The Long Farewell (15 page)

‘Certainly not. I don’t traipse around with an affair of that sort.’

‘I don’t think Alice would be so scornful of it. In fact, at a guess, I’d say it was hers, and that she’s rather proud of it.’ Quite casually, Appleby shut down first the little travelling case and then the boot of the car. ‘So what does our discovery suggest?’

‘I’d rather not talk about it.’ Ruth’s voice was steady, but her lip was slightly trembling. ‘And now I’d better go about my business. I’ve promised Edward to go and fetch this man Rood. I suppose you wouldn’t like the run?’

Appleby was surprised. He was even – rather absurdly – pleased. ‘I’ll certainly come,’ he said. ‘But I’ll go in and see Edward first. It’s my notion to get a meal elsewhere, and then come back to Urchins for the night.’

Ruth nodded. ‘I don’t grudge you a quiet grill and a pint of bitter. The Husbands cuisine is rather distinguished. But I’m bound to confess I’m getting a bit tired of the conditions under which I’m privileged to partake of it.’

Appleby laughed. ‘I have a feeling,’ he said, ‘that Edward Packford’s protracted house-party will soon be breaking up.’

They found Mr Rood at a point outside the railway station at which he could scan the road from Urchins. He had, it appeared, made one of his Napoleonic changes of plan, caught a motor coach, and thus contrived to arrive early. But as he had twin suitcases each rather heavier than there seemed any occasion for, and had therefore been indisposed to wander round seeking a further conveyance, his strategy hadn’t resulted in any particular advantage. Except that he had exchanged his silk hat for a bowler, he presented precisely the appearance under which Appleby had first encountered him. And his manner too was unchanged. Having apparently been apprised of the peculiar marital status of his deceased client, he took early occasion to deliver himself to Ruth of sundry conventional sentiments on the theme of sad occasions, distressing circumstances, and the like. These Ruth received with patience. ‘You know Sir John Appleby?’ she said.

‘Certainly I do.’ Rood limply shook hands. ‘And I was very glad to see he had taken the matter up. Although I disapprove, of course, the deplorably sensational cast of the report.’

‘What’s that?’ Appleby was startled.

Rood was already climbing into the back of the old car. But now he paused to rummage in the pocket of his overcoat. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you haven’t yet seen the evening paper. Allow me.’

Appleby took the newspaper and got in beside Ruth. The death of Lewis Packford, he found, had belatedly made the front page. So had something vaguely described as ‘a priceless Shakespeare relic’. The police, the report declared, now thought it highly probable that Packford had died as the result of foul play, and that the priceless relic had been stolen at the same time. There was also a photograph of Appleby – which was something that Appleby always particularly disliked seeing.

Ruth had read the report over his shoulder. She now started up the car. ‘At least,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing about bigamy – yet.’

‘That is certainly something,’ Rood said from the back. ‘But one wouldn’t expect anything of the sort, until they felt very sure of their ground. They have of course no consideration for the personal feelings of those involved in this deplorable affair. But at least they keep an eye on the law of libel. If they announced that my late client had conspired with – um – the young person now at Urchins to commit bigamy, and the allegation turned out to be without substance, we should have them. We should have them very nicely. Unfortunately, when this further trouble does emerge into daylight, there will be very little we can do. From the point of view of my late client’s reputation, the whole affair is truly lamentable. And, of course, for others concerned as well.’

Appleby tapped the evening paper. ‘But doesn’t this represent pretty well your own view of the case? Isn’t this Shakespeare relic they talk about simply a journalist’s term for what you suppose Packford to have got from that impoverished nobleman of Verona? And don’t you believe that he was, in fact, murdered? Or has the discovery that he’d got into that desperate scrape over marriage now persuaded you to take another view?’

Rood took time to consider this battery of questions carefully. ‘I must still incline,’ he said presently, ‘to my former opinion. I was shown, you know, that postcard purporting to be poor Packford’s last message. And I was convinced it is a forgery.’

‘If so, Mr Rood, it is certainly an uncommonly good one. Our experts accept it as genuine, and although I understand you have some knowledge of these matters yourself, you are at least outvoted on the point, so far.’

‘It’s certainly an uncommonly good forgery. It might be called a brilliant forgery. That, my dear sir, is simply part of my case.’

