Appleby's Answer Read online

  ‘Share a taxi, perhaps?’ the Captain suggested hopefully. ‘Small economies necessary, these days. All those damned taxes.’

  ‘Thank you, but I am being met by friends.’ Miss Pringle rather prided herself upon her adroitness with small social lies; she even believed that she could manage quite a big lie at a pinch. ‘In the station hotel,’ she added, by way of obviating any awkwardness on the platform.

  ‘Then au revoir,’ Captain Bulkington said easily. ‘Hope you have a jolly dinner. And pick up a tip or two, eh? I’ll be on the lookout for your next.’

  ‘That will be extremely nice of you.’

  And thus Miss Pringle escaped into the almost open air of Paddington.

  3

  ‘My dear Priscilla, you have made a conquest, I declare!’ Miss Vanderpump spoke with what she would herself have described as a merry tinkle in her voice. She tapped the card her friend had shown her – so vivaciously that her sherry jumped in its glass. ‘A beau – and a military officer!’ Being what is called a romantic novelist, Barbara Vanderpump felt it incumbent upon her to employ a slightly antique vocabulary. ‘And, you say, un vert galant.’

  ‘Just what does that mean?’

  ‘It means that you report his joints creaked.’ Miss Vanderpump bubbled. ‘Do you think he is a Hussar? Or a Dragoon?’

  ‘He is certainly neither now. He appears to be a pedagogue.’

  ‘Which lends rather a sinister resonance to his address.’

  ‘Kandahar?’ Miss Pringle was perplexed.

  ‘No, no. Long Canings. He is a most prodigious fustigator of small boys.’

  ‘Barbara, you are extremely foolish. A crammer takes on nineteen-year-old youths, who have been superannuated from the public schools. Boys who have been hopeless even in an Army Class. He prepares them for Sandhurst, and places of that sort. It must be a depressing means of livelihood.’

  ‘My dear, we are out of date, don’t you think? It seems probable that, in these egalitarian times, Sandhurst is no longer entered in that way. Your new friend no doubt coaches his charges for admission to strange new universities. Which is worse and worse. Captain Bulkington is a figure of pathos, I declare. Did he seem very hard up?’

  ‘He offered me five hundred pounds.’

  ‘Five hundred pounds!’ Miss Vanderpump stared. ‘To–?’

  ‘It appeared to be to collaborate in a detective novel.’

  ‘Then he must, as you have conjectured, be a little unhinged. He probably hasn’t a penny.’

  ‘He belongs to a very good club. One of those in Pall Mall.’

  ‘However do you know that? Did he propose an assignation there?’

  ‘He well might have. But it was simply’ – Miss Pringle was a little embarrassed – ‘that I happened to notice a luggage-label on his suitcase.’

  ‘And you belong to a very good club yourself.’ Miss Vanderpump glanced appreciatively round the drawing-room of the Lysistrata. ‘You must invite him to luncheon here. And invite me as well. I’d love to meet the inamorato.’

  ‘I will do nothing of the sort.’ Miss Pringle applied herself to her own sherry. She sometimes found Miss Vanderpump’s resolute pursuit of spirited conversation a shade fatiguing. ‘For that matter, he would much prefer to be asked to the Colloquium. He has this thing about crime-writing. I think he would call it crime-writing. An odious expression.’

  ‘It sounds almost fishy.’

  ‘Fishy?’ A pause ensued, while Miss Pringle lit a cigarette. ‘Nothing of the kind has occurred to me. He was, in his way, quite an amiable man.’

  ‘You must not speak of him in a past tense. You and he have a future together. I feel it in my bones.’

  ‘Then your bones creak, my dear woman. The episode was amusing while it lasted. But I was most careful to deny him any means of following it up.’

  ‘That was unadventurous. And why not collaborate with him? Of course, Priscilla, you are now so extremely successful that his suggestion of a fee is an absurdity. But you could make your own arrangement about dividing the royalties, after all.’

  ‘You are talking very great nonsense, Barbara. What rational motive could prompt me to such a course?’

  ‘It needn’t be strictly rational. It might be a matter of your doing something kind.’

