The Open House (10 page)

The local doctor, whose name proved to be Plumridge, was another matter. He was an old rather than merely elderly man, who showed every sign of being able to cope competently with whatever turned up. The dotty Mrs Anglebury, for instance, had turned up; she was presumably one of Dr Plumridge’s patients; he was to be detected as considering that a live and disturbed patient was more important than an undisturbable corpse. Not that he hadn’t examined the body with care. He didn’t seem to feel there was anything all that mysterious about it.

At least the constable appeared to have put Appleby low on his list for interrogation. He had perhaps provisionally concluded that Appleby was a valet or a footman. He was busy at the moment questioning Professor Snodgrass, and was receiving most of the replies from Dr Absolon, who had clearly decided that the distressed uncle of the dead man still needed all the support he could get. Appleby took the opportunity to move over to Plumridge, and murmur that he would appreciate a few words with him in the library. And Plumridge gave him a single swift glance, nodded, and followed him down the quadrant corridor.

‘I recognize you,’ Plumridge said briskly. ‘I’ve a memory for faces, and even for photographs. Sir John Appleby, isn’t it? Has trouble been expected here? Did they persuade you to come along? It can’t be. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Quite right. It’s sheer chance. I walked into this house in the middle of the night, my dear Doctor, and found myself in the middle of all this. Of course, I’ve no title to ask questions; only to answer them. Presently some police inspector will arrive; and he’ll either be extremely cross that I’m here at all, or take it for granted that I’ll clear the affair up for him before breakfast. Either reaction will be vexatious. Still, it’s a fair cop.’

‘I think you mean that you propose to have a go. But is there all that to have a go at? The affair has had a horrible end, but it doesn’t strike me as having any great puzzle element to it. Thieves panic-stricken when surprised, and ruthless enough and stupid enough to kill somebody.’

‘May I meet your question with another one?’ They had reached the library door, and Appleby stood aside to let Plumridge enter first. It was as if he were coming to feel himself in at least the temporary position of a host at Ledward. ‘You say you have a memory for faces, and you’ve certainly remembered mine from a magazine or newspaper. What about Adrian Snodgrass? I take it you knew him a long time ago?’

‘Dear me, yes. I’ve been in practice in this corner of England for more than forty years. I knew Adrian as a boy.’

‘Very good. And this
is
Adrian?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ There was astonishment in Plumridge’s voice.

‘We’re talking about faces. There’s the remains of a face in this house now.’ Appleby said this grimly and without pleasantry. ‘Are you quite sure it belongs to somebody whom I gather you’re unlikely to have seen over the past ten years or so?’

‘Good Lord!’ For a moment Plumridge was silent. ‘Yes, I think I am.’

‘That sounds like only a qualified certainty.’

‘I suppose it is, Sir John. But consider how instantly your question has me asking whether I have taken something for granted. Here is this daft annual occasion at Ledward… By the way, I suppose you know about it?’

‘Indeed I do. And it’s my growing impression that a great many other people do as well.’

‘I’d imagine you to be quite right in that. But here’s my point. At dinner tonight, as it happens, I said to my wife, “I wonder whether Adrian Snodgrass will turn up
this
time?” And he
does
turn up. This fellow Leonidas, that’s to say, tells me so on the telephone, and that the returned wanderer has been shot while trying to catch some thieves. I arrive and find what we know about. No doubt as to the dead man’s identity ever occurs to me. And then you fire that question at me! Naturally, I ask myself whether I can conceivably have been taking something for granted. But I don’t think it can be so. Indeed, I wonder how such a conjecture can have come into your head.’

‘It was into the vicar’s head that it came, as a matter of fact. I think it has gone out of it again now. But he started the hare that this whole business of a long-lost heir being expected home afforded an ideal spring-board, so to speak, for successful imposture. Some pretender has only to persuade the old Professor that he is Adrian, and he’s likely to be able to get away with a great deal.’

‘It’s an ingenious idea. But I doubt, Sir John, whether you are any more disposed to believe in it than I am. Still, we’ll
both
have to believe it if one very simple condition holds.’

‘What’s that?’

