Appleby's Other Story

by Michael Innes

  ‘No. And I know very little about the robbery at that time. I was away from home.’

  ‘You mean you were in your London house, Mrs Tytherton?’ It was Appleby who asked this.

  ‘I was abroad.’

  ‘For a considerable period?’

  ‘Really, Sir John, I can see no relevance in such a question.’

  ‘The longer you were away, the less specific might be the information about the affair that ever came to you.’

  ‘You think so?’ It was clear that Mrs Tytherton judged poorly of this suggestion. ‘It was a matter of several months. I was in the South of France, recovering from a serious operation. Can I give you any other information about myself?’

  ‘Thank you, no. But the general pattern of life at Elvedon nowadays must be relevant to our inquiries. You commonly have a small house party when you are down here?’

  ‘Hardly even a small house party. No more than a few friends. My husband’s taste was for very quiet country life.’

  ‘I see. Nothing rackety?’

  ‘Most certainly not.’ Mrs Tytherton had adjusted her well-plucked eyebrows to indicate what might have been called aristocratic hauteur.

  ‘But sometimes, perhaps, you have large parties for a weekend – although doubtless of a most decorous sort?’

  ‘Anything of the kind has been quite out of the question. My husband did not care to trouble with a large staff such as is necessary for that sort of thing. Who, for that matter, any longer does?’

  ‘Good thing, too,’ Colonel Pride offered. ‘Fill your house with mobs of semi-strangers and souse them in inferior champagne. Always was a pretty vulgar notion of life, eh? Few friends quite a different matter.’

  ‘Possibly so.’ Here again were observations that Alice Tytherton thought poorly of. ‘I was myself brought up to generous notions of hospitality. But the Tythertons have always retained the instincts of the counting-house, Colonel Pride. An eye on the ledger. They dislike even the remotest threat of what is nowadays called getting into the red. They bought Elvedon, but never really expanded to its dimensions. Much of the place is unfurnished to this day, and the kitchens couldn’t cater for twenty. It is scarcely the way to take one’s place in the county.’

  ‘Can’t say I regard ostentation as the best way to stand well with one’s neighbours.’ Having enunciated this article of simple faith, Colonel Pride suddenly remembered he was conversing with a mourning, even if with an excessively foolish and disagreeable, woman. ‘My dear Mrs Tytherton, it was kind of you to come in and renew your offer of help. But we must not tax you further.’

  ‘Catmull says there will be a buffet luncheon at one o’clock.’ Mrs Tytherton had put down her empty glass, and stood up. ‘I will ask him to avoid any offer of inferior champagne. But Sir John looks as if he might be interested in my late husband’s claret.’

  ‘Thank you, but I shall be lunching elsewhere.’ Appleby was inclined to react somewhat sharply to insolence. ‘And you must regard me, madam, simply as one of the policemen who will for a little time be around the place.’

  ‘There will be no difficulty about that,’ Mrs Tytherton said. And she walked with conscious poise from the room in which her husband had been murdered.

  9

  ‘Interesting woman,’ Colonel Pride said dubiously.

  ‘Perhaps so.’ Appleby was pacing the room again. ‘But I believe I’m more interested in this business of the brandy.’ He turned to Henderson. ‘How do you arrive at the notion of its having been drunk – apart from Miss Kentwell’s swig – almost immediately before Tytherton’s death?’

  ‘By treating Miss Kentwell as a reliable witness – which is an act of faith, no doubt. When she came into this room the second time – when she came in and found the body, that is – the tray with the stuff was standing where it stands now. And it hadn’t been when she was first here, fifteen minutes or so earlier.’

  ‘Where had it been then?’

  ‘She hadn’t noticed it at all.’

  ‘Odd bit of evidence,’ Pride said. ‘Don’t altogether trust it. Seems curious that, in the circumstances, she should have noticed such a thing as a small tray having turned up on an inconspicuous table.’

  ‘Yes, I agree. But it seems that during the few minutes in which she was here on the first occasion she had happened to put her handbag down on that table. Under the shock of discovering the body, she made the same instinctive motion the second time. That is how she came to notice that the tray had appeared there.’

  ‘What does Catmull say about it?’ Appleby asked.

