Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season

by Cecily Gayford

  ‘Mr Darien-Gore’s binoculars, sir. He keeps a pair in the gallery.’

  Appleby took the binoculars and focused. There could be no doubt about what he saw. A line of heavy footprints led straight to the well. There were none leading the other way.

  ‘Ought I to rouse Mr Darien-Gore, sir?’ Frape asked, as Appleby put down the binoculars and turned away from the window.

  ‘Certainly you must.’ Appleby moved across the gallery to the great fireplace. ‘And everybody else as well. But it will be rather a chilly occasion for them – particularly for the ladies. Would you say, Frape, that this fire could be blown up quickly?’

  ‘Decidedly, sir. A little work with the bellows will produce a blaze in a few minutes.’

  ‘Then this will be the best place in which to meet. You had better get on to the job … But one moment.’ Appleby held up a hand. ‘You could not have been mistaken about the identity of the man peering in on us a few moments ago?’

  ‘Certainly not. It was Mr Trevor.’

  ‘Nor could you have had any motive for … deceiving me in the matter?’

  ‘I quite fail to understand you, sir.’

  ‘Do you think that Mr Trevor – if Mr Trevor it is – may have some reason for entering the gallery? Might he be outside that door still, hoping that we shall leave by the other one?’

  ‘I can’t imagine any reason for such a thing.’

  ‘Can’t you? Well, I propose to put it to the test, by going down the one staircase, through the hall and up the other one now. You will stay here, please, blowing up the fire.’

  ‘I don’t see that – ’

  ‘Frape, you’re far from being in the dark about what we’re up against. Please do as I say.’

  This time, Appleby waited for no reply, but left the gallery by the door beside the target and ran downstairs, playing his torch before him. As an outflanking move it seemed a forlorn hope, but in fact it was startlingly successful. When, a couple of minutes later, he returned breathlessly into the gallery by the other door, he was hustling before him a figure who had in fact still been lurking there. It wasn’t Charles Trevor. It was Robert Darien-Gore.

  ‘All right, Frape,’ Appleby said. ‘Get everybody in here. But give them a few minutes to get dressed – and get dressed yourself.’ He turned to Robert, who was wearing knickerbockers and a shooting jacket. ‘You mustn’t mind my staying as I am,’ he said. ‘It might be a mistake if you and I were to waste any time in beginning to work this thing out.’

  VII

  ‘Good God!’ General Strickland said, and put down the binoculars. He was the last of the company to have accepted Appleby’s invitation to scrutinise the inner bailey. ‘The fellow walked deliberately out and killed himself. And in that hideous way.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ Mrs Strickland asked, ‘some … some abominable joke? He can’t, for instance, have tiptoed back again in his own prints in the snow?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ Appleby, who was planted before what was now a brisk fire, shook his head. ‘Robert Darien-Gore was good enough to accompany me down to the inner bailey a few minutes ago. We didn’t go right out to the well – I want those tracks photographed before any others are made – but I satisfied myself – professionally, if I may so express it – that nobody can have come back through that snow. Whatever the tracks tell, they don’t tell that.’

  ‘The snow on the parapet,’ Trevor said rather hoarsely, ‘– on the low wall, I mean, round the well – seems to have prints at one point too.’

  ‘Precisely. And the picture seems very clear. There is one person, and one person only, missing from the castle now – a chance guest like myself: the man Jolly. Whether deliberately or by accident, he has … gone down the well. And I believe you all know what that means.’

  ‘By accident?’ Strickland asked. ‘How could it be an accident?’

  ‘I can’t see how it could possibly be,’ Judith Appleby said. ‘No sane man would take it into his head to go out in the middle of the night – ’

  ‘He was a bit tight,’ Jasper Darien-Gore said. ‘I don’t know if that’s relevant, but it’s a fact. Frape – you noticed it?’

  ‘Most emphatically, sir. Although not incapacitated, the man was undoubtedly tipsy.’

