The Open House (11 page)

‘My dear Sir John, may I ask what you mean by that?’

‘I refer to what’s called professional confidence. It’s just possible, isn’t it, that you may have relevant information – relevant, I mean, strictly to the clearing up of this crime – which you might have to ask yourself questions about in that regard? I believe I could ask you such a question now.’ Appleby had risen to his feet, for there were voices at the far end of the quadrant corridor. ‘Shall I?’

‘Yes, of course. I take your point. But it stands to reason that I shall want to help in every possible way.’ Plumridge got up and stood with his back to that now fast-dying fire which had been kindled for Adrian Snodgrass’ return to the home of his fathers. ‘So go ahead.’

‘That young man who came to fetch his mother, and who tells me his name is David Anglebury. Is there any chance that he is Adrian Snodgrass’ illegitimate son?’

‘I see.’ Plumridge’s expression had become grave. ‘Well, it is obvious that there is always a
chance
of such a thing. To put it crudely, any man
may
be the father of any child with whose mother he could conceivably have had sexual relations within a given stretch of time. And you would quickly find, I think, that the possibility applies to Adrian Snodgrass and this particular young man’s mother. But that just doesn’t begin to be evidence.’

‘Of course not.’ Appleby was moving towards the door. ‘And there’s nothing more you can say about it?’

‘Not without a little thought.’ Plumridge paused on this expression, as if weighing it carefully. And it appeared to satisfy him, because he repeated it at the open door.

‘Not without a little thought,’ Plumridge said.

Detective Inspector Stride seemed a highly conscientious officer; he clearly made it a standing instruction that whenever a murder call came through in the small hours he was to be summoned from his bed. And about Appleby’s identity he was as assured as Dr Plumridge had been; some years ago, he explained, he had attended a Crime Squad course at which Sir John gave a much-appreciated lecture. This being so, Stride had decided (perhaps rashly, from the point of view of pure theory) that Appleby was not profitably to be suspected of being either a murderer of wandering heirs or a purloiner of French paintings. And since Appleby
did
happen to have dropped in on Ledward on this rather unusual occasion, Stride opined, he might very well feel like continuing to move around a little. But not – it seemed to be suggested – as an awkwardly high-ranking attaché to Stride’s own team. Appleby, finding, at least for the time being, much sense in this, took himself off to another room.

He looked at his watch, and found to his surprise that it was barely past three o’clock. In subjective terms, this impromptu mystery appeared to have been going on for a good deal longer than that. Perhaps the impression was occasioned by his having so far made no real progress in clarifying the affair. There was as much nonsense and inconsequence to it now (he told himself impatiently) as there had ever been. However, at three o’clock, the night, or at least the morning, was still young. There was plenty of time (thus a small seductive voice from the past seemed to murmur in his ear) to tie the whole thing up before breakfast. Or before, at least, the customary hour for that meal. For it seemed improbable, in the present confusion at Ledward, that Leonidas or another would get around to serving coffee and bacon-and-eggs at eight-thirty.

These reflections on the clock led him to recall that there were certain small chronological sequences that needed fixing and clarifying. For instance, there had been the events, or better perhaps the phenomena, that had preluded the actual catastrophe. And these had been introduced by a kind of double prelude. The suggestion of prowlers on the terrace outside the library had been the first of these; and the second had been the lurking presence of Mrs Anglebury (as she had proved to be) at the library door. Between these there had been time for Appleby’s first quite substantial colloquy with Professor Snodgrass. After the alarm of the woman in white that colloquy had continued. Then there had been the sounds of Adrian Snodgrass’ arrival, and these had prompted Appleby to that abortive withdrawal from Ledward which had led to his unfortunate grapple with Dr Absolon. There had followed a certain amount of palaver before Leonidas had entered with his formal announcement that Mr Snodgrass was in residence. Leonidas had then given his brief account of what might be called Adrian’s comportment – and it was hard upon this that the real crush of impressions came. What it wouldn’t at all do to muddle was the actual order and succession of these. But Appleby was fairly confident that he hadn’t got them wrong.

