Appleby's Answer Read online

  ‘Did he claim that it had happened already?’

  ‘I don’t know that he did. Although forthright, he was a tactful and compassionate man. What do you think?’

  ‘I’d suppose it more likely to work the other way. Your colleagues’ – Appleby glanced round the table – ‘occasionally collect a few tips from the world of real crime. But they then fantasticate them in a manner that takes them clean out of the realm of the possible. No criminal would waste time in putting himself to school amid such fairy-tales.’

  ‘You relieve my mind greatly.’ Hussey sounded, in fact, rather disappointed. ‘My own first story was about a peculiarly ingenious murder in a Cambridge college. I knew nothing whatever about such places. I had been no more than an undergraduate in one. And undergraduates, of course, know nothing. Nothing at all.’

  ‘About their seniors? I can imagine that to be so. Why should they? They have other matters to attend to.’

  ‘Exactly. Well, I eventually returned to my own old college as a Fellow. It was a most urbane society. Or so I judged for a while. Then I observed that there were frictions here and there. Sub-acute irritations. Irritations which could not, in honesty, be so described. Unspeakable passions, my dear Appleby, and unquenchable animo-sities! I lived for months in terror lest one of these phrenetic scholars should chance upon my book, and that comprehensive holocaust should succeed.’

  ‘But it didn’t?’

  ‘You are perfectly right. It didn’t. And everything subsided, and we became a very clubbable crowd.’

  ‘Just so. And if one of your temporarily incensed colleagues had come upon your romance, the idea of putting such implausible nonsense into practice would never have entered his agitated but highly intelligent head.’

  ‘I call that a damned uncivil speech.’ Hussey chuckled and raised his glass in amiable salute. ‘But let there be enough agitation, you know, and intelligence fades out. What if one of these chaps had gone right off his chump?’

  ‘I give you that.’ Appleby raised his own glass. ‘If he were mad enough, he might start conning a whole library of thrillers. But a man who is both sane and intelligent, and who wants to kill somebody and get away with it, is likely to think his little problem out for himself. He will probably see the advantage of being as dead simple as may be.’

  ‘Dead’s the word.’ Miss Barrace, who had been listening, interrupted briskly. ‘But, no doubt, there are people whose instinct it is to look for printed instructions. A good supply of arsenic fails to command their confidence unless the recommended dose is printed on the bottle. And Dr Hussey’s Cambridge colleagues would have an inclination that way – viewing everything, as somebody said, through the spectacles of books. But I agree with Sir John. They wouldn’t be likely to get much that was useful out of detective stories. They’d do better to engage in a little research in the annals of actual crime. Famous Trials, and that sort of thing.’

  ‘Sordid,’ Hussey said disapprovingly. ‘All that stuff about pathologists coming forward and giving in evidence just what they found in the various sealed jars brought to their labs. Until it has been what Appleby calls fantasticated by you and me, Miss Barrace, violent crime is merely squalid and disgusting.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ Miss Barrace said. ‘But – do you know? – I once met a respectable elderly gentleman who was approaching things decidedly from the text-book angle. But not violent crime. Only blackmail. He did me the honour of consulting me on the subject.’

  ‘He came to you,’ Appleby asked, ‘and confided to you that he was the victim of a blackmailer? I’ve been the recipient of such confidences myself in my time.’

  ‘No, no – nothing of the kind. He didn’t come to me, for one thing. It was a casual encounter on a railway journey.’

  ‘How very odd.’

  ‘And it was my impression not that he was being blackmailed, but that he was proposing to set up as a blackmailer. And he had, as it were, those printed instructions I was speaking of. He was reading the thing up.’

  ‘Most interesting,’ Hussey said. ‘A scholar, no doubt.’

  ‘Well, no. He said nothing about his walk in life. But I believe I should have concluded him to be an unsuccessful military man.’

  ‘A military man?’ Appleby echoed, looking up. ‘And on a railway journey, you said?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ Miss Barrace did more than masculine justice to the brandy which had now arrived before her. ‘And railway journeys are either restful or boring, as one feels disposed. I was bored, and quite welcomed this odd character.’

