A Night of Errors

by Michael Innes

  ‘I am afraid it does. And we may notice that there is also at work a queer instinct of tidiness. This body has been to Sherris, as the boot witnesses. It must have been there that the missing fingers were noticed and that it was consequently turned down as not good enough. It was of course desirable to remove it, so that it might have no appearance of connexion with the Dromio affair. But why return it just here? The neurotic’s exaggerated sense of orderliness is the answer. Our criminal is of the rather over-anxious type.’

  ‘Our criminal is an abominable maniac!’

  ‘Abominable – yes. But whether he is a maniac remains to be seen. I think we’ll simply put the body in the back of the car and drive back to Sherris. It’s a little irregular, but time is getting on. I doubt whether the last act in the affair is timed for much after noon. I must be getting off to town.’

  ‘To town!’ Mr Greengrave was quite dismayed. ‘I hope you have no engagement which prevents your following out these horrors to the end? Inspector Hyland is a most efficient officer, I do not doubt. But I am quite sure the only chance–’

  ‘Will you take him under the arms? That’s right. And what you were going to say is probably true. Through what was not much more than a freak of association the solution does seem to have come my way. And it may be doubted whether it would now come to anybody else… Just let him slump down on the seat. As for my run up to town, I hope I may be back again this evening.’

  ‘With some conclusive piece of evidence?’

  Appleby settled himself behind the wheel. ‘I have very considerable hope of it. The weather has been fine for some weeks and there should be very few common colds about.’

  Mr Greengrave stared blankly at Appleby. ‘I hardly see–’

  ‘But it’s not a question of seeing. It’s a question of smelling.’ Mr Greengrave sighed. ‘At this stage, at least, it can hardly be a matter of smelling a rat.’

  ‘A rat? Dear me, no. Say rather a hyena or a tiger.’

  At least the Bentley had returned. And one of the fire-engines had departed – as had the ambulance with the dead or dying Sebastian Dromio. The ladies too had gone, and the huddle of helpless servants. But Hyland still sat at his little table, his constables coming and going about him. He had been provided with a telephone, and he was talking into this as Appleby approached. Behind him the ruins of the great house sullenly smoked, and acrid smells mingled with the dank stench of the emptied lily pond. Firemen continued to play hoses here and there, and near the centre of the main building a group of men were working round a small crane.

  Hyland put down his telephone and raised a weary head. ‘And how,’ he asked, ‘was the wild-goose chase after Mrs Marple’s ducks?’

  ‘Quite a successful bag.’ Appleby sat down. ‘In fact, we’ve brought you another body.’

  Hyland groaned. Then he looked hopeful. ‘Geoffrey Gollifer’s?’ he asked.

  ‘Dear me, no. You must surely have caught Geoffrey Gollifer by this time, even if the mad baronet still eludes you.’

  ‘We have not caught him. It’s the most damnable mess. The Chief Constable has been very decent, but I can see he’s upset. I’m afraid he thinks Lord Linger may be annoyed.’

  ‘Bother Lord Linger.’

  ‘I’m afraid he thinks Lord Linger may think Mr Bottle may think it a reflection on the county as a whole.’ And Hyland shook his head, as if the whole weight of the English social structure were pressing on his shoulders. ‘But what’s this body you were talking about?’

  ‘Just a tramp’s. The body of a murdered tramp. He was wearing one boot. And the other boot was found by one of your men here in a ditch.’

  ‘Then I suppose we must somehow fit him in. Probably he was snooping about, poor devil, and saw too much. So the criminal killed him, carried off the body, and dumped it–’

  ‘Nothing like that, Hyland – nothing like that at all. He was killed over at Mrs Marple’s, and brought here presumably in a car. The criminal was going to pass off his body as another’s, and began to remove articles of clothing which might resist a fire. He got off one boot. Then he noticed something that made the body unsuitable for his purpose. Whereupon – either immediately or somewhat later – he took the body away again and dumped it where he found it.’

  ‘Well, I’m blessed!’ Hyland took refuge in naïf astonishment. ‘It must be admitted we’re up against somebody uncommonly active.’

