‘I see – or rather I don’t.’ Appleby paused, awaiting explanations. He had to ask himself, he was acutely aware, whether he was not in the presence of a clever woman rather over-playing her hand. One could readily decide that all this dispassionateness and magnanimity was a little too good to be true.
‘He was a boundlessly enthusiastic person. And marriage – which was, of course, quite a late adventure with him – took him decidedly that way. And then we made that foolish decision. Don’t think I can’t really see it as a foolish decision. And I must insist that it was very much my fault at the time. If I hadn’t, I mean, showed that I’d much like to keep my job, then that secretive genius of Lewis’ which you seem to know about wouldn’t have had this new sphere to exercise itself in. But there it was. And keeping our marriage dark meant a lot of separation – and at a time when Lewis, a middle-aged man new to the whole thing, was in a thoroughly excited state. Sex had taken an entirely novel role in his life. And being sanguine and generous and careless, he was – well, very vulnerable.’
Ruth paused. She was saying all this in a low steady voice which was far from suggesting an insensitive attitude to her subject. ‘I can see,’ Appleby said cautiously, ‘the kind of thing you mean.’
‘Before he knew where he was, he was in bed with this girl. It’s not gratifying to reflect on, but I suppose it is natural enough.’
‘Perhaps so. But there was nothing natural in going through a form of marriage with her.’
‘Wasn’t there? I doubt whether you know Lewis really well. The girl was on his hands – quite suddenly. He must have felt rather like a cricketer, fielding close in, who becomes aware he’s made a catch. He’s planned nothing, made no sort of grab, but there the ball is.’
‘Very apt,’ Appleby said. He spoke a shade dryly. Ruth, he thought, was going out of her way in search of charity.
‘There she was, I say. And she wasn’t a person with any less real a claim on him simply because she did a little smell, perhaps, of the public bar.’ Ruth paused on this – so that it was almost possible to suspect that she had divined the fact that verisimilitude would be furthered by at least the hint of an astringent note. ‘And no doubt she revealed herself as artlessly and trustingly inclined to matrimony. In such circumstances, Lewis would certainly judge it a shame not to provide it. So he did.’ Ruth paused again. ‘And now I think we’ll drive on.’
‘Yes, drive on.’ Appleby watched her throw away her second cigarette and start up the engine of the ancient car. ‘But could Packford,’ he asked, ‘do such a fundamentally muddle-headed and irresponsible thing? He was, after all, a highly intelligent man.’
‘It was a canalized sort of intelligence. It all went into a sort of jet propulsion, driving on his work. Outside that, he was capable of any number of ineptitudes.’ Ruth’s voice had changed, and Appleby’s startled ear had to acknowledge that what it now held was tenderness. ‘Don’t you remember how clumsy he was?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘And isn’t bigamy about the clumsiest crime a man can commit?’ she laughed softly. ‘So there you are.’
‘It’s a crime that may be extremely cruel and heartless. On the other hand, it may be committed in such circumstances as to be not much more than silly.’ Appleby paused. ‘If one misses out the theological aspect, that is to say.’
‘Lewis was certainly being merely silly.’ Suddenly, she was almost crying out. ‘And it oughtn’t – oh, it oughtn’t – to have brought him to his death!’
‘If it did.’
There was a long silence, unbroken until Ruth had swung the car between rusty iron gates and up a somewhat neglected drive. ‘Urchins doesn’t exactly flourish,’ she said. ‘A comfortable sort of semi-decay. Plenty of money for food and books and travel. But beyond that – well, I’m beginning to be doubtful.’
‘I see.’
The silence renewed itself. They were in sight of the house before Ruth spoke again. ‘Talking of travel,’ she said, ‘will you tell me something?’
‘Certainly – if I can.’
‘You said you visited Lewis when he had the villa on Lake Garda. What did he talk about?’ She hesitated. ‘For instance, did he have anything to say about–’ She hesitated again.
Appleby smiled. ‘About you – or even about Alice? No, not a word. There were one or two moments when I found myself speculating as to whether he had involved himself in some personal perplexity. But it wasn’t because of anything at all explicit in his conversation.’
‘Then, Sir John, what
did
he talk about?’
Appleby had to consider only for a moment. ‘Forgery,’ he said.
