Appleby's Other Story (15 page)

‘What do you mean by that?'

‘A charitable way of looking at you. The general situation I've sketched by no means precludes it's having been yourself who was constrained to put a bullet in the man. Just think! Here is Maurice Tytherton murdered literally under the eye of a Goya worth tens of thousands of pounds, and within a couple of years of some funny business with pictures transacting itself in this house. And here is Egon Raffaello, an art-dealer known to myself and others as enjoying uncommon luck in being still at large. It doesn't look pretty. Only let Inspector Henderson form a strong conviction about it, and you'll have a damned bad time. So my advice is simple. Go away and think it over. And don't spend too long on the job.'

 

 

More bullying, Appleby thought gloomily as he made his way downstairs. Boasting, too. All to be over by sundown. I wonder. Am I not still without so much as a glimpse of two possible star performers? But, ah! That looks like one of them.

The man with whom Pride was in conversation in the hall certainly had the appearance of a principal personage. A professional man, one would have said, in some distinctly prosperous mid-career. More carefully dressed, perhaps, than was altogether pleasing. Except that there was, so to speak, something to dress: a force and presence, a poise, which would have made themselves felt in dungarees. And his identity was confirmed by the Chief Constable at once.

‘John, this is Mr Carter. Sir John Appleby.'

‘How do you do?' Carter took a polite step forward, and shook hands with gravity.

‘Mr Carter has been giving his account of things to Henderson, and he has an engagement in town this evening which he is anxious not to cancel. But he has heard that you are giving us a hand, and wonders whether he might have a short talk with you. He knows that Henderson welcomes anything of the kind.'

‘But of course.' Appleby wondered what this somewhat unnecessary initiative on Carter's part portended. But it appeared to be a suitably gratified response that was expected, and this Appleby was very content to import into his tone. ‘Nothing could be more valuable, Mr Carter, than your comment on this shocking business. Let us find a spot where we can sit down and talk it over. This hall strikes me as more imposing than comfortable, I'm bound to say.'

‘The billiard-room,' Carter said unexpectedly. ‘It doesn't sound promising. But nobody billiards here – except occasionally young Archie Tytherton by himself – and I've found it the most secluded place in the house. Come along, Sir John.'

 

A billiard-room is surely the most banal of apartments; this one was a little distinguished by displaying a large rural painting of the Dutch School. Three cows standing up, three cows lying down, a woman with a milking pail, and a river in a peaceful glow behind them.

‘Cuyp?' Carter said, pausing before it. ‘It's signed A C but if you ask me that means Abraham Calraet. But notice the triangular composition of the three creatures standing up. It's precisely the Three Graces, I'd say, or Giving and Receiving and Returning. You know the three ladies I mean: two frontal and one par derrière, wreathed in a dance? Haunted the artistic imagination for centuries, and got mixed up with the most abstruse Neo-Platonic speculation. Old cow-shed Cuyp wouldn't have made much of
that
. But here he is – or here's his imitator – all-unconsciously giving us that highly mystical conception in bovine terms. Quaint and interesting.'

‘Very.' Appleby saw no occasion to elaborate this connoisseur's talk. ‘Perhaps it was a common interest in artistic matters that made you and Maurice Tytherton congenial to each other?'

‘Ah, yes – and other things.' Carter had slightly raised his eyebrows, as if indicating a sense that the pace was being a little forced. ‘We had known one another for quite a long time.'

‘But his friends in general – ?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Well, a few moments ago you happened to remark that you had found this the most secluded room in Elvedon. That suggests that you didn't find the society here wholly agreeable – or not, at least, more or less round the clock.'

‘Perhaps so – yes. I haven't, as a matter of fact, stayed in this house all that often.'

‘I see. You were not a sufficiently close friend of Maurice Tytherton's for his sudden death to have been a great personal shock to you?'

‘True enough, Sir John. And I am, as it happens, rather used to sudden death. Or to sudden life, for that matter. Do you know, that can be almost as disconcerting?'

