Appleby Talks Again (18 page)

“How do you mean?”

“If the doctors who’ve seen Slack have got it straight, it was like this. Whale suddenly took on the part of a homicidal maniac. His idea was to make Slack jump from what Slack believed to be a fast-moving train. Only Slack didn’t jump. He struck.” Appleby paused. “And you can imagine him afterwards – wandering in utter bewilderment and panic through this fantastic place. He had another fit of destruction – I suppose your diorama-gadget makes a noise that attracted him – and then he found a way out. He came to his senses – or part of them – early yesterday, and went straight to the police.”

The Producer had brought out a handkerchief and was mopping his forehead. “Slack won’t be–?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. His story must be true, because he couldn’t conceivably have invented it.”

“A plea of insanity?”

Appleby shook his head. “You don’t need to plead insanity if you defend yourself against a chap you have every reason to suppose insane. Whale’s will be death by misadventure.”

The Producer drew a deep breath. “A ghastly business. But I’m glad it wasn’t a real murder.”

Appleby smiled. “That’s only appropriate, I suppose. It wasn’t a real train.”

“Jewellery?” Appleby said. “It’s certainly queer stuff and causes endless trouble. Lady Scattergood’s emeralds, for instance – I’ve told you about them. A strange affair, decidedly. But nothing to Mrs Denton and her diamonds.”

“Have you a memento of that in your museum too?” I asked.

“I’m glad to say I have – and I’ll show it to you presently.” Appleby paused meditatively. “Yes – a very odd case indeed. And, you know, she seemed a decent sort of woman enough. But asking for trouble – just asking for it.”

“Mrs Denton?” Recollection came to me. “Did you say
decent
?”

“Well, well – the word can be applied in various ways.” Appleby was wisely tolerant. “Put it that she seemed not a bad sort. But of course she had enjoyed that rather startling career, and everybody knew of the way in which her enormous wealth had come to her. It made the thing additionally awkward. For a time her situation really did look quite black. And principally – this was the queer part – because of the obstinate way in which she clung to a thoroughly damaging story. The visit of Busson, for instance, on the very morning she left Paris.”

I shook my head. “My dear Appleby, you talk in riddles. Be a good fellow and settle down to solid narrative.”

“Then here goes.” And Appleby considered for a moment. “I may begin by mentioning certain of the ways in which the good lady was, as I’ve said, asking for trouble. The diamonds constituted an elaborate rig-out – what the trade, I believe, calls a parure – and their value was very high. Mrs Denton made no secret of the fact that she always took them about with her. Moreover, just as if she was positively anxious to advertise the fact, she had lately had a new travelling-case made for them – an obtrusive and expensive-looking pigskin affair which she would carry like a large handbag. That alone was asking for pretty well anything – murder not barred.

“Then again, Mrs Denton quite often went abroad – and on these occasions, too, the diamonds went with her. There was trouble in that – although only of an official, humdrum kind. Exchange restrictions, you know, have meant that valuable things of that sort have to be checked in and out of the country at the Customs barriers. Otherwise, there would always be some wealthy people prepared to buy jewellery in England, take it abroad, sell it, and have a nice expensive time on the proceeds before returning home. So Mrs Denton had to show up her diamonds whenever she came and went.”

“Did she move,” I asked, “in good society?”

“My dear fellow, that is something of which we all have our own definition. Many of her acquaintances had titles and estates and it is conceivable that a few even had ancestors. But Mrs Denton was not exactly a snob. She stuck by some old friends – or had some old friends stick to her. Did you ever hear of the Grand Fatout?”

“I think not.”

“You scarcely surprise me. He was a rather low-class conjurer in Marseilles with whom Mrs Denton’s passionate interest in human nature – particular masculine human nature – had prompted her to brief but warm friendship. When Fatout hanged himself – he couldn’t quite stand the pace – Mrs Denton took on his destitute widow as her maid. It must be called a charitable act.”

“No doubt. But surely, Appleby, eccentricity of that sort–”

“Quite so. Mrs Denton was very vulnerable to the world’s censure once any spotlight fell on her.”

Again Appleby paused as if to marshal his facts. “Behold, then, Mrs Denton, attended by the relict of her deceased illusionist, presenting herself before the Customs officials at Dover on her return from a trip to Paris.

“They knew her very well. And, as a necessary consequence of that, they knew the diamonds very well, too. All too well, as it turned out. For when Mrs Denton opened that opulent pigskin receptacle and displayed her treasure, the fellow whose duty it was to check them off against some document found himself obscurely puzzled. He missed, I suppose, in some minute but just perceptible degree, the usual knock-you-down effect.”

“I believe, I’ve got it!” I could hardly restrain my triumph. “What he saw was not the true diamonds at all, but mere paste.”

“How acute you are. But, of course, this wasn’t what Mrs Denton was taxed with there and then. There were delays, consultations and so forth; and she was questioned so closely that she was reduced to tears. And she clung to what, as I have already said, was a most damaging story – although she appeared too confused herself to see it as that.

“She had lately met a certain M. Busson, a man of high character, who was one of the foremost authorities on precious stones in France. He had called on her at her hotel in Paris that very morning, inspected the diamonds, and seen Mrs Denton lock them away for their journey. Since then, she declared, the case has never been out of her sight, nor its key out of her pocket.”

“And how did it end?”

“It ended – for the moment – with the questionable gems being impounded for further examination; and with Mrs Denton departing by a late, slow train for London. She put on quite an act – staggering out, weeping into a few square centimetres of scented handkerchief, and with her maid – whose name was Annette – following behind with the luggage, including the despoiled and forlorn jewel-case.”

“And then there were legal proceedings?”

Appleby shook his head. “No – there was only the threat of them. The official world is very cautious, and making out a criminal case against Mrs Denton would be tricky. But it was concluded that she had certainly disposed of her diamonds in order to build up a little fund abroad. Recovering them was decidedly up to her. She was smoothly informed that no doubt she had fallen into some species of error – and that the true diamonds must be produced for inspection.”

“And how, Appleby, did you come into this?”

“A week later Mrs Denton appeared at the Yard – and with a queer tale. She had received an anonymous letter offering to restore the diamonds to her – but at their full market value. There were precise instructions about how to proceed. It struck me that, if her story was true, she had shown considerable strength of mind in resisting the proposal. So I took up the affair myself. It didn’t really take much solving.

“As you know, it is difficult to dispose of stolen jewels for anything like their true value. So here was an ingenious combination of theft and blackmail. Mrs Denton’s diamonds had been stolen – and she herself had been manoeuvred into what looked like a criminal deception. She
had
to have her jewels back, poor woman, or go to jail. It pretty well came to that.”

“How was it done? Come and see.” And Appleby led the way down the room to his little collection of criminological exhibits. “When Mrs Denton had that new jewel-case made, Annette went to some of her deceased husband’s old associates in the conjuring business and had a simple trick replica manufactured. Here it is.”

I stared in astonishment at the handsome affair held out to me. “You mean to say–”

“Certainly. It is perfectly simple, and does a neat little swallowing trick. Put in X. Shut the case. Open it again. What you find is Y – while X is snugly tucked away in a false lid. It never occurred to the Customs people to be interested in the mere receptacle. Their attention was given to what they had opened it on. So when they had impounded the false diamonds and the bewildered Mrs Denton had shoved this seemingly empty case at Annette as worthless, the real diamonds were in fact concealed in it still, and Annette was able to possess herself of them at leisure. One can forgive her the pleasure she must have taken in the fraud. Her husband, you remember–”

“Quite so.” I stopped Appleby before he could recur to what struck me as the least edifying aspect of the whole affair. “And what a queer story.” I took the pigskin exhibit rather cautiously in my hands. “I can–?”

“Play with it, my dear fellow? Certainly. You’ll find it – as I said at the start – a very odd case indeed.”

