Appleby again had his moment of suspicion about Professor Snodgrass. Had it been wholly fanciful to imagine a slight pause before the word ‘Balaclava’, as if his host had been considering saying ‘Waterloo’ instead?
‘Mark you, we have had one alarm.’ Snodgrass was at his most reasonable again. ‘It was only last year, as a matter of fact.’
‘You mean on this particular night last year?’
‘Of course – on Adrian’s birthday. I came over to the Park to see if he had turned up. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t, and I decided to wait for a while. Not here, come to think of it, but in the drawing-room. I was on the qui vive, you know. Odd expression that. It means Long live who? Same sort of challenge as Under which king, Bezonian? speak, or die! Are you a Shakespeare man? I’ve always been a strong Shakespeare man myself. Used to have long chats about the plays with Mr Kipling. Another strong Shakespeare man. Bible too. Amazing.’
‘And what was the result of your being on the qui vive?’
‘I heard these noises outside. Thought it was opossums.’
‘Opossums?’
‘Yes – but the Australian kind. Got to know them when I did an ADC spell there as a young man. Climb on the roof or under it, or fool around on your verandah. Cough and wheeze and jibber so that you’d swear it was half a regiment of senile tramps.’
‘You thought you heard half a regiment of senile tramps outside your drawing-room?’
‘Well, approximately that. Just some fellows up to no good. Proposing to break and enter, eh? But they cleared out when I shouted at them.’
‘I see. But I suppose they could have entered without breaking? Walked in, I mean, through your symbolically open door, just as I’ve done tonight.’
‘I’m very sorry there was nobody to receive you, my dear Appleby.’ The Professor’s port appeared to be prompting its proprietor to cordiality. ‘Must have appeared uncommonly uncivil. But it just so happens, you see, that you’ve turned up on rather an exceptional night.’
‘I’ve tumbled to that.’
‘Nothing of the kind. I’ve been most uncommunicative. Another uncivil thing. Very conscious that I owe you an explanation. So I’m going to tell you about Adrian.’
It is a principle of the human mind that information which it may be intriguant to ferret out for oneself becomes potentially boring as soon as it is volunteered by somebody else. And this principle obtains with particular force in the minds of retired professional detectives. Appleby in his retirement found himself at times positively prowling round for some small mystery to bite on; conversely, being addressed in an instructive way by other people frequently prompted him (as it did Dr Johnson) to remove his mind and think of Tom Thumb. So he was suddenly not at all sure that he wanted to hear the life-story of Adrian Snodgrass. The mild duty he had felt to protect property wantonly exposed to larceny had lured him into and around Ledward, and the sounds he had heard outside the library disposed him to believe that his solicitude had been by no means idle. But in the face of Professor Snodgrass’ regardlessness in the matter there seemed to be little more he could do. And as for Adrian (Appleby suspected), the more one heard about him, the less was one likely to be charmed or edified. He bore all the signs of belonging to that sizeable flock of black sheep which the English upper classes, collectively regarded, are concerned to maintain at pasture in regions of the globe as remote as possible. Adrian Snodgrass was perhaps peculiar in that he possessed, in the Ledward estate, a tolerably rich home pasture which he didn’t appear much to bother about – and in that he possessed, too, in the form of an aged military historian, a doting relative who yearly made bizarre and elaborate preparations for a return to the fold which, in all probability, was never going to happen. And if it did happen – if by any conceivable chance the long-lost heir turned up this very night – the occasion would not be one at which a total stranger could with any propriety assist.
Nevertheless Appleby was fairly caught. He could not now with civility rise to his feet and offer brief farewells. And the Professor, he noticed, had poured another glass of port for each of them. If he had kept this vigil in solitude for years – as was rather to be supposed – he was far from disconcerted at having a companion on this occasion. In fact, he was enjoying it. Simple humanity required Appleby to sit back and listen.
‘As a young man, or indeed as a boy,’ Professor Snodgrass began, ‘Adrian was remarkable for…’ He broke off. ‘My dear Appleby,’ he said, ‘have you heard anything?’