Urchins turned out to be a surprisingly large house. It seemed moreover to be of considerable antiquity. But it had been made a mess of, comparatively late in its history, by some owner with a taste for the Gothic. And this must have been done on the cheap, for the battlements, pointed windows and so forth were now in a crumbling and tumbling condition and what remained solid appeared to be of an altogether earlier date. The whole place could only be described as in shocking disrepair.
And it had something to tell, Appleby supposed, about its late owner. Packford could have taken very little interest in this – presumably – ancestral home. Appleby remembered him as only vaguely and conventionally aware of his surroundings at Garda – just conscious that his villa was modest and his summer-house rather grand; gesturing unseeingly at the
grotteschi
from which he believed himself to be experiencing pleasure; boundlessly enthusiastic over the idea of giving masterful instructions to Gino, but not really at all possessed of the difference between one shrub and another. All Packford’s real traffic had been with the memorials and signs and traces of things, and not with things in themselves. What was left of things in the library of the British Museum, in the neglected muniment rooms of houses just like this, in the Public Record Office: his real territory had been there. Conceivably the two ladies in the case were the first material objects of which he had ever become aware, so to speak at all vividly in the round.
Yes, Urchins looked decidedly emaciated. Packford, without much noticing the fact, had possibly starved it for years. And so it might well be an inconvenient sort of inheritance now. Probably it went to Edward Packford, and not to whichever of the ladies proved to be the dead man’s authentic spouse. In default of a direct heir, places of this sort were commonly tied up that way.
Appleby knew nothing about Edward Packford. But then there was a lot of information which, despite Cavill’s rapid conscientious survey of what seemed an unmysterious suicide, he didn’t yet possess. And in a way the scent – if there was one – was slightly cold. And yet it appeared that there was one odd – and even perplexing – circumstance that bore the other way. Lewis Packford had been entertaining some kind of house-party at the time of his death. And now, several days later, these people were still at Urchins, presumably as the guests of Edward. It might be a good idea to find out about them at once.
Ruth had drawn up the ancient car before the front door of the house. There was a long shallow porch facing south, and now bathed in warm sunshine. Deck-chairs, tables and a scattering of cushions and books and newspapers struck one note; dandelions sprouting between chinks in the flagstones struck another. Not far away a very old man was rather ineffectively gathering up between two boards a first scattering of the leaves of autumn.
‘Do you mind,’ Appleby asked, ‘if I leave my suitcase in the car, and hope that somebody will give me a lift to a pub afterwards?’
Ruth seemed surprised. ‘But Edward will expect you to stop at Urchins. He’s very hospitable. For instance, he makes no bones whatever about continuing to house at the moment two sisters-in-law by one brother. Many men would think that a bit steep.’
It seemed to Appleby that Ruth was not without a sense of humour. ‘And what about those other people who are continuing to stay on?’ he asked. ‘Who exactly are they?’
‘I think they might be called the members of a sort of club or society – or least of a coterie – to which Lewis belonged. Normally, I gather, they simply dine together three or four times a year. But sometimes Lewis liked to gather them in for a weekend.’
‘And I suppose they too are learned?’
‘Well, some of them. Scholars, collectors, bibliophiles – a mixed lot. And they indulge a life of fantasy.’
‘They do
what
?’ Appleby was puzzled.
‘It’s a species of literary joke about an imaginary eighteenth-century antiquarian called Bogdown. They read each other papers about him. Transactions of the Bogdown Society. That sort of thing. I expect it’s great fun.’
‘It sounds uproarious.’ Appleby couldn’t be sure whether Ruth’s judgement on this singular diversion was, or was not, ironically intended. ‘But you’ve never been let in on it?’
‘Of course not. It’s entirely for men. And there’s one of them now, coming out of the front door. Professor Prodger.’
‘The old person with the white beard?’
‘Yes. He’s terribly eminent. And he’s tracing Bogdown’s books. They were dispersed, you see, at the Bogdown sale in 1784. At least I think it was 1784.’
‘Is that why Prodger is eminent?’
‘Of course not. Haven’t I explained that Bogdown is just a game? Prodger’s serious work is on the development of the comic Irishman in English drama.’
‘Oh.’
‘You’d better meet him now, while I go and find Edward.’
