There Came Both Mist and Snow Page 9

  But Appleby agreed. He agreed and at the same time contrived to suggest respectful surprise that this embarrassment should be experienced by a man of the world so finished as myself. ‘These questions,’ he said, ‘must be asked of everybody’ – the words came as smoothly as they come in Lucy’s fictions – ‘as a matter of routine. We must endeavour to fix the whereabouts of everybody concerned round about a quarter to eight. At half past seven Sir Basil was undoubtedly in this room and sitting at that desk. The parlourmaid Jane saw him there. That is why she was convinced that it was he who had been shot when she returned here at about ten to eight and saw Mr Foxcroft’s body. We were at the front door. Jane ran into the hall crying that Sir Basil had been killed. Sir Basil appeared and so, almost at the same moment, did Richards. Richards announced that it was Mr Foxcroft to whom an accident had happened. I am afraid’ – Appleby glanced at me mildly – ‘that you were very much upset.’

  I felt an uncomfortable sensation in my spine. The man had the skill of a competent barrister. There was the suggestion that Wilfred had been shot in mistake for Basil; there was the suggestion that it was Richards’ correction of Jane that had upset me; there was the fact that I had been wandering about outside. I had an impulse to say something about demanding the presence of a solicitor. Repressing this extravagance, I simply replied: ‘I was naturally much shocked.’

  ‘A shocking affair,’ said Leader suddenly and very solemnly. I wondered if he was recalling some official manual of etiquette.

  Appleby, without expressing verbal agreement, spared a moment to looking adequately serious. ‘Will you give us,’ he asked – and I realized how firmly he had dug himself into the investigation – ‘a fairly detailed account of your movements this evening?’

  ‘I changed early and came down to the library. It was just seven. There was nobody about. I glanced at a book for about ten minutes and then went to the front door and out to the terrace. It was cold; I returned to the lobby, got a coat and galoshes, and once more went out to the terrace. I stood there for a few minutes, watching the big sign on the brewery. Then I went down a flight of steps – those not far from this window – and paused by a small sheet of water below. I remarked that it was frozen hard. Then I strolled off into the park and did not return until just before our meeting under the porch.’

  ‘Thank you. I suppose you met nobody during your walk?’

  ‘No. It would be a most unlikely thing to happen.’

  ‘Quite so. And that means you saw nobody from the moment you came downstairs to the moment we met before the front door?’

  I suppose I must have hesitated; at least I was aware of both Appleby and Leader looking at me very inquiringly indeed. ‘I did think,’ I said, ‘that I caught a glimpse of somebody from the garden: the figure of a man leaning with his back against the balustrade of the terrace.’

  ‘He would be facing the house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘About where would he be standing?’

  I was beginning, despite myself, to like the police after all. The thing had a sheer intellectual fascination which was extraordinarily compelling. ‘It could not have been very far from this window.’

  ‘You could not identify the figure?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You made no further investigation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you saw no one else?’

  ‘No one.’

  There was a silence. ‘This,’ said Appleby, ‘would be some five or ten minutes before Jane paid her first visit to this room and saw Sir Basil sitting at his desk.’ He turned to Leader. ‘Ring the bell.’

  Richards came and went. Jane, now somewhat recovered, came and went. And the upshot was that Jane, coming in to tend the fire, had been conscious of a fierce draught. Sir Basil, she said, liked the cold. In the coldest weather he would sit before an open window. Almost certainly the window had been open. About the curtains she couldn’t say. Almost certainly they had been drawn or she would have noticed. But likely enough they had not been drawn completely. Sir Basil had a habit of interfering with drawn curtains, pulling them back a little to admit the air.

  Appleby turned to me again as the door closed on the parlourmaid. ‘From where you stood on the terrace, and later in the garden, would you have been aware if the curtains here had been drawn back?’

  ‘If they had been fully drawn back, yes; if there had been merely a substantial gap – even a foot or so – probably not.’

