We stared at him.
‘You see? “Serious, naturally. A close call.” Nothing could be plainer.’
‘You mean’ – I found I had to struggle for words – ‘that Wale was making some covert reference to Law’s book? It’s perfectly fantastic. And Cecil would never pick such a thing up. He hasn’t that sort of ear.’
Appleby shook his head. ‘Nothing of that kind. And I don’t suppose that Dr Foxcroft consciously picked up anything. Wale used – quite by chance – the two elements in the title Serious Call. And that touched off some spring deep in Dr Foxcroft’s mind. Wale and the Serious Call were brought fortuitously together. And for Dr Foxcroft their union somehow meant danger. That is the way, you know, that the mind works.’
I was abundantly aware that the mind worked so. And though I considered Appleby’s line of thought fantastic I looked at him with a new respect. It was plain that of every word that eddied around him he missed just nothing at all. I looked at my watch. ‘Really,’ I said, ‘that is a notion on which it would be well to sleep.’
Appleby nodded. ‘Yes, and that is just what Leader here is going off to do. But I thought that you and I might take a stroll.’
I must have looked at him much as the rabbit looks at the snake. ‘A stroll?’ I said.
‘The nocturnal sort of which you are rather fond at the Priory. Leader, I shall be back in the morning. And I trust you to get me in on this officially. It interests me more and more.’
The door closed on the departing Inspector Leader. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I have seldom met a man less appropriately named.’
Appleby smiled. ‘Dux a non educando.’
The Latin was bad and our little joke not much better. But it established an atmosphere of something like companionship. Appleby filled his pipe again; I crossed to the desk and looked absently at Wilfred’s letter on margins. ‘If my cousin recovers,’ I said, ‘or recovers sufficiently to talk, the affair will presumably explain itself.’
‘I doubt it. If somebody appeared at the window when the curtains were as Sir Basil left them – some feet apart – then no doubt Wilfred Foxcroft recognized his assailant. But if the curtains had been drawn to their present position and if the shooting was done through the resulting chink, then he may know no more about it than we do. Or even less.’
‘That,’ I said, ‘could hardly be.’
It was a fishing remark, and Appleby recognized it as that. ‘We certainly appear to know very little. It is an unusually obscure case. The shot may have been fired by any one of a number of people. That is common enough. But it may also have been fired at any one of a number of people. Who thought to shoot whom? The problem has two unknowns.’ He moved towards the door. ‘I can’t decently hang about much longer. But I would like that last prowl.’
I followed him into the lobby; we put on coats; I found an electric torch. Outside it was snowing lightly. We stood for a few moments under the porch, watching the flakes eddying against a backcloth of darkness. Then we turned along the terrace towards the study window. Broad flags just powdered with snow were beneath our feet. Appleby scrutinized them carefully. Presently he straightened up, turned towards the house. I started as I noticed the posture he had taken up. He was immobile against the balustrading of the terrace; straight before him was a chink of light from the standard lamp still burning in the study. ‘The tram,’ he said, ‘threw out its flash of light, and here stood your man.’ He brushed the snow from the balustrade, sat on its broad surface and twisted round until he faced the garden. ‘And there’ – a beam shot into the darkness from the electric torch – ‘is your lily pond. You would see the man, but scarcely the window. And this was at about twenty past seven. Sir Basil was still at his desk; the curtains still a foot or so apart. Your man could therefore see in clearly enough. But he would not himself be distinguishable from inside. Or merely as an unidentifiable figure taking a stroll. Twenty past seven. And nothing had happened by half past, when Sir Basil left the library. Why the wait?’
‘Obviously because Basil was not the quarry.’
‘Very well. Your cousin Wilfred comes in, goes up to the curtains and draws them nearly to.’ Appleby paused. ‘He could hardly do that without revealing his identity to your man outside – supposing your man–’ He paused again. ‘Supposing your man is still there.’
‘We don’t know that Wilfred did draw the curtains closer to. That may have been done by the assailant afterwards. Wilfred may simply have sat down and begun his letter.’
