Appleby's Other Story (12 page)

‘Ah!' he said. ‘I thought I heard a car. But not yet. However, they'll be here at any time now.'

‘The police?' Mrs Graves asked sharply.

‘I think not. The Hanged Man doesn't interest the police at the moment. I mean the press. Reporters and photographers, madam. This is certainly where they will put up. I'm surprised they're not here already.'

‘Photographers?'

‘Oh, most certainly, madam. You will all be on the front page of the dailies tomorrow.' Appleby looked at Mrs Graves appraisingly. ‘It's a pity you're not looking quite your best. At least, I suppose that's so, for you're certainly not looking too good. Mr Tytherton, you agree?'

‘I wouldn't care to be ungallant,' Mark said with a vicious grin. ‘But, since you ask me, I'm bound to say she looks like the cat's breakfast.'

‘You cads!' Mrs Graves said. But although she had produced this antique locution with all the splendour of a lady in a Somerset Maugham play, she was grabbing her bag and making for the door.

‘Don't be bullied by them,' Appleby said kindly. ‘Take your time over the necessary repairs, and insist on pleasing yourself as to how you pose. I'd suggest as background the loggia on Elvedon's west front. More dignified than being caught in a pothouse.'

But Mrs Graves was gone.

 

‘She was quite right,' Mark said. ‘
You
can't be a gentleman either.' For a moment he looked almost cheerful. ‘Why did you get rid of her? What do you want to know?'

‘Eventually, I want to know everything about your movements over the last twenty-four hours. But that's something you may want to think about.'

‘Why should I want to think about it? In order to make up a pack of lies?'

‘Not necessarily that at all. For instance, there may be other people whose interests you have to consider. And as for the question I fired at you about being in the park late last night, I'll tell you the basis of that at once. It's simply the vicar again. He was out looking for badgers, and he's not sure he didn't see you instead. But he'd be very far from swearing to it, if put in a witness-box. You can be confident of that.'

‘What a damned odd thing for you to tell me.' Mark stared at Appleby, genuinely perplexed. ‘Well, he
did
see me. For that matter, I saw him.'

‘You visited Elvedon?'

‘Take it easy, Appleby. You've got me in the park at midnight. One step at a time.' As he produced this frivolous response the young man made a weary gesture and sat down on the bed, which creaked dismally beneath him. ‘Or try something else.'

‘I very much want to try something else – on a different time-scale, as it were. When did your father's second marriage take place?'

‘Fourteen years ago – when I was fourteen.'

‘Your mother was dead?'

‘No, she died some years later. There had been a divorce.'

‘It worried you?'

‘When you're not talking out of that bobby's guide it's only to take a turn as a child-guidance officer. Of course it worried me.'

‘And continued to – to an extent justifying what that beastly woman said: that you have a thing about your mother?'

‘I can't think why I don't knock you down.' Mark Tytherton remained unbelligerently on the bed. ‘But I see your picture. And it's really fair enough.' He frowned. ‘The thing's not an obsession,' he said, ‘even if it has more or less occasioned the way I live. I'm not a nut-case, despite what that cheap little tart said.' His expression darkened. ‘I won't plead diminished responsibility, or any crap like that.'

‘The divorce was an unfortunate one?'

‘It was all pretty filthy. And one of those affairs in which the judge feels he has to talk a lot of the muck into the published record. I was in my first year at public school.'

‘I see. But all this is very much past history, Mr Tytherton. Have you lately been disturbed by some sense of that history in a fashion repeating itself?'

‘What should put that in your head: my father ditching Alice as he ditched my mother – and this time in favour of a mere whore?'

‘It's conceivable. And may I ask another child-guidance question? Have you felt a very keen antagonism towards your father?'

‘Not for years.' Mark produced this with a promptness at which he himself appeared surprised. ‘I used to want to kill him. But everything changes with the years – even these fearfully deep things. Passions wear themselves away. It's pretty terrifying, really. There's a French chap who wrote a dozen books on that. I once read them when I was ill.'

‘He wrote them when
he
was ill.' Appleby would not have thought of Mark Tytherton as a likely amateur of Marcel Proust. ‘But other passions crop up.'

