Appleby at Allington (14 page)

‘If that’s so, it’s my uncle’s fault. Only Martin has ever been of the slightest interest to him. A blackguard like that!’

‘My dear Miss Allington!’ It was difficult for Appleby not to feel shocked.

‘I know he’s dead. But I don’t propose to turn pious and charitable about him, all the same. He was to have the whole place – and just to play fast and loose with, at that. My uncle isn’t a wealthy man, you know. It was just that somehow he did suddenly make quite a lot of money, and he sunk almost every penny of it in Allington. In order to re-found our ancient line. And to create an elder son. That’s what they used to call it, when an up-and-coming bourgeois started buying land and planning to leave everything to a single heir. It has been plain from everything that my uncle Owain has said that my sisters and I were to be entirely out in the cold. You can’t be surprised that none of us has managed very much to love Martin.’

‘I suppose not.’ Appleby glanced curiously at Travis, wondering how he was disposed to receive this not wholly amiable exhibition on the part of his future bride. He could distinguish only that Travis appeared unperturbed. ‘Well, the situation has changed, Miss Allington. Martin is your uncle’s heir no longer. There’s an open field.’

‘Just what do you mean, Sir John?’ There was a startled note in Hope’s voice.

‘Your uncle must choose somebody to leave Allington to, I suppose. Unless he directs that it be turned into a cat and dog home. I’m not sure it isn’t something like that already.’

‘There’s Rasselas,’ Travis said. ‘It might be left to Rasselas. Or jointly to Rasselas and Enzo. But I’m being frivolous again. Let’s return to the treasure. You think that Hope and I were going to sneak off with it, and get her a fair share in that way. Would it have been a frightfully immoral plan?’

‘It would have been totally against the law, Mr Travis.’

‘We might have let Faith and Carrie have a whack. But I suppose that would only be to increase the number of criminals.’

‘Not on what you might call a voluntary basis, perhaps. Under constraint, of course, it might be different.’ Travis paused, and then gave Appleby a most engaging smile. ‘I say, Sir John, what about coming in with us?’

‘Tristram, you’re a complete fool.’ Although Hope Allington said this with emphasis, she didn’t really seem to be believing it. She was – Appleby could see – an intense and dangerous person. What fascinated her in Travis was his inability to take anything wholly seriously.

‘It’s really in that part of the lake?’ Appleby asked. ‘You came on something in all those documents that gave you a strong pointer to that?’

‘Almost a certainty, I’d say. The stream went through the lower ward of the castle, you know. Of course the besiegers had diverted it. But there was a bit of a flood, their dam broke, and the Allingtons managed to get the stuff through their lines in a little boat. Then they sank it in the one deep pool available. It wasn’t what they meant to do, but there was some hitch in meeting a waiting wagon, and it seemed their only chance. One finds it hard to believe, but there’s a big chance that the treasure is there still. Hope’s wretched brother must have gone in pretty well on top of it. When they were fishing him out this evening – him and his flashy car – I was almost afraid that ducats and marks and louis and sovereigns would come up with him.’

‘And pieces of eight,’ Hope said, ‘as in
Treasure Island
.’ She spoke, Appleby thought, a little wildly, as if this queer vision of her dead brother dripping gold was a little too much for her. ‘Why on earth did Martin take it into his head to go in just
there
?’

‘Perhaps he had tumbled to a hint of the truth,’ Travis said. ‘Perhaps he associated that part of the lake with the treasure. And it had a fascination for him. Acted like a sinister magnet. So, when he was tight–’

Hope Allington stood up abruptly.

‘That’s about enough,’ she said. ‘I disliked and despised Martin, and I’ll always say so. But we can spare him mere mortuary jokes.’

The Chief Constable had been as good as his word. He was back at Allington, and Appleby had glimpsed him during the last few minutes, walking up and down the terrace with his host. Owain Allington was talking vehemently, and it was evident that he was still in an agitated state. Colonel Pride was looking uncomfortable, and as Appleby left Hope and her fiancé – having had decidedly enough of them for the moment – it was to find that Pride too had broken away, and was advancing towards him.

‘Appleby, thank goodness you’re here still. Come and take a turn outside. This is a confoundedly awkward thing.’ Pride was silent until they were out of earshot of anyone else. ‘Allington has been spinning me a very queer yarn about this unfortunate nephew of his. Apparently he was in Security – MI5, or something of the sort. Allington says you know about it. Is it true?’

‘Quite true.’

‘Well, I’m damned! But that would be neither here nor there. Not in itself, I mean. Unfortunately Allington has got it into his head–’

‘I know. He’s told me. He thinks Martin Allington’s death wasn’t accidental.’

