The Open House

by Michael Innes

  ‘That wasn’t a marriage at all.’ Mrs Anglebury’s voice had changed suddenly; it was as if she was back in the region she had been inhabiting when this strange conversation opened. ‘Not a marriage at all,’ she repeated. ‘Mr Templeman, you see, hadn’t been Mr Templeman – only some wicked friend of Adrian’s. It had all been contrived so that I might be undone.’ Mrs Anglebury paused on this archaic word, and appeared to take satisfaction in it. ‘Undone,’ she repeated.

  ‘This is something you remember discovering shortly after what you thought had been a true wedding ceremony?’

  ‘I didn’t discover it. Adrian told me.’

  ‘After you had been living together for a little time? After a quarrel, perhaps?’

  ‘Perhaps after a quarrel. But I think perhaps it was after I had been having some of my funny turns. He didn’t like them.’

  ‘Mrs Anglebury, I wonder whether I have got this right? Adrian simply told you that you were not legally his wife, that he had no intention of making you so, and that you had better clear out, keep quiet, and manage as best you could?’

  ‘Yes. Of course, it was all long before he started wanting to kill me. Or was it that I started wanting to kill him? I think you and I were talking about that. But I forget.’

  ‘Never mind that for a moment. There is something I want to know.’ Appleby had stood up, and was now standing over Mrs Anglebury as if a further brief sanity could be compelled upon her by sheer effort of will. ‘After your…your relationship with Adrian Snodgrass – with David’s father – broke up, did you ever see Adrian again?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But only once. It was when David was a small boy. Adrian must have been staying at Ledward. That’s the Snodgrasses’ family place, and I don’t think it can be far from this hotel… I wonder if you would be so kind as to ring for that tea?’

  ‘It will be coming very soon. You say you encountered Adrian?’

  ‘Yes. I was walking in the park at Ledward. It is something I sometimes do. And somebody was shooting rabbits, or perhaps it was pigeons. It turned out to be Adrian.’ Mrs Anglebury’s limbs were now moving restlessly, spasmodically beneath the eiderdown. ‘We talked.’

  ‘Was David mentioned?’

  ‘Yes – because, you see, somehow or other Adrian had met him. I think he had liked him very much.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘But not me. I could feel that I horrified him. I can’t think why. But it was almost as if it was the way I talked.’

  There was a silence. It represented Appleby seeking cautiously for words. He was on the verge – but only on the verge – of confirming his own strangest notion of the Ledward affair.

  ‘Mrs Anglebury – how did the conversation end?’

  ‘It was about something being mended.’ Mrs Anglebury’s head moved strangely. She might have been trying to see round the corner of a veil, a darkness, a mist. ‘No. It was about something that couldn’t be mended.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Not in Adrian’s lifetime – or at least not for years ahead. He said that one day he might become a stronger man than he was then. But of course he was strong. He liked to show it sometimes with the men – tossing sheaves or hauling at a rope. So it must have been something really difficult to mend. Do you think it might have had to do with a tractor, or with one of the bridges over the River Ledward where it runs through the park?’

  ‘These are obviously possibilities. But did Adrian say anything more about it?’

  ‘He said something about papers. That there were papers securely tucked away at Ledward which would put things straight one day.’

  ‘I see.’ Appleby stood up as he uttered these far from idle words. ‘I’m bound to say that Adrian Snodgrass strikes me as a penitent of a distinctly procrastinating sort.’

  ‘I wonder whether David has caught the burglars.’

  ‘What’s that?’ It had been for his own satisfaction that Appleby had uttered his last grim reflection, and he had been obliged to recall himself to Mrs Anglebury with a jerk. ‘What was that you said?’

  ‘David was with me here until a few minutes before you arrived. But then this man came in and whispered to him. I think I wasn’t supposed to hear. But I did.’

  ‘What man was this, Mrs Anglebury? Try to tell me.’

  ‘I don’t know. But he said he knew who the burglars were, and he and David could corner them on their own if they were quick. So he took David away.’

