Appleby reeled it off in his own mind – and disliked it. The perfection of Wine’s experiment, it was true, they had power to smash. To no unsuspecting friend in that house would the ghost of a murdered man ever appear, or fail to appear. At their first word spoken all that laborious project of Wine’s would be in atoms. But beyond that the position was bleak. Wine was very little likely to be intimidated. He would know, almost as well as they knew themselves, how long and tenuous was the track from the Happy Islands to Scotland Yard. In a world at peace the pursuit of two missing officers would be inexorable indeed, but would be slow. Under present conditions Wine – whose whole vast project was a gamble – might well reckon that his own powers would be deployed and triumphant long before they were run to earth here in their vulnerable cradle.
The river flowed past the front door of 37 Hawke Square. The alligators plopped within earshot of its dining-rooms. Such incongruities, deliberately contrived by a logical if perverted mind, had an insidious power to paralyse the will, to baffle the intellect. But not Lucy Rideout’s. Lucy enjoyed a saving ignorance. She knew far too little of the world to be in danger of sitting back flabbergasted. And she knew enough of melodrama and had enough of native wit to contrive sufficiently surprising answering stratagems of her own. One might do worse than give Lucy her head.
A shadow moved among the chimney pots. Wine had emerged on the roof – an incongruous figure in his quietly immaculate tropical clothes. ‘Appleby, is it you? I am glad you have found this amusing vantage point.’ Wine sat down easily on the leads. ‘Who would ever think to survey the heart of South America from the roof of a London tenement? And yet here we are, and there South America is.’ He waved his hand whimsically before him. ‘Utterly irrational, but a fact. And all the most potent facts are utterly irrational. That is our theme. Men made steam engines by observing and exploiting the way things actually work. We are going to make far more potent engines by observing and exploiting the way things are spontaneously imagined to work. Consider the stars, my dear man.’
Appleby looked up at the darkening sky. In a few minutes now the stars would be hanging there, would be hanging there whether one was considering them or not… ‘The stars?’ he said vaguely.
‘Consider the stars. What is it natural to believe of them? What notions about them come spontaneously into men’s minds? Clearly the notions of judicial astrology. Compared with them the notions of Copernicus and Newton, of Kepler and Einstein, are temporary, local and eccentric in the highest degree.’
‘But the notions of Copernicus and his followers work. Their predictions come true. Whereas with the astrologers–’
Wine interrupted with a wave of an amiably dismissive hand. ‘The human race, my dear Appleby, is much too shock-headed, and has much too short a memory, to take much notice of whether predictions are fulfilled or not. All it wants is a certain quality in the predictions themselves. They must have a magical and irrational element of sufficient substance to satisfy the magical and irrational appetencies which make up nine-tenths of the content of the human mind. That is what we are going to provide – Radbone and you and I.’
‘And Hudspith.’
‘And Hudspith, of course.’ Wine was silent for a moment, as if his mind had gone off on some other train of thought. ‘Has one of you by any chance got a revolver?’ he asked suddenly.
‘I have. But I don’t think Hudspith has. Would you care to borrow it?’ Appleby spoke easily, but with a mild unconcealed surprise. If Lucy’s hair-raising plan was to be adopted it was necessary to appear utterly unsuspecting of danger.
‘Dear me, no. It has simply struck me that some rough census of weapons is desirable. The truth is, there are rumours about the surrounding natives which I don’t quite like.’
‘I hope they haven’t caused any more wastage?’
‘No: the trouble is rather that they appear to be lying very low. It makes me think they may be meditating some attack. And though they are not visible by day, there are stories going round of rather queer things being seen and heard at night.’
‘Queer things? That sounds right up your pitch. Perhaps they just want to pull their weight in your brave and irrational new world.’
Wine laughed – perhaps a shade uncertainly. ‘After so much of Beaglehole it is really delightful to talk to somebody who can make a joke. But, seriously, I am a little perturbed. They undoubtedly ate those two women who were so interestingly en rapport.’
‘Miss Molsher and Mrs Gladigan?’
‘Yes. And now they have most certainly eaten the Yorkshire girl who escaped with the horse. That is most upsetting in itself, for really she was a most promising witch. But what I am afraid of is that the thing may give them an ungovernable taste for white man in the stewpot. I believe it does sometimes happen that way.’