‘If that dead body proves not to have parted with its appendix. I remember sending Adrian into a nursing-home for an appendicectomy quite thirty years ago. It was uncommonly fashionable at that time. Shall we go back and have a look? I didn’t strip the poor chap down to his tummy.’

‘Not while that bobby’s on the beat, thank you. But if the body
has
had its appendix out…’

‘That doesn’t advance the matter? I quite agree. And I don’t suppose Adrian’s fingerprints have ever been collected by the police. Or not in this country.’

‘Ah?’

‘So it may be the dentist or nothing, if a coroner at his inquest gets sceptical. But I increasingly feel, Sir John, that we’re on a wild-goose chase. Dash it all, the features aren’t all that mutilated. No, it’s Adrian. I’m sure of it.’

‘What about it being some other Snodgrass, with a close resemblance to the young man you remember?’

‘Is
there such a person?’ Plumridge looked puzzled. ‘I can’t think of one.’

‘Of course I haven’t a notion, Doctor. It’s simply that one has to think of all those possibilities. It’s a kind of routine.’ Appleby paused. ‘But you said something interesting a moment ago. About fingerprints. “Or not in this country”. What do you know about Adrian Snodgrass in other countries? And about the Snodgrasses in general, for that matter? This business of a South American connection, for example. I’m quite curious about that.’

‘My dear sir, it would take a little leisure to put you at all fully in the picture there.’

‘Then why not sit down?’ As he spoke Appleby moved towards the fire, which was still by no means extinguished. ‘They’ll rout us out when they want to.’ He paused. ‘But what about that Mrs Anglebury? Perhaps you feel you ought to have an eye on her? Particularly if the police…’

‘Not necessary.’ Dr Plumridge had sat down, and was stretching his limbs in frank fatigue. ‘I’ve given her what will by now have knocked her out for some hours. Remarkable privileges, we medical characters have. The police mayn’t be pleased, but I simply say my patient’s interest comes first. And now, let me tell you anything I usefully can about the person we’ll agree to identify with the dead man.’

‘Thank you,’ Appleby said. ‘Thank you very much.’

‘I don’t know the details,’ Plumridge began, ‘of what may be called the South American background of these people. But the outline is clear enough. The Snodgrasses have been a good deal intermarried with the Beddoeses, who are another family of the same sort.’

‘There was a Beddoes Beddoes who was called the Liberator,’ Appleby said.

‘Ah, I see you know something about them. I don’t think the two families
were
of the same sort back in the Liberator’s time. The Liberator was an adventurer – although he might just as well be called a thug – with nothing much behind him, whereas there had been prosperous Snodgrasses in the Argentine and elsewhere for quite some time before he bobbed up. The man who built this distinctly ambitious house, Augustus Snodgrass, did so largely on the strength of properties in the West Indies; and from there other Snodgrasses had already been taking up land, and so on, on the South American continent for some time. Particularly in Azuera. They seem to have been clever enough, and wealthy enough, to hold their own through a great deal of political turmoil of one sort and another – partly, I believe, on the strength of further judicious marriages which gained them the support of banking interests in the United States.

‘The Snodgrasses out there had no doubt become as Spanish as they were English in a good many ways, and I think they prized being accepted by the Blancos, or aristocrats of pure Spanish descent. No doubt they exploited the natives, and the lower classes generally, in a manner merciless enough. But they had their virtues, and I think it would be fair to call them an honourable and high-minded crowd. Certainly they got deeper into politics, and with the best of intentions. The result of that was that their prosperity tended to decline, and their security was threatened in various ways. Roughly speaking, therefore, they came to rely a good deal on their English and American connections. I think their position is something like that today.’

‘Great houses like this are contriving to get along in private hands still without a great deal behind them.’ Appleby paused. There had been the sound of a car on the drive which probably betokened the arrival of more police. ‘Would that be the position of Ledward still?’

‘I think not. There’s real wealth behind it. And there are other Snodgrasses in England who are people of fortune.’

‘It seems to me extraordinary that this unfortunate fellow, Adrian Snodgrass, being actually the proprietor of the place, should have had nothing to do with it for years, nor apparently have benefited from it in any way.’

