Appleby at Allington

by Michael Innes

  ‘Not in situ, any longer. But we’ll get the idea. Now, just where have they shoved it? It certainly wasn’t in its right place when we drove in. I’d have noticed that.’

  ‘So you would,’ Judith said. ‘And there it is.’

  The gate had simply been carried off to the other side of the drive, and deposited on the turf a few yards back. Appleby inspected it, inspected the firmly based post from which it commonly hung, and then went back and stared at the water.

  ‘We’re not talking sense,’ he said abruptly. ‘It isn’t all that dangerous. Who in his senses would have something thoroughly hazardous at one of the two principal entrances to his grounds?’

  ‘John, something might have gone in.’ Judith was poking around at the edge of the lake. ‘Things going up and down have really been going awfully close.’

  ‘My dear girl, that’s quite a different matter from clutching your steering-wheel and making a bee-line for the spot where all that oil now is. But I’ll grant you one thing. If anybody had done that – suicidally, say – the mess here is such that you couldn’t easily find the marks of it. Certainly not if it was a little time ago. Before all the heavy stuff being trundled out this morning, for instance.’ He turned back to the gate and stared at it. ‘Bother the dumb thing!’ he said. ‘I believe it’s trying to tell me something.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Judith said, ‘to suggest appropriate action.’

  ‘That, of course.’ Appleby shook his head grimly. ‘But whatever has happened, a further five minutes is going to make no difference to it now. Has Pride left the Park, did you notice?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He and his wife must be about the last people there. Apart from all those relations.’

  ‘Wilfred, do you mind?’ Appleby turned to Osborne. ‘There’s almost certainly something here for the police. The simplest thing will be to go back to the house. And Allington should know at once, too. For let’s face it.’

  ‘Face it, my dear John?’ There was dismay in Osborne’s voice.

  ‘If there’s anybody down there’ – and Appleby pointed into the lake – ‘it’s a little more likely – wouldn’t you say? – to be the missing Martin Allington than anybody else.’

  ‘But why should–’

  ‘He’s said to be quite a bit of a drunk, for one thing. It’s claimed as something of a factor in motor accidents, from time to time.’ Appleby realized he had spoken impatiently. ‘I’m sorry, Wilfred. There’s something else in my mind, and I just can’t lay a finger on it. But I keep on feeling that it’s about that gate.’

  ‘We can find out about just who moved it,’ Judith said. ‘And when, and why.’

  ‘Yes, almost certainly we can do that.’ Appleby paused. ‘As you know, I never drove into the Park by this route until today. But I’ve been along this road often enough. And somehow–’ He broke off.

  ‘My dear fellow, it’s bound to come back to you.’ Osborne offered this consolingly. ‘And now, we’d better get this unfortunate news off our chests. Too bad, if there’s really been a fatal accident. One yesterday and one today would make a pretty poor show.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Appleby said. ‘And unfortunately you never can tell when that sort of thing is going to stop.’

  Part Two

  Twelve o’clock and Two o’clock

  1

  Martin Allington seemed not to have changed much – except that, this time, there was to be no struggle back to life again. Resuscitation had been attempted – it always is with the drowned – but from the first it was clear that he had been dead for some time. Probably – or so the police surgeon now declared – he had been dead for many hours.

  He hadn’t changed. He was the same young man – or almost young man – who had nearly died as the sequel to some discreditable and bungled exploit a few years ago. This time he had died. And Appleby, as he glanced at the body for the last time before they finally drew a sheet over it and shoved it in the ambulance, supposed there must have been something discreditable in this exploit too. Nothing criminally so – except, indeed, that it is highly criminal to be driving a powerful car when drunk. And drunk he must have been. No man, when sober, could have produced a miscalculation that would so send his vehicle and himself like a projectile into the lake.