‘No doubt. In fact, an abstention from cannibalism, if one takes a broad enough view, is probably temporary, local and eccentric in the highest degree. And if the savages turn really spontaneous we are all likely to be turned into cutlets.’
Wine’s laugh was perceptibly harsh this time. ‘Quite so. We don’t want magical practices too near home. Perhaps Hudspith may congratulate himself that he is going downstream in the morning. He, at least, won’t be eaten by cannibals.’ Wine paused. From the river below came the faint plop of an alligator.
‘But for us who remain you think there is real danger?’
‘Only of inconvenience and a tiresome scrap. The savages are believed to exist in quite considerable numbers and in these upper reaches have never been brought under control. But fortunately they are quite without any sort of directing intelligence.’
‘Ah.’ Appleby knocked out his pipe and looked up at the heavens. Yes, the stars were there – armies of unalterable law. And, perched obscurely on his grain of dust in space, he winked at them. ‘Fancy,’ he said. ‘Fancy a Yorkshire witch ending her days in an American savage’s cauldron. Irrational, isn’t it?’
Hudspith snapped down the locks of his suitcase. ‘I wonder why it should be me?’ he asked composedly. ‘Of course Wine came to realize that my having a vision of Lucy that night was a hoax. But I feel he went on believing those stories of yours about my being that sort of man.’
‘In a way you are that sort of man.’ Appleby, sitting on his bed in the small hours, spoke softly across the room. ‘You’re a moody devil with an abstracted eye and a bee in your bonnet about abducted girls. It gives you quite a distinguished air. And I don’t doubt Wine regards you as psychically sensitive. Nevertheless you are going to supply the ghost and I am going to be the percipient: there’s no doubt of that. Probably the theory is that only psychically peculiar people have the makings of good ghosts. Come to think of it, ghosts are seen by all and sundry in the most unselective way. If they’re seen at all, that is.’ Appleby paused in order to give some attention to loading his revolver. ‘Whereas as often as not a ghost has been a person of some mark. I think you must take it as rather a compliment that you have been cast for that particular role.’
‘Cast is the word,’ said Hudspith. ‘But not so much a role as a bump.’ He laughed loudly at this complex of puns, and then checked himself as the sound echoed startlingly in the night. ‘You know I can’t help feeling an element of waste in the thing.’
Appleby laid the revolver on his bed. ‘Very natural, I’m sure. All condemned men must regard the projected execution as a quite unjustifiably lavish expenditure of life. They must feel that a decent regard for economy positively requires that the thing be commuted to a kindly rebuke.’
‘I don’t mean quite like that. Do you ever read detective stories?’
‘Lord, lord! What sort of talk is this? No, I haven’t read a detective story for years.’
‘I read quite a lot. Recreative, I find them.’ Hudspith had switched off the light and was speaking out of the darkness. ‘They quite take one out of oneself, if one’s in my line.’
‘I see. No ruined girls.’
&nb
sp; ‘Not many ruined girls. They don’t sell. How many people would you say have written detective stories?’
Appleby yawned. ‘Hundreds, I should imagine.’
‘Quite so – and some of them have written scores of books. Folk with intelligences ranging from moderate through good to excellent. A couple of women are quite excellent; there’s no other word for them.’
‘Is that so? I say, Hudspith, it must be deuced late.’
‘And what would you say those hundreds of folk are constantly after?’
‘Money.’ Appleby’s voice, if sleepy, was decided.
‘They’re constantly after a really original motive for murder. And here one is. I’m being murdered to further the purposes of psychical research; murdered in order to manufacture a ghost. It’s a genuinely new motive, and none of them has ever thought of it.’
‘Probably someone has. You just haven’t read that particular yarn. Good night.’
‘But I haven’t explained what I mean. About waste, that is.’ Hudspith’s voice continued to come laboriously out of the night. ‘Here is a perfect detective-story motive, and yet we’re not in a detective story at all.’
‘My dear man, you’re talking like something in Pirandello. Go to sleep.’
‘We’re in a sort of hodge-podge of fantasy and harum-scarum adventure that isn’t a proper detective story at all. We might be by Michael Innes.’
