Appleby Talks Again Read online

  Copyright & Information

  Appleby Talks Again

  First published in 1956

  © Michael Innes Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1956-2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Michael Innes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 0755120825 EAN: 9780755120826

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

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  About the Author

  Michael Innes is the pseudonym of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, who was born in Edinburgh in 1906. His father was Director of Education and as was fitting the young Stewart attended Edinburgh Academy before going up to Oriel, Oxford where he obtained a first class degree in English.

  After a short interlude travelling with AJP Taylor in Austria, he embarked on an edition of Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s Essays and also took up a post teaching English at Leeds University.

  By 1935 he was married, Professor of English at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and had completed his first detective novel, Death at the President’s Lodging. This was an immediate success and part of a long running series centred on his character Inspector Appleby. A second novel, Hamlet Revenge, soon followed and overall he managed over fifty under the Innes banner during his career.

  After returning to the UK in 1946 he took up a post with Queen’s University, Belfast before finally settling as Tutor in English at Christ Church, Oxford. His writing continued and he published a series of novels under his own name, along with short stories and some major academic contributions, including a major section on modern writers for the Oxford History of English Literature.

  Whilst not wanting to leave his beloved Oxford permanently, he managed to fit in to his busy schedule a visiting Professorship at the University of Washington and was also honoured by other Universities in the UK.

  His wife Margaret, whom he had met and married whilst at Leeds in 1932, had practised medicine in Australia and later in Oxford, died in 1979. They had five children, one of whom (Angus) is also a writer. Stewart himself died in November 1994 in a nursing home in Surrey.

  A MATTER OF GOBLINS

  “You’re sure it’s uninhabited?” Sir John Appleby peered ahead rather apprehensively as the car moved slowly over the uneven track. “There isn’t a resident squire? The Pooles are one of those families that have entirely evaporated from the English scene?”

  “How inquiring you turn when we have a small job of trespass on hand.” Lady Appleby pressed firmly on the accelerator. “I don’t know why even an eminent policeman need be so law-abiding. As for the Pooles, I believe there are plenty of them.”

  “But not here? Look out for that cow.”

  “Not here. I don’t know that Water Poole ought to be called uninhabited. That, to my mind, suggests ruins and generations of emptiness. But I understand that it’s certainly unoccupied and beginning to tumble to pieces. You’ll see for yourself.”

  “You mean we’re to go in?”

  “Of course. That’s always the real fun. There’ll be a window.”

  Appleby groaned. “Judith my dear, I foresee it all. Indeed, it has happened again and again. We break in. We cover ourselves with dust and cobweb. We twist our ankles in rotting floorboards. And then the man comes.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “We hear him approaching with a sinister limp. He is simply some cottager told off to keep an eye on the place. But we are petrified. You are even more terror-struck than I am. Your bravado deserts you. Out of compassion for your pitiable condition, I consent to our hiding in a cupboard. And there the man finds us.”

  “I never heard such rot. Such a thing has never happened to us. Or only once.”

  “I rattle my small change loudly in my pocket and assume an air of jaunty patronage. The good old man–”

  “The what?”

  “That’s what he is. The good old man fails to hear the half-crowns. He is unaware of my manner, which I myself distinguish with piercing clarity as indistinguishable from that of numerous petty criminals of my acquaintance. But he does recognise both your accent and your clothes as virtually identical with those of the late squire’s dear old mother–”

  “I think you’re abominable.”

  “And so – in a humiliating sort of way – all is well, and we are shown round and offered a lot of inaccurate antiquarian information. As we leave, I give the good old man five shillings. He touches his hat respectfully – to you.”

  “Then that’s all right.” Judith Appleby slowed down to avoid another cow. “It looks to me as if there has been a car along here already today.”

  “I’d say there have been several.” Appleby picked up a map. “And that’s odd, for this certainly leads to the manor house and no further. And it’s curious, by the way, that a place of some apparent consequence should never have run to a better approach.”

  “It may have been less primitive at one time. And, of course, they always had the river.” Judith pointed to a line of poplars in the middle distance. “It’s quite navigable from here to where it joins the Thames, and probably some of their heavy stuff used to come and go by water. But one of the fascinating things about Water Poole, I gather, is just its remarkable isolation. There’s really nothing for miles… And there it is.”

  They had swung round a clump of beech trees still in their freshest green, and now the venerable Elizabethan house was directly in front of them. Involuntarily, they both exclaimed in dismay. Water Poole was a larger place than they had expected, and much more nearly ruinous. Approaching from this aspect, one might have supposed some labour of demolition to be in progress – had one not become aware at the same time of absolute solitude and silence.

