Stately Homicide (15 page)

When the Superintendent and the girl had gone, departing together like old friends, Sergeant Bowles brought Jurnet a cup of tea with two biscuits in the saucer.

‘Miss Jessica had the Lincoln Creams. I kept back the Bourbons for you, sir.'

‘You spoil me.' The detective took one of the biscuits and bit into it, savouring the chocolate taste: savouring, above all, the peace of being his own man again. So, he fancied, Moses must have felt in the wilderness, in between those inescapable visitations when the Lord God of Hosts called by to find out what the hell was going on.

He surveyed his new domain with a satisfied air.

‘Those marigolds certainly brighten the place up,' he remarked, to the good Sergeant's manifest gratification. He twisted round in his seat, sipping his tea the while. ‘We're going to need a lock for that door. Once that cabinet starts filling up –'

‘I already rang Headquarters. They're sending a man out.'

‘Might have known you'd have thought of it already.'

‘Thank you, sir.' Sergeant Bowles hesitated, then said carefully: ‘All the same, I'd be willing to sleep over, if you think it's a good idea.'

‘Hardly seems necessary, when we're not twenty minutes out of Angleby.'

‘That's true. I'll take your cup, sir, if you've finished.'

‘Ta. First-rate cuppa.' Into Jurnet's mind came the comfortless picture of his own flat. No Miriam: but at least the hope, or maybe the delusion, that one day she would be back; the two of them back in bed together, possessing and possessed. He could not bear to imagine how it must feel to know, as Sergeant Bowles must know, that there was no hope, ever.

‘Sleeping here might not be such a bad idea at that, if you're quite sure –'

‘Not every day I get put up in a stately home.' Sergeant Bowles perked up considerably.

‘There's a four-poster in the bedroom.
And
the ghosts of Anne Boleyn and George Bullen to keep you company.'

‘I'll make sure they don't get at the Bourbons! Mattress 'd suit me fine. There's one up on the roof I could bring down –'

‘Air bed. I'll give you a hand down with it. Easier than letting the air out and having to pump it up again. I've been thinking it ought to come in, anyway. The cover was blowing about, and it has to rain sometime.'

Back on the roof, Jurnet did not look for the sea, and would not have found it had he tried. The breeze had dropped, a heat mist blurred the outline of trees and fields. From somewhere over to the west, thunder rumbled like a remembered bellyache.

Jurnet remarked: ‘With a bit of luck we'll get the edge of it. Anything that cools the air off –'

Sergeant Bowles, who had grown up in a village the other side of Bersham, observed with reproof in his voice: ‘Won't do the barley a lot of good.'

Revealed, the air bed in its orange cover looked bright and bawdy.

Jurnet said: ‘Better give it a turn over before we take it down. The Bullen-Appleyard Trust won't thank us for infesting their curator's flat with creepy-crawlies.'

Gingerly, the bed curving as they up-ended it, the two laid bare the space beneath. No woodlice, no earwigs nor spiders: a skeletal leaf, a few twiggy bits that Sergeant Bowles leaned over and brushed away.

Jurnet's first thought, upon perceiving what else lay where the air bed had lain, was what to tell the Superintendent – or rather, what not to tell him. He'd not be the one to let it be known the lads had missed something they had no business to have missed.

Sergeant Bowles, who knew exactly what was going through the detective's mind, observed realistically: ‘Can't hardly say it fell out o'the beak of a passing eagle.'

‘S'pose not.'

Only when he had put that first problem out of his mind as insoluble did Jurnet turn to the second, the greater, one. He squatted down on his haunches and examined the small, glittering object with an attention which he knew to be a mere postponement of action. From one trouser pocket he produced a small bag, and from another a scrap of facial tissue – one more tattered relic of Miriam, who thought handkerchiefs unhygienic. He teased open the edges of the little bag, took the tissue between thumb and forefinger, and, with infinite care, holding it delicately by the edges, picked up the earring and dropped it into the bag.

Picked up the beautiful earring, silver and strange red stone carved with hieroglyphics; one of the pair Anna March had worn at the party.

