‘Gaffer’s Grave?’
‘Poor Isaac,’ Appleby said.
‘I don’t think I know about that.’ The young woman gave Appleby a glance of some suspicion.
‘Ah.’ Appleby found his invention failing him. ‘Did you go up to Lewis Packford’s funeral?’ he asked rather abruptly.
‘I’m not quite clear why it was in London.’
‘Something about a family grave. And only his brother Edward went. I didn’t. It would have been awkward. If, I mean, we had
both
gone.’
Appleby was puzzled. ‘You and his brother?’
‘No, no. Myself and this Alice woman. Of course, we could have tossed for it. But it didn’t seem quite reverent.’
‘I see.’ And Appleby did see. He realized, that is to say, that this was one of the two ladies with some claim to be called Mrs Packford. And the Alice woman must be the other. ‘Do I understand,’ he asked steadily, ‘that you and this Alice woman were both at Urchins when your – when Packford died?’
The young woman nodded briskly over the wheel. ‘Yes. You see, we had both got wind of Lewis’ disgraceful behaviour simultaneously.’
‘Got wind of it? You mean, it wasn’t a matter of his confessing what he’d done? It had somehow leaked out?’
‘This woman and I received anonymous letters by the same post. And we both went straight to Urchins at once.’
‘I wonder if you realize,’ Appleby said, ‘what a lot of explaining this extraordinary situation seems to require? Who is this Alice woman, anyway?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea, Sir John.’
‘I find that rather hard to believe.’ Appleby spoke patiently but with firmness. ‘Even if you had never heard of her before the last few days, you have shared with her since then, it seems, a most shocking and harrowing experience. You must have found out something about her. Does she belong to the learned classes – with a line on Thomas Horscroft’s Nether Ladds, and Seth Cowmeadow, and all that?’
The young woman driving Appleby gave a hollow laugh. ‘She might have a line on the “Welcome Home.” I understand Alice is a barmaid.’
‘I see. Well, it’s a perfectly respectable calling. Would you say that she is simple-minded?’
‘Entirely so.’
‘Then, if I may say so, she is much the less puzzling of the two of you. May I, by the way, ask your name?’
‘You ought to call me Mrs Packford.’
‘But at the moment I can’t tell – can I? – whether that would be quite fair to Alice. I think you’d better give me your Christian name. Only, of course, for the purposes of ready identification and convenience in internal monologue. It looks as if I shall be doing quite a lot of internal monologuising over this affair. Aloud, I shall call you madam.’
‘My name is Ruth.’ The young woman had thrown the engine out of gear and was bringing the car to a halt. They were in a deserted lane between high hedges. She had presumably decided that some more leisured conference was desirable before introducing Appleby to Urchins. ‘Aren’t you striking,’ she asked, ‘rather a frivolous note? After all, poor Lewis died only–’
‘I’m very sorry, I’m sure.’ Appleby was sincerely apologetic. ‘It’s only, you know, that I don’t want to strike a note that’s all too uncomfortably grim.’
Ruth edged herself sideways in the driving-seat at this and gave him a rather uncertain glance. She wasn’t after all, he noticed, exactly young. And she wasn’t fast, and she wasn’t stupid, and she wasn’t – superficially, at least – emotional. In fact, she was quite a problem. ‘Grim?’ she now asked. ‘I’d supposed that, although there’s still quite a bit of a mess lying around, the real grimness was over.’
‘Perhaps it is, in a way.’ Appleby wondered if Ruth was really rather a hard type. ‘But I think it fair to explain that the case – for it must be called that – is by no means closed. For instance, Lewis Packford’s solicitor – who is not in the least a fool – is disposed to believe that his client was murdered. He has, I’m bound to admit, a very queer notion of why the crime was committed. But his actual suspicion mustn’t be accounted negligible.’
Ruth had made no attempt to interrupt this speech, and she remained silent for a further moment now. When she did speak, it was rather surprisingly. ‘But it’s not possible,’ she said. ‘You know it’s not possible. I wish it was.’
‘You wish that Packford had been murdered?’
‘Well, yes – in a way.’ As she said this, Ruth looked rather bewildered, as if the oddity of the sentiment were coming home to her. ‘Because it was unlike him – to kill himself because he’d been a bloody fool.’ She paused. ‘It’s disconcerting, I suppose, to have a person one believes one knows well acting suddenly out of character. Particularly when the action is, at least by conventional standards, a little craven.’
