Canon Rixon gave a benevolent sigh. ‘Poor Prodger!’ he said. ‘I fear he is beginning to show the burden of his years. At times, however, he remains remarkably shrewd. And old age – although it is a sad thing to admit – often has its unscrupulous side. I am only too afraid that Prodger’s actual aims in this library tonight were identical with those of Limbrick.’
‘Are you, indeed?’ Appleby allowed himself no more than a mild irony in this.
‘And now, my dear Sir John, I wonder whether I might not myself be the better person to have a little talk with our friend Alice? She and I are in a relation of confidence, I am happy to think. And then I can see the dear girl to bed.’
‘If she isn’t in a state to see herself to bed, I shall call Mrs Husbands.’ Appleby now spoke briskly. ‘If you want to have a talk with her, it had better be at breakfast. Because she’s going to be off shortly afterwards.’
‘That’s right.’ During the whole of these exchanges Alice had sat curiously limp and mute. But now she sat up and spoke with energy. ‘I’m leaving, I am.’ She turned to Appleby. ‘Not that the Reverend hasn’t been nice to me – in an old gentleman’s fatherly way, if you know what I mean. But none of them thinks I was really right for Loo.’
‘This is very sad.’ Rixon moved to the door. ‘But I hope, my dear Alice, that I may be able to see you now and then. There is, I judge, no impropriety in a clergyman’s visiting a tavern from time to time. Positive frequentation is, of course, another matter. Good night, my dear. Good night, Sir John. I am confident that I can leave that delicate little matter of our transactions to your discretion.’
‘Would you describe yourself as all right again?’ Appleby had turned to Alice as Rixon left the room.
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘You know that you’ve been chucking things around?’
‘Chucking things around? Come off it!’ Alice was indignant. ‘I wouldn’t think of such a thing. Not in a gentleman’s seat, I wouldn’t.’
Appleby walked across the library and picked up the statuette. ‘You nearly got Limbrick’s head,’ he said. ‘With this. You might have knocked him out. Do I understand you remember nothing about it?’
‘Nothing at all.’ Alice was frightened and subdued. ‘It must have come over me again. I just know I went upstairs to bed.’
‘Well, as you can see, you came down again. You came down to look for something.’
‘It would be my travelling-case, that Loo gave me.’
‘Exactly. You’ve been worrying about it, as I discovered before.’ Appleby paused. ‘You’ve really no idea where it is?’
‘Of course I haven’t.’ Alice managed to speak again with some spirit. ‘I wouldn’t be behaving queer about it if I did.’
‘It’s in the boot of Lewis Packford’s car. I think you put it there yourself. I think, Alice, you really did have a shot at taking him away – quite a resolute shot. But you don’t remember it. Because it happened when you were upset. Perhaps when you were very upset indeed.’ Appleby carried the statuette across the room and replaced it on its table. There was no sign of its being much damaged. ‘It’s still a blank?’ he asked. ‘Your memory, I mean, of all that?’
Alice nodded dumbly, a picture of woe. When she did speak, it was with a sudden spurt of resentment. ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘it’s your job to clean up all this, isn’t it? It’s your job to find out what really happened, and why it happened, isn’t it? Well – why don’t you? Why don’t you get us all out of our misery? I can’t bear it any longer, I tell you – not knowing at all what it was that happened to Loo.’
‘Yes, it’s my job. Remember, though, that I haven’t been on it very long.’ Appleby spoke quietly. ‘Even so, I don’t think there will be much more waiting. You remember my saying how I hoped the mystery wouldn’t last very far into today? Well, it won’t. I’ve one or two people to get a little more information from. And then I think we can have – explanations.’
‘That’s really true?’ Alice looked at him round-eyed, so that it was almost as if she were frightened again. ‘But who? Who have you to get things from still?’
‘The housekeeper, Mrs Husbands. And Rood.’
‘The lawyer?’ She spoke sharply. ‘I don’t trust that man. I said so before, didn’t I? He’s not straight.’
‘Perhaps he’s not. Unfortunately not many people in this affair have been quite as straight as they might have been. Look at these three precious worthies who were here a few minutes ago.’
‘The Reverend’s all right.’
‘Perhaps so. But we needn’t start checking up on the cast now, Alice. It’s round about one o’clock in the morning, and you ought to be in bed. How do you feel? Shall I get hold of Mrs Husbands, or of Ruth?’
‘I’m quite fit to look after myself, thank you.’
‘Then I’ll see you to your room. Come along.’
Alice stood up and shook her head. In country houses, she had doubtless read, it is not customary for ladies to be escorted to their bedrooms by gentlemen guests. ‘You stay where you are,’ she said firmly. ‘But if I see you at breakfast, I’ll be glad.’
Appleby smiled. ‘I’ll look out for you,’ he said. ‘And we’ll try to sit together.’
Alice’s footsteps quickly died away. Appleby lingered in Lewis Packford’s library. He walked up and down, as the dead man must often have done when probing one or another of his literary problems. Perhaps Prodger was right in declaring the quiet of the night to be conducive to concentration. It was quiet enough now. There wasn’t a sound throughout the house – and from beyond it there only came, very faintly, the occasional hooting of an owl. At ‘The Crossed Hands’ Rushout and the egregious Moody were presumably asleep. Or were they? Moody, at least, might be wakeful; it was even rather surprising that, with his consuming mania for unique possessions, he was letting a night pass without laying actual siege to Urchins. But Moody, after all, was only on the fringe of the case. All the vital actors were under this roof, here and now.
Or was that right? Wasn’t there something to be said, perhaps, for moving Moody, if not Rushout, a little nearer to the centre of the puzzle? As Appleby asked himself this question – still pacing softly up and down the silent library – he became aware of other questions obscurely redisposing themselves in his mind. And then he became aware that one, that another, that a third was evolving its own answer in the process. He already knew a lot; now he was learning that in fact, he knew significantly more.
For some minutes he was lost in profound abstraction. So deep was this, indeed, that when he was abruptly haled out of it by an unexpected sound in the night, it was a full second before he realized that that sound had been a revolver shot.
4
The shot hadn’t been fired in the library or anywhere immediately adjoining it. And this was all that Appleby could say. He went to the door, threw it open, and listened. There wasn’t a sound. But he couldn’t conceivably be the only person still awake in Urchins; it seemed indeed improbable that any of the people who had so lately been in this room with him could be already asleep. They were hesitating, in fact, to be the first person to emerge and start the shouting. They were telling themselves that what they had heard was perhaps the fall of a picture or a looking-glass from the wall, or the backfire of a motor-bicycle in some nearby lane.
But now the silence was broken. It was broken, very faintly, by distant screams. And then he heard Edward Packford’s voice, calm and authoritative, in some distant part of the house. ‘Mrs Husbands – can you hear me? Tell those women to stop that noise and get back to bed.’
Well, that told one something at once. It was the housekeeper’s domestic staff that had judged it incumbent upon itself to kick up a shindy. And as this part of the establishment was almost certainly accommodated in the attics, and as it must indeed have been abruptly roused from slumber thus to indulge in instant hysterics, the inference was that the shot had been fired at least as high as the main bedroom floor.
>
Appleby ran down the long corridor upon which the library gave, and then up the main staircase. A light went on as he reached the first landing, and he was just in time to see Edward Packford, in pyjamas and dressing-gown, emerge some distance away through a green baize door. Edward recognized him and strode forward. ‘It was unmistakably a pistol-shot,’ he said crisply. ‘We’d better run it to earth before the real rumpus starts. It’s my impression it was down here – past your own room in the east wing.’ He turned to flick on more lights. ‘Ah – there they go!’
It was certainly true that there they went. All over the house doors were now opening and voices calling. It must have been just like this, Appleby thought grimly, on the night Lewis Packford died. But on that occasion there hadn’t been a policeman about the house. ‘Would you please remember,’ he asked Edward, ‘not to touch any door-knobs with your bare hand? Use your handkerchief.’
