Death at the Chase (6 page)

‘Of course not. Men don’t do that sort of thing at hunt balls. Or not at the balls of
good
hunts.’

‘You are quite idiotic. I am only saying that I don’t mind scaring your Tommy. Not that it
is
scaring him. Pride’s a very good scout. As for the
maquis
, it’s not to be joked about. In France itself such things went on happening for years after the war. A fellow would square this chap and that, and get himself solemnly acquitted in court of any species of collaboration. And then young men – or not so young men – who had acquired a taste for summary justice under
résistance
rules would turn up one night and simply rub him out. Read
Les Mandarins
. Simone de Beauvoir, you know.’

‘I
do
know. But they didn’t fall down on the job every 10th of October.’

‘Fair enough.’ Appleby got up and paced the room. ‘There’s something really fiendish in that. It’s as if they want to break his nerve – just as it was once broken by some hideous secret police long ago. So far, it looks as if this old man – who
is
an old man, and destined by some freak of heredity to go on getting yet older for a long time – allows himself to get worried for about twenty-four hours in the year. They want
really
to get him down. And then, I suppose, they’ll end up that series of near-misses, and contrive a square hit. It’s not at all nice. I didn’t scare Pride, but I’m glad to think I’ve alerted him. He feels he may have rather rashly discounted this Martyn Ashmore’s seemingly incredible yarn. He’s making inquiries. As a matter of fact I expect him to drop in this evening.’

‘John, do you
believe
this fantastic tale?’

‘I believe in that hunk of stone. And so would you, my dear, if you’d felt the wind of it on your left ear.’

‘I believe in it too.’ Judith looked seriously at her husband. There had been plenty of times when she had sat over two poached eggs round about 9 p.m., trying not to wonder whether she would ever see John again. She didn’t like this story of sudden and insane danger during a day’s ramble from Long Dream. ‘But I don’t at all know what to believe about your young Frenchman. Of course it’s true that Martyn Ashmore has French relations.’

‘His father married a de Voisin?’

‘His father – Ayden Ashmore – married ages ago a
bonne bourgeoise
called Annette Dupont. Very much the
haute bourgeoisie
, as they say. Related to all sorts of people, however, with much grander names.’

‘How you contrive–’

‘I knew some of them when I was almost finished for good at that ghastly French school. Before I ran away to the Slade. Before I met my glorious policeman.’

‘No doubt.’ Appleby sat down again, and with conscious complacency finished his tea. ‘And you also know all about this rash of Ashmores who appear to be our near neighbours at the other end of the county. I think I’ll want to know about them too… Judith, why aren’t you listening to me?’

‘Of course I’m listening to you.’ But Lady Appleby’s ear had been quite detectably attuned to the outer world. ‘But Bobby’s coming for the weekend. I thought I heard what might be his car.’

‘Fine. You’ll be able to talk to him about Simone de Beauvoir.’

‘Bobby thinks the Beaver and Sartre and all that fearfully old-hat. Bobby belongs to the
anti-roman
school. What he goes in for is called
la nouvelle écriture
.’

‘He hasn’t given up hope of educating me.’ Appleby picked up a book. ‘I’ve been told to read this, by a chap called Alain Robbe-Grillet. It’s described as a novel, but a great deal of it seems just to be describing a house. The first paragraph is about a veranda. Listen.

Since its width is the same for the central portion as for the sides, the line of shadow cast by the column extends precisely to the corner of the house; but it stops there, for only the veranda flagstones are reached by the sun… At this moment the shadow of the outer edge of the roof coincides exactly with the right angle formed by the terrace and the two vertical surfaces of the corner of the house
.’
[1]

Appleby put down the book. ‘Odd, don’t you think?’

‘It ought to appeal to you. It’s by rather an observing kind of person.’

