Hamlet Revenge!

by Michael Innes

  ‘…there shall be done

  A deed of dreadful note.’

  The words had been from Macbeth. And the deed had been treason.

  ‘Better knock,’ said Appleby, pausing coolly before Gervase’s door. He knocked; there was no answer. He turned the handle and walked in. Darkness. He flicked on the light. There was no sign of Gervase Crispin in the bedroom; the dressing-room and bathroom were empty too. Without wasting a moment, and perfectly methodically, he began to search the room. ‘Perhaps the Duke’s gone queer in the head,’ he said presently. But his search was ruthless and the remark – half whimsical, perhaps, and half apologetic in intention – rang harshly when it was uttered. And then he put the case plainly. ‘Gervase Crispin shoots Auldearn, gets the document, suggests searching Auldearn’s room, leaves you there, and hurries to his own. He takes the photograph – perhaps gets the plate off to a confederate – and then returns to the hall and manages to get the document into the scroll. It seems to hold.’

  Gott was analysing this in a flash. ‘It won’t hold. If he had a confederate waiting somewhere up here, he would surely give him camera and all: it couldn’t be got away too soon. And he would have no reason to be fiddling with the camera afterwards when Scamnum was teeming with policemen. And if he had no confederate to get the thing away he would be taking a frightful risk. If the search in the hall had been followed by a search in his room – and there was half a pointer that way, for he had been out – he would have been caught.’

  ‘There was more than half a pointer, Giles. And – Lord help me! – I missed it. As for frightful risk, frightful risks enough have been taken in Scamnum tonight; think of trundling Bose’s body past all these bedroom doors! But tell me about Gervase straight, while I finish this rummage. Then, if he doesn’t return, we must be after him.’

  ‘If there’s anything in this, then when I spoke of nightmare I spoke too soon. He’s a Crispin. Indeed, as I said, he’s the Crispin. And they’re at the heart of England. It’s fantastic.’

  Suddenly, and while still searching like an automaton, Appleby spoke with something like passion. ‘York’s the heart of England – and Stratford and Preston, perhaps, and Huddersfield. Scamnum! …didn’t you say yourself it was a show-case – and the Duke and his fish and his pigs show-case stuff, too? And what’s the real Crispin, this Gervase’s Crispin? We were talking about grab – isn’t that him? The honourable history of grab. First hundred years – grab in England and Holland; second hundred years – grab about Europe, India, and the Levant; third hundred years – grab round the planet! Gervase is big at his game – really big, I grant – and that’s where something of the incredible comes in. But the heart of England is sob-stuff. Gervase is money, the root and heart of money. And for all I know his home and his allegiance may be wherever money spawns quickest at the moment. I’ve no more reason to trust him than I have a labourer out in the Crispin fields – less, in fact.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were a Jacobin, John.’

  ‘No more I am. I’m probably violently reactionary. Even when Hamlet was being written Crispin was still Crippen, pushing a trade honest men didn’t favour. But all that’s irrelevant. Here’s my point, though. I know almost nothing about this document that’s in my pocket now, and I probably wouldn’t learn much more if I sat straight down to study it. It’s about international industrial organization, as far as I can gather, and it may be far more a matter just of Grab than of the Union Jack. It was put to me in terms of this country and that, and with rumours of conflict in the background. But I know that once one touches the fringes of an affair like this, one is fated to work half in the dark. For all I know it may be just a racket that’s going to cripple Gervase in Germany or Gervase in North Africa – that sort of thing. And you can’t deny that the Duke, having been smart enough to see the significance of a camera, was sufficiently impressed to come forward – rather heroically – with the story. He may know that the document is in some way connected with Gervase’s interests, which would be a reason for his instant extreme concern. And I’m not sure that I wasn’t given half a hint not to trust…well, the family.’ Appleby was thinking of the Prime Minister’s remark about not trusting even the Archbishop of Canterbury.

  ‘But mightn’t Gervase be in on the document-business anyway?’

  ‘Not necessarily. He’s not in the Cabinet, for instance. But tell me about him – as a private person, I mean – while I prod this sybaritic spring-mattress.’

