The answer was smooth and natural, but Hazlerigg was not deceived. His eyes had been on Vicar Choral Malthus, and the look of urgent discomfort on the weaker partner’s face had not escaped him. However, he saw that at the moment further questioning would be fruitless.
‘That’s their story and they’re sticking to it.’ He murmured the old saying to himself as he took his leave. It was after five o’clock, but he had another call to make before he could think of tea.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the maid at No. 1 the Close (rather surprisingly), ‘Mr. Prynne’s in and he’s expecting you.’
When Hazlerigg entered the study, a tall, ascetic-looking gentleman rose to greet him. Guileless eyes regarded him from behind rimless pince-nez glasses. A lean but unexpectedly sinewy hand shot out from a length of snowy clerical cuff, grasped his own hand, shook it, and steered him into a tall wheel-back chair – all with a certain absentminded grace.
The Reverend Ernest Vandeleur Prynne, having settled his guest, took a short hitch in his own immaculate trousers and seated himself in the chair opposite.
‘I have been expecting you,’ he said austerely.
‘So your maid informed me,’ retorted Hazlerigg. ‘Would it be indiscreet of me to inquire why?’
Prynne elected to take this question at its face value.
‘No,’ he said, ‘you can ask me that. My reasons for expecting you were, I think, quite logical. Either you were questioning everyone in the Close – in which case of course I should be included – or else you were confining your attention to those who could give you useful information on the subject of Appledown’s movements yesterday evening.’
‘Short of questioning you in pursuit of method number one,’ said Hazlerigg, falling in easily with the didactic manner, ‘how was I expected to ascertain that you qualified with inclusion in category two?’
‘You knew,’ said Prynne, ‘because Mrs. Judd told you so.’
‘And did she also tell you that she had told me so?’ inquired Hazlerigg, nettled.
‘She informed Miss Bloss, who told my daughter, who passed this information on to me.’
This remarkable instance of The Close Intelligence System left Hazlerigg a little breathless.
Prynne went on.
‘It’s no good trying to keep any secrets in this place. And exclusive information is an expression we haven’t heard of. Information here belongs to everybody. To that extent alone we really do live the communal life. But I mustn’t divert you from your purpose. I suppose you want to know what I was doing yesterday evening?’
‘If you please.’
‘That’s simple. I went to the cinema.’
‘You were on your way there, I presume, when you passed Appledown going into his house. That would be at about a quarter to seven.’
‘If Mrs. Judd says so,’ observed Prynne courteously, ‘I am quite prepared to take her word for it. Personally I never notice the time.’
‘Could you think back carefully and tell me exactly what you did and what you saw?’
‘Why, yes,’ said Prynne slowly. He seemed a little surprised. ‘You think it might be important? I thought that it wasn’t, until …’ He paused.
‘Until what, were you going to say?’
Prynne looked at him blandly.
‘I shan’t answer that,’ he said. ‘My thoughts are no one’s business but my own.’
The smile that accompanied them robbed the words of their sting. ‘You were asking me what I saw. Let me think. I was walking along the road – it was dusk, not quite dark. As I rounded the corner of the wall I heard the gate go – the west wicket gate of the precincts, that is to say; it has a most peculiar and characteristic squeak. I looked up and saw Appledown crossing the road – he must have just left the cathedral. By the time I got up he had gone indoors, but I saw the light go on in his front room and immediately afterwards his shadow jerking about on the blind.’
For the first time in the interview Hazlerigg shifted sharply in his chair. Prynne waited for him to speak, but if he had been going to say something he evidently thought better of it, and after a pause Prynne continued in his dry pedantic tones.
‘That is really all I have to tell you of that particular incident. I reached the cinema in time for the beginning of the supporting picture.’
‘What time did you come out?’
‘As I told you before I never notice the time, so it’s no good asking me. I came out after the big picture was over and went straight home. I then read a discourse of Marcus Aurelius – as a mental laxative – and went to bed.’
‘Casting your mind back a bit, can you tell me what you did before going to the cinema?’
