Appleby's Other Story (24 page)

‘Yes, I would. You were just going to embark on it.'

‘But a
convincing
case? I'm thinking of a judge and jury.'

‘Perhaps that's a different matter.' Ramsden had suddenly turned away. ‘May I ask you something, my dear Appleby?'

‘By all means. In fact, I undertake to try to answer quite faithfully absolutely any question you care to put to me.'

‘What first lodged your sense of the matter quite firmly in your head?'

‘Something I was told by your unwitting collaborator, Miss Kentwell. Do you recall trying to prevent her looking out of a window?'

‘Ah.'

‘I had to ask myself why. You had your wits about you, and knew that there was nothing more alarming or significant in the prospect than a screeching peacock, perched on the head of Hermes. But what about the
viewpoint
? What if it might reveal to her, then or later, that she wasn't where she thought she was? As soon as I'd asked myself that, I saw the truth. The statue of Hermes is directly below Tytherton's workroom, but it is obvious that it is also directly below the room immediately above as well. You and Miss Kentwell were – in the first instance – in that upper room. You didn't want her to see that, on some later occasion in the real workroom, she might become conscious that she was viewing from a perplexingly different elevation. On that, what may be called the whole theory of the dummy room came to me. It was the ingeniously created instrument of an alibi in what was to be a premeditated murder. But juries, you know, don't much care for ingenuity – not, I mean, when it has to be urged by a prosecution. So – seriously – don't you think you still have a chance?'

‘Go on, Appleby.'

‘The entire architecture of the place favoured the deception. Symmetry, balance, repetition are the keynotes. Grove nods to grove.'

‘What's that?'

‘Never mind. At least the second floor simply echoes the first. At the same time the scale of the place makes any wandering course through it a bit confusing. Choose somebody – like Miss Kentwell – unfamiliar with the house; conduct her on a rambling tour at night; and she mayn't notice – even though she is a private detective, she mayn't notice! – that the room to which she appears to have been brought back at eleven-twenty is not the room – the absolutely identical room – to which she was introduced at eleven o'clock. And in the interim, during which you haven't been out of her sight, a man appears to have been killed in it. It was as simple as that. But Maurice Tytherton was, in fact, dead in his real workroom before you appeared downstairs and proposed the little tour which took Miss Kentwell into the dummy one.' Appleby paused. ‘But consider that jury again. It would want to know how this odd facsimile could be created – and then uncreated.'

‘No doubt.' Ramsden had shifted a little on the balustrade, and his hand had gone deeper into his pocket. ‘Do tell me all about that.'

‘You often had the house virtually to yourself, and on that almost deserted second floor you could go to work at leisure. The workroom isn't copiously furnished, and it was all sufficiently easy, I imagine, to have been quite fun to fudge up. The Goya, as we've seen, was no trouble at all – not for a superficial glance. Nor was a dim old Italian
cassone
. Nor was borrowing, and rephotographing, that photograph of Mark. No, it was all perfectly simple – curtains and rugs and the rest of it – given plenty of time. Of course, dismantling your precious assemblage was another matter. At that, you clearly had to work pretty fast this morning, so that there should be nothing but an innocently empty room again. But among all that endless junk on the floor above, clearly, one could bury a whole houseful of stuff: picture-frame, writing-table, chairs, what you will. It would be quite a job, I imagine, to reassemble that dummy room again now. But I do deprecate your being so casual about the torn-up colour print – to say nothing of the torn-up photograph. That, by the way, was the other scrap of evidence I came upon, with the help of a nice Italian girl, newly arrived in what may be called the family wastepaper basket. You ought to have had your own little bonfire, Ramsden. You really ought.'

‘When are you going to tell your friend Henderson all this?'

‘Now, now – don't start that lethal rush. Henderson knows it all already. At a pinch, I'd be expendable.'

‘And he knows what it was all in aid of?'

‘Certainly – and I don't think even that worried jury would lose sleep over that one. You were the mastermind in Elvedon, Ramsden. You ran the place – and perhaps rather more to your own occasional profit than it would have been comfortable for your employer to get to know. But that's speculative, and a minor issue. The bogus robbery two years ago, and the subsequent big
coup
with the profits: you were certainly the controlling intelligence behind both. And when it began to appear that the ikons could produce, even on a black market, a very large sum of money indeed – well, you didn't see why it shouldn't all come to you. There would be only Catmull to square. He had his own plans, perhaps, for double-crossing you. But they would have been ineffectual ones. He's a petty rascal, if ever there was one: of low intelligence, likely to be extremely scared, and ready to make himself scarce at very inconsiderable cost.'