  ‘And blackmail, you said – not murder?’

  ‘I did say. You need not nod off, Sir John, after so trifling and foolish a banquet.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’ Because he had the habit of noting everything, Appleby noted the totally irrelevant fact that Miss Barrace had quoted from Romeo and Juliet. ‘And I assure you I am most interested. So is Hussey. Please go on.’

  ‘He was plainly aggrieved by the book he was reading. It was some sort of legal text-book on blackmail. We entered into conversation. He asked me if it was a subject I was interested in. I had to confess having had more than one occasion to look into it.’

  ‘But of course,’ Hussey said cordially. ‘It occurs in at least one of your tip-top stories. I remember them well.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind, Master. Pray desist from idle flattery. My interest was a consequence of what impertinent reviewers are disposed to call my other character. Not that blackmail – except of the very most genteel and velvet-glove sort – much turns up in the routine work of the FO. But during the war I had to branch out a little, and look into certain aspects of espionage.’

  ‘You certainly had to do that,’ Appleby said. Fabulous stories about Miss Barrace were coming back to him.

  ‘Far more spies are created through blackmail than by the enticement of a comfortable numbered account in a Swiss bank. But that is commonplace to you, Sir John.’

  ‘It is. A pretty ghastly sort of commonplace, often enough.’

  ‘Of course. Fear, not greed, is the mainspring of that whole futile industry. But we digress.’

  ‘So we do. And within ten minutes you will be calling upon me to get up and talk nonsense. So let us press on. Just why was this military character aggrieved by his text-book?’

  ‘It seemed to be because it was all about blackmailers being caught out. Just how the law can be exercised to cover and successfully send down even the most cunning of them. It wasn’t in the least what the colonel – I am imagining him to be a colonel – was after.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Hussey prompted, ‘he wanted tips on how to bring the thing off?’

  ‘Precisely. But he wasn’t an unintelligent old rascal. He was aware of the value – call it the negative value – of cautionary tales. But he wanted, so to speak, the positive know-how.’

  ‘Which you would have been very well able to provide.’ Hussey chuckled. ‘But it wouldn’t have been altogether moral to oblige him.’

  ‘One has one’s professional obligations.’ Alarmingly, Miss Barrace responded to Hussey’s chuckle with a deep and rumbling laugh. ‘I could hardly offer him even the small change of the subject.’

  ‘Was he mad?’ Appleby asked.

  ‘It must be evident that an element of eccentricity entered into his attitude.’ Miss Barrace paused upon this eminently diplomatic reply. ‘Waiter, more brandy.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘He suggested that we might have further chats. It seemed not feasible, alas, that they should take place. So that is the end of my story. But I confess that I was left feeling curious about him.’

  ‘A wholesome attitude,’ Appleby said. ‘Did you, by any chance, exchange names?’

  ‘Certainly not. He did, in fact, offer me his card. I tore it up on the platform without looking at it. It was either that, or taking an absurd story to the police.’

  ‘So it was.’ Appleby was so impressed by this latest piece of information t
hat quite a pause succeeded. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I am interested in some of the members of your club. Those two women at the far end of the table, for instance – the one in salmon-pink and the other in magenta. Who are they?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know their names. They are recent accessions to our number, and I fear I am not quite keeping up. I think the salmon-pink one writes stories about archdeacons and prebendaries and precentors. Why should those in particular–?’

  ‘They were introduced to me – or introduced themselves – in a confused sort of way. The magenta one was anxious that the salmon-pink one should tell me some interesting anecdote.’ Appleby just perceptibly hesitated. ‘There was to be a railway journey in it, and a retired soldier. But the salmon-pink one rather shut the other one up.’

  ‘Then you were no doubt preserved from some entirely boring communication. During the informal aftermath of this’ – Miss Barrace was grim – ‘quite a number of people will want to tell you things. And now, Sir John, are you ready?’

  ‘I believe I’d claim readiness as one of my few remaining virtues.’

  ‘Good,’ Miss Barrace said. And she tapped on the table and stood up.

