‘My eldest boy may come back.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Appleby was startled out of his speculations.
‘My husband was mad, Mr Appleby. Until just before he died it was a thing not commonly known. But he was mad and violent. When the three boys were born he was like a man demented. It is said that he tossed them about the room until it was not known which was which. And hard upon that there was the fire. We cannot tell that it was really Oliver who was rescued. My husband was indifferent to the matter. He was only concerned that he should have one son and not three.’
‘Lady Dromio, do I understand you to mean that under cover of this fire he had two of the infants smuggled away?’
‘Yes – just that. It was very rash and unkind. But then, as I have said, he was mad.’
‘I do not at all see how he could have contrived such a thing.’ Appleby hesitated. ‘Are you quite, quite sure that the shock of losing the two children did not–’
‘Send me mad myself?’ Lady Dromio was now working composedly at her embroidery. ‘That, of course, is the natural thing to think. I might have comforted myself with the – the fantasy that my children were really alive, after all. Is that not it?’
‘Some such possibility does occur to me. You see, I find it hard to understand how, even under cover of a big fire, two infants could be spirited away. There would have to be remains – what were definitely the remains of two human children – before the coroner who must have investigated the accident would be satisfied.’
‘But there were. That was what puzzled me.’
‘Puzzled you?’
‘Yes. You see, I knew that none of my babies had died. I knew it because I knew that my husband had caused the fire.’
‘Did it follow?’
‘Somehow it did – quite certainly. He was mad, and he had done something very wicked. But he had not killed his own children.’
‘Or any children?’
Lady Dromio was silent. ‘It was my great fear. For years there was this fear as well as my uncertainty and sorrow. And then at last my mind was relieved – thanks to Grubb.’ Lady Dromio paused. ‘Grubb was the garden boy and they had arrested him for starting the fire. Since I knew that my husband had done it I had of course to insist that they let Grubb go. When my husband died I reinstated him, although by now he hated the family. It seemed the honest thing to do. Honesty is sometimes the best policy – just as it says in the book.’
‘No doubt. But you haven’t yet told me how you knew it was your husband who started the fire.’
‘I just knew.’
Appleby, who had felt his interest in Lady Dromio’s statement growing, was suddenly exasperated. ‘But you must see–’ he began.
‘Yes, I do see. And what you want comes later. But I only came by it through just knowing; otherwise I shouldn’t have been looking for it, and I shouldn’t have noticed Grubb. There was a cottage where my husband used to lodge a gamekeeper; it is on the edge of the park. And I came to notice that young Grubb kept wandering that way and staring at it. He still does. He is head gardener now, you know – and, I fear, a very lazy and dishonest man; I have had to dissuade Oliver more than once from dismissing him. Well, it was like this. Grubb would stand in front of this cottage and behave in a very odd way. It was a sort of play-acting. And one day I understood it – quite in a flash. He was imitating my dead husband. He was imitating his manner of acting when a sudden idea would come to him. I couldn’t think why. But now I believe I know. He was trying to puzzle out something that had come to my husband, once, standing just there. So I began to inquire.’
Lady Dromio, prompted perhaps by some instinct for drama, paused to match her silks. Appleby waited silently. He had no doubt now that from this straggling narrative something of substance was going to emerge.
‘I remembered that the cottage had been empty from just about the time of the fire; when I was up and about again the gamekeeper and his family were gone. And what I eventually found out was this. The man’s wife had given birth to twins a few days before my own children came. The doctor who had delivered them was certain that they would not live. And then the whole family disappeared. My husband told the doctor a little later that he had sent them all off to the woman’s mother, where they would be better cared for. And nobody, of course, was the least curious when they never came back. Don’t you think, Mr Appleby, that what really happened is clear? My husband had this sudden wicked inspiration. He simply waited until these infants were dead and substituted their bodies for two of his own children whom he persuaded the gamekeeper and his wife to take away. I had no difficulty in understanding that this was what had happened. But I found it very difficult to decide what to do. My husband had been mad and that frightened me. I was afraid that it might all be supposed as – as you think, and that I might be taken for mad too. I couldn’t bring myself to have the horrible thing opened up and a search made. I put it off from day to day and week to week, hoping that I might find real evidence, something that I could take with confidence to lawyers and people like that. But I didn’t find any real evidence.’
