Appleby's Other Story

by Michael Innes

  ‘You know who I am. Appleby. Introduce me, please.’

  ‘This is Mrs Graves. Please take her away and bury her.’

  To a witticism so logically bizarre as this it is not easy to frame a reply, and for a moment Appleby found himself looking speechlessly at the lady – almost, indeed, like an undertaker making a rapid calculation of the dimensions of a corpse. Not that there was anything corpse-like about Mrs Graves; she seemed as alive as an electric eel, and no more comfortable for the purpose of making passes at. But tastes of course differ, and those of an elderly policeman are not of an exotic sort. It was possible that this snaky slinky person was precisely Mark Tytherton’s style – as she was reputed to have been that of his late father. Perhaps – extremely unedifying as the thought was – the occasion of this prodigal son’s home-coming had been a rumour of the attractiveness of his father’s mistress. She couldn’t be thought of as a fatted calf, indeed; rather she would pass very well as a serpent of old Nile. And perhaps the not very gallant injunction that Appleby had just received was a consequence of no more than a lovers’ quarrel. Not that they looked like lovers – even lovers who had fallen out. They had been confronting each other, absurdly, from either side of an iron bedstead which showed no sign of having had to resign itself to illicit amorous purposes. And they presented as convincing an appearance of mortal enemies as Appleby could remember ever having seen together in a room.

  ‘I don’t in the least want to take either of you away,’ Appleby said. ‘Nor even to interrupt a private social occasion. What I have to tell you is that the police resume their investigation at Elvedon at two o’clock, and would be obliged if you could be available to them then.’

  ‘This fellow follows me around, talking like a coppers’ manual.’ Mark Tytherton offered this observation to Mrs Graves in what was momentarily almost a conciliatory tone. ‘It’s your turn now, woman. Talk to him. Chat him up. I’m going down to get a drink. I’ll need it, if I’m to be put through some third degree.’

  ‘If you choose, Mr Tytherton, you need say nothing at all to anyone until you have taken legal advice. And that, madam, applies to you as well. But if I might myself have a word with both of you now, the later stage of the affair might be simplified.’

  ‘And what the hell do you mean by that?’ Mark Tytherton demanded.

  ‘Only what I say. And I assure you that I am a totally disinterested observer of this affair. It is a complicated affair. Also an onion of an affair, one might say, requiring a good deal of stripping.’

  ‘No need to be coarse,’ Mrs Graves said haughtily. ‘And I don’t understand your position at all. It seems quite irregular.’

  ‘So it is, madam. I may be called a Baker Street Irregular. As for my coarseness, there is perhaps rather a lot of it around. It’s my idea that a certain amount of it can conceivably be got out of the way in not too public a fashion. But I warn you that I may be wrong.’

  ‘There may be something in that!’ Mark Tytherton came out with this vehemently. ‘It’s the absolute damned indecency of these salt bitches that really gets me down. It dragged him down.’

  ‘Mr Tytherton, I have already listened to a certain amount of your intemperate speech. If you want my help–’

  ‘A snooping copper’s help?’

  ‘Yes – my help. If you want it, you’ll employ the language of a gentleman.’

  ‘Creeping Christ! The man’s out of Noah’s Ark.’

  ‘Then moderate your tongue, or back into the Ark I go. Leaving you, incidentally, in not too agreeable a position. What were you doing, prowling around Elvedon not far short of midnight last night?’

  ‘What was I doing last night, out in the pale moonlight?’ Mark produced this snatch of music-hall melody defiantly enough, but he had gone pale nevertheless. So, for that matter, had Mrs Graves. Perhaps, Appleby thought, these two, despite their present enmity, had been playing Romeo and Juliet under the same resplendent moon which had enabled Miss Kentwell and the attendant Ramsden to survey the countryside from the leads of Elvedon. Or perhaps they had been quite otherwise employed. They were certainly exchanging a glance quite as much of complicity as enmity now. ‘What was I doing?’ Mark repeated. ‘Nothing that I see any reason to tell you about.’

  ‘That is a perfectly legitimate reply. But it means that you were on the prowl?’

  ‘Who wouldn’t be on a fine night, if the alternative was skulking in this bloody pub?’

