The Open House

by Michael Innes

  At least it wasn’t a little hall of mirrors, liable to occasion the sort of buffoonery associated with a fun fair. There would be one identifiable rascal, and Appleby was going to nail him. And there he was. There he was, immediately in front of the altar – a circumstance by which Appleby found his displeasure markedly increased. And now, apparently most justly alarmed, the man had bobbed down, as if to avoid observation, upon his knees. Appleby hurled himself forward to the tackle he had been dreaming of for quite some time. There was a brief and indecent confusion of thudding bodies and flailing limbs. And then a familiar voice spoke.

  ‘My dear Sir John,’ Dr Absolon said a little breathlessly, ‘are these recurrent demonstrations really necessary?’

  ‘I must repeat that I’m extremely sorry,’ Appleby was saying a minute later. ‘But you seemed to dodge, you know. To take evasive action. To attempt to drop out of sight.’

  ‘It may appear odd to you, or even suspicious, but the simple fact is that I came here to pray. After what has happened at Ledward tonight it appeared the reasonable thing to do. From my point of view, that is to say.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I don’t…’

  ‘And it does happen that, for the purposes of prayer, a certain bodily posture is prescribed. It has been usual for really quite a long time. We get on our knees. You may have seen it in quaint old pictures.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ It interested Appleby that the mild Dr Absolon was, for the moment, an angry man, and one with a considerable gift for simple sarcasm. ‘I was extremely precipitate. But, you see, I’ve been chasing somebody all over this damned house. I beg your pardon. Over this house. He’s given me the slip, all right. And I copped you instead. For the second time, I agree. Which does make it peculiarly aggravating. I hope you’re not hurt?’

  ‘My dear Appleby, I am little, if at all, older than you are – and in tolerably good condition. Of course I’m not hurt. The question is, where do we go from here?’

  ‘Nowhere at all, at the moment. By which I mean that I’d greatly appreciate a little further conversation with you – and away from all those policemen. If you’re sufficiently magnanimous, that’s to say, not to want to call them in yourself, and have me locked up as a dangerously violent person. This isn’t a bad place for talk. I certainly prefer it to the crazy structure next door.’

  ‘I agree that we are quite comfortable.’

  The two men were in fact now sitting on the steps of the altar, and facing each other slant-wise. It was rather like the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury (Appleby thought frivolously) in solemn colloquy in the Sistine Chapel.

  ‘You know,’ Appleby said conversationally, ‘for some time this affair was developing much in the manner of one of those boring modern plays that get along with no more than three or four characters all the way through. But the cast has been filling out, I’m glad to say. Those prowling predators, for example, adept at making improbable noises off-stage. They really exist. Snodgrass saw them. That unfortunate Mrs Anglebury saw them. A new chum of mine, Mrs Gathercoal, has seen them. And now…’

  ‘Mrs Gathercoal? You don’t mean to say she’s turned up?’

  ‘She has, indeed. And shares my opinion of this whole damned… I beg your pardon again. Of this whole affair. She disapproves of it strongly.’

  ‘We must all do that.’ Rather unfairly in view of the irony in which he had lately indulged on the subject of Appleby’s nescience in the matter of prayer, Absolon gave this a tone of mild rebuke. ‘But you were saying…?’

  ‘That I’ve seen them too. Which is the important thing. That’s to say, from my point of view.’

  ‘Quite so.’ The vicar had acknowledged this deft echo with a cheerful nod. ‘The only person you can trust not to be a damned liar – I beg your pardon, Appleby: a liar – is Sir John Appleby, eh?’

  ‘Decidedly so. It’s a cardinal principle in detective investigation.’

  ‘And you’re giving me an opportunity to spin you a few more obfuscating stories now?’

  ‘Nothing of the kind, sir.’ Appleby had turned serious. ‘But everybody concerned in this wretched business may be inclined to one or another sort of reticence. Dr Plumridge, for example. There are things he might feel under a professional obligation not to air.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. And, on a different plane, you may feel it may be the same with me. I do hear confessions, as a matter of fact – although I don’t judge it necessary to shut myself up in a little box to do so.’

