Appleby Plays Chicken

by Michael Innes

  With a nasty feeling of disaster spreading from his brain to his stomach and his knees, David looked behind him. The two other motorcyclists had got off their bikes and were advancing upon him deliberately, one on each side of the road. He had a dim sense that there might be an innocent explanation of this. But much more urgent was his conviction that it was the worst crisis yet. Only a couple of fields away there must be hundreds of people – including policemen who, being on foot, couldn’t vanish with a kick and a roar. Here however he was as completely isolated as he had ever been on the moor or amid the empties of pineapple nectar. And he didn’t have another effective bolt in him. He was quite sure of that.

  But this certainly must have been shared – he was presently to be convinced – by some guardian angel that was accompanying him through his adventures after all.

  For at this moment the earth shook, there was a sound like a bellows from over the hedge, and another riderless horse dropped out of the sky, stumbled, and half checked itself. Its flank brushed David’s right shoulder. Out of old habit he made a grab at the reins – and then out of sheer inspiration a grab at the stirrup. The horse fortunately approved of his design. Within seconds David was galloping over the next field.

  A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse… If just this had happened to Richard III, David thought, he might have got on top of things at Bosworth after all. Rescued in this way, he himself presumably cut an abject and even scandalous figure, and in a few minutes might well be exposed to the opprobrium of the entire county. This didn’t worry him, but he rather hoped his performance wouldn’t be grossly incompetent as well. The fact that two riders had been thrown suggested some stiff fences, and his jumping had never been up to anything much. He was coming up to his first test now, and it had all happened so quickly that he hadn’t had time to think of trying to deflect his mount from the course. Presumably this was a second time round, but he hadn’t a notion how many jumps there might be ahead. Anyway, this was the only one he’d take if he could help it. With a strange horse like this, the chances were certainly that he would go for six… Now. He felt his body and his hands go forward, and then back again, automatically. It had been as easy as that. And he was actually in sight of some of the other riders in front of him. He had been looking out for an open gate somewhere. But now he felt that perhaps he should finish the course.

  This however he didn’t bring off. Something had happened to the horse. David’s seat was down on the saddle and staying there. He had just told himself this meant they had dropped to a canter, when the brute once more changed its pace and trotted quietly off on a diagonal. Presumably it had suspected some indignity in the proceedings and had decided to go home. David judged he’d better concur.

  It was thus that, minutes later, he was really in a crowd at last – or rather above a crowd, since he hadn’t yet ventured to dismount. He’d been to such affairs frequently enough for the scene to be entirely familiar: rows of cars, resplendent or humble, which had disgorged picnickers around collations elaborate or simple; a line of bookies, who certainly wouldn’t make a fortune; a tote; a few marquees; a bar with barrels of beer; sundry opportunities to buy ice-cream. The sun was still shining; the rows of cars gleamed and sparkled; people moved about with a great sense of leisure, of relaxation, as if the last thing anybody meant to do was to attach much importance to whatever had brought them together. It was all easily and utterly English. And, above all, it was as safe as houses – or as safe as estate cars and horse boxes and tents labelled ‘Committee’ or ‘First Aid’. David sat his beautiful hunter as if it was the top of the world. Like DH Lawrence, he wanted to buttonhole people and insist with some urgency that he had come through. He was rather disappointed that – at first – nobody paid any attention to him.

  He certainly wasn’t dressed for this part. But perhaps he passed very well for a groom or a stable boy. There was nobody to recognize him – unless, by any chance, Ian was really here, and had brought any of the crowd along with him… David leant forward and patted the horse’s neck in what he judged to be a convincingly professional way. He noticed that his finger was bleeding again – the finger that had been grazed by a bullet during the incredible flight from the Tor. And it did seem incredible now; he almost felt that, if it weren’t for these drops of blood, he would find it impossible to believe in the whole thing: that there had ever been a dead body, or a man with a clipped moustache, or even a hay wagon and two sinister men on motorbikes. In that sun-warmed saucer of stone on top of Knack Tor he had fallen asleep and dreamed a succession of alarming dreams prompted, perhaps, by the mild dangerousness of the previous night’s affair in Timothy Dumble’s car.

  David’s mind was working in this irresponsible way when he saw somebody looking at him over the heads of the crowd. It was the man in knickerbockers.

  11

  There was nothing surprising in that. The place of their last encounter was, after all, no distance away. Nevertheless here was a disappointing discovery. The dream had obstinately cropped up again.

  David slipped to the ground and walked off leaving the horse to look after itself. This was an action so excessively odd that it should have attracted general notice at once; and it was a sign that his reactions to events were now really becoming blundering and extravagant. That the man in knickerbockers couldn’t very well, in present circumstances, walk up and despatch him was a simple consideration that David’s mind just failed to get around to. He was dominated by the sense that he hadn’t yet escaped, after all; that the job, in fact, was yet to do. So he walked away in what he thought was an unobtrusive manner. Oddly enough, nobody protested – perhaps because the horse obligingly stayed put and so didn’t draw attention to itself. David climbed over a rope and edged himself into the small crowd milling around before the line of bookies.

