‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ Colonel Pride produced a handkerchief and mopped his brow. ‘
Did
he try to kill Finn?’
‘It might be possible to maintain that he only proposed to intimidate him. I don’t say it would be true. But it could be maintained.’
‘My dear John, whatever are you getting at?’
‘Ambrose was here last night. It was he who gave the prowling Finn that clip on the jaw. There are, no doubt, various stories that Ambrose can tell. It may be possible to strike a bargain with him. We take a lenient – even phoney – view of his exploit this morning in exchange for as much of the truth as is in him about last night. If he
didn’t
kill his brother, it may be a useful line.’
‘I’ve never heard of anything more outrageously irregular!’
‘That, Tommy, is why you and I are alone in this room. Shall we invite Mr Ambrose Ashmore to join us for a quiet chat?’
‘I don’t know that anything of the sort ought to take place except in the presence of at least one of my officers. Things might turn very awkward, if we–’
‘We’ll have Finn, instead of one of your henchmen. A confrontation, you know. I’d say it was essential. And it would help if you strolled out and brought them in. I’m afraid Ambrose doesn’t care for me very much.’
The truth of this became apparent a couple of minutes later. Preceded by Colonel Pride, and followed by Finn, Ambrose Ashmore entered the room, violently expostulating.
‘Pride,’ he said, ‘I call upon you to arrest this scoundrel. Assault and abduction.’
‘Of course I take note of what you say, Mr Ashmore. Won’t you sit down? Mr Finn, sit down too – and don’t speak until you are spoken to.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Finn sat down demurely.
‘Fellow calls himself Sir John Something,’ Ambrose said. ‘Never heard of him. Never set eyes on him.’
‘And Mr Finn?’ Pride asked, and indicated the young man. ‘Have you ever set eyes on him?’
‘I decline to be interrogated.’ If Ambrose was indeed scared, it was plain that he was quite genuinely angry as well. Perhaps it would have been better to say ‘enraged’. There were veins standing out in an ugly way at his temples. But possibly, Appleby thought, this was his habitual emotional state. Solo Hoobin had been very rash ever to enter his employment.
‘It is Mr Finn’s contention,’ Pride went on, ‘that you and he had an encounter, here at the Chase, late last night… You know, by the way, that your brother Martyn is dead?’
The ruthlessness of this took Appleby’s breath away. But was it, or was it not, a genuine surprise and shock that Ambrose Ashmore registered in the ensuing moments? Appleby judged it not easy to decide.
‘Mr Martyn Ashmore,’ Pride was continuing presently, ‘died last night in this room, and in circumstances which must occasion suspicion of foul play. So the matter of your alleged encounter with Mr Finn is of the gravest import. It will be wise, Mr Ashmore, that for the moment we should neglect whatever has been happening this morning, and concentrate on last night. Mr Finn declares that he came upon you at the front door of this house, and that you knocked him unconscious. Mr Finn may be offering me a complete fabrication. Or he may be genuinely mistaken as to your identity. If you deny having been here – which may be the truth – there must inevitably be much further investigation. If you agree that you were here, that clears so much of the ground, and we can turn to other aspects of the situation confronting us.’
‘It is possible,’ Appleby said, ‘that you are aware of something in your own situation that is embarrassing or even legally dubious and morally reprehensible. Or perhaps merely of something that testifies to a humiliating failure of nerve. But I think I ought to point out that prevarication at this point, if it were to be proved against you–’
‘What do you mean – proved against me?’ This was the first time that Ambrose Ashmore had directly addressed Appleby.
‘There were other people around the Chase last night. And at least two of them – I need mention only your brother’s gamekeeper – would have recognized you the moment they saw you. And if you were proved, I repeat, to be telling lies, your position might be compromised in the most dreadful way.’
‘He means,’ Finn interrupted scandalously, ‘that you’d be where, in the old days, you’d swing for it.’
‘Mr Finn, I told you to be quiet.’ Colonel Pride glared at the young man, but there was something in his eye that signalled covert approval of this brutal turn of the screw. And it was now Ambrose who was mopping his brow.
‘Out with it,’ Finn said encouragingly.
‘I was here. And I did hit out at this young man. I don’t know who the devil he is. As for this morning, I had no notion of doing him any harm.’ Ambrose hesitated. ‘Just of suggesting to him that it would be healthy if he cleared out.’
‘Mr Ashmore,’ Colonel Pride said mildly, ‘you appear to be, on your own confession, a person of the most ungoverned impulses towards violence and intimidation.’
‘In a man of your age,’ Finn said, feeling his jaw, ‘it’s a damned unbecoming thing.’
Appleby was glancing out of the window. He saw that Bobby had arrived. But he wasn’t alone; instead of the missing Giles Ashmore, he had provided himself with a young woman. She was good-looking, and she was quite clearly another Ashmore. Bobby seemed to be expostulating with a police sergeant about not being admitted to his father’s presence forthwith. Appleby sighed, and glanced at his watch.
‘I think,’ he said briskly, ‘that Mr Ashmore wants to make a preliminary statement about his presence at the Chase last night. But perhaps “statement” is too formal a word. At this stage, we needn’t write anything down. Mr Ashmore, I understand that you and your brothers were not on the best of terms, and saw each other comparatively rarely. So why did you come to the Chase late last night?’
‘Because of that damned girl!’ Ambrose Ashmore, casting caution aside, produced this in a kind of infuriated shout. ‘Some jumped-up caterwauling kitchen-maid – not that that’s either here or there – who was going to marry my brother Rupert’s fool of a son. Then yesterday morning, in
The
Times
–’
‘Quite so. You came to the Chase to expostulate with your brother Martyn over the announcement of his engagement to Miss Bunker. But it can’t be said, can it, that you had a very strong case?’
‘What the devil do you mean?’
‘In the light of family tradition, let us say. Ashmores often marry rather late in life – and start begetting children in their seventies or eighties. That was the trouble, I take it?’
‘Of course it was the trouble!’ Ambrose said this with a frankness that was almost disarming. ‘Martyn was letting me down badly.’
‘And letting your brother Rupert and his son Giles down badly too?’
‘Yes, of course. But these people can look after themselves.’
‘I met your brother Rupert yesterday – and a young Frenchman who is going to marry his daughter. Can you tell me where Rupert is now?’
‘Of course I can’t. His movements are nothing to me.’
‘I see. Then may we come back to your own movements last night? You saw your brother Martyn?’
‘Yes, I did.’ Ambrose looked uneasily about the room. ‘He let me into the house, and we came in here.’
‘And what did he say about his proposed marriage?’
‘He said it was no business of mine. He laughed at me.’
‘You quarrelled?’
‘Yes.’
‘A violent quarrel, Mr Ashmore – quite in your usual style?’
‘I don’t know what you mean. I came away. I let myself out of the house, and found myself confronted by this young man. I admit that, and that I did knock him down. I was very much upset, you see.’
‘It was quite a natural thing for one of your violent temperament to do. But was it only because you had been in dispute with your brother that you thought to wipe the door-handle and door-bell clear of fingerprints?’
‘I did nothing of the kind.’ Ambrose Ashmore’s voice rose a pitch.
‘Mr Finn says you were doing that.’
‘Then your Mr Finn is talking nonsense.’
‘Very well.’ Appleby made a long pause. ‘Mr Ashmore, was your brother alive when you left him?’
‘Of course he was alive.’ Ambrose moistened his lips. ‘I want to see my solicitor.’
‘Then you had better go and do so. I am sure the Chief Constable will put a car at your disposal. And I have only one other question to ask you. After your dispute with your brother, and after your rash assault – your
first
rash assault – upon Mr Finn, did you, or did you not, remain near, or return to, the Chase last night?’
‘I neither remained nor returned. I went straight home.’
‘Mr Ashmore, thank you very much.’
‘I don’t think he’s telling the truth,’ Appleby said. ‘Or he was scared enough to tell some of it, and too scared to tell it all. But if what he has suppressed is what I think it is, there’s something devilishly wrong with our whole approach to the affair. Oh cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right.’
‘My dear fellow,’ Pride said soothingly, ‘your assistance is invaluable.’
Appleby chuckled, turned away from the window, and frowned into the empty fireplace.
‘Surely,’ he said, ‘Rupert Ashmore should have been located by now? We want him on the spot – together with his runaway son and that young Frenchman. Talking of sons, I’m going out to have a word with Bobby. Finn, you’d better lose yourself.’