  ‘He must have decided to go back to his car.’ Prunella Darien-Gore broke in with this. ‘He thought he’d go outside the castle, and he went blundering through the snow – ’

  ‘It’s not impossible,’ Appleby said. ‘Only it doesn’t account for Jolly’s climbing up on the lip of the well. Face up to that, and suicide is the only explanation. Or it would seem to be. But Mr Robert has another theory. You may judge it bizarre, but it fits the facts. Frape, do you remember saying something to me about a bet?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It was in a slightly different connection. But the point is a very relevant one.’

  ‘And I think you remarked that gentlemen have their peculiar ways?’

  ‘I did, sir. I trust the observation was not impertinent.’

  ‘According to Mr Robert, Mr Darien-Gore himself happened to recount at the dinner table some legend or superstition about the well. It was to the effect that notable good luck will be won by any man who makes his way to the well at midnight, stands on its wall and invocates the moon.’

  ‘Does what?’ General Strickland exclaimed. ‘Some pagan nonsense, eh? God bless my soul!’

  ‘It’s perfectly true.’ Jasper spoke slowly. ‘I did spin that old yarn. And I can imagine some young man – a subaltern, or undergraduate, for instance – who might have received it as a dare. But not that fellow Jolly. He wasn’t the type. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Unfortunately, something further happened.’ Appleby still stood in front of the fireplace; he might almost have been on guard before it. ‘Mr Robert – so he tells me – made some sort of wager with Jolly. Or perhaps he did no more than vaguely suggest a wager. He was trying, as I understand the matter, to entertain the man – who was not altogether in his element among us. Have I got it right?’

  Most of the company were standing or sitting in a wide circle round Appleby. But Robert had sat down a little apart. He might have been taking up, quite consciously, an isolated and alienated pose – rather suggestive of young Hamlet at the court of his uncle, Claudius. He had remained silent so far. But now he replied to Appleby’s challenge.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Just that. I said something about a bottle of Jasper’s Margaux if Jolly could tell me in the morning that he had done this stupid and foolhardy thing. I repent it bitterly. In fact, I hold myself responsible for the man’s death.’

  ‘Come, come,’ General Strickland said kindly. ‘That’s a morbid view, my dear Robert. You were doing your best to entertain the fellow, and what has happened couldn’t be foreseen.’

  ‘It isn’t the truth! It can’t be!’ Prunella had sprung to her feet in some ungovernable agitation. ‘He still wasn’t that sort of man. He was calculating … cold. I hated him.’ She turned to her husband. ‘Robert – you’re not hiding something … shielding somebody?’

  ‘Prunella, for God’s sake control yourself.’ Robert made what was almost a weary gesture. ‘It’s a queer story, I know. But there it is.’

  ‘Which puts the matter in a nutshell.’ Appleby had taken a single step forward, and the effect was to make him oddly dominate the people in the long gallery. ‘It’s a queer story. But it’s conceivable. And there isn’t any other in the field. Not unless we have a few more facts. As it happens, we have more facts. The first of them is a bow-shot in the night. Strickland, would you mind stepping through that door at the end of the gallery, and bringing in anything you find hidden behind it?’

  General Strickland did as he was asked, and came back carrying a bow.

  ‘It’s a bow,’ he said – a shade obviously. ‘And there’s an arrow there too.’

  ‘Precisely. And somebody was concerned to return them to the ascham here within the last hour. Frape appears to be convince
d that that person was Mr Trevor. So perhaps Mr Trevor somehow lured Jolly up on the lip of the well, and then – so to speak – shot him into it. One moment!’ Appleby stopped Trevor on the verge of some outburst. ‘Another fact is this: Jolly was, to my knowledge, a professional blackmailer. And his arrival here wasn’t fortuitous; it was designed. Moreover – but this is conjecture rather than fact – he and Mr Trevor were not entirely unknown to each other – ’

  ‘That’s true.’ Charles Trevor was a frightened man. ‘I had an … an encounter with Jolly in the past. Suddenly coming upon him again was a great shock. But it wasn’t – ’

  ‘Very well. Suppose Frape didn’t see Mr Trevor peering through that door. Supposing he was concerned to shield – ’

  ‘Of course Frape saw me. And then you discovered me. And now Strickland has discovered the bow and arrow.’ Robert Darien-Gore got these statements out in a series of gasps. ‘I haven’t been sleeping. Last night I knew it wasn’t even worthwhile going to bed. So I passed the time repairing one of the horns of that bow, and feathering an arrow. Then I brought them back here.’ Looking round the company, Robert met absolute silence. ‘I give you all my word of honour as a gentleman,’ he said, ‘that I did not shoot Jolly.’