  It might have been all right – he might have formed, that is to say, some reasonable design for coping with his situation – if there hadn’t been another man.

  David supposed the man in knickerbockers to be coming up behind him, but this man was straight in front. And quite clearly he was out of the same stable – another country gentleman sort of thug. David didn’t stop to think that this Point to Point was stuffing with country gentlemen, and that it was rationally certain that ninety-nine per cent of them were utterly authentic and uninteresting. For one thing, this new man had a close-clipped moustache – a circumstance massively suspicious in itself. For another, he was looking at David not only with concentrated attention but also with something that powerfully suggested itself as knowledge. And for yet another, he communicated an instant impression of being formidable – of being intellectually formidable. What came oddly up in David’s mind as he shied away was the feeling he’d get when knocking on old Pettifor’s door with the consciousness that he had a woefully inadequate essay in his notebook. David turned aside and ran. He had an impression that his old acquaintance of the knickerbockers had momentarily lost the scent, but that his new one was coming with long strides after him.

  He dodged round a tent, and was vaguely aware of a large vehicle and a couple of men in uniform. There was a second tent dead ahead, with an open flap and then a screen that prevented a view inside. David bolted into its shelter, rounded the screen, and almost stumbled over a stretcher. There was a man on it, covered with a rug up to the chin. David gave a gasp. It was Ian. It was Ian Dancer.

  Ian grinned wanly. He was pale, and he had a bandage round his forehead. ‘Hullo, you great goon,’ he said. ‘Did you see me take it?’

  David stared at him stupidly. ‘Take it?’ he asked.

  ‘The hell of a purler. A horse crossed me at the second bloody jump. And now the hell-hounds have got me.’

  ‘The hell-hounds?’ David, although he said this on a note of interrogation, hadn’t the least doubt that Ian referred to the enemy. There must be a general disposition abroad in England to have Pettifor’s l
uckless reading party rapidly and comprehensively eliminated.

  ‘The ambulance chaps – and the usual apology for a doctor.’

  ‘Oh – I see.’ David’s mind cleared a little. ‘Nothing bad, I hope? Collarbone?’ He had a dim memory that Ian broke a collarbone from time to time.

  ‘Nothing of the sort. Chipped shoulder blade, if you ask me.’ Ian spoke from matter-of-fact acquaintance with these matters. ‘But they’re always convinced, you know, that one’s concussed and dangerous. They’re carting me off to the morgue. The ambulance is out there now.’

  David nodded. He still felt dazed – just as if he had taken the hell of a purler himself – but he was conscious of some enormous and unreasonable relief. It arose, he realized, from the simple fact that he was talking. Since his long and ghastly colloquy with the man on the Tor, and his half-dozen words with the girl in the car, he hadn’t had occasion to utter a sound. ‘Bad luck,’ he said vaguely. He spoke partly just for the delight of further speech, and partly because he remembered that a flow of solicitous remarks was, oddly enough, the correct English response to people tumbling from horses.

  Suddenly Ian sat up. His dark eyes sparkled, and his pale face showed its wickedest grin. ‘I say, David – do you think I could give them the slip?’

  ‘Just clear out?’ David remembered that this was precisely what he himself wanted to do. ‘Would it be quite the thing?’

  Ian threw back the sheet, and in consequence suffered some stab of pain that set him swearing. Then his face went obstinate. If David had spoken out of a deep calculation his words couldn’t have had a more definitive effect. ‘David Henchman’, Ian said, ‘is the best type of public schoolboy. He makes me sick. And I’m going to do my vomiting quietly elsewhere. Quite the thing! My God.’ He was on his feet and peering round the screen. ‘Damn. It’s too late. Here are the ambulance chaps coming now.’

  ‘Get out under the flies at the other end.’ Inspiration had come to David. ‘And I’ll take your place.’

  ‘Take my place?’ Ian stared at him. ‘But that would be a bit steep. They’d make a row.’

  ‘Never mind the row. It’s what I want. It’s important.’

  Ian’s eyes rounded. ‘Are you right up the creek, David?’

  ‘Don’t argue. Clear out.’

  Ian gave him one more look – and David remembered thankfully that he was enormously intelligent. Ian had tumbled to the fact of real, if obscure, crisis. Without a word he turned away and vanished – with just a small yelp of pain – beneath the wall of the tent. David flung himself on the stretcher and drew the blanket up to his nose. There was no time to do anything about a bandage for his head, for the entrance to the tent was already darkened. He turned his head sideways and just hoped for the best. He had a notion that ambulance men treated you with a profound disinterest anyway.

  And they carried him out. The ambulance had been backed up to the tent, and its doors were beautifully and comfortably yawning for him. But even so, he thought he caught a glimpse of his new enemy. All orthodox shooting stick and binoculars and pork-pie hat, he was striding towards the vehicle. In the nick of time, as it seemed, the doors closed on David. His muddied shoes, dangling over the end of the stretcher, were last in. Nobody had got in with him. He felt there ought to be a nurse – and, although her presence might have been fatal, he was unreasonable enough to resent the absence of this orthodox attendant.