  Part Two

  IN DARKEST WILTS

  5

  Miss Priscilla Pringle to Miss Barbara Vanderpump

  MY DEAR BARBARA,

  No, I think I shall not be in town again for some time, but of course we must certainly lunch together when I do come up! I have finished Poison at the Parsonage, I am thankful to announce, if only after one or two bad moments. Needless to say, there was no trouble with the ecclesiastical part, because I know that territory thoroughly. But the whole episode of the unprincipled farmer who thought he was shooting a fox (although it was really the red-haired Lady Curricle, who had ‘taken a toss’, you will remember, over a hedge) was, I fear, a mistake. I have never myself ridden to hounds (although my Uncle Arthur was an enthusiast and celebrated as a most intrepid ‘thruster’ in his time), and found considerable difficulty in catching the feel of a fast run with the sagacious animals! But now I think it will at least pass. I found just a little help, I will confess to you, in Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man.

  Speaking of parsonages, do you recall my odd encounter with Captain Bulkington, about which you were so anxious that I should tell that important policeman, Appleby? Well, I recently met somebody from his, Bulkington’s, part of the country (which is near Chippenham) and she told me that the proper name of ‘Kandahar’, the Captain’s house, is simply The Old Rectory, Long Canings. The Parish of Long Canings was combined a good many years ago with the neighbouring parish of Gibber Porcorum. At that time the Captain must have bought the house from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and given it its present fancy name, which no doubt commemorates some family association of his own. And talking, by the way, of names, it appears that Long Canings is so called after an interesting rural pursuit, long practised there. I must find out more about this.

  But I want to find out more about something else. The Old Rectory is not really old at all – and indeed parsons’ houses thus denominated seldom are. In the mid-nineteenth century, when (as you will know) the beneficed clergy were still persons of position, and owning a stake in the country, it was the frequent habit to build vicarages and the like which often overshadowed, in point of respectability and consequence, the local public house (dear me, I mean of course to write manor house!) itself. Our quaint Captain’s residence is said to be like this: an imposing Victorian pile in the Gothic taste. It was thus no doubt suitable for the reception of the extensive tutorial establishment he designed.

  But why, you ask, am I interested in the place? Well it seems that the last incumbent actually to live there came to a violent and mysterious end! He was murdered!! It is quite notable how seldom this happens to clergymen in real life, so an authentic instance is naturally of interest to me. And I have a notion that just a peep at the scene (although not, of course, exposing myself to the renewed importunities of its owner) might be not without imaginative stimulus. Nor might quiet chats with the older among the surrounding peasantry be wholly unproductive. In short, tomorrow as ever is, I propose to drive over and go on the prowl for copy! I think this entitles me to sign myself, with love,

  Your enterprising friend,

  PRISCILLA PRINGLE

  The writer of this letter was as good as her word – as indeed she ought to have been, since she was actually proposing to herself to be a good deal better. For a plan – let it be announced at once – had formed itself in Miss Pringle’s mind.

  There are several ways of beginning a reconnaissance in foreign territory of a rural sort. The most common is to discover a sudden need of stamps, and draw up at the village post-office. If the post-office is the everything-shop as well, so much the better. There will then be three or four female cottagers (as Miss Pringle would have called them) gossiping in the place; these will fall silent as you enter, and then draw aside out of what you may be fond enough to suppose a proper feeling of deference towards the gentry (even foreign gentry); in fact, there has been a sudden outpouring – as of a flood of adrenalin into the bloodstream – of suspicion and hostility of the most primitive sort. But you need not greatly worry about that. This is civilisation, after all. The village constable is bedding out lettuces in his garden next door, and (although it wouldn’t be his real inclination) he knows that his livelihood depends upon defending you at need. One of the women makes a gesture, indicating that you should jump the queue. They do in fact want to get rid of you, so that they can resume their talk. But you decline, and withdraw modestly into a corner of the constricted space, perhaps affecting to study some faded picture-postcards of local beauty-spots. So the women continue with their miscellaneous purchases, and within a minute they have forgotten about you and resumed their tittle-tattle. Whereupon you listen in. Persons seeking dream cottages, dilapidated and going for a song, but offering the largest scope for inspired modernisation, tend to have particular faith in this method of setting to work.