  ‘I take the point. But the skulking was your own idea, after all. If you had driven straight to Elvedon, I don’t know just how lovingly or civilly you would have been received. But I have no reason to suppose you’d have been turned away from the place.’

  ‘Do you suppose I’d have wanted to spend a night under the same roof as those two–’ With an enormous effort, Mark checked himself. ‘With those two gentlewomen?’

  ‘He’s a straight nut-case,’ Mrs Graves offered unexpectedly. ‘He has a thing about his mother.’

  Appleby glanced at this disagreeable and far from nicely bred woman with a certain respect. She had at least said something that she believed to be true; something that was conceivably a firm stepping-stone in a thoroughly boggy affair. What Mark had earlier represented in himself as a loss of nerve and lack of guts – the reason, he had maintained, of his not going straight to Elvedon upon his arrival in England – had quite possibly its real occasion in what Mrs Graves vulgarly called a thing about his mother. Appleby had heard nothing about the first Mrs Tytherton; about how far back, so to speak, she lay either in her husband’s life or her son’s. She might be dead, or she might be alive and divorced. She might have been a faithless wife to Tytherton. Or Tytherton might have been a faithless husband to her, as he appeared to have been to his second wife, Alice Tytherton. There was plenty of room for conjecture. There was also a need for simple information, if anything was to be made of this new dimension of the affair. Mark Tytherton himself could supply much of it, and Appleby wasn’t sure that, only a few minutes before, the young man hadn’t betrayed a certain willingness to parley. The presence of Mrs Graves, however, was unlikely to facilitate the process. And Mrs Graves, although no doubt harbouring mysteries of her own, would keep. It would be a good idea to get rid of her. Having determined on this, Appleby made a sudden move over to the window, and glanced out.

  ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘I thought I heard a car. But not yet. However, they’ll be here at any time now.’

  ‘The police?’ Mrs Graves asked sharply.

  ‘I think not. The Hanged Man doesn’t interest the police at the moment. I mean the press. Reporters and photographers, madam. This is certainly where they will put up. I’m surprised they’re not here already.’

  ‘Photographers?’

  ‘Oh, most certainly, madam. You will all be on the front page of the dailies tomorrow.’ Appleby looked at Mrs Graves appraisingly. ‘It’s a pity you’re not looking quite your best. At least, I suppose that’s so, for you’re certainly not looking too good. Mr Tytherton, you agree?’

  ‘I wouldn’t care to be ungallant,’ Mark said with a vicious grin. ‘But, since you ask me, I’m bound to say she looks like the cat’s breakfast.’

  ‘You cads!’ Mrs Graves said. But although she had produced this antique locution with all the splendour of a lady in a Somerset Maugham play, she was grabbing her bag and making for the door.

  ‘Don’t be bullied by them,’ Appleby said kindly. ‘Take your time over the necessary repairs, and insist on pleasing yourself as to how you pose. I’d suggest as background the loggia on Elvedon’s west front. More dignified than being caught in a pothouse.’

  But Mrs Graves was gone.

  ‘She was quite right,’ Mark said. ‘You can’t be a gentleman either.’ For a moment he looked almost cheerful. ‘Why did you get rid of her? What do you want to know?’

  ‘Eventually, I want
to know everything about your movements over the last twenty-four hours. But that’s something you may want to think about.’

  ‘Why should I want to think about it? In order to make up a pack of lies?’

  ‘Not necessarily that at all. For instance, there may be other people whose interests you have to consider. And as for the question I fired at you about being in the park late last night, I’ll tell you the basis of that at once. It’s simply the vicar again. He was out looking for badgers, and he’s not sure he didn’t see you instead. But he’d be very far from swearing to it, if put in a witness-box. You can be confident of that.’

  ‘What a damned odd thing for you to tell me.’ Mark stared at Appleby, genuinely perplexed. ‘Well, he did see me. For that matter, I saw him.’

  ‘You visited Elvedon?’

  ‘Take it easy, Appleby. You’ve got me in the park at midnight. One step at a time.’ As he produced this frivolous response the young man made a weary gesture and sat down on the bed, which creaked dismally beneath him. ‘Or try something else.’

