‘Come in. Almost as soon as I heard the words, of course, I ought to have begun wondering what Lewis Packford was up to. For consider. His summer-house presented simply a blank wall on the side by which I approached it. So he couldn’t possibly have spotted me – and indeed when I walked in he was clearly completely surprised. He assured me moreover that he was quite out of contact with either English men or English women. No doubt one might argue that, hearing a knock on a door, a man will instinctively call out in his own language. But that simply wouldn’t be true in the particular circumstances of the case. Packford had fluent Italian, and he had been settled there at Garda for a good part of the summer. So you may put it this way. What would the reasonable inference have been if Packford had called out Herein?’
There was a moment’s silence in the library, and then Edward Packford spoke a shade impatiently. ‘One could be pretty sure that he was expecting a German, of course.’
‘Precisely. His calling out in English was, admittedly, not so completely definitive as that. But at least it suggests a strong probability that your brother was expecting a visit from an Englishman.’
‘Or from an American.’ Limbrick, who had taken up a position from which he could glower offensively at Moody, made this suggestion with animus.
‘Quite so. And Packford was certainly expecting somebody. Once or twice he looked at his watch in a way that wasn’t wholly civil; and when I left him he was hurrying back to that summer-house like a man with an appointment. Thinking it over afterwards, I came to the conclusion that he had agreed to meet somebody quietly there either before one evening hour or after another one. That happened to make it possible for him to give me dinner at tolerable leisure – and to produce quite a lot of talk which later events have shown to be highly significant in itself. But even while talking he was distrait at times. So I didn’t find it difficult to accept Rood’s later suggestion that I had chanced to pay my call on Packford on the very evening that something extremely important was happening.’ Appleby paused. ‘In fact Rood’s suggestion fitted in with my own sense of the whole incident. What was later to puzzle me a good deal was why Rood made it.’
‘Puzzling conduct,’ Ruth Packford said, ‘appears to have been Mr Rood’s forte. That, and howling bad taste. Whether he was a rascal or not, I don’t know – and I don’t greatly care. But to make his death a kind of grotesque echo of Lewis’ was disgusting.’
Alice nodded approvingly. ‘I quite agree with that, I must say. Leaving the same message – about the long farewell, I mean – was in bad taste. It wasn’t a thing a gentleman would do.’
‘I suppose,’ Edward Packford asked, ‘that the handwriting will prove to be authentically Rood’s?’
‘I’m quite sure it will.’ Appleby spoke with authority. ‘He had been annotating some legal documents, so I’ve been able to make a comparison. Rood wrote the scrawl we found last night.’
‘Echoing what my brother wrote?’
Appleby shook his head. ‘Your brother never wrote anything of the sort. Both these messages were written by Rood.’
There was a baffled silence. And it was Ruth’s mind which first got to work effectively on Appleby’s announcement. ‘In other words,’ she said, ‘Lewis was never by way of saying farewell to anybody or anything?’
‘Precisely. I had to consider, of course, the possibility that he had been killed immediately after writing something merely designed to announce that he was solving his difficult matrimonial situation – if that’s the right word for it – by packing up and clearing out. The suitcase which turned up in his car seemed for a time to support that interpretation. But the suitcase was Alice’s work. I am inclined to think that, during the period of total loss of memory which she has described, she visited Packford in this room and suggested flight. Then, still in the same dissociated state, she packed a suitcase for him and hid it in his car, together with the little travelling-case of her own. I’ve already explained this hypothesis to Alice, and she doesn’t disagree with it. All this, of course, wasn’t a confusion upon which Rood could have been reckoning at all. But it was otherwise with the simple arrival of the two ladies at Urchins and the crisis which that produced. Rood certainly engineered that. It was an essential part of his plan. Or rather it was an essential part of one of his plans. For he had a great belief in keeping things flexible. It was a trait which emerged in my first conversation with him. You might call it his Napoleon complex. That in turn was a reflex of his vanity. And these elements are at the heart of the case.’
‘Are we to understand, then,’ Canon Rixon asked, ‘that this unfortunate solicitor was throughout prosecuting some criminal design? This is shocking indeed.’
