A Night of Errors (13 page)

‘Never?’

‘Not for a very long time. And as the months went by it seemed more and more hopeless to bring such a strange story forward. For it is strange, is it not?’

Appleby nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said soberly. ‘As strange as anything I have ever heard.’

‘Only something did turn up at last. But by that time I had adopted Lucy – I thought somehow it would help me along – and Oliver had begun going to school. I was very ignorant of the world and of affairs. I did not know what trouble I might start if somewhere I found two boys with an obscure claim to be Oliver’s brothers. And yet I wanted my children very much.’

‘That was natural.’ Lady Dromio, Appleby could see, had hardened with the years, and now her character had a strength which had been lacking in her in the period she described. Yet there was something affecting in the rather helpless simplicity with which she told her story. ‘But will you tell me now just what was the evidence you finally found?’

‘I read a novel about detectives and that gave me an idea. It seemed that there really were rather low but clever people whom one could employ to find things out without any necessity of really explaining oneself. I bought some nasty newspaper and found one of these people advertising. I went to see him, which was very horrid. I think he mostly lurked about hotels peering through keyholes because of divorces and things like that.’ Lady Dromio paused and looked at Appleby vaguely, as if wondering who or what he might be. ‘Not,’ she added hurriedly, ‘at all the sort of person one would associate with the police. But quite able all the same. He found out two things. The first was this: that someone with our gamekeeper’s name had taken his wife and two infant children to America about a fortnight after the fire. And the second thing–’

‘One moment, Lady Dromio. Had you asked this fellow to discover whether something of that sort had, or had not, happened?’

‘No – I had said nothing about children. I simply gave the gamekeeper’s name and said I thought he might have emigrated. But the second thing this man discovered was even more important. I had to pay a great deal for it – no doubt because there were solicitors’ clerks and rather superior people like that to bribe. In the few months before his death my husband had sent very considerable sums of money to somebody whom I recognized as an old university acquaintance of his, a rather eccentric doctor in New York. So, you see, at last I had something on which I could definitely act.’

‘And you acted?’

Lady Dromio laid down her embroidery, crossed the room, and wrapped a fine shawl around herself; it had the effect of making her look very much older. ‘I found I couldn’t. It was something too unknown and big. I could mean nothing to those distant children, and something had grown up obscurely within me to make me fear them. I had a foreboding of disaster should they – my own children – return to Sherris.’

There was silence. On the mantelpiece the little silver clock ticked its way doggedly through the small hours; on the floor the shredded rose petals lay. Appleby looked searchingly at Lady Dromio. ‘And that is all?’

‘No – no, it is not. I have always known that one day I would do something. And I did – forty years after all the unhappiness began. Oliver was in America. On a sudden impulse I wrote to him, telling him everything and giving him that New York doctor’s name. After that I heard nothing from him – although he usually wrote regular letters when away – except he once rather urgently sent for money. I was much worried, thinking the shock might have been very great. Only sometimes I wonder whether that particular letter reached him, for he was moving about a good deal and was sometimes careless about his mail.’

‘You would have been glad to know that the letter had, in fact, missed him?’

‘Yes, Mr Appleby. The letter was a mistake. If he was to hear the story he should have heard it face to face.’

‘I rather agree with you. And you have heard nothing to suggest that he had contacted those unknown brothers?’

‘Nothing whatever. And I have now told you everything.’ Lady Dromio once more applied herself to her embroidery.

Appleby looked at her seriously. ‘Everything? What of your son’s plan to marry? Had he advanced far with that?’

‘I suppose Sebastian has told you of his pursuing an heiress? But I cannot say how far it had gone. At the time of his ceasing writing he was still very reticent.’

‘His plan must have upset your adopted daughter?’

Lady Dromio’s vaguest manner returned. ‘I don’t understand you at all.’

‘A few minutes ago Miss Lucy volunteered the information that she had threatened to kill Sir Oliver. Can you substantiate that?’

‘Certainly not. I have nothing to say about it at all.’

‘Was Miss Lucy in love with your son?’

‘Really, I hardly think–’ Lady Dromio’s voice faltered. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘I think she was.’

‘Please forgive this question. Was Sir Oliver a man scrupulous in matters of sexual relationship?’

‘No!’ The word came unexpectedly and almost explosively. ‘He was…rather horrible in such things.’

‘Thank you.’ Appleby picked a final rose petal from his shoulder and dropped it in a waste-paper basket. Had there run, he was wondering, some deep current of emotion – and that by no means one of affection – between the dead man and his mother? Had the unsatisfactory Oliver been in some obscure way rejected in favour of the mere idea of those other sons of whom Lady Dromio had been robbed? Appleby was silent for a moment. ‘Do you think,’ he asked, ‘that Sir Oliver had made Miss Lucy his mistress?’

But at this Lady Dromio suddenly raised oddly helpless hands. ‘Go away!’ she exclaimed. ‘You must please go away. I have told you everything – everything that is mine to tell. And I belong to a generation that – that did not discuss such things.’

And Appleby withdrew. It was true that he had been told a lot – indeed that a complex and astonishing, if fragmentary, story had been pitched at him. And it was not a story that sounded to him like an invention. There seemed every possibility that Hyland had been right; that the death of Sir Oliver Dromio was in some devious way the issue of that forty-year old fire.

But one thing, he realized, he had not been told – the story of the torn and shredded rose.

In the corridor Appleby bumped into Sebastian Dromio, and at the same time became aware of uproar somewhere outside: shouts, pounding feet and a succession of blood-curdling yells.

‘Whash that?’ Sebastian was grasping a tumbler and it was evident that he had been far from taking Appleby’s advice on keeping a clear head. ‘Whash shishit?’ Sebastian’s hand trembled and he stared at Appleby with a wild and wavering surmise.

‘I have no idea – but I’m going to find out.’

‘Shtop. It’s those damned villagers. Shoshialists, colonel. Think we’re dagoes. Always have, confound them. Heard about this beashtly affair and come to burn down the house. Polish no good; call out the military at once.’

‘I hardly think it’s as bad as that, Mr Dromio. In fact there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go to bed.’

Sebastian shook his head. Finding that it continued to shake after the negative nature of his gesture was clear, he looked first puzzled and then alarmed; presently however he succeeded in putting up a hand and stopping it. ‘Die with my bootsh on. All Dromios prepared to die with their bootsh on ever shinch they had any. Defend our women to the lasht. Shoot at shight.’ And Sebastian clutched Appleby by the lapel of his coat.

The shouting renewed itself. Appleby shook himself free. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘shoot away. But I’m going out.’

‘Shoot?’ Sebastian looked immensely surprised. ‘Damn good notion, colonel. Teach them who we are.’ And with surprising dexterity Sebastian Dromio whipped out a revolver and fired it through the nearest window, shattering a large sheet of glass.

‘You can’t do that!’ Appleby grabbed at the revolver; Sebastian dodged, turned and ran. Appleby pursued him, swearing. Sebastian blundered down the corridor, whipped into a vestibule, threw open a door and disappeared into darkness. Appleby followed him with misgiving, but at his utmost speed, and found himself on a terrace bathed in moonlight. Twenty yards away stood Hyland, all gleaming buttons and peaked and braided cap. Appleby gave him a shout – and as he did so saw the cap rise some inches in air and go spinning to the ground; there followed a second shattering report close by his ear. Sebastian gave a yell, vaulted a balustrade, and was lost in impenetrable shadow.

Hyland came forward, dusting his cap. ‘Appleby, is that you? And what the devil was that?’

‘Almost another sudden death. Your Sebastian Dromio’s tight, and he’s got a gun.’

‘Don’t call him my Sebastian Dromio.’ Hyland was aggrieved. ‘Have
you
got a gun?’

‘Have I got a tank or a jeep? Don’t be an ass.’

‘No more have I – or any of us. But the fellow must be stopped. What does he think he’s doing, anyway?’

‘Defending his women to the last. Thinks he’s in the thick of a peasant revolt. My God – there he goes again.’

A third revolver shot had rung out in the gardens below. And, farther away, men were still shouting. Appleby got on the balustrade. ‘Are these your men making that fool noise? That’s what upset Dromio – and I’m afraid it’s going to keep on doing it. Couldn’t you call them off?’

‘Call them off? Dash it, man, they’ve got the murderer cornered.’

‘I don’t believe it for a moment. And, even so, need they behave like a pack of dogs after a fox?’

‘Hounds, Appleby – for heaven’s sake.’ Hyland was outraged.