‘Before going to the cinema I had a meal, a sort of high tea, at six o’clock. And before that I was down in the town – first to the tobacconists and then to Boots. I don’t know if you’re one of those investigators who find an absorbing interest in small and irrelevant details; if so, I may tell you that whilst I was there I encountered Mrs. Malthus, and purchased a two and fourpenny bottle of Dr. Balsom’s Balm for the Bilious.’
Hazlerigg’s mind was wandering. He was trying to recapture a shade, an intonation in Prynne’s voice which had puzzled him a minute before. Almost idly he asked, ‘Did you like Appledown?’
Surprisingly there was quite a long silence. Prynne was looking at him for the first time with a hint of admiration in his cold blue eyes.
‘I got an impression that you disliked him the very first time you mentioned his name,’ went on Hazlerigg. ‘It’s a thing we’re trained to listen for. Not very difficult to detect.’
‘Singular perspicacity! Well, I admit the charge.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘Nothing to put into black and white,’ said Prynne slowly. ‘And, mind you, Appledown was a very popular man. Perhaps some people thought that he was getting a little past his job, but he was such a complete “faithful old retainer” that no one would have dreamed of mentioning it for fear of hurting his feelings. But to my mind he was much too complete, too benevolent and too benign. In fact, altogether too good to be true. And the choristers didn’t like him, you know.’
‘Did they say so?’
‘Not to me – or in as many words. But you can take it from me that such was the feeling. I don’t think they had much against him except that he sometimes used to make them run tiresome little errands for him – the sort of petty pilfering of their liberty which often annoys boys more than downright tyranny.’
‘By the way, you and Halliday teach at the choir school, I understand – is that a private arrangement between you and Dr. Smallhorn?’
‘It is a bit unusual,’ agreed Prynne. ‘All the minor canons are supposed to lend a hand with the boys’ education – God help them! But it usually seems to devolve on Halliday and myself, as “Kinkey” simply refuses to have anything to do with it and Malthus is always too busy – or says he is. Malthus is one of those supremely efficient people who can organise anything except their own daily existence.’
‘Another of your dislikes?’
‘Well, anyway,’ said Prynne with a smile, ‘I didn’t trouble to conceal it that time.’
As Hazlerigg rose to leave, Prynne added apropos of nothing in particular: ‘When I was going into the cinema last night I stopped for a few minutes to talk to the commissionaire at the door.’
‘Did you now?’ said Hazlerigg. ‘That was very thoughtful of you.’
Hazlerigg had one or two matters of routine to look to, and Evensong was over by the time he reached the cathedral. He made a half circuit of the cloisters, pushed through an iron gate into the celebrated slype with its tessellated pavement and broad swing-frame windows, and found himself in the Chapter House (one of the lesser glories of Melchester Cathedral). Pollock was already in possession, seated at a table with the results of his afternoon’s work spread out in front of him.
‘The Dean,’ he announced in answer to a question from Hazlerigg, ‘was
splendid. We had a very large congregation tonight; as Halliday remarked to me, ‘It’s wonderful how calamity brings out the religion in people’ – or maybe it was just the herd instinct. I don’t think anyone else could have said the things he did without seeming sacrilegious.’
‘I hope he didn’t say too much.’
‘No, no. He was the model of discretion. He began with a sort of appreciation of Appledown – a devoted worker – “good and faithful servant,” and so on. Then he led up to his death; “foully struck down in the course of his duty,” with a rather impressive bit out of Genesis about “blood-guilt,” which made people sit up and eye each other. When he had got them all worked up he rubbed it into them that it was their solemn duty to tell the authorities anything which might have any bearing on the matter, with the implied threat of hell fire if they hung back (to say nothing of several years of penal servitude as accessories after the fact).’
‘I see. And has anyone responded?’
‘The response,’ admitted Pollock regretfully, ‘has so far been disappointing. As yet no one has come forward to admit that they did it – or even that they know who did it.’
He had barely uttered the words when footsteps – audible on the cloister flags – came pattering towards them in a brisk determined rush.
‘The harbinger of the fates,’ muttered Pollock involuntarily.
The steps paused, the door was thrust open, and Mrs. Judd appeared, out of breath but as resolute as ever.
