Appleby's Other Story (21 page)

‘Very good, sir.' Henderson asked no question. He was a man wholly at ease in a hierarchical system.

‘I've absolutely broadcast the fact that I'm going home. What I actually propose is to walk quietly back to the house and take another leisured look round. Dinner will be keeping everybody busy – even Catmull at table and Mrs Catmull in her kitchen. Have you left any men in Elvedon yourself?'

‘Two, just at the moment. To keep an unobtrusive eye on things, you might say.'

‘Quite right. Will they keep an unobtrusive eye on me?'

‘They know who you are pretty well, Sir John, and will carry out any instructions you give.'

‘I'll only want them not to hold me up. But wait a minute. Will one of them have the key of Maurice Tytherton's workroom?'

‘No, sir. It's in my pocket now.'

‘Then I think I'll relieve you of it, just for the time being. Can you be back at Elvedon yourself by nine o'clock?'

‘Yes, of course. Earlier, if you prefer it.'

‘Nine will do. And I think you'd better have a few more men around. We'll call it the hour at which we begin to close in.'

‘That's a very encouraging expression, Sir John.'

‘Here we are.' They were running over the Palladian bridge. ‘Stop on the other side, and we'll admire the view. And it won't take me ten minutes to tell you what tentative conclusions I've come to in this affair.'

The superannuations of sunk realms
, Appleby told himself. This time, he had started at the top of the house, and wandered through a seemingly endless series of attic rooms. Some were small, and some very large. Some harboured nothing except dust and cobwebs. Others were piled to the roof with the kind of junk – often rather opulent-looking in an outmoded fashion – that accumulates over the generations in a large country house. Appleby wondered whether there had been a radical clearance when the first Tythertons took over Elvedon, or whether in a fabric so generous of elbow-room nobody had much bothered. The acquisitiveness of the English propertied classes – he reflected as, in one chamber, he peered into a jungle of abandoned iron and brass bedsteads – is evidenced in such places. They won't let anything go. Even when you know you will never have twenty indoor servants again, you don't send such humble amenities as you have hitherto allowed them to the scrap yard. You tell the remaining half dozen to cart the stuff up to your lumber-rooms. No doubt there was something in it for the social historian. Suppose the whole of Elvedon to be suddenly buried under lava, and then excavated a thousand years on. A refined researcher, comparing what was down below with what had been banished to this obscure elevation, might be able to trace certain radical changes of taste in the course of the house's quite short history. Hip-baths: they had their date. But bird cages – when had the English gentry gone in for caged birds in a big way? Appleby didn't know – but there was one room almost full of such contraptions. Perhaps one scholar, well-seen in such matters, would tumble to what might be called the Maurice Tytherton Revolution. Statues and busts heavy enough to threaten to fall through the floor, furniture which had enjoyed one spell of modishness or another, Regency frames without pictures and Victorian pictures without frames, tartan carpets which must have been imported by some Tytherton well affected to the dear Queen: there had certainly at some recent date been a wholesale banishing from public view at Elvedon of these and much else. No doubt Maurice Tytherton – that man of taste, as Tommy Pride had early certified him to be – had been responsible for much overturning of established nineteenth-century sanctities in his ancestral home.

As far as he was concerned, Appleby told himself, these attics were no go. The police search whole counties for buried bodies; airports and transatlantic liners for time bombs; vast hotels for wads of forged banknotes and packets of doubtful drugs. Quite frequently their efforts appear to be crowned with success, or so we are assured in newspapers. But even humble operations of this sort take time. Set a squad of men searching here for a specific object, or class of objects, and it might be days rather than hours before they produce results. Appleby dusted himself down, and descended to the next floor.

Here, however, he had done some exploring already, and his present visit would have struck a casual observer as somewhat perfunctory. He entered half a dozen rooms, furnished or empty, and peered absently into a few cupboards and through a few windows. He paced a corridor, whistling moodily the while. Then he checked himself, reflecting that, while the high ceremony of dinner was going on below, a certain amount of house-maiding might go on up here. The Italian girls interested him, but he didn't want to run into any of them just yet. It might be useful, however, to know how they came and went, and he gave a few minutes to finding the service staircase. Having descended it to the first floor, he went straight to the workroom. Elvedon, despite the high lucidity of its architecture, was rather easy to get lost in; nevertheless he was beginning to feel he could now get round it in the dark. He unlocked the door, entered, and closed it behind him.