  ‘That it usually stands during the evening on the top of that cupboard in a corner. Tytherton would sometimes shift it elsewhere if he used it.’

  ‘Ramsden?’

  ‘He didn’t notice the thing at all, until he looked for it to recruit Miss Kentwell. You say you find the brandy significant, sir?’

  ‘It’s only this, Inspector. One doesn’t bring a revolver into a room like this on the off-chance of having to defend oneself. One has some positive lethal intention, wouldn’t you say? Of course one may intend to kill, or not to kill, the occupant according as to how some attempt at negotiation or the like happens to go. But the probability is that one simply walks in meaning to kill. So what I find hard to envisage is this murderous occasion having as prelude a chummy drink.’

  ‘I see your point, sir. But you’re dealing, if I may say so, in no more than likelihood and unlikelihood.’

  ‘Perfectly true. But we ought at least to bear in mind that twenty minutes or thereabouts is an appreciable period of time. Several people could come and go in it.’

  ‘Two visitors rather than one, eh?’ The Chief Constable nodded wisely. ‘Perfectly feasible thing. And plenty of people around who might have dropped in on the chap innocently enough. Which reminds me, Henderson. About time we had them formally on parade, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Henderson looked at his watch. ‘It’s true I’ve had only sketchy statements from some of them so far. And at least one of them is already impatient to get away. Mr Carter.’

  ‘And just who,’ Appleby asked, ‘is Mr Carter?’

  ‘I don’t know what the fellow does.’ It was Pride who produced this. ‘Except, it seems, hang around Alice Tytherton. Or that, my dear John, is the gossip. Rather a raffish crowd, you know. One keeps on coming back to that.’

  ‘Does one?’ Appleby was amused. ‘As far as a motive for this crime goes, I’d call it an area we still have to explore. Carter, enamoured of Mrs Tytherton, as an old play might say. What about somebody called Mrs Graves – whom our friend Raffaello was badgering? Is she Mrs Graves, enamoured of Tytherton?’

  ‘I think we can safely say some relationship exists, but you can judge for yourself after lunch, John. We’ll have the whole crowd lined up, and invite them to say anything they want to, eh? Not forgetting the missing heir from his local pub.’

  ‘Whom I’ll make myself responsible for contacting.’ Appleby moved to the door. ‘And now, do you and the Inspector go and sample that woman’s damned claret. I’m taking a country walk.’

  ‘Henderson and I intend to drink water, and in a room by ourselves. That right, Inspector?’

  ‘Decidedly, sir. We’re both on duty, after all. And I rather think Sir John must be reckoned so too.’

  ‘Quite right.’ The Chief Constable chuckled. ‘Appreciate your attitude very much, my dear Henderson. Get this nasty thing cleared up as soon as possible. Eh, John?’

  ‘Well, yes. By dinner time, perhaps. Certainly before we go to bed.’

  ‘Sir?’ There was a startled note in Henderson’s voice. ‘Don’t you feel that this may be – well, rather a complicated case?’

  ‘Oh, decidedly. And that’s the hopeful thing, Inspector. Plenty to worry at, and so elucidate at a tol
erable pace. It’s the really simple affairs that can be a month’s hard work. Shall I tell Mark Tytherton it’s two o’clock for your next session?’

  The vicarage lay beyond the kitchen gardens, the church beyond the vicarage, and the village beyond the church. It was thus that Appleby, proposing to seek refreshment and perhaps information in the local pub, found himself viewing the Reverend Mr Voysey in his garden. Mr Voysey sat within the shade of a rustic arbour, in front of him a table decorously spread with a snowy linen cloth, and on the cloth a generous provision of bread, cheese, cold ham, apples, and a jug of what was perhaps cider. Appleby, passing on the other side of a hedge, would not have paused before this spectacle of Sabine plenty had he not been hailed by the person in innocent enjoyment of it. Mr Voysey had raised an arm in a gesture combining arrestment with the muted suggestion of ecclesiastical blessing.

  ‘Ah, Sir John! Whither away so fast? Will you not enter and lunch with me? Capital Double Gloucester, and very tolerable Beauties of Bath. Or ought one to say Beauty of Baths? Do you go in for apples?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. They take the place with me of poor Sherlock Holmes’ bees. But I must resist your invitation. I rather hope for what they call a working lunch in your village inn.’