They brought the air bed down to the Long Chamber and left it there, out of the way. Jurnet, who could see that the sight of the party debris was more than Sergeant Bowles's nerves could stand, left him happily going round with a waste paper basket, whilst he himself made for the dining room.

In the little hall, a sound of shuffled papers decided a change of direction. The detective passed the dining room by, moved further along the Bokhara runner, past the bedroom and the bathroom, and stuck his head round the study door.

Ferenc Szanto sat at the desk, in front of him one of the boxes containing the Appleyard papers. The lid was off and Jurnet could see the man's hands, sausage-fingered as they were, moving through the contents with precision and economy.

Looking for what?

Jurnet said: ‘Good morning. Anything I can do for you?'

There was no start of surprise. A frozen moment, though, before the man swung round in his chair, the thick, white hair flying, the broad, comical face a moon of smiles.

‘The detective-inspector in person, and hot on the scent!' The Hungarian rose, approached Jurnet with hand outstretched. The latter, at a loss how to avoid it, suffered his hand to be shaken. ‘And are you close on the heels of the murderer of poor Mr Shelden?'

‘Pretty close.' Jurnet's voice was firm with a confidence he did not feel. He directed his gaze pointedly at the open box. ‘Don't tell me you're at it again!'

‘Suspicious, eh?' The man's broad chest heaved with suppressed laughter, ‘Next thing I know, eh, if I'm not careful enough, I shall find myself down at the police station, as they say in the papers, helping the police with their inquiries!'

‘I hope you're always ready to help the police without having to be carted down to Headquarters to do it.'

‘Headquarters! Then I
must
be important!' The Hungarian looked intently at the detective, thrusting his big head forward. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, and with an abrupt end to raillery, he stated calmly: ‘I am here, as a matter of fact, not only to take away, but also to bring: to make sure that the papers are not Laz Appleyard, authorised version, nor yet Laz Appleyard, revised version, but Laz Appleyard the complete omnibus edition, unexpurgated and unabridged.'

The man took a step or two about the room, moving with an indecision that seemed foreign to his nature. He came to a stop with his back to the window, a position that bothered Jurnet who preferred the people he was interviewing to place themselves where the light fell full on their faces.

The detective said: ‘So long as it isn't Laz Appleyard, the plausible lie.'

‘Ha!' the other exclaimed, throwing up his hands in a gesture Jurnet classified as foreign. ‘You remember my own words against me, eh, when all I wanted, at the party, seeing the poor young man so cocksure he could clap my old friend Laz between hard covers like a bluebottle you only have to stay very still till it is inside, then
bang!
you have squashed it dead on the page, was to prick his conceit, if that were possible; sow a seed of becoming doubt. St George of England, Lawrence of Arabia, Appleyard of Hungary – all three, I think equally fairy stories: legends, useful like a double Scotch for stiffening the spirits in times of national emergency. But Laz Appleyard the man, not the hero –' into Ferenc Szanto's voice had come a note of deepest melancholy – ‘the devil, not the man – that is another story altogether.' ‘I think,' said Ferenc Szanto, ‘you wonder if I have not killed Mr Shelden in fear he might put into his book something I do not want written there.' With a palm upraised to stop Jurnet, who was on the point of making an interjection: ‘Unless, perhaps, with your renowned British justice, you are prepared to give me the benefit of the doubt until Mr Biographer Two, and Three, and Four are also found dead at the bottom of the ramparts. You see how absurd it is. So, though it is partly for my own protection, it is chiefly to bring you closer to the person you seek that I tell you now that other story – the story of the real Laz Appleyard. At the end of it, if you believe me, there will be one less name on your list.'

‘You called him devil.'

‘Ah! I am glad I have caught your attention!' The Hungarian resumed his seat, now in full light; the shallowness of shadow accentuating the Asiatic cast of his broad features. ‘What strange things you discover in this beautiful place, eh? – so peaceful in the English way, so well-bred about keeping its secrets in the family. First you learn that Queen Anne Boleyn slept with her brother like any feeble-minded peasant. Now you hear that Appleyard of Hungary –' The man broke off and sat for a moment motionless, looking down at his hands splayed on the desk top. Jurnet, the man trained to listen, said nothing. Waited.

