‘The Professor and Leonidas? I’d be on the Professor’s side, I think. There’s a covert insolence about that fellow I don’t at all like. If he were my employee, I doubt whether he’d long survive unfired. But that’s neither here nor there. And Professor Snodgrass, incidentally, is the person I now rather want to talk to again. If you approve, that is, Inspector. This is your case.’
‘You’re very welcome, I’m sure.’ Stride was showing signs of sinking into gloom. ‘There’s no sense to be got out of that old gentleman at present. None at all. Of course, we must remember he has had a great shock.’
‘So he has. Only – do you know ? – I’m not as confident as I’d like to be about just what that great shock was.’
‘I’d like to be confident of anything at all,’ Stride said with sudden savagery, ‘in this damned case.’
But confidence was a quality which appeared to have returned to Professor Snodgrass. He was still perched, indeed, on one of those marble benches which Stride had aspersed as fundamentally unsound. But it was with an air of relaxation that made itself felt at once. Both the horror of his nephew’s death and the nasty jar of his sudden glimpse of a gang of murderers seemed to have faded on him; he was watching a good deal of coming and going on the part of the constabulary with a vague but composed interest; he might have been studying the logistics of a homicide operation from the detached but informed standpoint of the military historian he was.
Appleby wondered, somewhat inconsequently, whether Ledward had ever seen anything of this sort before. Had gentlemen with swords at their sides, or ornate in satin, or buckskin-breeched from hunting, ever fallen in their cups to some lethal quarrel amid all this tomb-like splendour and massive decorum? A film director could mount a splendid armed brawl as eddying round these ranked columns. The poised and planted feet would ring on marble, and the smooth alabaster be grooved and gashed by the flailing blades. At the moment, however, the only camera on the scene had just been carried into the drawing-room by an officer in plain clothes; he would take numerous photographs of the corpse; on some future day, perhaps, a judge would examine these, and decide that the more distressing of them need not be placed in the hands of the jury.
‘I hear they have broken up the octagon room,’ Professor Snodgrass said, a little unexpectedly. ‘It has never seemed to me other than in poor taste. But to take a hammer to it has been exceedingly high-handed, to my mind.’
‘It wasn’t exactly a matter of a hammer.’ The chronic mild battiness of Beddoes Snodgrass, Appleby reflected, might well cause Detective Inspector Stride to despair of him as a reliable witness. But of course the old gentleman was perfectly capable of responding to reason with reason – or intermittently so, at least. ‘And I’m afraid I was partly responsible myself. I was trying to catch somebody, you know. One of those South Americans.’
This piece of shock tactics was not without its effect. The Professor gave Appleby a glance the sharpness of which didn’t wholly cohere with his general air of being perched at some remove above the general level of events.
‘South Americans, my dear Sir Edward?’
‘John.’
‘Ah, yes – Sir John. It takes time to place a new neighbour. You think that is the explanation of my poor nephew’s being shot? It hadn’t occurred to me. But nothing is more likely. A mission of vengeance on the part of Gozman Spinto’s crowd. Adrian smashed Gozman Spinto, you know. It was a great step towards constitutional government.’
‘I understand it was your ancestor the Liberator who smashed Gozman Spinto. Decapitated him, in fact. And that it wasn’t a great step to anything except the Liberator’s making a packet.’
‘Really? Well, the details are unimportant, are they not. Emissaries of one scoundrelly Azuera Junta or another. Do you think they may still be lurking in Ledward? If so, I am inclined to suggest that the military be called to the assistance of the police. The villains may be in possession of automatic weapons. They are said to be coming increasingly into use.’
‘I hardly think, Professor, that soldiers are required.’
‘Well, mention it to me, if you change your mind. There is no doubt a militia regiment quite near at hand. The Lord Lieutenant of the County would know. He is an old friend of mine, and I could call upon him at any time.’