‘It will be Dromio who has got them cornered, if you ask me. Even if there’s been no damage so far, your local constabulary may still show a death roll of three. Pretty stiff – even if they are clearing up a grim crime of retribution. Come on.’ Appleby dropped into darkness.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Jump on Dromio’s back and rub his nose in the mud. Come on, I tell you.’

Hyland came on, landing heavily in a freshly manured flower-bed. He got to his feet, breathing heavily, and both men ran. As they did so a fourth shot rang out and there was a brief startled silence. A fifth shot followed – and from somewhere a man’s voice rose in a sharp cry of pain. Hyland stopped. ‘He’s got one.’

‘But listen.’

The cry of pain was repeated, and then turned into a stream of lurid curses. ‘All’s well,’ said Appleby. ‘Only an arm or a leg. You can’t think all that up if you’ve got it in the tummy.’

‘But he’s got a sixth shot in the locker.’ Hyland was running again. ‘There they are. Hi, you men, there – lie down, scatter!’

A voice came back out of the darkness. ‘He’s here, sir – somewhere among those hedges. But he seems to be armed.’

‘Nothing of the sort. It’s another fellow altogether who has the gun. Lie down, the whole lot of you. He has one more shot to go. Then you can rush him as soon as he shows himself.’

Appleby, crouched in the shadow of a patch of shrubbery, peered ahead. Two tall hedges came together at a right-angle straight in front of him, and disposed round these, like men besieging a house, there could just be discerned a number of helmeted forms, now sheltering behind what cover they could find. Appleby moved cautiously up to the nearest of these. ‘Just what is this, anyway?’

‘I don’t know that I can say, sir. One of our men came upon the fellow wandering in the park. He was the man we were told to get all right, for he was waving a decanter the same as if he intended to brain somebody. Dead drunk, he looked. But when we closed on him he put on a fair turn of speed and got the shelter of these hedges. And somehow we can’t get at him. And now some fool’s turned up with a gun… There he goes!’

Just so, Appleby thought, might a whaler cry ‘There she blows!’ And following the constable’s finger where it pointed above the dark line of the hedge he saw, momentarily glinting in the moonlight, that crystal decanter which ought to be lying shivered like its companions in Sir Oliver Dromio’s study. Three times it waved in air and then vanished; its disappearance was followed by a wild yell of derision and defiance. ‘Come on,’ yelled a raucous voice; ‘come on, you barstards and let me bash the whole bloody lot of you! Call yourselves coppers? Yah!’

Appleby sighed. His expectations of enlightenment from this grotesque episode were meagre. He listened carefully. ‘Hyland,’ he called, ‘do you know, I think I hear that fellow Dromio going right down the drive?’

It was true. As the taunting presence beyond the hedge fell silent it was possible to hear Sebastian’s voice receding into distance. He was calling upon an imaginary corps of Dromio cadets to drive the threatening
Jacquerie
off the estate. His sixth shot, however, he appeared to be saving up still.

‘All right, men – forward you go.’ And Hyland advanced upon the system of hedges before him, waving his cane. The effect, Appleby thought, was rather like a travesty of some battle-piece by Lady Butler.

‘Yah, muckers!’ The jeering voice rose again. ‘Come on, the whole blurry gang. I’ll make bleeding ’ermits of the lot of yer.’

Undeterred by this mysterious threat, the local constabulary advanced. With cat-like tread, Appleby murmured to himself – and indeed it was a Gilbertian moment. There were angry exclamations, mutters of bafflement. ‘Can’t make it out, sir,’ somebody called. ‘Seems like a little garden with this hedge all round.’

‘Come into the garden, you bleeding Mauds!’ The decanter was erected again and circled – rather like Excalibur waving above the surface of the lake. It disappeared and the voice broke into uproarious song. ‘For I’m the king of the carsle,’ it sang, ‘And you’re–’ The traditional words appeared altogether inadequate to the feelings of the singer; he extemporized after a fashion that made Hyland breathe hard as he listened.

There was a sudden shout of triumph. ‘Here you are, sir, I’ve found a gap.’

The constabulary converged upon this rally-cry and were presently piling through a narrow opening in the hedge. Appleby followed. He was in time to hear shouts of bewilderment and alarm. ‘Can’t make it out, sir.’ ‘Seems to be hedge wherever you turn, like.’ ‘No sight of him, sir.’ ‘Them little paths all over the place.’