Appleby's Answer Read online

  Circumspection, she never ceased to tell herself, was the prime desideratum. There would be those who would declare her moral position to have been equivocal, and even in her own mind there was no doubt that it was delicate. The grand effect of her endeavours, it was true, was simply to be the unmasking of villainy – an achievement which must be held laudable in all right-thinking minds. Moreover, in each of the two phases of the affair she was surely bound to emerge in a sympathetic light. In the first, she was nothing other than a generous woman, shamefully abused as a consequence of having obeyed an impulse of the most benevolent, indeed charitable, order. In the second, she owned a penetrating intelligence, together with the power of taking rapid and courageous measures in a crisis. It would, no doubt, be an inevitable consequence of the whole sensational affair that her name, at present so modestly celebrated, would spring instantly into nation-wide celebrity. The film rights of Poison at the Parsonage would be sold for many thousands of pounds within a week. The paperback rights (not yet negotiated) would pay for far more than Miss Pringle’s customary inexpensive holiday on the Italian Riviera. The novel might even be translated into Japanese. There wouldn’t, of course, be much money in that. But one of Barbara Vanderpump’s historical romances had been thus translated; and the resulting book had been so delicately refined a physical object that Miss Pringle (a woman of exquisite aesthetic feeling) was consumed with jealousy.

  And the next book would automatically be almost as profitable. In certain carping quarters, therefore, it would be murmured that the whole sensational and scandalous business had resulted in Priscilla Pringle’s doing pretty well for herself. That was why she had to be careful.

  But this had not been all. It had been some time before she was completely assured of the seriousness of Captain Bulkington’s intentions. Captain Bulkington’s letters were hard to interpret – since he, in his rather crazy way, went in for being careful too. What if he simply got bored? What if his robustly malign attitude towards the Pinkertons (of which there seemed to be no rational explanation whatever) simply dissipated itself in fantasy, and he turned to amuse himself with other things? And there was a hazard antithetical to this. Far from cooling off, he might hot up, and simply jump the gun. For weeks Miss Pringle never opened her morning paper without being apprehensive of reading about the sudden and mysterious death of a respectable landowner in Wiltshire. For this wouldn’t do at all. She had been obliged to admit (although a shade reluctantly) that it must be only an attempted murder, and not an achieved murder, that was to take place in terms of the seemingly innocent diversion whereby she had consented to provide Captain Bulkington with the basis for an amateur thriller. If Sir Ambrose was really killed (she saw with her accustomed intellectual clarity), the sensation, although even greater than it would otherwise be, would not be likely to redound to her credit. No: eleventh hour realisation and last minute intervention gave the formula to which she must work.

  In the series of letters to the Captain in which she had sketched the plot of The Three Warnings (or was it Fretful Elements, a phrase she had found in King Lear?) she had been extremely careful to write precisely as she had promised Captain Bulkington to do: strictly without a hint of anything other than a literary bagatelle as being afoot. And he had replied in the same manner. But three times on the telephone he had spoken to different effect, and been most reassuringly maniacal. Sir Ambrose had really and truly received his three warnings – as of death by earth, air, and water – on the first day of three successive months. Ahead of him now was the real thing. Bang on the due date, and through the instrumentality of certain ingenious measures which the professional skill of Miss Pringle had been able to suggest, he and his pretentious mansion (and, if possible, wife as well) would go up in flames. Captain Bulkington’s chuckle just before putting down the receiver upon the occasion of his transmitting this news attained to a pitch of the higher insanity such as momentarily chilled even Miss Pringle’s blood.

  But that which freezes the blood may be said, in a similar figure of speech, to produce an icy calm. Miss Pringle’s was an icy calm. She let the very day come. She let its hour of luncheon pass. And then (having first assured herself that her car was in good running order) she picked up her telephone, dialled 999, and unburdened herself of the staggering realisation that had come to her.

  Despite thus playing it so cool, however, Miss Pringle was unable to prevent herself from arriving in the vicinity of Long Canings considerably in advance of the time appointed for her rendezvous with the forces of the law. She recalled her collision with Lady Pinkerton’s horse and her flat tyre outside the rectory at Gibber Porcorum. It seemed a district in which automobilism was exposed to peculiar hazard, and she must give herself time in hand as an insurance against anything of the kind now. But all went uneventfully, with the consequence that she had an hour to spare.