The darkness had evoked an angry shout, or had at least been instantly followed by one. Then had come running footsteps – the footsteps, surely, of several people pounding along together. And
loud
footsteps. Could they have come from the quadrant corridor immediately beyond the library: the corridor along which he had previously seen Mrs Anglebury disappear? It was difficult to suppose so… Appleby frowned. Well, hard upon that had come the sound of the smashed drawing-room window, and
then
the report of the revolver, or whatever the weapon had been. But in between
these
sounds – splintering glass and loud report – there had been the woman’s scream. Mrs Anglebury’s scream, one had to suppose.

Or had there been a second female prowling Ledward? At present, it was impossible to say. But there was something else that
did
, surely, emerge from this brief analysis. The sequence of sounds he had been recalling lacked – he searched for a word –
lucidity
. There was something odd about them.

These, whether in an intelligible series or not, had been the acoustic effects (or known facts, for that matter) immediately clustered round the main event of the night: namely, Adrian Snodgrass’ death. But there was one other, if minor, cluster of events the sequence of which required thinking about. They were the events which had enacted themselves in what might be called the bedroom and dining-room area. As Appleby’s mind turned in this direction he found his steps doing so too.

The dining-room was undisturbed. It was in the same disorder, that is to say, as before: the tumbled and broken chair, the shivered wine glass and little puddles of champagne, the ice-bucket that appeared to have been used as a football. Detective officers would presently come to measure and photograph all these appearances with due solemnity. Appleby resisted an inclination to reflect that somebody ought to be keeping an eye on the place meanwhile. At the moment, no doubt, Stride hadn’t all that many men to deploy. And there was something much more important to chew on: his own instant sense, as it had been, that the chaos was altogether too much of a good thing, and added cogency to a suspicion which on other grounds it was fairly easy to form. Wasn’t there something factitious about the whole affair? Didn’t it match the hoary old formula of the inside job disguised as an outside job? Or did it? The fingers of one hand, Appleby told himself, wouldn’t serve to enumerate the difficulties in the way of that temptingly simple interpretation.

And now there was again the question of the sequence of certain events – here, in this, as it were, subsidiary area of the mystery. Apart from the library with its welcoming fire, two rooms appeared to have been particularly prepared for the returning Adrian Snodgrass: this dining-room, and the master-bedroom which almost adjoined it. He himself had inspected the bedroom, and had been mildly unnerved, if not by the waiting pyjamas, at least by the waiting hot-water bottle. He had then come into the dining-room, with its answering signs of an expected arrival. And Adrian
had
arrived, and had sat down to a meal. He had rung a bell (somewhat speculatively, that must have been); Leonidas had appeared and explained himself; Leonidas had opened the champagne and at once put another whole bottle on the ice. (Appleby checked on this story now. Yes, sure enough: there was an unbroken bottle that had rolled to a corner of the room.) Adrian had then sent a disrespectfully framed message to his uncle, but before letting Leonidas go had asked him to take a glass of madeira. (Yes, again: two glasses which had been used for madeira stood unbroken on the table.) Leonidas had made his way to the library, and was still giving an account of himself when the house was plunged into darkness.

And now had come the main sequence of events, beginning with that angry shout. Adrian’s shout, it must be supposed: an Adrian who had in the same moment jumped to his feet so violently as to smash a chair, shiver a champagne glass, and send an ice-bucket flying. A mere failure of the electricity supply would surely not occasion such a reaction; in the second before darkness fell Adrian must have
seen
something that made him furious. It must have made him furious enough, or alarmed enough, to pick up a poker.
But how had he managed that?

Anticipating the coming efforts of Stride’s assistants, Appleby started searching the dining-room for a burnt match. There just wasn’t one. Had Adrian happened to have an electric torch in his pocket? There had been no torch on or near the dead man.

