The Weight of the Evidence

by Michael Innes

  ‘Certainly not!’ Hobhouse’s voice was as decided as it was scandalized.

  ‘Don’t you think that perhaps Nesfield Infirmary–? After all, it would only be a sort of slightly new post-mortem.’

  ‘It would be nothing of the sort.’ Logic came to Hobhouse’s aid. ‘A post-mortem is performed in order to discover the manner of death of the corpse in question. In what you’re suggesting the corpse wouldn’t be the corpse in question. It would be a – previous corpse. Decency is decency, Mr Appleby.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ Appleby was silent for a moment. ‘By the way, I can tell you this. There’s going to be a great deal of sex in the Pluckrose affair. For instance, Pluckrose’s landlady practically stated to me that Pluckrose was a person of immoral habits. And that no less a person than Sir David Evans was a rival of his in his lewd loves.’

  Hobhouse sat up with a jerk. ‘Now you’re talking!’ he said. ‘What I always say is this: get your hands on the sex of the matter and you’ll soon find your feet. Now, I’ll tell you a curious case–’

  The car sped through the night. It was an instructive, if not an edifying, journey.

  They had passed a road-house, garish with neon, loud with music; they had overtaken a little column of night-travelling lorries, headlong and stinking; they had turned through great gates dimly glimpsed – and then the moon rose as they crossed Nesfield Chase. Slyly the moon edged itself over the horizon as if its purpose were eavesdropping on the earnestly discouraging Hobhouse; then in a moment it hung clear in the sky, suddenly indifferent and remote. To the left it gleamed coldly on an expanse of water flanked by a balustrade which seemed to run endlessly into distance; to the right it created out of darkness a great irregular chequerboard of trees and clumps of trees and blotched and shafted shadows upon a carpeting of blanched and close-cropped grass. Now they were on a bridge and in the water deer were drinking; now they were running by the stream and before them, correctly framed amid plantations and contrived waters, were the ruins of Nesfield Abbey – a silhouette of broken and impending arches caught by the invisible hand of wealth and invisibly sustained in air; a treasured and embalmed decay. The car purred on, circled, stopped. There was a high stone wall and wrought-iron gates flanked by prancing monsters: portal-guarding lion-whelps, thought Appleby thinking of Tennyson. The driver discreetly tooted and there was a stir at a lodge door. ‘The park,’ said Hobhouse. He spoke in a low voice, rather as if in church. ‘It was his grandfather enclosed the chase as well.’ The car was moving again – down an avenue now.

  The elm avenue ran like an arrow before them, still and dappled. Fast as the car was going, it was like walking up some endless aisle to the encountering of unknown mysteries. It is nice, thought Appleby, to be plebeian; you take nothing for granted and get all the thrill. The avenue curved, straightened again, curved once more – manoeuvring to just the angle wanted. And then there was clear moonlight and the car was in the open. It was like pulling round a point in a dinghy and finding a battleship at anchor straight ahead.

  To left and right Nesfield Court sprawled into distance – or would have sprawled had it not been laboriously braced against aesthetic appraisal by the massive perpendiculars of Corinthian columns rising to a succession of pediments, or marshalled by platoons and companies into symmetrically disposed porticoes and colonnades. Beneath all this was an ordered multitude of flights of steps, advancing and retiring upon each other like a frozen ballet; and beneath this again was a system of terraces at once cold and lavish, mathematically embellished with classical statuary: hounds and boars, nymphs and satyrs, Laocoon and Hercules and Niobe all tears. Appleby looked at it all as the car slowed down. There was a lot of it and it had been there for quite a long time. Moreover it would last. Even when England had turned into the Duke’s dog-kennel paradise it would stand. Even when given over to the occupancy of tired workers or imbecile children it would continue to make its own assertions and not theirs. At the moment it made Pluckrose seem very small; before this vast façade of stone that shabby little figure shrivelled further, took on the dimensions of some inky-spinning spider crushed between the pages of an academic text-book. How curious, then, the power of the moral conscience. How curious that the judges of this class-ridden and materialistic modern England would license the pulling of Nesfield Court stone from stone if it were demonstrable that the riddle of this obscure scholar’s death could only be solved that way!

  The car had stopped before a bifurcation of the drive. Appleby saw the driver’s questioning face, and smiled. ‘Hobhouse,’ he said, ‘how do you think we get in?’

