Appleby Plays Chicken

by Michael Innes

  ‘Might it still be there, but round at the other side?’

  For a minute Appleby made no reply, but simply walked on, his eyes bent on the ground. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said presently. ‘My impression is that it came back pretty well in its own tracks.’

  ‘Do you think it may have been brought here so that…’

  ‘Of course I do.’ For the first time, Appleby’s tone sounded faintly impatient. David guessed that he didn’t at all like this development. ‘Well, we’ll get on.’

  They moved forward more quickly. Although the westering sun was still shining over the moor, all warmth had gone out of it, and there was a thin chill wind. Over the summit of the Tor a hawk swung, hovered, and dropped – dropped like a stone destined to smash itself on the brute rock. Actually, its concern must have been with something on the farther slope. On the summit there could be nothing except a human body, and a hawk would hardly concern itself with that.

  But would the body still be there? Very probably, David realized, it would have gone. That could be the only meaning of the recent passage of a motor vehicle here. Nobody, unless he were a cripple, would elect to ride, rather than to walk, to the Tor, unless he had in view some definite end for which transport was required. Yes, that was it. The enemy had come back and collected the body.

  David’s first reaction to this notion was regrettably childish. He would have nothing to show Appleby. It was true that Appleby could no longer very reasonably conclude his whole story to be an invention. There was now too much objective evidence for that. But, after all, the body was the big thing. It was just like those beastly thugs to make away with it… This was certainly a foolish line of thought, and it was immediately succeeded by one equally unpresentable. If the body wasn’t there – the body of a middle-aged man with a hole in the middle of his forehead – then probably David would never see it again. There would have been no point in the thugs taking the risk of coming back here and collecting it, if all they were going to do was to abandon it in some other place. If it had vanished, it had vanished for good. David would never again have to look at it. He was surprised to discover what a relief this would be.

  They were now at the foot of the rock. It was just the point at which David had scaled it. Suddenly Appleby bent down and drew something out of the heather. ‘Ever seen this before?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s my walking stick.’ David stared at the unexciting object as if it had been a vast surprise. ‘Of course I dropped it when I began to climb. How awfully funny that I just haven’t remembered it since. It belonged to my grandfather.’

  ‘It’s a good stick.’ Appleby stuck it upright in a tump of heather. ‘We’ll collect it when we come down. Now up we go.’

  Appleby went first and David followed. Appleby climbed rather as the principal enemy had done – with a professional touch. But David was conscious that he himself made at least a better job of it than he had managed that morning. He was on his mettle – for no better reason, it seemed, than that Appleby had commended his stick. And when he got his head over the top he saw just what he hadn’t expected to see again: a pair of rather good shoes, not far from his nose, and heels in air.

  ‘Well, here it is.’ There was a note of satisfaction in Appleby’s voice. ‘Not a dream, you see. You were as wide awake as you’ll ever be.’

  David scrambled to his feet. It was a relief, after all, that the body was still in situ. But he saw that there was something queer about it. He had known there was something queer as soon as he had seen the shoes… ‘It’s turned over,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’ Appleby swung round on him.

  ‘The – the body has turned over. It was on its back. It’s managed to get on its face.’

  ‘And it seems to have managed to get back that pistol.’ As Appleby pointed, his voice was grim. And it was true. There was a pistol in the dead man’s hand.

  David stared. ‘I don’t think it’s the same pistol.’

  Appleby took a step forward, knelt by the body, and with a strong careful movement turned it over. The head hung limp. There was a hole in the middle of the forehead. David heard Appleby’s voice as if from a distance. ‘Not the same pistol. But is it the same man?’

  ‘No… No – it’s not.’ David’s own words came jerkily. ‘It’s the other one.’

  14

  ‘Then somebody has arranged us a little surprise.’ Appleby, who had sat down on a ledge of rock, said this unemotionally. ‘At least it looks like that. But we may be flattering ourselves. We mayn’t have been in their heads at all.’

  David realized that he was being given time to compose himself. Even so, some further seconds passed before he trusted himself to ask: ‘You believe it’s the other man?’