  Miss Pringle was so surprised that she finished her sherry at a gulp. This was a mistake, since at least twenty minutes must elapse before the two talented ladies could usefully set out for the Diner Dupin. Moreover, she was now constrained to notice that Miss Vanderpump’s was also an empty glass. Although far from grudging the cost of a further apéritif, she was conscious of liking, upon formal occasions, to keep a clear head. It was all very well for Barbara, whose line was the artistic temperament and a dashing vivacity. She herself preferred to give an impression of cool intelligence – which is the proper endowment, surely, of writers of the classical detective novel. However, she believed she didn’t get tipsy very easily. So she asked for more sherry.

  ‘Of my doing something kind?’ she asked.

  ‘Certainly. This Captain Bulkington – surrounded by his horrible half-wit youths, and not even able to beat them – probably leads a very dull life. A lonely life, too. What he seeks is simply some pleasant professional association. And you would benefit from it yourself, Priscilla. As a writer, that is. Haven’t some of the reviewers been saying that you have rather run the clergy to death? Literally to death, more often than not. Your art might well benefit from fresh associations. You could stay at “Kandahar”–’

  ‘That would be most improper.’

  ‘There is probably a respectable matron or housekeeper or the like who would preserve the convenances. And think of all those youths. They would make a fascinating study. Several of them would probably fall in love with you. Those from long-broken homes, for instance, who have never known a mother.’

  ‘Or even a maiden aunt.’ Miss Pringle spoke tartly. Barbara’s delightful nonsense could be extremely tiresome. ‘You seem to be much more obsessed with this man than I am. Why not pick him up, and collaborate with him yourself?’

  ‘Why not, indeed?’ Miss Vanderpump waved her replenished glass gaily. ‘Collaborate, that is. The expression “pick him up” is a somewhat indelicate one. Or why should we not all three collaborate? It would be the greatest fun. Captain Bulkington no doubt takes a keen interest in military history. A romance of the Napoleonic Wars, perhaps. A title comes to me like a flash! Revelry by Night. The reference would be to the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels on the eve of Waterloo. At the same time, it would be un mot à double entente–’

  ‘Which, I suppose, is the correct French for what most of us call a double entendre?’

  ‘Exactly. And we should be in rivalry with Thackeray in Vanity Fair, not to speak of Lord Byron in Childe Harold. Of course there would be a mystery element, Priscilla, such as only you could provide.’

  ‘Thank you. But I don’t think Captain Bulkington would be interested in historical romance, even with mysterious corpses thrown in. His taste is for the small-scale and the everyday. He was discontented with Murder in the Cathedral because the cathedral wasn’t something more manageable, such as a parish church. How, he asked me, is a fellow to come by a cathedral?’

  ‘My dear Priscilla, if that isn’t fishy, what could be fishy? Captain Bulkington is a homicidal maniac.’ Miss Vanderpump had recklessly changed ground. ‘He lives amid fantasies of cunningly contrived murder. He dreams of possessing himself of diabolical infernal machines and poisons unknown to toxicology. When he discovered who you were, you inevitably went to his head.’

  ‘And you regard all this as a good reason for collaborating with him?’

  ‘Certainly. There is scope in Captain Bulkington for the most fascinating psychological study.’

  ‘I think it would be better if his mind were diverted to the Battle of Waterloo.’ Although speaking lightly, Miss Pringle was conscious of feeling considerable perturbation. She was far
from certain that there was not some germ of truth in Barbara Vanderpump’s frolicsome interpretation of her adventure. ‘Do you think,’ she asked impulsively, ‘that I ought to tell the police?’ She paused. ‘Seriously, Barbara?’

  ‘Perhaps you should. Why not tell this interesting man Appleby, whom we are going to meet tonight?’

  ‘I don’t think that would quite do. Hasn’t he retired? And, in any case, it would not be suitable on a social occasion.’

  ‘I am unable to agree – not, Priscilla dear, if you do it with proper address. Simply tell him, as if purely for amusement, of this rather odd encounter on your way up to town. And let him draw his own conclusions. Even if he no longer runs all the policemen, he might drop a word somewhere, so that discreet enquiries would be made. Yes – I believe it is really your duty to do just that. Otherwise, quite dreadful things may happen. The Killings at Kandahar. Crime at a Crammer’s. The Witness from Wilts.’ Miss Vanderpump produced what the poet Meredith would have called a volley of silvery laughter. ‘My dear, you must forgive me,’ she said. ‘I am hopelessly in thrall to the Comic Spirit. There was a star danced, you know, and under that I was born.’

