Appleby's Answer Page 16

  ‘Perfectly.’ Miss Pringle was entirely firm. ‘And contrived so as to be activated by a twelfth stroke only.’

  ‘Commendably ingenious,’ Appleby said. It was the first comment he had offered.

  ‘Thank you,’ Miss Pringle responded, much gratified. Then, bethinking herself, she added, ‘How little I imagined that so harmless a stroke of fiction should be put to–’

  ‘Quite so,’ Appleby said. ‘Absolutely quite so. But my colleague must forgive me for interrupting him.’ At this point Appleby accepted a cigar from Sir Ambrose, to whom an exact hospitality appeared to be the one remaining resource. ‘I think he may conceivably have one or two questions to ask. In the interest of subsidiary elucidation, that is to say.’ At this Appleby offered Miss Pringle a brief glance – such as perhaps might be due to a performing animal of extraordinary accomplishment in a circus. ‘And I won’t interrupt again.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Graves said – quite with the rapid deftness of one practised participant to another practised participant in a television causerie. ‘If I may, madam, run over a few salient points?’

  ‘Please do,’ Miss Pringle said composedly. ‘Deeply culpable as I feel–’

  ‘Quite so. But you have been, if I may say so, extraordinarily acute in tumbling to the abominable deception imposed on you.’ Graves, who seemed to learn rapidly, articulated this with a smoothness that would have done credit to the retired Commissioner of Metropolitan Police himself. ‘Captain Bulkington, whose acquaintance you had made quite by chance, had expressed himself as attracted by the idea of entering into the field of detective fiction: a kind of writing – of literature, indeed – in which you are recognised as being something more than in the top ten.’

  ‘You are very kind,’ Miss Pringle said. It occurred to her that Sir Ambrose Pinkerton, so adequate in finding her a chair, had for some reason neglected to offer her brandy. She was beginning to feel the need of it. What she had imbibed earlier in the Jolly Chairman had now failed of its effect. It had probably been of deplorably inferior quality. ‘But go on,’ Miss Pringle said. And she added courageously, ‘Time presses.’

  ‘Tempus fugit.’ For the first time, Lady Appleby had looked up from her crochet. ‘As Captain Bulkington might say.’

  ‘So you agreed,’ Graves pursued, ‘to suggest to Captain Bulkington, chiefly through a series of letters, the plot of a story which might suitably be entitled The Three Warnings, or something of the sort. All this about Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Or, to be more precise, Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. And you little knew – I think that would be your way of expressing the matter – that Captain Bulkington was proposing, in sober actuality–’

  ‘Just so,’ Miss Pringle said heroically. ‘On the first day, or night, of the fourth month. In fact, now.’

  ‘Have you any idea why Captain Bulkington should propose to release these shocking engines upon Sir Ambrose and his household?’

  Appleby, who had been sitting with his right leg crossed negligently over his left, stirred slightly and crossed his left leg over his right. It might have been his manner of acknowledging that the note-taking Detective-Inspector Graves possessed unsuspected, because cunningly dissimulated, rhetorical resources.

  ‘Really none whatever,’ Miss Pringle said firmly. ‘The man must be mad.’

  ‘You are not alone in suggesting that point of view. But now, another point. I am not quite clear as to how sudden illumination – if I may put it that way – came to you, madam. The horrid truth, as it were. The occasion or prompting of your picking up a telephone and communicating with the police.’

  ‘Intuition, Inspector.’ What was surely Miss Pringle’s supreme moment had come. ‘Something stirred in the deep well.’

  ‘The deep well?’ For the first time in this curious encounter, Detective-Inspector Graves appeared really startled.

  ‘The deep well of unconscious cerebration.’

  This – reasonably enough – produced silence. It was a silence broken, first, by a faint whirr: nothing less than the premonitory signal which large clocks are in the habit of offering five minutes before gathering up their forces to strike the hour. And then, more decisively, it was broken by Miss Anketel.

  ‘Good God!’ Miss Anketel said. ‘What balderdash is all this? Sir John, will you be so good as to assist us to a little common sense?’

  But it didn’t look as if Appleby was disposed to oblige. His cigar was burning evenly, and he appeared entirely relaxed.

  ‘As I keep on saying,’ he presently and mildly remarked, ‘we simply wait and see. Four minutes and thirty seconds, or thereabout.’

