if suddenly tempted to a very easy way of getting rid of the carpet-slippers. ‘I wouldn’t mind breaking into the house, you know, and making away with all that Georgian silver, with heaven knows whose crests and arms and mottoes, which one feels Allington has simply picked up in sale-rooms. But the treasure – not that it exists – is another matter. Very much Allington property, that must be. Their wealth poured out for the King, and all that, while the Osbornes were running up and down Cheapside, doing a brisk trade in continental armour for Cromwell’s New Model Army. That’s what they called it, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I think so. But I expect the greater part of the treasure wasn’t Allington wealth, at all. It would have been amassed here from all sorts of sources.’

  ‘If it were to turn up, I’d think it ought to go to Owain Allington, all the same.’

  ‘The coroner would have to sit on the stuff first,’ Appleby said. ‘As he’ll have to do on poor Mr Knockdown.’

  ‘John, that reminds me.’ Judith was still driving cautiously down the drive. ‘Did you tell the Chief Constable–’

  ‘Of course. I named his corpse as Leofranc Knockdown, an electrical enthusiast from out Potton way. Pride was dumbfounded. He clearly thought I’d had computers and things hurried down from Scotland Yard. But he was very decently grateful.’

  ‘And will now be eating out of the hand?’

  ‘Oh, decidedly. He’s quite a decent chap, your Tommy Pride.’

  ‘It’s astonishing,’ Judith said, ‘how many quite decent chaps there are in these parts. Wilfred goes in for them quite a lot. And now you.’

  ‘Judith, will you pull up?’ Appleby had spoken quite abruptly. ‘Get the car on the verge if you can. You won’t chew it up more than it has been chewed up already.’

  They had been about to emerge on the high road, which ran at right-angles to the drive. The lake, close on their left, was narrowing to the final deep point at which there flowed into it, beneath the road and through a low, unnoticeable bridge, the slow-moving stream by which it was fed. And now they were standing on the brink, staring out over the water. But not staring very far. For what was on view on the surface, perhaps less than fifteen yards away, was a large, darkly iridescent patch of oil. It had the appearance of having broken up some time before, and patches of it could be seen drifting slowly on a diagonal course down and across the lake.

  ‘We were right about the explanation of the oily boy,’ Appleby said slowly. ‘He bobbed up through one of these. But what do you think is under that big patch now?’

  ‘A fractured pipe of some sort,’ Judith suggested.

  ‘Or something entirely natural.’ Wilfred Osborne contributed this. ‘I believe small pockets of oil can exist in the soil here and there, and that it needn’t in the least mean any extensive deposit below. You sometimes see it bubbling up in a
sluggish stream, and perhaps take it for marsh gas, or something like that.’

  ‘Not on a scale like this,’ Appleby said.

  ‘You’re quite right.’ Osborne spoke soberly, and after a moment’s thought. ‘Judith may have guessed correctly about a fractured pipe. But – By God, John! – it’s a fractured pipe in a motor vehicle.’

  ‘I’m afraid so. In fact, we’re looking at the only visible sign of a nasty accident. And goodness knows when it happened. The oil may have escaped instantly, or only after several days. It’s certain that a patch of it would take at least an hour or so to get anywhere near Richard Cyphus and his friends at the bathing-place. One can tell no more than that.’

  ‘It can’t have been visible for very long,’ Judith said. ‘With all this coming and going to the fête, somebody would have been sure to notice it. We’d have noticed it as we arrived.’

  ‘I doubt the certainty of that very much.’ Appleby was looking broodingly at the sluggish, and now strangely sinister, patch. ‘It’s not all that large or noticeable.’

  ‘John, could it have been what that young man – Tristram Travis, I mean – was really looking at through his field glasses? He certainly wasn’t honestly after birds.’

  ‘Nor a bird, either – if Miss Junkin may be described as one. But why should Travis be studying this – and keep mum about it? Your mind’s hawking after melodrama again.’

  ‘He was scanning this end of the lake. I remember that.’

  ‘And talking about something, or pointing something out.’

  ‘The mess made by the lorries of the son et lumière people. And a gate, which he said they had knocked off its hinges. But I didn’t think that was right. The gate had just been lifted off, and moved away.’

  ‘To give heavy stuff an easier turn in and out,’ Osborne said. ‘But it would increase the risk of an accident, with the verge of the lake so near. Deep, too. It’s why, long ago, I had that gate hung the way it is. You’ll see.’