‘That’s undeniable.’ Forgetting about Monsieur Robbe-Grillet, Appleby walked to the window. He too was hearkening to the outer world. He was commonly as relieved as Judith when their youngest child’s alarming car was heard to come safely to a stop in the drive. Bobby Appleby had once been a useful youth in the middle of the front row of a scrum. He had then surprisingly transformed himself into an even more useful scrum-half. In that position he had played a very decent game against the All Blacks. Appleby believed that he himself concealed behind an impenetrable mask his satisfaction in his son’s having thereafter even more surprisingly transformed himself from an Appleby into a Raven. Nearly all Judith’s relations had been – and were – pretty mad. But they had followed a remarkable variety of curious pursuits. Writing Anglicized versions of the
nouveau roman
was simply the latest of these. ‘Stop bothering about Bobby,’ Appleby shamelessly went on, ‘and tell me about all those Ashmores. I’d like to be clued up on them before Pride arrives.’

‘Very well.’ Judith extinguished the small ritual lamp on her tea-tray. ‘The Ashmores have been around these parts for quite a time. Since the Conquest, in fact.’

‘Absolute rubbish. Nobody has been around since the Conquest – except in the commonplace sense in which we all have. The Ashmores no doubt emerged from their hovels in the time of Thomas Cromwell, and liberated something substantial from a monastery. Not that it’s material. Go on.’

‘It certainly wasn’t all that number of generations back. Not
their
generations.’

‘I know. Their ultimate ancestor was a tortoise. Or a Galapagos turtle. Martyn Ashmore told me all that. His grandmother was present at the Rape of the Lock. I accorded his recital – offered in the presence of appropriate family portraits – instant and implicit belief. But it scarcely appears a factor in the present mystery.’

‘I suppose not. But I don’t see how I’m going to tell you about the Ashmores if you will go on talking.’

Appleby made a resigned gesture. Then he threw a log on the fire – thereby bringing the looming Hoobin crisis one step nearer – and filled his pipe.

‘The Ashmores,’ Judith said, ‘have a reputation for eccentricity. They’ve had it for a long time, and occasionally it seems to deepen into madness. That must be the Chief Constable’s excuse for ignoring Martyn Ashmore when he started some tale of mysterious persecution over a glass of sherry.’

‘Pride didn’t exactly ignore it. He had somebody go round asking discreet questions. But nothing emerged. And it seems that Ashmore wasn’t in any sense asking for help. It was this neighbour business again – feeling it due to a fellow to tell him about something that was going on. And if that isn’t nearer to madness than to eccentricity I don’t know what is.’

‘If that’s one salient point about Martyn Ashmore, another is his wealth. There’s far more money than simply comes to him from land.’

‘That’s not quite what he suggested to me. He implied that it was safe, broad acres with him, and what I remember his calling bubble-and-squeak stock-jobbing in his numerous relations.’

‘He was being less than candid.’ Judith appeared in no doubt about this. ‘It’s combining a large fortune with really miserly habits that has given him so picturesque a reputation.’

‘There didn’t seem to be a servant about the place. He said they demand exorbitant wages.’

‘I think he was being less than candid again. There are said to be some old creatures lurking around the place, although he refuses to have them quartered in the house. As to the whole family, I don’t know much about them in recent years – not really since they used to be around when I was a girl. Martyn wasn’t the head of the family. An elder brother had the Chase, and was married and had a son. Martyn inherited only because his brother and nephew were killed in a motor smash. There were two younger brothers who are still in circulation, although they aren’t at all young now. And there are nephews and nieces, and great-nephews and great-nieces. Even the younger ones are much in these parts from time to time. Shall we have a big party and ask the lot? You could go round questioning them closely. That would clue you up.’

‘I think not. But I’d like to know more about the French side – for instance how Martyn Ashmore’s French ancestry landed him in France, and in what capacity, during the war. That young Frenchman, de Voisin, puzzles me quite a lot. Why on earth should he have turned up like that?’

‘Might he have been the villain of the piece? Might it have been he who chucked the stone?’

‘In theory, yes – although it would have involved some very funny business with a motor-cycle engine. The only clear point is that his arrival on that particular day cannot conceivably have been purely coincidental.’

‘You used to say that the most inconceivable coincidences just do happen.’

‘They weren’t happening at Ashmore Chase.’ Appleby paused to allow for his wife’s amusement before this dogmatic statement. ‘I’d like to
help
this chap.’

‘The mysteriously irruptive Jules de Voisin?’

‘Of course not. Ashmore. He’s so queerly discontinuous that he’s hard to assess. But he’s not a bad old chap. Kept some sort of end up under pressure both from within and without. And he has some uncommonly good claret.’