  Gott considered gloomily. ‘Gervase has the family feeling for a role,’ he said. ‘In the play he took Osric and the second Grave-digger, and that more or less represents what the Terborg girl calls his persona: something midway between the fantastic and the buffoon. His jokes have deliberately no sense to them; you know the sort? But one is aware all the time that he is the able banker and all the rest of it; one would be aware of something of the kind at a first meeting and without knowing anything about him. As for the rest, the Russian woman is his mistress–’

  ‘Ah, the heart of England again. Go on.’

  Gott smiled. ‘Certainly it adds a neat touch to the cosmopolitan-villain picture. It’s a recent affair, but I believe honourable enough or she wouldn’t be here. The Duchess is ironical about it but actually approves. They can’t marry I understand, because she has a husband in a mad-house.’

  ‘It looks rather as if she had a lover in one too. Tell me more about them, if you can.’

  ‘There’s something a little puzzling about their relationship. Nave, for instance, was questioning it the other day. He has a nose for the psychopathic that he would do better to keep for his consulting-room. And – though I knew the story – I didn’t discuss it with him. The point is, I understand, that Gervase doesn’t in any sense keep the Merkalova. She’s an independent creature, contriving to make some sort of living out of fashionable journalism, and she’s temperamentally a virginal creature as well, so that it is one of these affairs that are laced with long-term platonics. It was the feel of that, perhaps, that baffled Nave.’

  For a moment Appleby had looked startled. ‘It’s just possible–’ He checked himself as if before a hazy speculation. ‘But it’s interesting about Nave. After all, he’s a professional observer. What exactly did he think about them?’

  Gott hesitated. ‘It may have been his idea that they had less the air of lovers than of colleagues. But–’

  ‘But you think – being full of reactionary prejudice yourself – that Nave would be baffled before anything outside farmyard relations. Maybe so. And here, surely, is friend Gervase returning.’ Appleby punched the mattress and looked calmly round the ransacked room. ‘I’m afraid that – like Wilkie Collins’ traveller – he’s going to find a Terribly Strange Bed.’

  Footsteps had made themselves heard in the corridor. They ceased and there came a half-hearted – almost an inattentive – rat-tat. Appleby wrinkled his nose in disgust. And then the door opened and admitted Max Cope. ‘I’m seeking Gervase,’ he said placidly and with something of the North Country idiom it had always pleased him to retain. ‘It’s Gervase I’m seeking. Have you seen him, Gott? Is he about?’ He advanced into the room and stopped to contemplate the cascading pile of rifled bedclothes in the middle of the floor. ‘How very, very pretty!’ he said – and sat down and nodded his own lovely and cascading white beard.

  For a moment it seemed as if this irruption of another Scamnum exhibit was too much for Appleby. Then he spoke briskly. ‘I’m glad you like it; it’s the lighting, no doubt, that gives the effect. Did you know that Mr Bose is dead?’

  Cope looked dreadfully upset. ‘Bose – the little dusky fellow who moved so well? Dear me, how dreadfully sudden!’

  ‘Bose was murdered – too.’

  ‘Worse and worse,’ said Max Cope; ‘worse and worse. It makes it much more dreadful. One wonders could a girl…could a girl, one asks oneself…’ He pau
sed doubtfully, looked very seriously at Appleby. ‘You see, before I say anything to the police I feel I should consult Gervase. I should ask Gervase, I think, before speaking to the police. Don’t you think, Mr–?’

  ‘Appleby,’ said Appleby.

  ‘Appleby,’ said Cope. ‘Appleby – quite so.’ His eyes strayed to Gott – and lit up. He wagged a cunning finger. ‘The oyster-wife, you see. I kept the oyster-wife in mind. And then there she was!’ He gave what in another man would have been a leer – for beauty still hung oddly over all Max Cope’s gestures – and then he chuckled crazily. Suddenly he stopped, his eyes widening on Appleby. ‘But didn’t you arrange that search? The search – wasn’t it you–’

  ‘Yes,’ said Appleby.