It must certainly have been true that Appleby looked as if he were hearing something. His sitting back had abruptly become a sitting forward as if at the bidding of an alerted sense. He had turned, moreover, to look at the French window which he had shut again after his recent survey of the terrace beyond it. The window was shut still.
‘Heard anything?’ Appleby repeated. ‘Well, no. But what about smell? Do you smell anything out of the way?’
‘I can’t say that I do.’ The Professor was reasonably surprised. ‘A whiff of stale tobacco, perhaps? I smoke a cigar in this room from time to time. Delighted to find you one now. Neglectful of me.’
‘Not tobacco. I’d be inclined to say Chanel.’
‘Camel?’ Appleby’s host seemed gratified rather than puzzled. ‘You must be right. Not a thing it’s easy to mistake, eh? Adrian arrived on one, no doubt. Capital means of transport, as I think I said.’
But Appleby had jumped to his feet, and was making for the door of the library. Either Professor Snodgrass had failed to close it on entering, or somebody else had opened it subsequently. For it was certainly ajar by rather more than a chink now. Appleby was perhaps acting out of turn once more – for here again was something which, strictly regarded, was no business of his at all – but he nevertheless made no bones about going across the room at the double, and throwing the door as wide open as it would go. There was no doubt about the scent; it was faint and delicate, but undeniably present. Equally – if only for a moment – there was clear evidence of how it had, as it were, come on the air. The figure of a woman had disappeared round the curve of the quadrant corridor. Appleby hesitated, and decided not to follow. He really could not go pounding after somebody who might well enjoy a better right to be here than he did. Then he found that Professor Snodgrass was standing beside him, sniffing vigorously.
‘Not a doubt of it,’ Snodgrass said with satisfaction. ‘Unmistakably camel.’
5
‘Then it was a white camel,’ Appleby said, ‘and it walked on two feet.’
‘Puzzling thing.’ Professor Snodgrass received this exasperated remark quite seriously. ‘Might be a trick of the light, perhaps? In mirage conditions, I’ve seen them with up to eight. Feet, that is.’
‘There was a woman at this door, and presumably she was listening to us.’ Appleby pursued his plan of dogged rationality. ‘A woman in white. Have you…’
‘A woman in white? Fellow wrote a yarn called that. Not at all bad. Much better than modern stuff of the same sort.’
‘No doubt.’ Appleby felt no disposition to digress upon the literary merits of Wilkie Collins. ‘Have you any idea why a woman dressed entirely in white should be wandering round Ledward?’
‘None whatever. It sounds a shade eccentric to me.’ Having produced this brilliant riposte, the Professor at once capped it. ‘Do you think she might be impersonating a ghost?’ He picked up the decanter, and held it interrogatively over his guest’s glass.
‘No more, thank you – although it’s a capital port. May I ask whether you have many women in your household?’
‘Lord no, my dear fellow. Lost interest in them years ago. And in a quiet country situation it just doesn’t do.’ Professor Snodgrass shook his head a shade nostalgically. ‘Adrian found that.’
‘Did he, indeed? I was thinking of servants, as a matter of fact.’
‘Oh, I see. Not quite the same thing, eh? Not that one can’t have what you might call an overlap.’ Whether genuinely o
r not, the Professor’s glance momentarily suggested a ripe Edwardian depravity. ‘There’s my cook, Mrs Gathercoal. Invaluable woman. Understands a soufflé. Set her to one for you, if you’re kind enough to stay on. Manage you a bit of rough shooting, too. Brought your gun?’
The wandering course of these remarks, and much else in his host’s conversation, might be the result, Appleby supposed, of their being offered in a large absence of mind. There could be no doubt that, as he talked, the old gentleman never ceased to listen. And it wasn’t for those problematical personages whom Appleby was coming to judge rather thick on the ground. Women in white, for example, didn’t interest the present guardian of Ledward Park in the least. His mind was entirely concentrated upon that imposing property’s missing heir.