‘Never?’
‘Not for a very long time. And as the months went by it seemed more and more hopeless to bring such a strange story forward. For it is strange, is it not?’
Appleby nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said soberly. ‘As strange as anything I have ever heard.’
‘Only something did turn up at last. But by that time I had adopted Lucy – I thought somehow it would help me along – and Oliver had begun going to school. I was very ignorant of the world and of affairs. I did not know what trouble I might start if somewhere I found two boys with an obscure claim to be Oliver’s brothers. And yet I wanted my children very much.’
‘That was natural.’ Lady Dromio, Appleby could see, had hardened with the years, and now her character had a strength which had been lacking in her in the period she described. Yet there was something affecting in the rather helpless simplicity with which she told her story. ‘But will you tell me now just what was the evidence you finally found?’
‘I read a novel about detectives and that gave me an idea. It seemed that there really were rather low but clever people whom one could employ to find things out without any necessity of really explaining oneself. I bought some nasty newspaper and found one of these people advertising. I went to see him, which was very horrid. I think he mostly lurked about hotels peering through keyholes because of divorces and things like that.’ Lady Dromio paused and looked at Appleby vaguely, as if wondering who or what he might be. ‘Not,’ she added hurriedly, ‘at all the sort of person one would associate with the police. But quite able all the same. He found out two things. The first was this: that someone with our gamekeeper’s name had taken his wife and two infant children to America about a fortnight after the fire. And the second thing–’
‘One moment, Lady Dromio. Had you asked this fellow to discover whether something of that sort had, or had not, happened?’
‘No – I had said nothing about children. I simply gave the gamekeeper’s name and said I thought he might have emigrated. But the second thing this man discovered was even more important. I had to pay a great deal for it – no doubt because there were solicitors’ clerks and rather superior people like that to bribe. In the few months before his death my husband had sent very considerable sums of money to somebody whom I recognized as an old university acquaintance of his, a rather eccentric doctor in New York. So, you see, at last I had something on which I could definitely act.’
‘And you acted?’
Lady Dromio laid down her embroidery, crossed the room, and wrapped a fine shawl around herself; it had the effect of making her look very much older. ‘I found I couldn’t. It was something too unknown and big. I could mean nothing to those distant children, and something had grown up obscurely within me to make me fear them. I had a foreboding of disaster should they – my own children – return to Sherris.’
There was silence. On th
e mantelpiece the little silver clock ticked its way doggedly through the small hours; on the floor the shredded rose petals lay. Appleby looked searchingly at Lady Dromio. ‘And that is all?’
‘No – no, it is not. I have always known that one day I would do something. And I did – forty years after all the unhappiness began. Oliver was in America. On a sudden impulse I wrote to him, telling him everything and giving him that New York doctor’s name. After that I heard nothing from him – although he usually wrote regular letters when away – except he once rather urgently sent for money. I was much worried, thinking the shock might have been very great. Only sometimes I wonder whether that particular letter reached him, for he was moving about a good deal and was sometimes careless about his mail.’
‘You would have been glad to know that the letter had, in fact, missed him?’
‘Yes, Mr Appleby. The letter was a mistake. If he was to hear the story he should have heard it face to face.’
‘I rather agree with you. And you have heard nothing to suggest that he had contacted those unknown brothers?’
‘Nothing whatever. And I have now told you everything.’ Lady Dromio once more applied herself to her embroidery.
Appleby looked at her seriously. ‘Everything? What of your son’s plan to marry? Had he advanced far with that?’
