The Open House

by Michael Innes

  ‘Yes, William, yes. The murderers. The thieves. The thieves have killed him, haven’t they? They’ve killed Adrian?’ Suddenly Professor Snodgrass produced an extraordinary sound in his throat, so that Appleby expected him to fall senseless to the floor as the consequence of some cardiac or circulatory disaster. But Snodgrass only slumped into a chair. ‘But I’ve seen them!’ he cried. ‘Can you understand? I’ve seen them!’

  ‘They’re still here?’ Absolon asked sharply – and looked swiftly round as if in search of a likely weapon. Then he shook his head. ‘Beddoes, calm yourself, for God’s sake. The ruffians have bolted through that window. It’s against reason that they should have come back. There’s no danger. Appleby here will tell you so. And your nephew’s death is our only real calamity.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ The Professor made an effort to control himself, and wholly failed. ‘In the bedroom,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Where I went for a sheet, as…as that man told me to.’ He pointed wildly at Appleby. ‘I was unnerved. I behaved like a poltroon, cowering by the door. And then I heard your voice, William, and ran to join you. Ran.’ And Professor Snodgrass, having reiterated in this way what is a soldier’s ugliest word, was suddenly quite still.

  ‘It was only prudent,’ Appleby said quietly. ‘But I think you may have been mistaken. One’s imagination can play tricks on one in circumstances like these. Remain where you are for a moment, while I go and see.’

  ‘My dear sir…’ Absolon began urgently. But he was addressing the back of another running man. For Appleby was out of the drawing-room and crossing Ledward’s bleakly splendid hall at the double.

  The odd lay-out of the mansion’s principal apartments took him once more through the dining-room. Fleetingly, he glimpsed disorder. The single chair which had been set for the long-lost Adrian Snodgrass had been overturned, as if too hastily thrust backwards. It was a fine Hepplewhite chair, and its fretted lateral members had been fractured. The silver ice-bucket had rolled across the floor. A shattered champagne glass lay in a small puddle on the dark walnut table. It all adds up, Appleby told himself, and ran on without pause to the bedroom. The door was open. He went straight through. It was very much a moment recalling old times.

  Anticlimax succeeded. Unless comically under the bed, or hidden in a wardrobe, there was nobody in the room. The intruders – if intruders there had been other than in the aged Professor’s febrile fancy – had not lingered to explain themselves. And the good order of the place was quite undisturbed. The expensive pyjamas were still laid out on the bed. It was still possible to distinguish the hump of the hot-water bottle. The feet it had been designed to warm – Appleby thought grimly – were now fast chilling for good.

  But not quite undisturbed. There was one single object which was in disarray. A picture had been wrenched from the wall, and now lay, face downwards, on the carpet. It had not gone the way of the Claude, one had to suppose, because somebody had been constrained to drop it and run. There had been a lot of running at Ledward just recently.

  Appleby stooped, picked up the painting, and set it against the wall. He stared at it, perplexed. This wasn’t a Claude. It wasn’t a Poussin. It wasn’t a Reynolds, a Gainsborough, or even a Romney. It was the sort of more than indifferent portrait of a lady (circa 1860, Appleby judged) that family piety hangs in places of semi-seclusion in great country houses.

  John Appleby – those familiar with his career will learn without surprise – had as a Boy Scout been particularly distinguished at what is called Kim’s Game. Kim’s Game consists in enumerating as many as possible of a miscellaneous assemblage of objects briefly glimpsed shortly before. Appleby found himself involved in this game now. Earlier that night, he had viewed the drawing-room at Ledward in its unviolated state. Minutes ago, he had viewed it again when a large variety of show-pieces of one sort and another had been raped from it. He was trying to call up a representative assemblage of those now missing, and an answering assemblage of those left behind – and to compare the artistic worth (and monetary value) of the two groups. This was a rather special and difficult variant of Kim’s Game. But he found that he could arrive at very tolerable results. The thieves had known their stuff. It was extremely improbable that, so far as pictures went, they should have supposed that, next after Claude’s Campagna with Banditti, they should go for this feebly delineated Victorian lady. So here was another component in what might be called the sheer nonsense side of the affair into which the bad behaviour of a gear- lever had precipitated him.