At last Ferenc Szanto raised his head. Looked past the detective, out of the window.

‘It was magic, those childhood days at Kasnovar, the estate the old countess brought to the Appleyards as her marriage portion. Magic not just because I was a boy and the world seemed an apple that was mine for the picking; but because Laz Appleyard was my friend. That I was only the son of the Kasnovar blacksmith and he the heir to land and riches I knew very well, but, to a child, what do such things matter? Together we galloped the half-wild horses of the
puszta
, climbed trees, swam naked in the lakes and rivers, rode on top of the great hay-waggons, half-drugged by the scent of the hay.' The man regarded the detective with a quizzical smile. ‘A pastoral idyll, eh?' Shaking his head: ‘Not so. Because, young as I was, I knew even then that there were things wrong with my friend – a cruelty, a love of destruction for its own sake which both repelled and intrigued me. Once he climbed a tree that was as skinny as a pole – not a single branch from the ground to its sprouting head, you would have said not even a monkey could climb such a tree – but up he went, up and up, until he had climbed to a great, untidy nest a stork had made at the very top. The nest was full of baby birds a few days old, and I watched from below as Laz reached in, and picked them up, and threw them down, one after the other. Their little bones were so frail they splintered to nothing on the hard ground. Then the mother bird came back to the nest, and she went for Laz with her great beak, squawking like a demon. But he had a knife in his belt, a beautiful curving dagger one of his ancestors had taken from the Turks, and in another minute the great bird was lying dead at the foot of the tree along with what remained of her chicks.

‘Shall I tell you something?' The Hungarian shook his head in a kind of awed disbelief. ‘I knew he had done something unforgivable, yet it only bound me to him more closely than ever. We were friends. Whatever he did, I was part of it. The blood of the stork and her brood was on my head also. I was captivated by his terrible audacity, joined to him by dark forces I could not understand.' A sigh. ‘And still do not understand after all these years.'

With a shake of the head Ferenc Szanto set the insoluble problem aside, and returned to his narrative.

‘Well, Inspector Jurnet, as you may have heard, the war came and childhood ended. I hardly know which was the greater tragedy. For you in England the war, eh, was to beat Hitler, and, when you had beaten him, the war was over. So simple! For Hungarians, nothing is ever simple. Some people – like the English, I think – have learnt to control their own history, to canalise it, build locks and weirs which regulate its flow. For Hungarians, history is a devouring flood which sweeps everything before it, good and bad alike. The most an individual can hope to do is find a convenient rooftop to straddle, or a piece of wreckage to cling to, while the waters rage past.'

‘Laz Appleyard,' Jurnet reminded him.

‘My friend Laz,' said Ferenc Szanto. Again there was a moment of quiet before the man began to speak again. ‘Some of it is true,' he said. ‘Some of that stuff they have put in the Appleyard Room for visitors to see. During the uprising, he got more than a hundred people out of the country.'

‘That must have taken some doing.'

‘A great deal of doing.'

‘Including his wife, I understand.'

‘Mara.' The man pronounced the name like a benediction. ‘Mara Forro, the daughter of my employer and benefactor, Janos Forro, who was himself the righthand man of Imre Nagy, our Prime Minister. Except that Mara wasn't Laz's wife in those days. She was going to marry me.'

‘I see.'

‘You see nothing,' said Ferenc Szanto, without animus. ‘No Englishman makes a fool of himself for love unless he is a fool already; and you, Inspector, are no fool. So: suddenly my friend Laz comes back to Hungary. How happy I am to meet him again! At once we are so close, we could have been children again. Except that he has grown tall and beautiful, a fairy prince, and I – even though, thanks to Janos Forro, I too have got on in the world – I still looked like what I was, the son of the Kasnovar blacksmith. The surprise would have been if my Mara had
not
fallen in love with the young god who had appeared out of the blue to help Hungary in its fight for freedom.'

‘You must still have been surprised to see him.'

‘Surprised?' The man repeated, as if the point had never before been put to him. ‘I do not think so. It was a time when nothing could have surprised us, when everything that happened was strange and wonderful, as in a dream. Until the day the Russian tanks rolled back into Budapest, and we woke up.'