  It was true that the steering might have failed at a critical moment. The accident could certainly have been produced by that. Or conceivably a sudden failure of the brakes might have had the same effect, although this seemed less likely. All that would have to be investigated. They had managed to hoist the car out of the lake now, and it was lying on the other side of the drive, with a constable standing guard over it. It was covered in mud and its own oil; it was festooned with duckweed. Otherwise, there didn’t seem to be much wrong with it. After it had been poked about in for the coroner’s benefit, it might well run again. It was a smart as well as powerful affair: a coupé (which was why the man inside hadn’t had a chance) that would look well in a second-hand saleroom. Another proud owner might take that wheel – and never know anything about this small, unfortunate occasion.

  Martin Allington would also be poked about in for the coroner’s benefit. It happens to anybody who isn’t careful to die in a totally explicable manner in his bed. His breath – Appleby told himself – had been challenged for the last time: down there, and as he struggled to free himself beneath six feet of water. But there were other tests. Alcohol would have stopped oxidizing more or less at the moment of death. Or it would break down in a different way and at a different tempo. The coroner would sagely listen to scientific evidence on this. And if anything proved to turn on it – which seemed unlikely – one expert would testify against another. Nothing of which would help the poor devil who had come to this nasty end.

  Two deaths by misadventure… Appleby walked slowly up the drive to Allington Park again. Judith was still there, and Wilfred Osborne. It would be necessary to speak further decent words to Owain Allington – who had by now, perhaps, begun to recover from the state of shock into which the first news had plunged him. It might even be necessary to speak again to the Barfords and the Lethbridges, who might conceivably be embarrassed at the memory of the somewhat uncharitable comments they had made upon a kinsman who, as it had turned out, was no longer among the living. But perhaps the Barfords and Lethbridges weren’t like that. What did sudden death mean in the context of the golf links and the tennis court? Match point against Martin. Martin’s last bunker… These bizarre phrases turned themselves over in Appleby’s mind as he walked – which was a sign that something was worrying him.

  Two deaths by misadventure… And two something else…

  The detritus of the fête was all over the place. Ice-cream cartons and toffee papers were chiefly prominent, but there were surprising variations on this simple theme. The bathing-tent which had afforded a sibylline shrine for the prophetic Miss Pyefinch had been taken down, but its decorations had become detached in the process, so that sphinxes’ heads, broomsticks, cauldrons, owls, and similar popular symbols of the forbidden and arcane, all in brightly coloured paper, were flapping over the terrace in a dismal manner. Mr Scrape’s marquee stood open-ended and untenanted, like a large white whale waiting torpidly for its Jonah. Here and there, children had been sick and unauthorized dogs had relieved themselves. It was probably Rasselas who was most aware of these latter disturbances. It was evident that he took an offended view of them.

  The surviving company were clumped in a large glass-sheathed loggia at the south-west corner of the house. It afforded an excellent view of the lake. One might have supposed that everybody felt a morbid reluctance to turn away from the placid, lethal scene. Only Sandra and Stephanie, Digby and Eugene were not visible. Probably they had been sent to bed. Appleby recalled that, after the first pervasive consternation of discovery, a somewhat unrealistic policy of ‘keeping it from the children’ had been determined upon by the Barford and Lethbridge parents. So the juveniles had doubtless been tucked up early, wi
th approved books to read. Digby had Bobby Plays for the School and Eugene had Bobby Goes to Wimbledon. Stephanie was reading aloud to Sandra a stirring romance called Priscilla’s Great Round. Such works of edification certainly existed for the young.

  This idle speculation was interrupted by Owain Allington. He came hurriedly along the terrace to intercept Appleby, and led him down a short flight of steps into a small sunken garden with a pool in the middle. It was a depressingly well-groomed place, all immaculate turf in sharp-edged oblongs, with here and there simpering infants cast in lead and perched on low pedestals. Allington drew Appleby to a marble bench.

  ‘Pride has gone away,’ he said. ‘He felt he must take his wife home. But he’s coming back.’

  ‘I see.’ Appleby supposed that the Chief Constable must be among Allington’s intimate friends, and wished to be with him through his first distress.