‘Oh, I say!’
‘But not for too long. I may want you again. Even the Chief Constable may want you again.’ He turned to Pride. ‘That girl out there,’ he said. ‘I’ve guessed who she is. Rupert’s daughter Virginia. I’ll see if there’s anything I can get out of her.’
‘This is my father,’ Bobby Appleby said to the girl. ‘I think you ought to talk to him. I’ll be strolling round the place.’
‘Don’t go too far, Bobby.’ Appleby glanced curiously at his son. ‘And talk to Finn. He’s feeling disapproved of. Miss Ashmore, shall we take a turn in the park?’ Appleby led the way down a flight of steps. ‘Of course you know of your uncle’s death?’
‘Your son told me. And I said I would like to be brought over to the Chase. Has my father turned up here?’
‘Not yet. The police are trying to contact him. Can you help them, by any chance?’
‘I don’t think so. It seems very probable that my father has run away. Does that sound insane?’
‘I should like to think it did.’
‘I have only just discovered that I live among mad people. Or I have only just admitted it to myself.’ Miss Ashmore, although clearly in some state of extreme tension, said this quite calmly. ‘It makes one do stupid things. For example, I have told your son some perfectly useless lies.’
‘Useless lies are not commonly very bad ones.’
‘One was that Jules – who is known as my fiancé – would look after the dogs while I came over here. It wasn’t true. Jules has departed.’
‘You mean that he has run away like your father?’
‘Not quite that. He quarrelled with my father yesterday afternoon–’
‘Miss Ashmore, you really are a quarrelsome crowd.’
‘I agree. And it was
quite
mad. It wasn’t because – as I’ve discovered – my father had been doing something unspeakably cruel and wildly criminal.’ Miss Ashmore’s voice had become icy. ‘It was because the rationality of the French nation was being aspersed. Jules came and told me the facts, read me a lecture on them, packed his bags, and departed.’
‘I think, perhaps, you had better tell
me
the facts.’
‘Very well. This is something else I lied to your son about. My Uncle Martyn, it seems, had dreadful experiences during the war – and also, in France, for some years afterwards. It had left him with a neurosis, an
idée fixe
– I’m not sure what it should be called. And my father has been working upon it, causing strange and sinister things to happen, in order to drive Uncle Martyn slowly mad – or to have him tell such an unlikely story that he would be
thought
to be mad–’
‘Yes.’ Appleby thought he might well interrupt at this point. ‘Your father has struck me as a man whose methods would be oblique or devious.’
‘Then, only a few days ago, one of these silly and wicked pranks went wrong. My father was stupid enough to do something before a witness–’
‘Quite so. It was an enormous mistake, and perhaps the product of a sudden access of real homicidal feeling. Incidentally, I was the witness. And Jules, Miss Ashmore?’
‘He simply decided he couldn’t take it, and asked for his cards. I don’t blame him. Only, I suspect he was aware of what had been happening, in a general way. He only started creating because he had a thing about France.’
‘It’s to the credit of a Frenchman that he should have a thing about France. Do I understand you to regard your engagement as broken off?’
‘Most decidedly.’
‘I think you now know about another broken engagement? At least, I suppose it must be called that. I mean your brother Giles’ relationship with Miss Bunker, and how your Uncle Martyn appears to have disrupted it? Presumably your father knows about it too by now. Have you any idea when he found out?’
‘He was very upset yesterday afternoon, after he had been looking through the newspapers.’
‘I see. And that was before his quarrel with Jules?’
‘In a way, yes. But something had been blowing up for some days.’
‘May I return to the subject of your father? Why should you judge it probable that he has run away?’
‘If he knows about Uncle Martyn’s death – about it’s being sinister, I mean. If investigation turned up the fact that he himself had been faking attempts on his brother’s life, and so on, he would be in a very awkward situation.’
‘He certainly would. Although it is entirely uncertain that he does know about his brother’s death, so far. When did you last see your father?’
‘Isn’t that the title of a famous painting?’ Miss Ashmore had smiled faintly. ‘It was late yesterday afternoon. He said something about his dentist. Then he just got into his car, and drove off. He’s often very casual about such things.’