‘You are to understand, for a start, that he planned an elaborate, foolish and conceited hoax.’
‘A hoax?’ Edward Packford’s voice was sharp, and he had swung round on Appleby. ‘Just what do you mean by that?’
‘You will understand what I mean presently. And it is better, I think, to speak of a hoax than of a fraud – at least in the first instance. But let me go back to Garda. I left your brother, so to speak, expecting an English visitor – and concealing the fact of that expectation from a casual caller in the person of myself. Well, yesterday I discovered – and in rather an odd way – that that English visitor had almost certainly been Rood himself. You will agree, I think, that your brother had rather a simple sense of humour, and was moreover fond of repeating his little jokes?’
Edward nodded. ‘Perfectly true.’
‘When I called on him, he happened to remark upon the decoration of his summer-house. There were wall paintings of a somewhat insipid erotic cast. He referred to them as amorous shrimps, and added that there was no vice in them. When I happened, in this connection, to repeat the phrase “amorous shrimps” to Rood, Rood at once, in speaking of your brother, used the phrase “no vice in him” to me. The associative link was unmistakable. Rood too had heard that joke from your brother in the summer-house. But Rood had implicitly denied ever having visited your brother at Garda. He had simply corresponded with him, and arranged for the transfer of £1,000 – the sum required, according to Rood’s story, to buy some valuable book or document from an impoverished nobleman of Verona. It became clear to me that this impoverished nobleman was moonshine. Rood had invented him; and had persuaded your brother that he, Rood, was acting as an intermediary in delicate negotiations.’
There was silence again – oddly broken by a burst of rather harsh laughter from Rushout. ‘Is this leading up to the proposition that the supposed annotations by Shakespeare in that Ecatommiti are a fake – a forgery?’
‘Certainly it is. Rood was a bit of a scholar and a bit of a palaeographer. And Lewis Packford – Mr Packford here has told me – used to rather laugh at Rood’s pretensions, and indeed to make fun of him generally. With a man of Rood’s temperament, that was a dangerous thing to do. And Rood furthermore possessed a dangerous accomplishment: he had made himself into a brilliant forger. Not, of course, of his clients’ signatures on cheques, or anything of that sort; but simply in the field of literary and antiquarian investigation. The history of scholarship is oddly full of that sort of thing; and there are all degrees of the impulse. The learned joke about Bogdown, if I may venture to say so, is a sort of first-cousin to it.’
Canon Rixon raised a mildly protesting hand at this. ‘My dear Sir John, I consider that remark to be contentious. But proceed.’
‘Rood, then, determined on a shattering hoax at Packford’s expense. On the one hand, he counted on his own quite exceptional skill; and on the other, on what may be called a sanguine streak in his proposed victim. He told me that he regarded Packford as credulous. Even so, his proposed deception was a great gamble. But then he admired gambles. He told me that too. And he particularly admired the gambler who will double his stake at a crisis. The relevance of that will appear later.’
Appleby paused to look round his auditory. With the exception of Alice, who ha
d clearly given up trying to grasp what it was all about, they were as attentive as any actor or lecturer could wish. Moody, who had perhaps been hurried over his breakfast, was covertly swallowing one of Dr Cahoon’s pills. But nobody else moved.
‘The hoax might have worked. As we all now know, Packford went so far as to write a letter to Professor Rushout, stating his conviction that he had found an incomparably important body of marginalia by Shakespeare. And he dropped various hints about it to other people now in this library. The time had come for Rood to disclose the truth, and set the whole learned world laughing at Lewis Packford’s gullibility. Unfortunately Rood had, at quite an early stage, allowed himself one of those swift changes of plan he was so proud of. He had admitted a simple profit motive into his enterprise, and collected from his victim a large sum of money – ostensibly to hand over to the impoverished Veronese nobleman. This, when you come to think of it, was really a hopeless and pitiable muddle at the start. For it would only be for so long as the authenticity of the marginalia went virtually unquestioned that there would be no danger of investigations which would ultimately expose the whole Veronese story as a fraud. Rood could, of course, have handed back the £1,000 at the moment of exploding his hoax. But clearly he didn’t want to. So he thought again, and changed his strategy once more.’
