“Leaving Hiram alone at Water Poole?”
“I guess so. Unless you were still here yourself, Mr Poole.”
Appleby looked up sharply. “Have you any reason, Miss Brown, to suppose anything of the sort?”
Miss Brown hesitated. “I can’t swear to Mr Poole here. But I did have a hunch that there was somebody lurking around.”
“I see. Now, when you left Water Poole, however much you may have felt personally insulted, you must have supposed your work there to be done. Mr Richard Poole was wholly discredited. May I ask you why, in these circumstances, you returned here this morning?”
“Because I was uneasy. Mr Hiram Poole was an old man, whom I knew to be in poor health. And I had left him here in the small hours, after subjecting him to painful disillusion. I returned in order to make quite sure that nothing had happened to him.”
“Well – it had.” Appleby uttered this shortly and then took one of his brief walks to a window. “In the ruined part of this house there is a staircase that mounts through two storeys and then goes on to end nowhere. From that hazardous eminence, some time in the small hours, Mr Hiram Poole was precipitated. And there are still a good many possibilities. For example, we don’t know – at least
I
don’t know – what was in the dead man’s mind. How did he take the revelation which it is agreed was made to him? Miss Brown, the only person to be in his company after the truth was revealed, quite failed to get any change out of him. That, at least, is her story. Suppose it to be true… Do you hear a car? It will be my wife with a doctor.”
“I am not in the habit of prevarication.”
“Very well. Your story is gospel, so far as it goes. But there may have been – indeed, if it
is
gospel, there must have been – a further and distinct act in the drama. Mr Richard Poole
may
have been lurking around – or he may have returned after you left, encountered his cousin, and become involved in some altercation with fatal consequences. In the circumstances it is a possible picture.” Appleby paused. “I mentioned the chance of Mr Richard’s being
already
, in some degree, Hiram Poole’s heir – and knowing it. On that, the actual truth must, of course, eventually become available. For what my own opinion is worth, it is slightly improbable. But one fact is admitted. As matters stood last night, and still stand now, the Daughters of Abstinence are very large beneficiaries under Hiram Poole’s will. And this bring us back to Miss Brown. Her story may
not
be gospel. It may be quite untrue.”
“I am not in the–”
“No doubt, madam. But there are tight corners in which the most inflexibly truthful persons find themselves a little inclined to stretch a point. Suppose that this investigation of the true state of Water Poole brought both Hiram Poole and yourself to the top of that staircase. He had been silent. You became vehement in your denunciation of Mr Richard. And then Hiram Poole did something which surprised you very much, but which in fact was thoroughly consonant with human nature. He cried a plague on both your houses.”
“He did what?” Miss Brown was both startled and at a loss.
“He declared that Richard should not have a penny of his. And then he said precisely the same thing about the Daughters of Abstinence.”
“He would never do such a thing.”
“I repeat that I think it extremely likely that he would. Your organisation had set a spy on him, and subjected him to an acute humiliation of which you, madam, cannot have the faintest imaginative understanding. So here is another sober possibility. Up there, at the top of that crazy staircase, this old man told you that your organisation would be struck out of his will tomorrow.”
Miss Brown was silent – and suddenly old and spectral. Richard Poole looked at her not unkindly and then turned to Appleby. “I must say you have considerable skill in making it uncomfortable for everybody in turn. Is there more to come? What about Mr Buttery?”
And Appleby nodded. “I’m coming to Mr Buttery now.”
“To me?” Over his steel-rimmed spectacles the clergyman looked at Appleby in naïve alarm. “I fear all this has been incomprehensible to me, and that I am unlikely to be able to assist. Here and there – on the goblin side of the thing – I am fairly clear. But all this of wills eludes me. Mr Poole, it seems, has told one story; this lady who keeps on changing her name has told another; and I suppose you, sir, must choose between them.”
Appleby shook his head. “That may be unnecessary. I have myself ventured some alternative hypotheses which are no doubt mutually exclusive. But the stories of Mr Poole and Miss Brown do not in themselves contradict each other. Both may have told as much of the truth as they know. And now it is up to you to tell the rest.”
Mr Buttery considered this injunction for a moment in silence. Then, disconcertingly, his venerable features assumed an expression of the deepest cunning. “I suppose,” he asked, “that what is called motive is of great importance in a matter of this sort?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“You were asking, for instance,
why
this lady returned to Water Poole when she did. Stress is put upon things like that?”
“Certainly it is.”
“Awkward. Troublesome. Vexatious.” And Mr Buttery shook his head. “If I myself had what might be termed a
respectable
motive–”
“Folk-lore.” Appleby was brisk. “Your own further investigations of Water Poole last night, sir, were prompted entirely by your interest in folk-lore. You were after the goblins, and nothing but the goblins. And now perhaps you can go ahead.”
“I don’t quite follow this.” Richard Poole was curious. “Am I to understand that Mr Buttery–”
“Mr Buttery is a great law-breaker.” Appleby announced this without any appearance of censure. “A little quiet poaching warms the cockles of his heart. But lately he has taken larger flight. He found, I think, a very tempting cellar, to be entered unobtrusively by a cut from the river. Perhaps he found some suitable implements and utensils as well. Anyway, he has been having great fun distilling illicit spirits. Hence the smell remarked by Miss Brown. And hence Mr Buttery’s own enthusiasm for Total Prohibition. He feels that if that came in he might go into business in a large way. But these are irrelevant matters–”
“Really irrelevant?” Mr Buttery was sharply hopeful.
“At least there is a very good chance of it. Last night, sir, you watched the goblins in some alarm until they packed up. And then you came to investigate. They are said, after all, to do terrible things in dairies. Perhaps they might have been behaving equally mischievously in your distillery.”
“I certainly waited in my dinghy until all was dark and silent again.” Mr Buttery now spoke with much placidity. “It was a tedious vigil. I was not however greatly surprised. For goblins, as you know, have a great reputation for keeping it up till dawn. Gradually their lights went out, and I was conscious of intermittent rumblings. Parties of them were returning to the nether world.”
“Or our vans were driving away.” Richard Poole was looking at the clergyman in some perplexity, as if finding it hard to gauge just how deep his eccentricity went.
“When at length I ventured to land they had all vanished – as our national poet puts it, following darkness like a dream. Or all, that is, except the Goblin King.”
“The Goblin King?” Miss Brown, whose spirits appeared to be a little revived, interrupted. “Do Goblins have that?”
“Certainly – and he is rather a fine personage. It is a mistake, you know, to suppose that goblins are dwarfs, or in any sense little people. I was not at all surprised to find that the Goblin King was a most distinguished figure, magnificently attired in black and gold.”
“Cousin Hiram!”
“With him he had an obscure familiar. I caught only glimpses, you know. As I remarked earlier, it is very dangerous for the clergy to get involved with goblins. So the utmost circumspection was necessary. The Goblin King had some species of lantern. I had to be very careful to keep out of its beam; and it was only from the oblique light coming from it that I could distinguish him at all. The familiar puzzled me. Could it have been Hecate? I am more inclined to suppose a minor Teutonic divinity. Possibly the Sow Goddess.” Mr Buttery looked ingenuously at Miss Brown. “Would that appear to you to be a tenable hypothesis?”
“I think you are a very wicked old man.” Miss Brown’s response, if not strictly relevant, was spirited.
“Presently however the familiar was banished. This was the only occasion upon which I actually heard the Goblin King speak. ‘Go away,’ he said. I was much struck by his tone of authority. Without more ado, the Sow Goddess – I am sure she was that – took her departure.”
Richard Poole looked wickedly at Miss Brown. “With more rumbling?”
“I should rather say with a purr. I am inclined to suppose some species of chariot. The Goblin King then withdrew to the house. In fact, he withdrew to this hall, and sat for a long time there in the window, quite still and silent. He appeared lost in sombre thought. When at last he stirred, it was because the dawn was breaking. He then began once more to explore the house. I felt that I had seen enough, and I slipped out to recover my dinghy. I was halfway across the lawn when I heard the laughter.”
“The laughter?” Richard Poole was startled.