  ‘The box is an irrelevance.’

  ‘Yes.’ Absolon was now as serious as Appleby. ‘But I can tell you that nothing has ever come to me from this house, or from anybody connected with it, by way of what may be called ghostly confidence.’

  ‘Not even from Mrs Anglebury, Vicar? She strikes me as the sort of woman…’

  ‘I understand you perfectly. She is a little mad, and may therefore be vulnerable to priestcraft.’

  ‘That’s most unfair. You’re building up a false picture of me as a scoffer.’ Appleby was aware of himself as coming, most unprofessionally in the light of the present mysterious circumstances, simply to like Dr Absolon. ‘But she obviously needs a good deal of support, and her son has not always been old enough to give it to her. You may feel that, at some time or other, you have received confidences from her, not in any formal sense in your clerical character.’

  ‘Quasi-formal, so to speak. But no. I have occasionally indulged in conjectures about her. In the light of what confronts us, they’re at your service, should they be of the slightest use to you.’

  ‘Is she a magistrate?’

  ‘Of course not!’ There was simple astonishment in Absolon’s voice. ‘She is a person of some position in this part of the world. But nobody would dream of shoving her on a bench.’

  ‘Then she’s a quite reckless liar. And she says it was she who killed Adrian Snodgrass.’

  ‘She still may have done.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ Dr Absolon, Appleby saw, was quite reasonably tough. ‘And, no doubt, she may be a wronged woman – even although she is quite flamboyantly posturing as one.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, Sir John, I haven’t a doubt of her being a wronged woman. And my heart goes out to wronged women. Nevertheless, we do have to get at the truth.’

  ‘She was this brutally murdered man’s mistress long ago?’

  ‘In my opinion, yes.’

  ‘And the young man going by the name of David Anglebury is their son?’

  ‘You have only to look at the boy.’

  ‘And the boy has only to look at himself in his shaving mirror?’

  ‘No, no – one can’t say that. When did he last, or ever, set eyes on Adrian? I just don’t know.’ The vicar was silent for a moment. ‘Deep waters,’ he said soberly.

  There was a pause in this strange discussion. And no sound from an outer world disturbed it. Whatever of industrious investigation was going on in Ledward, no murmur of it reached this small asylum.

  ‘The first thing anybody would want to know,’ Appleby resumed presently, ‘I just haven’t been able to come by. I ask Snodgrass, and we are interrupted, or in some way distracted. I ask Plumridge, and he tells me he isn’t the family lawyer. No more are you. But consider. Adrian may be dead, for he hasn’t been heard of for years. He turns up, presumably to claim his inheritance, which is a very rich one. And somebody promptly kills him, amid a great deal of obfuscation. Your own word, Vicar, as the journalists say – or used to say – qui bono? Who inherits? It’s the first thing to ask.’ Appleby paused. ‘I suppose there is, or has been, a Mr Anglebury? A Mr Anglebury Senior, that’s to say.’

  ‘Dear me, yes. I knew him. He died a great many years ago.’

  ‘And a great many things appear to have happened a great many years ago. I have an increasing sense that, in this business, the dickens of a number of relevant facts lie in hiding-places much more than ten years’ deep. And I confess to you that I’ve promised myself to flush them out
before breakfast-time.’

  ‘A bold speech, Sir John. By the way, I find myself to have addressed you several times as Appleby. We seem to have known each other for quite a long time. This night is taking on very odd dimensions, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes – but, once more, we’re drifting away from what I want to know. There was somebody called Anglebury, who presumably acknowledged young David as his son. And who presumably believed himself to be this demented – or at least hysterical – woman’s legal husband. Is it possible that he was mistaken, or at least content that he should be supposed so? Was that marriage, in fact, a bigamous one? Can she have been already married to David’s true father? In other words, is David Anglebury the true heir?’

  There was another silence. This time, it was a long one.

  ‘Deep waters, Appleby. Deep waters, indeed.’