  ‘I very much want to try something else – on a different time-scale, as it were. When did your father’s second marriage take place?’

  ‘Fourteen years ago – when I was fourteen.’

  ‘Your mother was dead?’

  ‘No, she died some years later. There had been a divorce.’

  ‘It worried you?’

  ‘When you’re not talking out of that bobby’s guide it’s only to take a turn as a child-guidance officer. Of course it worried me.’

  ‘And continued to – to an extent justifying what that beastly woman said: that you have a thing about your mother?’

  ‘I can’t think why I don’t knock you down.’ Mark Tytherton remained unbelligerently on the bed. ‘But I see your picture. And it’s really fair enough.’ He frowned. ‘The thing’s not an obsession,’ he said, ‘even if it has more or less occasioned the way I live. I’m not a nut-case, despite what that cheap little tart said.’ His expression darkened. ‘I won’t plead diminished responsibility, or any crap like that.’

  ‘The divorce was an unfortunate one?’

  ‘It was all pretty filthy. And one of those affairs in which the judge feels he has to talk a lot of the muck into the published record. I was in my first year at public school.’

  ‘I see. But all this is very much past history, Mr Tytherton. Have you lately been disturbed by some sense of that history in a fashion repeating itself?’

  ‘What should put that in your head: my father ditching Alice as he ditched my mother – and this time in favour of a mere whore?’

  ‘It’s conceivable. And may I ask another child-guidance question? Have you felt a very keen antagonism towards your father?’

  ‘Not for years.’ Mark produced this with a promptness at which he himself appeared surprised. ‘I used to want to kill him. But everything changes with the years – even these fearfully deep things. Passions wear themselves away. It’s pretty terrifying, really. There’s a French chap who wrote a dozen books on that. I once read them when I was ill.’

  ‘He wrote them when he was ill.’ Appleby would not have thought of Mark Tytherton as a likely amateur of Marcel Proust. ‘But other passions crop up.’

  ‘Oh, quite. Trifling and peripheral things’ – Mark’s vocabulary was changing as he talked – ‘that take on a sudden symbolical significance. I cared, you see, that my father’s life should be degraded by a series of rotten women. It seemed a shame. He wasn’t a bad sort. And it’s such a revolting sight: a man old enough to know better, helpless before that silly tickling, and being dragged about by the nose, or rather the–’

  ‘Quite so. But you didn’t return to England, Mr Tytherton, to act as an elevating influence, struggle with your father for his immortal soul, and redeem Elvedon from its degraded condition as a haunt of vice?’

  ‘You can also talk bloody tough. And of course I didn’t come back with any kid’s notions of the sort. When I was very small–’ Mark hesitated. ‘Listen,’ he said oddly. ‘For here’s the beans.’

  ‘I am listening.’

  ‘When I was very small, and my mother was getting dressed to go out to dinner or something, I used to be allowed to get the jewel cases from a small safe in her bedroom. A fascinating hiding-place, you see. Absolute magic in it.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘And then the jewels themselves!’ Mark pulled himself up. ‘Let’s just say they were of very considerable value indeed. And, incidentally, they were her own. Emotionally, that’s not a great point with me. I mean that the legal position isn’t such a point. The things just were, quite obviously to me, my mother’s. Part of her.’

  ‘And it is these trinkets that crop up with what you call a sudden symbolical significance?’

  ‘Yes. And at least you understand what I’m talking about.’

  ‘And where are they now?’

  ‘That woman has them. The trollop you’ve just sent packing from this room.’

  ‘Can you be sure of that?’

  ‘Of course I can. It stands to reason. And I had a go at her this morning as I came away from Elvedon.’ Mark was becoming excited. ‘I ran into her – and took the opportunity of telling her I thought of wringing her ruddy neck.’

  ‘My dear young man!’

  ‘It paid off. At least it panicked her. She came to this pub to tell me a pack of lies about not having them. But one doesn’t believe a harlot on a thing like that.’

  ‘I see.’ Appleby looked at Mark soberly. ‘And now I think that you and I had better get back to Elvedon.’