  ‘My dear chap, I haven’t the slightest reason to disbelieve you.’

  Again David was silent for a moment. He wasn’t quite certain that this form of words was wholly comforting. ‘I mean’, he said, ‘it seems so wildly and utterly improbable. One body up here is unlikely enough. But two successive bodies…and getting themselves switched round like this…’ He broke off rather helplessly. ‘It’s awful, feeling so – so implausible.’

  ‘Of course you may be a thoroughly muddle-headed young man.’ Uttering this frank sentiment, Appleby produced his pipe again with a matter-of-factness suggesting he had seen violent death before. ‘The one incontrovertible circumstance is that there has been a bit of ugly business on this summit, and that you are mixed up with it.’

  ‘A mixed-up kid.’

  Appleby stared. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Nothing…I’m sorry. Just something people were talking about last night. It sounds as if I am muddle-headed – quite damnably.’

  ‘It’s a possibility, as I say.’ Appleby had now got to his feet again and put his pipe aside to examine the body. ‘Quite dead, I need hardly tell you. And no time ago – no time ago, at all. Even if you are very clearheaded, Henchman – quite the master criminal, indeed – I doubt whether you can possibly have done this.’ And Appleby tapped the shoulder of the corpse lightly as he got to his feet again. ‘At a guess, I’d say that you and I had made each other’s acquaintance before this fellow died. And that gets several things clear for a start. All your memories of today’s events may, of course, be enormously confused and utterly unreliable. When an affair like this comes along, that’s a fact a policeman must reckon with at once. Tough or not so tough, you see, it’s all the same. A shock can precipitate no end of muddle as soon as the individual who has received it tries to think back. People have been known to swear with absolute conviction and sincerity that they saw Jack murder Jill, when in fact what they saw was Jill murdering Jack. But this corpse, you see, was alive and kicking when you told me your story. So that does a little simplify things.’

  ‘I see.’ If David hadn’t entirely followed Appleby’s long speech, he had at least got his wits in tolerable order again – which had perhaps been the idea. ‘And what do we do next?’

  ‘Confront the awkward fact that we’re deucedly short of dramatis personae.’ As he made this unexpected reply, Appleby contentedly lit his pipe again. ‘There’s you, of course – but I honestly don’t place much reliance on you.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’ David was now sufficiently composed to grin at this.

  ‘That’s to say, the possibility of your being what may be called a principal personage is remote.’

  ‘A master criminal?’

  ‘That sort of thing. So what are we left with? Not the initial victim of this morning – unless, of course, you just don’t know a dead man when you see one.’

  ‘He was dead all right.’

  Appleby nodded. ‘Very good. For the moment, I accept that as a fact. And here’ – and he pointed to the body – ‘is another fact. Call him the First Murderer. He’s knocked out of the cast to
o. So what have we left? Only Second Murderer – meaning your friend the knickerbockers – and an obscure First Assistant Conspirator.’

  ‘The chap who sprang up when First Murderer here blew his whistle?’

  ‘Just that. And my instinct tells me that he is most unpromising. So who else?’

  David considered this. ‘The Death Riders.’

  ‘Meaning the two men on motorbikes?’ Appleby smiled. ‘Will you forgive me if I say I don’t terribly believe in – well, their relevance? They came on the scene when you yourself you know, had every reason to be exercising what one may call a vigorously stimulated imagination.’

  ‘But they stopped their bikes as soon as I tumbled off that hay wagon. And the last I saw of them – before I jumped on poor old Ian’s horse – they were coming right at me on either side of the road.’

  Appleby shook his head. ‘I’m sorry – but for the moment I shall persist in considering them mere supers. They realized that races were going forward, and they proposed to find a gap in the hedge and have a look. So what?’

  Thus challenged, David took a deep breath. ‘The girl.’

  ‘I’ll give you the girl – and even, provisionally, call her the Leading Lady. But there, you see, the cast stops off. It’s unpromising. I don’t like it.’