The Archdeacon had told us a ghost story, and as the polite murmurs of interest and appreciation died away our hostess threw a log in the fire. It was quite a small log, but nevertheless the action committed us to a further sleepy, even if very tolerably comfortable, half-hour. And this prompted one of the younger people to a question the precise phrasing of which was perhaps a shade lacking in tact. “And now,” she asked, “couldn’t we have a really exciting one?”

“A mystery story,” another girl said. “A murder in a sealed room, and then some frightfully cunning detection, and all ending up in a terribly thrilling chase.”

“That is just what Sir John could give us.” Our hostess turned to Appleby. “You wouldn’t be so unkind as to refuse?”

For a moment the Assistant Commissioner was silent, so that I wondered whether he was going to contrive some polite excuse. A long career at Scotland Yard had provided him with plenty of horrific material, and there had been occasions on which I had known him come out with it forthrightly enough. But he had old-fashioned ideas on what was suitable for mixed company. So I wasn’t very surprised by his words when he presently did speak.

“Do you know, I’m afraid that positively nothing in the murderous way comes into my head? But an affair that had its moment of mystery – well, I think I can manage that.”

“Only a moment of it?” The girl who had required excitement was reproachful.

Appleby shook his head. “Oh – what I shall tell you was abundantly mysterious. But mystery, you know, is another matter. One is lucky ever to get a glimpse of it.” Appleby paused, and it was plain that he spoke seriously. Then he told us his tale.

“John and Elizabeth Fray were old friends of my wife’s family, and for some years we used to spend a week with them just before Christmas. The party would be rather like this one, and the house was similar, too – which is no doubt what has put the incident I am going to describe into my mind. Fray Manor rambled in an easy, unassuming fashion over a good deal of ground and back through several centuries. The oldest bit was undoubtedly at the top. You may judge that to be a good mysterious touch at the start, although I hasten to add that it has no particular relevance for my story.

“Well then, there, at the top of the house, was a fine late Elizabethan Long Gallery, with a magnificent view through high, grey-mullioned windows. Not your sort of view, though. Fray is in the Fen Country; and the house looks out over level fields stretching to the horizon, with here and there a canal or windmill or church tower, and everywhere an enormous sky.

“But there was another particular in which the set-up at Fray isn’t to be compared with this.” And here Appleby turned to our hostess with a smile. “Neither John nor Elizabeth had the sort of grasp you and Hugh possess of family history – and particularly of family possessions. I don’t mean that they were indifferent to John’s inheritance – far from it. But they were vague, and I think felt that through all past and all future time Fray had been and would be the same. In point of fact, there were ominous signs that they were mistaken, and the family fortunes were altogether shakier than they understood.

“I used to doubt whether their small son, Robin, would much mend matters. For Robin too was vague – although in what might be called a potentially more distinguished way. He was a shy child, but with some hidden flame in him – of passion, of imagination: one couldn’t tell what. Certainly he was more likely to add something to the ideal than to the practical world. I’m afraid that I can’t describe him better than that – which is a pity, since my story turns on him.”

“Robin Fray is its hero?” The Archdeacon asked this.

And Appleby nodded. “Yes. Not, I’m glad to say, the tragic hero. Although in a sense, it was a near thing.”

“I don’t need to tell you much about the house-party. It wasn’t large, and we nearly all were friends of long standing. But there were three exceptions. Miss Shibley was an elderly woman who painted dogs, and John Fray’s admiration for this accomplishment was so great that he had made Elizabeth invite her to stop, pretty well out of the blue. Then there was a fellow called Habgood, who appeared to do free-lance articles on country houses for the magazines. Finally, and in rather a different category, there was an American cousin, Charles Fray.

“The actual cousinship must have been extremely remote, since the American branch of the family had been established in New England for many generations. But I was amused to notice that Charles knew far more about the family history than John did. Not that Charles obtruded his knowledge. He was an observant, rather diffident bachelor. It was with some surprise that I gathered he was a highly successful business executive and extremely wealthy. He was due to conclude his visit a couple of days after my own arrival. I was sorry about this, because he seemed to me a thoroughly nice fellow.