  ‘Quite so. Ceaseless activity – that’s the key to the whole thing. While you and I were sitting in there’ – and Appleby waved his hand in the direction of Sir Oliver Dromio’s vanished study – ‘while you and I were chewing over what we took to be a settled and accomplished crime, there was really a continuing process all around us. A complicated imposture was building itself up step by step. It’s still doing so.’

  Hyland groaned. ‘It’s a sort of nightmare. They talk of unravelling a crime. Well, here’s somebody ravelling at one end far faster than we can unravel at the other. One gets the feeling that the affair may go on complicating itself indefinitely.’

  ‘Not a bit of it. The complications will stop as soon as they have gained their object. And already there are a good many questions to which we can give the answer. Who first killed whom?’

  ‘Cain first killed Abel.’ Hyland roused himself to a flicker of sarcasm.

  ‘Whose was the body you and I first saw in the study? Was it the same body that Dr Hubbard and the others saw there later? Is it the same body that is there now? Who provided us with that spectacle of satanic laughter at the crisis of the fire? What is the next spectacle proposed? Who is going to die next?’

  ‘To die next!’ Hyland rose up in consternation. ‘If the Chief Constable has to tell Lord Linger that he must admit to Mr Bottle that–’

  ‘Bother Mr Bottle. But how many Dromio brothers were alive a month ago? How many were alive yesterday morning? How many are alive now? In that group of questions there still is an element of doubt, I must admit. However, I’m going up to town.’

  ‘Splendid!’ An even heavier irony was now Hyland’s sole resource. ‘And if we want to ask you anything more we’ll address you care of the Brains Trust, no doubt. How many Dromio brothers will be alive next Saturday? It all depends on what you mean by Saturday, doesn’t it?’ Hyland threw up his hands. ‘Heaven preserve me from another case of homicide in this country!’

  ‘Not at all. A beautiful murder.’

  ‘Really, my dear Appleby.’ Hyland switched deftly to moral indignation. ‘How can you allow yourself such levity with all those poor women–’

  ‘Then I think I’ll be off. Will your motorized bloodhounds have left any petrol in the Bentley? By the way, I’ll give them a tip.’

  ‘A tip?’

  ‘Yes. Let them look out for fire down below. Let them not bother with fire on the level or fire up above – not even if the whole countryside is blazing. Let them keep their noses to the ground until they find fire down below. Good-bye.’

  ‘If you really must–’ Hyland stopped abruptly. ‘Hullo,’ he said, ‘what’s that?’

  A shout had been raised by the group of men working by the crane. Appleby looked across at them sharply. ‘Have they got at the bodies in the study?’ he asked.

  Hyland shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. They’ve had to give over that for a bit. Still too hot. But of course the site of the study is under observation all the time. No more possible substitutions now.’

  A constable came hurrying up. ‘They believe they’ve got down to it, sir.’

  ‘Got down to it! Got down to what, man?’

  ‘The butler’s room, sir. It’s a bit cooler there, and they’re through the charred beams to the joists and the ceiling.’

  ‘I’d clean forgotten him.’ Hyland turned to Appleby. ‘One more body, heaven help us. You’d better have a look before you go.’

  ‘Very well.’ And Appleby moved towards the house. ‘Perhaps you’d better have that dentist.’

  ‘Dentist? Oh
, I see. As a matter of fact Sir Oliver’s dentist is on his way here now. But I don’t see what he has to do with Swindle.’

  ‘But we’re not going to find Swindle – or not for certain. We’re going to find a charred body in Swindle’s room – just as presently you are going to find two more charred bodies in Sir Oliver’s study. So it won’t do to take anything for granted. Sir Oliver’s dentist should be let loose on the body in Swindle’s room too – if there is a body, that is to say.’

  ‘If there is a body!’ Hyland was taken aback. ‘Surely you haven’t any reason to suppose that Swindle escaped?’

  Appleby shook his head. ‘I’m not suggesting that he’s alive. But since Sherris has seen a veritable corpses’ ballet in the last twelve hours it seems almost unreasonable to expect any one body to be in its right place. Didn’t I assure the vicar there would be no body at Mrs Marple’s? And wasn’t there?’

  For the first time for a good many hours Hyland laughed. ‘I wish I’d been there when you were confounded in the matter – by way, you know, of learning how to carry such a situation off. But here we are. And if there’s a body we shall certainly bring in the dentist. And if there isn’t – well, we’ll hunt for the old man elsewhere. But all the evidence suggests that he was trapped here in his room… How is it going there?’

  A grimy fireman paused in heaving back a blackened beam. ‘Just coming on it, sir. Fire swept right over these basement rooms and must have made a pretty oven of them. Some nasty gases there now, I should say. But there would have been air of sorts for a longish time. It was slow roasting for the poor old chap if he was down there. Run round trapped and frantic, he would, until his toes began to go.’

  Mr Greengrave, who had come up in time to hear this unpleasant reconstruction of Swindle’s end, exclaimed in horror, ‘This crime,’ he said, ‘would appear to have qualities of imagination. And yet it is hard to conceive of any but the most brutalized mind contriving such abominations.’

  Appleby nodded. ‘It certainly is a grim business enough. But at least we don’t know that anyone actually designed Swindle’s slow roasting… They’ve got through the ceiling. Look out!’

  With dramatic suddenness a confused structure of charred wood and broken plaster had given way at their feet, and from below a blast of hot air blew over them. The fireman plied an axe and the aperture widened. Bright sunlight from above penetrated the slowly settling dust and they found that they were indeed peering down and into what had been Swindle’s sanctum. It was curiously intact, like some unrifled, immemorial tomb – and, as with such a tomb, everything in it seemed ready to shrivel to a brown dust. The heat was still unbearable. On a shelf above the fireplace a row of pewter jugs had melted and spread themselves in a mess of fused metal on the floor. The curtains and carpet were seared and blackened rags. But on an intact chair in the middle of the room, and directly facing them as they gazed down, was slumped the figure of a man. A small table stood beside him, and on the table lay the remains of a decanter, split and fragmented by the heat. The man’s fingers had closed round the stem of a wine glass – and the bowl of this too the heat had destroyed. His eyes were closed.

  ‘Well, I’m blessed!’ Hyland’s voice was at once horrified and relieved. ‘He’s perfectly recognizable, praise be. It’s the butler’s body, all right.’ And Hyland turned to Appleby with no more than decently restrained glee. ‘So there is a corpse – just as there was at Mrs Marple’s. And we don’t need the dentist.’

  ‘I rather think we need the doctor. Look at him.’

  The figure in the chair had moved oddly – and as they gazed he lifted the stem of the wine-glass to his lips, attempted to drink from the vanished bowl, opened one sleepy and indignant eye… ‘Urrr!’ Swindle said. ‘Urrr!’

  The fireman gave an incredulous gasp. ‘Gawd!’ he whispered, ‘–if the old barstard isn’t alive. It oughtn’t to be possible – not even if he had an out-size in asbestos suits.’

  Mr Greengrave murmured what was presumably a pious ejaculation. Then he shook his head. ‘Alive? The place must have been as a fiery furnace. It would appear to be almost–’

  ‘Alive?’ Hyland was blankly incredulous. ‘The thing’s impossible. It’s just some queer trick of the muscles.’

  ‘He’s alive, all right,’ said Appleby. ‘Miss Dromio got it quite wrong. Far from having a dangerously low flash-point and being ripe for spontaneous combustion, he was such a withered and leathery old person as to have virtually the immunities of a salamander. I suppose we ought to rejoice.’

  ‘Of course we ought to rejoice,’ said Mr Greengrave. ‘Whatever the moral shortcomings of this old man, and indeed all the more if sin lies heavy upon him–’

  ‘I don’t mean quite that.’ And Appleby shook his head. ‘But if ‘Swindle is alive – well, I think it means that Geoffrey Gollifer is dead. Of course it is possible that we ought to rejoice over that too.’

  ‘Geoffrey Gollifer dead!’ Mr Greengrave was bewildered. ‘But what possible connection–’

  ‘It’s rubbish!’ Hyland’s voice rose in exasperation. ‘Some mere hallucination. Look, he’s quite still again.’

