‘I’ve no doubt, sir, that he was able to leave that behind him in England – at least to some extent. It may even have been his motive for spending the summer in Italy – rather unobtrusively, as I gather it was. His rapturous experiences were over, and he was only anxious that neither of the ladies should come up with him.’
Appleby shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can only say, Cavill, that I’ve seen some queer things in my time. But this is about the queerest.’
‘Well, now, that was my feeling about Urchins.’
‘Urchins?’
‘Packford’s house in the country. I suppose it belongs to his brother now.’
‘Packford had a brother?’
‘A younger brother called Edward. A bit of an eccentric, too, it seems to me. Insisting, for instance, that all those professors and so forth should stop on. Scarcely decent, after such a death. Particularly with the two wives having turned up. Craziest place in England at the moment, I say. But you can take it from me, sir, that there hasn’t been a murder.’
‘That’s not this fellow Rood’s opinion. He has a story about Packford having acquired something important from an impoverished nobleman of Ver–’
‘Yes, sir, I know all about that.’ Cavill’s interruption was at once highly improper and an indication that he was now viewing Appleby from a mood of sunny tolerance. ‘I think, perhaps, you ought to look at page two.’
Appleby picked up the file again and looked at page two. There was rather a long silence. Page two recorded that Lewis Packford had left a written paper which had been found beside his body. It had been scrawled on a postcard, and read simply:
Farewell, a long farewell!
Appleby stared at this. ‘You know that it’s a quotation?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir. I looked it up.’
‘Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness. It’s rather a magniloquent last message to be left even by quite a well-known scholar, isn’t it? But he was always quoting Shakespeare, and in a hit-or-miss way.’ Appleby looked up at Cavill, frowning. ‘It’s his writing? I’d have said it was – so far as my memory goes.’
Cavill nodded. ‘It’s his writing, all right. We’ve had two experts on it. Only your friend Rood, sir, declares it to be a forgery. Quite nasty about it, he was. Dignity injured. A touchy type. Claims to be a bit of an expert himself.’
‘And when you disregarded him, he tackled me. But he didn’t tell me about all this.’ Appleby pointed to the file again. ‘You say the scrawl reproduced here was lying beside the body?’
‘Just that.’
‘Do you see any significance in the fact that it was written on a postcard?’
‘Well, sir, it’s certainly a point worth pausing over. But I simply take it that a postcard was the first thing that came handy on his desk.’
‘There was other stationery there too?’
‘Certainly there was. Packford shot himself in his library, just like one of those baronets in a novel. And this postcard, and his fountain-pen, were lying on the desk.’
Appleby got up, walked to a window, and stared out at the London dusk. ‘Farewell, a long farewell,’ he murmured. ‘Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness.’ He turned and looked sharply at Cavill. ‘Has it occurred to you that what Packford wrote on that postcard was no more than a flowery way of saying any sort of goodbye? He was always – as I say – spouting Shakespeare. He may well have had the trick of regularly scribbling him too. Has it occurred to you that what we have here is something he might conceivably scrawl on some perfectly trivial and entirely innocent occasion?’
‘As far as an intention to commit suicide goes, the words are certainly not very explicit.’ Cavill’s body had stiffened in his chair as he gave this evasive answer, and Appleby realized that he was angry again. ‘They might, of course, be about something quite different. By jove, sir, what a subtle thought.’
‘Sorry,’ Appleby said. ‘Idiotic of me.’
‘Well, sir, I’m bound to say I did consider the point you raise. Old fragments of writing have been used in misleading contexts before now. I remember’ – Cavill smiled faintly – ‘your mentioning it in a lecture.’
‘Well, then – how do you meet the point?’
‘By believing the testimony of Packford’s housekeeper, who seems a perfectly respectable and reliable woman. It was she who heard the shot, and who ran to the library. Packford was slumped over his desk, and the postcard was on his writing-pad. The woman took a good straight look at it. And the ink was wet.’
Appleby took a long breath. ‘I don’t know much about your literature of baronets in libraries,’ he said. ‘But my guess is that you might search in vain for just that.’