  ‘I see.’ Cope turned to Gott. ‘Gott, this is a policeman. And little Bose is dead…where’s Gervase?’

  ‘Missing but not, we hope, very far away.’ Gott felt as baffled before Cope as Nave had felt before his problematical lovers. He wondered if this quasi-lunatic discussion was evoking in Appleby the irrational irritation that it was evoking in himself. Nevertheless he continued civilly: ‘You wanted him very much?’

  ‘He seemed the best person. Gervase seemed best. One must be so careful these days. I mean, there’s just a suspicion of a thing and then they write about it. The mere suspicion might ruin the girl. The girl might be ruined–’

  ‘What girl?’ asked Gott – positively sternly.

  Cope stared. ‘Diana Sandys, of course. Gervase seemed–’

  Appleby made a big effort to control the proceedings. ‘Diana Sandys – one of the players? Mr Cope, tell me please, what is this about Diana Sandys? What about her?’

  For a moment Cope seemed scared by the concentration behind the question; scared or simply, perhaps, lost and confused. ‘Diana Sandys? Oh, no bone – don’t you feel? No interesting bony structure. Pretty and illustrative…determination or something of the sort. Pressure about the mouth…’ And as Appleby was on the point of giving up Cope seemed suddenly to emerge. Quite simply he said: ‘She burnt something, you see.’

  In the little silence that followed Appleby was aware that this rambling old person, as he made his announcement, was eyeing him intently. And as if to avoid reciprocal scrutiny Cope now ambled across the room and into shadow, to sit down and fidget by Gervase’s rummaged desk. ‘Burnt something,’ he repeated with a species of gently imbecile guile. ‘The child burnt something. And what, we wonder, did the child burn?’

  How many of the pleasant people who had gathered at Scamnum – it suddenly came to Gott – were going to be pleasant no longer? Twelve hours ago Max Cope had been crazy and wholly amusing; now he appeared crazy and not a little nasty. Perhaps the nastiness was not in Cope; perhaps it was a poison in the air, a distorting medium that would soon people these stately rooms with knaves, a destructive element that would overwhelm all normal human confidence and make honest people eye each other with suspicion and fear. An exclamation of impatience was on his lips when he was prevented by Appleby – and by Appleby’s favourite phrase.

  ‘Tell me about it, will you?’

  And ramblingly, repetitively Cope told. While the players had been waiting about the hall and shortly before the arrival of Appleby, one of the Terborg twins – he couldn’t remember which, not that they were in the least indistinguishable as people maintained – one of the twins had remarked that there was sure to be a thorough police search. Whereupon Diana Sandys had said, ‘I simply must have a cigarette,’ and – though nobody was smoking – had gone off to one of the dressing-rooms to get her cigarette-case. And Cope had followed – followed, as he said, simply because it would be kind to hint that nobody had thought it proper to smoke. But on sticking his head round the corner of a curtain he had observed her applying a match not to a cigarette but to several small sheets of paper. And on this it had come to Cope, apparently, that Miss Sandys was what he called the oyster-wife, the person who had been responsible for the ‘Hamlet, Revenge!’ messages. The notion of a police search having been suggested to her she was hastening, he supposed, to rid herself of a little stock of similar messages. What it bad to do with Auldearn’s death he didn’t know. But there it was.

  ‘You thought it was messages?’ asked Appleby – and continued evenly: ‘It didn’t occur to you that she might be burning notes made from the document?’

  Cope’s eye, he felt, was again narrowing upon him. But Cope’s voice came out of the shadows in helpless bewilderment. ‘Document, Mr–?’

  Appleby sighed. ‘And you thought you must speak to Mr Gervase Crispin about it? You hadn’t by any chance an appointment with him?’ The question was shot out.

  ‘An appointment with Gervase? Dear me, no – I thought it would be wise to speak to him. If the poor girl had been perpetrating this joke…and then if this had happened…’ Cope, fidgeting still at the desk, allowed his voice to falter into bewilderment and silence.

