The Open House

by Michael Innes

  ‘My own observations, Sir John?’

  ‘You must forgive me. I just have a notion that you don’t feel things to be precisely as they seem. The when and where of Adrian Snodgrass’ killing, for example. And what he was doing when he was killed.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I’d be grateful if you’d step over here’ – Appleby had crossed the room – ‘and look at this photograph. It is undoubtedly of Adrian as a small boy, and dressed up as a soldier. With some care and at some expense, you notice. He’s rather like some little royal personage wearing the real thing.’

  ‘Perfectly true.’

  ‘I wonder whether it suggests or recalls to you a small physical fact about Adrian – something, as a matter of fact, that I’ve been seeking information on within the last hour.’

  ‘The boy’s right hand is resting on the hilt of his sword – which he has contrived to put on on his right side. And that’s irregular, without a doubt, from a military point of view. The child knows that his left hand is, so to speak, his business hand. And he’s a self-willed little devil, as one can see. So he has fixed things so that he can most effectively draw the sword, and wield it, left-handed. I don’t positively recall Adrian as left-handed. But obviously he was so.’

  ‘From which, Doctor, it follows…?’

  ‘That somebody has been none too clever. A left-handed man, when surprised and alarmed, doesn’t snatch up a poker in his right hand and go charging through the house with it. And, of course, there are one or two other things that make that macabre little tableau unconvincing.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Rather too little blood in situ. Forensic medicine isn’t quite a country GP’s province, and I don’t propose to burden the professionals with flighty theories. But, since you ask me, Sir John, there it is. My bet would be that the initial haemorrhage took place elsewhere.’

  ‘And earlier than the picture suggests?’

  ‘Well, obviously – if a dead or dying man was dragged to where the body now lies. One can’t determine a time of death all that accurately. But it clearly wasn’t, say, early in the evening, or anything like it. Then there’s the position of the body…’ Plumridge broke off. ‘But you’re drawing me into teaching you your own ABC.’

  ‘Please go on.’

  ‘If you came charging at me, and if I hit you very hard and square on the jaw, you would be much more likely to drop supine than prone. And a bullet, of course, is just such a blow – but packing a far greater impact still.’

  ‘We ought to have found the body on its back?’

  ‘It’s no more than a probability, I’d say. The victim might turn or pivot as he fell, I suppose. Only in that case, and knowing the direction in which Adrian was running…’

  ‘Or has been represented as running.’

  ‘Yes, of course. That’s what we’re talking about. If the thing were, so to speak, genuine, I’d have expected that the spin that brought the body down prone would have landed its heels in the drawing-room and its head in the hall.’

  ‘I think you are right in that. So what does all this suggest?’

  ‘Something that an amateur scarcely wants to be the first to go round airing.’ Plumridge spoke soberly. ‘The whole appearance of burglary, and so on, has been faked as a cloak for something quite different.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Appleby looked speculatively at the doctor. ‘I’m bound to say I almost convinced myself of that quite early on. But it won’t do.’ Appleby paused. ‘You look relieved.’

  ‘Do I? I suppose I am. One positively wants to feel that there have really been – well, professional criminals at work. Habitual criminals. You think there have been?’

  ‘That, my dear Doctor, depends on how one defines one’s terms.’ Appleby was again silent for a moment. ‘Can you spare a further minute or two? I have something to tell you, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘But of course.’ Plumridge sat down. ‘Does it pick up, perhaps, from our last conversation? When we had a word or two, I mean, on the difficult problem of professional confidence.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. But there was something that came before that. I was anxious to get hold of a very simple piece of information. Who was going to inherit Ledward now that Adrian was dead? It seemed scarcely plausible that the family doctor wouldn’t know. But you struck me, if I may say so, as a little evasive. Indeed, you said something to the effect that you were not the family lawyer. Might I be right in thinking that what was operative was your sense that you knew who ought to inherit the place? Morally, I mean, as distinct from legally.’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘You can’t be called exactly communicative, Doctor. So here is what I want to tell you. David Anglebury has been communicative. He has confided to me pretty well everything he appears to know about himself.’