‘Innes? I’ve never heard of him.’ Appleby spoke with decided exasperation. ‘You might employ your last hours more profitably than in chatter about the underworld of letters. Go to sleep. Go to sleep and dream of the nice boiled egg they send to the condemned cell on the fatal morning.’
Hudspith sighed and for a time was silent. ‘It’s all very well rotting,’ he said at length. ‘But about this idea of Lucy’s – do you think it will work?’
Silence answered him.
‘Do you think it will? After all, it’s a matter of some importance from my point of view.’
But again there was silence. Appleby was asleep.
4
Boiled eggs had been prominent on the breakfast-table, and while discussing them Wine had gone over in considerable detail the terms which Hudspith was to propose to his employer Radbone. Hudspith had made jottings in a notebook, scraped out his second egg and gone stolidly on board the little steamer. And no one could have guessed he guessed he was flirting with death. He stood beside Beaglehole in the stern, and sometimes he waved and sometimes Beaglehole waved, and quite soon they were indistinguishable dots far down the river. Wine, whose farewells had been openly affectionate, retired to administrative duties for the day. And once more Appleby climbed the little hill and sat himself down beneath the Ñandubay.
Hudspith was gone. A policeman who believed himself not to be known as such, he was gone as the result of what he believed to be a successful ruse – was gone, as he believed, to bring back troops and police and the rule of law to the Happy Islands. But in all this he was deluding himself. Radbone was a fiction successfully imposed upon him. And he was going to his death – a curious death, useful to science.
Such was the picture of the affair as it presented itself to Wine now. And how did Wine see Appleby? As another policeman who believed himself not to be known as such, a policeman who had only to go on pretending to believe in Radbone, a policeman who had only to sit tight in unsuspicious-seeming ease until his colleague returned with abundant help. But in all this but another deluded policeman. For to Appleby no Hudspith would ever return in the flesh. Only to an Appleby wholly unapprehensive, whole unsuspicious of his friend’s death, there might one day appear Hudspith’s ghost – a ghost calling for revenge. To others as well the ghost might manifest itself, but it would be to Appleby, as to Captain Bertram and Dr Spettigue, that some definite revelation would be attempted. Hudspith was to die, and thereafter the unsuspecting Appleby would be under scientific observation. Has he seen anything? Has the spirit of his murdered friend managed to communicate with him? These would be the questions asked. And all this as a sort of sideline to Wine’s vast organization. The man sat down there, marshalling and docketing his growing army of clairvoyants and astrologers and miracle workers to strictly practical ends. But he had this little weakness for real science. And hence the strange transplanting of 37 Hawke Square and Hudspith’s present voyage… Appleby gazed down the river. The little steamer had rounded a bend. There was only water, yellow and empty, to be seen.
Appleby filled his pipe. He lit it and puffed and thought about Hudspith’s death. It was important to get this melancholy event quite clear.
Hudspith must die here. It would be no good cutting his throat fifty miles down the river – else might his ghost vainly haunt a solitude broken only by the flamingos and the scissors-birds. And not only must he die here – here in 37 Hawke Square – but here too must violence first be offered him. Wine’s scientific thoroughness would insist on that. The murder must, so to speak, begin and end here.
Hudspith, then, must be brought back all unsuspecting. And quietly; nobody must know. Not one of the teeming occupants of the house must know. Even thoroughly reliable accomplices must be at a minimum – for the more of these there were the more possible would it be that the experiment might be vitiated by the operation of telepathy. Minds knowing of the murder might communicate to Appleby an obscure alarm.
Hudspith must be murdered here. And he must know it. Appleby frowned as he hit upon this point. If you do not know that you are being murdered it is conceivable that your ghost will never know that you were murdered. Hudspith must be brought back all unsuspecting; he must be made aware that his murder is imminent; he must be murdered with the knowledge of as few persons as possible; his body must be disposed of safely and instantly; all must be as if he were still smoothly dropping down the river in the company of Beaglehole.
These were the conditions of the experiment. Most of them Lucy had worked out already; and Lucy had seen how drastically they limited the enemy’s power of manoeuvre. How could the thing be done?