  ‘When Richards came in hard upon Jane’s discovering Mr Foxcroft they were just as they are now – a gap of a few inches. Just enough, if one stepped through the window from the terrace, to enable one to peer into the room.’ Appleby crossed to the desk and appeared to study the letter on margins. ‘Mr Ferryman,’ he said, ‘you have given us an account of your movements. Will you now give us an account of something much more interesting?’

  I looked at him in somewhat suspicious perplexity.

  ‘I mean, will you now give us an account of your thoughts?’

  ‘Really, Mr Appleby–’

  ‘I don’t mean your thoughts since this thing has taken place, valuable though they may be. I mean your thoughts before it took place. For instance, what were you thinking of during your stroll in the park? It is for the purpose of reflection, as often as not, that one takes such a ramble.’ He paused and looked at me almost anxiously. ‘My point – my experience – is this. In any party of the sort gathered here – and particularly in a family party – there are likely to be various current issues and conjectures. Certain subjects are of general speculative interest. There is expectation here, apprehension there. Has Charles proposed to Mary–’

  ‘Charles?’ asked Leader perplexedly.

  ‘And is Richard, perhaps, seriously ill?’

  ‘Quite so,’ I said. It was evident that Appleby had developed a technique for putting things clearly to persons of low intelligence.

  ‘The familial constellation,’ continued Appleby, as if suddenly remembering that I was in a different category. ‘If one can get hold of all that one is in a very strong position as an investigator. It is different, of course, if it is a matter of vanished spoons and forks. But in an affair like this the policeman has to seek very much the same preliminary information as the psychiatrist would seek were it he who was called in. It would often be better if it were he.’ And Appleby smiled at me encouragingly, like one excessively educated man to another. Leader, as if confident of what was to come, began vigorously to sharpen not one but several pencils.

  The temptation was great. I do not know if I can construct a narrative or record a train of reflection. But to do so is my constant preoccupation. Moreover there was very little question of giving anything away; almost everything that I could tell I was very sure this young man would get at soon or later. Still I might have hesitated but for the writer’s primitive impulse to produce surprise. I turned to Leader: he poised his pencil. ‘In the park,’ I said, ‘I was meditating the rocket which my cousin Basil proposes to fire at the moon.’

  ‘The moon,’ said Leader with satisfaction. The exclusion of Saturn or Uranus might have been a considerable step forward.

  ‘Or – in what is perhaps a better-authenticated version – my cousin’s determination to establish a meteorological station in the Antarctic. Whatever it be, he is proposing to sell Belrive.’

  Appleby, standing before the fire, was stuffing a pipe. ‘Your cousin,’ he asked, ‘is wealthy?’

  ‘Not, I think, excessively so. This estate – of which the site must be extraordinarily valuable – is probably his principal asset.’

  ‘And he proposes virtually to sink it in his expedition: I see. What, by the way, of Mr Foxcroft?’

  ‘Wilfred is said to be something of a millionaire.’

  ‘And has no children?’

  ‘He is unmarried. I suppose’ – I saw no point in beating about the bush – ‘his brother Cecil would largely inherit. But my niece, Anne Grainger, who is h
is ward, might reasonably expect to be a legatee.’

  ‘And Sir Basil? His heir is his brother, Mr Hubert Roper?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I spoke a shade reluctantly and Appleby smiled. ‘There is nothing suspicious in being somebody’s heir.’ And before I could estimate the cogency of this soothing remark he went on: ‘So much for the main interest in all your minds: the Priory, it seems, is to be sold. What else?’

  The direct appeal caught me. The young man was interesting and, though disconcerting, not unpleasant. The odd make-believe that we were colleagues – that my affiliations were here rather than in the library – held me for the moment. I talked – discreetly, but frankly on the whole. The substance I have already written down here. At least, I believe I saved the young man time. And I confess that I got some pleasure from the exercise.

