A Night of Errors

by Michael Innes

  ‘Never mind Geoffrey Gollifer. Stick to Dromio – whether One, Two, or Three. Just where has he been reported so far?’

  ‘There, and then there.’ Hyland’s finger ran over the map. ‘And this is Sherris here.’

  ‘It looks a random progress.’

  ‘Of course it’s a random progress. Just where he goes is all the same to him. One piece of incendiarism is as satisfactory as another, no doubt.’

  Appleby shook his head. ‘In itself that may be true. Nevertheless the movements of our quarry are purposive and strictly controlled. He has set himself what, in the south of England, appears to me a formidable problem. Moreover, he is in a hurry. But fortunately we are not.’

  ‘Not in a hurry!’ Hyland was impatient. ‘With a maniac roaming the–’

  ‘The maniac is a very clever man.’ Appleby paused. ‘Cleverer than any criminal I have ever met before.’

  ‘Dear me!’ It was Mr Greengrave who broke in. ‘That is a most interesting observation to hear you make. Indeed, it gives me an irrational and topsy-turvy sense of some distinction having been conferred upon our neighbourhood. But a sadly sinister distinction, I fear.’

  ‘A very clever man,’ Appleby repeated, ‘and I don’t think that we have much chance of grabbing him before the next stage of the affair. I don’t know, however, that it is of the first importance. It simply means that the lawyers will have rather more to argue about before a jury. He no longer has a chance of getting clean away.’

  ‘You are confident,’ asked Mr Greengrave, ‘that the criminal will be taken? Is it not likely that one so demented will rather commit suicide?’

  ‘I don’t say it won’t turn out rather that way.’ Appleby was preparing to jump into the car which Hyland had summoned. ‘Perhaps you would care to come along? Your introduction to Mrs Marple might be valuable.’

  ‘By all means.’ Mr Greengrave jumped eagerly at this proposition. ‘I am most interested to know what we shall find.’

  Appleby shook his head. ‘I think I can promise you,’ he replied, ‘that we shall find very little.’

  16

  The summer day was flawless. Ahead, towards Sherris Magna, a few low clouds lay over the sea; elsewhere the sky was clear and a warm sunlight bathed ample pastures in which cattle paddled in their several pools of shade. Behind them wafts of smoke still hung above Sherris Hall. To their right, and in the middle distance beyond a broad valley, rose a single column of darker smoke.

  Mr Greengrave leant forward to peer at this across Appleby as he drove. ‘I suppose–’ he began doubtfully.

  ‘Most certainly. And over the horizon there will be a little chain of such conflagrations. They are a manifesto, you see – a large writing on the sky such as they used to squirt out of aeroplanes.’ Appleby paused. ‘Yes, this too is a sort of advertising. It pays to advertise. In this case it even pays – or is designed to pay – a murderer… But what about a little song?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Mr Greengrave was startled.

  ‘It is our habit, isn’t it, when we drive?’

  Mr Greengrave smiled. ‘But I am not at all sure–’

  ‘And let it be something appropriate.’ Appleby pressed the accelerator and began to sing:

  ‘Fire in the top bucket, fire in the main;

  It’s fetch a bucket of water, gals, and put it out again.

  Fire in the fore-peak, fire down below…’

  Mr Greengrave frowned, laughed, hesitated no longer; his deep voice joined in:

  ‘Fire in the windlass, fire in the chain;

  It’s fetch a bucket of water, gals, and put it out again.

  Fire up aloft, and fire down below,

  It’s fetch a bucket of water, gals, there’s fire down below.’

  Appleby nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s it. That’s what our man has to find – fire down below.’

  Mr Greengrave returned to gravity. ‘He is almost sure to, I am afraid.’

  ‘I mean here and now. Fire down below – it is the remaining condition of his problem.’ Appleby was silent for a moment. ‘And I doubt whether they will catch him until he has fulfilled it. Even’ – and he swung the wheel of the little car – ‘although they’ve borrowed my Bentley to make the better speed. Look there.’ He pointed to another smudge of smoke on the far horizon. ‘The mad Sir Oliver, son of the mad Sir Romeo, perpetrated a crime of calculation. He killed his brother and endeavoured to pass off the body as his own – thereby ensuring himself an unembarrassed withdrawal from various predicaments. But the excitement was too much for his sanity and he at once went as overtly mad as his fire-raising father. That is the picture.’

