‘Margaux, was it? Judith said it tasted rather like cowslip wine.’
‘My dear boy, she was perfectly right. She always is. That’s the precise description for the bouquet of Margaux. Ever been to the Château?’ Strickland paused to sniff at his brandy. ‘I must tell you, one day, of the week I spent there in ’17. Absolutely amazing. Not that the place is anything much to look at. Not a patch on Gore. Built by some fellow called Lacolonilla about a hundred years ago, and might be round the corner from my own house in Regent’s Park … How does Gore strike you, by the way?’
‘It’s an impressive place – particularly to tumble into out of the snow. And perhaps a shade oppressive, as well.’
‘Never struck me that way. But then I’ve known it, you see, man and boy … Bit of a cloud over it at the moment, eh?’
‘So I feel. But Judith and I are unbidden guests, you know. I told her, earlier this evening, that curiosity isn’t on.’
‘And she said that, with you, it’s never off?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact, she did.’ Appleby paused to light a cigar.
‘But, Strickland – do you know? – I’m not sure I wouldn’t like any gossip there is. I’ve a notion there’s something … well, building up. Any idea what I mean?’
General Strickland looked about him cautiously. But the two men were unobserved – except by the ancestral Darien-Gore portraits on the walls.
‘That fellow Charles Trevor seems deucedly uneasy,’ he said. ‘And what’s he doing here, anyway? Knows his spoons and forks, and all that. In fact, he was at school with Jasper. But not our sort. Not our sort, at all.’
‘I suppose not.’ Appleby was amused by this obscure social judgement. ‘But I imagine he’s more our sort than poor Mr Jolly.’
‘Well, that’s different. Very decent, unassuming chap, no doubt. Some sort of counter-jumper or motor salesman, eh? Jasper didn’t want to bother the servants with him.’
‘So I’ve gathered – if it was Jasper. I rather think it may have been Robert. There’s a faint conflict of evidence on the point.’
‘Well, it comes to the same thing, my dear boy. The brothers are tremendously thick. And, since Robert and Prunella came to live here – ’
‘Why did they come?’
‘Ah – that’s telling.’
‘I know.’
‘Appleby, you really feel there’s something … well, happening in this place?’
‘Happening, or going to happen. Don’t you?’
‘That could be stopped?’
‘Well, not by me. I just don’t know enough.’ Appleby paused to look into his brandy glass. ‘Were you going to tell me about Robert?’
‘My dear chap, I don’t know. Nobody does – or wants to, I should hope. It looked damnably ugly for a time. And then it ended on what you might call a minor note.’
‘Ended? What ended?’
‘Robert’s career, I suppose one has to say. He left the army. And the thing dropped.’
‘The thing? What thing?’
‘God knows, something there turned out not to be sufficient evidence about, I imagine.’ General Strickland broke off, and again looked about him. This time, it was at the line of portraits silent on the wall. ‘A poor show of some sort. Hard on a decent family, eh? Not much wrong with them since the Crusades, and all that.’
‘You’re a romantic at heart, Strickland. And noblesse oblige is all very well, no doubt.’ Appleby was speaking seriously. ‘But that particular sense of obligation is an open invitation to pride.’
‘And pride?’
‘Is an open invitation to the devil.’
‘Here’s Jasper coming down the gallery. He looks proud, I’m bound to admit. But he’s ageing, too. It’s just struck me. Still, he’s kept his form. A great athlete, you know, as a young man. But not the sort that falls into a flabby middle age … I think he’s coming over to talk to you. I must go and have another word with your wife. Astonishing thing, you two turning up here like that. Quite astonishing.’
‘Delightful that you turned out to know the Stricklands,’ Jasper Darien-Gore said. ‘Won’t you and your wife treat it as an inducement to stay on for a day or two?’