‘And a couple of other women,’ Snodgrass said. ‘Housemaids, I suppose they’d be called. And, of course, there’s my butler, Leonidas. Uncommon name, eh? Very decent one, too. I engaged him on the strength of it. Can’t say he’s turned out all that Spartan. Still, it puts one in mind of what was a damned good show. If the Phocians had just held on to that mountain path by Anopaea, it might even…’
‘I suppose so.’ Appleby judged the tactics of the battle of Thermopylae to be even more irrelevant than the literary accomplishment of the author of The Woman in White. ‘Does Leonidas keep an eye on the Park as well as your own house?’
‘Dear me, yes. They all have to lend a hand. And some of my outdoor people as well. Must stay shipshape.’ Professor Snodgrass paused. ‘But I was telling you about my nephew Adrian. Boring you, I expect.’
‘Not at all. And, for that matter, you haven’t told me very much. We were interrupted. South America, for instance. Your nephew spends a good deal of his time there?’
‘He certainly used to.’ It was conceivable that the Professor – unmindful of the uses of Who’s Who – had glanced at Appleby with fleeting suspicion and surprise. ‘We have family connections in more South American countries than one. In fact, both the Snodgrasses and the Beddoeses have. I daresay you may have heard of my maternal grandfather, Beddoes Beddoes. Known as the Liberator, in that part of the world. Liberated a pretty packet for himself, in a quiet way.’ The Professor produced his hoarse chuckle. ‘Still, a great patriot in his adoptive land, and so forth. Decapitated a pretty ugly dictator called Gozman Spinto with his own hand, they say, and then gave the place a constitution. Literally handed it over, handsomely bound in full morocco, to some ruffians he’d appointed vice-presidents and judges and senators and what have you. But really held all the strings himself up to the day of his death. Smart politician, was my grandfather Beddoes the Liberator.’
‘And Adrian has also interested himself in politics there?’
‘Decidedly – and fished in some deuced muddy waters, if you ask me. The boy has all the Beddoes spirit of adventure. He also has the Snodgrass brains. He needed both for that affair in Azuera. As revolutions go, a classic of its kind.’
‘I think I remember what you’re talking about. Adrian was in on that?’
‘Master-minded it, my dear fellow. And then led the assault on the Ministry of War himself.’
‘There was a certain ruthlessness to it, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘Dear me, yes. I don’t think Adrian actually took an axe to anybody’s neck. But he didn’t precisely stay the hand of his supporters.’
‘Did they remain his supporters for long?’
‘Ten days or a fortnight, I think it was – and then young Adrian – he was young Adrian then – was on his travels again.’
‘What has he been doing during the last ten years?’
‘The last ten years?’ For the first time, the conversable Professor Beddoes Snodgrass had hesitated. ‘We haven’t heard much of him, as a matter of fact. I don’t know that we’ve heard anything at all.’
‘So you simply keep this place going, and expect him to turn up? It seems rather strange to me – if I may say so – that with such a splendid patrimony in his own right your nephew should remain a wanderer on the face of the earth. For I take it that Ledward is Adrian’s absolutely?’
‘Of course it is. Not a doubt of it.’
‘Doesn’t his absence – or at least his complete silence added to that – produce any legal difficulties?’
‘Nothing of the kind. There are trusts, and powers of thingummy, and so forth – all fixed up by the sharks. I have no difficulty at all.’
‘Who would inherit Ledward if Adrian never came back – if he got himself killed in another palace revolution or military coup?’
How Professor Snodgrass might have responded to this outrageous curiosity was never to be known. For he had suddenly raised an arresting hand.
‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Here he is.’
For seconds Appleby heard nothing at all. As his ear remained tolerably acute, he was inclined to suppose that the Professor was imagining things. Anybody, after all, who mounted so odd an annual occasion as Appleby had stumbled upon must be regarded as harbouring a certain liability in that direction. But in this supposition Professor Snodgrass’ fortuitous guest proved wrong. It was simply that Professor Snodgrass’ own ear – at least for the matter in hand – was very acute indeed. For now there was a sound. It was that of a car which was still a long way off. Perhaps it was simply passing in the night, and would come no nearer than the road upon which Appleby’s own car was stranded. But in a moment this conjecture too was falsified. The car was coming up the drive.