  ‘The Hanged Man. A curious name for a convivial resort. The English had a developed taste for the macabre long before the invention of Sunday newspapers. How does it go with the kettle of fish at the big house?’

  ‘Not yet quite on the boil. May I ask you something?’

  ‘By all means. But pray step through the wicket. Village life, as you must know, is divided between the twin activities of peeping and eavesdropping.’ Voysey waited until Appleby had obeyed this prudent injunction and sat down on a bench beside him. ‘Of course you must not ask me for the secrets of the confessional. None are available. Once, as a curate, I had to work in a parish where that kind of thing went on. Confessions, I mean. Not, it seemed, the sort of things that it would have been at all interesting to hear confessed.’

  ‘Mr Voysey, it has occurred to me to wonder whether, at our encounter earlier this morning, you told me quite everything that you might have done.’

  ‘Ah – about the Elvedon folk in general. Perhaps you are right. I hinted disapprobation, and failed to document it. I might have been motivated by no more than the fact that they don’t much come to church. No more they do. And where a parish includes a landowner in a large squirarchal way, the parson does appreciate his giving some thought to what used to be called the public discharge of his religious duties. However, Sir John, times change. And it’s not what those people fail to do in public that I deprecate. It’s what they don’t bother to keep private. One doesn’t care to report evil of a man one will presently be reading the burial service over, and that must excuse part of my reticence. Tytherton had a mistress called Mrs Graves – Cynthia Graves. She was always around the place, and in fact is there now, as you probably know. I don’t know whether adultery becomes yet more sinful when carried out under one’s wife’s roof. I’d have to ask the Bishop.’ Mr Voysey selected an apple as he offered this clerical jest. ‘But it certainly becomes more blackguardly. And they have taken no care to conceal it. Their servants have known, and so the village has known. Which is something that’s bad for morality at large.’

  ‘And Mrs Tytherton has been standing for this?’

  ‘Mrs Tytherton may not have been in a strong position to protest. Something like open scandal there too, I’m sorry to say. But that side of the thing I think I’ll let you find out for yourself.’

  ‘Thank you; I have a notion it won’t be difficult.’ Appleby paused. ‘As a matter of fact, it wasn’t about the sexual ethos of Elvedon that I was thinking, although I’m most grateful for what you have told me. It was about the young Tytherton – Mark.’

  ‘But, my dear Sir John, it was about spotting Mark two days ago in the park that I took particular occasion to speak to you.’

  ‘That is true. But I had a sense – it’s something my curious profession has much refined in me, you know – that there was something you hadn’t spoken about.’

  ‘And so there was.’ For some moments Mr Voysey concentrated upon removing the skin from his apple in a single spiral paring. ‘I reported a certainty, and suppressed a conjecture. Or, perhaps, less a conjecture than a fancy. And the trouble is that I can no longer be confident as to when it actually visited me. Are you interested in badgers?’

  ‘Uncommonly.’ Appleby appeared quite unsurprised by this question. ‘We have several setts in our wood at Dream. My wife and I both put in a good deal of time watching them.’

  ‘Then you know that last night would have been ideal for the purpose. A very light wind, and an excellent moon. I went badger-watching myself. Perhaps I may be allowed to mention that I have contributed one or two observations on the creatures to the journals – as an unassuming field naturalist, you will understand.’

  ‘I must get hold of them,’ Appleby said politely.

  ‘I should also mention that I obey a certain instinct of privacy when pursuing this necessarily nocturnal vocation. A night-prowling parson is regarded with suspicion in the countryside. Evil motives are imputed to him. I have sometimes thought that this must stem from the just ill-repute of certain of the Pre-Reformation clergy. You will recall that “limitours and othere holy freres” are described by Chaucer as frequently up to no good in their wanderings.’

  ‘Most interesting,’ Appleby said. He saw that Mr Voysey was not to be hurried.