Dusk was falling, and he switched on the lights. What his eye first fell on was Mark Tytherton's photograph, once so affectingly reported on by Miss Kentwell, which indeed stood in a silver frame on the dead man's writing-table. He picked it up and examined it curiously. What one would have expected, somehow, would have been the portrait of a schoolboy. But this was the portrait – was very much the portrait – of the young man Appleby knew. He frowned over this, turned the thing over, removed the back of the frame, and found himself looking at the gold-lettered name and address of a photographer in Buenos Aires. So no wonder Mark was the heir of Elvedon; the propensity his father and he had formed for quarrelling hadn't impaired the decent intercourse this recent gift testified to. Appleby spent a further moment or two peering rather closely at this piece of evidence, and then returned it to its place.

He stared at the floor and stared at the ceiling – rather as if expecting them to reveal trap-doors and spy-holes. He walked over to the Goya, and stared at that. Then – and he might have been a man overtaken by
folie de doute
– he reached up and passed a cautious finger over the
impasto
with which the painter had rendered the highlights of this Spanish grandee's cravat. He shook his head, turned away, and made a final survey of the room at large. He nodded – much as a stage manager might do when satisfied with his
mise en scène
– and then switched off the lights, left the room, and locked its door behind him. He glanced at his watch. It wasn't likely that the present ill-assorted company at Elvedon would much linger over their evening meal. But he still had at least fifteen minutes to himself. In that time, there were several matters upon which he would be glad to instruct himself. He made his way to the ground floor.

 

The door of Catmull's pantry was ajar. As once before, Appleby walked in.

‘Oh, hullo!' he said. ‘Why aren't you eating your nice dinner?'

‘I pleaded a headache.'

‘Ah – what is called a nervous headache, no doubt. You really ought a little to spare yourself. Incidentally, I should have expected the Catmulls to lock up when leaving their household goods unguarded.'

‘They did. I've just picked the lock.' Miss Kentwell sounded mildly surprised, as if the fact might have been taken for granted.

‘I see. Well, I'm afraid you must be called a most disingenuous lady. Would you still maintain that there might be circumstances in which you could entertain high expectations of our friend Archie Tytherton – as a co-respondent, or whatever?'

‘I don't know why not, Sir John.' Miss Kentwell, who had been studying one of Catmull's emaciated racehorses, now took the creature boldly from its hook, and placed it face downwards on a table. ‘In my trade one does occasionally kill two birds with one stone. Or affects to be after one bird, while really aiming at another.'

‘This unfortunate dead man, Maurice Tytherton, really believed you to be here because he had retained you to spy out and document his wife's infidelities?'

‘Most certainly. And so I was.'

‘But also?'

‘Well, it is perfectly true that my agency accepted what may be called a double-booking.' Miss Kentwell, although her ear was obviously alert for sounds in the corridor, smiled at Appleby, very much at her ease. Then she tapped the back of the heavy frame before her. ‘And it can't be said that I haven't carried out my assignment. Just take a look, Sir John.'

Appleby took a look – and spent some minutes taking other looks.

‘Well, well,' he said. ‘Tell me, would it be
Novoexport
?'

‘Yes, indeed. And I may say they are excellent employers. As for these things' – and Miss Kentwell made a gesture round the walls – ‘they are undoubtedly the legal property of the government of the USSR.'

‘Who send you chummy letters with nice stamps. And not in vain, since the stuff will now be returned to them.'

‘Indeed, it will. I shall have the pleasure of alerting that nice Inspector Henderson – and he will have the pleasure of being active in two
causes célèbres
at once. He will have quite a spin with Interpol, and his photograph will be in the papers.'