  The ground-plan of the building appeared to be the familiar Tudor H. And one of the end pavilions – it must in fact have constituted a stack of handsome rooms – had come down in a mass of rubble which spread far across the derelict open courtyard before them. Already the tumbled stone and plaster was in part overgrown with hemlock and thistle. And high up, incongruously reminiscent of bomb damage
in a London square, they could see a single slice of an augustly panelled apartment, with swallows nesting under the narrow strip of ceiling that remained to it. Elsewhere the long grey façade, which for centuries had faced this empty landscape with a mellow confidence, was flaked and cracked and crumbling round gaping windows and below a broken balustrade. It had been a noble dwelling – and now its whole appearance was so forlorn and disgraced that Appleby had the feeling of having committed an unseemly intrusion. Even the hum of the car seemed an impertinence. The same impression must have come to Judith, for she slipped out of gear and switched off the engine. They glided forward silently into the embracing silence of the place. It was like a physical medium receiving them and covering them, as if they had been swimmers plunging without a ripple into a deep still lake.

  “Somebody told me it was occupied during the war – shared by two families.” Unconsciously Judith had lowered her voice, as one might do in the presence of some meditating sage. “But it looks far too ruinous for that.”

  “There’s plenty of it, and matters mayn’t be so bad on the other side.”

  “But they’ve plainly let it go. Nobody is hoping ever to bring it to life again.” Judith stopped the car and they got out. “It’s enormous. And that’s made it too stiff a commitment for whatever Pooles remain.”

  Appleby nodded. “Certainly it’s on the large side. Indeed, it’s more like one of the showplaces put up by Elizabeth’s great courtiers than a run-of-the-mill manor house. Who are these Pooles?”

  “An old family, I believe, taking their name from this part of the shire, and giving it to the house when they built it. They met disaster in the Civil War; a father and two sons all killed at Naseby. Now, I imagine, they are impoverished, and quite insignificant as well. Shall we go ahead?” Judith, as she asked this question, was already in vigorous forward motion.

  “There will be no harm in walking round the gardens.” Appleby put forward this proposition not very hopefully. “But undoubtedly it lays us open to misconception.”

  “We might be taken for thieves?” Judith was amused. “I don’t see much that we could make away with.”

  “There’s probably thousands of pounds’ worth of lead on the roof.” Appleby stopped suddenly. “I wonder if somebody has been after that? The ground suggests a good deal of recent coming and going. Or perhaps people help themselves to loads of that rubble. It could be useful in all sorts of ways. We’ll go round the house and down to the river.”

  For some seconds they walked on without speaking. Even in the clear light and gentle warmth of this early morning in June there was something insistently depressing about Water Poole in its last long agony. They climbed by insecure and treacherous steps to a mouldering terrace fast disappearing under a lush growth of summer weeds. They passed between the side of the house and a large formal garden which was now mere wilderness. And presently they came to the river frontage. “Why,” Judith exclaimed, “it is better – ever so much better. It’s almost cheerful.”

  “I don’t know that I’d go as far as that. But at least they’ve cut the grass. Odd, perhaps – but meritorious.”

  On this side too the house was elevated behind a terrace, and between the terrace and the river lay a broad expanse of turf. This was not in good condition, but it had certainly been recently mown with some care. Judith looked at it in perplexity. “I suppose it’s a gallant attempt to make a decent show. But who’s to see it? No one would bring a sail up here, and its decidedly remote for canoes or punts… The fabric’s better, too.”

  Appleby turned. The house as viewed from this angle was plainly in disastrous disrepair, but it bore no suggestion of falling to pieces. The terrace here was in tolerable order, the windows were either glazed or decently shuttered, and under a massive portico a stout oak door appeared firmly shut. Rather to his wife’s surprise, Appleby led the way across the grass and climbed a broad flight of steps that rose to the house between battered statues. “Weeded,” he said. “And they don’t tilt disconcertingly when you tread on them.” He stooped. “Patched up, after a fashion.” He reached the terrace, walked to the oak door and tried it. “Locked.” And this time, to Judith’s positive astonishment, he gave it an impatient rattle. “Shades of Dr Johnson’s father.”

  “Dr Johnson’s father, John?”

  “Don’t you remember? Every night old Michael Johnson went out and locked with great care the front door of a building which no longer had any back to it. Young Sam was afraid he was going off his head. Well, Water Poole has a back rather like that. So if we do want to go inside there’s no particular difficulty. We just go round to the other side again.”

  “Then here goes – and I believe you’re quite as curious as I am.”