  Mr Greengrave considered. ‘The true picture?’

  ‘Dear me, no. It is an ingenious picture, but what these fires actually illumine is a picture much more ingenious than that. Of their perpetrator I would be inclined to say’ – Appleby paused – ‘well, that he is one whose fires true genius kindles. They are elements in a deep design. You might almost call them, with King Lear, thought-executing fires.’

  Mr Greengrave took a moment to reflect on this. ‘When you fall to sea-shanties and to – um – talking like the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, does it mean–’

  ‘Yea, I suppose it does. It means that I feel reasonably near getting home to a quiet dinner… Is this where we turn off?’

  ‘Yes – and then to the right.’ Mr Greengrave shook his head. ‘Surely it is a crime of an altogether uncommon perplexity.’

  Appleby nodded. ‘In one sense crimes are usually simple enough. One comes quickly upon a clear motive, obvious opportunity, sufficient passion. Common sense carries one through. But if this were all – if there were not another factor constantly at work – criminology would hold very little of interest. But there is another factor, and one which constantly tends to surround the simplicities of crime with what psychologists might call secondary elaboration.’

  ‘They use the term of dreams.’

  ‘Quite so. And the secondary elaboration may come to occupy almost the whole picture. But it is secondary, nevertheless. And it proceeds…but perhaps I bore you?’

  Mr Greengrave shook his head emphatically. ‘On the contrary, I find this strange territory extremely interesting. I only regret that Canon Newton is not with us. You would find his grasp remarkable – very remarkable, indeed.’

  ‘No doubt. But it is really not so very difficult. All that happens is this. A surprisingly high proportion of human beings harbour criminal impulses just below the threshold of their conscious life. As long as their environment is well-ordered they are themselves well-conducted. But confront them suddenly with a context of violence and the criminal strain may assert itself. It is thus that crime breeds crime – and often with an amazing speed. Moreover there is this to be remarked. Criminal actions released in this way tend to be far more ingenious and bizarre than the initial crimes the shock of which prompts them. The initial crime is likely to be a matter of simple passion such as we can all without difficulty understand; the further crimes elaborated from it tend to the extravagance and fantasy – as also the ingenuity – of dreams. From all this there emerges a good working rule. Find the simplicities of the case – those elements in it which make simple sense in terms of the elementary human passions. Take this as a centre and dispose everything else as best you can round about it. Don’t be seduced into taking as a centre any of the secondary elaboration, however obtrusive and startling it may appear… Is that Mrs Marple’s?’

  ‘Yes. It will be best to stop just beyond the bridge.’ Mr Greengrave picked up his clerical straw hat and set it firmly on his head. ‘And all this leads you to certain conclusions in the present case?’

  ‘I think I have got pretty well through the maze. But various things are still lacking. I am hoping for a little quick work by the New York police. And of course we must have the dentist whose importance Sergeant Morris spotted.’

  ‘You think the evidence of the dentist might expose the
truth?’

  Appleby chuckled as he brought the police-car to a halt. ‘Here is a mystery turning on incinerated bodies. Do you think it really likely that the villain left the dentist out of account?’

  ‘Good heavens!’ Mr Greengrave was startled. ‘You don’t mean that some innocent man’s life may be in danger simply because he once attended to Sir Oliver Dromio’s teeth?’

  ‘No, we can be pretty confident that the dentist is as safe as houses… We had better go straight up to the cottage. Will you lead the way?’

  Mr Greengrave, thus bidden, opened Mrs Marple’s garden gate. Then he paused. ‘I think I understand enough of this affair to be distinctly depressed by what you have said. I mean as to finding the centre of the case at that point where simple human passion clearly appears. It is all going to end badly, I am afraid?’

  ‘Yes, I am afraid it is.’