‘He thinks it’s something out of a thriller, out of some absurd spy story. Chap must be off his rocker, wouldn’t you say? Shock, I suppose. Beastly thing to happen at the bottom of your garden, after all.’

‘No doubt. I’m not at all sure that Allington is off his rocker, all the same.’

‘Good God, man!’ Colonel Pride was staring at Appleby. ‘You don’t suppose such a thing to be true?’

‘That this has been an espionage affair? Not for a moment. And I don’t think that Allington is being frank with us. I don’t think he’s telling us what is really in his head. Pride, do you know this family at all well? They seem an odd lot to me.’

‘I meet Allington from time to time – as you will, now that you live down here. The nieces, with their husbands and so forth, I hardly know at all.’

‘It seems that Allington had intended his nephew to have the Park and estate, and that he hasn’t much else to leave. Martin Allington’s sisters were to get nothing – and they haven’t been feeling pretty. It seems to me possible that Allington himself has been feeling guilty about it, and has exaggerated in his own mind the hostility and resentment that his known intentions have occasioned. And now he’s by way of believing that what we have on our hands this evening is a spot of fratricide. Perhaps that
is
to be off his rocker. It’s certainly to have cut adrift from any commonsense view of the situation.’

‘Well, I’m blessed!’ Colonel Pride was dumbfounded. ‘And of course it is. Such things don’t happen. Or not among decent people.’

‘I don’t know that I’d express it quite as strongly as that. But they’re certainly unusual among the best families.’

‘And you mean to suggest’ – for a moment Pride had glanced with a not unfriendly suspicion at Appleby – ‘that Allington is talking this nonsense about spies by way of distracting our attention from a crime which he believes to have been committed by one of his relations?’

‘I don’t know that I’m suggesting it. Call it a possibility which I feel obliged to entertain.’

‘But the fellow should simply keep quiet! I haven’t shown the slightest disposition to regard the wretched affair as other than an accident. Have you? Have you been putting ideas in his head?’

‘On the contrary, Pride, I feel that he has been trying to put ideas in mine. Of course, if he entertains this notion – which I agree is extremely strange – that there has been foul play inside the family, he may feel that some sort of evidence of the thing’s being a crime is likely to turn up, and he may be laying a species of false trail in advance.’

‘It’s quite absurd. The fellow ought to be locked up. Do you think’ – Pride was suddenly hopeful – ‘we could give him a friendly hint to see his doctor?’

‘No, I don’t.’ For the first time that evening, Appleby felt honestly amused. ‘He wouldn’t take it at all well.’

‘And then there’s this business about the chap with the weird name. Knockabout.’

‘Knockdown.’

‘That’s right. Leofranc Knockdown. When Allington hears about him, it’s bound to set more bees stirring in his bonnet.’

‘Hears about him?’ Appleby was at a loss. ‘But Allington knows all about that already.’

‘Ah!’ Colonel Pride said. ‘I forgot to tell you.’

The two men had paused on the terrace. A lorry had appeared at the edge of the park below them, and half a dozen men were engaged in striking the marquee and loading it up. They must be working overtime. The last vestiges of the fête were to be got rid of more swiftly than Appleby would have expected. It had been the same, he recalled, with the
son et lumière
. He had rather forgotten about the
son et lumière
. And now here was Pride, with his mysterious talk about Knockdown, seemingly coming back to it.

‘You got ahead of us there,’ Pride was saying. ‘And I was most grateful, as I hope I made clear. But my people have managed a pretty smart follow-up I’m glad to say. When I got home with my wife – she’d had enough of this, and I don’t blame her – there was a message waiting for me. This fellow Knockdown is a villain. Was a villain, I ought to say.’

‘My friend Mr Goodcoal didn’t know that. He seems to think that Knockdown was something of a natural.’

‘Low intelligence, certainly. Probably what the quacks call a psychopath. But a villain, all the same. A dangerous criminal, Appleby. Something we don’t much go in for, in these parts.’

‘I’m sure you don’t. And I rather got the impression that Knockdown hadn’t, in fact been in these parts very long.’

‘Precisely. He boarded, as you told me, with some folk of the name of Clamtree, and it seems he was living on a small allowance. He cashed a money-order at the Potton post-office once a week. Respectable connexions. Not gentry, of course, but prosperous trades-people or the like. Keeping a black sheep out of the way, even at considerable expense. I’m told it’s quite a common thing now, even with that class. Like the ne’er-do-well cousin you used to keep in Australia.’