‘In that case again’ – Appleby spoke with sudden decision – ‘the assailant knew whom he was shooting at. Only if he shot through a chink is it reasonable to suppose that he made a mistake. Try it now.’
‘Try it?’
‘I’m going in again. Shoot at me through the present chink.’
He was gone. And what he had meant by a last prowl was nothing less than a reconstruction of the crime. Once more I felt extremely indignant at the oblique fashion of this young man’s proceedings. I had no fancy for playing at shooting Wilfred Foxcroft.
‘Here I am.’ Appleby’s voice came softly through the curtains. ‘I am at the desk with my letter before me. Fire ahead.’
Rather uncertainly I stepped through the window and peered through the chink.
‘Who am I?’
‘You are the young man Basil asked to dinner. But only on scrutiny. If I had an a priori certainty that you were somebody else–’
‘Precisely. Through the chink mistake is possible. But now this.’
The curtains before me were pulled some eighteen inches apart – so suddenly that I jumped. Appleby turned to the desk. ‘Who am I now?’
‘Appleby beyond question.’
‘Very well. Let us keep to your unknown man. He is out there, the curtains are back, he can see that it is Sir Basil who is sitting here. He waits. Sir Basil goes away. Wilfred Foxcroft comes in. If Wilfred Foxcroft drew the curtains closer he would be recognized as he did so. If he left the curtains as they were the same thing holds. Therefore if it was your unknown who did the shooting it was Wilfred whom he intended to shoot. For only if the assailant arrived on the scene after Wilfred had drawn the curtains to a chink would it be possible for him to make a mistake as to whom he was shooting at. Do you agree?’
I agreed. My head was in something of a whirl.
‘But that is not quite watertight either. It holds only if your unknown were watching uninterruptedly. What about this? The unknown comes out on the terrace, looks in through the open curtains and sees Sir Basil working. Here is his chance. But he has no weapon. He hurries off to get one. And while he is away Basil leaves the room and Wilfred enters and draws the curtains closer. The unknown returns with his revolver. He takes it for granted that it is Sir Basil who has drawn the curtains and that it is Sir Basil whom he sees at the desk when he peers through the chink. He fires. What do you think of that?’
‘I think,’ I said slowly, ‘that it gets you back to where you started.’
Appleby frowned. ‘It gets me to this. Suppose your unknown did the shooting. Suppose he thought he was shooting Sir Basil. Suppose he really did go away as I have suggested to fetch a weapon, thus failing to realize that Wilfred Foxcroft had taken Sir Basil’s place. Didn’t fetching the weapon take a longish time? Your unknown was watching Sir Basil at about twenty past seven. Wilfred Foxcroft didn’t enter the study until after half past, and he had time to write a considerable part of a letter. The shooting can hardly have been before twenty to eight. Why did the unknown take twenty minutes to fetch a gun?’
‘Perhaps because he went to fetch one from the range. To do that he would have to cross a good bit of the park.’
‘You were walking in that direction yourself?’
‘Yes,’ I said. And added: ‘But I didn’t fetch a gun.’
Appleby ignored this touch of nerves. ‘How long would that take?’
‘I really couldn’t say with any exactness.’
‘The
n it must be timed. In the dark, and with someone who knows the way. Would you mind?’
It was plain to me that Appleby just hated the idea of going home to bed. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Come along.’
We went down the steps, our feet crunching on the snow. Cudbird’s bottle winked and wobbled behind the ruins; street-lamps were still burning beyond the high wall of the park; elsewhere darkness was absolute. The garden was traversed in silence; we were well in the park itself before Appleby spoke. ‘I think we shall have company,’ he said.
I only half-gathered his words. My mind was back on the terrace, automatically retraversing all that I knew. ‘Company?’ I asked stupidly.
The torch flickered over the snow before us. ‘Somebody set out on this expedition a little time ago. A woman. And I think – yes, she was followed by someone else.’
There is nothing so wonderful in reading tracks in the snow. But I was in a condition of some strain and I had a sudden sense of Appleby as what Geoffrey had called him: a bloodhound unleashed. And of myself trotting at the creature’s side.
