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  ‘They may be useful for getting about quietly.’ Appleby paused. ‘There’s plenty of room on this trunk, without any question of disagreeable contiguity. So won’t you sit down?’

  The man called Egon Raffaello sat down. Heaven knows his real name – Appleby reflected – but the ridiculous mix-up of his assumed one is almost offensively absurd. Perhaps Raffaello is still a common Italian name, although I don’t remember ever having shaken anybody so denominated by the hand. And this chap is Portuguese. It’s one of the few facts certainly known of him. Not even a political refugee – whom one might continue to respect even if he has been constrained to fall for a living on the more shady edge of things. Nothing to be said for him whatever.

  But that’s not true, Appleby thought. There’s no human being on whom such a verdict should be pronounced. In this hostile universe some of us hold out longer or better than others, and in the eyes of the gods Egon Raffaello – who is a thorough-going pest in mine – is simply an early casualty. Which doesn’t at all mean, however, that he ought to be let get away with something at other people’s expense. So what is he doing here, anyway? One wouldn’t suppose violence to be at all his line. Still, he must be checked out of the affair pretty thoroughly – whether by me or by Pride’s men.

  ‘Are you in the habit of visiting Elvedon?’ Appleby asked.

  ‘I’ve never been here before.’ Raffaello produced a relaxed gesture. He was by nature an urbane twister, and his urbanity had been shaken only momentarily by his unexpected encounter with an old adversary. What he would in any case have to tell somebody sooner or later, he had no objection to telling Appleby now. ‘And you’ll want to know whether I came in a professional character. Well, certainly I did. Tytherton wanted to discuss one or two proposals at leisure. And to show me things.’

  ‘Paintings?’

  ‘Works of art in general. The collection here isn’t at all remarkable, but it’s worth thinking about, all the same.’

  ‘From a commercial point of view? Tytherton was what may be called an investor in the fine arts?’

  ‘My dear Appleby, they’re all that.’ Raffaello’s tone was indulgent. ‘No man in England knows that better than you. Think of all those dukes and marquises with Titians and Holbeins that you’ve hob-nobbed with in your time. Charming and unworldly characters. Removed through centuries of privilege from the base temptations of the market place. But was there ever one of them who didn’t keep an eye on how such things were going?’

  ‘Some of Tytherton’s pictures went, I gather – and more or less out of the window. I imagine he had given up hope of recovering them. Was he perhaps proposing to make good the gaps by fresh purchases? And was he enlisting you to help him?’

  ‘It’s a reasonable conjecture, no doubt.’ Raffaello smiled blandly. ‘But matters of that sort are highly confidential, as you know. I could scarcely discuss them without the consent of Tytherton’s heirs and executors.’

  ‘Even when the manner of Tytherton’s violent death is a matter of police investigation?’

  ‘Well, well – we shall see about that. The day is still young, after all. By the way, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to you that Tytherton may have wanted to sell something?’

  ‘To sell something?’ Appleby looked hard at Raffaello. He was wondering whether this question was as meaningless as its casual tone suggested, or whether it somehow represented Raffaello’s vanity in some fashion betraying him. ‘Tytherton was concerned to have a balanced and coherent collection? He sold off second-bests?’

  ‘Another reasonable conjecture.’ Raffaello stood up and stretched himself lazily in the sun. He appeared to have wholly recovered from the disconcerting apparition Appleby had constituted, and to be addressing himself to enjoying the situation. After all – Appleby thought grimly – he eluded me once. In fact he got the better of me. Why shouldn’t he be confident he’ll do it again?

  ‘Or he may have been hard up.’ Raffaello said. ‘Many of us are.’

  ‘One wouldn’t be prompted to such a notion by Elvedon, or by the way the place is maintained.’

  ‘Perfectly true. But appearances can be deceptive in this sector of society.’ Raffaello again made a sweeping gesture. ‘It’s a fact of which I’ve had a good deal of experience. One learns to look out for the signs.’