  ‘You are sure this whispering man was a stranger to you?’

  ‘Well, not quite. I mean he did seem vaguely familiar.’

  ‘It wasn’t Professor Snodgrass?’

  ‘Oh, no. I should know Professor Snodgrass at once. Even if he suddenly turned up in this hotel.’

  ‘A man stinking of soap and heaven knows what?’

  ‘I shouldn’t notice. I smoke too much. Have you any cigarettes?’

  ‘No, I have not. Try to remember anything more.’

  ‘There wasn’t anything more – except that the man took David into a corner of the room where I couldn’t hear what he said. Or only the bit about the park.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘That he knew the crooks had a hide-out there, and would be lying low until they could get away. And David nodded, and they both ran out of the room.’

  ‘Damnation!’ Uttering this surprising expletive, Appleby strode first to the bedroom door, where he flicked off the lights, and then swiftly to the window. Heavy curtains had been drawn across it, and he flung these back and gazed out.

  A thin grey light of dawn hovered in the park – a light still so faint that it might have been no more than a slow evaporation from the grey moisture of the grass. It would almost have been possible to interpret these scant visual evidences as a seascape in which a single dark tree showed like a becalmed galleon with inken sails presaging doom. But the sea was parting even as Appleby looked; it was rolling itself up into shapeless bundles as if in imitation of the swathed and shrouded objects inside this room; in places these little bundles were beginning to move with the slow deliberation of grazing sheep, or to disintegrate and fade like small clouds unable to withstand the sun. But there was as yet no sun here. For as much as another half-hour, perhaps, the park at Ledward would be a theatre of opening and closing vistas, drifting vapours, obstinately lingering shades.

  Appleby threw open the window, and for a moment stood listening. Seemingly far away – although it might not be far away at all – he thought he heard voices calling: the voices, perhaps, of two men who had lost contact with each other and were seeking to regain it.

  Without so much as pausing to shut the window again, Appleby turned and ran from the room.

  19

  There were no thoughts of Robert Adam in Appleby’s head this time as he tumbled himself dangerously down the elegant main staircase of Ledward Park. In the hall he scribbled a note and then shouted directions to a policeman, but didn’t pause to see with what speed this mustered support behind him. He had no doubt whatever of the particular dire hazard which had suddenly presented itself, and no disposition to deny that in his assessment of the situation he had failed to take account of the one bizarre possibility that might lead to it. So it was very much up to him to move quickly now.

  When he emerged from the house it was momentarily into an effect of darkness, but this was only because he had been passing once more through that oppressively over-illuminated interior. As his vision accommodated itself he saw that the columns of the great portico outside the front door stood dark against a sky faintly flushed with rose, and as he dropped down the elaborately balustraded stone steps to the level of the gardens and the drive he received an impression that daylight was farther advanced than he had supposed.

  But there was another factor at work, and of this he became aware as soon as he had negotiated a ha-ha and entered the park itself. The morning mist which from the height of Mrs Anglebury’s window had suggested no more than the thickness of a blanket on
the ground was in fact a shifting and opaque integument in places more than head-high. And the little fleecy sheep which had appeared to move grazing over the surface of this chilly pasture were tall enough to envelop whole trees for a time in a magic cloak of invisibility.

  Appleby paused to listen. In these conditions – familiar only to those who go abroad at dawn – sound might be muted too, and any quarter from which it did come not easy to be certain of. But at least he did again hear voices, although they sounded far away. So he set off again at a run. There was now a broad stream on his left hand. Presumably it was the River Ledward to which Mrs Anglebury had referred in one of her more rambling moments. A couple of herons were standing in the water; their heads rotated with the suggestion of some malign scanning mechanism as they watched Appleby go by. He turned his own head and glanced behind him. There was no sign of any of Stride’s men.