But Cavill was unimpressed by this sally. ‘The point is this, sir,’ he said a shade didactically. ‘We have a confluence of improbabilities. That this scrawl of Packford’s is not Packford’s is an improbability, since we have the opinion of two of our own experts to set over against the opinion of Rood, who is a mere crank. That the scrawl does not refer to his intention of taking his own life is a second improbability, much more likely to turn up in fiction than in fact. And that the respectable woman I have mentioned should be either mistaken or telling a blank lie is a third improbability. All this adds up, surely, to a very big improbability indeed.’
‘But Packford’s bigamy is as big an improbability as any, my dear Cavill. And yet it is admittedly gospel. So we are reminded that highly improbable things do sometimes occur.’
‘That’s quite true, sir,’ Cavill – perhaps because he felt that he had really established his case – was now entirely patient. ‘And you’d find Urchins – if you went down there – pretty hard to believe in at the moment. But there it is. It’s a fact. And I’m not arguing that wildly improbable interpretations of evidence are not occasionally vindicated. But I am saying that this Packford business holds no further surprises. What they do about the dead man’s two wives and so forth is no business of ours – unless it becomes a question of whether the more recent of them knew what she was about. But that isn’t going to interest you or me.’
‘I agree with you there.’ Appleby had turned back to the window. ‘What was that you said about a collection of professors and such like?’
‘There was a sort of house-party, sir. People interested in Packford’s scholarly discoveries and so forth all gathered there by his invitation. That was the set-up when the thing happened. And Edward Packford has persuaded them to stay on for a little. The whole circus is there now.’
‘How very queer.’ Appleby had turned round again. ‘Cavill – you are sure the affair is closed? I mean – well, a fellow couldn’t go down and have another look?’
Cavill stood up and laughed. He laughed at the Assistant Commissioner with a pure affection that went to Appleby’s heart. It was one of those moments which, in a rather brittle, rather edgy organization, are worth living for. Then he picked up the file and placed it neatly in the centre of Appleby’s desk.
‘Good hunting, sir,’ Cavill said. And he went out of the room still laughing.
3
Neither Edward Packford nor the local police, when contacted by telephone, took any exception to the idea of further investigation. So Appleby went down by train next day – an antique mode of conveyance across England’s smaller distances for which he had a weakness that frequently cost him quite a lot of time. He changed trains at Sherborne and again at Little Urchins. When he got out at Deep Urchins a car was waiting for him. It seemed much as if he were paying the surviving Packfords a purely social visit.
The car was old and lethargic; the woman driving it appeared young and extremely brisk. She could hardly be the respectable housekeeper who figured among Cavill’s witnesses, so Appleby put her down as a secretary. She wasted no words, and they drove out of the little station yard in what looked like the beginnings of an oppressive silence. Although the young woman was, so to speak, at the receiving end of the encounter, and thus to be reg
arded as in possession of the initiative, Appleby thought that she was perhaps waiting until spoken to. Some secretaries were like that. Some were not.
‘A queer name,’ Appleby hazarded. ‘Deep Urchins, I mean.’
‘Poor Seth,’ the young woman said decisively.
‘I beg your pardon?’
The young woman took her eye from the road for a moment – she appeared to be unfamiliar with the car, which felt as if it might be a little unreliable in point of steering mechanism – and looked at Appleby in sharp appraisal. ‘I suppose you know,’ she said, ‘that Deep Urchins is Thomas Horscroft’s Nether Ladds?’
‘No. I’m afraid I don’t. But the circumstance is, of course, extremely interesting.’ Appleby was doing his best. ‘And I think you said something about Seth?’
‘Poor Seth Cowmeadow, who drowned himself in the pond at Nether Ladds, after letting himself get drunk at the “Welcome Home” and so failing to prevent the boar from eating his grandchild in its cradle.’
‘The boar’s grandchild?’
‘Seth Cowmeadow’s grandchild. But I see you haven’t read the book.’ The young woman took another – and this time frankly disapproving – glance at Appleby.