‘I think I ought to say’ – the words came from me abruptly – ‘that I rather hate all this. I’m afraid I don’t much believe in justice. So often we must punish in one man the deed that is born in another man’s thought.’
The snow fell softly on my face; I was very aware of the absurdity of thus stumbling out an obscure philosophical observation. But Appleby was interested. ‘Justice?’ he said briskly. ‘No, I don’t believe in that at all. Mind the branches.’
I ducked; invisible twigs brushed my cheek. ‘But surely in that case–’
‘I believe in injustice. That we are constantly in danger of committing it. And not merely in courts of law. Take this shooting.’ The voice was coming quietly out of the darkness. ‘Leader might make nothing of it. The queer, ugly thing that happened at Belrive that Christmas: it would be that to you all for the rest of your days. A family cupboard crammed with unjust suspicions. Much better clear it up.’
‘And you think you can clear it up?’
‘Oh, yes. I have the key already.’
It was extraordinarily cold in the park. But it was excitement, I think, which made me shiver at that moment. ‘You have the key!’ I cried.
‘No.’ Appleby’s voice was suddenly anxious. ‘I express myself badly. I know where the key is. Like the kettle at the bottom of the ocean. Not really lost.’ He laughed ruefully. ‘Wale said something that took me straight to it. Or all but. Anyway, it’s gone again now.’
I remembered Appleby’s odd theory about the Serious Call. ‘Wale seems to have been uncommonly communicative,’ I said.
Appleby laughed again. ‘In an involuntary way. Snow…mist. That was what he said. It put me in mind of a poem.’
‘A poem!’ I exclaimed – and wondered if Appleby was not as mentally tired as myself.
‘Just that.’ There was a touch of mockery in his voice now. ‘He said something about snow and mist, and I thought “Poem,” and the key all but turned in the lock. Can you offer any suggestions?’
Cudbird’s goblet filled and I got an uncertain glimpse of my companion’s face. It was absorbed. His question was evidently seriously intended. For a few moments we walked in silence.
‘What,’ I asked, ‘about this?
‘Bolt and bar the shutter,
For the foul winds blow…’
‘It sounds promising.’
‘Bolt and bar the shutter,
For the foul winds blow:
Our minds are at their best this night,
And I seem to know
That everything outside us is
Mad as the mist and snow.’
‘No,’ said Appleby decisively, ‘it’s not that. Something better known.’
We trudged on in silence. To rummage through English poetry for mist and snow did not seem to me a promising way for a policeman to solve a shooting-mystery. But Appleby’s mind must have continued to revolve round his odd problem. ‘Plenty of mist,’ he said presently, ‘in verse, and plenty of snow. But they can’t often occur together… We’ve been walking seven minutes at a slowish pace. Are we nearly–’
I felt his hand on my arm and realized that we were in darkness; he had switched off the torch. Instinctively I stopped. From somewhere just ahead, and in the shadow of the ruins, had come a sharp metallic sound. It was repeated once. Then there was silence.
For a full half minute we stood quite motionless, Appleby’s hand still on my arm. And then with infinite caution my companion tiptoed forward. As if under irresistible compulsion I did the same. But I realized with dismay that we were spying once more.
15
I see that I have reached the middle of my narrative as I have planned it. And for half-way house the nocturnal affair in the ruins serves nicely enough. It is dramatic without anything of the pitch of an inconvenient climax; it has décor; in some respects it is prelusive of the climax actually to come. Were I concerned – as is far from being the case – to dispose my materials with an anxious art I believe I should place this murky episode just where it stands now.
It took me by surprise. Appleby had remarked that we were to have company, but without rousing me to expectation. I was tired; I think I had fallen into that half-waking state which psychologists call hypnagogic; what I was chiefly aware of as I walked was a series of mental images of unusual vividness. Advancing upon the ruins, and with the slow flood and ebb of Cudbird’s bottle before me, what I yet really saw was the window of Basil’s study, its curtains parting and coming together as if marking the pauses in some enigmatic play. And at the same time another, and verbal, part of my mind was behaving in a similarly undisciplined fashion. The hunt for mist and snow had conjured up a memory of the hunt for Shakespeare’s bells which Lucy had organized on the previous afternoon; scraps of quotation were running through my head again; I was in the poorest state of vigilance with regard to the outer world. It was in this abstraction, then, that I had felt Appleby’s grip on my arm; that I had become aware of the reiterated metallic clatter in the ruins. It was from this that I was fully roused by a voice – Geoffrey Roper’s – saying in the darkness: ‘Caught in the act!’