Again Appleby paused, and again for a moment nobody moved. But then Limbrick struck a match and lit a cigarette. ‘I can’t see,’ he said easily, ‘that you aren’t possibly making all this up. About the spuriousness, I mean, of the marginalia in the Ecatommiti. Let us admit that Rood was in Italy. But he may genuinely have been acting as a go-between, in relation to a genuine nobleman owning a genuine Shakespearian treasure. So far, you have been importing the notion of forgery simply on the strength of your own reading of Rood’s character.’
Appleby nodded. ‘There’s some truth in that. If I were a barrister, presenting this material in court, I should have to begin by ordering my entire material much more carefully. As it is, I’m assuming things that can only appear incontestable a little later on, when the rest of the evidence is fitted into place. You’ll find, that’s to say, that matters to which I shall presently come are not reconcilable with the assumption that the marginalia are genuine.’
At this Rushout took it upon himself to nod judiciously. ‘So far,’ he said, ‘your case at least possesses what I’d call internal coherence. And I’m prepared myself to believe the damned stuff is bogus. If only’ – he sighed – ‘because it’s too good to be true.’
‘Very well. And I’ve now come to a point at which Rood, as I conceive the matter, began to evolve a really formidable battery of alternative plans. He had found out about the embarrassing matrimonial dilemma which his client and victim had fallen into. Mr Packford here had advised his brother to take legal advice, and so Lewis Packford had told Rood the story. Rood’s instinct would be to exploit it in some way. And in one set of eventualities, he saw, a descent by the ladies upon Urchins might afford a useful element of confusion. So he communicated with them anonymously, and saw to it that they presented themselves here virtually simultaneously. He himself came down to Urchins at the same time.’
Edward Packford raised his head at this. ‘Did he? We certainly knew nothing about it.’
‘I understand that it was your brother’s invariable habit to spend an hour or two in this library before going to bed. Rood had no need to announce himself. On a summer evening, he could simply walk in by the French window. And that is what he did.’
‘Intending murder?’
‘Almost certainly not. Indeed, I’m not positively certain that he intended to confront your brother at all. It seems to me conceivable that he simply intended to slip into the house and conceal himself. The plan at this time in the forefront of his mind was probably theft. And that is where Mr Moody comes in.’
‘Huh?’ This was the first sound that Moody had uttered.
‘The position, remember, was this. Lewis Packford had possessed himself of these supposed marginalia by Shakespeare. He had informed Professor Rushout about them, and he had dropped hints to other people. Packford, of course, was a great name in this particular field of learning, and his opinion would carry much weight. When, however, the marginalia were eventually given to the world, they would almost certainly be questioned, debated and eventually exposed. That was no longer what Rood desired, or looked forward to as other than thoroughly inconvenient. But if he could possess himself of the Cintio again – steal it, in fact – he could dispose of it to that sort of collector who doesn’t object to clandestine acquisitions, and who indeed has rather a fancy for them. Mr Moody certainly falls into that category. He has a fancy for possessing remarkable things that nobody knows about. He told me so himself. Isn’t that right, Mr Moody?’
Moody considered this question sombrely for a moment. ‘Huh,’ he said.
‘Quite so. And let us notice that Mr Moody would be paying a substantial sum for the marginalia on the strength of the conviction which Lewis Packford had arrived at about it, while at the same time being unable, in the nature of the case, to call in further expert opinion by way of corroboration. Rood, then, had a lot to gain by simply walking off with the Cintio if he could lay his hands on it.’
Professor Prodger, who had for some time given the appearance of slumbering within the recesses of his venerable beard, was prompted to speech by this. ‘But that mightn’t be easy – eh? That mightn’t be easy, at all. Even if he had the advantage of knowing the precise book he was looking for. Am I right, Rixon? Limbrick, would you agree with me?’