  ‘Then he is to be accounted a very sensible lad.’

  ‘Thank you. He has mentioned that you were a great help to him at a time when he was trying to sort out his feelings about his father, and his father’s conduct towards his mother. It isn’t my impression, however, that you found it useful or possible at that time to give him any information which you may have possessed and he did not.’

  ‘But what sort of information may I have possessed that would have been of any use to the boy?’

  ‘By this time, Doctor, it’s rather a question of any information that may be of use to me. Here is young Anglebury – if we may call him that – faced with the very difficult situation created by his mother’s wandering presence here at Ledward on this shocking night. He tells me that he is in fact the dead man’s son, and that his mother has for a very long time cherished delusions – or what Anglebury judges to be delusions – about the circumstances attending the seduction which resulted in his birth. But he can hardly have any memories preserved from his earliest infancy, let alone any positively pre-natal ones. You, however, have explained to me that you have been in practice in this part of the country virtually throughout your working life, and you may very well have had the future Mrs Anglebury’s misfortune more or less under your eye. You may even have delivered David into this world.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘This is most encouraging. You are really becoming communicative.’ Appleby glanced at Plumridge with a kind of whimsical irony. ‘So what about the seduction? Did that happen under your eye as well?’

  ‘My dear Sir John, I’m not, and never was, exactly a voyeur. But it’s true I wasn’t without information in the matter. Before she brought off – if that’s not too gross a way of phrasing it – her rapid marriage to Charles Anglebury, the unfortunate woman had occasion to consult me.’ Plumridge paused. ‘Well, here is a professional confidence. She was pregnant, and she wanted to know whether there might not be something in the state of her health which would make the termination of the pregnancy desirable on medical grounds.’

  ‘In other words, she was hoping you might get her out of her plight by arranging a quiet abortion?’

  ‘Just that. Of course I explained the legal and ethical position to her as well and gently as I could.’ Plumridge hesitated. ‘She had a good deal more to say.’

  ‘She told you this story of an outrageous piece of wickedness on Adrian Snodgrass’ part? Of his having arranged, on some pretext, a secret marriage ceremony, which later turned out to be fraudulent and invalid?’

  ‘Just that.’

  ‘Do you agree with David that her persuasion can only have been a delusion, and that no educated woman could possibly be so deceived?’

  ‘The answer to that must depend, you know, on the opinion one had formed of her pre-existing mental state. A woman who was simple-minded in the sense of being positively mentally subnormal…’

  ‘But there was no question of that?’

  ‘Definitely not. On the other hand, I think it would be fair enough to say that she was already a little off her head. But you see how that may bear upon the matter in quite contradictory ways.’

  ‘I’m n
ot sure that I understand you.’

  ‘She would be the more ready simply to imagine things; say to bring into being, and genuinely believe in, the melodramatic fantasy of a mock-marriage by way of providing an excuse for what she was certainly conventional enough to think of as her fall.’

  ‘The authentic Victorian vision.’

  ‘Yes. And I must point out, Sir John, that, unlike you, I am literally a Victorian myself. So I’m not sure there isn’t something to be said for that very simple point of view. However, I come to the other way of regarding the problem. If she was already a little mad – as I believe she was – it might be the easier actually to put her under a false persuasion. An educated woman in a normal state of mind, that is to say, would be likely to penetrate such a deception, however cleverly arranged. But think of her as disturbed, or as on the verge of requiring custodial care, and the particular piece of wickedness we are wondering about does become feasible.’

  ‘Are you then telling me, Doctor, that one guess is as good as another? Short of successful investigation of actual events which occurred a full generation ago, we can never know whether Adrian Snodgrass’ possessing himself of this unhappy woman was accomplished by means of a criminal deception or not?’