‘Indeed?' It came to Appleby that the prosaically named Mr Charles Carter rather fancied himself as a conversationalist, and perhaps as a wit.

‘By profession, as it happens, I am a surgeon. Sometimes sudden death is
there
– right under my hand. But sometimes the reverse obtains. There, on the table, is somebody who in all probability has three hours, an hour, half an hour to live. But one finds, against all expectation, that one can do this, or that – and to dramatic effect. With a few instruments gradually evolved from the butcher's shop I have created for this man further years of existence. Sudden life, in fact. And of course one wonders.'

‘About the beneficence of what one has done?'

‘Precisely. However, at least we don't yet traffic in an elixir or philosopher's stone. The conferment of immortality still eludes us. And while there is death there is hope.'

Appleby felt he had heard this little medical joke before, but refrained from saying so. Instead, he moved abruptly to what he chiefly wanted to know.

‘Mr Carter, was your original association with Maurice Tytherton a professional one?'

‘He was never a patient of mine.' For a fraction of a second Carter hesitated. ‘But his wife was.'

‘Ah, yes. No doubt you mentioned this to Inspector Henderson.'

‘I think not. It didn't crop up.'

‘I see.' Appleby took a moment to study the Cuyp further. Carter had got away with something with Henderson; second thoughts had persuaded him he wouldn't continue to get away with it for long. ‘Mrs Tytherton has mentioned to me that she underwent a serious surgical operation a little over two years ago, and that she recuperated from it in the South of France. That operation I take it you performed?'

‘That is so.'

‘And this would have been the occasion of your forming a first, or at least a closer, personal acquaintance with the Tythertons?'

‘Quite so.'

‘Mr Carter, are you fond of the South of France yourself? Do you perhaps go on holiday there?'

‘Yes, I am – and I do. But I fail–'

‘That may well have resulted in your visiting Mrs Tytherton during her convalescence?'

‘I must protest against such questions. Their implication–'

‘Oh, come. You are in danger of ceasing to be quite clear-headed – which I am sure is unusual with you. It's bound to come out, you know. That's why you have sought this interview with me. You feel, rightly or wrongly, that you and I talk more or less the same language, and that as a consequence aspects of the matter may be easier to sort out with me than with a rural police officer. I don't think there's much in it. But, of course, I'm at your service, all the same.'

There was a silence. Carter had picked up a billiard-cue, and was idly taking aim at an ancient and somewhat discoloured white ball on the table. Perhaps his principal attraction – Appleby thought – was in those strong and beautiful hands. Appleby wondered what sort of hands Maurice Tytherton had possessed. Possibly Mrs Tytherton hadn't thought much of them.

‘I'm naturally alarmed,' Carter said surprisingly. He executed a stroke with precision, and a series of swift clicks rewarded him. ‘You can see why.'

‘You possessed a very good motive for murdering Tytherton?'

‘Oh, I hadn't quite thought of
that
!' Alarmed or not Carter looked up from the table with some appearance of amused astonishment. He was a handsome man. The wide expanse of fine cloth, reflecting the sunshine streaming in from a skylight, lent the flesh-tones of his face the greenish shades, one might say, of Correggio's nudes. ‘We don't live in a novelette, with searing sensualities producing homicide at every turn. Tytherton was killed, I suppose, by somebody after his pictures. But any sort of irrelevant vulgar scandal is liable to be started up by such a thing – particularly as there has been this odd circumstance of his son's returning from South America and saying Lord knows what. It's oddly pat, I must say. Anybody would be prompted to rustle up a mystery out of it. And mysteries are news. And news battens on any scandal, however irrelevant, it can dig up.'

‘There is undeniably much in what you say. To put it baldly, you are in a fix, and quite intelligent enough to be aware of the fact. However, I am in a position to offer you a word of encouragement. You are by no means singular. The number of people at present under this roof who are similarly circumstanced – in a fix, that is to say, on one account or another – may be fairly described as astonishing. I confess, however, that I find your own case a particularly interesting one. And I advise candour. I go round Elvedon, indeed, advising candour. But upon you, my dear sir, I positively urge it. Shall we face up quite squarely – you and I – to the special and peculiar occasion you may have felt for shooting down your host in cold blood? And I emphasize the temperature. Cold blood, not hot.'