  And there was no sign of Ledward either. As if it really were the monstrous scurrying crustacean of Appleby’s earlier fantasy, it had picked itself up and vanished. But what had really happened, of course, was that mist and indeed fog, far from progressively dispersing before the cheerful sun as had at first appeared, were now in fact billowing into the park with the sudden exuberance of foam from a fire-extinguisher. Appleby hadn’t a sufficient sense of the emergency confronting him – or not, at least, in its likely detail – to be confident whether there was advantage or disadvantage in this change. At least he himself was now depending wholly on sound for the opportunity to be of any effectiveness at all. But then the same circumstance could equally impair the operations of others as well. And probably this sudden effect of what astronauts call visibility degradation would last no more than a few minutes.

  There was now only one voice calling, and it still seemed to come from straight ahead of him. It was David Anglebury’s voice, and it was repeatedly calling out a name – the name of Snodgrass. Was it Basil, or was it the Professor who was thus being conjured to reveal himself?

  Appleby didn’t think it made much difference.

  And then – hard upon this thought – came the crisis. David’s voice was still to be heard, but had grown fainter. It was much as if he had taken a wrong cast in the children’s game known as ‘Hot and Cold’. Appleby had briefly to debate whether to give the young man a shout himself – since to call him to heel, so to speak, would be a desirable measure in face of what was afoot. On the other hand, to give such a shout was to announce himself as an intrusive presence upon whatever was going forward. So Appleby decided to accept a further measure of risk, and thus maintain himself as an unknown factor in the proceedings.

  He came abruptly to a halt, and in another instant was prone in wet chill grass. The vapour had parted in front of him, to reveal a low stone wall (no more, indeed, than the vestige of a wall, now no longer with any function) which ran down a gentle slope towards the stream. It was behind the shelter of this that he was flat on his tummy now. Beyond it, he had glimpsed a dim light – whether of torch or lantern – which mysteriously suggested itself as in some way buried in the earth. And, from the same enigmatical quarter, there came a murmur of voices. They were voices speaking in a foreign tongue.

  This last was a circumstance by which Appleby might be said to have been favourably impressed.

  The place was an ice-house. It was this not in the loose modern sense of an environment very much colder than is comfortable, but literally and technically. Here, in fact, was one of those caverns, dug into conveniently rising ground and provided with such insulating walls as our rude forefathers could devise, in which, for the use of great houses like Ledward, ice was formerly stored throughout the year. A century might have passed since this particular ice-house had been functioning; gardeners or a gamekeeper might have used it since; its entrance was now so overgrown as to suggest a long period of absolute desuetude. It was a good hide-out. It would be a handy place in which to tuck away objects which there might be awkwardness in being found in possession of.

  ‘Snodgrass?’

  Appleby glanced up, to find David Anglebury standing beside him in the mist. He could see that the young man was in a state of high excitement.

  ‘Oh – I thought you were Basil Snodgrass. I got separated from him. He and I have been…’ David broke off. ‘Listen!’

  ‘David, get down!’

  ‘Spanish…it’s them!’ David had sprung forward, thereby unconsciously eluding a ruthless sweep which Appleby had aimed at his legs. ‘We’ve got them…come on!’

  The young man was over the wall – he had taken it like a hurdle almost from a standing start – and was charging the ice-house much as if it represented a pair of goal-posts and he had a rugger ball under his arm. Appleby, fortunately already on his feet, managed a fairly rapid vault. He gave another warning shout, but it was of no avail. Perhaps the young idiot took it for encouragement – as a kind of hunting cry. There was nothing for it but for Appleby to get up a quite improbable speed. And this – it was for no more than a few yards, all told – he did in some miraculous manner achieve. The young man with an imaginary rugger ball was brought abruptly to earth by a far from imaginary tackle. In the same instant there was the crack of a pistol from dead ahead. Appleby was aware of it as a good shot. The bullet had passed through empty air which, a split second before, was being displaced by David’s flying body.

  As it happened, the grass was long, and the ground broken, so that some sort of minimal cover was not hard to find. There was still a light – it might have been designed as a little beacon – in the ice-house; and it was to this that Appleby might now have been conceived as addressing himself in unemotional tones.