  ‘And what are the signs here?’

  ‘I see you haven’t met Mrs Graves. Otherwise you’d scarcely ask.’

  ‘I certainly haven’t met Mrs Graves – or heard of her either.’

  ‘And what about Carter? Coming to an understanding with him might be quite expensive, if you ask me. Miss Kentwell, of course, is different. A harmless creature, if there ever was one – although as tiresome as they come.’

  ‘Do I understand that these people constitute a kind of house party at Elvedon?’

  ‘My dear Appleby, I see you are by no means au courant. Some of them I should call a little more than that. But you will see for yourself. My own advice to you would be to concentrate your celebrated detective powers on Catmull.’

  ‘And who is Catmull?’

  ‘The butler. It’s never safe to ignore the butler. But, on reflection, I change my mind. Go not for Catmull but for his wife. Mrs Catmull is the cook. And if cuisine means anything, Mrs Catmull is the most sinister of the lot.’

  Meaningless badinage, although not to be judged morally reprehensible, is seldom entertaining for long. Appleby remembered it now as one of this disagreeable character’s more tiresome propensities. But there were more relevant matters to recall to memory. For example, there was Raffaello’s chief field of professional activity. No doubt he had a good enough line on where to pick you up, say, a Caravaggio, if you wanted such a thing, and knew just where to find a couple of collectors susceptible of being talked into profitable competition with each other for a Monet or a Renoir. The mechanics of inflating a contemporary reputation at a commercially propitious moment were unlikely to be beyond him. And he certainly possessed skill in filtering quietly out of a private collection awkwardly valuable works on which no right-thinking man would like to see the successful collecting of estate duty. It was this last beneficent activity, indeed, that had first commended him to Appleby’s notice a good many years ago. More recently, he had been peddling one or another remote past or dawn of history. He had a little gallery off Bond Street which announced in a refined and reticent lettering: The Arts of the Ancient Orient. He financed what had the appearance of a learned journal but really acted as a sales-sheet with the title Etruria. If you were knowledgeable, you went to him for authentic Etruscan stuff smuggled out of Italy, and got it; if you were less knowledgeable, you did the same thing, and acquired some perfectly respectable fakes. And then – Appleby remembered – there were the displaced lamas and monks and anchorites and archimandrites. These people were always turning up nowadays – fleeing from the threat of the sword, more or less, but with marketable objects of great value in their baggage, and stories about their own just proprietorship of these which nobody in the western world was in a position to check. Raffaello, it was understood, had cashed in on that.

  Much of this was rather a long way from Elvedon Court. It did seem as if what might be called Raffaello’s pliability had been his recommendation to the place; in other words, that the late Maurice Tytherton had been up to something not wholly reputable. People who get themselves murdered have often been up to precisely that. Roughly speaking, it is a black mark against a man if he finishes up with a bullet in brain or heart. Still, about Tytherton this remained wild surmise. He might well have been as monumentally respectable as most landowners, bankers, care-ridden industrialists, minor Ministers of the Crown, newspaper owners, and indeed all affluent persons normally are. As for the insinuations in one or two things Raffaello had said – well, that might just be the fellow’s common venomous style. Except that one had to remember the
re had been the Reverend Mr Voysey as well. Voysey, who was odd but neither venomous nor vulgar, had been constrained to admit that a certain lack of edification marked the Elvedon scene. And who was Mrs Graves? Who was Carter? Could the significance of Mr and Mrs Catmull conceivably be other than a silly joke? Asking himself these questions now, Appleby had to confess to himself that he was hooked.

  ‘What an estate agent would call an imposing country residence.’ Raffaello had taken a few steps across the little glade to a point from which it was possible to glimpse the roof of Elvedon. He looked like a very minor devil, Appleby thought, taking a brooding and disparaging survey of Eden. ‘Who inherits it? Not I’d suppose, that superior tart, the second Mrs Tytherton. The sponging nephew?