‘Oh, quite. Trifling and peripheral things' – Mark's vocabulary was changing as he talked – ‘that take on a sudden symbolical significance. I cared, you see, that my father's life should be degraded by a series of rotten women. It seemed a shame. He wasn't a bad sort. And it's such a revolting sight: a man old enough to know better, helpless before that silly tickling, and being dragged about by the nose, or rather the–'

‘Quite so. But you didn't return to England, Mr Tytherton, to act as an elevating influence, struggle with your father for his immortal soul, and redeem Elvedon from its degraded condition as a haunt of vice?'

‘You can also talk bloody tough. And of course I didn't come back with any kid's notions of the sort. When I was very small–' Mark hesitated.
‘Listen
,' he said oddly. ‘For here's the beans.'

‘I am listening.'

‘When I was very small, and my mother was getting dressed to go out to dinner or something, I used to be allowed to get the jewel cases from a small safe in her bedroom. A fascinating hiding-place, you see. Absolute magic in it.'

‘Yes, indeed.'

‘And then the jewels themselves!' Mark pulled himself up. ‘Let's just say they were of very considerable value indeed. And, incidentally, they were her own. Emotionally, that's not a great point with me. I mean that the legal position isn't such a point. The things just were, quite obviously to me, my mother's. Part of her.'

‘And it is these trinkets that crop up with what you call a sudden symbolical significance?'

‘Yes. And at least you understand what I'm talking about.'

‘And where are they now?'

‘That woman has them. The trollop you've just sent packing from this room.'

‘Can you be sure of that?'

‘Of course I can. It stands to reason. And I had a go at her this morning as I came away from Elvedon.' Mark was becoming excited. ‘I ran into her – and took the opportunity of telling her I thought of wringing her ruddy neck.'

‘My dear young man!'

‘It paid off. At least it panicked her. She came to this pub to tell me a pack of lies about
not
having them. But one doesn't believe a harlot on a thing like that.'

‘I see.' Appleby looked at Mark soberly. ‘And now I think that you and I had better get back to Elvedon.'

‘I'm damned if I–'

‘Don't be a fool. You're in a fix, and you know it. You've told me quite a lot, and I believe you. But you have more to tell. Think it over, please, as we walk across the park. If I can honestly help you, I will. But being a good deal franker than you have been so far is your best chance of scrambling out of trouble.'

 

 

The walk accomplished itself in complete silence until the two men stood at the bottom of the steps leading up to the main portico of Elvedon. At the top, side by side with the sentinel-like constable who was doubtless preparing himself to salute, stood Colonel Pride. He was clearly waiting for Appleby, and expecting him to appear upon his hour. And this was happening, since the stable clock now struck twice.

‘Who's that?' There was a sharp note in Mark Tytherton's voice, and he had come to a halt.

‘The Chief Constable. I'll introduce you, and he will take you to an officer called Inspector Henderson. Henderson will take down, and ask you to sign, any statement you may care to make.'

‘So this is it. I could send for the family lawyer – that sort of thing?'

‘Most definitely. Indeed, the police are often inclined to prefer it that way.'

‘They must put up with me
solus.
' Mark Tytherton's chin had gone up. ‘Only – do you know? – there's just one thing I'd like to tell you yourself, here and now. Steady me a bit, perhaps. Or call it burning a boat, if you like. It's true I was here last night.'

‘Thank you. Now up we go.'

They climbed. Pride watched them impassively, his hands behind his back. They might have been holding a pair of handcuffs.

‘Tommy, this is Mr Tytherton. Colonel Pride.'

‘How do you do?' Pride shook hands instantly. ‘Let me condole with you, sir. Where's your bag?'

‘Thank you.' Mark Tytherton was taken aback. ‘My bag?'

‘This is an unbecoming business, sir. Putting up in the inn. Your relations with your stepmother may not be good. But you ought now to be under this roof, from which your father's body has been removed only for a time. Let me instruct one of my men to fetch your things.'

‘Oh, very well.' Mark, Appleby reflected, had taken this stiff rebuke decently enough. ‘But mayn't they want to turf me out?'