  Miss Pringle, however, was not in quest of a hovel, since she was very nicely accommodated in this particular in her own part of the country already. What she sought might be defined as a synoptic view of the social situation in Long Canings and round about. For this reason (but also, of course, because she was a stout churchwoman) she had chosen to present herself at matins in Long Canings church.

  For there was still a church in some sort of working order, attended to in such leisure as the pastoral care of the people of Gibber Porcorum afforded the rector of that more populous parish. Miss Pringle had made preliminary enquiries, and she had come over on a Sunday – a pleasantly sunny Sunday – upon which Long Canings was having its innings. As her little car chugged over the last stretch of downland and dropped down to the venerable Wilts and Berks canal, she realised that ‘Kandahar’, alias The Old Rectory, was not going to be hard to find. It dominated the suddenly contracted horizon like a cathedral or a gasometer, and the church in the shade of which it ought modestly to have reposed would in fact have gone into it two or three times over. Apart from a pub and a few scattered cottages of no very prosperous (or even picturesque) appearance, the two structures, moreover, seemed to constitute the totality of the village or hamlet of Long Canings. But this was presently revealed as not quite so. Beyond the church was a shrubbery, beyond the shrubbery was a lawn, and beyond the lawn and on a lower level was a large and rambling – although nowhere lofty – manor house put together over some centuries (one had to suppose) to the effect of a careless miscellany of architectural styles. Beyond all this again, and plainly appurtenant to the manor, was a pleasingly imposing park. Miss Pringle, who had a fondness (proper in a lady of good family) for all evidences of spacious and ordered living, felt that she would be much more at home in this squirearchal fastness than in the towering, arched, crocketed, and generally hideous redbrick residence of Captain A G de P Bulkington (also of the Imperial Forces C
lub, Pall Mall).

  The church bell was ringing, monotonously although not quite metronomically, as she drove up. There was nobody in sight, so that when she had parked her car unobtrusively she hastened forward, concluding the congregation to be already assembled within. There was one other car in evidence. Although rakish and secular rather than clerical in cut, its position close to the chancel announced the fact that it had lately embarked the rector of Gibber Porcorum a few miles away and now decanted the rector of Long Canings to perform his subsidiary offices as soon as the bell stopped. In the little churchyard she remarked a large Gloucester Old Spot (not nowadays a fashionable sort of pig) reposing on a flat tombstone, and a surprising number of pheasants perched here and there on upright ones. From somewhere nearby, but invisible behind a high wall, came the sound of stamping, champing, rattling, snuffling, sneezing and snorting which one associates with a well-populated stable-yard.

  Composing herself appropriately, Miss Pringle entered the church – and looked round perplexed, since there appeared to be nobody else in the place. But the bell had suddenly stopped, and when she glanced towards the west end (where there was a kind of potting-shed which she knew must lie beneath the tower) it was to become aware that an aged man, rather like a tortoise in a humble walk of reptilian life, had abandoned a dangling rope the better to survey her with what could only be described as offended incredulity.

  ‘Be you seeking summun?’ the tortoise asked.

  The question, as addressed to somebody entering a sacred place, was susceptible of a serious interpretation. But Miss Pringle was a little disconcerted.

  ‘I have come to attend matins,’ she said. ‘Surely–’

  ‘You’re early,’ the tortoise said morosely – but nevertheless failed to return to his bell. In a religious silence, Miss Pringle sat down. A wooden placard on the wall informed her in barely decipherable lettering that in the year 1604 Jn. Spink, Gent. had donated an unusual sum of 7s. 4d. for the relief of the poor of the parish. An answering placard reminded her that she must not marry her Grandmother’s Husband. She became aware of an odd and not displeasing smell as pervading the church, and concluded that the rite of incensation must obtain in it. Olfactory analysis, however, suggested that what was in question could only be a mingling of sundry embrocations, liniments, and saddle-soaps, and must be due to the tortoise’s diurnal and secular employment.