‘Thank you. I’ll bear it in mind. I wonder whether you can tell me…’
‘I have asked Leonidas to serve coffee. The hour appears to be somewhat advanced. But it didn’t seem to me that we had quite got to the stage of early morning tea. Besides, that is best partaken of in bed.’
‘Certainly it is. But what I want to ask you about is connected with South America, and Adrian’s long sojourns there. Do you think his wife came back to England with him on this occasion?’
‘Adrian’s wife? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘But didn’t you tell me that he had a wife? And a little boy?’
‘Nothing of the kind.’ Professor Snodgrass had suddenly produced what Appleby characterized to himself as a glare of cold sanity. ‘You must have taken leave of your senses.’
‘Not quite that, I hope. But no doubt I misunderstood you, or am confusing your family with another family having connections out there.’ Appleby offered this absurdity without a blush. It was only fair, after all, to send an occasional imbecile vagueness back over the net, so to speak, and into the Professor’s court. ‘So there’s no direct heir to Ledward? How very sad! That such a splendid place should in a fashion be going begging.’ Appleby shook his head in a sombre fashion – and then seemed to cheer up, as if another thought had struck him. ‘But, of course, Adrian may have married, and without troubling to let you know about it. Any time in these past ten years, or thereabout. Indeed, nothing is more probable. He was just the age at which his type often decides to settle down. Adventure and women and so forth behind him, and a stable and domestic life in front. Such marriages are often singularly happy and successful. With your experience of the world, Professor, you must have noticed that. And it’s particularly true in cases in which there’s more than a mere competence in the way of family fortune. Yes, Adrian, come to think of it, had almost certainly married. And he’d come back to fix up his future manner of life here. He’d be looking forward to the boy’s growing up in the old home. The first pony. The first gun. Off to Eton for his first half. All that. It can still happen, of course, so far as the little chap is concerned. I wonder whether he takes after both the Snodgrasses and the Beddoeses.’
Appleby paused with some satisfaction on this rapidly constructed fantasy. We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, he was telling himself. Still, we can give a kick or two now and then. And thus vaingloriously congratulating himself, he had another rapid go.
‘I expect,’ he said, ‘you know Charles Pumpernickle? He’s our ambassador in Patagonia at the moment. And of course it was he who told me, not you. Stupid of me to make that muddle. Told me, I mean, about Adrian Snodgrass’ marriage. And about the boy. A dear little fellow, he says.’
It would not have been possible to maintain that Professor Beddoes Snodgrass displayed any marked gratification at thus being suddenly dowered with a great-nephew – even one vouched for as a dear little fellow. On the other hand (and Appleby was watching him closely) he gave no sign of mortification or rage. Perhaps he was sufficiently in possession of his wits to know very well that he had been listening to an outrageous fabrication. Or perhaps his regard and affection had been wholly for Adrian as an individual, so that, with Adrian dead, he wasn’t much affected by Appleby’s story, even if he believed it. Or perhaps, yet again, his mental life was in fact so discontinuous that Stride was justified in feeling that nothing was to be done with him. Appleby, however, had one last shot.
‘I am sure,’ he said (not very decently, but policemen cannot always be over-nice), ‘that this will be a great consolation to you. The fact, I mean, that Adrian has left a son. But will it come as a dis
appointment to somebody else?’
‘Somebody else?’
‘There must be somebody who would be due to inherit Ledward now, if Adrian had not in fact married and produced an heir. Who is he?’
‘He?’
‘You mean it’s a woman?’
‘Leonidas – I wonder what can have become of him.’ Whether through guile or not, Professor Snodgrass had gone completely vague again. ‘Why hasn’t he brought that coffee? But – dear me! – now I remember. I have dismissed him.’
‘Dismissed Leonidas? Given him notice?’
‘Or did he dismiss me?’ The Professor paused, and appeared to see no light on this problem. ‘He certainly remarked that these were not respectable goings-on. It was hard to controvert him. Unfortunately, what he had to say was couched in a tone of some insolence. So he has departed. That’s why there’s no coffee. I do, my dear fellow, apologize about it.’