  ‘Get in?’ Hobhouse was looking dubiously up at the moonlit vistas of pale stone. ‘Drive up to the front door, of course. Get on.’

  They drove on past long flights of empty and unwelcoming steps. It was rather as if they were sculling round the battleship and looking for an accommodation ladder. Suddenly the bonnet of the car nosed up into air; a flight of steps had parted before them and they were mounting a steep stone ramp. Darkness gathered round them and then once more they were on a level and had come to a stop. Great pillars soared all around with here and there a shaft of moonlight striking uncertainly through. It was like being lost in a forest of immemorial elms. They sat and peered rather helplessly into the thicker darkness. ‘Well,’ said Appleby, ‘I think there can be no doubt that this is the front door. What about ringing the bell? Or do you think one just gives a knock?’

  Hobhouse showed no disposition to get out. ‘Perhaps–’

  ‘I expect you’re right. They probably open this one only for the Royal Family. We’d better search elsewhere.’

  The car moved forward; the bonnet sharply dipped; presently the unending steps and terraces and balustrades were gliding past them once more. They turned a corner. ‘Do you know,’ said Appleby, ‘I believe that was just the side of the house. There’s far more of it this way on.’

  ‘If this were a taxi we’d have had a bob’s worth round the place already.’ Hobhouse was becoming restive. ‘And as yet I haven’t seen a single light. The place might be uninhabited.’

  ‘Probably nine-tenths of it are. I think I see an archway a bit along. Let’s turn in.’

  The archway proved to have something like the dimensions of a tunnel; they drove through and now the building rose on all sides of them. Still there was no gleam of light; great walls, blank or with shuttered windows, rose intermittently before them; they crawled uncertainly through further tunnels and drove slowly round court after deserted court.

  ‘It’s like a dream,’ said Hobhouse flatly, and then: ‘Lights!’ he added dramatically – much as a castaway might announce a sail.

  The buildings were lower and more irregular now, and straight ahead a cluster of lights had revealed itself. The car crawled to a standstill; a shaft of light shot across the darkness nearby as a door was opened and shut; another door, wide open, showed a vista of empty, stone-flagged corridor.

  ‘Offices,’ said Appleby. ‘Laundries and harness-rooms and lord knows what. Rather a come-down after such a regal approach. But human contact is something. Out we get. And don’t forget to be properly respectful to the head groom.’

  Hobhouse shook his head. ‘Drive on,’ he said firmly.

  ‘But don’t you think–?’

  ‘Mr Appleby, we have the dignity of the constabulary to observe. It wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all.’

  Appleby sighed and the car drove on. ‘Hobhouse,’ he asked suddenly, ‘whom are you going to ask for, anyway?’

  ‘Ask for?’ Hobhouse appeared not to have considered this point.

  ‘Supposing that in the next half-hour we find what looks like the policemen’s entrance, whom are you going to ask for – the Duke?’

  ‘It’s really rather difficult to say. If it were the Lord Mayor of Nesfield, now, I’d certainly ask for the Lord Mayor.’

  ‘And if it were a baronet somewhere about the country?’

  ‘I’d ask for the b
aronet.’

  ‘And if it were an earl?’ The courts now were growing loftier again, and the lighted windows were large and showed blinds of uniform cream. ‘Or, say, a marquis?’

  Hobhouse shook his head, much disturbed. ‘They have all sorts of folk around them. What would you say to asking for His Grace’s secretary?’

  ‘I think you ought to ask for the major-domo.’

  ‘It sounds kind of queer to me, Mr Appleby.’

  Appleby chuckled. ‘It is. Of course you might try the steward.’

  ‘Would the steward be a gentleman?’ Hobhouse had sunk his voice confidentially.

  ‘Not in the sense you mean.’

  ‘Then it wouldn’t do. Particularly with the Chief Constable’s car.’ Hobhouse pondered. ‘What about not asking for anyone? What about just saying, ‘I am Inspector Hobhouse of the Borough Police’? And then just expecting something to happen?’

  ‘That will be capital.’ A paralysing place, Appleby was thinking – when the car jerked to a stop. They had come suddenly upon a sort of junior version of the portals at which they had made their first assault – another ramp running up under a small portico. Only here there were lights in the roof and panels of light from windows flanking a closed door.