‘It’s most hospitable of you, but I’m afraid we can’t.’ Appleby felt no reason to suppose that Darien-Gore had spoken other than merely by way of civility. There was, indeed, something faintly distraught in his manner which emphasised the point. ‘As a matter of fact, we must try to get away fairly early.’ Appleby hesitated, and then took a plunge. ‘Unless, that is, I can be useful in any way.’ He waited for a response, but none came. Darien-Gore was looking at him with a frozen and conventional smile. He simply mightn’t have heard. Having begun, however, Appleby went on. ‘You’ll forgive me if I’m talking nonsense. But it has just occurred to me that in that fellow Jolly you may find yourself rather far from entertaining an angel unawares. And I happen to know – ’
‘Jolly?’ Darien-Gore repeated the name quite vaguely. ‘An odd chap, I agree. But he has been getting on quite well with Robert. In fact, they’ve been making some kind of wager – I’ve no idea about what.’
‘I don’t think I’d be inclined to lay any wager with Jolly. Winning and losing might prove equally expensive.’
‘And he says that he must try to get away quite early, too. Ah, here he is.’
This was not wholly accurate. Jolly had been standing some little way across the. gallery, and without showing any disposition to approach. But Jasper had made a gesture which constrained him to come forward.
‘Mr Jolly,’ he said, ‘ – you must really leave us in the morning, if your car can be got away? It would be pleasant if you could stay a little longer.’ As he produced this further civility, Jasper gave Appleby a hard smile. ‘And, of course – ’ He broke off. ‘Ah – thank you, Frape.’
Frape’s appearance was with a large silver tray, upon which he was carrying round a whisky decanter, glasses, ice and a syphon. The Darien-Gores, it was to be supposed, kept fairly early hours. Frape was looking particularly wooden. He had presumably overheard his employer’s latest essay in hospitality.
‘Very much obliged,’ Jolly said. ‘But fast and far will be my motto in the morning. All having gone well, that’s to say.’ He gave a laugh which was at once insolent and apprehensive. ‘Yes, all having gone well.’ He looked indecisively at the tray – and at this moment Robert Darien-Gore came up. Silently, he poured a stiff drink, added a splash of soda water and handed the glass to Jolly. Jolly, who already seemed slightly drunk, gulped, hesitated, gulped again. The two brothers watched him fixedly. He returned the glass, only half-emptied, to the tray, and waved Frape away. Frape’s eyes met Appleby’s for a moment, and then he moved silently off.
‘I know just when I’ve been given enough,’ Jolly said. ‘And it has been the secret of my success.’ He turned to Appleby, and gave him a look of startling contempt. ‘Pleasant to meet people one has heard about,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that right, Sir John?’
‘Decidedly. And I’m glad, Mr Jolly, that I’ve been here to meet you tonight.’
‘I know, you see, just how much I can take.’ Jolly pointed at Appleby’s glass, as if further to explain this remark. ‘That, and fast and far, are the secrets of my success.’
‘Come and have a final word with my wife, Mr Jolly.’ Quite firmly, Appleby took Jolly by the elbow and led him away – leaving the Darien-Gores looking at each other silently. But Appleby took no more than a few paces towards Judith. ‘My man,’ he said, ‘let me give you a word of advice. Stick, on this occasion, to fast and far. And make it quite clear that you have forgotten the other part of your secret of success.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I’m talking about life and death. Good night.’
V
‘Good night, madam … good night, sir … good night, my lady.’ Frape, standing at one of the doors of the long gallery, responded to such salutations as he was offered
while the company dispersed. His employer and his employer’s brother were the last to leave the gallery; to each of the Darien-Gores, as he very slightly bowed, he gave a grave, straight look. Jasper hesitated when at the head of the staircase, half-turned as if about to speak, thought better of it and moved on. Robert had already vanished; in a moment Jasper’s shoulders – squarely held – and then his head vanished too. Frape closed the door behind him, turned and looked down the long gallery. From its far end the archery target regarded him like a staring and sleepless eye. He moved down the gallery, set glasses on a tray, placed a guard carefully before the great fireplace, turned off the lights, so that it was now by the flicker of firelight that he was lit, paused to look thoughtfully at the line of portraits on the wall. He went over to the ascham and saw that it was locked. He moved to a window, drew back a curtain and stood immobile before the wintry scene. Small clouds were drifting across a high, full moon, so that pale light and near-blackness washed alternately over the landscape. To his left, and from very high up, he had an oblique view of the inner bailey; this came into full light for a moment, revealing the well, still amid its unbroken carpet of snow.