‘Just what do you mean by that, Sir John?'

‘That is precisely the sort of question I am asked by one of the least attractive of your fellow-guests – the gentleman who calls himself Mr Raffaello. I regard the assumption of so divine a name as an outrage in itself. But that is by the way. I will tell you what I mean – and possibly launch a little straight talk as a result. You spoke just now, and in an ironic tone, of searing sensualities. Well, they do happen. And sometimes, when they have rather burnt themselves out, they leave an awkward legacy. Now,
don't
ask me just what I mean by that. We both know perfectly well. You lost your head over Alice Tytherton. You slept with her – regularly and often, I suspect – and now here you are, actually under her late husband's roof. Most unfortunately, she has been your patient. There you were, Carter, poised over her unconscious body and with those instruments of life and death in your hands. You did a good job by her – perhaps a quite notably good job. Sudden life, in fact. But then this thing happened. You seduced her. Or she seduced you. That's equally probable, I suppose. But the emotional niceties of the affair wouldn't much interest the General Medical Council.'

There was a short silence. Carter played another shot, and missed rather an easy cannon off the red. He made an impatient gesture, and thrust the cue back in its rack.

‘Go on,' he said. ‘You interest me. Are you supposing there was some sort of crisis yesterday?'

‘It's a tenable view. I'm only dealing in tenable views.' Appleby had sat down in a deep armchair that exhaled a faint aroma of chalk and cigar smoke. ‘One is rather inclined to assume that Tytherton had been aware of your liaison with his wife for quite a long time; that he had tolerated it as belonging within the context of near-promiscuity which appears to have been the thing in his set. Certainly a lot of people were aware of it – including, I suspect, his own servants and tenants. Still, Tytherton
mayn't
have known. Or not to the extent of having proof. You may have been enormously careful. It was certainly very much in your interest to be so. Just get cited as co-respondent in a divorce suit in which the woman has been your patient, and your professional career is finished.'

‘I grant you that one – as a general proposition, that is to say.' Carter, like Appleby, had sunk into a large chair. They might have been two idle denizens of this country house, gossiping their way through a boring afternoon. ‘In more ways than one, my dear Appleby, my profession continues to drowse contentedly in the Victorian age.'

‘No doubt. But now let me return to what I was speaking of: a possible action for divorce.'

‘But you must know by now that Tytherton was what a judge might call a hardened adulterer. Even supposing your conjectures about his wife and myself to be true, he'd have found anything of the kind a tricky business to launch.'

‘Perhaps so. A judge – since you are interested in judges – would certainly be unfavourably impressed by a plaintiff's admitting that he had brought a mistress – to wit, Mrs Graves – into his own matrimonial dwelling. Still, judges simply have to mop up these messes as best they can. Nowadays, they let what is called their discretion in such matters cover a great deal. So consider, Carter, where we are. Tytherton has either suddenly discovered the truth, or he has just got hold of what amounts to hard and fast evidence.' Appleby paused. ‘So he sends for his solicitor. And gives himself the pleasure of telling you he has done so.'

‘May I ask when you suppose this interesting event to have taken place?'

‘Yesterday evening. And, this time, I am
not
supposing. I know Tytherton
did
send for his solicitor. The fellow's name is Pantin.'

 

‘Well?' There had been a long silence in the billiard-room before it was thus broken by Carter's voice. ‘Tytherton writes his letter. Or perhaps he simply telephones–'

‘Yes. He telephones.'

‘Yesterday evening, you say. So what follows?'

‘I can leave that to your imagination. Or perhaps to your memory.'

‘We'll say imagination, if you please. What follows is, I suppose, what you call the crisis.'

‘Very definitely it is that. You get to know what he has done. Perhaps he simply tells you what he has done. Or there is another possibility – an ironical one.'