‘Never mind about the coffee. You say your butler has departed?’
‘Certainly. Returned in his car to the Old Dower House, packed his bags – and by this time will have cleared out for good. You may make your mind entirely easy, Appleby. You won’t see that rather objectionable man again. He has been a disappointment to me, I’m bound to say. One has a right to expect more of a person with a name like that. Weren’t we having a chat, by the way, about Thermopylae? We must resume it, one day.’
‘Yes, indeed.’ Appleby felt a strong prompting to seize Beddoes Snodgrass and shake him vigorously. ‘May I ask whether the police know about Leonidas’ departure?’
‘I doubt whether he mentioned it to them, my dear Appleby. Nor have I. After all, it can’t really concern them. And they appear to have such a lot on their hands as it is, poor fellows. Do you know’ – and Professor Snodgrass suddenly brightened – ‘I think I’ll go and make that coffee myself?’
Part Three
FIRST LIGHT
14
This was a house – Appleby told himself as he watched the Professor totter away on his stick – in which reliable information remained in uncommonly short supply. On the other hand the place was willing to do one any amount of solitude, and it was in solitude that such scant information as he had managed to acquire might best be sifted and reflected upon. No doubt if he returned to the society of Inspector Stride he might pick up a little more hard fact than he was yet possessed of, and certain areas of the mystery might emerge from the soft focus in which they were at present obstinately clothed for him. But for half an hour or so that could wait. He would simply lose himself in Ledward and brood.
There was one direction in which he had not yet gone. This was along the fourth of the quadrant corridors and into whatever it conducted to. Presumably this would be a wing of the same general dimensions as the other three. One might make a bet with oneself as to what it housed. For instance, it might be devoted to a museum of South American antiquities, and even contain pictures and records of value in trying to get a notion of the character of the Snodgrasses’ involvement in the continent. Or it might be divided in two, like the wing shared by the hothouse and the chapel, and offer the alternative diversions of a billiard-room and a swimming bath. Appleby decided to take his ruminative stroll in that direction.
Had he really got anything out of Professor Snodgrass on the strength of the nonsense he had talked to him? He certainly hadn’t elicited anything dramatic. Neither a howl of rage nor an expression of unbounded joy had greeted his confident assertion that Adrian had left an infant heir behind him. Again, the Professor had not been drawn into any communication as to whom he understood or supposed that Ledward would now pass. His avoidance of this had something wary or nervous about it. And there was another odd thing: he had shown no impulse to be communicative about his own glimpse of the marauders.
After all, at least one of the men had been a sinister-looking foreigner. Appleby had described him to Stride accurately enough. And when he had spoken of them to the Professor as ‘those South Americans’ the old gentleman had accepted this and elaborated upon it within a matter of seconds. But this had taken the form of a piece of extravagant chronological confusion. And it had not prompted him to add, in corroboration of the general idea of some exotic vendetta, that his own glimpse had undoubtedly been of Latin-American persons. Yet the effect of that glimpse had, for a time, been shattering – or, if not shattering, bewildering. And Snodgrass had now shut down on it.
One must concede the possibility, Appleby reflected, of two distinct crimes. It was untidy; it wouldn’t please Dr Absolon in his character as a connoisseur of detective fiction; but one had to come back to it, all the same. Two synchronous crimes – but not grossly coincidental, since each had keyed to the same brief span of time for logical reasons. The intruders whom he himself had glimpsed (who might or might not, have been those whom the Professor and Mrs Anglebury had severally glimpsed) were indeed exotic. They had pursued Adrian Snodgrass, it might be, across the South Atlantic Ocean. But their purpose, conceivably, had not been vendetta or vengeance, but something quite different. And there were a number of possibilities here, although the most obvious of them connected itself with the rifled safe. These foreigners (former associates of Adrian’s, or whatever they may have been) knew enough about the safe to hunt for it. And they had wanted to get to it first. They had wanted to abstract or destroy vital papers, say, before Adrian himself recovered and in some way exploited them. And it looked as if they had succeeded, more or less.