  They got out and explored. ‘There isn’t a bell,’ said Hobhouse, suddenly dejected.

  ‘A bell? Of course not. This little place scarcely counts as an entrance. It’s just a convenient place to put out the cat. Try a knock.’

  Hobhouse knocked, and presently knocked again; there was no result. ‘It looks like another blank,’ he said.

  ‘Nonsense. Look at the lights.’ It was Appleby who was impatient now. ‘Try the door. If it’s open we’ll simply walk in.’

  ‘Walk in!’ Hobhouse was scandalized.

  ‘We’ll come upon a porter or footman in no time. In you go.’

  Doubtfully Hobhouse pushed open the door and they entered a vestibule which was all pale green enamel and Chinese Chippendale. In front were curtained glass doors with light streaming through. Hobhouse looked about him and seemed to gather resolution from the costliness and strangeness of the place. He advanced upon the glass doors, opened one wing, and marched through without a pause. Then suddenly he gave a bound backwards, cannoned violently into Appleby, and slammed the door to.

  ‘Hobhouse, what on earth–’

  ‘Somebody took a shot at me.’ Hobhouse’s hand had dived into his overcoat pocket; his glance was warily on the door.

  ‘Took a shot at you? Nonsense. There wasn’t a sound.’

  ‘I felt it go past my ear. A graze.’

  ‘My dear man–’ Appleby stopped and stared. From Hobhouse’s left ear there was a trickle of blood.

  And then the door opened again and the tall figure of the Duke of Nesfield was before them, politely curious. ‘I hope’, he said, ‘that you are not hurt? Perhaps it was a stupid place to set the thing up. But then nobody ever comes in this way.’ He came forward and shook hands, a man very far from proposing to show surprise at the identity of his unexpected guests. ‘My friends and I took a fancy to darts some months ago, and tonight we are having a little reunion. You play?’ He stood aside and they entered what proved to be a billiard room. ‘More coffee, Thomas.’ He glanced at Hobhouse. ‘And a bottle of iodine.’

  Appleby looked about him. Yes, there was the darts board, set up on a wall close by the door. And standing beside it, as one who studies the strategy of the later stages of the game, was young Marlow. And over by the billiard table, surveying the newcomers with frank distaste, was that acid and severe Romance philologer, Professor Prisk.

  8

  ‘Marlow’, said the Duke, ‘is streets ahead of us. He has the advantage of playing regularly in a Nesfield pub. A thing, unfortunately, I can’t do; it would be an affectation. And a thing the professor can’t do either; it would be an impropriety.’

  ‘Indecorous would be a better word.’ Prisk took careful aim. ‘And I think eccentric would be better still. Perhaps I may take it up. Pluckrose was our eccentric professor, as Mr Appleby here has found out. And now another is needed in his room.’

  ‘Talking of Pluckrose’s room–’ began Marlow.

  ‘Whisky?’ The Duke had strode over to a great silver tray on which stood an array of decanters and now spoke rather abruptly to the company at large. Prisk and Marlow, it seemed to Appleby, represented once again the Duke’s fondness for little parties with some ulterior object. And this, surely, could only have to do with the Pluckrose mystery. Nevertheless the Duke was not at all disposed to let Pluckrose’s name turn up at random. For the moment at least he had imposed upon Hobhouse and Appleby the part of casual visitors, and now he had shut up Marlow with businesslike directness. ‘Whisky?’ he repeated. ‘Although darts ought really to go with beer.’

  ‘Say rather with ale,’ said Prisk vigorously. ‘Ale for an Englishman is a natural drink, so that it be neither ropy nor smoky, nor have no weft or tail. But beer is a natural drink for a Dutchman.’ He held up a dart in air, much as if gesturing at a blackboard. ‘I cite no less an authority than Dr Andrew Borde’s Regiment of Health, a pioneer work in dietetics, published in 1557. Dr Borde, who was in holy orders, died in prison shortly after being arrested by his bishop on a charge of keeping three punks or croshabells in his rooms at Winchester.’ Having delivered himself of this piece of musty bawdry Prisk turned back – rather vaguely, it suddenly seemed to Appleby – to the game. In fact Prisk was slightly drunk – or what Dr Borde might have called disguised in liquor. And the liquor was the Duke’s. Perhaps the object of the present party could he glimpsed here. Perhaps the Duke was employing the mellowing resources of the Nesfield Court cellars to worm his way a little further into the Pluckrose affair. But Marlow was unkindled by wine; indeed he had the appearance of being carefully sober. And he was looking at Prisk now with a certain calculating malice.