  ‘I’m not saying that at all.’ Dr Plumridge had risen a little stiffly from his chair. He was an old man, and had been through a long night. ‘Why not ask the lady for a little more information?’

  ‘Ask the lady!’ For a moment Appleby was simply astonished.

  ‘Certainly. Now.’

  ‘But isn’t she asleep?’

  ‘She has been. But I don’t believe in narcosis in a big way. Mrs Anglebury is in a room upstairs, very tolerably awake, and no doubt thinking up the extraordinary things she’s going to tell the police. I’d get in first, if I were you.’

  ‘My dear sir, is there any point in its being me who has the extraordinary things fired at him?’

  ‘Reason in madness, Sir John. Every psychiatrist – every mad-doctor, as my generation says – is looking for just that. And you can’t have spent your professional life at grips with the criminal mind without having become a bit of a mad-doctor yourself.’

  ‘Very well,’ Appleby said. ‘And I’m obliged to you.’

  18

  When Appleby made his way upstairs to seek out the unfortunate Mrs Anglebury – whom he hoped to find refreshed and even composed – it was with a sense of leisure and security neither of which feelings he was to look back upon as well founded.

  He had, indeed, substantial reasons for confidence. His watch told him it was half-past five. This meant that, if he were to emerge from Ledward (still so extensively and expensively illuminated) and penetrate some way into the darkness of the park, it would almost certainly be possible to distinguish a first faint intimation of light in the eastern sky. But it was still a long time till breakfast. He had made, moreover, in his inner mind, very reasonable speed in elucidating the mysterious affair he had so casually intruded upon. To the very core of it, it might be said, he had penetrated within something like two seconds of its having become possible to do so. There had been nothing miraculous about this. He had been on plenty of such trails before, and must be accounted an old hound and a sagacious one, with a developed sense of smell. That, and a capacity for listening, had constituted the only witchcraft he had used. And it didn’t seem to him that, essentially, there was much more he needed to know. It was true that he had discerned one odd possibility the confirmation of which might radically alter the final issue of the whole deplorable business. But there was no sign of its being a possibility which had entered any other living head, and he would assuredly – so to speak – keep it firmly under his own hat until he had found means to determine on it one way or another.

  Certainly neither life nor property appeared any longer at risk at Ledward. Unless, of course, his own life. He alone, it might be, was in a position to identify the sinister foreigner with the drooping moustache – a gentleman who, whatever his own unlawful concerns at Ledward may have been, was probably aware that he had been uncomfortably in the vicinity of homicide. He alone (with all respect to Inspector Stride) might be conceived by one interested party or another as the man who knew too much. And he didn’t feel entitled wholly to neglect action appropriate to this situation. But the main point was that the riddle of Adrian Snodgrass’ death was now getting itself answered with reasonable speed.

  This was why, on his way upstairs (and not perhaps without a touch of that hazardous attitude known to students of Greek drama as hubris), he paused to confirm himself in the view that the flowing curves around him could represent the conception only of Robert Adam himself. The constable who had been detailed to guide him to Mrs Anglebury watched this gesture of connoisseurship with respect. He was no doubt under the impression that the great man was looking for fingerprints or blood-stains in unexpected places.

  Professor Beddoes Snodgrass’ devoted care of Ledward Park, and his anxiety that it should present itself as a going concern to his nephew Adrian upon whatever birthday anniversary he should choose to turn up, had not extended to giving an appearance of present occupation to the secondary bedrooms of the house. In the chamber in which Mrs Anglebury was resting everything rollable had been rolled up, everything swathable swathed, and everything baggable tied firmly into bags. Cats in bags, Appleby thought as he glanced around. Enormous cats in enormous bags, waiting to be let out. And he wondered whether the lady had, as it were, a further cat in a bag tucked up her sleeve.