  ‘As it happened, the earlier part of my vigil went unrewarded. It was in a patch of the woodland where there is an ash-association with a ground flora of bluebells and dog’s mercury as co-dominants. I had great hopes of it. However, nothing turned up, and I recalled another site where I had promised myself a long period of observation. This was in a bramble thicket beyond the other side of the park. I would be delighted to show it to you. One very large bush has been curiously hollowed out, and I have a strong suspicion that the badgers use it as a sleeping-out place. Successful observations of these have not been common. As I walked, my mind was intent upon its possibilities.’

  ‘But you observed something else, all the same?’

  ‘Precisely. The figure of a man, hurrying across the park from the direction of Elvedon itself. I withdrew into shadow before, I believe, he became aware of me. He was more likely, I judged, to be a poacher than a harmless fellow naturalist. However he was almost certain to be one of my parishioners, and a meeting might well have been embarrassing.’

  ‘But he turned out’ – and Appleby looked hard at the Reverend Mr Voysey – ‘to be young Mark Tytherton again, after all?’

  ‘That is precisely what I cannot say.’

  ‘This time, you didn’t see his face?’

  ‘I don’t think I did. Certainly I was less aware of his face than of his pace. He was walking very rapidly, and with more than a suggestion of agitation.’

  ‘At what time was this?’

  ‘At a guess, round about half-past eleven. But I could by no means be confident to within thirty minutes or so.’

  ‘Mr Voysey, you are now giving me information which may be of the utmost seriousness. You must try to clarify your impressions. Here is a man walking rapidly across parkland on a moonlight night. You don’t see his features, but you speak of “a suggestion of agitation”. Can you say just how that suggestion conveyed itself to you?’

  ‘This is most perplexing. I really don’t think I can.’

  ‘Was he making gestures?’

  ‘Gestures? I think not. No – positively not.’

  ‘Was his haste such that he appeared to be in danger of stumbling?’

  ‘That may well have been so.’ Mr Voysey had brightened. ‘Yes, I believe his progress might justly be so described.’

  ‘Did he, while within your obs
ervation, look behind him?’

  ‘As if he were being pursued? I think it very likely that he did. In the circumstances, that is to say.’

  ‘But we know nothing about his circumstances. If he was a poacher, would you have expected to notice him as carrying something? Was he carrying anything?’

  ‘Sir John, you must stop. Every question you ask merely serves to distort the very vague image of the occasion that I actually possess. Can you understand that?’

  ‘Most certainly I can, so let me stop building up a fancy picture for you. I shall not even ask you to estimate how close you came to this man. But one point perhaps we can get clear – and it is really a vital one. Just when did the name “Mark Tytherton”, or the thought “Mark again”, or anything of the kind, first come into your head?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Mr Voysey had put down his apple-core on the plate before him, and was regarding Appleby soberly. ‘That, my dear sir, is the answer I must give you, however much it makes me appear a fool. Was it a thought synchronous with my actual observation of this figure? Or was it something that came to me retrospectively, when they rang me up from Elvedon this morning, and told me what had happened? I cannot return a confident answer – such as I can, for example, about my previous daylight encounter with the young man not far from the same spot. So I am a very bad witness, I fear.’

  ‘My dear Mr Voysey, the human memory is a very odd contraption, and you have an instinct to respect its oddity. I believe that, as a witness, you might get rather a high mark from a judge.’

  ‘It is a test, I confess, that I have no eagerness to face.’

  ‘Giving evidence in a criminal trial?’ Appleby rose from the bench on which he had been sitting during this curious conversation. ‘Far be it from me to be needlessly depressing. But I fear it is extremely improbable that you will not find yourself so engaged before the year is out.’

  10

  The Hanged Man proved to be a hostelry of small pretension, although its saloon bar seemed to do a certain amount of trade of the gin-and-tonic, chicken-sandwich order with passing motorists. Appleby avoided this unpromising terrain, only to find that the public bar was at this time of day attracting no custom at all. But the fact didn’t appear to make his own arrival the more welcome; it was from an unresponsive character, whose bearing hinted a sense of something demeaning in attending to so inconsiderable an order, that he succeeded in extracting a pint of bitter and a plate of bread and cheese. The suggestion that it was a fine day got no response whatever; the further and more expansive assertion that it was a very nice countryside round about here elicited no more than a melancholic sigh. So Appleby resigned himself to solitary reflection. It might be quite a useful exercise.