  And now he had better return to his companions. The local GP ought to be turning up any time now, and so ought the police. As far as the corpse went, the doctor’s duties would be merely formal. But he might do something useful in the matter of the sadly disordered state of Professor Snodgrass. Give him a shot of something, or at least a couple of pills, that would get him some sleep and into reasonable shape for the morning. Not that the police wouldn’t want to extract a statement from him here and now. And from Appleby himself, for that matter, and from the worthy Dr Absolon as well. And Leonidas. And of course there was the woman in white, if they could find her. Perhaps she was lurking in the house. Perhaps she inhabited some attic suite, unknown to anybody – and had so done for years. Appleby had no fancy for searching Ledward. It was a job that could absorb a long weekend. The police had better turn a posse on to it.

  Perhaps it was the thought of the woman in white that reminded Appleby about getting hold of a sheet. He had better himself accomplish the mission upon which the Professor had been abortively despatched. He would simply take the upper sheet from this bed. To cover the dead body with that would have a decent appropriateness, after all.

  Addressing himself to this, he became aware of a sheet where a sheet shouldn’t be. There seemed to be a sheet – a crumpled sheet – under the bed…

  And Appleby stood back.

  ‘I think you might as well come out,’ he said.

  It is not very easy for a woman to emerge from beneath a gentleman’s bed – even a deceased gentleman’s bed – into the arms of a retired policeman and retain anything much of the quality known as presence. But the woman in white managed something like this. She was tall and dark; she was haggard and by no means still quite young; and she was not properly to be described as dressed in white at all. For what must be called her dress was a sophisticated and multitudinously coloured affair of barbaric suggestion, and over this she had simply swathed herself in a white plastic mackintosh. Or as such Appleby described it to himself, while reflecting that it might well be something more expensive than that. If a woman does emerge from under a bed – except in some stage farce of polite adultery – one somehow expects her to be of unassuming station: a pilfering housemaid, say, who has bolted for cover. This woman wasn’t at all like that. She might have been described as entirely en suite with the restrained but unmistakable opulence of Ledward Park. Appleby found that this circumstance was some way from moderating the exasperation which was threatening to become his main response (improperly, no doubt) to an affair the pivot of which was, after all, a revolting murder.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I wonder whether you would care to explain yourself?’

  ‘Explain myself? Why should I? I live here.’

  ‘I really don’t think that can be quite true. You live, it seems to me, some little way off. Not really at a distance, but beyond the boundaries of this park.’

  ‘You know nothing about me.’

  ‘I know that you have just behaved in an uncommonly eccentric way – which is something, I must admit, that does rather blend you with the Ledward scene. But it’s my point that, on a perfectly fine night, you can have donned that staring white garment only out of prudence when proposing to walk along a high road in the dark. In other words, you have appeared from somewhere in the neighbourhood, and have been lurking around this house for purposes best known to yourself. You produce the idiotic lie that you live here…’

  ‘I ought to have said ha
unt here. In imagination I spend much time at Ledward. It is my home by right.’

  ‘Why should you hide under a bed in your home by right?’

  ‘I didn’t like the appearance of those men.’ The woman in white looked sombrely at Appleby. ‘Did you?’

  ‘I haven’t had an opportunity to form an opinion, madam. And now, would you mind dropping all those riddles? Something very grave indeed has happened at Ledward, as I think you must know. The police will be arriving at any moment, and they will certainly require you to give an account of yourself. Therefore…’

  ‘An account of myself? They know me perfectly well. I am a magistrate.’

  ‘I assure you they will be particularly interested in a magistrate who scrambles under beds. But may I really appeal to you for a little sense? I’ve been a policeman myself. Rightly or wrongly, I feel I have a certain duty to do what I can to render this affair intelligible. So may I begin at the beginning, and ask you your name?’

  ‘I am Mrs Anglebury – Cytherea Anglebury. I ought to be Mrs Snodgrass.’ The woman in white produced this surprising statement quite flatly. ‘Adrian Snodgrass’ wife.’