  Dusk was deepening into darkness, and she wondered whether she should simply draw up in a lay-by and compose her mind in solitude. But this seemed a cheerless plan, and she had to acknowledge to herself that she felt the need a little to tune herself up. Suddenly she remembered the Jolly Chairman. There was something heartening about its mere name. And the hour was a perfectly proper one for a lady to indulge in a small brandy and soda. Deciding on this, Miss Pringle pulled up at the inn.

  Seeking on this occasion only refreshment and not the pleasures of conversation with local inhabitants, she opted for the saloon bar. It would quite probably be empty, she thought – and pushed the door boldly and regardlessly open. But not only was there company; there was crisis as well. The small square space – not much larger than a commodious horse-box – contained a lady and two gentlemen. The gentlemen were already known to Miss Pringle as habitués of the hostelry, since they were in fact none other than Captain Bulkington’s pupils. The lady was Miss Pringle’s old friend (and consoeur, as Captain Bulkington would facetiously have said), Barbara Vanderpump.

  Had Miss Pringle been capable of feeling anything other than a just indignation, she might have succumbed to alarm and dismay before so unexpected a confrontation. Her first impulse, indeed, was to curse her own folly in thus exposing herself in a place of common resort. But her mission to Long Canings was not going to be a secret, after all; and if there was something sinister in the confabulation upon which she had stumbled, it was as well that she had become apprised of it betimes.

  And now – even before acknowledging the existence of her friend and the young men from ‘Kandahar’ – Miss Pringle achieved a rapid preliminary analysis of the situation. She saw that in all probability it wasn’t sinister at all. The presence of Messrs Waterbird and Jenkins required no explaining, since the Jolly Chairman represented their refuge from the horrors of their condition as often as they had the price of a pint of bitter in their pockets. And the presence of Barbara Vanderpump could be explained easily enough. It was only necessary to remember (what Miss Pringle had long been conscious of) the appalling vulgarity and triviality of her friend’s mind. Inane curiosity and mere idleness were amply sufficient to account for this silly woman’s appearance in Long Canings.

  ‘My dearest Barbara,’ Miss Pringle said, ‘this is indeed a surprise! And good evening to you, my dear lads.’ Having achieved this cheerful and familiar greeting to the gentlemen (who had executed their uncertain, nicely-brought-up shamble to their feet), she turned to the pub-keeper, who was making a brief foray from the public bar. ‘A large brandy and soda, if you please,’ she said briskly, and sat down. ‘Mr Jenkins,’ she continued, ‘you don’t look well.’

  ‘Not well?’ The familiar bemused gape appeared on Ralph Jenkins’ features. ‘That’s a funny thing – because I don’t feel well, either.’ Ralph sighed hopelessly, as if dimly aware of some unfathomable error in logic, and peered into the depths of his glass.

  ‘Ralph ate too big a tea,’ Adrian Waterbird said contemptuously. ‘And he has a rotten stomach. No good at all.’

  ‘We were stood it by the man fro
m Scotland Yard,’ Ralph bestirred himself to say in an explanatory tone. ‘Very decent of him, really. Although, mind you, I think he was fishing for something. About the Bulgar, probably. Do you know, he’d come to “Kandahar” pretending he had a son he wanted to send there? Dashed queer, I thought that.’

  Miss Pringle also judged this intelligence dashed queer. It was the local constabulary that she had alerted to the perilous state of affairs at Long Canings, and even if they had for some reason immediately contacted the metropolitan police there couldn’t possibly have been time for a man to come down from Scotland Yard, nose around ‘Kandahar’, and give those two overgrown little brutes tea.

  ‘He had his wife with him, too,’ Ralph amplified. ‘And the Bulgar said their name was–’

  ‘Shut up, Ralph. You’re talking too much.’ Adrian’s glass was empty, and he now looked hopefully at Miss Pringle – no doubt recalling former benefits received. Miss Pringle, however, had turned to deal with Miss Vanderpump.

  ‘I hope, Barbara,’ she said, ‘that you find everything in these parts much as described in my letter. It is gratifying that you should think to check up on it.’