Ruth had begun to drive fast through the dusk, so that the Thomas Horscroft country was slipping by in rather an alarming fashion. But now she slackened pace and spoke. ‘I know nothing about this point technically,’ she said. ‘But I see no reason to suppose that Lewis didn’t write that message. There’s sense in it. Just what sense, Sir John and I discovered less than an hour ago. It’s perfectly plain that Lewis and Alice had decided to cut and run for it. In fact, the long farewell was to me.’

‘I am extremely sorry that you should have occasion to suppose so.’ Rood got a maximum of unfeeling quality into this, combined with a large suggestion of gloom. ‘At the same time, I am not without a suspicion that you may be introducing an unwarranted simplification into your view of the matter. That your husband had decided to cut and run for it is conceivable. Indeed, I am sorry to say that I am myself the bearer of information which enhances the credibility of such a supposition.’ Rood had fallen to his favourite occupation of rolling his umbrella. ‘But it must nevertheless be evident, my dear madam, that such an intention – and even the taking of certain definite steps to put it into execution – is not incompatible with the sadly sinister interpretation of our melancholy occasion to which I myself find it necessary to incline.’

A speech so heavy as this was not unnaturally followed by an interval of silence. Urchins Pydell went dimly by. And then Ruth spoke abruptly. ‘Just what did you mean by that about being a bearer of information making it the more likely that Lewis was thinking of bolting?’

‘There is no reason for reticence in the matter. You must certainly know at once, and so must the dead man’s brother. Sir John’s discretion is doubtless impeccable.’ Rood paused as if for a word of thanks for this testimonial. Not getting it, he pursued his ponderous course. ‘I have made a careful preliminary investigation of Lewis Packford’s affairs. I ought to say at once that I have not myself hitherto had much concern with them on their financial side. Had they been substantially in my hands, I should conceive myself to be gravely indicted of irresponsibility by the deplorable posture in which they now stand.’

‘Is all this,’ Ruth asked, ‘a way of saying that Lewis had been living beyond his means?’

‘Certainly that. He appears to have been entirely careless. I fear that there are grave difficulties confronting his estate.’

‘But you don’t suggest,’ Appleby asked, ‘that there was anything discreditable behind his difficulties? Apart from his recent queer aberration in contracting two marriages – which is quite another matter – there was nothing more culpable than a rather large inability to bother himself with his own practical affairs?’

‘That is, I think, true.’ Rood could be glimpsed in the driving-mirror as nodding gravely. ‘There were, so far as I know, no – um – irregular courses.’

‘You mean women –
more
women?’ Ruth asked this challengingly. ‘What about Italy?’ She turned to Appleby. ‘You visited Lewis there, it seems. Were there any signs there of what Mr Rood calls irregular courses?’

Appleby smiled. ‘I can’t say that there were. He flirted with his cook, but she was in her seventies. He talked about amorous shrimps. But they turned out to be wall paintings.’

‘Exactly,’ Rood said. ‘One is happy to think that there was no vice in him – or not of any positively degrading sort.’

‘You put it very nicely.’ Ruth spoke in a more acrid tone than Appleby had heard her use before. ‘Alice would be grateful to you, too.’

‘Would you say that Packford was in any sense a gambler?’ Appleby asked this chiefly by way of gliding over an awkward moment. ‘A man can quickly lose a great deal, that way.’

‘And he can quickly gain a great deal, too.’ Rood made this reply rather surprisingly. ‘To my mind, there is something we are bound a little to admire in the true gambler’s temper. To win handsomely, and then double one’s stake, must at least take resolution. But the answer to your question is quite simple. Packford didn’t gamble. He didn’t even, in the substantial sense, speculate. Had he done so, he might well have come to grief long before now. For, able though he was, there was something guileless and even credulous about him. Not, perhaps, as a scholar. But certainly in life’s larger relations. He could, in the vulgar but useful phrase, be had.’

There was another pause, in which Appleby could feel Ruth punch the accelerator. She wasn’t at all slow, it occurred to him, to take Rood’s pontificatings in a personal sense. ‘You’ll drop me at that pub?’ he asked. ‘I’ll get back to Urchins about nine.’

Ruth nodded. ‘Very well. And I hope you’ll have done something about it.’

‘Something about it?’

