The Long Farewell (11 page)

‘On something connected with his work?’

Mrs Husbands nodded. ‘Yes – something like that. Some very important discovery which he was proposing to announce to his friends.’

‘I find that very interesting.’ Appleby – apparently absent-mindedly – had begun to eat his lunch after all. ‘In fact, it brings us to something extremely significant, which I should like you to consider very carefully. Have you any reason to believe that this important discovery, which Mr Packford was perhaps about to announce, concerned any physical object that had come into his possession?’

Mrs Husbands looked puzzled. ‘I am afraid I don’t follow you, Sir John.’

‘Well, put it this way. A scholar may arrive at some new and surprising piece of knowledge simply as a matter of inference. He sees a connection, hitherto unappreciated, between facts which are themselves already well known. Or again, research may lead him to some hitherto unexamined book or document in a public collection – say, the library of the British Museum. Or, yet again, he may actually himself acquire a book or a document or a work of art. It may simply be extremely interesting in his particular learned world. Or it may be extremely valuable as well. Have you any opinion as to which of these categories would apply in the matter we are considering?’

‘None at all. Mr Packford was never communicative about his discoveries, until he judged that he had found an effective moment for being so. But it is very possible that some of his present guests – of Mr Edward Packford’s present guests, I ought to say – may be better informed than I am.’

‘Thank you. I wonder if you have anything to add to your account of how you found Mr Packford’s body in this room? As I understand the matter, the evening ended early and in considerable restraint?’

‘I suppose so. But I hadn’t, you will realize, the misfortune to be present. It has never been part of my duties to entertain Mr Packford’s guests.’

‘Quite so. But I imagine, Mrs Husbands, that you weren’t able to avoid being given some account of how things were going?’

‘That is certainly true. Both the maids who waited at dinner – I ought to mention, perhaps, that Mr Packford kept no menservants indoors – came to me in some distress, saying that it had been most disagreeable. I told them it was no affair of theirs. And to my own knowledge, of course, the party broke up early. Mr Packford came into this library, as was his invariable custom, for an hour or two before going to bed. And everybody else, it seems, went to their several rooms. But Mr Cavill questioned me very closely about all this.’

‘I appreciate that. You went into the drawing-room, I think, about half-past ten, fearing that the servants might have been so occupied with gossip that the coffee and so forth hadn’t been cleared away. And it was there you heard the shot?’

‘That is corrrect, Sir John.’

‘You realized at once that it was, in fact, a revolver shot?’

‘No, indeed. My first odd thought was that somebody must be opening a bottle of champagne. And that – very absurdly – took me hurrying towards the dining-room. Then I realized that the sound had certainly come from here, and I hurried in. Mr Packford was dead.’

‘Anybody who had been in this room with him at the time of the shot could have got away?’

Mrs Husbands nodded rather wearily. ‘Again, Sir John, you are only going over Mr Cavill’s ground once more. It is undoubtedly true that anybody could have got away – either into the house, or out through the French window.’

‘But, nevertheless, it would only have been a matter of, say, half a minute, either way? There would have been no time for such a person to conduct even a rapid search of this room?’

‘I am quite sure there would not.’

Appleby pushed away the tray and stood up. He found he had done full justice to what had been an excellent refection. Indeed, what had been presented to him, together with the implications of some of Mrs Husbands’ references to the household over which she presided, prompted Appleby’s next line of inquiry. ‘Urchins, if I may say so, appears to be run on decidedly liberal lines. Mr Packford was very comfortably off?’

‘Certainly. Mr Packford was a small proprietor.’

‘Quite so.’ Appleby, remembering the lumbering bulk of the dead man, found it hard not to smile at this curious description. It might be called, he supposed, another of the Edwardian touches about Mrs Husbands. ‘And you had no reason to suppose that he was in anything that could be called financial embarrassment? There was never any difficulty about the household bills, or matters of that sort?’

‘Never.’ Mrs Husbands hesitated. ‘Beyond that, I have, of course, no knowledge.’