‘I’m afraid I haven’t.’
‘Professor Quelch of Princeton has just published an absorbingly interesting study of Horscroft’s public-houses. Of their names, that is to say. They prove to be deeply meaningful. The “Welcome Home,” for example. The name harbours a profound irony.’
‘I’m sure it does,’ Appleby said. The young woman, he now supposed, must be one of the learned members of the late Lewis Packford’s still lingering house-party. Her interest appeared to lie not quite in the dead man’s period. But perhaps she ran Shakespeare as a second string.
The car was now running through a hamlet which a signpost announced as Urchin Pydell. The young woman took a hand from the wheel and pointed at a displeasing hovel beyond a ditch. ‘The Hangman’s Cottage,’ she said. ‘You remember how–’
‘It ought to be condemned,’ Appleby said firmly. ‘A demolition order, or whatever it’s called, from the local authority. Either that, or a shilling charged to literary pilgrims at the door.’ He paused. ‘And we can’t be far from Gaffer’s Grave.’
‘Gaffer’s Grave?’
‘Poor Isaac,’ Appleby said.
‘I don’t think I know about that.’ The young woman gave Appleby a glance of some suspicion.
‘Ah.’ Appleby found his invention failing him. ‘Did you go up to Lewis Packford’s funeral?’ he asked rather abruptly.
‘I’m not quite clear why it was in London.’
‘Something about a family grave. And only his brother Edward went. I didn’t. It would have been awkward. If, I mean, we had both gone.’
Appleby was puzzled. ‘You and his brother?’
‘No, no. Myself and this Alice woman. Of course, we could have tossed for it. But it didn’t seem quite reverent.’
‘I see.’ And Appleby did see. He realized, that is to say, that this was one of the two ladies with some claim to be called Mrs Packford. And the Alice woman must be the other. ‘Do I understand,’ he asked steadily, ‘that you and this Alice woman were both at Urchins when your – when Packford died?’
The young woman nodded briskly over the wheel. ‘Yes. You see, we had both got wind of Lewis’ disgraceful behaviour simultaneously.’
‘Got wind of it? You mean, it wasn’t a matter of his confessing what he’d done? It had somehow leaked out?’
‘This woman and I received anonymous letters by the same post. And we both went straight to Urchins at once.’
‘I wonder if you realize,’ Appleby said, ‘what a lot of explaining this extraordinary situation seems to require? Who is this Alice woman, anyway?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea, Sir John.’
‘I find that rather hard to believe.’ Appleby spoke patiently but with firmness. ‘Even if you had never heard of her before the last few days, you have shared with her since then, it seems, a most shocking and harrowing experience. You must have found out something about her. Does she belong to the learned classes – with a line on Thomas Horscroft’s Nether Ladds, and Seth Cowmeadow, and all that?’
The young woman driving Appleby gave a hollow laugh. ‘She might have a line on the “Welcome Home.” I understand Alice is a barmaid.’
‘I see. Well, it’s a perfectly respectable calling. Would you say that she is simple-minded?’
‘Entirely so.’
‘Then, if I may say so, she is much the less puzzling of the two of you. May I, by the way, ask your name?’
‘You ought to call me Mrs Packford.’
‘But at the moment I can’t tell – can I? – whether that would be quite fair to Alice. I think you’d better give me your Christian name. Only, of course, for the purposes of ready identification and convenience in internal monologue. It looks as if I shall be doing quite a lot of internal monologuising over this affair. Aloud, I shall call you madam.’
‘My name is Ruth.’ The young woman had thrown the engine out of gear and was bringing the car to a halt. They were in a deserted lane between high hedges. She had presumably decided that some more leisured conference was desirable before introducing Appleby to Urchins. ‘Aren’t you striking,’ she asked, ‘rather a frivolous note? After all, poor Lewis died only–’
‘I’m very sorry, I’m sure.’ Appleby was sincerely apologetic. ‘It’s only, you know, that I don’t want to strike a note that’s all too uncomfortably grim.’