Appleby looked up into the empty South American sky. It needed an aeroplane, he thought.
The steamer could not come back. But Hudspith must come back. Suppose, then, that Beaglehole affected to remember some vital point in the proposed deal with Radbone which Wine had not cleared up. Suppose that, some way down the river, a plane of Wine’s opportunely turned up. Suppose Beaglehole proposed a quick hop back in this to the Happy Islands and then a return hop before the steamer had gone much farther on its way. This would serve to bring an unsuspecting Hudspith back and – what was equally important – it would serve to get Beaglehole quickly away again after the murder. For nobody must know of Beaglehole as mysteriously returned and hanging about. The moment Hudspith was murdered it would be desirable that Beaglehole should make himself scarce. And for this a plane would be the thing. An amphibian plane could come and go in darkness. And Wine was almost certain to possess one. It all combined to bring Lucy’s plan within the fringes of the feasible… Appleby knocked out his pipe and started down the hill. Lucy Rideout was all right. One knew where one was with her – now. But what of Hannah Metcalfe – and Daffodil? He looked out over the dark luxuriant fringe of the river to the infinite spaces beyond. An army could manoeuvre there.
Black coffee is the best vehicle for administering a surreptitious sleeping draught, and at half past eight that night Appleby gave the appearance of drinking a good deal of black coffee. An hour later he told Wine and Mrs Nurse that he was feeling sleepy. And half an hour after that again he was in bed. He was in bed and in darkness – for the night was very dark. He lay in bed thinking of the curious turn which it was proposed that things should take. Finish was required; there must be a constant care for convincing detail. And Appleby put out his arm and turned on a little lamp by his bedside. He tossed an open book, spine upwards, on the floor. It would be thus with a man whom an opiate had surprised.
Everything was very quiet by eleven o’clock;
so quiet in this over-populated house that it was tempting to believe there must have been laudanum all round. The sluggish river slapped half-heartedly at the stone steps before the front door of 37 Hawke Square; a light wind intermittently clattered in some metropolitan chimney-top contrivance overhead; far away the creatures of the South American night called to each other sparely and without conviction – the call of wild things perpetually half awake on the off-chance of alarm or catastrophe. For Appleby it was an off-chance too; it would mean a hitch if he were called out into the violent stream of things that night. But he was very wakeful.
Wine came at twenty past eleven. He tapped at the door – lightly; slipped into the room – softly; spoke – very quietly indeed. ‘Appleby, my dear fellow, I hope you don’t mind–’ He was across the room and by the bed; and now he said nothing more. Appleby, breathing heavily, sensed him as sitting down. And then he felt a touch, light but purposive, on his wrist. Wine was feeling his pulse.
Constantly one had to remember that it would all be very scientific. The way to avoid surprises was to remember this. Doubtless this pulse business would be repeated at frequent intervals during the next hour or so. For, hard by the sleeping man, stirring events were presently to accomplish themselves. How interesting – how scientifically interesting – if that pulse quickened to some obscure intimation of drama from the waking world!
Wine must be watching him intently. And as Appleby visualized that intent glance he felt his own eyelids flicker as those of a man heavily asleep ought not to do; he contrived to stir uneasily, groan, and bury his head in the pillow. And what, in fact, would his pulse tell? Wine was a hard man to cozen.
The light from the bedside lamp still seeped faintly through to Appleby’s retina; outside the room, on the second-floor landing, another faint light would be burning. But everywhere else there would be a velvet blackness now; only from high overhead the river would show, perhaps, as a streak of dullest silver. No doubt a skilful pilot – Appleby listened. From far down the river came a murmur of sound that grew momentarily in volume and then faded away. There was silence and then far off a bird cried. A bird cried and another answered; many birds were calling, and the blended sound made the same murmur but louder, so that it drowned the sullen slap-slap of the river and the creak of the London chimney pot overhead. But again there was silence, and then again the murmur grew, louder still. Colony by colony up the long reaches of the river the birds were coming awake and crying and then once more sinking to rest. High above them something was passing – and now a new vibration could be felt, a new sound heard. The faint quick throb of the engine grew. And again Appleby felt the touch on his wrist.
The Daffodil Affair Page 19