As usual she came to the point without preamble.
‘I have two things to tell you, Inspector. I forgot them both last time I saw you. My memory isn’t what it used to be. Though I wouldn’t have you think that it was failing. I had a cold bath every morning until my husband died.’
‘You have an addition to make to your previous statement?’
‘Yes. First I should have told you that whilst I was having my supper I heard people talking in Parvin’s house. Mrs. Parvin – and a man.’ An indescribable look came into Mrs. Judd’s aged eye, malevolent yet impotent. ‘That dirty slut, the moment her husband’s back was turned. The other thing I had to tell you was about Dr. Mickie. I was looking out of my window at a few minutes past nine and I saw him. He was wearing an old mackintosh over his shoulders; I saw him go down the path to the engine shed. I couldn’t see him for more than a moment because the path goes out of my sight.’
‘You’re absolutely certain that it was Dr. Mickie?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Judd. ‘I saw his face by the light of the lamp at the corner.’ This quiet, matter-of-fact statement was strangely convincing. ‘And I didn’t see him come back again,’ she added. ‘I think someone should ask him what he was up to.’
She made one of her unobtrusive exits and they heard her feet tap-tapping down the corridor.
‘If she’s telling the truth,’ said Pollock, ‘the case is over. I suppose we must see Mickie.’ He felt little elation at the prospect.
‘So you see,’ said Hazlerigg firmly, ‘you must tell me what you know. We’ve been very fair with you, I think. We might have held up Mrs. Judd’s statement and used it against you at’—delicacy shied at the word “police court,” so he finished up lamely—’at a later stage.’
The two men faced Dr. and Mrs. Mickie across the remains of their evening meal. What a miserable business it was, thought Pollock, hating it. Hazlerigg was immovably polite.
‘Mrs. Judd saw you going down the path towards the cathedral. She admits that she lost sight of you after that. Then we have a set of footprints – there can’t be much dispute that they are your footprints – running across the lawn, from the engine shed to your house.’
He paused invitingly, but still Dr. Mickie did not speak. His face was a ghostly colour, but he had himself well under control.
‘Have you nothing to say, Mrs. Mickie?’ Hazlerigg turned to the woman.
‘Yes, I have, but I don’t promise that you’ll like it.’ There was a surprising amount of spirit in her tone. ‘You’ve no right to ask these questions. My husband has said that he knows nothing and that he never left the house last night, and now I suppose you’ll make it your business to bully him until he says something different. Those footprints might have been made by anybody – you said so yourself – and as for Mrs. Judd, she’s mad. She’s been mad for years, as anyone in the Close would have told you, if you’d taken the trouble to ask them.’
The affair seemed to have reached a deadlock, when Mickie surprised them all by breaking into a wan smile.
‘It’s no good, dear,’ he said, ‘but thank you all the same. I think the truth’s the thing. After all, I’ve nothing very much to be ashamed of, except that I ran away from a ghost.’
‘We all do that,’ said Hazlerigg.
‘Well, I did go to my study at eight-fifteen, as I told you, and started working. I suppose I worked for about three-quarters of an hour, but my conscience was worrying me. I had felt for some time that there was something wrong with the electric transmission in the organ – a sort of powerlessness on some of the stops; it had been particularly noticeable at service that evening, and I knew – or thought I knew – where I could lay my hand on the trouble. Still, it was nine-o’clock at night and raining into the bargain, and it could easily have waited over till next morning. But as it happened there was a matter of private honour at stake. You know how it is when you funk a thing once, you can’t rest easy until you’ve done it – if it’s only to prove to yourself that you aren’t a coward. I’m sorry if that sounds a bit cryptic, but I’ll explain in a moment.
‘Well, the long and short of it was that I put on a mackintosh and let myself out of the front door. It was raining very hard. I went along the road and into the precincts by the pillar-box entrance. It was light enough for me to see my way along the path to the corner of the Chapter House, and the cathedral was pretty black. I felt my way along it with my fingers on the wall, cursing myself for not bringing a torch. A few yards short of the door I stopped for a moment to get my keys out of my pocket; by that time my eyes must have got more used to the dark, because quite suddenly I found myself looking at a body. It lay crumpled up on the ground in front of me, so near that I could have stretched out my foot and kicked it.’