  ‘No doubt.’ This sage reiteration had brought a hint of impatience into Appleby’s voice. ‘But there must be some firm ground in this particular area we’re considering. Young Mr Anglebury is at least not – so to speak – heir apparent. Adrian’s dead. And somebody – somebody I don’t seem as much as to have heard of – owns this place now. Or will own it, at least, as soon as the lawyers have done their stuff, and collected their fees. Who? Can it possibly be the old Professor?’

  ‘I hardly suppose it usual to inherit from a nephew, unless by way of bequest. If Adrian had Ledward in his gift, so to speak, and thought it sensible to leave it to somebody in extreme old age, then it might no doubt work out that way. There’s a sense in which Beddoes Snodgrass would deserve the heritage. It has meant much to him. But I don’t know that the dead man – although one ought not to speak other than charitably of him – was one markedly aware of the finer considerations.’

  ‘I’d somehow suppose not.’ Appleby had found this temperate speech depressing. ‘But, you know, it’s my point that there must be a legal next of kin to Adrian: somebody who will inherit if he has died intestate, or who would inherit in any case, because of some fashion in which the property is settled. But I just don’t know…’

  The rest of this sentence, if completed, went unheard by Dr Absolon. For the silence of Ledward had suddenly been shattered by a tremendous explosion.

  13

  This time, Stride and his men were very promptly alerted, and it was on their way to the scene of this fresh outrage that they came upon Mrs Gathercoal. She had been chloroformed, bound, and gagged with brisk effectiveness. Which accounted for her failure to perform her late mission.

  Adrian Snodgrass’ bedroom – his authentic bedroom – was in poor shape. The blast had knocked it around quite strikingly. Even the portrait of the Tudor lady had been damaged, although it had actually been removed (with an odd solicitousness) to the farther end of the room. Set into the wall where it had hung was a small safe – or rather the remains of a small safe after a wholly disproportionate blasting operation had been performed on it. It was empty except for a small twist of metal which had once been a paper-clip.

  ‘Not nearly so neat,’ Stride said dispassionately, ‘as the job on the Professor’s unfortunate cook. That was professional, and this is amateur. They can’t have been by the same hand. Or is that jumping to a conclusion? Drugging and kidnapping and what-not may be in their regular way of business, but this is their first shot at blowing a safe. Does it occur to you, sir, that the safe now looks rather like Adrian Snodgrass’ face?’

  ‘Well, I can’t say that it had.’ Appleby was startled by this command of the macabre in a stolid police-officer. ‘But I see what you mean. The same sort of excessive head-on effect. An overplus of straight brutality. Murder and robbery, and the same criminal putting his signature to both crimes… I wonder.’

  ‘It’s fairly easy to see what happened. In this particular area of our inquiry, I mean.’ Stride gestured round the devastated bedroom. ‘They got the rooms wrong at first, and consequently the pictures. Hence the monkeying with the one in the room that had been got ready for Adrian Snodgrass. They had “bedroom” and “woman’s portrait”, you might say, as clues; but beyond that, their intelligence wasn’t precise enough. Eventually, after some pretty cool continuing to lurk around this uncommonly commodious house, they got up here; and they were just going to look behind this picture when you and Mrs Gathercoal interrupted them. They must have numbered at least three, if you ask me, and when they bolted two of them must have got into the corridor and doubled back pretty quick. They were in time to intercept and deal with Mrs Gathercoal before returning here and preparing to blow the safe more or less at leisure. For meantime, you see, the third was leading you a pretty dance, sir. A decoy, he might be called.’ There was a mild and inoffensive note of professional malice in Stride’s offering this sally. ‘And then, of course, down there in the chapel, you put in a little time having a chat with the vicar. Giving him the sense, perhaps, of what they call assisting the police with their inquiries.’

  ‘No doubt, Inspector.’ Appleby thought it unnecessary to appear amused. ‘And now that you have refreshed us with wit, we may perhaps proceed to a sober consideration of the matter. I would value your opinion on the Campagna with Banditti.’

  ‘On the what?’

  ‘The painting by Claude, which was over the chimney-piece in the drawing-room. Were they looking for a safe behind that? I hardly think so. It hasn’t been displaced; it has been removed. Have you any notion of its approximate value?’