‘Or even ridiculous?’ Appleby, as he asked this, was conscious that he was quickly coming to have a considerable respect for Ruth. Whether he was coming to have any liking for her was a different matter. And the mere puzzle of her grew. She was too intelligent for her own slightly ludicrous situation to be at all easily explained.
‘Or even ridiculous,’ she agreed gravely. ‘But I don’t think, Sir John, that you can have been given all the facts. Lewis left a message saying–’
‘We needn’t tackle that now,’ Appleby said. He was determined to steer this interview his own way. ‘But I may say that I’ve had a pretty full report from an experienced officer of my own.’
‘Yes, I think I met him. Mr Cavill.’
‘Exactly. And it’s fair to say that he agrees with you, madam.’
‘But you don’t?’
Appleby took a second to answer this. ‘I do see,’ he said presently, ‘some possibility of keeping an open mind.’
Ruth Packford – if it was proper to call her that – had produced a cigarette-case. As she held it out to Appleby he noticed that her fingers were those of a heavy smoker. In spite of her air of brisk competence she was probably one who didn’t find life altogether easy. But of the competence there was no doubt. It was instanced in her having taken on the job of meeting Appleby at the railway station. She must have taken some initiative over that, since she was herself, according to her own account, too recent an arrival at Urchins to make such an assignment a matter of course. Certainly one felt she had never driven this particular old car before. She had presumably possessed herself of it with the object of contriving just this present
tête-à-tête
.
‘Of course,’ she was saying, ‘I’m perfectly willing to be open-minded too. It’s the grand condition of all successful research. My work teaches me that.’
Appleby received this respectfully. Ruth, he supposed, was whatis called a professional woman – a species sometimes uneasily conscious of amateurishness in some of the normal fields of female activity. She was looking at him slightly defiantly now. ‘And you were unaware,’ he asked, ‘that there was this other person in Lewis Packford’s life?’
There was a moment’s silence. Appleby was conscious that his question, as phrased, had a somewhat literary ring, so that she might judge she was being made fun of. But she answered at once. ‘I hadn’t a clue,’ she said. ‘Is that very queer?’
‘I don’t know if it’s so queer as the fact that nobody seems to have had a clue about
you
. Mr Rood, for instance, who was Packford’s solicitor. It seems extraordinary that a man should conceal a marriage from his solicitor.’
‘He might well conceal
two
.’
‘A man is certainly likely to conceal the fact that he had been so idiotic as to contract a bigamous and invalid marriage. But why conceal the first and valid one?’
Ruth laughed. ‘But that, you see, was the one with me. And it was perfectly natural.’
‘I assure you it doesn’t bear that appearance. Why should you contract a secret marriage with a perfectly respectable and indeed eminent person, and never so much as enter his house?’
She laughed again. ‘The explanation is so obvious that I’d expect you to have thought of it,’ she said. ‘I teach in a women’s college, you see. And the conditions of my employment preclude marriage. If it had been known that I was married, I’d have been obliged to vacate – I believe that’s the word – to vacate my fellowship. And I didn’t want to do that. My work means a great deal to me.’
‘You mean that you’ve been continuing to hold your job under false pretences? Isn’t that going to be rather awkward now?’
‘Not in the least. You haven’t listened to what I said. The words I used were “
If it had been known that I was married.
” They precisely represent the legal situation. You see, our statutes, or whatever they are called, were drawn up for us by some wicked old judge. And there are several places, it seems, where he amused himself by inserting small absurdities that wouldn’t be noticed by a pack of guileless learned women. This is one of them. The relevant clause begins “
Should it come to the cognizance of the College Council
.” There’s no onus upon any of us, should she get married, to say a word or do anything. Lewis spotted that.’
‘He would.’ Appleby said this with conviction.
‘And, of course, we didn’t cheat about the money. I was still legally entitled to my salary. But Lewis, who was quite well off, thought it wouldn’t be the thing to take it. So I’ve been paying it into a trust fund to found a scholarship.’
‘The Lewis Packford Shakespeare Scholarship, no doubt.’ Appleby supposed himself to have said this with marked irony.
‘Oh, yes – how clever of you to guess!’ Ruth seemed really pleased. ‘Lewis decided it should be that.’