  ‘Mrs Anglebury, you do know, don’t you, that Adrian Snodgrass is dead? In fact, you cried out almost at the moment he was killed?’

  ‘Of course I know that Adrian is dead. Of course I know that he has been killed. It was I who killed him.’ Mrs Anglebury frowned. ‘Wasn’t it? It’s what I came to do. So I suppose I did it.’

  ‘You are saying something very serious indeed. May I ask what you have done with the weapon?’

  ‘The weapon? I have no idea. I quite forget.’ Mrs Anglebury felt in the pockets of her mackintosh. ‘Nothing here but a cigarette case. Do you smoke?’

  That Appleby would have found any reply to this is uncertain. For suddenly a new voice – a man’s – spoke from the doorway behind him.

  ‘Hello, Mum,’ it said cheerfully. ‘I’ve come to take you home.’

  It was a very young man who had entered the bedroom. He might be in his first term at Oxford, or his last term at a public school. His hair was moderately long rather than moderately short; he was dressed in patched jeans and a nondescript upper garment which he probably regarded as an impenetrable social disguise rendering him indistinguishable from a barrow-boy; yet you couldn’t have mistaken him class-wise, or supposed him other than precisely what he was. Appleby felt, at the moment, all for a little straightness and wholesome simplicity. He felt uncomfortable about the part he must himself presently play. He cursed the splendour of Ledward’s basilican hall, which could lead you from the front door to this part of the house unnoticing of certain grisly appearances masked by those great alabaster shafts. The lad didn’t yet know that anything was amiss – or amiss, at least (so Appleby guessed), except in a sadly familiar fashion. This nice young man had a mother who was rather badly crazed. And, of course, badly crazed people can do sadly grisly things.

  The young man was now looking at Appleby in an alerted way. He must be sufficiently familiar with the set-up at Ledward to know that here was somebody who normally had nothing to do with the place. He was about to call Appleby ‘sir’ – and to challenge him firmly enough. He was continuing to look very straight at Appleby. And it was a gaze that Appleby had a sudden strange sense of having met before.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve rather barged in, sir,’ the young man said. ‘My name’s David Anglebury. I sometimes pick up my mother here. She enjoys a bit of a walk at night, and then I collect her in the car.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ It was as he produced this meaningless phrase that Appleby realized he was speaking to a Snodgrass. Where he had seen these eyes before was in the photograph of a small boy in a soldier’s suit. ‘My name’s Appleby,’ Appleby said, and was conscious that he had rather tumbled out these words. ‘I’m a stranger, and here by pure chance. Your mother and I have just met.’

  ‘I was under the bed,’ Mrs Anglebury said.

  ‘How do you do?’ It was with practiced promptness that David Anglebury obliterated his mother’s bizarre remark. ‘Do you happen to know, sir, whether Mr Snodgrass has really turned up? I expect you’ve heard about his birthday, and so on. Every year we’re interested to know if he has come home. It’s what’s brought my mother over, I expect. Mr Snodgrass – Adrian Snodgrass – and she are old friends.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Appleby didn’t think it too bright to have reiterated this. He had just heard the sound of a car – perhaps two cars – approaching the house. ‘Mr Snodgrass has arrived,’ he said, ‘and not more than an hour ago. But I ought to say did arrive.’

  ‘He’s gone away again?’

  ‘In a sense, yes. He’s dead.’

  It had been an indecent stroke – but when surrounded by infuriating mystery and muddle one must play one’s cards as one can. Appleby’s eyes, steadily on the eyes of the young man, took in a moment of horror. That was natural enough. But had it been a moment of terror as well?

  ‘He’s dead? He was ill?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Anglebury. This isn’t at all pleasant. There appears to have been a robbery with the most ruthless violence. Adrian Snodgrass was shot. He must have died instantly. Professor Snodgrass and Dr Absolon are both here, and know about it. The police are coming. Indeed, I think I have heard them arriving now.’