Edward nodded, brought out a handkerchief, and threw open a door. He felt for the switch and turned on a light. ‘A blank,’ he said. ‘Stupid of me. This one hardly ever is used. Try the one opposite.’
Appleby had already done so – and as the door swung back he became aware of a reek of gunpowder that told its own tale. ‘The mischief’s here,’ he said. ‘Would you mind stopping all those people from coming down this corridor?’
Edward turned back without a word; he seemed to acknowledge that it was Appleby’s job to give orders. For a second Appleby stared into the enigmatical darkness ahead of him. He reached out for the light-switch – knowing that what was about to spring into visibility wouldn’t be wholly unfamiliar to him. He had been here already that night.
Rood lay in a crumpled heap in the middle of the floor. Appleby crossed over to him and stooped down. In a second he knew that the solicitor was dead. The bullet had gone in at his right temple and out again at the base of the skull. The revolver lay by his limp right hand. It was a small and ineffective-looking affair. But it had killed Rood, all right. It had even made a distressing amount of mess.
Appleby went back to the door and glanced down the corridor. Nearly everybody seemed to be assembled at the end of it in a dishevelled and anxious group. Appleby walked towards them, his glance moving rapidly from one to another. ‘I am very sorry to have to tell you,’ he said quietly, ‘that Mr Rood is dead. What we all heard appears to have been the revolver shot that killed him.’
There was a stunned silence. The first to speak was Canon Rixon. ‘Do you mean,’ he asked, ‘that this unhappy man has taken his own life?’
Appleby shook his head. ‘I am not the coroner and his jury, Dr Rixon. Rood has died – and rather as Lewis Packford died a few nights ago. I will say no more than that. And now, please, we must have the local police called at once. And, of course, a doctor. Mr Packford, will you see to that?’
Edward nodded. ‘I’ll get them on the telephone at once.’
‘Thank you. Where is Mrs Husbands?’
‘Mrs Husbands?’ Edward seemed surprised. ‘Isn’t she here? But now I remember. I called out to her to go and quiet the servants. If you want her, I’ll find her presently.’
‘Perhaps Mrs Packford will be good enough to do so.’ Appleby turned to Ruth. ‘While Mr Packford is telephoning, will you find Mrs Husbands and bring her straight here?’
‘Certainly.’ Ruth hesitated. ‘But you mean actually to–?’
‘Yes,’ Appleby said, ‘I do. She must be more or less used to violent death by now.’
Appleby went back to the dead man’s room and took another look at the body. It was in pyjamas, and somehow it looked mean and meagre. The bedclothes were turned back – and in a fashion, it seemed to Appleby, that told a story. They hadn’t simply been given the token turning-back that is part of a housemaid’s ritual. They weren’t, on the other hand, in any marked disorder. Rood was a man of neat and precise habits, who loved nothing more dearly than a well-rolled umbrella. He would get into bed without much disturbance. And if he had occasion to get out again, it would be just to this necessary extent that he would shove things away. If Rood had shot himself, he had got neatly and calmly out of bed to do so. If he had been shot by somebody else, it had been after getting out of bed in the same good order.
Appleby moved carefully around the room. The dead solicitor didn’t appear to have done much unpacking. What was chiefly in evidence was a small pile of legal documents on a desk before a curtained window. Appleby looked at them closely. They were typewritten, but freely annotated in pencil. They seemed entirely concerned with Packford family affairs.
And then Appleby’s glance travelled to the other end of the desk. A pencil lay on it; and beside the pencil was an irregular sheet of paper, such as might have been torn roughly out of a notebook. And on the paper was a pencilled scrawl. It read:
Farewell, a long farewell!
