Operation Pax

by Michael Innes

  ‘My name is Appleby, and I was dining in company with Dr Kolmak this evening. He left before I had an opportunity to talk to him, which I am very anxious to do.’

  The woman inclined her head. ‘My nephew,’ she said, ‘is unwell.’

  ‘I am very sorry.’ Appleby’s tone was mild and conventional. Then suddenly he rapped out: ‘You are alone with him here still?’

  The unlikely shot went home and the woman’s eyes momentarily widened in alarm. But she spoke composedly. ‘If you will come into my salotto,’ she said, ‘we will talk together.’ And she led the way from the tiny landing on which they had been standing into a massively furnished attic room. ‘Please take place,’ she said.

  Nehmen Sie, bitte, Platz… Frau Kolmak, like her nephew, appeared to preserve a good deal of native idiom. Appleby sat down. But his hostess for a moment remained standing. ‘Are you, too, of the police?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Appleby was startled, but saw no occasion for prevarication.

  ‘Then, if you will excuse me, I must put on the kettle.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Appleby supposed either that he had not heard aright or that, this time, Frau Kolmak’s English had gone very markedly astray.

  ‘Not on many days has one the pleasure of twice making tea for the English police…it is Mr Appleby?’

  ‘Sir John Appleby.’

  ‘Ach! This afternoon it was Detective-Inspector Jones – which sounds much grander, does it not? But you too shall have tea, Sir John.’

  And Frau Kolmak applied herself to a spirit lamp. Appleby, unresentful of mockery, watched her composedly. She had considerably more address, he reflected, than her nephew. ‘You are very kind,’ he said. ‘I shall be delighted to have tea.’

  Frau Kolmak set a kettle on the lamp and turned back to him. ‘It would be difficult to express to you,’ she said, ‘the charm of giving tea to a policeman; the charm – to put it in another way – of being in no expectation of being kicked by him.’

  ‘I see.’ Appleby looked at his hostess soberly.

  ‘The officer who came this Nachmittag had a routine task. Unlike my nephew, I am legally of Hungarian nationality. It makes, at present, some difference in the formalities. But you, I judge, have nothing to do with that. You, who are of die bessen Stände, have come to control the police from the army, nicht wahr?’

  ‘Oh, dear me, no.’ Appleby was rather indignant. ‘I joined the police as quite a young man, and right at the bottom.’

  ‘That is most interesting.’ For the first time Frau Kolmak looked faintly puzzled. Her urbanity, however, remained unflawed. It was, Appleby judged, too unflawed altogether. Frau Kolmak was really under considerable strain. Nevertheless her hands, as they busied themselves assembling what was evidently her formal tea equipage, were perfectly steady. And presently she spoke again. ‘Kurt talks very well – when his shyness is overcome, that is to say. So I am not surprised at your seeking his conversation. You, too, are interested in the art of the trecento?’

  Appleby considered. ‘It is an interest of my wife’s,’ he said conciliatingly. ‘I’m afraid I myself know very little about it.’

  ‘Nevertheless you have followed Kurt home for the sake of talk – knowing that he is von grosser Unterhaltungsgabe? What you have in mind is a purely social occasion?’ Frau Kolmak quietly poured tea.

  ‘I want your nephew’s help in an investigation – a police investigation, in point of fact, although my own interest in it is personal and not official. It is a question of somebody’s having disappeared.’

  The small silver strainer which Frau Kolmak was manipulating tinkled against a tea cup. ‘Of a man’s having disappeared?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, a young man – and, as it happens, an undergraduate at your nephew’s college.’

  ‘A young man from the Studentenschaft at Bede’s? But how can Kurt–’

  ‘Guten Abend, mein Herr.’

  Appleby turned round. Kolmak was standing in the doorway – pale, and agitated to the point of being unconscious that he had spoken in German. Appleby put down his teacup and rose. ‘Good evening, sir. I think you will recognize me, although we were not actually introduced.’

  ‘Sir John Appleby.’ Frau Kolmak had folded her hands in her lap and was looking at them. ‘He has come to speak to you Kurt, about somebody – a man – who has disappeared.’