  ‘Borde?’ said Marlow; ‘I think Prisk would find sounder advice in Platt. Sir Hugh Platt’s Jewell House of Art and Nature. He recommends salad oil. A good swig of salad oil will float upon the wine which you shall drink, and suppress the spirits from ascending to the brain.’

  ‘Oh, most barbarous!’ Prisk flung a dart – so inaccurately that Appleby trembled for Hobhouse’s other ear. The result appeared to discourage him; he turned away, lowered himself carefully into a chair, and began solemnly to recite:

  Who ever casts to compass weighty prize,

  And thinks to throw out thundering words of threat:

  Let pour in lavish cups and thrifty bits of meat,

  For Bacchus fruit is friend to Phoebus wise.

  And when with Wine the brain begins to sweat,

  The numbers flow as fast as spring doth rise.

  He paused and frowned, as if he had lost the thread of this paean. ‘Duke,’ he said heavily, ‘if only our dear Gerald were here the reunion would be complete.’

  ‘Very true, professor.’ The Duke too had sat down and was taking the band from a cigar. ‘But Gerald is safe at Cambridge, thanks to your good offices.’

  So that was it. Prisk had been the second of the tutors employed to cram dear Gerald. Prisk and Marlow. And here, after Pluckrose’s death, was the Duke conducting a little veiled investigation. Not veiled from Marlow; there was a wariness about that young man that showed he suspected how the land lay. But – unless the man was an incomparable actor – veiled from the more aggressive and less apprehensive Prisk… And now Prisk had raised his song and his glass together:

  O if my temples were distained with wine,

  And girt in garlands of wild ivy twine…

  Again he paused. ‘An epiphonematical passage,’ he said carefully.

  For Hobhouse this looked like being too much. He opened his mouth as if to announce that it was not the Muses but a meteorite that he had come to seek. Appleby contrived unobtrusively to restrain him. The meteorite – or rather the absence of the meteorite – could wait. There was matter of much more immedi
ate interest going forward. The Duke of Nesfield had embarked on what Edwardian ladies would have called a smoking-room story.

  Perhaps there was nothing so very odd about that. Sir Robert Walpole, a contemporary of the Duke who built Nesfield Court, encouraged dirty conversation on the ground that it was the only sort of talk enjoyed by everybody. And at the moment the Duke had rather an ill-assorted company to entertain. But with Hobhouse, at least, he was not being successful. That self-conscious representative of the higher constabulary, who had so recently been entertaining Appleby with certain of the more startling findings of his professional experience, was sitting frozen with horror. Other times, other manners. This was not at all the way the twentieth century expected its noblemen to behave.

  But if Hobhouse contracted into an image of respectful disapproval Prisk expanded like a flower. It was soon evident that he carried not one but two invisible bags: a word-hoard and what might perhaps be called a love-hoard. And they had this in common: that their contents were curious, far-fetched, and made smooth with handling. Nor did Prisk appear to be a mere passive collector of anecdotes of Cyprian experience. Much of what he had to say took the form of personal reminiscence. In fact, thought Appleby, a thoroughly dirty old man. It was a new light on Romance Philology.

  The Duke plied the whisky and listened attentively – so attentively that Appleby presently decided that Prisk was not the real object of interest at all. The Duke scarcely glanced at Marlow – but it was on Marlow that some obscure experiment was being conducted nevertheless. How, then, did Marlow feel about it? He was not, like Hobhouse, shocked. He was angry. Or – to put it more adequately – Prisk’s reminiscences pricked him to a cold fury which not all his wariness was able to suppress. And it was in the gauging of this that the Duke was interested. Marlow, in fact, was to be goaded to the point of some outburst. That was the plan, and it was a plan which the Duke had no intention of seeing upset by the arrival of a couple of policemen. And what was it about? Why was the Duke thus exercising himself? Because these two men had been his guests – or employees. Because at the university which was one of his hobbies a scholar had – most shockingly – been murdered. Because of some piece of knowledge or train of speculation which had prompted him the day before to waylay the police and murmur, ‘I suppose it is – ah – Pluckrose?’ Yes, because of that.