  She was reclining on a bare mattress, but had been provided with an eiderdown quilt, plenty of pillows, and a cheerful-looking electric fire. And if she didn’t herself look cheerful, at least she looked calm. She might also have been described as remaining more handsome than ravaged. Adrian Snodgrass’ way with women had doubtless been reprehensible. But his taste had been good.

  ‘Good morning,’ Appleby said. ‘My name is Appleby. You may recall that we met last night.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Appleby’s words, which had struck him as absurd even as he uttered them, didn’t seem to discompose Mrs Anglebury in the least. ‘Not when I was on top of a bed, as I am now, but when I was under one. Did I tell you I had killed Adrian?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Anglebury, you did.’

  ‘I get things wrong sometimes. I rather think I got that wrong.’

  ‘You will find others who agree with you in that.’

  ‘Because, you know, why was I under the bed? I must have been hiding from Adrian. In other words, it was Adrian who was trying to kill me. Which clears the matter up.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, you said at the time that you were hiding from some men. Not from Adrian, Mrs Anglebury. From some men you didn’t like the look of. And you weren’t imagining them. You really did see them. I myself saw them too.’ Although thus expressing things as simply as he could, Appleby found himself without much hope of making any progress with David Anglebury’s mother. For here in front of him was something not in the least like the wayward battiness and obscure wilfulness or disingenuousness of the aged Professor Snodgrass. Mrs Anglebury was insane. It had been absurd of Dr Plumridge to suggest that a layman, whatever degree of mental eccentricity his career had brought him in contact with, could get anything useful out of her.

  ‘For a long time,’ Mrs Anglebury continued, ‘Adrian was simply trying to have me put away. He had enlisted powerful support. The Prime Minister was in the plot. And of course – and as you might guess – the Archbishop of Canterbury. But Monsieur Picasso stood out. It was very much to his credit. They wanted him to paint me so that I should look mad, and then they were going to show the painting to the Queen. I was to have two eyes in the middle of my left cheek. This would have the effect of making me look strange. But I foiled all their attempts. That is why Adrian started trying to kill me.’ She paused, and smoothed the eiderdown over her knees. ‘Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘I think it may be said that you do.’ Appleby was
by now simply wondering how he could retrieve this painful false step and get away. For here was a degree of helpless alienation which it was merely indecent to intrude upon.

  ‘Adrian and I were married,’ Mrs Anglebury said, ‘on the 21st of January 1953, in the parish church of St Botolph’s, Oxford.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Appleby, who had seated himself at a cautious remove from the demented lady, sat up with a jerk. ‘Do I understand…’

  ‘It was because of its being a runaway match.’ Mrs Anglebury had been heedless of interruption. ‘And Adrian, you see, was very fond of Oxford – although his career there had not been so successful as that of his half-brother Basil, whom I have no doubt that you know. And of course the Vicar of St Botolph’s, who performed the ceremony, was an old friend of Adrian’s. In fact, he had been the chaplain of his college. The Reverend Frederick Templeman, MA.’

  ‘I see. Do you recall whether the banns were called in a regular way, or whether the marriage was by special…’

  ‘Yes, by special licence. It was from the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

  ‘Never mind about the Archbishop,’ Appleby said hastily. ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘Then? We set out on a short wedding-journey on the continent. But, no – that is not quite correct. We were about to set out on such a journey. To Venice. We had neither of us ever been to Venice.’

  ‘And then something disconcerting happened?’

  ‘Disconcerting? I don’t think so.’ Mrs Anglebury shook her head vaguely. It was as if she were losing interest in the discussion. ‘I wonder whether it is possible to ring for early morning tea in this hotel?’

  ‘Well, there is a respectable person – a Mrs Gathercoal – who I hope may be induced to bring you some. But you were telling me about your marriage.’

  ‘Was I? Charles and I were married – if my memory is correct – in the spring of 1953.’

  ‘Your memory is certainly correct. But we were speaking of your marriage not to Charles Anglebury, but to Adrian Snodgrass.’