‘Oh, I rather doubt that last proposition. I expect there were bankers upon whom he could draw if he wanted to. Basically it has been a matter of pride, I imagine. Adrian stood by the role his family had allotted him when he was still a younger son.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Appleby recalled
Who’s Who
. ‘ “Eldest surviving son”. As a young man, they shipped him off to South America?’

‘Just that. He was too wild for the home paddocks. And, in point of family tradition, there was nothing out of the way in it. The branch of the family out there was by way of getting, as I’ve said, financial backing from Snodgrasses in England. And black sheep would arrive along with the money, as a kind of package deal.’

‘A humiliating arrangement, from the young man’s point of view.’

‘Yes, indeed. But I think the old gentleman here, Beddoes Snodgrass, was the only one to bother his head about that. Adrian must always have been a favourite of his.’

‘Is it really a full ten years since he last troubled to turn up and see his uncle?’

‘I think of it loosely as that, but if I worked it out I think it might come to only eight. Which was long enough. And it wasn’t, incidentally, pure family piety that brought him back to Ledward then. Or I don’t think it was. I had a strong impression at the time that he had come here in order to lie low. This will sound melodramatic, I suppose. But I believe there were people who were out for his blood.’

‘My dear Doctor!’ Under cover of this exclamation of astonishment, Appleby took a sharp look at Plumridge, as if almost suspecting him of some deliberate obfuscation. ‘Do you mean political enemies from across the South Atlantic?’

‘It sounds absurd, but I’m afraid I do.’

‘You saw him at this time you’re speaking of? You had some talk with him?’

‘Certainly. A good deal of what he said was obscure to me. Adrian might be described as submerged in a world of revolution and counter-revolution of an almost phantasmagoric sort, and he took it for granted that I was as interested and well-informed as he was.’

‘It amounted to obsession? He was far from being mentally well-balanced?’

‘I think that would have to be called a fair assessment. Adrian had started in the army, you know, and left it pretty promptly under some sort of cloud. And that made him seek, if not exactly martial glory, at least military eminence. So now it was a matter of his wanting to be Commander-in-Chief in Azuera, and probably Minister of War as well. But some rival clique of officers had got their man the job. He was very savage about it; indeed, not altogether sane. He told me several times over that he had in his possession what would cook their bloody goose at any time in their succeeding lives; and that he was capable of playing cat and mouse with them; and biding his time with them, and not striking until he could strike to kill. I’m bound to say I didn’t find it all much worth listening to. And it’s probably not worthwhile your hearing about it now. It’s past history, after all.’

‘I’m grateful to you, all the same.’ Appleby found himself taking another sharp look at Plumridge. ‘I think this conversation is likely to be interrupted at any moment now. But may I ask you about one other thing? Here is a man of property, shot dead in the very act, so to speak, of turning up to claim it – or, at least, possibly to claim it. So one has to consider…’

‘But what can this line of thought have to do with more or less petty robbery of pictures, and bits of silver, and high-class knick-knackery of one sort and another?’

‘I see that you at least understand what I’m talking about. But the robbery, you know, might be a mere blind. Or what we are confronting may be sheer coincidence. Or not – come to think of it – exactly that, since this particular night may be regarded as offering special scope for more kinds of crime than one. In any case, it’s plainly essential to know about who benefits from the death of Adrian Snodgrass – benefits, that is, in the most obvious financial way. Do you know anything about that?’

‘Of course not.’ Plumridge had admitted a note of impatience into his voice. ‘I’m the family doctor, you know, and not the family lawyer. I’ve no idea what entail – if that’s the term – still exists, or what trusts or settlements; or what Adrian’s will may prove to say – supposing he has made one, and has in fact owned a substantial power of bequest. Professor Snodgrass might give you a notion – presuming he’s willing to be communicative about the matter.’

‘Thank you. No doubt he’s the proper person to answer the question – and the police who have just arrived are the proper people to ask it. But as for being communicative, Doctor, I judge it improbable that anybody is going to have much choice. Except, conceivably, yourself.’