  12

  From this point – and for the remainder of this brief narrative – the reader will have to accept me as a sort of Watson. During the subsequent investigations Appleby appeared positively unhappy if I was not standing by at his side. During the interviews which he conducted with various members of the household he contrived that I should be present as what he called a family friend. And, again maintaining that a person so deeply researched in human character as myself was invaluable, he held conferences with me and made me a number of confidences in between. I suppose I knew that he was really up to something. But it was mildly exciting and I fell in with the role prescribed for me.

  The interview with Basil I felt must be basically awkward. To ask a new acquaintance to dinner for the purpose of amusing one’s sister and then to find him setting up as a detective officer in one’s study is a disconcerting experience. But Basil was not disconcerted. I think he summed Appleby up – and Basil could not have done what he had done were he not a sound judge of men – and liked him; continued to like him even when the interview became something of a duel and when it ended in the unaccountable way it did.

  ‘Sir Basil,’ Appleby began, ‘has it occurred to you that you may be in some danger?’

  Basil raised his eyebrows. ‘You alarm us,’ he said dryly.

  It was abundantly evident that Basil was not alarmed. But I admit that I had started at the suggestion, and his ironical glance was in my direction.

  ‘You were working here at your desk at half past seven; about fifteen minutes later somebody else sitting at the desk was sniped at through the curtains.’

  ‘Through the curtains?’ Basil looked at the window-recess and frowned.

  ‘The curtains were not just like that when you were in the room?’

  ‘They were not. When I returned to work here after changing I found that they had been drawn to. At this time of year the servants pile up huge fires. Before sitting down I opened the French window and left the curtains a foot or so apart.’

  ‘They are not more than a couple of inches apart now. Can you suggest how that came about?’

  ‘A few minutes after half past seven, as you know, I went into the library. I wanted to be there when people began to assemble for dinner. It seems that Wilfred – Mr Foxcroft, that is – then came in here to write a letter. It is likely that he would pull the curtains more or less to again.’

  ‘So that an assailant might have only an imperfect view of the person he was shooting at – a person sitting, notice, in his own light. Would you not agree than that you may be in some danger?’

  Basil shook his head decisively. ‘No. I cannot conceive of anyone attempting a crime in such a haphazard way. If the shot was fired deliberately it is overwhelmingly probable that Wilfred was fired at. I am under no apprehension at all.’

  ‘Mr Ferryman,’ said Appleby rather enigmatically, ‘was persuaded to the contrary view.’ He paused. ‘Suppose, then, that Mr Foxcroft was indeed deliberately shot: can you suggest any reason for such a thing?’

  ‘It is conceivable that he came upon a thief, who fired in the course of making his escape.’

  ‘That is of course possible… I think you must have been alone in the library when the shot was fired?’

  Basil looked up quickly. ‘I was certainly alone. The others were rather late in coming down.’

  ‘And you heard nothing? Mr Ferryman has suggested that there are so many traffic noises like the report of a revolver that a shot might pass unnoticed. But a shout or cry?’

  ‘I heard nothing until the girl Jane began to shout in the hall.’

  Appleby paused again. Leader scribbled. ‘Sir Basil, can you think of anything in Mr Foxcroft’s circumstances which would make an attack of this sort likely? I am leaving out of account the notion of a burglar. It is improbable – if only because Mr Foxcroft seems to have been shot as he sat.’

  ‘I can think of nothing. I am not well acquainted with his affairs.’

  ‘He is your nephew?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you have never been closely associated?’

  I began to wonder if I had done well in so obligingly sketching the family affairs. It was enabling Appleby fairly to gallop over the ground.

  ‘We saw much of each other many years ago. We both climbed. But this is Wilfred’s first visit to the Priory for a long time.’

  ‘There had been an estrangement?’

  ‘In better English,’ said Basil in his dryest manner, ‘there had been a quarrel.’

  Appleby nodded – nodded with his rather alarming air of momentary absence of mind. ‘Tell me,’ he said suddenly, ‘was anyone else who has recently been at the Priory in on all that – the climbing, I mean?’

  ‘Only Ralph Cambrell, who was here at luncheon and with whom I had some business talk afterwards.’

