A Change of Heir (22 page)

Miss Bostock looked at him coldly.

‘Young man,’ she said, ‘for I don’t know your name–’

‘His name,’ Comberford said, ‘is–’

‘You shut your mouth,’ Gadberry said. This injunction, although crudely expressed, appeared to carry weight, at least for the time. Comberford fell warily silent.

‘Young man,’ Miss Bostock resumed, ‘that was a very foolish remark. The truth is a luxury to be afforded by none of us. By you least of all.’

Gadberry stretched himself. He was still feeling uncomfortably stiff. He chafed his wrists, and then chafed his ankles.

‘That’s certainly true of Comberford,’ he said. ‘He has been lurking in the vicarage. He has been plotting with the old imbecile Grimble, who wouldn’t stand up to police interrogation for ten minutes. He has broken into the Abbey in the night. In that black bag he has chloroform, other soporific drugs and – if I have understood him aright – a hypodermic syringe. He’s for it.’

‘And what about you?’ Still blocking the doorway, Boulter produced this with one of his abrupt returns to the natural man. ‘You’ve lived here under false pretences for months.
You’re
for it, you young bastard, if anybody is.’

‘But the point about me is that I don’t mind.’ Gadberry stood up. ‘Can you get that into your thick skull?
I don’t mind
.’

There was another silence – rather a long one, this time. Everybody seemed to be paying this the compliment of rather serious attention. Then Miss Bostock spoke. It was with an air of patiently beginning again from rational premises.

‘It appears to me that the superfluous person is the real Mr Comberford. Until his arrival, we were getting on very well. Boulter and I, it is true, were a little in the dark about each other. But our interests are readily reconcilable.’

‘That’s right!’ Boulter nodded his head vigorously ‘Our money’s on the fake Comberford, not the true one.’ He paused as if to consider. ‘Could this chap – the real Comberford –
prove
himself to be the real Comberford? That’s the point. If he couldn’t–’

‘Of course he could.’ Miss Bostock was impatient. ‘And any dispute about identity would be fatal. Start investigating our own young man’s claim, and it wouldn’t stand up for a week. Probably not for a day.’

‘Then, in that case, there seems to be only one thing for it.’ Boulter eyed Comberford grimly before turning back to Miss Bostock. ‘Don’t you agree?’

‘Certainly I agree. One regrets the necessity. But it is self evident.’

‘It’s unfortunate the ground’s so hard.’

‘Yes – but other means can be thought of.’

At this moment – rather unexpectedly and wholly fatally – the true Nicholas Comberford’s nerve broke. And panic lent him strength. He took a lunge at the portly Boulter which sent him sprawling into the corridor. A split second later, he was in full flight down it himself.

Calmly scrutinised, this precipitate retreat might have yielded much that was rational. There was nothing more in Bruton Abbey for Nicholas Comberford; in that direction he had dished himself for good. He was in the presence of two baffled and ruthless antagonists, and of a man whom he had proposed to see indicted of murder. To cut his losses and stand not upon the order of his going was sensible enough.

But there was really nothing rational about the pursuit. It was a matter of sheer confusion, and perhaps of something like blood-lust. Strangely enough, Miss Bostock led it – and at a speed which might have been envied by Atalanta, or by swift Camilla scouring the plain. Boulter followed, cursing and looking round for a weapon as he ran. Gadberry, utterly astonished by this fantastic rout, at first brought up the rear. Surely they couldn’t really intend – He decided to suspend speculation, and crowd on speed.

Corridor, staircase, corridor, staircase. Cloisters, abbot’s arch, scriptorium, monks’ arch. Strangers’ hall, locutory, gatehouse. They all went past as in a dream. The chase was now in open air. The wind still whistled, and it was bringing up more clouds heavy with snow from the north. But to the south the moon still flicked in and out of mere shreds and patches, so that the Abbey with its ruins and its gardens, its fishpond and its terraced parterre, was behaving like an ancient and decomposing film. Amid all this, Comberford was a dark, headlong blotch on the snow.

‘Comberford, stop! Stop, you fool!’ Gadberry spared breath to yell thus desperately, for he had suddenly realised the fantastic hazard ahead. But it was in vain. The fleeing man, wholly disoriented, had steered a course straight across the fishpond. And the thousand-to-one chance fulfilled itself. There was a quite small sound – rather like the plop of a frog in a stream. Nicholas Comberford had vanished. His inheritance at Bruton was with its pike.

For a long time Gadberry knelt by the dark hole – the other two standing silent beside him. But there was nothing whatever to be done. Finally he got to his feet.

‘We make a bargain,’ he said.

‘A bargain? What do you mean?’ Boulter spoke aggressively, but there was uncertainty in his tone.

‘We let each other alone. I’m going – now, this minute. You return to the house. You get rid of Comberford’s bag. You find the hat I’ve been wearing lately – the deerstalker. You leave it here by the hole. When the body’s found – which won’t be for some time – it will be
my
body.’

‘Your body?’ Miss Bostock said.

‘Damn it, woman, you know what I mean. It will be the body of the only Nicholas Comberford to have been at the Abbey for years. He behaved pretty crazily this afternoon; he went wandering out again tonight and had this ghastly accident. One of you can get that car away from the vicarage – and that buttons it up. There may be odds and ends.’ He looked at Miss Bostock. ‘But they’re not beyond your wits to get away with. And you’re lucky, both of you. So is poor old Aunt Prudence, if she only knew it. She’s got rid of two rotten great-nephews at one go. Goodbye.’

The first flakes of the next snowstorm were beginning to eddy in the wind. By morning they would have obliterated all traces of this wild chase. And they had an immediate utility now. George Gadberry, with fifteen pounds in his pocket and a lesson in his head, made a moderately dramatic exit through their gentle fall.

John Appleby first appears in
Death at the President’s Lodging
, by which time he has risen to the rank of Inspector in the police force. A cerebral detective, with ready wit, charm and good manners, he rose from humble origins to being educated at ‘St Anthony’s College’, Oxford, prior to joining the police as an ordinary constable.

Having decided to take early retirement just after World War II, he nonetheless continued his police career at a later stage and is subsequently appointed an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, where his crime solving talents are put to good use, despite the lofty administrative position. Final retirement from the police force (as Commissioner and Sir John Appleby) does not, however, diminish Appleby’s taste for solving crime and he continues to be active,
Appleby and the Ospreys
marking his final appearance in the late 1980’s.

In
Appleby’s End
he meets Judith Raven, whom he marries and who has an involvement in many subsequent cases, as does their son Bobby and other members of his family.

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

Published by House of Stratus

The Ampersand Papers While Appleby is strolling along a Cornish beach, he narrowly escapes being struck by a body falling down a cliff. The body is that of Dr Sutch, an archivist, and he has fallen from the North Tower of Treskinnick Castle, home of Lord Ampersand. Two possible motivations present themselves to Appleby – the Ampersand gold, treasure from an Armada galleon; and the Ampersand papers, valuable family documents that have associations with Wordsworth and Shelley.