  This small interval of time elapsed. The peaceful silence which darkest Wiltshire enjoys in the dead waste and middle of the night remained unbroken. No owl hooted or pheasant clacked. From the populous stables of the Pinkertons not a neigh or whinny was heard. And Miss Pringle paled, as one who is betrayed. Observing this, Sir Ambrose was tardily recalled to the duties of his station. He rose and advanced upon this incredible woman, bottle in hand.

  ‘A drop of this?’ Sir Ambrose sympathetically asked.

  ‘Thank you.’ Faintly, Miss Pringle nodded. And then she spoke out, loud and clear. ‘The scoundrel must have lost his nerve,’ she declared.

  ‘Which isn’t true of you,’ Appleby said. He spoke with honest admiration – but spoke too soon. For Miss Priscilla Pringle (talented authoress of Poison at the Parsonage) had risen and bolted from the room.

  20

  John Appleby followed. He did so with a gesture indicating his persuasion that an effect of general hue and cry was not desirable. Judith would not in any case have abandoned her crochet; the day had passed when she judged it amusing to join her husband in policemanly scampers. The Pinkertons and Miss Anketel merely exchanged glances of politely restrained relief, thereby registering their sense that Miss Pringle had proved not at all their sort of person. Detective-Inspector Graves, having acquitted himself with credit, was perfectly willing to take Appleby’s raised finger as a command, and he gave himself placidly to tidying up his notes. The result of all this was that Appleby presently found himself on the terrace of Long Canings Hall, alone under the stars – except for the presence of a few looming forms which might have been either heathen divinities or Wiltshire constables.

  The police were certainly not evident in any active role. Assembled and stationed for the purpose of intervening to prevent the spectacular destruction of a substantial manor house and its owner, they had not been required to interfere with the departure of a solitary female guest. And that Miss Pringle had indeed departed was evident from the sound of a motor-engine retreating down the drive – from this and the sudden appearance of wavering headlights as the lady remembered to switch them on.

  But now a car was advancing from the other direction, and in a moment it could be seen that the two were passing each other. Then, rather dashingly, the oncoming vehicle circled the broad gravel sweep before the house, and came to a halt more or less under Appleby’s nose. It was the sort of car in which most of the available space is given over to the works, and the occupants edge themselves in as they may. But the driver who scrambled from this sporting conveyance was the Reverend Dr Howard.

  ‘Ah, Sir John again!’ Howard said. ‘And I think that was our friend Miss Pringle who has just driven away.’

  ‘You recognised her?’

  ‘I recognised her car. I once changed a wheel on it when she had a puncture in Gibber. So far as I am concerned, her presence adds to the mystery by which we appear to be surrounded. Are those people in the manor all right? And the good Miss Anketel? It’s really what I came to find out.’

  ‘They are all in excellent health, I’m glad to say. So you have felt able to leave your young fugitive?’

  ‘Jenkins? My housekeeper will hold his hand if he wakes up sobbing in the night. He has been talking the most extraordinary stuff.’

  ‘Has he, indeed? If you don’t feel it to be too chilly, Howard, let u
s take a turn round the house. A little conversation may be useful.’

  ‘By all means. But you have no sense of a crisis that won’t keep?’

  ‘Not on my present information. There is a certain intrepidity about Miss Pringle, although I think she is prone to exist in considerable confusion of mind. Just at the moment, I expect that she is on the way to “Kandahar”. It doesn’t seem a move that can much mend matters, from her rather peculiar point of view. Whether she is placing herself at some sort of hazard, or is on the contrary disposed so to place the learned Bulkington, is another matter. I hope, as a matter of fact, that you can help me to a clearer view of it.’

  Dr Howard received this for a moment in silence, and the two men together rounded a corner of the building. A sickle moon here shed upon spreading lawns a dubious radiance that died before the low dark mass of surrounding shrubberies. In the middle of this composition, like a great rock rearing itself out of a still sea, stood a single cedar. Howard paused to view it thoughtfully.

  ‘Am I right,’ he asked, ‘in thinking that that tree was mixed up with one of the tomfooleries which have been worrying Pinkerton?’

  ‘Certainly. Pinkerton found a hanged Pinkerton in it. And he found a drowned Pinkerton and a buried Pinkerton as well.’

