‘I’m on the way,’ Appleby said, and put down the receiver.
But Appleby’s first call was at a police station, since there was a certain measure of protocol to observe. An hour later, and accompanied by a Detective Inspector called Gamley, he was in Charles Vandervell’s library, and reading Charles Vandervell’s letter.
My Dear Litter,
There are parties one does not quit without making a round of the room, and just such a party I am now preparing to take my leave of. In this instance it must be a round of letters that is in question, and of these the first must assuredly be addressed to you, who have been so faithful a servant and friend. I need not particularize the manner of what I propose to do. This will reveal itself at a convenient time and prove, I hope, not to have been too untidy. And now, all my thanks! I am only sorry that the small token of my esteem which is to come to you must, in point of its amount, reflect the sadly embarrassed state of my affairs.
Yours sincerely,
CHARLES VANDERVELL
‘Most affecting,’ Mr Truebody said. ‘Litter, I am sure you were very much moved.’ Truebody was a large and powerful looking man, disadvantageously possessed of the sort of wildly staring eyes popularly associated with atrocious criminals. Perhaps it was to compensate for this that he exhibited a notably mild manner.
‘It was upsetting, of course.’ Litter said this in a wooden way. Since he had so evident a difficulty in liking anybody, it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t greatly care for the man of business. ‘But we must all remember,’ he added with mournful piety, ‘that while there is life there is hope. A very sound proverb that is – if an opinion may be permitted me.’
‘Exactly!’ Fabian Vandervell, who had been standing in a window and staring out over the gardens, turned round and broke in unexpectedly. ‘At first, I was quite bowled over by this thing. But I’ve been thinking. And it seems to me–’
‘One thing at a time, Fabian.’ Appleby handed the letter back to Gamley, who was in charge of it. ‘Was this simply left on Mr Vandervell’s desk, or something of that kind?’
‘It came by post.’
‘Then where’s the envelope?’
‘Mr Litter’ – Gamley favoured the butler with rather a grim look – ‘has unfortunately failed to preserve it.’
‘A matter of habit, sir.’ Litter was suddenly extremely nervous. ‘When I open a postal communication I commonly drop the outer cover straight into the waste-paper basket in my pantry. It was what I did on this occasion, and unfortunately the basket was emptied into an incinerator almost at once.’
‘Did you notice the postmark?’
‘I’m afraid not, sir.’
‘The envelope, like the letter itself, was undoubtedly in Mr Vandervell’s handwriting?’
‘No, sir. The address was typewritten.’
‘That’s another point – and an uncommonly odd one.’ Fabian had advanced to the centre of the room. ‘It makes me feel the whole thing is merely funny-business, after all. And there’s the further fact that the letter isn’t dated. I’m inclined to think my uncle may simply have grabbed it from the pile, gone off Lord knows where, and then typed out an envelope and posted the thing in pursuance of some mere whim or fantasy.’
‘Isn’t that pretty well to declare him insane!’ Appleby looked hard at Fabian. ‘And just what do you mean by talking about a pile?’
‘I believe he was always writing these things. Elegant valedictions. Making sure that nothing so became him in his life as–’
‘We’ve had Donne; we needn’t have Shakespeare too.’ Appleby was impatient. ‘I must say 1 don’t find the notion of your uncle occasionally concocting such things in the least implausible, psychologically regarded. But is there any hard evidence?’
‘I’ve been hunting around, as a matter of fact. In his papers, I mean. I can’t say I’ve found anything. Uncle Charles may have destroyed any efforts of the kind when he cleared out, taking this prize specimen to Litter with him.’
‘Isn’t all this rather on the elaborate side?’ Truebody asked, with much gentleness of manner. ‘I am really afraid that we are failing to face the sad simplicity of the thing. Everybody acquainted with him knows that Vandervell has been turning increasingly melancholic. We just have to admit that this had reached a point at which he decided to make away with himself. So he wrote this perfectly genuine letter to Litter, and perhaps others we haven’t yet heard of–’
‘Why did he take it away and post it?’ Inspector Gamley demanded.
‘That’s obvious enough, I should have thought. He wanted to avoid an immediate hue and cry, such as might have been started at once, had he simply left the letter to Litter behind him.’