Frape remained motionless, with the firelight flickering behind him.
VI
‘Snubbed,’ Appleby said.
‘Never mind, darling. This is a most comfortable bed. And do hurry up. I’m extremely sleepy.’ Judith put down the book she had been reading. ‘You mean you scrapped that business about having a social duty to discover nothing?’
‘More or less.’ Appleby took off his black tie and tossed it on the dressing-table. ‘At least, I decided that I ought to offer our host some sort of warning about Jolly. What I was after was a little candour before trouble blows up.’
‘What sort of trouble?’
‘Unfortunately, I can’t take more than a guess at it. If I could do more, it might be possible to act. Anyway, our friend Jasper refused to play. So did Jolly.’
‘Jolly! You talked to him?’
‘He’s up to mischief, and I had a shot at sharing him off. It didn’t work. You’d take him to be rather an apprehensive little rat, but in fact he has a nerve. It amuses him to be operating – and he certainly is operating – right under my nose.’
‘He’s gathered who you are?’
‘Quite clearly he has. But I don’t seem to carry around with me much of the terror of the law.’
‘There’s something between him and that man Charles Trevor.’
‘I know there is.’ Appleby was now in his pyjamas.
‘I think Trevor is quite as nasty as Jolly. Perhaps they’re confederates.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘You say something’s going to happen. What?’
‘Well, for one thing, you and I are going to sleep.’ Appleby turned out a light. ‘For another – but this is where I just start to guess – there’s going to be some hard bargaining at Gore. And not of a kind, unfortunately, at which I can very well act as honest broker.’
‘It sounds most unpleasant.’
‘I’m sure it is. But I don’t see there is anything I can do. I must think twice before compounding a felony, I suppose. And that’s why, in a way, I don’t really want to learn more. We didn’t stagger in here out of the snow in order to start blowing police whistles and insisting on open scandal. Or that’s how I see it at the moment. It may be different in the morning.’ Appleby crossed to the window, drew back the curtain a little way and half-opened a casement. He moved back across the room, got into bed and turned out the last light. The room was quite dark, with only a narrow band of moonlight falling on a wall and across the bed. ‘And now you’re going straight to sleep,’ he said.
The band of moonlight had moved a little; it now caught the corner of a picture. Otherwise the room was in absolute darkness. The only sound was Judith’s breathing.
‘Twang!’
Appleby found that he had come awake with a start, and that his mind was groping for the reason. And the reason came to him, like an echo on the inward ear, as he sat up and switched on a bedside lamp. Judith was still fast asleep.
He picked up his watch and looked at it; the time was just two o’clock. He slipped out of bed, went over to the door and listened intently. He came back, put on his dressinggown, felt in his open suitcase and produced a pocket torch. Returning to the door, he opened it gently, went out and closed it behind him. The corridor before him was quite dark and very cold. He let the beam from his torch first play down its empty length, and then circle until it found the door of Jolly’s room. He went over to this, listened for some seconds and then switched off the torch and cautiously turned the handle. The door swung back with a faint creak upon blackness. He switched on the torch again, and the beam fell on Jolly’s shabby suitcase, open and untidy. The beam circled the room and fell upon the bed. It had been turned down at one corner. But nobody had slept in it.
Appleby closed the door – and as he did so heard faint sounds from the end of the corridor. They might have been slippered footfalls. He turned in time to see a dim form and a flickering light disappear round a corner. Muffling the torch in the skirt of his dressinggown, he followed.
