Appleby's Other Story

by Michael Innes

  ‘About the beneficence of what one has done?’

  ‘Precisely. However, at least we don’t yet traffic in an elixir or philosopher’s stone. The conferment of immortality still eludes us. And while there is death there is hope.’

  Appleby felt he had heard this little medical joke before, but refrained from saying so. Instead, he moved abruptly to what he chiefly wanted to know.

  ‘Mr Carter, was your original association with Maurice Tytherton a professional one?’

  ‘He was never a patient of mine.’ For a fraction of a second Carter hesitated. ‘But his wife was.’

  ‘Ah, yes. No doubt you mentioned this to Inspector Henderson.’

  ‘I think not. It didn’t crop up.’

  ‘I see.’ Appleby took a moment to study the Cuyp further. Carter had got away with something with Henderson; second thoughts had persuaded him he wouldn’t continue to get away with it for long. ‘Mrs Tytherton has mentioned to me that she underwent a serious surgical operation a little over two years ago, and that she recuperated from it in the South of France. That operation I take it you performed?’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘And this would have been the occasion of your forming a first, or at least a closer, personal acquaintance with the Tythertons?’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘Mr Carter, are you fond of the South of France yourself? Do you perhaps go on holiday there?’

  ‘Yes, I am – and I do. But I fail–’

  ‘That may well have resulted in your visiting Mrs Tytherton during her convalescence?’

  ‘I must protest against such questions. Their implication–’

  ‘Oh, come. You are in danger of ceasing to be quite clear-headed – which I am sure is unusual with you. It’s bound to come out, you know. That’s why you have sought this interview with me. You feel, rightly or wrongly, that you and I talk more or less the same language, and that as a consequence aspects of the matter may be easier to sort out with me than with a rural police officer. I don’t think there’s much in it. But, of course, I’m at your service, all the same.’

  There was a silence. Carter had picked up a billiard-cue, and was idly taking aim at an ancient and somewhat discoloured white ball on the table. Perhaps his principal attraction – Appleby thought – was in those strong and beautiful hands. Appleby wondered what sort of hands Maurice Tytherton had possessed. Possibly Mrs Tytherton hadn’t thought much of them.

  ‘I’m naturally alarmed,’ Carter said surprisingly. He executed a stroke with precision, and a series of swift clicks rewarded him. ‘You can see why.’

  ‘You possessed a very good motive for murdering Tytherton?’

  ‘Oh, I hadn’t quite thought of that!’ Alarmed or not Carter looked up from the table with some appearance of amused astonishment. He was a handsome man. The wide expanse of fine cloth, reflecting the sunshine streaming in from a skylight, lent the flesh-tones of his face the greenish shades, one might say, of Correggio’s nudes. ‘We don’t live in a novelette, with searing sensualities producing homicide at every turn. Tytherton was killed, I suppose, by somebody after his pictures. But any sort of irrelevant vulgar scandal is liable to be started up by such a thing – particularly as there has been this odd circumstance of his son’s returning from South America and saying Lord knows what. It’s oddly pat, I must say. Anybody would be prompted to rustle up a mystery out of it. And mysteries are news. And news battens on any scandal, however irrelevant, it can dig up.’

  ‘There is undeniably much in what you say. To put it baldly, you are in a fix, and quite intelligent enough to be aware of the fact. However, I am in a position to offer you a word of encouragement. You are by no means singular. The number of people at present under this roof who are similarly circumstanced – in a fix, that is to say, on one account or another – may be fairly described as astonishing. I confess, however, that I find your own case a particularly interesting one. And I advise candour. I go round Elvedon, indeed, advising candour. But upon you, my dear sir, I positively urge it. Shall we face up quite squarely – you and I – to the special and peculiar occasion you may have felt for shooting down your host in cold blood? And I emphasize the temperature. Cold blood, not hot.’

  ‘Just what do you mean by that, Sir John?’