  Miss Pringle gathered up her evening-cloak, and made no reply. She was telling herself that she had quite forgotten how really silly Barbara Vanderpump was. And of her afternoon’s adventure she was sorry that she had told her a thing.

  It was the first of London’s evening rush-hours, and their taxi made only a tedious stop-go progress towards the Café Royal. Fortunately the Comic Spirit had suspended its overlordship of Miss Vanderpump – perhaps the better to put her through her paces in more brilliant company later on. Miss Pringle thus had leisure to look around her, and she was far from feeling impatient merely because their progress was rather slow. She had made her home of recent years in a retired situation (but where there was a good vicar) near Worcester, and a visit to London was really like a child’s treat. It was only that, of course, because it was infrequent – and this made her glad that she had decided against living in the capital. A London home would require money – really a lot of money – and it was still only on her own modest scale that she could think of herself as affluent now. Of course if one was famous, and not just established (although ‘established’ was a comfortable word, and not to be despised), it would be another matter…

  They were in Shaftesbury Avenue, and it was like going through a ‘scenic’ railway in a Brobdingnagian fun-fair. The multicoloured neon signs flickered rapidly on and off, leaving the most bewildering after-images on the retina; other brilliant lights pursued each other helter-skelter in circles and squares and oblongs and elaborate arabesques. One of the theatres kept on flashing the name of some currently successful playwright very rapidly in green and red and blue – first in one colour and then another. Childishly, Miss Pringle shut her eyes and tried to see the same lights announcing PRISCILLA PRINGLE with equal abandon. Although she didn’t achieve a very convincing image, the thought was an exciting one, all the same. It remained with her, intoxicatingly, as the taxi wove its way down Haymarket and up to Piccadilly Circus, and came to a halt.

  ‘They don’t advertise us like that!’ she said a little breathlessly, as she jumped out.

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Novelists.’

  ‘Advertisements don’t sell novels.’ Miss Vanderpump prided herself on understanding publishing. ‘What does, nobody knows.’

  ‘Advertisements like those might.’ Miss Pringle gestured in the direction from which they had come, although she had to interrupt fumbling in her bag for coins in order to do so.

  ‘It wouldn’t pay, you dear goose.’ Miss Vanderpump’s laughter, at its most argentine, startled the large man in a top hat who was holding open the door of the taxi. ‘Perhaps we ought to turn playwrights. The idea of costume drama has always attracted me. But wouldn’t you say that large success is a little vulgar?’

  ‘One would at least wish to avoid notoriety,’ Miss Pringle replied judiciously.

  And the two ladies repaired to their banquet.

  4

  Appleby at sixty had to keep on reminding himself that sixty it was. He no longer felt like Appleby at twenty, but it wasn’t at all clear to him that he and Appleby at, say, thirty were not very much one and the same person. At least curiosity had not died in him; if it had, he would not have come to this dinner. Thomas Hardy has a poem in which the moon peers in upon Thomas Hardy scribbling at his desk – being interested in the ‘blinkered mind’ (as he brutally tells the poet) of somebody at all prompted thus to scribble ‘in a world of such a kind’. Appleby felt rather like the moon – at least in relation to people who invent crimes in a world so deplorably full of crimes already. He wanted to peer at them.

  It wasn’t, perhaps, quite the spirit – he told himself – in which to have accepted an invitation to turn up as principal guest at a feast. But then, after all, if he was peering he was also being peered at. His hosts (and hostesses), creators of the golden world of fiction, were not without their own curiosity about him as an emanation from the brazen world of fact. He had actually sat in an office overlooking the Thames, with high-powered Detective-Inspectors and the like presenting themselves to report on this and that; he had actually – only a little earlier in his career – hurried in an equally high-powered police car to inspect one more-or-less enigmatical corpse or another. And now he was at their dinner, decently able to say the right, the appreciative, thing to people he had never heard of, and presently proposing to get on his feet and make a speech which at least would offend nobody. One way and another, it was a reasonably fair deal.