  David took a look at this odd policeman from Scotland Yard. He continued to think he might be rather nice. At the same time he acknowledged to himself that the wholesome instinct to rebel against the elder generation was strong in him at the moment. ‘What a thumping lie,’ he said. ‘You like it enormously.’

  Appleby laughed aloud – and so spontaneously that the sound didn’t seem in the least improper in the vicinity of the dead man.

  ‘You like it more and more,’ David added. ‘Although I can’t think why.’ He paused to consider. ‘I believe I rather bored you at first – myself and my whole adventure. Not that you didn’t go out of your way to pick it – and me – up.’

  Appleby nodded, decently sober. ‘You are a pick-up, all right. I acknowledge it. Any unusual appearance attracts me instantly. And then, when you told your story, I wasn’t terribly keen. I acknowledge that too. You had stumbled upon some nasty local crime. And I meet too many crimes. But of course I had to see you through – and give a hand in clearing things up. A busman’s holiday. Not attractive. But now it’s different. You’re quite right.’

  ‘And what has made it different is danger?’ David was rather pleased with this. It struck him as an extraordinarily acute psychological perception.

  But Appleby was looking at him once more in an infuriatingly elderly way – half astonished, half amused. ‘Danger? Dear me no. I used to go in for it a lot. It was quite horrid – although with its fascination, I admit. But I can’t say it appeals to me now. No’ – and he shook his head in what seemed a drift of oddly sombre feeling – ‘it’s not a resource that lasts, you know. Nothing really lasts, except the queer urge to make a little knowledge when one can.’

  ‘I think I know about that.’ David said this quite honestly. He wasn’t old Pettifor’s pupil for nothing. ‘But does this’ – and he gestured, first at the dead man and then at the solitude and silence around them – ‘does this have anything to do with that?’

  ‘Only in the humblest way.’ Appleby had knocked out his pipe, and was kneeling again by the body. ‘You see, whe your corpse changed to this corpse, the affair ceased to be just a crime. It became a mystery. And that’s something challenging our instinct to worry things out a bit. So I like it enormously, as you have very accurately observed.’

  David said nothing – and in the silence a lark struck up again, like a punctual sound effect tuned in by a conscientious BBC producer. Appleby was turning out the pockets of the dead man. There was something rather horrible in the sight of it. It was like an inglorious aftermath of battle, a pillaging of the dead. And then David noticed Appleby’s face. It was gentle and absorbed, so that he was reminded of Pettifor when you caught him in a library, poring over a book that contained goodness knew what. To solve this business would, of course, be to make knowledge – although in an uncommonly macabre field. But how did one begin? With this problem in his head, David waited until Appleby got to his feet again, and then asked a question. ‘I suppose it will somehow be possible to…to identify this chap?’

  ‘Identify him? I’ve done that already. As a matter of fact, I know him quite well.’

  ‘You know him!’

  ‘His name is Charles Redwine. We worked together once. He was my chief during the first years of the war.’

  David’s first emotion on hearing this extraordinary statement was of simple alarm – as if the man who made it was boldly unmasking himself as a criminal. Then he became incredulous. ‘It’s impossible!’ he cried. ‘Of course I can’t be certain he killed the first chap. But he tried to kill me, all right.’ He turned and stared at the corpse. ‘It’s true he looks everything he should be. But I just can’t, can’t believe he’s not a bad hat!’

  David stopped – aware that Appleby’s eyes were once more on him with their peculiar steadiness. Appleby had sprung this as another surprise, as some sort of final test. And only an astonishing self-control – David suddenly realized – had made that possible. His own eyes had been on Appleby when he had turned over the body and first looked at the face of the dead man. The shock of recognition must have been pretty stiff. But he hadn’t let a muscle flicker.

  ‘Redwine was a bad hat, all right.’ Appleby, although he spoke sternly, seemed to realize the need of being reassuring. ‘In fact, it’s rather satisfactory that he’s dead.’

  ‘Satisfactory?’

  As usual, Appleby caught David’s tone exactly. ‘It’s certainly an indecent thing to say. And perhaps even vengeful. Redwine was one of my failures. He was the biggest of them. I failed to get him into jail.’