  ‘Did he, indeed?’ Impatience before folly was perceptible in Dr Howard’s tone. ‘Am I right in thinking that whatever precisely has been happening has been a very great deal of nonsense – somehow involving both Bulkington and that inquisitive Miss Pringle, but so silly as scarcely to be worth elucidation?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t really know.’ Appleby glanced whimsically at the rector in the moonlight. ‘I shan’t know until I have elucidated it. Fortunately, the greater part of the job is already done. The follies of Miss Pringle – and I think they are fairly to be called follies rather than crimes – are no longer obscure to me. With your neighbour Captain Bulkington it is another matter. I confess to being a little uneasy about him. He has a great appearance of absurdity of a not unendearing sort. One feels, so to speak, like letting him off with a caution. And yet I wonder. I wonder – and should be most interested to know how this strikes you – whether he may not be a rather notably wicked person.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘Precisely, Howard! “Ah” is the word. Take, for instance, those two youths, Waterbird and Jenkins. It would be quite unfair, I believe, to claim there is any evidence that Bulkington has in a serious sense corrupted them. He appears, indeed, to have introduced them to the possibilities of fornication–’

  ‘Good God, sir! Don’t you call that corruption?’

  ‘Well, yes – I do. But I wouldn’t say there was anything positively heinous about it. Incidentally, it was a means of establishing a hold over them, which he has exploited in order to compel them to carry out a number of pranks which they must have judged senseless and more or less harmless. Pranks reflecting, as it happens, the fanciful mind of our friend Miss Pringle. But dismiss that for a moment. I am not sure that I don’t find something more disturbing – something hinting Bulkington to be more wicked than absurd – in whatever it is that has really got young Ralph Jenkins down. According to Miss Anketel – and this is something you encountered along with her, and must be in a position to confirm – Bulkington has been drinking heavily and behaving in an alarmingly manic fashion. And Jenkins has been particularly scared by something that has to do with that abandoned well in the Old Rectory garden.’

  ‘An, the well! So we come back to that.’

  ‘Indeed, we do,’ Appleby said. ‘And to the death of Dr Pusey.’

  They had reached an end of the terrace which terminated in a squat balustrade. On this Dr Howard now casually perched himself – much as he had done on the dangerously low coping of the fatal well itself. He then waited for Appleby to do the same. His ease of manner, however, was not immediately reflected in his speech.

  ‘How sorry I am,’ he said, ‘that I cannot help you more with a piece of ancient history which appears so much to interest you. But it was before my time, as I have said.’

  ‘No doubt. But at least the present perturbation of Ralph Jenkins, and his affecting flight, my dear rector, to the sanctuary of Holy Church, is well within your cognisance. And it’s that I’d be grateful if I might hear a little more about. It might help me when I go over to “Kandahar”.’

  ‘You’re going over there at this hour?’ Howard asked. He seemed startled. ‘The business requires following up at that pace?’

  ‘It may. I don’t know. One has to be on the safe side, does one not? And now, please, the mind of Ralph Jenkins.’

  ‘Very well. What the wretched boy says is roughly this. Waterbird has lately been making him spy closely on Bulkington. Waterbird plans for Bulkington some hideous reversal of fortune. His favourite phrase, it seems, is that he is going to have the Bulgar howling yet. They are really an awful set.’

  ‘No doubt. But then?’

  ‘Jenkins, compelled to espionage at the expense of his own innocent slumbers, has discovered that Bulkington gets up and prowls in the small hours. He goes outside and wanders around – in narrowing circles which gradually bring him closer and closer to that damned well. Eventually he reaches it, and when he reaches it he gloats.’

  ‘Gloats? That would be Jenkins’ word?’

  ‘Precisely. He gloats. And, having gloated, he delivers himself of peal upon peal of maniacal laughter.’

  ‘Not Jenkins’ word?’

  ‘Not exactly – but that is the idea. And then Bulkington goes back to bed. That is Jenkins’ entire story. Perhaps, Appleby, you make more of it than I do.’

  ‘I think not,’ Appleby said. ‘I think you find it highly suggestive.’

  ‘I fail to understand you.’