  They weren’t moving. He had an uneasy sense of some conversation – even perhaps of an argument – going on outside. There were local accents – that would be the men in charge of the ambulance – and once he heard another voice that was clipped, quiet, and authorative. He distrusted it at once. He wondered whether somebody had perhaps pounced on Ian making his illicit exit, so that the row was going to come here and now. And then he heard the engine start to life, and the ambulance moved off.

  David wanted to give a shout of triumph. This was better than the hay wagon, by a long way. He had achieved a major fault in the trail, and with luck it would defy an army of men in knickerbockers to pick it up again. It was, of course, going to be slightly awkward at the other end of his journey. They just wouldn’t know whether to treat him as a criminal or as a lunatic. But that didn’t greatly matter. Authority would be called in, and the astounding truth would assert itself.

  He lay back in great luxury and gave himself up to idle fantasy. This was no doubt reprehensible, since he ought to have been considering how most rapidly and effectively to bring the forces of the law to bear upon the grim enigma which he had been obliged to quit so unceremoniously on the summit of Knack Tor. But instead it amused him to spin himself a number of improbable pictures of what would happen when he arrived in hospital. He heard a bell ringing – already it was only faint in the distance – and knew it must be for the next race; he reflected on his own recent equestrian appearance with placid satisfaction. And when he grew tired of that he entertained himself with sundry imaginary adventures of Ian’s since they had parted. It occurred to him that his horse had in all probability been Ian’s too. This amused him very much. He wondered if he was light-headed. Certainly he was again ceasing to take any very accurate account of the passage of time. It might have been within ten minutes, or it might have been after an hour, that he felt the ambulance draw to a halt.

  Well, that had been that. Now he must brace himself for those difficult explanations – to doctors, matrons, nurses, goodness knew what. The doors of the ambulance opened and he was lifted out. He could, of course, sit up and say something decisive at once. But he decided that he’d let himself be carried inside first. He even shut his eyes – rather in the spirit of a child who wants to save himself up a big surprise about his whereabouts.

  And this was exactly what he got. The stretcher was set down. And a voice said, grimly and very unexpectedly. ‘You can sit up now.’

  In every sense, David sat up. The place wasn’t a hospital – he realized that in a flash. It was all sombre brown paint, and it seemed to smell of oil lamps and ink. And David spoke his thought – he didn’t at all know whether in high indignation or great fear. ‘I say!’ he said. ‘This isn’t a hospital. I’m sure it’s not.’

  ‘Why should it be?’ The same voice spoke. ‘After all, you’re not a patient.’

  David turned his head. It was the new man – the one with the pork-pie hat, the binoculars, and everything proper about him. He was standing in the middle of a bare room, and regarding David with a glance that was entirely serious and absorbed. He might have been wondering just where to plant a bullet. On the other hand, his thoughts might have been quite different, for he was nothing if not inscrutable.

  David had the impression of other people close behind him. But he didn’t turn. Suddenly he seemed to hear – with an inner ear but nevertheless as if it were quite outside his head – Timothy Dumble’s voice, remarking calmly that this was it. He tensed his muscles and gathered himself for the final show. The man in front of him seemed to know he was doing this. But he just continued to watch him keenly.

  ‘If it’s not a hospital, then just what is it?’ David heard a surprisingly steady voice put this reasonable question, and recognized it with some difficulty as his own.

  ‘It’s a police station.’

  David gave a snort. This time it really was indignation, pure and simple. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And I suppose you’re a policeman?’

  And then – in what was the most unexpected occurrence of the day – the grim man with the binoculars smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am. My name’s Appleby.’

  12

  Appleby. The name meant nothing to David Henchman. But now he looked around him, and was constrained to believe what he was told. It was a police station, all right. Not the most resourceful gang of crooks could fake up such a decor. There was a sergeant – stolid, but plainly not disposed to regard this man Appleby
as an everyday event – amiably getting him a cup of tea. There was a constable who, with equal amiability, had gone off to fetch sandwiches – for David was enormously hungry. He was much more hungry than exhausted now, so that he found it hard to believe that lately he had been behaving in such an end-of-the-tether way. ‘Frightfully kind of you,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘I haven’t had anything since breakfast, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘And now it’s nearly three o’clock.’ The man called Appleby offered this with what appeared to be perfect solemnity. ‘Still, you’ve pulled through.’

  David blushed. ‘You’ll think me quite idiotic. But this morning does, as it happens, seem to me an enormous time off. I’d better tell you about it.’

  ‘Quite so. But I think you’ll find another cup of tea in the pot.’ Appleby, who seemed in no hurry, turned to the sergeant. ‘You don’t mind our being here a little longer? No need for you to bother about us.’

  ‘Certainly, Sir John. You’ll stay as long as you like, of course. And we’ll be getting back to work.’ With this the sergeant vanished, taking his subordinate with him.

  David was impressed. ‘I say,’ he said, ‘it’s frightful cheek to ask. But are you the Chief Constable or something?’

  Sir John Appleby shook his head. ‘Dear me, no. I’ve no standing down here at all. And I’m sure I’ll never be a Chief Constable. I work at Scotland Yard.’

  David found himself receiving this information with a most unsophisticated awe. ‘Criminal investigation?’ he asked.