  ‘That is precisely the sort of question I am asked by one of the least attractive of your fellow-guests – the gentleman who calls himself Mr Raffaello. I regard the assumption of so divine a name as an outrage in itself. But that is by the way. I will tell you what I mean – and possibly launch a little straight talk as a result. You spoke just now, and in an ironic tone, of searing sensualities. Well, they do happen. And sometimes, when they have rather burnt themselves out, they leave an awkward legacy. Now, don’t ask me just what I mean by that. We both know perfectly well. You lost your head over Alice Tytherton. You slept with her – regularly and often, I suspect – and now here you are, actually under her late husband’s roof. Most unfortunately, she has been your patient. There you were, Carter, poised over her unconscious body and with those instruments of life and death in your hands. You did a good job by her – perhaps a quite notably good job. Sudden life, in fact. But then this thing happened. You seduced her. Or she seduced you. That’s equally probable, I suppose. But the emotional niceties of the affair wouldn’t much interest the General Medical Council.’

  There was a short silence. Carter played another shot, and missed rather an easy cannon off the red. He made an impatient gesture, and thrust the cue back in its rack.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You interest me. Are you supposing there was some sort of crisis yesterday?’

  ‘It’s a tenable view. I’m only dealing in tenable views.’ Appleby had sat down in a deep armchair that exhaled a faint aroma of chalk and cigar smoke. ‘One is rather inclined to assume that Tytherton had been aware of your liaison with his wife for quite a long time; that he had tolerated it as belonging within the context of near-promiscuity which appears to have been the thing in his set. Certainly a lot of people were aware of it – including, I suspect, his own servants and tenants. Still, Tytherton mayn’t have known. Or not to the extent of having proof. You may have been enormously careful. It was certainly very much in your interest to be so. Just get cited as co-respondent in a divorce suit in which the woman has been your patient, and your professional career is finished.’

  ‘I grant you that one – as a general proposition, that is to say.’ Carter, like Appleby, had sunk into a large chair. They might have been two idle denizens of this country house, gossiping their way through a boring afternoon. ‘In more ways than one, my dear Appleby, my profession continues to drowse contentedly in the Victorian age.’

  ‘No doubt. But now let me return to what I was speaking of: a possible action for divorce.’

  ‘But you must know by now that Tytherton was what a judge might call a hardened adulterer. Even supposing your conjectures about his wife and myself to be true, he’d have found anything of the kind a tricky business to launch.’

  ‘Perhaps so. A judge – since you are interested in judges – would certainly be unfavourably impressed by a plaintiff’s admitting that he had brought a mistress – to wit, Mrs Graves – into his own matrimonial dwelling. Still, judges simply have to mop up these messes as best they can. Nowadays, they let what is called their discretion in such matters cover a great deal. So consider, Carter, where we are. Tytherton has either suddenly discovered the truth, or he has just got hold of what amounts to hard and fast evidence.’ Appleby paused. ‘So he sends for his solicitor. And gives himself the pleasure of telling you he has done so.’

  ‘May I ask when you suppose this interesting event to have taken place?’

  ‘Yesterday evening. And, this time, I am not supposing. I know Tytherton did send for his solicitor. The fellow’s name is Pantin.’

  ‘
Well?’ There had been a long silence in the billiard-room before it was thus broken by Carter’s voice. ‘Tytherton writes his letter. Or perhaps he simply telephones–’

  ‘Yes. He telephones.’

  ‘Yesterday evening, you say. So what follows?’

  ‘I can leave that to your imagination. Or perhaps to your memory.’

  ‘We’ll say imagination, if you please. What follows is, I suppose, what you call the crisis.’

  ‘Very definitely it is that. You get to know what he has done. Perhaps he simply tells you what he has done. Or there is another possibility – an ironical one.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Tytherton had occasion to contact his solicitor about something totally different. But doing so put it into his head to play an ill-natured joke on you. He told you he was about to institute divorce proceedings, although in fact nothing of the sort was in his mind. Probably he couldn’t care less whether you were sleeping with his wife or not.’