Ruth edged herself sideways in the driving-seat at this and gave him a rather uncertain glance. She wasn’t after all, he noticed, exactly young. And she wasn’t fast, and she wasn’t stupid, and she wasn’t – superficially, at least – emotional. In fact, she was quite a problem. ‘Grim?’ she now asked. ‘I’d supposed that, although there’s still quite a bit of a mess lying around, the real grimness was over.’
‘Perhaps it is, in a way.’ Appleby wondered if Ruth was really rather a hard type. ‘But I think it fair to explain that the case – for it must be called that – is by no means closed. For instance, Lewis Packford’s solicitor – who is not in the least a fool – is disposed to believe that his client was murdered. He has, I’m bound to admit, a very queer notion of why the crime was committed. But his actual suspicion mustn’t be accounted negligible.’
Ruth had made no attempt to interrupt this speech, and she remained silent for a further moment now. When she did speak, it was rather surprisingly. ‘But it’s not possible,’ she said. ‘You know it’s not possible. I wish it was.’
‘You wish that Packford had been murdered?’
‘Well, yes – in a way.’ As she said this, Ruth looked rather bewildered, as if the oddity of the sentiment were coming home to her. ‘Because it was unlike him – to kill himself because he’d been a bloody fool.’ She paused. ‘It’s disconcerting, I suppose, to have a person one believes one knows well acting suddenly out of character. Particularly when the action is, at least by conventional standards, a little craven.’
‘Or even ridiculous?’ Appleby, as he asked this, was conscious that he was quickly coming to have a considerable respect for Ruth. Whether he was coming to have any liking for her was a different matter. And the mere puzzle of her grew. She was too intelligent for her own slightly ludicrous situation to be at all easily explained.
‘Or even ridiculous,’ she agreed gravely. ‘But I don’t think, Sir John, that you can have been given all the facts. Lewis left a message saying–’
‘We needn’t tackle that now,’ Appleby said. He was determined to steer this interview his own way. ‘But I may say that I’ve had a pretty full report from an experienced officer of my own.’
‘Yes, I think I met him. Mr Cavill.’
‘Exactly. And it’s fair to say that he agrees with you, madam.’
‘But you don’t?’
Appleby took a second to answer this. ‘I do see,’ he sai
d presently, ‘some possibility of keeping an open mind.’
Ruth Packford – if it was proper to call her that – had produced a cigarette-case. As she held it out to Appleby he noticed that her fingers were those of a heavy smoker. In spite of her air of brisk competence she was probably one who didn’t find life altogether easy. But of the competence there was no doubt. It was instanced in her having taken on the job of meeting Appleby at the railway station. She must have taken some initiative over that, since she was herself, according to her own account, too recent an arrival at Urchins to make such an assignment a matter of course. Certainly one felt she had never driven this particular old car before. She had presumably possessed herself of it with the object of contriving just this present tête-à-tête.
‘Of course,’ she was saying, ‘I’m perfectly willing to be open-minded too. It’s the grand condition of all successful research. My work teaches me that.’
Appleby received this respectfully. Ruth, he supposed, was whatis called a professional woman – a species sometimes uneasily conscious of amateurishness in some of the normal fields of female activity. She was looking at him slightly defiantly now. ‘And you were unaware,’ he asked, ‘that there was this other person in Lewis Packford’s life?’
There was a moment’s silence. Appleby was conscious that his question, as phrased, had a somewhat literary ring, so that she might judge she was being made fun of. But she answered at once. ‘I hadn’t a clue,’ she said. ‘Is that very queer?’
‘I don’t know if it’s so queer as the fact that nobody seems to have had a clue about you. Mr Rood, for instance, who was Packford’s solicitor. It seems extraordinary that a man should conceal a marriage from his solicitor.’
‘He might well conceal two.’
‘A man is certainly likely to conceal the fact that he had been so idiotic as to contract a bigamous and invalid marriage. But why conceal the first and valid one?’
The Long Farewell Page 5