‘I knew from the first that you were the most benevolent of women. I positively began to believe in all that charitable zeal.' Appleby turned to the door. ‘By the way, do your many accomplishments include fluent Italian?'

‘I am afraid not.'

‘A pity – then I must make do with my own. Henderson, incidentally, is going to summon a little gathering for nine o'clock.'

‘Indeed, Sir John – and for what purpose?'

‘A short conference over Tytherton's death. I think it fair that everybody should know exactly how it came about.'

‘Which is something that
you
know?'

‘Oh, certainly, Miss Kentwell. I have all the facts. But I rather hope to find a further scrap or two of evidence.'

‘And these?' Miss Kentwell again pointed to Catmull's picture gallery. ‘These are another story?'

‘Almost.' Appleby laughed – briefly and grimly. ‘But not quite.'

 

‘
Buona sera, signorina
,' Appleby said – quite confidently, so far.

‘
Buona sera, signor
.' The Italian girl – and this was the prettiest of them, Appleby thought – was a shade startled by the sudden appearance of a gentleman in this obscure corner of Elvedon's domestic offices. But she wasn't disapproving. She probably had rather a dull life. Archie Tytherton had doubtless made improper advances to her, but there surely couldn't be much fun in that. And at least she wasn't supposing that Appleby was on that kind of prowl himself. She was looking puzzled and expectant, but innocent enough.

‘
Come vi chiamate?
' Appleby asked paternally.

‘
Mi chiamo Annunziata
,
signor
.'

‘
Bene!
' Appleby received this information with grave approval. ‘
Per favore, Annunziata
,
dove sono i rifiuti?
'

‘
Signor?
' It was perhaps the oddity rather than the obscurity of this question that bewildered Annunziata. And in his quest of domestic litter Appleby now threw in everything he had.

‘
I cestini dei rifiuti
,' he said, ‘
e della carta straccia. Mi capite? La cartàccia
.' He paused. ‘
Carta da gettare nei rifiuti?
' he produced as a final variant. ‘
Dove?
'

‘
Suvvia!
' Annunziata smiled brilliantly. However eccentric these demands, she had understood them. ‘
Andiamo!
' she amplified. And she led Appleby into regions of Elvedon yet more humble and obscure.

 

 

‘It is very good of you all to have come together in this way,' Appleby said. ‘Particularly as for some of you, as for myself, it's a matter of standing room only. The late Mr Tytherton didn't intend this room for large companies, and the furnishing is a little inadequate to our present purposes. However, it will not be necessary to detain you long.'

Nine o'clock had sounded on the stable clock, and the round-up had been brought about in the workroom. Mark Tytherton, with what was perhaps an unconscious assumption of proprietorship, had sat down behind his father's writing-table. Alice Tytherton and Mrs Graves were perched together – most inappropriately – on the Italian
cassone
. Miss Kentwell was on a low chair in front of the window, occupied with her embroidery. The only other comfortable chairs had been appropriated by Carter and Raffaello. Archie Tytherton was sitting cross-legged on the floor – perhaps from an obscure feeling that he might get off more lightly if he looked as much as possible like a small boy. Ramsden was leaning against the door. Catmull was standing in one corner of the room (it would not have been proper for him to sit down, anyway), and Inspector Henderson in another. Mrs Catmull had been excused these curious proceedings. And Sir John Appleby stood in front of the fireplace, with Goya's nobleman above his head. It was now an hour after sunset, and almost dark outside. But the evening was warm, and the window had been left open and the curtains undrawn. When the moon rose it would be a beautiful night.

 

‘Some of you may be a little puzzled,' Appleby began, ‘why I myself am here at all. It simply happened that my friend Colonel Pride brought me over this morning for the purpose of introducing me to Mr Tytherton. There was some idea that I might be consulted, I think. Certainly, when I heard that a number of valuable paintings had disappeared from Elvedon a couple of years ago, it occurred to me that Mr Tytherton might have it in mind to ask me whether I thought any useful steps could still be taken to effect their recovery. It is a matter, I should explain, of which I have experience. The first supposition of mine, however, has proved to be wrong.'