  ‘And I’m equally glad you haven’t left yourself. I hope Lady Appleby doesn’t mind. I’ve told Enzo there must be something quite simple for everyone at eight o’clock. I hope you and Pride will get together. Two professional views – even highly competent views, as I need hardly say I know them both to be – are better than one. I rely on you both.’

  ‘I hardly think–’ Appleby broke off, mildly astonished. ‘You think there is really some element of mystery in your nephew’s death?’

  ‘Of course there is! Foul play, Appleby. We can be frank now, I imagine, about where poor Martin’s work lay? One needn’t, if you like, actually name the branch of Intelligence. But there it was – and you must know, far better than I do, the sort of hazards it can bring. Martin has been murdered. Because he knew something. And I won’t rest until the murderer is caught.’

  ‘I can’t say that it seems more than a very remote possibility to me.’ Appleby was reflecting that too many people appeared to want to take a melodramatic view of events at Allington. ‘But, of course, even remote possibilities must be considered.’ He had added this rather hastily. It had occurred to him that Owain Allington might be a little off his head. As well as losing a nephew, he had lost an heir. And that side of his having recovered his old family property did appear to have become obsessive with him. If he now believed that in some incredible way Martin and his car could have been shoved bodily into the lake – and his theory seemed to imply this – then he had better be handled pretty gently for a time.

  ‘And I know you’re the man to find the truth.’ Allington was now speaking in a low voice which enhanced the suggestion of something not quite normal. ‘You solved that business last night, when these local people hadn’t a clue. A man called Knockdown, Pride says. I’d never heard of him. Mad on electricity. But all that doesn’t matter now. That poor devil’s neither here or there. It’s Martin’s death you must work on.’

  ‘If I can help, of course I’ll be glad.’ Appleby spoke absently. Two deaths by misadventure, he was thinking. And two something else.

  But again whatever was hovering in his head eluded him. And he was aware that Allington had got restlessly to his feet again.

  ‘We’ll go up,’ Allington said. ‘You’ll want to begin questioning them all.’

  ‘My dear man!’ Appleby was dismayed by this fantastic suggestion. And he snatched – not very usefully, he suspected – at a rational argument. ‘If you believe your nephew has died within a context of professional espionage, there wouldn’t be much point in my–’

  ‘Don’t think I’m not aware of the other possibilities, too. Wasn’t Martin to be my heir? To have all this?’ Allington made a sudden, wild gesture. It was alarming, but also farcical, since inadvertently it seemed directed at the overformal little garden and the foolish leaden putti. His voice rose a pitch. ‘So don’t they all hate him?’

  And Owain Allington turned and walked away. He stumbled a little as he climbed the small flight of shallow steps again. It was as if, for a moment, he was actually disabled by some access of emotion. Appleby followed him, and they walked in silence to the loggia. Yes, there was no doubt about the emotion. It vibrated in the air. But what really occasioned it, and at what it was truly directed, Appleby didn’t think he knew.

  The loggia was crammed with that sort of garishly coloured and over-stuffed furniture, much of it elaborately suspended on massive springs, that prosperous persons judge appropriate in such places. The champagne phase of the party having so disastrously concluded, gin had supervened. Several bottles of it, flanked by sundry alternative concomitants, stood on a side-table. Every now and then a Lethbridge or a Barford managed (being of athletic habit) to struggle out of one or another swaying or bucketing contraption to seek further comfort from this source. Wilfred Osborne appeared to have found some tonic water, and also a window ledge on which it was possible to sit in a more or less upright posture. He had his most relaxed and diffidently amiable air – which meant (Appleby felt he now knew) that he was taking a poor view of things. In one corner, and with a franker appearance of having contracted out, Hope Allington and Mr Tristram Travis conversed together in low tones. It was touching, Appleby thought, that Miss Allington should thus still seem solicitous to put at his ease the young man who had barged in and who didn’t know what to do with his feet. Perhaps it was a little surprising that, in the distressing family situation which had arisen, Travis hadn’t judged it proper to barge out again. Appleby decided that, if any investigating was going to be done, it might well begin in this quarter. So he went over and addressed Travis.