  Surely not. But I’m forgetting. There was a useless son, I’ve been told, by a first marriage. He skulks somewhere in South America.’

  ‘On the contrary, he has the good fortune to be skulking within reach of your backside.’

  These surprising words had scarcely been uttered before Appleby was aware of Raffaello sprawling face-downward on the grass. It had been a vigorous and accurate kick. Had the unfortunate art dealer really been a football, he would have gone straight between the posts.

  4

  Nor was the assailant assuaged. He had taken up a threatening posture above the prone man.

  ‘I don’t know who you are,’ he said. ‘But what you are is clear enough. A poisonous little toad. Is that right?’ He drew back one foot and swung it gently. ‘Or shall I dribble you off the property?’

  ‘Stop!’ It had taken Appleby a moment to get on terms with this astonishing irruption. ‘If you touch that man again you will find yourself under arrest.’

  ‘And who the devil are you to give me orders?’ The new arrival had swung round. ‘Clear out.’

  ‘I am, among other things, a Justice of the Peace. And I am not giving you orders. I am simply telling you, Mr Tytherton, of what will be the legal consequence of any further violence on your part.’ Appleby paused. ‘I suppose you know that your father is dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then consider the mere indecency, hard upon that, of becoming involved in a vulgar brawl.’

  ‘It takes two to manage a brawl. This creature will simply take a leathering. Let me show you.’

  ‘I’ll sue you for assault. I’ll have you shut up – put away. You’re a madman.’ Raffaello had picked himself up, seemingly not much injured, and managed to interpose Appleby between himself and the ferocious young man who was undoubtedly Mark Tytherton.

  ‘At least let me make him say he’s a poisonous little toad.’ Mark addressed this appeal to Appleby almost engagingly. ‘It will take only a single clout. You’ll see.’

  ‘Mr Tytherton, you are not a schoolboy, and this is not a junior day-room. You no doubt overheard Mr Raffaello speak contemptuously both of yourself and others. But I advise you to forget about it, and think seriously of other things. I know little, so far, about the circumstances of your father’s death. But they appear to have been mysterious, and anybody who may conceivably have been concerned will be required to give an account of himself.’

  ‘What about that chap?’ Contemptuously, Mark Tytherton pointed at Raffaello. ‘How does he account for himself?’

  ‘Mr Raffaello is an art-dealer, and has been staying at Elvedon as your father’s guest.’

  ‘And you – where do you come in?’

  ‘I had better explain that at once.’ And Appleby did so. ‘So you understand,’ he concluded, ‘that I have no official standing in the affair whatever. But if the Chief Constable invites me to help, I shall do my best to do so.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll all want me to account for my movements?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘And that will take some doing.’ Raffaello interjected this viciously.

  ‘At least we can tell this bloody wog to beat it for the time being?’ Again Mark Tytherton appealed to Appleby. ‘To crawl back into the woodwork?’

  ‘Mr Raffaello may well wish to withdraw. Your childish and grossly insulting language, Mr Tytherton. is scarcely likely to induce him to linger.’

  ‘A policeman, you say you are? You talk more like a book than a dick.’ Mark had produced this with a grin which one might have interpreted either as ferocious or as good-humoured, according as to how one felt about him. ‘Beetle off,’ he added – almost amiably – to Raffaello.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m going. If I come back, it will be with a van from the local madhouse.’ And Egon Raffaello, who appeared to find Mark’s juvenile form of wit catching, walked away.

  ‘How did you know who I was?’ There was uncompromising challenge in Mark Tytherton’s voice, and he eyed Appleby warily.

  ‘You more or less announced yourself, didn’t you?’

  ‘It was more than that. You weren’t sufficiently surprised.’

  ‘Wasn’t I?’ It amused Appleby that Mark had been dissatisfied with his coup de théâtre. ‘As a matter of fact, I did already know you were around. You were spotted in the park a few days ago by the vicar.’