  ‘That was it,’ Appleby said. ‘The last boss-shot in a pathetically incompetent affair. Ingenious in places, yes. But well-conceived, no. And it won’t be any good now having a go at hunting us down. The police will be trotting up at any minute, and we could dodge you, off our own bats, for an hour. Nor am I the only man who now knows the facts of the case. I took the precaution of making a progress report to somebody – I won’t name him – from which the whole set-up can certainly be worked out. So – as I said – that was it. Finish.’

  Silence greeted this speech. The only sound was a faint rustle in the grass, and in trees which seconds ago had been invisible, but which now showed as dark, crag-like islands from which a milky sea-spray was falling away. The vapours were departing. The entrance to the ice-house revealed itself as a mouldering wooden door on broken hinges. It was rather a pitiful refuge.

  Suddenly there was a second shot – so that Appleby threw an arm round David’s shoulders and forced him farther to the ground. Then, almost immediately, there was a third. Immediately, and from somewhere still in mist on the right, a small hubbub arose. It might have been the police, emerging, in a belated but spectacular fashion, and with much banging of doors and stamping of feet, from some unsuspected hiding-place near by. Appleby didn’t turn his head. Herons behave like that when getting under way. Here were simply two or three more, justly alarmed, hastily quitting some invisible plantation and proposing to join their fellows in the water.

  It was for something else that Appleby was listening: for so much as a single cry or moan from the direction of the ice-house. Nothing. Nothing came from the place except a small drift of vapour darker than the pearl-grey mist now everywhere in retreat from the park; except this, and a faint acrid smell.

  Appleby stood up.

  ‘A very old-fashioned weapon,’ he said. ‘Could it even be a double action Colt?’ He paused, and looked appraisingly at the boy now scrambling to his feet beside him. ‘I’m afraid it might be a good idea if we went in there together. The spectacle mayn’t be very agreeable, but that would be the best course from the point of view of giving evidence later on. Do you mind, Snodgrass?’

  ‘No – although I think I know what we’re going to find.’ Although very pale, the young man took a brisk pace forward. Then he paused. ‘Snodgrass?’ he repeated.

&n
bsp; ‘The truth is as you can’t but have imagined it at times. Snodgrass has never been other than your true name. And – since very early this morning – Ledward has belonged to you.’

  Epilogue

  20

  ‘An excellent woman, Mrs Gathercoal,’ Dr Absolon said, a few hours later. He was walking with Appleby across the park, preparatory to offering him the hospitality of Ledward Vicarage. It was from this undisturbed abode, it had been agreed, that the rescue of Appleby’s car might be effected with a minimum of publicity. ‘To organize coffee and bacon-and-eggs after a night like that was a considerable feat. Not to speak of the capital potted char. A most interesting old-world dish.’ Absolon paused. ‘But it is hardly surprising that young David had little appetite. It must all be a terrific shock to him. Particularly as it culminated in finding the bodies of poor Beddoes and the scoundrel Basil.’

  ‘Each was as great a scoundrel as the other, Vicar.’

  ‘But surely Beddoes was a mere accomplice, and more than a little mad?’

  ‘To my mind, nothing of the kind. When I tumbled in on the middle of their plot last night, the Professor may be said to have put on a very distinguished turn indeed. He was as good an actor, in a way, as the fellow one is inclined to call Basil-Leonidas. And Basil had, at least as a young man, actual experience as an actor.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Well, as an amateur and when at Oxford. See Who’s Who. But when he returned to the scene of action so hard upon removing Leonidas’ beard, it ought to have occurred to him not to stink of soap and what they call after-shave lotion.’

  ‘It was really so odd a circumstance that alerted you?’

  ‘Well, say that I was at once aware of it – having a good sense of smell.’ Appleby smiled. ‘But really, the instant he entered the corridor, I remember simply staring in astonishment at the effrontery of the proposed deception. They were very rash, to put it mildly, to go ahead with their plan once they knew the identity of the stranger out of the night.’