  ‘When he was your chief, sir?’

  ‘Yes, when he was my chief.’ Appleby had walked to the edge of the rock and was gazing out over the moor. ‘I found out the truth about him. And then I hesitated – for twenty-four hours. It seemed incredible. I mean, it felt incredible. There was loyalty, there was decency, there was everything against it. For twenty-four hours I let my emotions in the matter get on top of my intellect – declaring there was still a faint possibility of mistake, and so on.’ Appleby turned round. ‘You have no business to hear this, Henchman. Or rather I have no business to tell it to you. But the circumstances are’ – he smiled – ‘well, exceptional.’

  ‘I shan’t spread it round, sir.’ David said this rather stiffly.

  ‘In those twenty-four hours the evidence – the hard core of the evidence – melted away. It was, as they say, liquidated. So Redwine was shifted to unimportant work, and then he was pensioned off. Nothing more could be done. An eye has been kept on him since – that sort of bad hat isn’t forgotten about – but any tricks he’s been up to he’s managed to keep to himself. That he’s ended like this’ – Appleby made a gesture – ‘suggests that honourable retirement hasn’t been exactly his line.’

  ‘Does this mean that what I came upon this morning had something to do with spying – that sort of thing?’

  ‘Well, something in that target area, I’ve no doubt.’

  ‘With this chap Redwine as chief spy?’

  ‘I don’t know. But clearly he wasn’t on his own.’ Appleby turned and walked back to the centre of the shallow basin of rock. ‘Your story shows he had at least two fellows backing him up this morning. Well, that’s quite in the common run of things, as I think I was explaining earlier. If racecourse toughs work in gangs, espionage people organize themselves in rings. It works a little differently, but the principle’s the same. We may be confronting a ring, Henchman – or even inside one.’

  David was startled. ‘Do you mean literally?’

  ‘Why not?�
�� Appleby had opened his shooting stick, which somehow he had managed to bring up with him to the summit; found a crevice in the rock for its spike to rest in; and comfortably seated himself. ‘As I see the matter, they’re bound to be pretty interested in you still.’

  Although he’d had a hint of this before, David now took it in rather slowly. ‘Here and now?’ he asked presently.

  ‘Possibly here and now. I should explain that these are almost certainly big people. Whatever they have been up to is likely to have a good deal of significance, viewed from the standpoint of the country’s security.’ Appleby spoke briskly and not at all portentously. ‘This is all right by you?’

  ‘It’s all right by me.’ David paused awkwardly. He was much concerned to play down any lurking heroics in his strange situation. ‘I’m glad’, he said, ‘I had those sandwiches and cups of tea.’

  15

  The spring day would soon be over. Presently dusk – and then, very soon, darkness – would descend on the moor. And Appleby’s idea seemed to be to use David as a decoy. This wasn’t cheerful. But at least it was exciting. David reflected that if he could just hold on to that fact he might acquit himself without utter ignominy.

  And now Appleby was studying the small patch of blackened rock which was the only remaining sign of that morning’s mysterious fire. ‘Have the ashes been blown away?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think so. Whoever killed Redwine did a bit of a tidy up at the same time.’

  ‘Do you think the first dead man – the one I found – was some sort of bad hat too? Might he have belonged to a rival show?’ David didn’t know whether he ought to ask questions. But he had a strong impulse to keep his wits occupied.

  ‘I think it’s certainly possible.’ Appleby’s reply came readily. ‘Suppose Redwine fixed up a quiet conference with the other fellow in this retired spot. If he did, he expected possible trouble. Otherwise he would hardly have had a colleague lurking on the moor, and another patrolling the track with a rifle. And then suppose that, whether by premeditation or not, Redwine committed murder. If that was so, his next move is significant. He fixes the appearance of a suicide, and then simply walks away. That means that he could apprehend no danger to himself from the subsequent discovery and identification of the body. But then you came along. You hailed him, and he realized that continuing to walk away would be no good. You would certainly go after him and tackle him. So he returned to the summit and – well, discussed the matter with you.’