There was a knock at the door. Appleby turned away from the desk – he had spent a couple of further minutes there – and opened it to admit Mrs Husbands. The housekeeper too had presumably been in bed, but now she was dressed again, although hastily. She had daubed her face with powder – seemingly regardless of the fact that what it notably lacked was colour. Mrs Husbands, indeed, looked like a ghost; it was as if she had been abruptly translated from the Edwardian to a Stygian world. She was the second person, Appleby reflected, whom he had seen strangely transformed at Urchins that night.
‘Please come in.’ Appleby spoke gravely and with courtesy. ‘I believe you can be of great assistance to me.’
He stood aside. Mrs Husbands hesitated. Her glance was going – half fearfully, half curiously – past him to the grim huddle of mortality on the floor. ‘Must it be – here?’ she asked.
‘I am sorry to distress you. But I think it will be best.’ Appleby closed the door behind the housekeeper. ‘Let me be quite frank, Mrs Husbands. I am anxious that you should answer one or two questions at once – and before there has been any possibility of confusion.’
‘Confusion, Sir John?’
‘I think it possible that, were you now to engage in private consultation with another member of this household, a certain undesirable confusion might result.’
He could hear Mrs Husbands catch her breath. ‘I do understand you,’ she said. ‘And I don’t consider it proper to say anything without consulting Mr Packford, who is now my employer.’
‘I certainly can’t oblige you to talk.’ Appleby had walked across the room, so that the dead body now lay sprawled between Mrs Husbands and himself. ‘I am myself here as Mr Packford’s guest. But I am also here officially, and at the invitation of the Chief Constable of this county. I cannot possibly venture to put any improper pressure upon you, even if I were anxious to do so. You may, if you wish, defer all discussion of what has happened in this house tonight, and all further discussion of what happened in it a few nights ago, until you have taken legal advice.’
‘Then I shall certainly do so.’
‘But I should like you to consider. I should like you to consider that, when one is faced with this’ – and Appleby made an almost imperceptible gesture towards Rood’s body – ‘only the truth, and the immediate truth, is remotely adequate.’
‘I don’t know the truth. Anything I say may only lead fatally away from it.’
‘That is very unlikely, Mrs Husbands. And you must consider that, where there have been two violent deaths, as in this house, the position becomes unpredictable and dangerous until the full truth is known. Concealment means danger – perhaps for yourself, perhaps for others.’
‘Are you trying to frighten me, Sir John?’
‘Conceivably I’m giving you a rational warning. And I can assure you that it is only a small number of questions which I should like you to answer. Will you come and look at something on this desk?’ Appleby waited until she had crossed the room. ‘It’s rather like your experience of the other night, is it not?’
Mrs Husbands looked at the torn sheet of paper with its pencilled scrawl. �
�You mean this?’
‘Yes, I do. Have you seen it before?’
‘But of course. It’s the same message. Mr Rood has written the same words that Mr Packford did.’
‘So it would appear. And I can’t help feeling it was a little uninventive.’
Mrs Husbands frowned. ‘Uninventive? I don’t understand you.’
‘He might have borrowed the first line of the same speech and written So farewell to the little good you bear me. Or, later on, I seem to recall a bit about swimming beyond one’s depth. Would that, I wonder, have been appropriate?’ Appleby paused, and then lightly touched the fragment of paper. ‘But I think,’ he said, ‘that you may be said to have seen this before – in another sense?’
Mrs Husbands was silent.
‘In fact, you have seen this actual piece of paper – either as it is now, or in its place in a notebook?’
‘Yes, I have.’ Suddenly in Mrs Husband’s voice there was weariness and despair. ‘Now, what more do you want of me?’
But Appleby shook his head. ‘Nothing at all,’ he said. ‘My investigation is concluded.’
IV
Epilogue in the Working Library of a Scholar
Oh, most lame and impotent conclusion!
— Othello
‘Come in.’
Appleby spoke the words not by way of summons but as the beginning of an explanation. It was after breakfast, and everybody was in the library. Even Rushout and Moody were present – their arrival at Urchins having been hastened by a telephone call.
The Long Farewell Page 16