But stick, for the moment, to these two rooms – or rather, now, just to the bedroom, which was so notably a scene of unelucidated events. It had been hard upon the lights going on again (presumably through the instrumentality of Leonidas) that Professor Snodgrass (already much shocked, one must suppose, by the death of his nephew) had made his way there, at Appleby’s suggestion, in quest of a sheet with which to cover the body. At this point, Appleby told himself, there had been a time-gap worth remembering. The Professor’s mission had taken rather a substantial period in which to fulfil itself. Nor
had
it, in fact, fulfilled itself. The Professor had returned without a sheet, but in a remarkable state of perturbation. Arrived in the bedroom, or at the bedroom door, he had become aware of two or more persons whom he supposed to be thieves and murderers. This had unnerved him to what was really a very surprising extent. He had cowered or hidden for an unspecified number of minutes. And then he had bolted.

What had been happening in the bedroom, or what had then happened there? The next witness was Mrs Anglebury. For some reason (or for no reason at all, perhaps, if she was as crazy as she appeared to be) her wandering progress round the house had brought her there. Like the Professor, she had seen ‘some men’, and had so little cared for the look of them that she had contrived (in an unexplained fashion) to hide under the bed. It was these men, presumably, who had made an abortive snatch at the mediocre family portrait. In this episode the time-intervals were short, since Appleby had arrived in the bedroom, and rapidly discovered the hidden lady, within minutes of Professor Snodgrass’ reappearance in unedifying panic.

Having got so far in this sketchy retrospect, Appleby, who was still standing in the dining-room, decided that the bedroom itself might be worth taking another look at. That portrait of some female Snodgrass of the Victorian era was obscurely coming to him as holding some central significance in the affair. He’d give himself another chance to make reasonable sense of it.

With this object in view, he made his way down the short corridor that brought him to the bedroom door. And here he halted, in a good deal of surprise.

There was a woman in the room. And she was a woman in black.

Women in white – Appleby, who had read much popular fiction in youth, told himself – but
spies
in black. Perhaps this person in black
was
a spy. Perhaps this whole nocturnal episode in which he had involved himself
was
a spy-story. Its general unaccountability would thus be explained.

But now the woman in black was looking at him with extreme disapprobation. Or so, for a moment, he supposed. Then he divined that her disapprobation was by no means concentrated upon himself. She was taking a comprehensively dark view of everything surrounding her.

‘And who may
you
be?’ the woman in black said.

Instantly upon these words – and because of their accent rather than their burden – Appleby perceived the character of the black garments before him. They didn’t belong to a spy in some romance of a past age. They belonged to a contemporary domestic servant. And Appleby was quite good at names.

‘Mrs Gathercoal, I think?’ he said.

‘I’m sure I don’t know how you come to know
that
,’ the woman said. ‘You’ve never been seen at Ledward before, you haven’t. Not that I know, you haven’t, have you?’

It was clear to Appleby that Mrs Gathercoal must be a very good cook. Not otherwise could she have overcome educational disabilities inadmissible in good service, and so risen to command the kitchens of Professor Beddoes Snodgrass of Ledward’s Old Dower House.

‘You’re absolutely right,’ he said admiringly. ‘But I am, as it happens, a guest of the Professor’s at the moment. And it won’t surprise you that he has mentioned to me the name of his wholly admirable cook.’ He paused to mark this going home. ‘Did you come over with Leonidas in his car?’ he asked.

‘Did I not!’ It was with vigorous emphasis that Mrs Gathercoal produced this syntactically obscure disclaimer. ‘On my own two feet I came. Feeling that an eye ought to be kep’ on all this ’ere nonsensicalness.’

‘A thoroughly sound feeling.’ Appleby had warmed to this. ‘It has all been very great nonsense, has it not? Only you haven’t yet perhaps heard what it has ended in.’

‘Ended in? Would I be surprised! Year after year treating this ’ouse like it was a public – and well after closing time at that.’

‘As a matter of fact, my own first notion of Ledward was that it was going to be a public house. But I quite understand what you mean. You disapprove of opening up on the chance of this wandering Mr Adrian choosing to drop in?’