  ‘Voysey?’

  ‘Yes. He came to see your mother–’

  ‘Stepmother.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I beg your pardon. He came to Elvedon this morning, and was the first person I encountered. He told me how he had run into you.’

  ‘Does he think I bolted from him?’

  ‘He didn’t suggest that to me. You simply hadn’t noticed him.’

  ‘No more I had.’

  ‘Mr Tytherton, am I right in thinking that, even down to this present moment, you have let nobody at Elvedon know of your arrival in the neighbourhood?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘But you have heard of your father’s death?’

  ‘They were talking about it in my pub as I had breakfast.’

  ‘They don’t know who you are?’

  ‘No. They’re new people. They’ve taken over the pub since my last visit.’

  ‘But have you registered with them under your own name?’

  ‘Registered? Good Lord, it’s a mere pothouse, and they don’t bother about that kind of thing. The fellow just shouts to his wife that here’s a gent who wants a room.’

  ‘I see. But this pub must be frequented by people who remember you, and would recognize you?’

  ‘Oh, yes – I suppose so. I didn’t think about it.’

  ‘You might have been detected at any time?’

  ‘Detected?’ There was bewilderment in Mark’s voice. ‘Oh. I see. This business of lurking and skulking. But it wasn’t like that, at all – or not meant to be. My first idea was to come straight home. It would have been the rational thing. Fatted calf, and all that.’

  ‘Do you regard yourself as very much a prodigal son?’

  ‘You do ask damnably impertinent questions. But, well, no – I don’t. It’s true I last left England after a violent quarrel with my father–’

  ‘Violence seems to be rather a thing with you, Mr Tytherton.’

  ‘Violence?’ Mark seemed momentarily at a loss. ‘Oh, I see. That bastard’s behind. He asked for it, didn’t he?’

  ‘Perhaps so. But may I suggest that, in the present state of affairs at Elvedon, a certain interest must attach to evidences of a propensity to violent behaviour?’

  ‘They must have taught you to talk like that when you were a kid.’ Mark Tytherton offered this impertinence cheerfully. ‘But I see what you mean. If I had killed my father…’ Mark paused, and looked at Appleby with curiously wide-open eyes. ‘It’s a strange thing to have to say, isn’t it? But if I had had another awful row with my father, and taken a gun or a chopper or whatever to him, I’d be rather unlikely, don’t you think, to advertise what you call my propensity to violent behaviour just
for the pleasure of booting some rotten dago on the bottom?’

  ‘It’s a point to consider, no doubt.’ Appleby seemed not particularly impressed by the argument. ‘Am I right in thinking that, when you were distracted by hearing the sound of talk in this spinney, and yielded to the pleasure of what is called, I believe, putting in the boot, you were in fact on your way to Elvedon to present yourself?’

  ‘Yes, of course. And I’ve made a pretty fool of myself, haven’t I? If I hadn’t lost my nerve–’

  ‘And lurked?’

  ‘Just that. Put up in that pub and hung around before going through with the thing. If I hadn’t done that, it seems possible that what has happened wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘You mean, Mr Tytherton, that you have reason to believe that your father’s death has been the consequence of a situation which your earlier arrival would have obviated?’

  ‘Not specifically. I know nothing about my father’s death. It’s just a feeling that it all might have been different.’

  ‘Different, exactly, from what?’

  ‘I just mean that various things – things I don’t myself know about at all – might have taken a different turn, so that he might have been alive now. Perhaps it’s a silly feeling. But if I had gone up to the house at once – if I’d had the guts for it – then, because of the way one thing leads to another–’ Mark broke off rather helplessly. ‘It’s difficult to explain.’

  ‘I think you mean that your father’s death has come at the end of a chain of events which you are entirely in the dark about – but which, even so, your turning up might have broken or altered.’

  ‘That’s just it.’

  ‘Mr Tytherton, have you, whether directly or indirectly, been getting very much news of your home during recent years?’