‘I wouldn't dispute that character sketch, for what it is worth.' Ramsden laughed softly. ‘Of course, a lot of other things were happening at Elvedon. Your jury might find them a shade confusing.'

‘Perfectly true. Capable counsel could cast very effective suspicion over at least half a dozen people under this roof now. The unexpected must have come near to unnerving you more than once, Ramsden. Mark's turning up, and proving to have been with his father almost immediately before your own operation was due to begin. The sudden rumpus following Archie's being discovered in bed – if they bothered about a bed – with Mrs Graves. Tytherton's sending for his solicitor. Above all, the shattering realization that Archie had actually been staring at the dead man at an hour which, if it were to be reliably pinpointed, would blow your whole alibi business sky-high. Yet in all these things there was the positive advantage which might come to you from utter confusion. Your original plan had gone wrong – but you had a chance of getting away with your crime, all the same.'

‘Yet I haven't?'

‘Let's face it – you have not.' Appleby was suddenly grim. ‘The dummy room is a fact. We
can
put it together again, if it takes us a month – and produce sworn testimony that every item was found by the police dispersed through this house. The only two people who could extract an alibi out of it were Miss Kentwell and yourself. And of you two, only you yourself had the time and opportunity to fabricate it. So perhaps, Ramsden, the game
is
up.'

‘Yes. Perhaps it is.'

‘You had bad luck, I think, in the way your career has fallen out. Maurice Tytherton must have been a pretty poor specimen, it seems to me – although I wouldn't tell Mark so in just those words.'

‘Mark knows. But he was rather fond of his father, all the same.'

‘It can't be said that you were. You wasted your talents in running Elvedon for him and his rotten crowd. And you resented it.' Appleby paused, and looked sombrely at Ronnie Ramsden. ‘But one mustn't get murdering people just because they're rubbishing themselves, and tag around with a pretty grotty set.'

‘Thank you, bishop, another sermon.' Ramsden uttered these words mockingly. But he tensed himself as he did so – so that Appleby, who had a developed instinct for danger, found himself doing the same. And Ramsden sensed this. ‘All right, all right,' he said. ‘I haven't got that gun, as a matter of fact. It's in the lake.'

‘Which is not a bad place for it.'

‘And what about this place?' Speaking idly now, Ramsden glanced around him, as if suddenly prompted to take the dimensions of Elvedon. ‘A ghastly pile' – he tapped lightly with his foot – ‘weighed down under all this mass of lead. In this light, it's like an arctic sea. Do you know, Appleby? There's something to be said for being a swimmer into cleanness leaping.'

And suddenly Ramsden was coming at Appleby with a rush. Or so, for only a brief moment, Appleby thought. The lantern was only a little aside from Ramsden's path; he swerved suddenly – to rise as from a springboard and with perfect timing. There was a crash of glass, and the young man had vanished.

Appleby ran forward, and at the risk of an ugly vertigo stuck his head through the shattered pane. Very far below was the splendid hall of Elvedon, brightly lit. From this viewpoint alone, perhaps, could one be aware of the perfect elegance of its patterned black and white marble floor. It was a pattern marred now by a shapeless black splodge in the middle.

Of a fall like that, there could be only one issue. Appleby – as Ronnie Ramsden had claimed to do on another fatal occasion – looked instinctively at his watch. It was just twenty-four hours, he supposed, since Maurice Tytherton had died.

He turned away, left the roof, and descended – rather slowly – through the several stories of Elvedon Court.

 

 

John Appleby first appears in
Death at the President's Lodging
, by which time he has risen to the rank of Inspector in the police force. A cerebral detective, with ready wit, charm and good manners, he rose from humble origins to being educated at 'St Anthony's College', Oxford, prior to joining the police as an ordinary constable.

Having decided to take early retirement just after World War II, he nonetheless continued his police career at a later stage and is subsequently appointed an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, where his crime solving talents are put to good use, despite the lofty administrative position. Final retirement from the police force (as Commissioner and Sir John Appleby) does not, however, diminish Appleby's taste for solving crime and he continues to be active,
Appleby and the Ospreys
marking his final appearance in the late 1980's.

In
Appleby's End
he meets Judith Raven, whom he marries and who has an involvement in many subsequent cases, as does their son Bobby and other members of his family.

 

 

 

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels