Appleby Plays Chicken (19 page)

‘Very possibly.’ Appleby sounded sceptical. ‘Do you know the house?’

‘Absolutely not. I’ve never been near the place. Pettifor doesn’t make it one of the sights. Rather shy, I think, about his brother the squire.’

‘Why should he be that?’

‘I haven’t a clue. Over-compensating for inwardly feeling grand about him, perhaps.’ Timothy produced this fragment of modern psychology with some pride. ‘If these contours aren’t just filled in according to fancy, the house must be quite a bit above the shore. There ought to be a short drive about five hundred yards ahead. I can smell the sea.’

‘I expect you could hear it too, if we stopped. It seems never really still on this coast. Rocks and coves and currents and general restlessness. The unslumbering sea. Tricky.’ Appleby slowed down. ‘That must be the drive. And I think I can just see the house against the sky. Only the upper storeys, probably. No lights.’

The car turned in between stone pillars and past what seemed to be an untenanted lodge. A short run brought it to the house, and Appleby drew up. Except for a single light under a porch, the whole place was in darkness. And now they could certainly hear the sea.

‘Not very cheerful, is it?’ Timothy asked as he climbed out. ‘Hullo, there’s Pettifor’s car –
our
Pettifor, I mean. So he’s still here, all right.’

The Land Rover was a little farther along the sweep. They walked to the porch together, and found that it sheltered what must be the front door. Appleby rang a bell. It was an old-fashioned affair, and they could hear it clang in some distant place. They waited.

Nothing happened. There was no light and no sound. Appleby rang again, and again they waited with no result. ‘I think we’ll take a walk round,’ Appleby said.

They walked down the sweep and round a corner. The moonlight showed up the house in substantial detail. It seemed large and venerable and architecturally undistinguished. The sound of the sea was louder and had taken on specific character. They could tell that down below small insistent waves were breaking over rock.

Appleby stopped. ‘Voices.’

There were certainly voices, but they seemed very far away. They were distinguishable and then faded out again as if carried by a veering wind.

‘A light,’ Timothy said, and pointed along the pale shimmer of the façade by which they stood. The light seemed to be streaming from an uncurtained window. They walked on. They were on a bare terrace with a low balustrade. Beyond it there was a small garden sloping steeply away, and traversed by paths which eventually dipped and disappeared as if in some steeper drop towards the sea. The tang of the sea was in the air. ‘A french window,’ Timothy said. ‘And it’s open.’

Appleby stepped forward and without diffidence studied the lighted room. It was large and furnished as a library. Not – one could tell at once – the sort of library that moulders undisturbed from generation to generation in many large houses, but a library that was fully functional. There wasn’t much furniture. A handsome desk stood uncompromisingly in the centre of the room. The only ornament was a life-sized bronze figure of a youth, stripped and in the attitude of a diver, that stood in one corner.

‘Our Pettifor’s hat.’ Timothy pointed to a chair. ‘But the whole place seems deserted.’

‘Listen.’ Appleby had turned away from the room and towards the sea. ‘Those voices again. They must be down by the shore. The whole household, servants and all. That’s the explanation.’

‘And our Pettifor’s joined them?’

‘Precisely. I think we’d better join them too.’

They moved across the terrace and descended a flight of steps to the garden. Somewhere there was already lilac in flower; its scent mingled with that of rock pools and sea wrack. ‘There’s the sea,’ Timothy said. ‘It’s quite calm and still.’

The water lay like an empty mirror. There was a single line of lights very far away, like a faint gilding on an invisible frame. ‘It’s calm out there,’ Appleby said. ‘But listen to it nosing round down below. Here’s the path to the cove.’

They dropped down by a tumble of rock; the voices had faded again and there was only the plash of small waves and the patter of falling spray. In an inlet straight beneath them the sea was rising and falling like a breathing thing. Timothy scanned the rocks. ‘Nobody. Nobody at all.’

‘There must be a series of these coves. We’ll go on.’ Appleby pointed. ‘The path runs that way.’

The next cove was empty too. The path dropped down to it and a thin drift of spray blew over them. ‘A boat,’ Timothy said. ‘There – beyond the point.’ There was a rowing boat, with a figure resting on the oars. A man stood in the stern. He seemed to be gesturing to the empty night.

Appleby watched him. ‘It’s the next. We’ll have to climb up again. And there are the voices.’

As they scrambled upwards they could hear men calling to each other – sparely and with a strange effect of solemnity – across the water. The next cove was larger, and larger waves seemed to be rolling into it. There was a sliver of sand. A small group of people, men and women, stood on it, gazing out to sea. A hundred yards out were two more boats, rowing slowly side by side. And even as they watched a figure detached itself from the group and moved towards them – slowly, unsteadily, and stumbling on the rock.

‘It’s Pettifor. Had we better go back?’ Timothy spoke awkwardly, as if he were only just realizing what it was all about.

Appleby shook his head, and a moment later Pettifor was on the path before them. He halted. It was impossible to tell whether he was startled, or almost unaware of their presence. When he spoke, it might have been to himself. ‘They never will,’ he said. ‘They have to try. But they never will. Never, never, never, never, never.’

They followed him silently back to the house. On the terrace Appleby dropped back for a moment and murmured to Timothy Dumble. ‘Could you drive my car?’

‘Yes. I’m sure I could.’

‘Then get back to the George in it. There’s just a possibility of some message from your precious couple on the motorbike. If there is, use your judgement.’

Timothy made off with alacrity; he clearly didn’t know how to behave to a man who could quote
King Lear
like that. It was as indecent as would have been a command to howl, howl, howl, howl. He was fond of Pettifor. But that made it only the more embarrassing.

The two men went into the lighted library. Pettifor picked up his hat and stared at it absently. ‘My brother’s drowned,’ he said.

Appleby walked across the room and looked at the figure of the diving youth. ‘He was fond of the sea?’

‘Passionately. And a strong swimmer. But that sometimes makes a man foolhardy. Poor Arthur! He’ll never take a book from these shelves again. And no children – any more than I have. It’s the end of us’ – he made a small resigned gesture – ‘and that’s a thing hard to realize. For there have been Pettifors at Tremlett for quite a long time.’

‘They know it was down there? And they’re trying to recover the body now?’

‘Yes. Arthur’s clothes were there. They’ve been at it since the late afternoon. But they’ll never recover the body – never. Not with the currents as they are hereabouts. It makes all bathing dangerous.’

Appleby was silent for a moment. Not even long professional experience made him easy in questioning a man who was overcome with grief. And Pettifor was certainly that. He had the dazed air of one who is beginning to emerge from the first anaesthetic effect of a major shock. When Appleby did speak it was mildly. Nevertheless his words produced a startling effect. ‘Isn’t it very early in the year for anything of the sort?’

‘For God’s sake don’t let your mind start running that way!’ Pettifor made another gesture, as if he were repelling some physical menace. ‘I know it’s your element; I know you’ve come straight from that strange, violent business of this afternoon. And I know, too, that men sometimes contrive the appearance of this sort of thing. But I am quite–’

‘Of this sort of thing?’ Appleby seemed puzzled. ‘I don’t follow you.’

‘If a man – a man of our sort – feels he must take his own life, he will at least try to contrive something to relieve his end of the certainty of disgrace. He’ll go out and have an accident with his gun while getting over a stile. Or he’ll do what you may be thinking Arthur has done. But it just isn’t so. Arthur would never commit suicide. I can tell you that on my honour as a gentleman.’

Appleby received these strange words with a bow. It didn’t seem possible to find an articulate reply that would be much to the point. ‘Your brother’, he asked, ‘was accustomed to go swimming at any time?’

‘Arthur was pretty well an all-the-year-round man. The estate takes in a long stretch of the coast, you know, and it’s entirely secluded. From boyhood he’s had the habit of a quick dip in the course of a ramble. But his favourite cove is that one, quite near the house.
Was
that one, I ought to say.’ Abruptly, Pettifor sank down on a chair. ‘I wish they’d give over,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing but a mockery.’

Appleby had turned away from the statue and was making a casual survey of the shelves that ran all round the library. ‘Did your brother’, he asked, ‘live here all the time?’

‘No, not all the time.’ Pettifor spoke dully. ‘Didn’t you bring one of my lads – Dumble?’ He got to his feet again. ‘Drinks,’ he said vaguely. ‘It falls on me now, I suppose – all that sort of thing. And, anyway, Arthur would have wished–’

He had opened a cupboard, and there was a glimpse of bottles and glasses. Appleby shook his head. ‘Thank you, no. And I’ve sent the young man back to Nymph Monachorum in my car. I thought it was the best place for him…while we had some conversation.’

‘Conversation?’ Pettifor still seemed bewildered, but he managed to say this a little stiffly. ‘Is it exactly the time for that?’

‘I’m rather afraid it precisely is.’

Pettifor took a turn about the room. ‘Unbidden guests’, he murmured, ‘are often welcomest when they are gone.’ Then he flushed. ‘I beg your pardon. What an extraordinary thing to say!’

Appleby smiled. ‘The poets have a word for every occasion, haven’t they? And, of course, you are absolutely right, sir. There must be an inquest, and so on, on your brother’s death; and no doubt the county police will have to come and make inquiries. But I have no business here at all. If you want me to go, I’ll go.’

Pettifor passed a hand through his sparse hair. He had the appearance of ageing with the tick of the clock. ‘Stay – stay, for heaven’s sake. There’s deep water in this.’ He stopped again, as if this image were an awkwardly poignant one. ‘Look here, Appleby – have you anything in your mind?’

Appleby considered this; he found it impossible to decide whether its tone constituted an appeal or a challenge. ‘I think’, he said presently, ‘it would be fair to say this: I’ve got in my mind already what will shortly be in the minds of other people who come along.’ He paused. ‘And perhaps one or two other things as well. I suppose you are your brother’s heir?’

‘His heir?’ Pettifor took the abrupt question merely stupidly.

‘You inherit Tremlett – your family home?’

‘Yes, yes.’ Pettifor relapsed into vagueness again. ‘But what’s the use of it to me? My life has shaped itself in other places. Very good places, if it comes to that. What should I do here – talk to farmers, and see to barns and gates and fences? I could bring my young men here, I suppose, instead of to Nymph Monachorum.’ He gave a bleak smile. ‘And they could play chicken on the cliffs… But I never shall.’ Pettifor paused, as if suddenly struck by something wholly puzzling. ‘Why do you ask this – about who inherits, and so forth?’

‘Call it routine. Certainly it’s a sort of question that does get asked …when the owner of substantial property disappears.’

‘Disappears?’ Pettifor’s perplexity grew. ‘But Arthur hasn’t disappeared! You speak as if there were something sinister about his death – which is absurd.’

‘It has at least followed hard upon indubitably sinister events, not far away. And remember, please, I’m only thinking the thoughts of your local police, as these will be made quite clear to you when they arrive. I assure you that they won’t, for one thing, ignore the possibility of suicide. On the contrary, they’ll take up the several causes that commonly drive a man that way, and they’ll conduct a thorough investigation to discover whether any of them applies. You can guess what they are: incurable disease, great pain, marital difficulties, financial difficulties, threat of some exposure or disgrace, blackmail, severe depression or other nervous disturbance, unbearable bereavement, the consciousness or persuasion of failing intellectual powers–’

‘For heaven’s sake, stop!’ Pettifor again contrived his bleak smile. ‘Leave something to the imagination, man.’

‘Of course there’s a great difference between suspecting all sorts of things, and proving a single one of them. You’ve no doubt been struck by that.’

‘I haven’t been struck by that or anything else. You speak as if I’d had leisure to sit down and think about my brother’s death in all its most unlikely aspects. When I do have time for reflection, it will be along less fantastic lines, I should suppose. Tremlett, for instance. I’m deeply attached to the place, as you can guess. But it’s going to be a mere headache, as the young men say, to a person of my habits and temperament. I don’t delude myself about that.’

‘May I ask what will happen to the property after your own death?’

Pettifor stared. ‘It will go to my sister’s son, I suppose.’

‘The boy I’ve met – Julian Ogg?’

‘Yes, to Julian. He’ll be all right.’

‘I’m sure he will. And perhaps he’ll take the name of Pettifor? It’s a distinguished name.’

Pettifor seemed not very much gratified by this. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the name – and it’s of some antiquity, if that’s of any significance. But I don’t know that it’s made much noise in the world.’

Appleby shook his head. ‘The name of Arthur Pettifor means something to me,’ he said.

‘You surprise me. Arthur lived a quiet sort of life.’ Pettifor had fallen to pacing up and down the dead man’s library. ‘A civil servant, you know.’