  Kolmak bowed stiffly. ‘I am afraid I can be of no assistance to you, sir, on that score. There must be a mistake.’

  ‘That is perfectly possible, and if it is so I shall owe you, and Frau Kolmak, an apology.’ Appleby judged it tactful to do a little bowing himself. ‘Nevertheless I hope you will allow me to explain myself.’

  Frau Kolmak’s eyes travelled from her lap to her nephew’s face, and thence to a chair. Kolmak sat down. ‘I cannot well do otherwise,’ he said coldly, ‘to a guest of our Provost’s. Please to proceed.’

  ‘I think you overheard something of this matter in common room just before leaving it – and although it concerns somebody at Bede’s I believe that it was news to you. Very briefly, a young man called Geoffrey Ourglass, who ought to be up at Oxford now, has vanished. He is, as it happens, engaged to be married to my sister Jane, who is an undergraduate at Somerville. My own concern with the situation is solely on account of this connexion.’

  Kolmak again bowed frigidly. ‘We express our regrets,’ he said. ‘Our sympathy is extended to your sister.’

  Frau Kolmak slightly flushed. ‘Kurt,’ she said dryly, ‘you seem quite to have guessed that Sir John is connected with the police.’

  ‘The police!’ Kolmak appeared not, in fact, to have guessed the fact, for he now sat up very straight in his chair.

  ‘Please remember that his colleagues have always been friendly to us as well as courteous.’

  ‘Tante Lise, you do not understand the danger–’

  ‘I have understood many dangers, Kurt, Liebling, for now a long time. I shall say nothing more, but my advice to you is as it has been.’

  During this enigmatical interchange, Appleby conveniently occupied himself with his tea. Now he tried again.

  ‘About this young man’s disappearance we have only one approach to a clue. He is believed to have been seen in a car, driving through a small village in the Cotswolds. It is so out of the way that it is very tempting to believe that his destination must have been a local one. Inquiries, however, have produced no result. I have been prepared to believe that Ourglass was, in fact, passing through to a remote destination, or that the identification was a mistake.’

  Kolmak had ceased to sit back stiffly on his chair. He had leant forward, and his head was now buried in his hands.

  ‘And now, Dr Kolmak, I must be quite frank, and come to my sole reason for calling on you. This evening you heard the story. Or rather you heard the fact of somebody’s disappearance associated with the name of this village – Milton Porcorum. You at once evinced sharper interest and marked agitation. You were so aware, indeed, of having betrayed a peculiarity of behaviour that you abruptly left common room, and hurried home, feeling ill. Please understand that I should be lacking in my duty to my sister and to this young man – who may well be in some situation of great danger – if I failed to make the most earnest attempt to persuade you to an explanation.’

  There was a long silence. Then Kolmak looked up abruptly. ‘It is your sister’s lover,’ he said, ‘–her Verlobter – who has disappeared?’

  ‘It is, indeed.’

  Kolmak passed a hand wearily over his forehead. ‘If you were but a private gentleman!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘If you have something to reveal, you ought to reveal it. Here is a young girl in cruel suspense and a young man in unknown danger.’

  ‘As if I had no cause to feel it!’ And Kolmak looked quite wildly round the room.

  ‘I appeal to you, sir, as a scholar – as a scholar and a humanist.’ Appleby too had stood up.

  ‘Come back – come back tomorrow morning.�
� Kolmak appeared to be swaying uncertainly on his feet.

  ‘Tomorrow may be–’ Appleby checked himself. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen Frau Kolmak make him an almost imperceptible sign. ‘Very well. I will call immediately after breakfast – say at nine o’clock. And, meantime, thank you for listening to me.’ Appleby moved to the door and from there bowed to his hostess. ‘And thank you, very much, for entertaining your second policeman to tea.’