‘It’s certainly a possibility,’ Appleby said. ‘Would you consider, Mr Truebody, that such a delaying tactic on Vandervell’s part may afford some clue to the precise way in which he intended to commit suicide? He tells Litter it isn’t going to be too untidy.’
‘I fear I am without an answer, Sir John. The common thing, where a country gentleman is in question, is to take out a shotgun and fake a more or less plausible accident at a stile. But Vandervell clearly didn’t propose any faking. The letter-writing shows that his suicide was to be declared and open. I feel that this goes with his deepening morbidity.’
‘But that’s not, if you ask me, how Mr Vandervell was feeling at all.’ Litter had spoken suddenly and with surprising energy. ‘For he’d taken the turn, as they say. Or that’s my opinion.’
‘And just what might you mean by that, Mr Litter?’ Gamley had produced a notebook, as if he felt in the presence of too much unrecorded chat.
‘I mean that what Mr Truebody says isn’t what you might call up to date. More than once, just lately, I’ve told myself Mr Vandervell was cheering up a trifle – and high time, too. More confident, in a manner of speaking. Told me off once or twice about this or that. I can’t say I was pleased at the time. But it’s what makes me a little hopeful now.’
‘This more aggressive stance on your employer’s part,’ Appleby asked, ‘disposes you against the view that he must indeed have committed suicide?’
‘Yes, Sir John. Just that.’
There was a short silence, which was broken by a constable’s entering the library. He walked up to Gamley, and then hesitated – as if doubtful whether what he had to say ought to be communicated to the company at large. Then he took the plunge.
‘Definite news at last, sir. And just what we’ve been afraid of. They’ve discovered Mr Vandervell’s body – washed up on a beach near Targan Bay.’
‘Drowned, you mean?’
‘Yes, sir. Beyond doubt, the report says. And they’re looking for his clothes now.’
‘His clothes?’
‘Just that, sir. The body was stark naked.’
Although the North Cornish coast was only a few miles away, Charles Vandervell owned no regular habit of bathing there – this even although he was known to be an accomplished swimmer. Even if the letter to Litter had never been written, it would have had to be judged extremely improbable that his death could be accounted for as an accident following upon a sudden whim to go bathing. For one thing, Targan Bay and its environs, although little built over, were not so unfrequented that a man of conventional instincts (and Vandervell was that) would have been likely to dispense with some decent scrap of swimming apparel. On the other hand – or this, at least, was the opinion expressed by his nephew – a resolution to drown himself might well have been accompanied by just that. To strip naked and swim straight out to sea could well have come to him as the tidy thing.
Yet there were other possibilities, and Appleby saw one of them at once. The sea – and particularly a Cornish sea – can perform astonishing tricks with a drowned man. It can transform into a nude corpse a sailor who has gone overboard in oilskins, sea-boots, and a great deal else. It can thus cast up a body itself unblemished. Or it can go on to whip and lacerate such a body to a grim effect of sadistic frenzy. Or it can set its own living creatures, tiny perhaps but multitudinous, nibbling and worrying till the bones appear. What particular fate awaits a body is all a matter of rocks and shoals – shoals in either sense – and of currents and tides.
Appleby had a feeling that the sea might yield up some further secret about Charles Vandervell yet. Meantime, it was to be hoped there was more to be learnt on land. The circumstances of the missing man’s disappearance plainly needed investigation.
Appleby’s first visit to Pentallon had been on a Monday, and it was a Monday again now. According to Litter, the remainder of that first Monday had been uneventful, except in two minor regards. The formidable Mrs Mountmorris had stayed on almost till dinner-time, which wasn’t Litter’s notion of an afternoon call. There had been a business discussion of some sort, and it had been conducted with sufficient circumspection to prevent Litter, who had been curious, from hearing so many as half a dozen illuminating words. But Litter rather supposed (since one must speak frankly in face of a crisis like the present) that the lady had more than a thought of abandoning her widowed state, and that she was in process of thoroughly sorting out Vandervell’s affairs before committing herself. When she had at length gone away Vandervell had made a number of telephone calls. At dinner he had been quite cheerful – or perhaps it would be better to say that he had appeared to be in a state of rather grim satisfaction. Litter confessed to having been a little uncertain of his employer’s wavelength.