‘He’s not quite on time,’ Professor Snodgrass said. He had adopted a casual air which carried no conviction at all. It was plain that, whether fondly or not, he believed that his great moment had come. He had kept his promise by Adrian: the candle in the window, and much other welcoming ritual besides. And now, after many years, Adrian was keeping his promise by him.
Appleby’s only impulse was to get out. If the car didn’t herald the owner of Ledward at all – if it contained, for instance, a conscientious local policeman doing his best to keep an eye on what must by now be a notorious folly – then Professor Snodgrass’ disillusion would be an uncomfortable thing to witness. If, on the other hand, Adrian Snodgrass had really and truly turned up, the resulting family occasion would equally not be an affair for a stranger to assist at. Adrian after ten years or more would not be quite the Adrian his uncle remembered, and the encounter might not, for one reason or another, run on the kind of lines the old gentleman had been envisaging. Appleby somehow couldn’t believe in an agreeable Adrian Snodgrass. In a sense, no doubt, the Professor had enjoyed his long wardenship of Ledward Park, but he would surely have enjoyed it more if he had continued to receive, from time to time, some token of thanks or interest from its wandering heir. Moreover, unless he had been treating himself to the perverse enjoyment of putting on a dotard’s turn, it seemed likely that the Adrian who now chiefly existed in his memory was a very early Adrian indeed: perhaps even the small boy who had been photographed in soldier’s uniform long ago.
Having decided so much, Appleby got to his feet. Discounting as much as possible the mere oddity of proposing to walk out into the night, he would take a firm conventional farewell of Professor Beddoes Snodgrass (not forgetting a further word of praise for the port) and depart resolutely from the house. And he decided to leave by the french window he had lately investigated. It would be more awkward still to run into the returning Adrian (if, again, conceivably it was he) before his own open front door.
‘Not yet, my dear Appleby.’ The Professor had made a gesture which invited his guest to resume his seat. ‘I know you must be as eager to greet Adrian as I am. But it won’t be proper quite yet.’
‘Not proper?’ Appleby was so astonished that he did actually sit down again. ‘If it’s really your nephew who is arriving, surely you are going straight out to welcome him?’
‘Certainly not. You forget that this is his own house. He enters and takes possession of it. He enjoys, if he cares to, the refreshment laid out for him. It
will then be for us to present ourselves. In a sense we shall be welcoming him. But it will be, on my part, as a kinsman who is a neighbour, and, on your part, as that kinsman’s guest. Listen! The car must be a hired car. It’s driving away again.’
This was true, and it was a circumstance that seemed to Appleby to negative the notion of an expostulating policeman. Whoever had simply been dropped at the front door of Ledward at such an hour plainly proposed to spend the rest of the night there. For the first time, Appleby found himself positively inclining to the view that Beddoes Snodgrass’ dream was about to realize itself. But this only strengthened his own resolution to depart. So he once more rose, and this time advanced upon Professor Snodgrass with an outstretched hand.
‘It has been a great pleasure to call upon you,’ he said in what he hoped was a virtually hypnotic tone. ‘But I must not intrude upon your family occasion. In fact, I will leave by the terrace. What a splendid port that is! Good night.’
‘My dear fellow, must you go?’ The Professor, to Appleby’s relief, appeared to be politely masking surprise, and had even extended his own hand. ‘Do drop in on me at my own place at any time. No point in standing on ceremony with a new neighbour, eh?’
‘I shall be delighted,’ Appleby said mendaciously, and made for the french window. It was perhaps because he was so decidedly not standing upon the order of his going – because, to put it crudely, he was in flight – that a second later he failed to pull up in time. He had opened the window, stepped briskly into the night, and collided violently with a more or less solid object. But it was not, in fact, an object so solid as to be immovable. It was now, indeed, supine on the terrace. And it was undoubtedly a man.
Appleby took no time at all to decide that here was one prowler too many. He pounced on the intruder not with any intention of assisting him to rise but in a determination to pin him to the ground. This resolution was only enhanced when he remarked, in the abundant light from within, that the lurking individual had chosen to attire himself in the garb of a clergyman. It was a form of disguise on the part of the criminal classes which he had always strongly reprobated.
The Open House Page 4