  ‘My dear Priscilla, I fear I have not given that quaint plan of yours a thought. And my meeting with Captain Bulkington’s pupils this evening is purely fortuitous. The fact is – although I doubt whether I have ever mentioned it to you – that I have a very old friend, Kate Anketel, who lives not far from here. I had promised her a visit for a long time, and at last I have been able to manage it. Hinton House is quite charming, and dear Kate – we were at school together – moves in the best county society.’

  ‘Very gratifying,’ Miss Pringle said. She felt momentarily baffled in the face of this unexpected aplomb on Miss Vanderpump’s part. ‘Then, no doubt, you have met the Pinkertons as well. And Dr Howard–’

  ‘Who is a Howard,’ Miss Vanderpump said with oafish irony.

  ‘–and Captain Bulkington himself.’

  ‘I hardly think that he qualifies as moving in the best circles here.’ Miss Vanderpump spoke with hauteur. ‘That, my dear Priscilla, must be said, however much it is known that you have been inclined to form an attachment to him.’

  Miss Pringle had no opportunity to reply to this disagreeable raillery, since the colloquy of the two ladies was abruptly interrupted by a sudden and unseemly brawl between the two young men. For some reason probably not unconnected with the amount of beer he had imbibed, the normally submissive Ralph Jenkins had turned truculent and stupidly blustering. He had resented, it seemed, Adrian Waterbird’s assertion that he talked too much. But just on what the dispute turned was not at first clear.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I tell her?’ Ralph demanded. ‘We told her some damned queer things in this pub last time, didn’t we? And that Scotland Yard man – didn’t you tell him about the rotten trick the Bulgar played on us with that slut Sally?’

  ‘What we say and what we don’t say, you great moron, you’ll bloody well leave to me.’ Adrian’s voice was coldly furious. He was so angry, indeed, that he appeared unaware that Miss Pringle and Miss Vanderpump were not absorbed in their own affairs. ‘Telling that chap we were made to tell a pack of lies is one thing. Blabbing about burglary is quite another.’ Adrian dropped to a fierce whisper. ‘Pinkerton’s a beak. He’d have us inside like a shot if he knew we’d been made to steal his rotten clothes. Bad-school, probably, which is a bloody sight worse than quod. They’d have you snivelling and yelping in no time, soppy Jenkins.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of you!’ The voice of Ralph Jenkins had suddenly risen to a panicky squeal. ‘I’m going to–’

  ‘You’ll have had enough of me by the time I’ve worked over you tonight,’ Mr Waterbird hissed hideously. ‘Blubbing for your dear old nanny – that’s what you’ll be.’

  ‘You beastly great cad, I’ll–’

  ‘Out!’ As he gave this order, Mr Waterbird sprang to his feet – a good deal more athletically than when putting on his polite Kensingtonian stand-up-for-the-ladies turn – and contrived an expert clutch on one of Mr Jenkins’ wrists. Mr Jenkins found himself yanked upright, twisted round, and subjected to a rapidly mounting impetus generated by a skilful bumping action on the part of Mr Waterbird’s knee on his behind. But the unseemly spectacle was at least of momentary duration only, since with a surprising approximation to instantaneity the gentlemen had tumbled alike out of the bar and (as it was to prove) Miss Priscilla Pringle’s life. For seconds Mr Jenkins’ yelping was audible diminuendo as he presumably began an uncomfortable homeward progress to ‘Kandahar’. And then silence fell.

  It was a silence that sustained itself for a full minute. This must have been due, in part, to the shock the ladies had sustained. Neither was without a sense that the behaviour they had just witnessed was quite grossly atavistic, belonging essentially, as it did, to that preparatory stage of an English gentleman’s education which commonly comes to a close in the course of his fourteenth year. But a further element in the silence undoubtedly lay in the fact that neither Miss Pringle nor Miss Vanderpump quite knew where each stood in relation to the other. Miss Vanderpump, detected in fishing around at the bidding, no doubt, of nothing better than the most vacuous inquisitiveness, did not know whether to expect severe censure or mere ridicule. Miss Pringle, the very crisis of whose fate had been broken in upon by this totally unexpected encounter, was obliged to calculate just what kind of menace to her strategy was involved.