  ‘I see. But Mr Crispin doesn’t seem to be coming back. I think, Mr Cope, you should stop worrying now and go to your room for a little sleep. You will be able to consult him in the morning.’

  And he humoured the aged painter like a tired child from the room. But when he turned back it was to exclaim: ‘I wonder!’ He took a turn about the room. ‘A fresh trail? A red herring? A deep game of some sort? Giles, is the old rascal as daft as he appears?’

  ‘I think he’s daft all right. But he might be up to a deep game all the same. But what? Is he telling lies about this girl?’

  ‘And in with Gervase? You know while he was rambling away I thought he was sizing me up with a pretty queer concentration.’

  Gott started. ‘I rather imagine–’ He crossed over to the desk and came back holding a piece of paper. ‘A habit of Cope’s,’ he said, ‘and accounts for the calculating eye. And it’s worth about thirty guineas, so hold on to it.’

  Appleby stared dumbfounded at the vigorous pencil impression of John Appleby. He read the inscription: ‘With best wishes for good hunting – M C.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ said Appleby, swearing for the second time in Gott’s knowledge. ‘Of all the nights.’

  Gott crossed to the window and drew back the curtain.

  ‘Getting on for dawn,’ he said. ‘The dawn, ah God, the dawn – it comes too soon.’

  7

  Appleby caught at a suggestion from the aubade. ‘I suppose that’s where Gervase is,’ he said. ‘With the lady.’

  ‘Perhaps. But as I said–’

  ‘Quite so. And they may be just colleagues. But in any case we must try to get hold of him. He’s the centre of the picture still, despite this story of Cope’s. Question is – who’s to fetch him?’

  Gott considered. ‘You might use the telephone. “Mme Merkalova? – may I speak to Mr Gervase Crispin?” But it seems indelicate. The obvious person to send is the Duke, but I think the Duke might be spared contact with Gervase at the moment. After all, he has practically suggested he be put in gaol. And the next most obvious person is the other member of the family – Noel.’

  The proprieties must be preserved, even in nightmare. ‘Then,’ said Appleby, ‘will you find him – once more? He’ll long since have been relieved of his lyke-wake.’

  Gott fetched Noel, whose sleepy eyes grew round as he surveyed Gervase’s devastated room. ‘I say,’ said Noel, ‘is this affair entirely non-stop, Mr Appleby – a sort of detective marathon? Do we feed you through a pipe as you sleuth?’ He was a charming youth, tall, slim, obstinately pink and white, and now enfolded in beautiful green silk. And a murder seemed to have approximately as much effect on him as an aspirin tablet; there was a slightly depressant action lasting about an hour.

  ‘There is something rather difficult I want you to do,’ said Appleby. ‘It’s to get Mr Gervase Crispin here at once.’

  ‘To be sure. And I don’t suppose it’s just
in order to see him to bed. Have you got an eye on old Gervase for the shooting and stabbing?’

  ‘He’s got himself suspected,’ said Appleby abruptly, ‘of tampering with a document of state.’

  ‘My good sir!’ Noel’s expostulation was as immediate as a reflex action.

  ‘And the person who first suspected him was the Duke.’

  Noel’s eyebrows went up. ‘Giles, it isn’t that Mr Appleby’s feeling the strain?’

  ‘It is not.’

  Noel sat down on the bed. ‘Friends,’ he said soberly, ‘give me your instructions.’

  Appleby thought for a moment. ‘We think Mr Crispin may be talking things over with Mme Merkalova. Go to her room–’

  ‘Oh Lord!’

  ‘Go to her room, knock, and call for him. If he reveals himself as being there – or if he doesn’t, for that matter – say this.’ Appleby paused to consider Noel’s conversational style. ‘Say: “Gervase, will you come and deal with this detective? He has turned your room upside down and now he wants to convict you of stealing the secret treaty with Ruritania.” And–’

  Mildly, Gott made as if to protest. ‘Isn’t that rather dangerously giving away–’

  ‘And be sure’, said Appleby, ‘that the lady hears every word. Then come back; a member of the family won’t be amiss. And now hurry. The night’s gone and we’ve no grip of this business yet.’