  ‘Enormous, no doubt, on a legitimate market. I’m told there’s ceasing to be any sense in such things. Pretty high, even on a black market. And if it’s heavily insured, and the insurers were willing to play, worth a great deal simply on a ransom basis.’

  ‘Exactly. I see you have a very good sense of such things. The Claude would be far more valuable than anything likely to be stored in this safe.’

  ‘Family jewellery?’

  ‘I doubt it. Not if Ledward’s affairs are administered in any sensible fashion. Really valuable jewellery, if there is no present use for it, is nearly always stored in banks or strong rooms, where insurance costs very much less than in a vulnerable safe like this.’

  ‘Bank-notes of high denomination?’

  ‘Perhaps. But, again, nobody is going to tuck away really large sums in that way for years on end. Think of inflation. Real value would be dropping year by year. Does it occur to you, Inspector, that this safe may have contained objects of interest rather than objects of value?’

  ‘I don’t know that I quite follow you, sir.’

  ‘Well, say a family tree. Or a birth certificate, or marriage lines, or a diary. There are all sorts of possibilities.’

  ‘I have found that to be commonly the case, sir, when one is completely at sea before a mystery.’

  ‘Perfectly true, and the thought is a sobering one. But I must not further detain you. Unless, Inspector, I can help you in any way.’

  ‘Well, there is one matter, Sir John. Professor Snodgrass doesn’t seem able to give much of a description of the men he came upon in the downstairs bedroom – if that is where he came upon them – and the lady, Mrs Anglebury, has been given something by Dr Plumridge that has fairly knocked her out. But what about yourself, Sir John? You’re the trained man, if I may put it that way, who had a sight of them.’

  ‘Perfectly true. But I can only speak for one of them. Although, mark you, I glimpsed him in about a thousand different aspects in those damned mirrors. Shall I tell you how he struck me, Inspector?’ And Appleby looked solemnly at Stride. ‘As a sinister foreigner. Just that.’

  ‘I see.’ Stride looked doubtful. ‘Might I ask why sinister?’

  ‘He was dark, my dear fellow. What is called swarthy. And with a villainous-looking drooping moustache.’

  ‘That’s something to go on.’ Stride had taken this frivolity very well. ‘And you could identify him?’

  ‘Parade him, Inspector, and I’ll promise to walk straight up to him.’

  ‘Which is a great deal
more. Would you say, sir, that, having cracked this safe, they’d brought off their trick, and had nothing more to do than to beat it?’

  ‘It’s a grim conclusion. But I confess to seeing it very much like that. Is Mrs Gathercoal all right? I rather took to her.’

  ‘She has come to no harm at all. But she might be a deep one, if you ask me.’

  ‘Indeed? It’s an interesting point of view. The confederate who is knocked out and tied up? I’ve come across it, I confess. And there’s a good deal more that one has a sense of having come across. The vicar, by the way, seemed to have the same feeling at one point. He kept on advancing ingenious theories out of a wide reading in detective stories. But now I think he’s sobered up.’

  ‘Ah, drink!’ Detective Inspector Stride revealed himself as being of somewhat literal mind. ‘That’s something one always has to think about. There seems to have been a lot of port drunk in that library.’

  ‘Indeed, yes. I myself was plied with it.’

  ‘And that champagne.’ Stride had tactfully ignored Appleby’s comment. ‘Apart from a glass or thereabout that got spilt, the dead man seems to have drunk a bottle of it. And after some sherry to begin with.’

  ‘Madeira.’

  ‘And, what’s more, he seems to have intended to go on to a second bottle.’

  ‘In the company of his uncle, perhaps. But I agree that in his last moments Adrian may not have been too clear in his head. He seems to have been resolved to make his homecoming a convivial occasion. He took a glass of the madeira with his uncle’s butler. By the way, I suppose that fellow has returned to Ledward?’

  ‘Leonidas? He came back, all right. He and the Professor have been having a word together in the hall, sitting on one of those marble benches. Chilly things. Bad for the backside, if you ask me. None too pleased with each other either, by the look of them.’