‘I suppose not.’ Appleby had walked to the desk, and now he tapped the postcard which still lay on it. ‘You have heard that this is the beginning of a quotation from Shakespeare – a speech of Cardinal Wolsey’s in
Henry VIII
, after his fall?
Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness
. You can’t think of anything specific that Mr Packford might have thought to refer to in that way? It mightn’t refer to an approaching need to live in some much more modest fashion than here at Urchins?’

‘I think that very unlikely indeed.’ Mrs Husbands spoke with decision. ‘It would be much more likely to refer, surely, to his very considerable reputation. I have often been told that Mr Packford was, quite strictly, a great scholar. And he naturally set much more store by that than by the mere fact of being a country gentleman with a small estate. But I don’t myself believe that he was thinking either of one sort of greatness or another. He would often produce what were clearly quotations with only a very partial application to the circumstances prompting them.’

‘That’s something I was aware of in him myself.’ Mrs Husbands, it seemed to Appleby, if not very intelligent, was nevertheless a perfectly shrewd woman when unexcited. ‘You don’t know, I suppose, what happens to Urchins now?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘I understand from Mr Edward that his late brother’s solicitor, a Mr Rood, is coming down this evening about matters of that sort. Do you know him?’

‘Yes, I do. He has been here several times. I believe he shared some of Mr Packford’s learned interests. Perhaps that is why Mr Packford employed him.’

‘You speak, Mrs Husbands, as if you rather distrusted the man.’

‘I don’t know about that. But I decidedly don’t care for him. He appears to me to be simultaneously arid and conceited. It is a combination for which there is nothing to be said.’

‘Well, I would agree with the general proposition.’ Mrs Husbands, Appleby thought, was certainly possessed of an academic past, and had picked up from it turns of phrase which were not entirely natural to her. She seemed, too, to have a considerable capacity for disapproving of people. And this reflection prompted Appleby to a final, slightly odd question. ‘Who would you say,’ he asked, ‘is the most sensible person about Urchins at the moment?’

Mrs Husbands had picked up the tray and was moving to the door. Her answer came without a moment’s hesitation. ‘Canon Rixon, without a doubt.’

‘Does
he
take a dark view of people?’

‘A dark view?’ Mrs Husbands almost flushed, so that it was clear that this very mild thrust had gone home. ‘Far from it. I should describe him as a benevolent man.’

‘I think,’ Appleby said, ‘I’ll have a word with him next. But first I propose to have a further look around this library.’

‘To search it, you mean?’ Mrs Husbands was very chilly again.

‘More or less that.’ Appleby crossed the room and politely opened the door. ‘And I needn’t detain you longer,’ he said.

There were, of course, tens of thousands of books – and all, it was clear, of a learned and solid sort. Urchins no doubt ran to a certain amount of light literature. But that would be kept in other apartments, where it could be picked up and laid down again by casual readers without any disturbance of the maturer studies of the owner of the house. Appleby poked about the drawers and cabinets – not with much conviction, since, after all, Cavill had been there before him. He climbed the little spiral staircase and examined some of the very topmost rows of books. These appeared unfrequented, and were not free from a fine film of dust. He guessed that Mrs Husbands had superintended a major cleaning operation of the library during Packford’s absence in Italy, and that when he was at home he didn’t much like the place to be disturbed. He descended, and studied the manner in which the main collection was arranged on the shelves. There wasn’t any very substantial evidence of system. Packford, like many of his kind, probably prided himself on the power of his memory to take him straight to a wanted book. Nevertheless the volumes all had shelf-marks, and there was a substantial card-index in what appeared to be good order. During the immediately preceding few years Packford had taken to noting in this the dates of his acquisitions and purchases. It might be possible, if one had occasion for so laborious a job, to distinguish, by means of this, something of the particular directions in which his mind had been reaching out during the period. But this wasn’t an activity which Appleby proposed for himself at the moment.

Nevertheless the books continued to occupy him for some time. Sometimes he stood back, as if to gain some general impression of a substantial section of them. Sometimes he peered minutely at one row or another. He wondered whether Packford had employed an assistant: and, if so, what sort of operations that assistant performed. He might ask Mrs Husbands.

But better not do that, he said to himself as he left the room. It was just possible that he was on to something. If he was, it would be prudent to keep quite, quite dark about it at the moment.