‘I suppose Sebastian has told you of his pursuing an heiress? But I cannot say how far it had gone. At the time of his ceasing writing he was still very reticent.’
‘His plan must have upset your adopted daughter?’
Lady Dromio’s vaguest manner returned. ‘I don’t understand you at all.’
‘A few minutes ago Miss Lucy volunteered the information that she had threatened to kill Sir Oliver. Can you substantiate that?’
‘Certainly not. I have nothing to say about it at all.’
‘Was Miss Lucy in love with your son?’
‘Really, I hardly think–’ Lady Dromio’s voice faltered. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘I think she was.’
‘Please forgive this question. Was Sir Oliver a man scrupulous in matters of sexual relationship?’
‘No!’ The word came unexpectedly and almost explosively. ‘He was…rather horrible in such things.’
‘Thank you.’ Appleby picked a final rose petal from his shoulder and dropped it in a waste-paper basket. Had there run, he was wondering, some deep current of emotion – and that by no means one of affection – between the dead man and his mother? Had the unsatisfactory Oliver been in some obscure way rejected in favour of the mere idea of those other sons of whom Lady Dromio had been robbed? Appleby was silent for a moment. ‘Do you think,’ he asked, ‘that Sir Oliver had made Miss Lucy his mistress?’
But at this Lady Dromio suddenly raised oddly helpless hands. ‘Go away!’ she exclaimed. ‘You must please go away. I have told you everything – everything that is mine to tell. And I belong to a generation that – that did not discuss such things.’
And Appleby withdrew. It was true that he had been told a lot – indeed that a complex and astonishing, if fragmentary, story had been pitched at him. And it was not a story that sounded to him like an invention. There seemed every possibility that Hyland had been right; that the death of Sir Oliver Dromio was in some devious way the issue of that forty-year old fire.
But one thing, he realized, he had not been told – the story of the torn and shredded rose.
8
In the corridor Appleby bumped into Sebastian Dromio, and at the same time became aware of uproar somewhere outside: shouts, pounding feet and a succession of blood-curdling yells.
‘Whash that?’ Sebastian was grasping a tumbler and it was evident that he had been far from taking Appleby’s advice on keeping a clear head. ‘Whash shishit?’ Sebastian’s hand trembled and he stared at Appleby with a wild and wavering surmise.
‘I have no idea – but I’m going to find out.’
‘Shtop. It’s those damned villagers. Shoshialists, colonel. Think we’re dagoes. Always have, confound them. Heard about this beashtly affair and come to burn down the house. Polish no good; call out the military at once.’
‘I hardly think it’s as bad as that, Mr Dromio. In fact there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go to bed.’
Sebastian shook his head. Finding that it continued to shake after the negative nature of his gesture was clear, he looked first puzzled and then alarmed; presently however he succeeded in putting up a hand and stopping it. ‘Die with my bootsh on. All Dromios prepared to die with their bootsh on ever shinch they had any. Defend our women to the lasht. Shoot at shight.’ And Sebastian clutched Appleby by the lapel of his coat.
The shouting renewed itself. Appleby shook himself free. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘shoot away. But I’m going out.’
‘Shoot?’ Sebastian looked immensely surprised. ‘Damn good notion, colonel. Teach them who we are.’ And with surprising dexterity Sebastian Dromio whipped out a revolver and fired it through the nearest window, shattering a large sheet of glass.
‘You can’t do that!’ Appleby grabbed at the revolver; Sebastian dodged, turned and ran. Appleby pursued him, swearing. Sebastian blundered down the corridor, whipped into a vestibule, threw open a door and disappeared into darkness. Appleby followed him with misgiving, but at his utmost speed, and found himself on a terrace bathed in moonlight. Twenty yards away stood Hyland, all gleaming buttons and peaked and braided cap. Appleby gave him a shout – and as he did so saw the cap rise some inches in air and go spinning to the ground; there followed a second shattering report close by his ear. Sebastian gave a yell, vaulted a balustrade, and was lost in impenetrable shadow.