  Already, and before sitting down, he had made a bow to several presumably deeply crime-stained ladies, and had had introduced to him an answering number of gentlemen doubtless reeking (could one have but sniffed it) of gore. And of chloroform, of course, and of gunpowder or whatever now propels bullets from revolvers, and of that peculiar smell as of bitter almonds inseparable from any really high-class poisoning. Appleby had found all these people agreeable and quite fun; his only anxiety had been to deal with the fact – if it arose – that a preoccupied life had positively forbidden him the pleasure of ever reading anything they had written. But it hadn’t arisen – or rather it had arisen instantly to evaporate, since they had all taken it for granted at the start that the sad fact must be precisely so. They were rather modest people, really – which was not a condition of mind which he had ever been much conscious of registering in such forays as he had ventured into more exalted literary spheres. Appleby resolved to excise from his speech one or two mild ironies which had been forming themselves in his head. There were a surprising number of women, for one thing. Appleby, who was old-fashioned (as old-fashioned, if the truth may be uttered, as that Miss Pringle whom we have lately met), believed that, vis-à-vis ladies, anything approximating to banter wasn’t at all the thing.

  He had looked round, on entering, on the off chance of a familiar face. And two familiar faces – for they arranged things very well – in fact flanked him at table now. He had known Miss Barrace for years – known her as a lady with a ‘desk’, as they said, at the Foreign Office. He just hadn’t known that Miss Barrace was Miss Somebody Else as well, and decidedly at the top of that lethal tree in the numerous limbs of which he had, for the evening, been invited to scramble. Miss Barrace was tremendous. He wasn’t confident that there didn’t already show at least a light sweat upon his brow as a consequence of the intellectual effort required to give her anything like a conversational quid pro quo or tit for tat. With old Hussey on his other hand it was possible to be more relaxed, although old Hussey was at least equally eminent. He was Master of Appleby forgot just what Cambridge college, a power in the land at something called Greek Epigraphy, and given, every decade or so, to uttering some deep mystery in the tradition of Douglas and Margaret Cole or Ronnie Knox. Appleby had once read a novel by Hussey. It had been called The Seventeenth Suspect. And he did at least recall of it that t
he anterior sixteen had all been given a very fair spin.

  The Diner Dupin was appropriately mounted. In the place of honour – hard by Miss Barrace, that is to say – reposed a tatty letter-rack, decidedly an authentic period piece, in the criss-cross tapes of which was thrust an equally tatty envelope. Opposite Miss Barrace, as the presiding genius of the feast, was a ferocious (but stuffed) orang-outang (or was it gorilla?) such as the severely logical mind of the great Dupin had once inferred as the only possible efficient cause of the regrettable events in the Rue Morgue. Appleby belonged to a dining club called the Peacocks, existing to honour the shade of Thomas Love of that name; he made a mental note to endeavour to borrow for one of its occasions a creature so eminently able to recall the prince of all such beasts, Sir Oran Haut-Ton. He ventured, indeed, to put this to Miss Barrace now, with the consequence that he was instantly subjected to a stiff viva-voce examination not only on Melincourt but on Crochet Castle and Gryll Grange as well. Quite soon he was telling himself that the grotesquely named Crooks’ Colloquium was a wholly pleasurable affair.

  ‘Going to clobber us, I suppose?’ the venerable Hussey was saying.

  ‘Clobber you? My dear fellow, nothing is further from my mind.’ Appleby was all surprise. ‘You get clobbered?’

  ‘Lord, yes! It’s absolutely the thing from our distinguished guests. Heavies from the criminal bar. Home Office experts on entrails and heaven knows what. Unfortunate chaps who look after homicidal maniacs in jug. They get up and tell us we touch pitch and shall not pass undefiled. They must be absolutely right.’

  ‘It’s not a line of thought that has ever come to me.’

  ‘Don’t be mendacious, Appleby. It doesn’t become your years. At our last jollification of this sort we had a fellow from your own old stamping-ground at the CID. A mild-mannered man. But he felt he must stand up and be counted. He simply appealed to us to give over. To chuck it. To purge and live clean. One day, he said, one of us might put something in somebody’s head.’