Appleby found Canon Rixon in the garden. He was seated in an arbour, playing Snakes and Ladders with a young woman. The Canon was very ugly and the young woman quite ravishingly pretty. She was posed – for it was much as if her companion had deliberately posed her for his own pleasure and Appleby’s – in a small shifting dapple of sunlight and shadow. And she was like some commonplace flower in a cottage garden – as such a flower might appear when viewed under the influence of mescalin. Or she might have been something on a canvas of Renoir’s. Only that would have been a pity, since then it wouldn’t have been possible to take her clothes off.

This last wasn’t, perhaps, a proper thought by which to be visited in the presence of a clergyman. But then the Canon himself seemed to take in the young woman a delight which certainly comprehended more than her immortal soul. ‘Do you know Alice?’ he asked cheerfully when Appleby had introduced himself. ‘She ought, you know, to be Alice Packford. Only it seems that she isn’t – and that’s a great shame. Although, as things have turned out, it wouldn’t have made so very much difference – would it, my dear?’ He had turned to Alice and – in what, Appleby admitted, was a properly fatherly way – patted the small rosy hand which was holding a dice-box. ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury, it is true, might not be in agreement with me. But we must remember that there is to be neither marrying nor giving in marriage later on. So, at least, our recent awkward situation won’t simply repeat itself again in heaven. Alice, my child, it’s your throw.’

Alice threw vigorously. ‘Five!’ she cried in triumph. And then her face fell. ‘It’s the very same horrid snake as last time!’

‘So it is.’ Rixon shook a commiserating head. ‘And you see what a really trying game it is. Compare it with real life. There are any number of snakes in that. But you can’t be called upon to visit the tummy of precisely the same snake twice. That is what, in my profession, we call a comfortable thought. Now – let me see.’ He rattled the dice-box. ‘Four! Dear, dear – it takes me just past the longest ladder on the board.’

‘I’ll win yet.’ Alice rattled with determination. She was clearly dead keen on the game. At the same time she was weeping softly. The tears on her cheeks were like drops of dew on a peach. ‘Six! That means I have another turn.’

‘Now
there
, you see, Snakes and Ladders
doesn’t
differ from life. There’s always the possibility of another turn. Not perhaps for an old fellow like myself, but certainly for the young. Six again! That puts you right ahead of me. I’m not sure that this is at all a Christian game. It keeps on upping one person and downing another. Whereas Christianity, as my dear old bishop used to say, puts us all on a common level.’

Appleby watched the game in silence until it ended in Alice’s victory. Canon Rixon continued to talk cheerfully throughout, and it had to be concluded that he had his own peculiar system of pastoral care, which he was in fact at present directing upon Alice with some success. Despite the girl’s blooming beauty, there was more than her occasional slow tears to show that she had been through deep distress. And unhappiness seemed all wrong for Alice. Appleby could see that any man whose eye rested on her twice might find himself absolutely compelled to do anything in the world to preserve her in a condition of unflawed enjoyment of the world. Perhaps it had been like that with the late Lewis Packford.

And this confirmed itself as soon as Alice began to talk. ‘Do you know,’ she asked Appleby gravely, ‘that nobody has been so nice to me as the Reverend here?’ This appeared to be her way of referring to Rixon. ‘And that’s a thing you’d never expect, now – would you?’

At this Rixon gave Appleby a cheerful wink. ‘Alice,’ he said, ‘you’re an ignorant girl. Your knowledge of the beneficed clergy of the Church of England is, I perceive, nebulous. But you’re a good child, all the same.’

‘And it was true right from the start,’ Alice went on. ‘I mean, from when I arrived. And I was mad, you know. Oh, my – wasn’t I mad!’

Appleby nodded. ‘At not being married?’

‘Well – that, of course. It was a terrible sell. Yes, it was a terrible let-down. But what I was chiefly mad at was his being so silly. Loo, I mean.’

‘Our late friend,’ Rixon interpolated.

‘I only wanted a ring, you know.’ Alice appeared to have embarked upon what she appeared to regard as a process of apology. ‘Just a Woolworth ring, like other girls have. There wouldn’t – would there? – have been any real harm in that. I mean there wouldn’t have been any
more
harm. The Reverend says there wouldn’t.’