  ‘There were some men,’ Mrs Anglebury said. ‘I saw them. But as for Adrian’s death…’

  ‘I see.’ David Anglebury had squared his shoulders. It was possible to feel that he had also risen on his toes. He might have been a full-back, Appleby thought, prepared to fling himself at the knees, the ankles of a flying three-quarter. ‘I don’t think this is a thing for my mother to be mixed up in, sir. As a matter of fact, she hasn’t been very well recently. May I take her away?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Not quite yet.’

  ‘Look – is it for you to say? I don’t know who you are, or if you are telling the truth, or if you have any authority here at all.’ The young man had moved to his mother’s side, and was looking dangerous. ‘Would you please stand out of the way?’

  ‘I’ve been a policeman myself, Mr Anglebury. I can still show you a warrant card, for what it’s worth. But I assure you that as a simple citizen I’d have a right to detain your mother – having heard from her certain things that I have heard. However, all that’s not to the point. Your own good sense will tell you that she ought to stay. And have you beside her.’

  ‘Very well.’ A sudden and rather touching bewilderment seemed for the moment to have come uppermost in David Anglebury. It was likely that he was rather far from being particularly clever, and he was confronted by a mature, dispassionate and composed man. ‘Only, can we get out of this room? I suppose it was…was going to be his. It has been got ready for him. I think it’s rather rotten, somehow, our being here at all.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Anglebury.’ Appleby had liked this speech by the young man. ‘Let us go elsewhere. But I’m afraid there’s a good deal that is rotten at Ledward just at present.’ And Appleby made a movement almost as if to touch the young man’s arm. ‘Bring your mother along. And I quite understand about her being not too well.’

  9

  The police proved to be represented, for the present, simply by the constable from the nearest village, who had arrived in a van, with the local doctor just behind him. Confronted by robbery and murder in high life – or at least in what was by far the most imposing house for many miles around – this officer had the sagacity to perceive that his job was simply to hold the fort until his superiors arrived. He also knew that merit was to be gained by ensuring that, in the interim, he got as much writing as possible into his notebook in an adequately legible hand.

  Appleby saw no reason to suppose that the course of justice would be expedited by his at all obtruding himself during this process. He had arrived at Ledward Park under circumstances which no sensible policeman would regard as other than highly suspicious. If, on top of this, he were to produ
ce the outrageous statement that he had lately been running New Scotland Yard, it seemed highly probable that he would be clapped into handcuffs at once.

  The local doctor, whose name proved to be Plumridge, was another matter. He was an old rather than merely elderly man, who showed every sign of being able to cope competently with whatever turned up. The dotty Mrs Anglebury, for instance, had turned up; she was presumably one of Dr Plumridge’s patients; he was to be detected as considering that a live and disturbed patient was more important than an undisturbable corpse. Not that he hadn’t examined the body with care. He didn’t seem to feel there was anything all that mysterious about it.

  At least the constable appeared to have put Appleby low on his list for interrogation. He had perhaps provisionally concluded that Appleby was a valet or a footman. He was busy at the moment questioning Professor Snodgrass, and was receiving most of the replies from Dr Absolon, who had clearly decided that the distressed uncle of the dead man still needed all the support he could get. Appleby took the opportunity to move over to Plumridge, and murmur that he would appreciate a few words with him in the library. And Plumridge gave him a single swift glance, nodded, and followed him down the quadrant corridor.

  ‘I recognize you,’ Plumridge said briskly. ‘I’ve a memory for faces, and even for photographs. Sir John Appleby, isn’t it? Has trouble been expected here? Did they persuade you to come along? It can’t be. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Quite right. It’s sheer chance. I walked into this house in the middle of the night, my dear Doctor, and found myself in the middle of all this. Of course, I’ve no title to ask questions; only to answer them. Presently some police inspector will arrive; and he’ll either be extremely cross that I’m here at all, or take it for granted that I’ll clear the affair up for him before breakfast. Either reaction will be vexatious. Still, it’s a fair cop.’

  ‘I think you mean that you propose to have a go. But is there all that to have a go at? The affair has had a horrible end, but it doesn’t strike me as having any great puzzle element to it. Thieves panic-stricken when surprised, and ruthless enough and stupid enough to kill somebody.’