  They walked up a narrow path between untidy box hedges. Mr Greengrave shook his head. ‘When this tramp’s boot was found, and you showed some interest in it, I must confess that my hopes rose. I thought it might prove that the whole horrible business was, after all, the work of some thieving ruffian from outside – one about whom there would be no heart-breaks. But reason tells me that there can be very little possibility of that.’

  ‘There can be none at all, I am sorry to say. But the owner of the boot may have his grim place in the affair, and as he appears to have been among this woman’s poultry it is just possible that we may find some trace of it. The signs of some physical struggle are what I have in mind.’

  ‘Dear me! I devoutly hope we are not going to come upon another body.’

  Appleby shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There is no chance of that.’

  Mrs Marple’s hens were clucking in their yard; her cocks strutted here and there in indecisive promiscuity, crowing the while; her geese cackled from beyond a hedge; at the sight of strangers her children ran screaming into the cottage; with a fog-horn’s persistence her cow provided a melancholic commentary from a byre; of two small muddy curs one yelped while the other snapped in well-drilled alternation. Then Mrs Marple, although herself invisible, began to shout – and at this, with laudable loyalty, all her dependent creatures redoubled their vociferations. To a deaf man, Appleby thought, the whole scene would suggest the deepest rural peace.

  Mrs Marple appeared. She was a massively bosomed woman smothered in soap-suds; she waddled forward surrounded by a waddling entourage of her Khaki Campbells; of these some made gobbling noises while others hissed; Mrs Marple gave over shouting and fell to gobbling too. It presently appeared that these new articulations were expressions of civility addressed to Mr Greengrave. Mrs Marple dried her soapy arms on her apron, scattered the curs with two well-directed kicks, delivered a number of threatening remarks in the direction of the now silent cottage, and led the way to what she evidently regarded as the scene of an important crime. Three nights before, the sleeping quarters of the Khakis had been broken into and two of the birds removed. ‘Felony!’ said Mrs Marple with a dramatic gobble. ‘Felony stalking my own ’earth and ’ome. ’Itlerism in the midst.’

  Appleby surveyed the scene with no very lively interest. ‘Are you much troubled by tramps?’ he asked.

  Mrs Marple nodded. ‘Tramps and ’ikers,’ she said, ‘and lowclarse picnickers out of cars. Felons and fornicators, the lot of ’em – and you can take my word for it.’

  ‘You get a good deal of motor traffic this way?’

  ‘Motor traffic!’ Mrs Marple stared down the empty road that skirted her domain. ‘It’s my opinion the King ’imself don’t look out on more cars and sherry-bangs nor we do. Come back to the ’igh-road this way, they do, after turning orf to Abbots’ Posset, the same being a beauty-spot with good ’igh teas. I done ’igh teas myself at one time, as parson ’ere knows. But I gave it over on account of the felony. For, believe it nor not, while wife and young would be ’ogging it in my parlour at ’arf-a-crown, cut and come again, the man would be out behind an ’edge, a-nicking of one of the fowls. Shameful, I calls it. As I said to young Timmins the constable, all I arsks for is the rule of law.’

  ‘Quite right, Mrs Marple. And it is the rule of law that I am here to assert.’ Appleby nodded as impressively as he could. ‘Now, did you see anything of the man who you suppose took the two Khaki Campbells?’

  ‘See him! ’Asn’t ’e been lurking in spinney there these three days past – and the smell of the creatures nicely broiled awafting over to my ’ungry little ones?’

  Mr Greengrave took off his straw hat and mopped his forehead. ‘Dear me,’ he said, ‘you told me nothing of this. And here have I been suspecting young Ted Morrow.’

  ‘Ted Morrow!’ Mrs Marple’s scorn was massive. ‘As if I wouldn’t ’ave gone arfter Ted Morrow with a broomstick. But I told young Timmins – confidential-like, as is proper when felons is to be dealt with. And wot did Timmins do? Did he go into that spinney and beard the ruffian in his lair? ’E did nothing but make pretence of writing in his notebook and took ’imself orf to ’is supper.’

  ‘That sounds very bad.’ And Appleby shook his head. ‘So a tramp has been lurking in that spinney and devouring your poultry? Just when did you see him last?’