  There was another long silence, broken only by an inarticulate sound from Prunella.

  ‘We can accept that,’ Appleby said gently. ‘But you killed him, all the same.’

  ‘Jolly came to Gore Castle in the way of trade,’ Appleby said. ‘His own filthy trade. He had papers he was going to sell – at a price. I don’t know what story these papers tell. But it is the story that failed to see the light of day when Robert Darien-Gore had to leave the army. Jolly, I may say, made a sinister joke to me. He said he knew when he’d been given enough; he knew just how much he could take. He was wrong.’

  ‘This must stop.’ Jasper Darien-Gore spoke with an assumption of authority. ‘If there is matter for the police to investigate, then the local police must be summoned in a regular way. Sir John, I consider that you have no standing in this matter. And it is an abuse – ’

  ‘You are quite wrong, sir.’ Appleby looked sternly at his host. ‘I am the holder of a warrant card, like any other officer of the police. And on its authority I propose to make an arrest on a specific charge. Now, may I go on?’

  ‘For God’s sake do!’ Prunella cried out. ‘I can’t stand more of this … I can’t stand it!’

  ‘My dear,’ Mrs Strickland said, and went to sit beside her.

  ‘Strickland – take the binoculars again, will you? Look at the keep. Got it? What strikes you about it?’

  ‘Chiefly the scaffolding round it, I’d say.’

  ‘Windows?’

  ‘There are narrow windows all the way up – lighting a spiral staircase, I seem to remember?

  ‘Glazed?’

  ‘No?

  ‘Imagine a skilled archer near ground-level on the near side of the bailey. Could he get an arrow through one of those windows?’

  ‘I suppose he could. First shot, if he was first class.’

  ‘And on a flight that would pass over the well?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘That was what happened. That was the bow-shot I heard and Frape heard. The arrow carried a line – by means of which somebody in the keep could draw a strong nylon cord across the bailey, something more than head-high above the well.’ Appleby turned to Robert. ‘You had already killed Jolly – simply with an arrow employed as a dagger, I rather think. He was a meagre little man. You carried the body to the well, pitched it in, mounted the lip – and returned across the bailey on the cord. For a climber, it wasn’t a particularly difficult feat. Then the line was released at the other end, swung like a skipping rope until it fell near one of the flanking walls and drawn gently back through the snow. There will be virtually no trace of it. It only remained to return the bow to the ascham here. The bow and one arrow. The second missing arrow is … with Jolly, I rather think.’

  ‘You know too much.’ Robert Darien-Gore had been sitting hunched in a chair, his right hand deep in the pocket of his shooting jacket. Now he sprang to his feet, brought out his hand and hurled something in the direction of Appleby, which flew past him and into the fireplace. Then the hand went back again, and came out holding something else. The crack of a pistol reverberated in the gallery as Robert crashed to the floor.

  ‘By God – he’s dead!’ Like a flash, Jasper had been on his knees beside his brother. But now he rose, dazed and staggering – and with the pistol in his hands. He came slowly over to Appleby. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘my brother is … dead. Will you … see?’

  Appleby took a couple of steps forward – and as he did so, Jasper dived behind him. What Robert had hurled into the fireplace was Jolly’s pocketbook; it had missed the fire, and lay undamaged. Jasper grabbed it just as Appleby turned, and made to thrust it into the heart of the flame. Appleby knocked up his arm, and the pocketbook went flying across the gallery. Jasper eluded Appleby’s grasp, vaulted a settee with the effortlessness of a young athlete in training, retrieved the pocketbook and turned round to face the company. He still had Robert’s pistol in his hand.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he said. ‘Don’t any of you move.’