  ‘Cambrell!’ I exclaimed in surprise. ‘This is news to me. And I shouldn’t have thought that he was at all that type.’

  ‘He was a different fellow before the mill caught him. Actually he and I climbed together only once. It was on Scafell and I took a horrid tumble on the ascent from Lords Rake.’

  For the first time that evening John Appleby showed something like emotion. ‘You had a tumble on Lords Rake!’

  Basil smiled. ‘Just that. Cambrell was barely past scrambling; he would have been safe enough on Broad Stand. Central Buttress was about my mark then; in rock climbs I really hadn’t so very much to learn. But tumble I did on Lords Rake and laid myself out. Cambrell had to stand by until I came to, and then we attracted the attention of some folk making for Pikes Crag. He behaved very properly and – I suppose because I don’t greatly care for him – I have felt slightly awkward about it ever since.’

  ‘Pikes Crag,’ said Leader, and licked the tip of his pencil. It was absurd and I wanted to laugh. Instead I looked at Appleby and saw Appleby looking at Basil. The camera, it occurred to me, had become momentarily an X-ray machine; I have seldom received a more powerful impression of what is called a penetrating eye.

  Abruptly – almost as if he were shaking off some compelling thought – Appleby stood up. ‘Sir Basil,’ he said, ‘may I go over the house?’

  If Basil was either surprised or annoyed he did not show it. ‘Certainly – anywhere you like. We are very lucky that this wretched business has found you here’ – he paused in a way that reminded me of Anne – ‘and so actively disposed.’

  ‘Thank you. And we must not keep you from your guests. Mr Ferryman will perhaps show us around.’

  ‘Arthur,’ said Basil, ‘is just the man.’

  In the eighteenth century one expected to be able to see over any house when the family was not in residence; John Byng, in those Torrington Diaries which are favourites of mine, more than once expresses his indignation at being denied this prescriptive right of the gentleman traveller. I had often reflected that in the guise of an elderly housekeeper I would have made not a bad cicerone to Belrive. And now here I was landed with the job – and in circumstances which were odd and disturbing in an extreme. That I was just the man may have been true enough. But Appleby’s interests, I supposed, could ha
rdly be antiquarian, and I was quite at a loss to account for his suddenly expressed wish except in terms of the merest whimsy. Was he proposing to search for the missing weapon? It was scarcely a task to undertake at ten o’clock at night, and with a number of people still presumably waiting to give an account of themselves.

  We moved into the deserted hall and Appleby wandered about as if he were in a museum, talking easily the while. ‘This party,’ he said, ‘was the occasion of a reconciliation between Wilfred Foxcroft and Sir Basil. A genuine reconciliation, let us suppose.’ He stopped before the Guardi. ‘Is this the picture your cousin has sold to Cambrell?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Appleby looked at it doubtfully. ‘Do you think, Mr Ferryman, that Guardi ever painted water with that square touch?’

  I replied that I was without knowledge of Guardi’s technique, but that I would not be at all upset if the picture proved a fake.

  ‘In other words,’ said Appleby, ‘you dislike Cambrell too. Now, about that dispute which you say he had with your cousin. It is your impression that Sir Basil refused a favourable offer for his property. And that it was with reference to this refusal that Cambrell said–’

  Leader flicked at his notebook. ‘You damned fool, even your idiot paint-splashing brother would have more sense,’ he read.

  Appleby nodded. ‘And that would be Mr Hubert Roper, the heir to the estate?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Those are interesting family portraits… Would you say that Cambrell’s remark was sound?’

  I considered. ‘No. I think Hubert would be most reluctant to sell Belrive at all.’

  ‘I see. But Cambrell may well be convinced that it is otherwise… The Watts, I suppose, is of Sir Basil’s father?’

  I found this shilly-shallying between detection and connoisseurship depressingly reminiscent of Lucy at her most characteristic. Nevertheless I continued to feel that Appleby knew what he was about. I replied that the portrait at which we were looking was indeed of Basil’s father.