  ‘I’m damned if I–’

  ‘Don’t be a fool. You’re in a fix, and you know it. You’ve told me quite a lot, and I believe you. But you have more to tell. Think it over, please, as we walk across the park. If I can honestly help you, I will. But being a good deal franker than you have been so far is your best chance of scrambling out of trouble.’

  12

  The walk accomplished itself in complete silence until the two men stood at the bottom of the steps leading up to the main portico of Elvedon. At the top, side by side with the sentinel-like constable who was doubtless preparing himself to salute, stood Colonel Pride. He was clearly waiting for Appleby, and expecting him to appear upon his hour. And this was happening, since the stable clock now struck twice.

  ‘Who’s that?’ There was a sharp note in Mark Tytherton’s voice, and he had come to a halt.

  ‘The Chief Constable. I’ll introduce you, and he will take you to an officer called Inspector Henderson. Henderson will take down, and ask you to sign, any statement you may care to make.’

  ‘So this is it. I could send for the family lawyer – that sort of thing?’

  ‘Most definitely. Indeed, the police are often inclined to prefer it that way.’

  ‘They must put up with me solus.’ Mark Tytherton’s chin had gone up. ‘Only – do you know? – there’s just one thing I’d like to tell you yourself, here and now. Steady me a bit, perhaps. Or call it burning a boat, if you like. It’s true I was here last night.’

  ‘Thank you. Now up we go.’

  They climbed. Pride watched them impassively, his hands behind his back. They might have been holding a pair of handcuffs.

  ‘Tommy, this is Mr Tytherton. Colonel Pride.’

  ‘How do you do?’ Pride shook hands instantly. ‘Let me condole with you, sir. Where’s your bag?’

  ‘Thank you.’ Mark Tytherton was taken aback. ‘My bag?’

  ‘This is an unbecoming business, sir. Putting up in the inn. Your relations with your stepmother may not be good. But you ought now to be under this roof, from which your father’s body has been removed only for a time. Let me instruct one of my men to fetch your things.’

  ‘Oh, very well.’ Mark, App
leby reflected, had taken this stiff rebuke decently enough. ‘But mayn’t they want to turf me out?’

  ‘You don’t seem to realize your position, Mr Tytherton. I have been in touch with your father’s solicitor. In fact he called here, at my request, half an hour ago. He saw your stepmother, and what he told her he decided he could then properly tell me too. Mrs Tytherton receives a reasonable jointure, and there are to be one or two other small charges upon the estate. Apart from this, it passes into your hands absolutely.’

  ‘I see. And the chap has gone away?’

  ‘The solicitor? Yes. But if you want–’

  ‘Good. I’ve been telling Sir John I don’t want my hand held. Not even by him, just at this stage. Any Let-me-be-your-Father stuff had better be out for the time being.’ As he made this odd speech Mark looked at Pride squarely. ‘Will you take me to your Inspector, please? I’ve one or two things to say.’

  ‘Come with me now, Mr Tytherton.’

  And the Chief Constable marched the young man within the portals he had just inherited.

  ‘Not sitting in on this, John?’ There was mild reproach in Pride’s voice when he returned.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t wanted by that young man, was I? And I think that, as a matter of fact, a roving commission will suit me best this afternoon.’

  ‘Fair enough. Henderson won’t mind. Sign of confidence in him, really. I say, did I give away that there was more behind this lawyer’s visit than I let on?’

  ‘I wondered a little, I confess. These chaps don’t commonly have much to say before the funeral and whatever baked meats follow upon it. He took the initiative?’

  ‘The moment he heard about Tytherton’s death this morning. Respectable old character called Pantin. Pantin and Pantin. Sounds a bit breathless, eh? Old-established local firm.’ Colonel Pride was taking his customary pleasure in having made a joke. ‘He called up the police, and made a point of contacting me personally. So I had him come over. He saw the widow, and so on, just as I said. But he also told me something pretty stiff. Maurice Tytherton rang him up at his house late yesterday evening, and asked him to come out to Elvedon this afternoon. Just live in a grand enough way, John, and you can treat a professional man as if he were the fellow who comes to tune the pianos or attend to the clocks.’ Pride paused for a moment on this just sociological reflection. ‘Tytherton wanted to draft a new will.’