‘Lewis, if you ask me, decided a great deal. The whole outrageous scheme of concealment was clearly his.’
‘It wasn’t outrageous!’ Ruth was indignant. ‘I’ve explained to you how we played entirely fair.’
‘There was certainly one person who didn’t get fair play – and that is yourself. And it wasn’t long before you had ceased to think it fun, and were acknowledging to yourself that it was very foolish and rather humiliating.’ Appleby had decided to smack out at Ruth. ‘For instance, your husband going off to a bachelor life on Lake Garda – where I happened, by the way, to visit him – while you were doing some learned dreary useless thing at home – lecturing, I shouldn’t be surprised, on the decay of metaphysical poetry to a Summer School for Patagonians.’
‘I’ve never in my life done anything of the kind!’ Ruth was extremely indignant. ‘You are being quite idiotic and – and improperly flippant and familiar.’
‘So I am.’ Appleby smiled at her inoffensively. ‘But I’m old enough to be your father, and I think I’ll put things to you after my own fashion. Packford was a fascinating chap. I liked him very much, or I wouldn’t be here now. But he had a mania for secrets and surprises. And he must have got you right under his thumb.’
‘Lewis didn’t get me under his thumb!’ Ruth’s indignation grew.
‘He must positively have hypnotized you, my dear young lady, or you would never have agreed to so absurd a course of conduct. And you really knew it – although you were repressing the knowledge and persuading yourself that, for a time at least, it was all a great lark. I’m very sorry to speak in this way about your relations with a man you were certainly much in love with, and who is only just dead. It’s not very decent. Unfortunately it’s my business to go ahead – and rather rapidly, because there are a good many calls upon my time. So what I’m saying is this: you were already in a state of some disillusion and some dissatisfaction when you got this incredible news. One secret marriage had so ticked his irresponsible fancy that he’d promptly gone off and contracted a second with someone called Alice. Unless, of course, Alice really came first. I just haven’t heard any evidence bearing on that as yet. But it’s not, perhaps, a point of the first importance. What is significant is that you were in a raging fury.’
Ruth lit a second cigarette from the stub of the first. She did it with difficulty, since her hands trembled and she was holding Appleby in a fixed terrified glance. ‘What are you saying?’ she said. ‘I don’t understand you.’
‘Somebody sent you an anonymous letter, containing what you must have supposed or hoped was a stupid and cruel joke. You hurried to Urchins – and the thing proved to be true. There was this other woman, brought there by a similar message. No doubt she was in a raging fury too. And what happened? Packford couldn’t take it. The situation was beyond him, and he shot himself. There oughtn’t, really, to be much difficulty in believing that. Am I right?’
‘It sounds reasonable.’ She spoke cautiously, doubtingly. It might have been because she was unconvinced, or because she felt obscurely that Appleby was baiting a trap.
‘Have you nothing more to say than that? What was in your mind when you seized the initiative, so to speak, this morning – grabbing this car to come and meet me with? Why did it strike you as advantageous to get in first?’
‘If it’s as a police officer that you are coming to Urchins, I much doubt whether your method of questioning isn’t singularly irregular.’ Ruth offered this with spirit. And she was now quite calm again. ‘It was simply this: if there is to be further investigation, I ought to be heard first. It’s due to my position that it should be so. But if I’d simply let you arrive at Urchins, there might have been a stupid scene, with Alice barging to the front.’
‘A matter of precedence – I see. By the way, what kind of person would you say this Alice was?’
‘Dead vulgar.’ Ruth snapped this out. And then at once she added: ‘I’d say she wasn’t a bad sort.’
‘Lewis Packford’s taste wouldn’t lead him far astray?’
‘As far as poetry and that sort of thing is concerned, Lewis’ taste simply didn’t exist. But I think he’d be not too bad on people.’
Appleby’s interest in Ruth grew. He still didn’t at all know whether she was positively likeable. But certainly she was formidable, which was a quality he rather liked anyway. ‘It would be fair to say,’ he asked, ‘that you really were two angry women, and that neither of you made any bones about showing it?’
‘That’s perhaps fair enough. But you mustn’t suppose that my feelings are bitter now. Indeed, I don’t know that they were ever that. As soon as I’d got control of myself I felt Lewis’ actions had been – well, quite understandable. Indeed, it was some quite good qualities that had got him into his jam.’