  But, even as he spoke, Swindle rose to his feet and spoke. ‘Robert!’ he croaked. ‘Robert…’ He hunched his shoulders in what appeared to be a shivering-fit. ‘Drat the good-for-nothing rascal. He’s done it again.’ And Swindle shuffled towards a non-existent door. ‘Let my fire out…’

  18

  It was seven o’clock by the time that Appleby got back from town. The Bentley’s bright yellow was dulled beneath a film of dust. Appleby felt that his mind was in much the same case. What chiefly occupied it was the fact that he had not shaved that day. This trivial if displeasing fact kept pushing the Dromios and their queer affairs out of consciousness. He was very tired.

  The drive forked, and only just in time did he remember to swing the wheel so as to avoid the track that had led him earlier that day – for such, oddly, was the actual chronology of this interminable-seeming affair – to the slumbering Grubb and his luckless decanter. Appleby gave the accelerator a final thrust, swept rather too quickly round a curve and had the house before him.

  The ruins of the house. It stood gaunt and roofless against the clear evening sky, and might to all appearance have been standing so for years. Almost one might have imagined wildflowers and grasses growing high up in the crevassed stone. During the fire the place had seemed alive with dogs; now the dogs were gone and there were cats instead – innumerable cats prowling with the automatism of displaced persons returning from desolation to desolation. At first no human being could be seen. The wide trampled lawn was untenanted. Hyland’s little table was gone and in its place – product of some desperate act of salvage – stood a grand piano, a ’cello and an unstrung harp. This mute concert gave a touch of lunacy to the scene. It was as if the President of the Immortals had turned surrealist and was rummaging in His own subconscious mind…

  Appleby climbed from the car, and as he did so became aware of Hyland’s Sergeant Morris broodingly on guard over the rubble. He had allowed himself a pipe, and the smoke from this rose straight in air like a tiny memorial of the morning’s inferno among those blackened walls. Seeing Appleby he stuffed the pipe away and came forward. He saluted – with a sinister deference, Appleby suddenly thought.

  ‘Good evening, sir. Glad to see you back again. And very glad that this is all over.’

  Appleby took out his handkerchief and wearily endeavoured to rub the sensation of dust from his stubble-covered face. ‘Good evening, sergeant. So it’s over, is it?’

  ‘Yes, sir. But very perplexing it was for a while.’

  ‘Ah. Well, I’m sorry I wasn’t in at the death…I suppose there was another death?’

  ‘Well, yes, sir – there was. Very shocking death-roll the crime has brought about. Not that the butler wasn’t lucky. Although they do say his mind is gone. The heat sort of seethed it, I dare say.’

  ‘I dare say it did. Well, it�
�s nice to know that others have remained clear-headed. And so there was another death? Well, well.’

  ‘The Inspector, sir, has gone over to dine at the vicarage. And Mr Greengrave asked me to say he would be very glad if you could join them.’

  Appleby looked at his watch. ‘I’ll go over straight away. Hullo, who’s that?’

  Another figure had appeared, striding with a gloomy purposefulness among the ruins, and occasionally turning to stare resentfully towards the west.

  ‘Press-photographer, sir. No harm in it, I understand – not now that the story has broken, as you might say.’

  ‘I see. Well, I think I’ll have a word with him.’

  The man looked up as Appleby approached. ‘Evening,’ he said perfunctorily. He was about to turn away, but paused. ‘You work here?’ he asked with sudden interest. ‘Know the family?’

  Appleby looked down at his crumpled clothes and felt his prickly jaw. He remembered Swindle’s favourite ejaculation. ‘Urrr,’ he said firmly.

  ‘Out-door servant?’

  ‘Urrr.’

  The press-photographer glanced cautiously across at Sergeant Morris, put his hand in his trousers-pocket and contrived a loud chinking noise. ‘Tell me anything interesting about the family?’ he asked. ‘Worth ten bob if it’s something not generally known.’

  ‘Urrr,’ said Appleby – this time on an irresolute note.

  ‘About the girl who was mixed up in it – she’s the interesting angle. Bit of all right, eh? Had a lover, would you say?’

  ‘Urr.’ The sound had the quality of a regretful and slightly salacious negative.

  The press-photographer looked disappointed. ‘Probably you know more about the servants. Now, what about this fellow Grubb?’

  Appleby considered. ‘Old Grubb,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. What sort of a fellow was he?’

  ‘Old Grubb.’

  The press-photographer swore in sudden exasperation. ‘Come down here for damn-all,’ he said. ‘That’s about it – damn-all.’