  ‘Only last night I seen ’im. And money ’e must ’ave ’ad, for ’e were as drunk as a Lord ’Igh Chancellor and ready to drop into a ditch.’

  ‘He would be making his way from the road there to his encampment in the spinney? Then I think we will first find his hide-out and then cast around. And we mustn’t interrupt your wash-day further. I think it unlikely that you will be troubled by this particular tramp again.’

  Mrs Marple, having offered some further observations on felony and the rule of law, retreated to her domestic occasions. Appleby and Mr Greengrave searched the spinney. There was no doubt that a tramp had been sleeping there. There was no doubt that he had regaled himself on Khaki Campbells; the creatures’ feathers and carcasses were a conclusive testimony. Appleby searched the whole spinney with extraordinary care. Then he shook his head. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘we might take up the notion of his being drunk enough to fall insensible by the roadside or into a ditch. I dare say you know all the pubs round here?’

  Mr Greengrave looked slightly taken aback. ‘I certainly know their location. But I fear that any more intimate knowledge–’

  ‘Capital. The point is to find the fellow’s route if he was returning here from one or another of them. We’ll work on that.’

  For some fifteen minutes they cast about them and then their search was rewarded. In a dry ditch by the roadside, plainly evident in the long grass, was the impress of the body of a man. Appleby climbed down. ‘Not a doubt of it,’ he called back presently. ‘Here Mrs Marple’s visitor lay. There’s even another of those feathers.’

  Mr Greengrave peered down. ‘Dear me!’ he said, ‘this is most dramatic. You don’t by any chance see the other boot?’

  ‘What I see is blood – quite a lot of it.’ Appleby hunted further. ‘And two distinct sets of footprints. And signs of one person being hauled out as a dead weight and with his heels trailing.’ He climbed back to the roadside. ‘Well, we’ll find nothing further. And it does fit another expected piece of the puzzle into place. Let’s get back to the car.’

  Mr Greengrave stepped back upon the road. ‘Am I right in thinking that this wretched man is now probably dead?’

  ‘I am afraid there is almost no question of it.’

  ‘Yet another addition to the holocaust!’ Mr Greengrave moved irresolutely forward. ‘And the body has been carried off?’

  ‘Precisely so. The body has been carried off for a purpose which has probably become fairly clear to you.’

  ‘I see.’ Mr Greengrave, having advanced a few paces by Appleby’s side, now halted again and stared before him in some perplexity. ‘I think I do see. Only–’ He hesitated. ‘Well, I almost hate to point it out. But in fact the body has not been carried off. I am looking at it now.
’

  Appleby glanced ahead. In a corner of the same ditch, a few yards before them, lay the body of a man. It was clothed in rags and sprawled with its feet cocked in air. One foot was shod in a battered boot. The other was naked.

  17

  Mr Greengrave continued to be embarrassed. ‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that this does not – well, upset your view of the case?’

  ‘It has its disconcerting side.’ Appleby gazed down at the body. ‘At least it should teach me to eschew prophecy. We were going to detect the signs of a struggle, and nothing else. I think that was it?’

  ‘I certainly have the impression that you said something of the sort. But, of course, in so complex an affair it is understandable–’

  ‘Help me haul him out.’

  They heaved up the body. The tramp was a miserable wisp of humanity. A diet of Khaki Campbells could have come his way but seldom. The ignoble discretion shown by Constable Timmins had surely been wholly unnecessary. Mr Greengrave gently closed the eyes. ‘I suppose,’ he ventured, ‘it could not be a matter of natural death? He scarcely looks as though he could have had much life in him, poor fellow.’

  ‘What life there was has been knocked out of him by a blow on the back of the head.’ Appleby was carefully examining the body. ‘I see!’ he said suddenly. ‘Do you know, this criminal of ours is an uncommonly observant fellow, as well as an uncommonly able one? Look at the right hand.’

  Mr Greengrave looked. ‘Two fingers missing.’

  Appleby nodded grimly. ‘This particular body proved not up to standard. Its remains even when incinerated could not without slight risk be passed off as someone else’s – the missing joints might be noticed. So it has been – well, say returned to stock.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ Mr Greengrave was appalled. ‘Surely that does not mean that another–’