We had moved, stealthily, a few steps forward. Now we halted again. Geoffrey’s voice had come from hard by the range; this much I knew though the bottle was out and the darkness whole. And I knew that he was speaking to Anne. The words had been spoken abruptly, almost with violence. But there was something in them still of a tone which Geoffrey kept for Anne alone.
The darkness flickered. A pinnacle, a buttress, a line of buttresses formed themselves high above us; green and acid light glowed through a crumbled clerestory window like the opening eye of some gigantic creature of the night.
Cudbird’s Beers are Best. The faint green skin of light faded beneath a wash of madder; the ruins might have been a fragment of Burgeon’s Petra – the rose-red city half as old as time. The light ran down what I recognized as the wall of the lay dorter. Standing against it was a slim figure glimpsed momentarily as Anne’s. ‘Why this impersonation’ – it was Geoffrey’s voice again - ‘of the Woman in White?’
‘And why this impersonation of the Spy in Black?’
As if to cap the repartee, the invisible bottle tilted and the ruins dissolved in a whirligig of circling shadows. Then the beer came. A swiftly increasing amber flood, it at once lit up the scene and spread over it a mellow and golden patina; Anne in a long white cloak and Geoffrey in his dinner-jacket were revealed confronting each other across the wooden locker which constituted the armoury of the range. It was a theatrical piece. Appleby and I – unsuspected spectators – watched as from across an orchestra of fallen masonry and snow.
‘If you must lurk,’ said Anne, ‘you should put on a coat. You’re busy catching a cold, not me.’
‘What were you doing with that gun?’
I made a movement to break away from Appleby and reveal myself; even as I stirred, the great bottl
e snapped into darkness and the scene was gone. The darkness – a darkness of shadow and shifting violet penumbra – checked me, and I heard Anne’s voice say: ‘Why was Wilfred so imperfectly shot?’
‘Yes, Anne. Indeed, why?’
‘I could give a guess.’
‘I could give a guess.’
The acid green was flickering again above us. I realized with a shock that these young people carried their verbal affectations into their intimate talk – and into talk on a theme where they were surely out of place.
‘We could give guesses.’ Rose turned to amber; they were standing as before with the golden-lit Priory behind them – like two modern folk strayed incongruously into a composition of Claude’s.
‘As could others.’
‘As could others – which is the point.’
‘Which is the point.’ The light faded on their unexpected laughter. ‘But what were you doing with that gun all the same?’
‘Till breakfast to guess.’
‘And is Cecil a liar?’
‘To bed, then.’
‘To beds.’
Green…rose…amber. They were gone.
‘It took us nearly nine minutes,’ said Appleby. ‘But who would have expected such a treat at the end.’
‘I must say I don’t at all like–’
‘But I have eavesdropped and am, on the contrary, happy. And so to bed.’ Appleby chuckled. ‘Or, as Miss Anne so precisely puts it, to beds.’
‘I hope,’ I said, ‘that you make something of what you have heard.’ The coolness with which Appleby carried off our deplorable conduct exasperated me slightly.
We moved over to the locker by which Geoffrey and Anne had been talking. ‘I admit,’ said Appleby, ‘that their idiom stands a little in need of interpreting. But I have no doubt you can do that.’ He halted and flashed the torch. ‘Locked, as it certainly ought to be. The young woman came with a key and under cover of darkness returned a revolver to its place. The young man followed her. One might see the expedition as implying guilt. But I felt that it might very well be a matter of giving a suppressed sense of melodrama an airing. As they said: Woman in White and Spy in Black.’
There Came Both Mist and Snow Page 11