“It came from high in air, and I knew at once that it was supernatural. Very cautiously I skirted the house – and suddenly I saw the Goblin King again, silhouetted against the dawn. He had climbed the ruined stair – climbed right to the top – and now he was looking down on all that part of Water Poole that is mere ruin. And he was laughing. I have never heard such laughter. It was, I say, supernatural – and yet all the gaiety and all the fun of the world we know seemed to be in it. I was astounded. I was strangely moved. Once more it pealed out – and then, quite abruptly, ceased. And the Goblin King had vanished.”
There was a long silence. At last Richard Poole spoke softly. “He had vanished?”
“Yes – following darkness. Following darkness like a dream. That was all.”
The silence renewed itself, until broken by Appleby. “Yes,” he said. “That – I am very glad indeed to say – was all.”
And Appleby and Judith drove away. He waited until they were on the highroad and then asked a question. “The doctor is quite sure?”
“Quite sure. It will be confirmed at the post-mortem. Hiram Poole was dead before he reached the ground. He died of the heart-failure that had threatened him for a long time.”
“That’s one way of putting it. Another is to say that he died of laughter. It was appropriate enough, for the whole affair was comedy. Once or twice it looked like crime – but it proved to be comedy in the end. One can’t consider that Richard Poole was very culpable, and he told the truth as he knew it. So did that tiresome but perfectly honest temperance crusader… But of course there was more to it than that.”
“More to Hiram Poole’s death?” Judith nodded over the wheel. “Decidedly.”
“One can’t doubt that young Richard’s deception was something the discovery of which was very painful to him. Imagine him, sick and chill and tired, being haled around that derelict shrine – for it was that to him – in the small hours.”
“And by a Daughter of Abstinence, at that.”
“Quite. It must have been sheer nightmare. And any common man would simply have felt himself abominably cheated and betrayed.”
“Any common man would have suspected the very obvious mercenary motive.”
“Hiram had his dark hour, I don’t doubt, hunched there in a window of the hall. But he rose to the thing.”
“He rose to it.”
“The Pooles are still resourceful and gay. Hiram saw it like that, and his own laughter attested it. I take off my hat to him.”
“Yes,” Appleby said, as we strolled to the far end of his study, “I do keep a bit of a museum in this room. A sign of old age and the reminiscent mood, no doubt.”
He pointed to a range of well-ordered shelves. “You may find them depressing. For these things connect up, one way or another, with every sort of wickedness under the sun.”
“All of them?”
“Well, no. One or two recall affairs that would have to be termed bizarre, I suppose, rather than nefarious. For example, that photograph. What do you make of it?”
I found myself studying a formal, three-quarter-length portrait of a young man, taken full face and looking straight at the camera. A professional job, I thought, but of rather an old-fashioned sort.
“Attract you?” No comment had occurred to me, and Appleby appeared to feel I needed prompting. “Or do you prefer a man to be handsome in a more regular way?”
“The features are certainly irregular enough,” I said. “But they have vitality. For what it is worth, then, your specimen does attract me. Was he a great criminal?”
Appleby considered. “Do you know, I didn’t find it at all easy to say? But I suspected the answer to be in the negative. You never heard of Leonard Morton?”
“Never. Is this his photograph?”
Appleby smiled. “Sit down, my dear chap, and I’ll tell you the tale.”
“It’s sometimes said that if the whole population was fingerprinted the police and the law-courts would be saved some pretty large headaches. And Morton is a case in point.
“His parents had been wealthy folk who lost their lives in some accident when he was a baby. There were no near relatives, and young Leonard was brought up in a careful enough, but rather impersonal way. Nobody had much occasion to be interested in him, and he seems to have had no talent for impressing himself upon the world.
“You spoke of vitality. I suspect he shoved most of that into a rugger scrum. And by his companions there, I suppose, he was remembered only as so much heave and shove. He made no
print
, so to speak, as a personality. Which was awkward, in view of what happened.
“He took off into the skies one day – it was for the purpose of bombing Berlin – and ceased to be a recognisable physical object some hours later.”
I was horrified. “Do you mean,” I asked Appleby, “that he was charred to a cinder?”