  ‘You are painting a picture of an extremely disagreeable group of people.’

  ‘That’s true, Mr Carter. I think I’d prefer to believe that he had just found out the truth, and was intending divorce. Even if it wasn’t the authentic occasion of his contacting Pantin there and then. However, the point is that you were convinced he had to be stopped. And there was only one sure way to do it.’

  ‘To kill him?’ As Carter asked this, he produced a cigarette and lit it with a steady hand.

  ‘Yes. Dead men, they say, can tell no tales. It’s equally true that they can start no law-suits. Nor can their heirs and executors – when all that’s in question is a treacherous friend and a faithless wife.’

  ‘You have a case.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind. I repeat that I am only dealing in tenable views, and there are several more of them floating around. This particular one can possibly be rendered no longer tenable by something quite simple which you may now judge it sensible to say.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Maurice Tytherton. Is that any good?’

  ‘It has its weight with me. But I think you will agree that it doesn’t take us all that far. But there are a number of possibilities. According to Henderson’s first information, you had gone off to bed, and were thus alone in your room, during the material time.’

  ‘The material time?’

  ‘Say, between eleven o’clock and eleven-thirty last night. But about this your recollection may have been – shall we say? – faulty. Perhaps you were in the company of somebody else – and thus have, in effect, some sort of alibi.’

  ‘You do make me out to be a shady character!’ Carter seemed genuinely amused. ‘If I wasn’t industriously murdering somebody, I was at least rampaging in my role as the celebrated adulterer, or perhaps merely seducing one of those attractive Italian maids.’

  ‘May I suggest, Mr Carter, that this is no occasion for merriment?’

  ‘How right you are. But about my movements last night I have nothing further that is helpful to say.’

  ‘And nothing else whatever?’

  ‘At least at this stage, no.’ Charles Carter rose composedly to his feet. ‘Except that, in the light of what you have been kind enough to suggest to me, Sir John, I think I shall cancel my evening engagement in town. It would be something of a rush now, in any case. Moreover, I am not sure that I might not feel a shade out of things.’ And Carter glanced at his watch. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I believe there is now some prospect of tea?’

  16

  This proved to be not too sanguine an expectation. In a library which opened through high French windows upon the main terrace before the house tea was being dispensed to the company at large by a personage of no less consequence than Catmull himself. Perhaps he was making amends, Appleby thought, for having delegated to inferior hands the serving of that buffet lunch.

  But the ritual of tea-drinking at four-fifteen in the afternoon (and this, however superior is the Lapsang Souchong, however thin the cucumber sandwiches, however delicate the breeze that ventures to stray indoors through filmy curtains from the golden glow without) is unlikely to be a wholly comfortable occasion when chiefly participated in by suspected murderers and variously graded officers of the police. Such conversation as was taking place fell noticeably short of that sparkle and elegance which might have been expected in a company of so notably polished – or at least prosperous – an order as now haunted Elvedon Court.

  The efficient Ronnie Ramsden, it was true, found something to say as, seconding Catmull’s more professional labours, he moved around in the interest of polite attentions to the ladies. The ladies, however, were unresponsive. Alice Tytherton, whose bearing before lunch might have been called aggressive, was now distinctly subdued. Carter had crossed the drawing-room and had a murmured word with her when he entered. Was she too now meditating the possible implications for herself of the suggestion that her husband had been considering the possibilities of divorce? Or even – to go back to what Appleby really knew – the advisability of changing his will? Under the existing will, as Appleby had heard, there was appropriate provision for her by way of jointure. Presumably Maurice Tytherton, had he wished, could have altered this in some way. The law would not have permitted him to leave his widow without a penny – or so Appleby as a layman supposed – but perhaps it had been in his power drastically to curtail whatever settlement he had made. In other words, once that particular alarm was started, once the abrupt summoning of Mr Pantin (of Pantin and Pantin) was known, Alice Tytherton was among those who might be favourably disposed to securing Maurice Tytherton’s abrupt decease. Conceivably the fact of the police having tumbled to this simple point had come home to her.