‘You don't seem to realize your position, Mr Tytherton. I have been in touch with your father's solicitor. In fact he called here, at my request, half an hour ago. He saw your stepmother, and what he told her he decided he could then properly tell me too. Mrs Tytherton receives a reasonable jointure, and there are to be one or two other small charges upon the estate. Apart from this, it passes into your hands absolutely.'

‘I see. And the chap has gone away?'

‘The solicitor? Yes. But if you want–'

‘Good. I've been telling Sir John I don't want my hand held. Not even by him, just at this stage. Any Let-me-be-your-Father stuff had better be out for the time being.' As he made this odd speech Mark looked at Pride squarely. ‘Will you take me to your Inspector, please? I've one or two things to say.'

‘Come with me now, Mr Tytherton.'

And the Chief Constable marched the young man within the portals he had just inherited.

 

‘Not sitting in on this, John?' There was mild reproach in Pride's voice when he returned.

‘Well, I wasn't wanted by that young man, was I? And I think that, as a matter of fact, a roving commission will suit me best this afternoon.'

‘Fair enough. Henderson won't mind. Sign of confidence in him, really. I say, did I give away that there was more behind this lawyer's visit than I let on?'

‘I wondered a little, I confess. These chaps don't commonly have much to say before the funeral and whatever baked meats follow upon it. He took the initiative?'

‘The moment he heard about Tytherton's death this morning. Respectable old character called Pantin. Pantin and Pantin. Sounds a bit breathless, eh? Old-established local firm.' Colonel Pride was taking his customary pleasure in having made a joke. ‘He called up the police, and made a point of contacting me personally. So I had him come over. He saw the widow, and so on, just as I said. But he also told me something pretty stiff. Maurice Tytherton rang him up at his house late yesterday evening, and asked him to come out to Elvedon this afternoon. Just live in a grand enough way, John, and you can treat a professional man as if he were the fellow who comes to tune the pianos or attend to the clocks.' Pride paused for a moment on this just sociological reflection. ‘Tytherton wanted to draft a new will.'

‘And what could be more classical than that?' Appleby, not given to gesticulation, had made a gesture of impatience. ‘An almost infallible way to get yourself murdered, wouldn't you say? Almost as infallible as having an alienated heir skulking in the ha-ha, or disguised as a hermit in the Gothic cow-house.'

‘Yes, of course.' Pride was conceivably a little at sea before this fantasy. ‘But that's not all.'

‘Tommy. I've heard those words already in the course of this affair. But I am patient. Expound.'

‘There was something else Pantin felt he ought to tell me. It seems there's far less money behind all this than you'd think. If Mark Tytherton is to keep Elvedon he'll have to be a deuced good manager. Thin ice, Pantin says. Damned thin ice for years. Bad buys in that picture-fancying line. Extravagant wife. Voracious top tarts. Shocking state of affairs.'

‘Did Pantin get the impression that Tytherton was acting impulsively and in a passion?'

‘Yes, he did. He says he made a note to put the brake on. Term lawyers use, it seems, when coping with the sudden whims of clients. Pantin got the notion that some specific upsetting thing had happened, and that Tytherton had lost his wool.'

‘Did he gather just what change or changes in his will Tytherton wanted to make?'

‘Not a thing.'

‘It might have been something big, or it might have been something little?'

‘I suppose so.' Pride had led Appleby into the hall, which presented its customary appearance of mysterious depopulation. He lowered his voice to combat its resonance. ‘Come to think of it, you know, he might have been proposing to disinherit his son.'

‘Would that have been legally possible?'

‘Not perhaps all the way. Must be this and that tied up one way and another in a concern like this, eh? But at least something pretty shattering might be in his power.'

‘Yes – but my instinct is rather against it.' Appleby had paused, frowning, before the ancestral Tytherton commemorated by Sir Thomas Lawrence. ‘For one thing, it's a tricky thing to do – leaving an only son the proverbial farthing. It may result in enormous sums vanishing in bitter law-suits, which is a thought the wealthy hate like poison. And, for another, people just don't, so far as my experience goes. Don't you agree?'