On the Tuesday morning Mr Truebody had turned up at Pentallon, but hadn’t stayed long. Litter had received the impression – just in passing the library door, as he had several times been obliged to do – that Mr Truebody was receiving instructions or requests which were being pretty forcefully expressed. No doubt Mr Truebody himself would speak as to that. There had been no question, Litter opined, of the two gentlemen having words. Or it might be better to say there had been no question of their having a row – not as there had been with Mr Fabian when he turned up on the same afternoon. And about
that
– Litter supposed – Mr Fabian would speak.
This sensational disclosure on Litter’s part could have been aimed only at Appleby, since Inspector Gamley turned out to have been treated to it already. And Fabian seemed to have made no secret of what he now termed lightly a bit of a tiff. He had formed the same conjecture about Mrs Mountmorris’ intentions as Litter had done, and he was ready to acknowledge that the matter wasn’t his business. But between him and his uncle there was some obscure matter of a small family trust. In the changed situation, now showing every sign of blowing up, he had come to Pentallon resolved to get this clarified. His uncle had been, in his view, quite unjustifiably short with him, saying that he had much more important things on his mind. So a bit of a rumpus there had undoubtedly been. But as he had neither carried Uncle Charles out to sea and drowned him, nor so effectively bullied him as to make him go and drown himself, he really failed to see that Litter’s coming up with the matter had much point.
Listening to all this, Appleby was not wholly indisposed to agree. He had a long experience of major catastrophes bringing unedifying episodes of a minor order to light. So he went on to inquire about the Wednesday, which looked as if it might have been the point of crisis.
And Wednesday displayed what Inspector Gamley called a pattern. It was the day of the week upon which Pentallon’s two maidservants, who were sisters, enjoyed their free half-day together. Immediately after lunch, Vandervell had started fussing about the non-delivery of a consignment of wine from his merchant in Bristol. He had shown no particular interest about this negligence before, but now he had ordered Litter to get into a car and fetch the stuff from Bristol forthwith. And as soon as Litter had departed in some indignation on this errand, (Bristol being, as he pointed out, a hundred miles away, if it was a step) Vandervell had accorded both his gardener and his gardener’s boy the same treatment – the quest, this time, being directed to Exeter and a variety of horticultural needs (derris dust among them, no doubt). Apart from its proprietor, Pentallon was thus dispopulated until the late evening. When Litter himself returned it was in a very bad temper, so that he retired to his own quarters for the night without any attempt to report himself to his employer. And as his first daily duty in the way of personal attendance was to serve lunch, and as the maids (as he explained) were both uncommonly stupid girls, it was not until after midday on Thursday that there was a general recognition of something being amiss. And at this point Litter had taken it into his head that he must behave with discretion, and not precipitately spread abroad the fact of what might be no more than eccentric (and perhaps obscurely improper) behaviour on the part of the master of Pentallon.
The consequence of all this was that it took Charles Vandervell’s letter, delivered on the Friday, to stir Litter into alerting the police. And by then Vandervell had been dead for some time. Even upon superficial examination, it appeared, the police surgeons were convinced of that.
Establishing this rough chronology satisfied Appleby for the moment, and he reminded himself that he was at Pentallon not as a remorseless investigator but merely as a friend of the dead man and his nephew. That Charles Vandervell
was
now definitely known to be dead no doubt meant for Inspector Gamley a switching to some new routine which he had better be left for a time to pursue undisturbed. So Appleby excused himself, left the house, and wandered thoughtfully through the gardens. The roses were still not doing too well, but what was on view had its interest, all the same. From a raised terrace walk remote from the house, moreover, there was a glimpse of the sea. Appleby had surveyed this for some moments when he became aware that he was no longer alone. Truebody, that somewhat mysterious man of business, had come up behind him.
‘Are you quite satisfied with this picture, Sir John?’ Truebody asked.
‘This picture?’ For a second Appleby supposed that here was an odd manner of referring to the view. Then he understood. ‘I’d have to be clearer as to just what the picture is supposed to be before I could answer that one.’