As he paused for a moment they could see him re-enacting the shock and nausea of the moment.
‘I think my heart turned right over. I don’t know how long I stood there without breathing. It seemed like hours, but was probably a fraction of a second. Then a large raindrop fell on the back of my neck, and I turned and ran. I must have climbed the wall, but I can’t remember anything more until my wife met me in the front hall.’
As he paused, Pollock could not resist the temptation to ask the question which was uppermost in his mind. ‘The body you saw,’ he said, ‘was it bare-headed, or had it a hat?’
Both Mickie and Hazlerigg looked surprised. The organist answered, but without any confidence, ‘Bare-headed, I think. It was very dark, I could scarcely see more than a blurred shape on the ground.’
‘Yet you knew it was a body.’
‘There’s something very unmistakable about a body,’ said Mickie dryly.
‘So that’s the truth at last,’ said Hazlerigg. ‘I think you might have given it to us sooner and saved us a lot of trouble. There’s one thing, though, that puzzles me. Admitting that it was an unpleasant shock to stumble across Appledown’s body under such conditions – lonely place, awkward time of night – anyone might have been excused for taking to their heels, but once you were safe and sound back in your house, do you mean to tell me that you took no steps to inform anyone of what you had seen? That’s rather odd, isn’t it? Why, for all you knew the man you’d seen might not even have been dead. He might have been badly injured – in need of help.’
‘It’s difficult to explain,’ said Mickie slowly, ‘but I was quite sure in my own mind that what I had seen was a hallucination – not of this world. I had some reason for thinking so. A month a
go I went over to the organ shed on a similar errand and at about the same time at night. It was raining then, I remember, and as God’s my witness I saw then – what I saw last night.’
8
NIGHT THOUGHTS AT THE BEAR
‘What did you make of that?’ asked Hazlerigg.
‘I don’t think he was lying,’ said Pollock. ‘If he was, then he did it remarkably well. I’ve no doubt he saw Appledown’s body last night and ran away just as he described. He kept quiet this morning for fear of implicating himself – until he saw that we knew too much.’
‘And the body he saw a month ago?’
‘Hallucination. A figment of the imagination. What Dr. Smallhorn would call “the artistic temperament.”’
‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ said Hazlerigg. ‘We shall find a more rational explanation for that disappearing corpse. Good evening, Sergeant.’
‘Good evening, sir.’ Sergeant Brumfit emerged from his cubbyhole by the main gate. ‘Shall we be expecting you back again this evening?’
‘I hope not,’ said Hazlerigg. ‘Sincerely I hope not.’
‘Good night, sir.’
‘Good night.’
The two men passed under the thick stone arch, and the gate clanged shut behind them. It was eight o’clock, and the pavements were nearly empty. Melchester was eating its evening meal, and the second house was not yet out from the cinema.
In the lounge of the Bear Hotel, that comfortable Georgian hostelry, they found two young men awaiting them – two young men looking more than ever like intelligent Cairn terriers.
Pollock felt a slight misgiving at the sight of them. In kindness to the Dean, and in order to expedite their departure from his premises, he had offered them a statement, an exclusive statement – this offer he now felt some difficulty in implementing. Hazlerigg, however, when he learned that they were reporters, appeared almost excessively gratified. He ushered them into the coffee-room, and whilst dinner was being served he talked. It seemed to Pollock rather a curious, lopsided talk, though his listeners found it satisfying enough. There was a good deal of insistence on the campaign of anonymous letter-writing, and full descriptions of the incidents of the anthems, the flag, and the garden wall. The poison pen. The heartless practical joker. Police inquiries into the origin of the letters (I suppose we have inquired? thought Pollock). The culminating idea – the theme song, as it were – of this remarkable performance was that “the authorities were confident” that if only they could trace ‘the perpetrator of these scurrilous missives’ they would have no difficulty in solving the mystery of Appledown’s death.
Close Quarters Page 10