  2

  The Misses Tinker were on the landing below, tiptoeing about with rubber hot-water bottles. Appleby sustained their conversation in some absence of mind. Their brother, it appeared, had been Junior Proctor some time in the eighteen-eighties and had been a distinguished advocate of higher female education in the University. Their father had visited Germany as a young man, returned under the novel persuasion that dons ought to engage in research, and in this cause conducted sundry heroic skirmishes against both the obscurantists of Christ Church and the utilitarians of Balliol. At a more convenient season Appleby would have derived a good deal of entertainment from ladies who appeared to regard themselves as contemporaries of Mrs Humphry Ward. As it was, he contrived to withdraw through the barrage with civil words. The elder Miss Tinker showed him out. As she opened the front door he fancied he heard Kolmak in colloquy with Miss Priscilla above. Perhaps he was explaining to her that he expected his visitor again at an unconscionably early hour.

  North Oxford was already sinking into slumber. Appleby walked through the quiet streets lost in thought. The disappearance of Geoffrey Ourglass was linked – tenuously, it was true – with an unimportant place owning the picturesque name of Milton Porcorum. Between Ourglass and Kolmak there was virtually no reason to suppose any connexion whatever. Kolmak had nothing to do with the teaching side of life at Bede’s, and he had not the appearance of one who cultivates the social acquaintance of undergraduates. Unless there were one or two historians of art among them – and young Ourglass’ interests were certainly remote enough from that – they would be no more to him, in all probability, than vaguely recognizable faces. What had interested and agitated Kolmak was not the disappearance of Ourglass, but the linking together of the concept of disappearance and the name of Milton Porcorum. It was not necessary to stare at this fact for very long before forming a hypothesis. Only the most slender observation, it was true, lay behind it. Still, it was worth holding on to and testing out. When people disappear, one hears talk of Milton Porcorum.

  Beguiled by this odd proposition, Appleby turned a corner. Why Milton Porcorum? It was a place without significance or marked attraction, offering no unusual facilities for either a life of anonymous beneficence or a period of covert vice. From the insignificance of Milton Porcorum could there be inferred – hazardously indeed but perhaps crucially – another conclusion? Persons whose disappearance is associated with Milton Porcorum have not been attracted into the void. They have been pushed.

  Appleby had arrived so far in this decidedly uncertain ratiocinative process when his attention was abruptly recalled to the outer world. He was making his way back to the centre of Oxford by certain quiet roads which were very familiar to him, and for some little way he had passed nobody except a single elderly man belatedly exercising a small dog on a lead. But now another figure was approaching him – or rather (what was the occasion of abrupting his train of thought) had faltered in doing so and was rapidly disappearing up a side road a little way ahead.

  That falter was well known to Appleby. He had encountered it often enough during the couple of years he had spent with a helmet and a bull’s-eye lantern long ago. Instinctively he quickened his pace and turned the corner. Only a little cul-de-sac presented itself. And in this, dimly visible beneath a single lamp, a meagre and apprehensive man stood at bay.

  Appleby was amused. It had never occurred to him that he might still give to a practised criminal eye the appearance of a plain-clothes officer on duty. At a guess, the man was a known burglar, with tools for breaking and entering now on his person, and in thinking to give Appleby a wide berth had taken this unlucky cast down a blind alley.

  But at the same time Appleby was puzzled. If he carried his tools with him, the fellow ought not yet to be abroad. The night was still too young by far. Appleby took another look at him, and became aware of two facts. They were facts that fitted together. The man was not merely scared or nervous; he was in very great and naked terror. And he was Stuart Buffin’s rabbity fellow with the scratched face. He had been up a telephone pole and – more mysteriously – ‘in Miles’ cat’. Stuart had not been romancing. He had veritably encountered a sort of museum specimen of that grand standby of the popular cinema, the hunted man.

  Rather as if to repudiate the charge of craven orthodoxy in this role, the man in front of Appleby began to scream. It was an effect that Appleby did not recall having witnessed. The man did not, it was true, scream very loudly, being temporarily afflicted, it appeared, with some hysterical constriction of the vocal cords. Nevertheless the performance was extremely displeasing, and Appleby could see no better way of ending it than by turning on his heel and marching out of the picture. This simple plan he proceeded to put into effect.