They had got out of the car, and Ruth led the way up to Professor Prodger, who had settled down in a deck-chair. She performed a perfunctory introduction, and then vanished. Appleby had an idea that she proposed making some sort of report to their host before confronting him with the new visitor.
The professor had got to his feet in order to shake hands, and this had involved him in dropping his glasses, the case in which he carried them, a newspaper and a couple of books. When Appleby had helped to recover these, the two men sat down. ‘I’m afraid,’ Prodger said mildly and from behind his beard, ‘that I know very little about your kind of thing – very little indeed. But I have a good Eliot and Chapman which I should be delighted to show you one day, and also a Derome that’s quite a pleasure to handle.’
‘Thank you very much.’ Appleby’s professional preoccupations prompted him to suppose for a moment that Prodger was a collector of little-known fire-arms. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Derome.’
This reply plainly prompted thought. ‘Am I not to understand,’ Prodger presently asked with a courteous inclination of his venerable head, ‘that I am addressing Dr Appleby, the distinguished student of bibliopegy?’
Appleby, although hazy about bibliopegy, was quite certain he wasn’t a distinguished student of it. ‘No. I’m afraid you must have taken me for somebody else.’
‘No matter, no matter. In fact I am rather glad to hear it. The history of bookbinding is a trivial sort of lore, after all. An amusement for collectors, sir. And we know what
they
are like. Eh?’ Prodger had a high faint senile laugh. ‘But no doubt you have come down to Urchins because you have some interest in the mystery? We all have. That is why we are staying on, you know – that is why we are staying on. And I must warn you, Dr Appleby, that we are a mixed lot. Poor Packford was not always very careful about his associations and – um – practices.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear it.’ Appleby supposed this to be a reference to the dead man’s unfortunate matrimonial adventures.
‘Limbrick and Rixon, for instance. They are both here, I am sorry to say. Limbrick, of course, is the well-known collector, and we know what
that
means. Eh?’ Prodger repeated his laugh. It was the sort of noise one associates with agitated guinea-pigs. ‘And Canon Rixon is Librarian to the Chapter at Barchester. At least I think it is Barchester. But there is no doubt as to his occupation. I have always found it to be one conducing to a singular depravity both of intellect and morals. And I am confident you agree with me. There may be meritorious exceptions. But as a class of persons they are wholly to be deplored.’
‘Cathedral librarians?’ It seemed to Appleby that it would be hard to think up a more blameless walk of life.
‘Certainly, certainly.’ Prodger’s beard could be seen as quivering with indignation. ‘I have never found one yet who is interested in low comedy in the Anglo-Irish theatre. Men utterly devoid of the instinct of scholarship, Dr Appleby. Not, of course, that they are as bad as wealthy collectors.’
‘You would say that wealthy collectors are very bad?’
‘They will buy anything, you know, and sit on it. Limbrick is sitting at this moment on the broken plough.’
‘Isn’t that very uncomfortable?’ Appleby was becoming rather dazed.
‘The Broken Plough
is Thomas Horscroft’s last work, existing only in a single manuscript now owned by Limbrick. We have with us, by the way, quite an authority on Horscroft’s books – a young woman who turned up, for some reason, a few days ago.’
‘Yes. She has just introduced me to you. She says she is Lewis Packford’s widow.’
‘Is that so?’ Prodger appeared to take no interest in this topic. ‘Now, what was I saying? Ah, yes – collectors. Limbrick is bad enough. But consider that fellow in New York – or is it Chicago?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’
‘Sankey – is that his name? In a much bigger way than Limbrick. Buys anything on any terms, you know, however flagrantly dishonest. And then sits on it. But all collectors are like that. Deny you access to their most important materials – and simply to aggrandize themselves in their own eyes. Worse than the monks in their cathedrals.
They
used to chain up their books, you know, chain up their books. And I am accustomed to say that the wealthy modern collectors still have the chained-book mentality.’
Professor Prodger paused as if to let laughter subside; this must have been a quip he was accustomed to offer his students. Appleby took the opportunity to get in a word. ‘What do you think about the mystery yourself?’ he asked.
‘It was almost certainly another of Packford’s Shakespeare discoveries, I should say. And something quite big. Important new light, perhaps, on the chronology of the plays. Or information on how Shakespeare was occupied during his twenties. There are nearly ten blank years to fill in, you know – nearly ten blank years.’