Hyland came forward, dusting his cap. ‘Appleby, is that you? And what the devil was that?’
‘Almost another sudden death. Your Sebastian Dromio’s tight, and he’s got a gun.’
‘Don’t call him my Sebastian Dromio.’ Hyland was aggrieved. ‘Have you got a gun?’
‘Have I got a tank or a jeep? Don’t be an ass.’
‘No more have I – or any of us. But the fellow must be stopped. What does he think he’s doing, anyway?’
‘Defending his women to the last. Thinks he’s in the thick of a peasant revolt. My God – there he goes again.’
A third revolver shot had rung out in the gardens below. And, farther away, men were still shouting. Appleby got on the balustrade. ‘Are these your men making that fool noise? That’s what upset Dromio – and I’m afraid it’s going to keep on doing it. Couldn’t you call them off?’
‘Call them off? Dash it, man, they’ve got the murderer cornered.’
‘I don’t believe it for a moment. And, even so, need they behave like a pack of dogs after a fox?’
‘Hounds, Appleby – for heaven’s sake.’ Hyland was outraged.
‘It will be Dromio who has got them cornered, if you ask me. Even if there’s been no damage so far, your local constabulary may still show a death roll of three. Pretty stiff – even if they are clearing up a grim crime of retribution. Come on.’ Appleby dropped into darkness.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Jump on Dromio’s back and rub his nose in the mud. Come on, I tell you.’
Hyland came on, landing heavily in a freshly manured flower-bed. He got to his feet, breathing heavily, and both men ran. As they did so a fourth shot rang out and there was a brief startled silence. A fifth shot followed – and from somewhere a man’s voice rose in a sharp cry of pain. Hyland stopped. ‘He’s got one.’
‘But listen.’
The cry of pain was repeated, and then turned into a stream of lurid curses. ‘All’s well,’ said Appleby. ‘Only an arm or a leg. You can’t think all that up if you’ve got it in the tummy.’
‘But he’s got a sixth shot in the locker.’ Hyland was running again. ‘There they are. Hi, you men, there – lie down, scatter!’
A voice came back out of the darkness. ‘He’s here, sir – somewhere among those hedges. But he seems to be arm
ed.’
‘Nothing of the sort. It’s another fellow altogether who has the gun. Lie down, the whole lot of you. He has one more shot to go. Then you can rush him as soon as he shows himself.’
Appleby, crouched in the shadow of a patch of shrubbery, peered ahead. Two tall hedges came together at a right-angle straight in front of him, and disposed round these, like men besieging a house, there could just be discerned a number of helmeted forms, now sheltering behind what cover they could find. Appleby moved cautiously up to the nearest of these. ‘Just what is this, anyway?’
‘I don’t know that I can say, sir. One of our men came upon the fellow wandering in the park. He was the man we were told to get all right, for he was waving a decanter the same as if he intended to brain somebody. Dead drunk, he looked. But when we closed on him he put on a fair turn of speed and got the shelter of these hedges. And somehow we can’t get at him. And now some fool’s turned up with a gun… There he goes!’
Just so, Appleby thought, might a whaler cry ‘There she blows!’ And following the constable’s finger where it pointed above the dark line of the hedge he saw, momentarily glinting in the moonlight, that crystal decanter which ought to be lying shivered like its companions in Sir Oliver Dromio’s study. Three times it waved in air and then vanished; its disappearance was followed by a wild yell of derision and defiance. ‘Come on,’ yelled a raucous voice; ‘come on, you barstards and let me bash the whole bloody lot of you! Call yourselves coppers? Yah!’
Appleby sighed. His expectations of enlightenment from this grotesque episode were meagre. He listened carefully. ‘Hyland,’ he called, ‘do you know, I think I hear that fellow Dromio going right down the drive?’
A Night of Errors Page 10