  But as he walked away he found himself uneasy on two quite distinct scores. The first proceeded from a habitual sense of responsibility for public order. This wretched little man was nothing to him; nevertheless he was either in some real danger or so far gone in lunacy as to be himself dangerous to others. Perhaps therefore he should be tackled and controlled at once, however much he screamed, and whatever indignation the proceeding aroused among disturbed residents in the district.

  Appleby’s second uneasiness was more obscure. He had a queer feeling that the man was in some way part of his direct concern. Yet he could assign himself no shadow of reason for this belief. Appleby snapped his fingers in vexation – and in the same instant was in command of the hidden connexion he sought. Kolmak! It was not once but twice that Kolmak had broken into other people’s talk earlier that evening. The second occasion had been the notable one concerning Milton Porcorum. The first had been the mention of Stuart’s rabbity fugitive as having a scratched cheek. And Appleby could now recall that both these interjections had possessed precisely the same quality.

  He was on the point of emerging from the cul-de-sac. The man had stopped screaming. Appleby turned and saw that he was endeavouring to scale a wholly impossible brick wall. He watched him for some moments until he fell back panting and exhausted; then he spoke quietly down the length of the cul-de-sac.

  ‘I’m not your enemy. Try to think. You are unarmed and helpless. If I want you, I’ve got you.’

  The man had turned and was standing immobile, his arms spread-eagled against the wall. He was one, Appleby fleetingly thought, who had unconsciously a sense of style, an actor’s instinct. It would make an effective shot.

  ‘There would be no sense in my standing talking like this until, perhaps, the police came along and I had to clear out. So you can see you’re in no danger with me.’

  The man straightened himself, but said nothing.

  ‘I do, as it happens, know something about you. You’ve been up a telephone pole. And you’ve been in Miles’ cat.’

  The man made a sudden dash for where, in the brickwork by which he was imprisoned, he had belatedly glimpsed a green-painted wooden door. He shook it furiously. It was locked. He turned again, and spoke at last.

  ‘You’re one of them.’ His voice was at once high and hoarse. ‘You’re one of them, or you couldn’t know that.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Appleby got out a pipe and proceeded to fill it. ‘One of the children told about it. The one that helped you. And look here: he knew about the telephone pole, but your enemies didn’t. Isn’t that right? If I was one of them, I wouldn’t have tumbled to that yet.’

  ‘They’re clever enough.’

  ‘And a lot too clever to stand jawing like this. Where are you trying to get to?’

  The man hesit
ated. ‘Into Oxford. But I lost my way. I want to get into a crowd.’

  ‘Come along, then – we’ll go together.’

  The man didn’t move.

  ‘You’re in a trap there, if this is a trap; and you can’t make matters worse by coming out. Look, I’m crossing over to the other side of the road. You can come up here and see that there’s nobody else about. And then we can go where you think it’s healthy.’

  Appleby suited his action to his words. The road was still quite empty. And presently the meagre man cautiously emerged into it. He looked about him warily but dully, and then crossed over. ‘I wouldn’t have believed that the old professor was one,’ he said. ‘But he was.’

  Appleby realized that the man beside him was played out in both mind and body. Perhaps he needed food. And certainly he needed sleep. ‘If we go by Walton Street,’ he said, ‘we can get a cup of coffee still at a place quite near this end.’

  The meagre man was glancing swiftly from side to side as he walked, like a creature moving through the jungle. But Appleby doubted whether he retained much power to descry, let alone to ward off, danger. The dash down the cul-de-sac had been a pitifully feeble move. The man was approaching, in fact, a state of somnambulism. His response now, although designed as truculent, was ineffective. ‘Who are you, anyway?’ he said. ‘Nobody asked you to come interfering with me.’

  ‘Well, we do sometimes get what we don’t ask for.’

  A car went by, close to the kerb, as Appleby spoke. And the meagre man’s whole body quivered. ‘They’ve got a van out,’ he said. ‘And cars too. Smashed one great car, they did – and two of them ought to have broken their ruddy necks. But there’s none of them dead yet, worse luck. None – see?’

  ‘I see. None of them dead.’

  ‘The law should get them.’ Suddenly the meagre man’s voice sharpened. ‘What are you, anyway? That’s what I ask. Are you the police?’

  ‘Yes – I am the police.’