Under these conditions, Gore Castle seemed tortuous and enormous. Several times he lost all trace of the figure in front of him. And then, suddenly, he oriented himself. The newel by which he was standing belonged to one of the two staircases leading to the long gallery. He looked up. An unidentifiable male figure – like himself, in a dressinggown, but holding a lighted candle before him – was disappearing into the long gallery itself. Appleby climbed rapidly. The gallery, when he reached it, was part in near-darkness and part floating in moonlight. At its far end stood the target, commanding the long, narrow place. Appleby rounded a screen, and the man with the candle stood before him. It was Frape. His hand was on the door of the ascham.
‘What’s this about, Frape?’
The candlestick in Frape’s hand gave a jump. But when he turned round, it was to look at Appleby steadily enough.
‘The door of the ascham, sir. It seems to have been left unsecured, and to have been banging in the night. The fault is mine, sir. I am deeply sorry that you, too, should have been disturbed by it.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘You are talking nonsense, Frape, as you very well know.’
‘I assure you, sir – ’
‘Open the door of the thing, and let’s have a look. It’s no more than you were going to do for yourself.’
Silently, Frape turned back and opened the door of the tall cupboard.
‘Commendable,’ Appleby said. ‘Everything as accountable as in a well-ordered armoury. Those two empty places in the rack, Frape – I think they mean two arrows missing?’
‘It might be so, sir. I cannot tell.’
‘Two gone.’ Appleby lifted a third arrow from the rack and poised it in his hand. ‘Simply as a dagger,’ he said, ‘it would make a pretty lethal weapon – would it not?’
‘I really can’t say, sir.’
‘But there’s a bow missing as well?’
‘There may be, sir. I have never counted them, so am not in a position to say.’
‘Frape, drop this. It can do nobody any good. You came up here – didn’t you? – because you were disturbed by the same sound that disturbed me. Somebody shooting one of those damned things. And we both know that nobody practises archery in the small hours just for fun.’
‘There is the possibility of a bet, sir. Gentlemen have their peculiar ways.’
‘For heaven’s sake, man, stop behaving like a stage butler. You know, even better than I do, that there’s some devilry afoot in this place.’
‘Yes … yes, I do.’ Frape passed a hand over his forehead, like a man who gives up. ‘Only, I must – ’
At this moment the creak of a door made itself heard from the far end of the gallery. Appleby was about to turn towards the noise, when Frape restrained him.
‘Don’t turn round,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I can see – without being detected as doing so. I think somebody is watching us through the door.’ He began to fiddle with the door-handle of the ascham. ‘Yes,’ he said in a louder tone. ‘The catch is defective, sir, and so the door has simply been blowing to and fro. There is always a draught in the gallery.’ Once more he lowered his voice. ‘He’s opened it wider. It’s Mr Trevor. He’s shut it again. He’s gone.’
‘You mean to say’ – now Appleby did turn round – ‘that this fellow Trevor has come up here, peered in at us in a furtive manner and made himself scarce again?’
‘Yes, sir. And it is certainly another indication that things are not as they ought to be.’
‘Quite so. And the question is, where do we go from here? Have you any idea where we might find that fellow Jolly?’
‘In his bed, I suppose.’
‘Jolly’s bed hasn’t been slept in. Were you aware of any coming and going about the place after the company broke up last night?’
‘I have an impression, sir, that there was some talking going on in the library until about midnight. Whether Mr Jolly was concerned, I don’t know. But would I be correct in assuming that you are aware of something seriously to his disadvantage?’
‘That puts it mildly, Frape. The man’s a professional criminal.’
‘Then I suggest that he may have left the Castle. Mr Darien-Gore may have detected him in some design that has resulted in his beating a hasty retreat. It would be perfectly possible. The wind has dropped, and I think there has been no more snow.’ As he said this, and as if to confirm his impression, Frape crossed over to a window.
‘It’s a possibility, certainly,’ Appleby said. ‘And I wonder – ’
‘Sir’ – Frape’s voice had changed suddenly – ‘will you be so good as to step this way?’
Appleby did so, and found himself looking obliquely down into the moonlit inner bailey. It was a moment before he realised the small change that had taken place in the scene. Between the well and one side of the surrounding courtyard there was a line of tracks in the snow.
Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season Page 9