Appleby nodded. ‘That is obviously true. And there is no doubt that Rood did in fact have an interview with Lewis Packford here in the library. And there is equally little doubt that Packford produced the Cintio. Rood’s simplest way of finding out where it was kept would be to contrive this. Unfortunately he found out something else as well. Perhaps you can guess what that was.’
‘That Lewis knew the truth, after all?’ It was Ruth Packford who asked this. She had been following Appleby with absolute concentration.
‘Certainly that he knew a great deal of the truth. Your husband, that is to say, had detected the fact of forgery. He had done so, it may be, only within the preceding few hours; and without doubt he had, so far, communicated his discovery to no one. There seems a high probability that Rood had underestimated his victim’s intelligence right from the start. Packford had indeed been bowled over by the magnitude of the supposed find, so that for a time his critical faculties were in abeyance. But from the first I believe that doubts and suspicions were gnawing at his mind – even without his being at all consciously aware of it. The drift of our conversation at Garda seems to me highly significant now. He talked about the technique of literary forgery – old paper, a chemically correct ink and so forth – and also about its psychology: forgery sometimes starting as a joke, gratifying an impulse to laugh up one’s sleeve, being particularly attractive to those who have reason to suppose themselves patronized or looked down upon. Very obscurely, in fact, his mind was groping after the basis of the whole deception which was being launched against him at that very moment. And now some more minute study of his find flashed on him the truth that it was spurious.’
‘And you think,’ Ruth asked, ‘that he taxed Rood there and then?’
‘No, I don’t. I think his first supposition was that both he and Rood had been equally the victims of an imposture. But you see the crisis with which Rood suddenly found himself confronted. Once Packford had communicated his revised opinion to Professor Rushout, or anybody of the sort, the Cintio would become virtually valueless. So there was no point in stealing it. And, whether he stole it or not, Lewis Packford would certainly conduct an investigation as a consequence of which he himself could scarcely escape exposure. Nor would he then be able to plead that he had been devising a harmless and even salutary hoax. For the cold fact would be that he had fabricated a false document, invented a false provenance
for it, and sold it for a large sum of money. Things were turning very awkward for him. It was incumbent upon him, therefore, to bring one of his reserve plans into operation. Fortunately he had – or believed himself to have – a Napoleonic genius in that direction.’
‘And so,’ Edward Packford asked, ‘we come to murder?’
‘And so we come to murder – and to a little more forgery. It is obvious that, if your brother died there and then, with the fact of his final discovery of the spuriousness of the marginalia undisclosed, Rood could still do very well. He could walk off with the Cintio, just as he had already proposed. Later, Professor Rushout would certainly make public the fact that Packford had believed himself to be in possession of important Shakespeare marginalia; there would be a vain hunt for the missing volume; and Rood would have something pleasingly notorious to peddle to Mr Moody on the quiet.’
‘Huh.’
‘And already the way was paved for this alternative operation. Acute domestic embarrassment had been, so to speak, dumped on the doorstep of Urchins that very afternoon. If Lewis Packford was given the appearance of committing suicide there and then, there would be a ready-made motive. So Rood shot him, and scrawled that note. He had, of course, put in a lot of time perfecting his command of Packford’s handwriting. I think it likely that he was ingenious enough to use a particularly slow-drying ink – in the hope that the first person brought to the spot by the shot would notice this apparently incontestable piece of additional evidence.’
There was a scrape of a match as Limbrick lit another cigarette. ‘And this,’ he said, ‘is the point at which your whole case, Sir John, turns to sheer nonsense. You say that Rood committed murder and ingeniously disguised it as suicide. But everybody knows that he was later virtually the only person to declare that it was murder. Do you maintain that he was simply putting up a crazy double bluff?’
Appleby shook his head. ‘Not quite that. The Napoleonic change of plan had a fatal attraction for Rood simply, one may say, for its own sake. It cropped up in his conversation in a way that clearly indicated an obsession. But there was, at the same time, a rational basis for this very hazardous second – or third – thought, when he embarked upon it. And this again concerns our American friend, Mr Moody, who has so kindly come along this morning.’
The Long Farewell Page 17