  It was Miss Pringle who recovered first. It would be impolitic, she saw, to keep mum. To behave, that was to say, as if nothing in particular were happening would bear an implausible appearance when, later on, her conduct necessarily came under a certain degree of scrutiny by the forces of the law. Barbara, in fact, must be taken into her confidence at once.

  ‘My dear friend,’ Miss Pringle exclaimed impetuously, ‘how truly thankful I am for your totally unexpected presence! For matters are dark, indeed. You will be an invaluable support to me.’

  ‘Dark, indeed?’ Miss Vanderpump echoed doubtfully.

  ‘My confidence has been abused. Perhaps it is better to say that it has been betrayed. Oh, Barbara – how right you were!’

  ‘I can’t think what you are talking about.’ Miss Vanderpump was disagreeably ungratified by her friend’s generous exclamation. ‘And you have formed some very peculiar notions about the people round here, I am bound to say. I take it that the young ruffians who have just left us are the present pupils of Captain Bulkington?’

  ‘Certainly they are.’

  ‘“Brilliant and delightful young men”, I seem to recall as your description of them. And “hand-picked”, as well. Hand-picked from the gutter, it appears to me.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Miss Pringle, although aware that the dreadful youths would presently have to be thrown to the lions, was indisposed to admit a falsification of social fact. ‘Adrian Waterbird is a Shropshire Waterbird. And Ralph Jenkins’ people are of consequence in the industrial sphere. It is true that they have been constrained to behave badly. But at least their ill-conduct has brought me certainty. You heard what they said about burglary? It is something to which they have been driven by the maniacal Bulkington. But now he is to be unmasked! For I have seen the revolting truth in the nick of time. And now I am acting’ – Miss Pringle glanced at her not inelegant wristwatch – ‘at the eleventh hour.’

  ‘Priscilla, I perceive you to be raving. You must have suffered a severe nervous breakdown. Permit me to summon a physician.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind, Barbara, although I must allow that the strain of the last few days has been very great. Could it be? I had to ask myself that. Could it possibly be? And I had to answer Yes – and that my oldest friend had penetrated to the truth long ago. The despicable Bulkington has made a tool of me. I had supposed that I was assisting him in a harmless diversion. The provisional title of his book was The Three Warnings. It was to make amusing use of the fallacious theories of mediaeval physics. Earth, air, fire, and
water!’

  ‘Earth, air, fire, and water?’ Miss Vanderpump repeated bemus-edly.

  ‘Yes – but that is by the way. Let me say only that the man Bulkington has achieved in fact the three warnings with which I provided him for the purposes of fiction. The theft, by those unhappy youths, of poor Sir Ambrose’s clothes, is dramatic confirmation of what has been going on. And tonight was to have been the fatal night.’ Miss Pringle, who had now drunk her large brandy, sprang to her feet. ‘Fire!’ she cried dramatically.

  ‘Fire?’ In not unnatural perturbation, Miss Vanderpump had sprung to her feet too – having formed the momentary impression that the Jolly Chairman must be going up in flames.

  ‘Do not be alarmed, Barbara. Do not be unduly alarmed. The situation is in hand. The police have been summoned. I am on my way to a meeting with them now. Bulkington shall rue the day’ – Miss Pringle here allowed herself a modest touch of drama – ‘that he and I met in a first-class railway-carriage!’

  ‘Priscilla, what appears to me to be in question is a first-class vulgar sensation.’ Miss Vanderpump paused, as she well might, in this moment of devastating and (in her) surely unnatural perspicacity. ‘You say you have summoned the police. May I enquire whether you have summoned the press as well?’

  Miss Vanderpump had accompanied this question with what both she and Miss Pringle were accustomed to describe in their fictions as a long hard look (or, alternatively, as a significant glance). Miss Pringle returned it fearlessly. There is, after all, a tide in the affairs of women which, if taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. And now Miss Pringle didn’t intend to let the boat depart without her.

  ‘Dear Barbara,’ she said urbanely, ‘I must excuse myself. My appointment is an important one, as you can imagine.’

  ‘I can imagine more than that,’ Miss Vanderpump rejoined darkly.