The other intruders had been English – since it had been ‘lower-class urban voices’ that Dr Absolon had heard. These people had come on this particular night simply because it was the night in the year upon which Ledward and its treasures were uniquely vulnerable. They, too, had been successful, since they had departed with the Claude and much else. And everything pointed to them as the killers of Adrian Snodgrass. That sort of killing is the product of a loss of nerve. As cool and efficient criminals they seemed inferior to the other lot.
And so much, Appleby thought, by way of a preliminary guess or two. It was a picture of the affair which at least organized some of the main chunks of evidence into the semblance of a coherent pattern. Still, as a nearly-completed jigsaw in which all the remaining pieces showed promise of using themselves up it wasn’t possible to think very highly of it.
Confronting this gloomy conclusion, Appleby came to a halt and looked about him. This quadrant corridor wasn’t identical with the others. It was, so to speak, a de luxe model, with an impressive additional feature thrown in. On its outer curve, which was on his left as he walked, it opened out into a semi-circular apse-like recess which looked large enough to accommodate a small orchestra. What it did accommodate was an indifferent marble reproduction of the Laocoön Group. The unfortunate father and his sons, writhing in the coils of Athena’s avenging serpents, had been combined with a placid little fountain which (like everything else at Ledward that night) had been paraded for the returning heir. There was a marble bench in front of the exhibition, as if to invite the passer-by to a leisured gloat before this revolting masterpiece of the Pergamene school. Appleby sat down and regarded it glumly. One had to admit that here was a spectacle of violence which had been tidied up. Polydorus, Athenodorus, and Agesander (if those were really the sculptors’ names) had reduced those straining bodies and contorted limbs to a tolerably lucid spectacle artistically regarded. They hadn’t, so to speak, left anything out of their particular jigsaw. Appleby got up and moved on. He must try to emulate just that.
He continued down the corridor. It happened to be one of those patches of Ledward that was poorly lit, and when Appleby opened a door at its end and stepped into brilliant illumination he was for some moments at a loss to interpret what confronted him. He seemed to be in a small structure like a wooden horse-box, and looking out through an unglazed aperture at a lofty and enormous hall which might conceivably be a riding-school. Along the whole of one wall there was a low wooden structure, like a projecting corridor, with ne
tted openings here and there, and a sloping wooden roof. High overhead there were windows and a skylight, but the present shadowless lighting came from a very modern-looking electrical installation just below the rafters. By way of making a little more of this, Appleby took a couple of steps forward. As he did so there was the sound of something like a sharp report from somewhere in front of him, instantly followed by an ugly crack against the woodwork behind. He was just reflecting that the night’s show-down had really begun (and had in fact dropped swiftly to the floor) when a triumphant voice sounded from somewhere at the other end of the hall.
‘Got the dedans!’
‘And you nearly got me.’ Appleby had risen rather sheepishly to his feet. ‘And you’re serving from the hazard side. Come over here, and see if you can get the grille.’
‘I’m terribly sorry. I’d no idea anybody would come along here.’ David Anglebury had jumped over the sagging net which gives its delusively slapdash suggestion to a real-tennis court, still carrying a couple of balls and the oddly lopsided racquet with which the ancient game is played. ‘I was just mucking around,’ he said. ‘I didn’t feel like going to sleep in this damned house. And, of course, I can’t leave until my mother can.’
‘Dr Plumridge has settled her down for a bit?’
‘Yes – but the police want to ask her all sorts of things. Only as part of the drill, I think.’
‘I’m not sure that I quite know what you mean by that, Mr Anglebury.’
‘Well, they know about her, you see.’
‘In just what way? Has she a habit of going round confessing to other people’s crimes? Forgive me if that sounds rather crude. It’s a species of morbid behaviour, as a matter of fact, known to every experienced police officer. The trouble is, you’ll understand, that one never can tell.’
The Open House Page 12