  ‘This is foolish,’ Appleby said quietly. ‘Foolish and useless. Your brother is indeed dead. And his last day’s work has been to involve you in murder. You knew nothing about Jolly when he arrived – except that you distrusted him. But Robert made you receive him as a guest, and by dinner time Robert had persuaded you to his plot. Your own first part in it was to concoct that legend about the well. But your main part was to be in the keep when the arrow arrived. You face a charge of murder, just as your brother would have done. Nothing is to be gained by waving a pistol.’

  ‘All of you get back from that fire – now.’ With raised pistol, Jasper took a pace towards Appleby. In his other hand he raised the pocketbook. ‘What I hold here, I burn. After that, we can talk.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Darien-Gore, but it won’t do. Before you burn those papers, you’ll have shot a policeman in the course of his duty. And if – ’

  ‘Permit me, sir.’ Frape had stepped forward. He walked past Appleby and advanced upon his employer. ‘It will be best, sir, that you should give me the gun.’

  ‘Stand back, Frape, or I shoot.’

  ‘As Sir John says, sir, it won’t do. So, with great respect, I must insist.’ And Frape put out a steady arm and took the pistol from his employer’s hand. ‘Thank you, sir. I am obliged to you.’

  For a fraction of a second Jasper looked merely bewildered. Then, as Appleby again advanced upon him, he turned and ran from the gallery.

  ‘Frape – help me to get him.’ Instinctively, Appleby addressed first the man who had proved himself. He was already running down the gallery as he called over his shoulder. ‘Strickland, Trevor – he must be stopped.’

  VIII

  The chase through Gore Castle took place in the first light of a bleak winter dawn. Judith Appleby, who had followed the men, was to remember it as a confusion of panting and shouting, with ill-identified figures vanishing down vistas that were composed sometimes of stately rooms in unending sequence, sometimes of narrow defiles through forbidding medieval masonry. It was the kind of pursuit that may happen in a nightmare: in one instant hopelessly at fault, and in the next an all but triumphant breathing down the hunted man’s neck.

  They were in the open – plunging and kicking through snow. Suddenly, in front of Jasper as he rounded a corner, there seemed to be only a high blank wall. But he ran straight at it; a buttress appeared; in the angle of this stood a ladder, steeply pitched. Appleby and Frape were at its foot seconds after Jasper’s heels had vanished up it; but even as they were about to mount it, it came down past their heads. As they struggled to set it up again Judith could see that Jasper, with a brief respite won, was crouched down on a narrow ledge, and fumbling in a pocket. With trembling hands he produced a box of matches
– and then Jolly’s fatal pocketbook. From this he pulled out a first sheet of paper, crumpled it, struck a match. But the match – and then a second and a third – went out. And now the ladder was in place again. There was no time for another attempt. Clutching the pocketbook, Jasper rose and ran on. He vanished through a low archway. He had gained the keep.

  It was almost dark inside. Judith was now abreast of her husband. As they paused to accustom themselves to the gloom, Jasper’s voice came from somewhere above.

  ‘Are you there, Appleby? I don’t advise the climb.’

  ‘Darien-Gore, come down – in the name of the law.’

  ‘This is my keep, Appleby. It was to defy the law – didn’t I tell you? – that my ancestors built it long ago.’

  The last words were almost inaudible, for Jasper was climbing again. They followed. Perpendicular slits of light spiralled downwards and past them as they panted up the winding stair. Quite suddenly, there was open sky in front of them, and against it Jasper’s figure in silhouette. In front of him was a criss-cross of scaffolding. One aspect of it they had seen from other angles already: a wooden plank, thrusting out into vacancy for some feet – and startlingly suggestive of a springboard. Beyond it, the eye could only travel vertiginously down … to the inner bailey, the well, the single set of prints across the snow.

  Jasper turned for a moment. They could see his features dimly, and then – very clearly – that he was holding up the pocketbook to them in a gesture of defiance. He thrust it into a pocket, turned away, measured his distance and ran. It was not a jump; it was the sort of dive that earns a high score in an Olympic pool. In a beautiful curve, Jasper Darien-Gore rose, pivoted in the air, plunged, diminished in free fall and vanished (as they ceased to be able to bear to look) into the well.

  And from behind them came the breathless voice of General Strickland: ‘Good God, Appleby! Jasper didn’t better that one when he gained a Gold for England in ’36.’

  A Scandal in Winter