‘I’ve never had cousins of any sort in Australia.’

‘
Une façon de parler
, my dear Appleby.’ Pride paused, as if taking satisfaction in his command of this cultivated expression. ‘Not really a terribly decent thing to do. With this dim-witted Knockdown, that is. Cutting him off from any sort of family support, except for that hard cash. Leaving him idle, too, for the most part. He seems just to have picked up odd jobs here and there. Society at fault, if you ask me.’ Pride paused again, this time to mark so liberal a sentiment. ‘Still, the fact remains. Knockdown by name and Knockdown by nature.’

‘You mean – ?’ Appleby was quite impressed by this flight of fancy.

‘Violent. A couple of minor convictions. Then mixed up in a pretty ugly gang affair – hi-jacking, I gather – that ended in a killing. He was acquitted. But it was what cooked his goose with his law-abiding relations. Can’t think why they didn’t get him off to America. He’d have been in his element there, wouldn’t you say? But a fish out of water in a quiet spot like this.’

‘He tried to interest himself in electricity.’

‘The Americans would have interested him in an electric chair. Come to think of it, though, the end result has been about the same.’ Colonel Pride frowned. ‘Oughtn’t to joke about the poor devil. Casualty of our socialist society, eh?’

Appleby accepted this thought with gravity. He didn’t feel other than grave all round. Pride’s fresh information obscurely disturbed him.

‘And you see what I mean,’ Pride pursued. ‘When Allington gets hold of this – and it can scarcely be withheld from him – it will feed this crack-pot notion of his. He’ll bind Knockdown, as a known criminal, into this international conspiracy, or whatever it is. Probably turn him paraplegic.’

‘Paranoiac?’

‘That sort of thing. Suspecting this and that, all round the clock. Awkward foible in the owner of a place like Allington.’

Appleby didn’t demur to the proposition that paranoia is particularly to be deprecated among the landed gentry.

‘But all that this fresh light on Knockdown suggests to us,’ he said, ‘is that Knockdown perhaps didn’t meet his death merely as a consequence of being curious about things electrical. He was hoping to make off with some piece of equipment which might be valuable. Nothing more than that.’

‘That’s the sensible way to look at it, without a doubt. But I’m not sure that you yourself sound very convinced about it.’

‘Don’t I?’ Appleby was a little taken aback. Colonel Pride, he realized, had his brighter moments. ‘It certainly isn’t that I see any other pattern in the thing.’

‘Perhaps,’ Pride said, ‘it’s that you’re beginning to feel you want to look for one.’

‘I think you may be right.’

‘I’ll be glad to help you in any way I can.’ The Chief Constable appeared conscious that he had uttered this a shade too formally. ‘Count on me,’ he added. ‘I’m uneasy, Appleby, to tell you the truth. It’s something in the atmosphere of this damned place. Deuced different from old Wilfred Osborne’s time.’

Old Wilfred Osborne was making himself agreeable to the Lethbridges. As a young man he had played tennis at some modest county level, and this gave him a kind of toe-hold in the Lethbridge world. So he was offering Ivon and Carrie Lethbridge his views on that year’s Wimbledon, with plenty of pauses in which to submit himself courteously to their better grip of the matter. The exchanges had to be conducted in the subdued manner necessarily adopted by those who believe that conversation on general topics remains a social duty even in face of mortality. Not, of course, that Mrs Lethbridge was consistently subdued. Her shattering laugh was so much a mere reflex action that it would certainly have broken out intermittently at a funeral. Wilfred Osborne would wait for it to subside, and then talk gently on. He had such an air of effortless and relaxed amenity of address that it was almost certain – Appleby thought – that the poor old gentleman was inwardly pretty well screaming to be let out.

And that, of course, was what had to be managed. They must get away. This hanging around a miserable fatality simply because Owain Allington seemed to own a morbid reluctance to close up the scene was too silly to be put up with. At one end of the loggia the silent Enzo – Appleby hadn’t discovered what English he had, if any – was showing signs of being about to produce the sandwiches which had been commanded of him. Sandwiches, Appleby thought, would be the end. He would choke on the first that was offered to him. Nor was it easy to see why Allington’s hospitality had now to be dispensed in this way. Apart from the various members of the family, who had been expected anyway, there wasn’t all that of a crowd. It again seemed to come back to Owain Allington and an eccentric notion of what he had on hand. The effect was of one of those comfortless resorts of semi-private theatrical entertainment, more sketchy even on the catering than the artistic side, at which one paces the damp lawns during intervals, gnawing buns and imbibing tepid liquids through straws.