‘You arrived this morning and announced that there was a mystery about Lewis’ death, after all. I hope you’ll arrive again tonight announcing that you’ve brought the solution.’

‘Hardly that.’ Appleby spoke seriously. ‘But I might well bring a part of it.’

The hotel before which Appleby found himself deposited was called ‘The Crossed Hands’ – so that he wondered whether Thomas Horscroft had found in it an irony sufficiently pungent to be commented on by the Princeton professor. It hadn’t been reconstructed lately, and therefore it didn’t look particularly antique, but there was a certain undisturbed solidity about it which seemed to promise a decent meal. The lounge was quiet and shabby, with large Victorian steel engravings depicting various more or less catastrophic occasions in English history: the execution of Mary Queen of Scots at Fotheringhay Castle, the trial of Charles the First, the death of General Gordon. There was even Thomas Chatterton clutching a phial of poison in his garret, so that Appleby was appropriately able to reflect on his obscurely significant conversation with Lewis Packford at Lake Garda.

But was it so obscure? He sat down and ordered himself a drink. Wasn’t there, indeed – as he had rather rashly hinted to Ruth – a first glimmer of light beginning to break on the whole affair? He had at least arrived at one substantial certainty; and he looked back with some amusement to the moment to which he was indebted for it. But it wasn’t a certainty that seemed to have much power of carrying other certainties with it; indeed it instantly presented one very large puzzle. For the solution of this, Appleby presently applied himself hopefully to his glass of sherry. It wasn’t a very reliable ally – a really hot bath was miles better – but he would give it a fair chance.

‘Waiter – bring me a bottle of your best champagne!’

This command was uttered so close to Appleby’s ear that for a moment he thought he was being addressed. Then he saw that the speaker had sat down – gregariously if somewhat unnecessarily – in the next chair. He had a loose grey skin, and loose grey clothes, and he was now applying himself to the study of a bundle of cables and telegrams. They looked important – and no doubt the problems they presented amply warranted the order their recipient had just given. Appleby returned to his sherry. It was not assisting his mental processes in any way. Perhaps it was the wrong drink.

The champagne arrived with an expedition which almost certainly meant that it would be tepid. The waiter poured a glass in gloomy silence. He clearly disapproved of this exotic behaviour. Then he set the bottle down on a table.

‘That’s all I want. Take it away and drink it yourself.’ The grey man said this in a threatening rather than a cordial voice. ‘And see there’s another like that waiting for me at dinner. Get?’

The waiter withdrew without vouchsafing any sign that he had got. He was now thoroughly offended.

The grey man watched him go, and then turned to Appleby. ‘Moody,’ he said.

‘Well, yes. I dare say he’s had a long day.’

‘I said Moody.’

‘Oh, I beg your pardon.’ Appleby now understood. ‘Appleby.’

The grey man nodded with a sort of ferocious cordiality. ‘You have some of that champagne, Mr Appleby? We can have it back.’

‘No – thank you very much. I’ve a drink here. Dry sherry.’

The American called Moody glanced at Appleby’s glass with suspicion. ‘I wouldn’t call that safe,’ he said. ‘I’m on strict orders to drink nothing but champagne. French champagne. Because of my duodenum. Haven’t you a duodenum, Mr Appleby?’

‘Well, I rather suppose I have – about twelve inches of one. But it never seems particularly to have called for champagne, I’m glad to say. Haven’t your doctors given you rather a costly prescription?’

‘Huh?’

This, from Moody, appeared to be a sound indicating bafflement. He gave Appleby a long stare which somehow suggested great ability. He might have been a person of the most commanding intellect who has been presented with a philosophical proposition just too remote for comprehension. ‘But it does come, you know,’ Appleby was prompted to add, ‘in half-bottles. Handier for between meals.’

Mr Moody shook his head decisively. ‘The corks don’t come out right,’ he said. ‘Not out of the little ones.’ He took a sip of champagne, put down the glass, and produced from his waistcoat pocket a small bottle of pills. ‘I’m glad you said that about meals,’ he went on. ‘I have to take these half an hour before. Dangerous to forget. I was warned that way by Dr Cahoon. I go into his clinic every Fall. Come across and look him up, Mr Appleby, if you ever find you have that duodenum after all. I guess you’d like Dr Cahoon’s clinic. Most expensive in the United States.’