  ‘Again, I think not. The wretched Jenkins’ narrative has rekindled in your mind suspicions which you have been glad to forget, or to half-forget, concerning the death of your predecessor. We have really – you and I – had this out on the carpet before. But we didn’t then go through with it. Let us do so now.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Your mind revolts violently – and I sympathise with you – at the thought of scandal attaching to a fellow Clerk in Holy Orders. Better that some wicked man go free than that such an evil, deeply injurious to the faith of your flock, should befall. Am I right?’

  ‘I have to say Yes. Matters would scarcely be improved’ –Howard could be seen to smile grimly in the faint moonlight – ‘by my starting in on a pack of lies.’

  ‘I’d expect nothing of the kind. So where are we? We have to suppose that Pusey, poor man, had succumbed to some snare of the devil which the world (although pretty well the devil’s property) would judge very bad indeed. We can imagine this or that – from melting down the church plate to the most striking sins of the flesh. His usher, this wretched cashiered or half-pay Bulkington, finds him out, and bleeds him white. That’s where the money came from for buying up what was then quite a flourishing tutorial establishment when the moment arrived. And it arrived, of course, when Pusey was drowned. But how did he come to drown? There arrived a stage at which he felt, as so many victims of ruthless blackmail have come to feel, that his situation was insupportable, and that he must find his own way out. But he had the credit of the cloth to consider. He was Pusey, DD – sanctae theologiae professor. STP for short. Am I right?’

  ‘It is my conjecture.’

  ‘He formed a habit of sitting on the well, reading his novel, his breviary, or whatever. He feigned the progressive development of some bodily infirmity characterised by dizzy fits. Having thus done his duty, he drowned himself. In a well, Howard! Think of it.’

  ‘I often have.’

  ‘And you have felt that, not merely as a priest but also as a man, his name was to be protected, even if it meant that Bulkington–’

  ‘You need not dot the i’s and cross the t’s.’

  ‘I beg your pardon. But well–’ Appleby broke off. ‘On
e hesitates to use the word, even as a different part of speech. But, well, that is it.’

  ‘Yes.’ Dr Howard sighed softly. ‘Do you know? I’m glad, now, that we’ve got so far.’

  ‘It is a clarification.’ Appleby spoke dispassionately. ‘Conjectural, perhaps, but we both accept it. So what is the result?’

  ‘It is for you to say.’

  ‘Our bizarre comedy – Miss Pringle’s nonsense, Bulkington’s present mere or near nonsense – becomes comédie noire. Half a mile away from us at this moment there is a thoroughly evil man.’ Appleby paused. ‘So again, what follows?’

  ‘Those young men must be got clear of him, for a start. I ought to have seen that long ago.’

  ‘I am bound to say I think you should. However, Jenkins, at least, is in sanctuary.’

  ‘Don’t mock me, Appleby.’

  ‘My dear man, heaven forbid.’ Again Appleby paused. ‘And now I am going to walk over and have a word with him.’

  ‘And with Miss Pringle?’

  ‘If she is there, yes. She, too, must be got away, if it can be done.’

  21

  That considerable confusion of mind which Appleby had predicated of Miss Pringle could not have been said to be abating in her as she drove through the darkness on her way to ‘Kandahar’. Captain Bulkington, she chiefly felt, had let her down badly. His nerve must have failed him in a craven manner particularly reprehensible and contemptible in one bred to the profession of arms. As a result, she had performed much labour, and suffered much anxiety, wholly in vain. There was going to be no sensation at all – except, perhaps, of a very minor sort calculated to do nothing but bring a certain amount of unkindly ridicule upon herself. Barbara Vanderpump would certainly tell their common friends that dear Priscilla had been most oddly imagining things. The odious man Appleby might make a kind of smoking-room story out of the affair, and retail it to his cronies at his club. But of anything worthy to be called publicity there would be nothing at all. That treacherous policeman Graves, with his disgusting servility towards the local grandees, would simply accept instructions to drop the whole thing. The official line would be that Bulkington had gone so far as to arrange for the commission of a few tasteless practical jokes, but beyond this no evil had been plotted except within the confines of her own imagination. And thus would decorum, repose, and the avoidance of any breath of public scandal be secured in this stupid little part of Wiltshire. The plain fact was that Bulkington had (as she believed her nephew Timothy would express it) made a monkey of her. It was all very mortifying indeed.