  Mrs Graves, too, was subdued – although not indeed in the aspect of tenue. The advancing cohorts of photographers conjured up for her by Appleby in the course of their curious encounter at the Hanged Man had evidently been in her mind when making a subsequent toilette. She would now cut a striking figure even in the most sensational public print. And she had, it was to be presumed, little to lose by appearing there. Perhaps she even had something to gain. Figure as a high-class courtesan in a sufficiently newsworthy situation and the most gratifying offers are likely to come pouring in. So why should she be glum – even (as Appleby sensed her to be) uncommonly scared?

  Perhaps Mrs Graves had shot her lover. Perhaps she had walked into that workroom of Tytherton’s, surprised him sitting at his writing-table, and put a bullet in his brain. But why – except that it was one of the far too numerous guesses it was possible to make in front of this unpleasing affair? Doggedly disposed to consider the problem, Appleby retreated, tea-cup in hand, into an embrasure between cliffs of books. There was the business of Mark Tytherton’s mother’s jewels. Suppose that they existed, and were not more or less a figment of that young man’s heated imagination. Suppose that Maurice Tytherton had in some way contrived to hold on to them in an improper fashion after the dissolution of his first marriage. Indeed, something more than supposition was available here. Appleby had not himself encountered Pantin, but had no reason to suppose that he would be given to unfounded gossip about a client. It could at least be taken as assured that Tytherton had angered his second wife by telling her he had sold certain jewels she considered herself entitled to the enjoyment of. It was after this that conjecture really came in. If Tytherton had in fact given or lent these contentious objects to his latest mistress, and if there had been a further row about them, might this not conceivably have led Mrs Graves to some lethal extremity? It seemed not probable – but a possibility it certainly was. And when one brought into the picture the curious fact that his mother’s jewels were an acknowledged obsession of the newly-arrived Mark Tytherton it did look as if they could not be far from the centre of the mystery.

  Appleby abandoned this speculation for the moment. The relevant facts would come clearer i
f Mark Tytherton turned out to have been communicative with Henderson. And now his eye fell on the third of the ladies. Miss Kentwell was talking to Carter with an air of composed affability about which there was nothing obtrusive, but which yet somehow arrested Appleby’s attention. She was like a cat, he told himself, that has decided to call it a day with a mouse. The image was an extremely odd one, and quite unsupported by any simple visual suggestion. Miss Kentwell was less like a cat than an over-fed canary, and Carter wasn’t in the least like a mouse. But then every time Appleby thought about Miss Kentwell he was irked by a sense of something unaccountable about her. It was partly that he didn’t quite believe in her charitable zeal, which seemed just a little too good to be true. And it was partly – as he had reflected before – that she was most unlikely to have gained the entrée to Maurice Tytherton’s Elvedon on quite that ticket. She had insinuated that Tytherton had owned some notion that philanthropic gestures might get him into an Honours List, but the suggestion hadn’t been a convincing one.

  So mightn’t all this have been a cover for something else? Once more Appleby glanced at the lady, and at Carter with whom he was sensing her to be in some equivocal relationship. A post-bellum relationship, he suddenly told himself. That was it. Mr Charles Carter, the eminent surgeon, was no longer Miss Kentwell’s quarry.

  Appleby was so pleased with this discovery that he looked round for somebody to whom he could communicate it. This, in the nature of the situation, could only be Colonel Pride or Inspector Henderson, and Pride had for the moment vanished. But Henderson was approaching him now, and with some air of requiring moral support. Henderson didn’t feel this tea-party to be altogether regular. But in the company of Sir John Appleby, after all, he couldn’t be going too far wrong.

  ‘Henderson, come into this little retreat, and let us confer. We ought to have a certain amount of information for each other by now.’

  ‘We’d have wasted an afternoon if we hadn’t.’