‘Obviously a worthy object of benevolence. But do you think–’

‘Colonel Pride, my lady,’ a voice said at the door.

‘My dear fellow, I’m most grateful to you.’ The Chief Constable turned to Appleby with these words as soon as he had greeted Judith with the familiarity of an old friend. ‘I ought to have been more on my toes when old Ashmore first spun me his unlikely yarn. No smoke without fire, and all that. No tea.’

‘No tea?’ Appleby was perplexed by this expression.

‘Talking to your wife, my dear chap. Had tea. Shouldn’t be surprised if I’m still here when it’s time for a drink though. A good deal to beat out. Plot thickens, as a matter of fact.’

‘Toast your toes,’ Appleby said hospitably. ‘Evening’s turning chilly now. You’ve found some sort of substantiation of Martyn Ashmore’s story?’

‘Well, yes and no.’ Pride turned again to Judith. ‘Is this going to bore you, my dear? Your husband’s told you about it?’

‘He’ll talk of nothing else. And you’ll remember, Tommy, how reliable I was as a small girl. All those sworn secrets.’

‘Yes, of course. That business of Anthea Killcanon’s pony, eh? The old pheasant lord was furious.’

‘New light on the French yarn?’ Appleby prompted. He found a slight tedium in Pride’s and Judith’s colloquies of this order.

‘Yes, decidedly yes. Some of your old henchmen at the Yard doing their stuff splendidly. Been on the line to them on and off all day. Mind you, we must distinguish. No compulsion to believe everything the old fellow says – or even believes. We have just the one hard fact still.’

‘It was certainly quite adequately hard.’

‘Quite so. It must have been a deuced near thing for both you and Ashmore. And for Ashmore there
have
been other deuced near things. That’s what I’ve turned up. But those really on record happened long ago. And in France. He stuck it out in France, it seems, for some years – in fact until he inherited this place over here. And there
were
attempts on his life – attempts which were undoubtedly a sequel to the grim business he told you about. No question, our people think, of his having played any sort of double game. Perfectly honourable above-board chap, caught up in desperate affairs. But there were plenty of people a bit off their rockers over there in the years after the war. Something had been screwed out of him in a manner unfit to be talked about. Unfortunately there were people who didn’t believe in the real existence of – well, the screw. As a consequence, he was shot at, had his house set fire to in the night, and was sent infernal machines inside wine bottles. Common form for a time. Bit of national what’s-it-called. Psychosis.’

‘I was telling Judith as much,’ Appleby stirred the logs in the big fireplace. ‘But after that?’

‘There’s the nub of the matter. The business of an annual persecution strikes these back-room types in London as most improbable. Bosh, in fact. They never and nowhere heard of such a thing. And I myself will believe
that
part of the yarn when it too is vouched for by somebody a little more reliable than this old chap seems to be. I’ve tackled him myself, I may say. But he manages to be uncommonly elusive. At times he seems to imply that these demonstrations, or whatever you’d call them, have been going on ever since he left France. At other times it seems as if only the last few years are in question. For that matter, they’re the crucial ones for us. Trail not too cold, eh? Get him to detail some of the alleged circumstances, and we might just conceivably pick up something like corroborative testimony. But I wouldn’t put money on it.’

‘But suppose,’ Judith said, ‘that Martyn Ashmore is actually killed just short of a year from now. This story that he put on record with you, Tommy, would be the only context, conceivably, available to you in order to make any sense of his death. In fact it would come back to you – and perhaps to others to whom he has told it – in rather a devastating way.’

‘In what might be an uncommonly confusing way.’ Pride glanced from Judith to Appleby, and hesitated. ‘Do you know? I have one damned odd notion in my head. But I rather think I’ll keep it under my hat until I’ve thought over it a bit more. Nothing in it, likely enough.’

‘Then I’ll be more rash.’ Appleby was careful not to appear amused. ‘It’s just conceivable that the odd notion in your head is an odd notion in my head too. Somebody has it in for Ashmore on grounds which have nothing to do with that ghastly French affair. And that somebody is confusing the old gentleman, and consequently confusing us, by cooking up a spurious connection with it.’