  “It’s the place that’s curious – not me.” For a moment Appleby turned to glance again at the river. It was no more than a stream, but he judged it to hold promise of excellent trout. “And as for that lawn–” He broke off, and they returned to the back of the house in silence.

  On this side the terrace half-obscured a basement floor of cellars and offices, and into these they walked without hindrance. For a time they wandered among flagged chambers and passages, either vaulted or with plaster ceilings most of which now lay on the floors. Here and there were vast fireplaces, cumbersome stone troughs, gloomy larders and pantries with massive slate shelves on a scale suggesting a morgue. Nothing movable was to be seen – except in one obscure recess a heap of brushwood disposed into a rough bed, with signs of a small fire nearby, as if a tramp of the more pronouncedly melancholic sort had recently chosen this congenial spot for temporary residence. It was clear that in modern times the house when occupied must have achieved more practicable domestic arrangements on the next floor. And to this the Applebys presently climbed. So far, it had all been most depressing, and Judith’s whole exploration appeared to hold every promise of ending in mere dismalness. Appleby endeavoured to enliven the proceedings by affecting to hear the threatening approach of the man. His wife however was not amused.

  But upstairs it was different. The great hall was a stately place, with high mullioned windows looking towards the river, a fine linen-fold panelling which must have been older than the house itself, and an elaborately ribbed plaster vaulting with pendants. These last had mostly broken off, and the effect was oddly like one of those caves or grottos in which eighteenth-century gentlemen amused themselves by shooting down the stalactites. But to an eye failing to travel so high as this the impression was less of decay than of suspended animation. Here was the very heart of the house, and it still faintly beat. It seemed only to be awaiting some prompting occasion to pulse more strongly, until the place felt the quickening flood in all its enchanted limbs, and stirred and breathed again.

  Judith paced the length of the hall from screen to dais, and there stood quite still, as if she were listening. When she came back her expression had changed. “It’s queer,” she said. “There’s something.”

  “Something?”

  “Don’t you feel it?” She smiled at him, faintly puzzled. “But of course you don’t. It’s not your line.”

  “If you mean ghosts and what not, I didn’t know it was your line either.”

  “Not quite ghosts. Unless – yes – a throng of ghosts. I have a feeling of time shutting up, telescoping. Our time and theirs. So that they were here – and have all gone away – only today or yesterday.”

  Appleby was examining on the great carved screen a fine series of panels exhibiting the motive of an arch in perspective. “My dear girl, who are ‘they’?”

  “I don’t know.” She laughed at her own absurdity. “Gentlemen adventurers bound for the Spanish Main. Cavaliers riding away to join Prince Rupert or the King. If we had been just a little earlier we might have seen them. They forded the river, I think, and rode away at dawn.”

  “You ought to have gone in for historical novels, not for sculpture. But – talking of that – look at the chimney-piece. It’s rather good
, in a florid way.”

  They studied it for some minutes: an affair of Hermes-figures, dolphins and cupids, surmounted by an ornate heraldic carving. “It’s odd about names,” Judith said. “They don’t go in for a pool, but a pole.” She pointed to this element in the elaborate coat of arms that crowned the structure. “But what’s that piece of carving lower down? I’d say it’s been added later.”

  “It’s another pole – chopped in two by a sword. What’s called an emblem, rather than heraldry proper. And there’s a motto. No – it’s simply a date. Can you see?”

  “Yes.” There was clear sunlight in the hall, and Judith had no difficulty. What she read was:

  ye 14 June

  1645

  Appleby thought for a moment. “Naseby, in fact. The Pooles were in no doubt about that battle’s being the end of them.”

  “And this is the tenth.”

  “The tenth?” He was at a loss.

  “Of June. Four days to the anniversary. No wonder–” She broke off. “John, there’s somebody coming. There really is, this time.”

  Appleby listened. There could be no doubt about the advancing footsteps. “Then we go through with it, as usual. Unless, of course, it’s not the man, but a ghost. One of Prince Rupert’s friends, say, who forgot some weapon – or some piece of finery – and has come back for it.”

  “What nonsense we talk. But there is something queer.”

  “I rather agree.”

  They looked at each other for a moment in whimsical alarm, before turning expectantly to the far end of the hall, from which the sound came. In a dark doorway beyond the dais they glimpsed what for an instant might have been identified as a gleam of armour. And then they saw that it was human hair. Advancing upon them was a silver-haired clergyman. He was carrying in his arms a square wooden box; he walked gingerly to a window embrasure and set down his burden; then he turned to inspect the Applebys over the top of small and uncertainly poised steel-rimmed spectacles. “Good morning,” he said politely. “So you are before me, after all.”