  ‘I’ve been wondering,’ he said, ‘about something you probably have the answer to. Which is the oldest part of the lake? Down here, by the house and castle?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Travis appeared to give the matter some thought. ‘In fact, definitely not. The original lake was probably not much more than a pool – a deep pool – up near the present bridge. Miss Allington, do you know?’

  ‘No, Mr Travis, I don’t. But that would be my guess. The stream would flow out of the pool just as it flowed in, and wander through what is now the park. Then they built some sort of embankment or dam, and did other bits of fiddling around, and the present lake was the result. I believe that’s how ornamental waters were usually created. As at Blenheim, for example.’

  ‘I see.’ Appleby changed the subject. ‘Your uncle says that Colonel Pride is coming back. It seems to be a relief to him. Your brother’s death has been a great shock to him – as it must be to you all.’

  ‘Sir John,’ Hope Allington said, ‘may Mr Travis get you a drink?’

  ‘Thank you, no.’ Appleby felt almost shaken by this steely response to his last remark. ‘Your uncle feels that in Martin’s death there may be a good deal that should be investigated.’

  ‘That was probably true of Martin’s life as well.’

  ‘I say!’ Travis broke in. ‘I think I ought to be getting along. Been butting in, rather.’

  Appleby judged this belated discovery unimpressive. It had sprung, one could almost feel, from a momentary failure of nerve. And this seemed to be Miss Allington’s view.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ she said curtly, and turned back to Appleby. ‘I didn’t know my brother very intimately,’ she said. ‘But at least I knew he was a bad hat. Investigation, as you call it, will produce nothing to his credit. My uncle will do well to leave the memory of the heir of Allington alone.’

  It wasn’t easy to reply to this – the more so, since Appleby suspected it to be true. He took another good look at Hope. She was young, beautiful, and possessed in particular of so attractive a voice that anything shocking she said sounded more shocking still.

  ‘That about the oldest part of the lake,’ she said. ‘Was that part of your investigating Martin’s death?’

  ‘Miss Allington, I must make it quite clear that I am not investigating Martin’s death.’ As he said this, Appleby was constrained to wonder fleetingly whether it was true. And this doubt made him bold. ‘In my opinion, the only mystery at Allington at present may be a tolerably harmless one
.’ He turned to Travis. ‘It must be harmless, or you wouldn’t have guyed it so light-heartedly from the first moment we met.’

  ‘I’m very irresponsible,’ Travis said. If he had been alarmed, this had subsided. He was quite cheerful again. Indeed, he was more cheerful than, in the circumstances, he ought to have been. Not that Miss Allington, Appleby added to himself, was much disposed to strike the note of family mourning. And what Miss Allington produced now was an exclamation of impatience.

  ‘Tristram is quite useless,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think that I agree, Miss Allington. And I think you do well to be dropping the pretence too.’

  ‘What do you mean – dropping the pretence?’

  ‘The pretence that you and Mr Travis aren’t as thick as thieves.’

  ‘Thieves, Sir John?’ Miss Allington looked coldly at Appleby. ‘Isn’t that rather an offensive expression?’

  ‘It’s a mere colloquialism. The point is that of course he’s Tristram to you, and you are Hope to him. And you are up to something together. But, in the light of what has now happened, it just won’t do. Mr Travis is a highly intelligent young man. They’ve been telling him so, I don’t doubt, since his private school – so once more won’t exactly turn his head. He sees that two unnatural deaths about the place make a change of plan necessary. The whole atmosphere at Allington has changed. Policemen – including Colonel Pride and myself – are on the prowl. You two have been in some sort of conspiracy, but with the feeling that you have plenty of room for manoeuvre. Up to some last moment, no doubt, it could be represented as a mere family joke, if something went wrong about it. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Sir John, you are talking in the most extravagant way. Tristram, isn’t that so?’