The Open House (5 page)

‘Known for miles around?’ Professor Snodgrass had the air of one confronting a novel idea. ‘But what if it is? Over that sort of area they’re all our own people, more or less. They’d be as delighted to see Adrian back as I’d be.’

‘No doubt.’ Appleby judged it pointless to question this squirarchal assumption. ‘But, you know, quite apart from this annual tryst you keep, the house strikes me as uncommonly vulnerable to burglary. If, that is, it is regularly untenanted by night – which is what I seem to gather from you. May I ask if the Dower House is far away?’

‘The Old Dower House. The New Dower House is a ruin. I’m just across the park. Matter of less than half a mile. Fellow from the insurance company did once come and take up your point. Had a lot to say about rascals who steal pictures, and so forth. Of course I reassured him. Showed him my double action Colt. Reliable weapon. Used by an uncle of mine, as a matter of fact, at Balaclava.’

Appleby again had his moment of suspicion about Professor Snodgrass. Had it been wholly fanciful to imagine a slight pause before the word ‘Balaclava’, as if his host had been considering saying ‘Waterloo’ instead?

‘Mark you, we have had one alarm.’ Snodgrass was at his most reasonable again. ‘It was only last year, as a matter of fact.’

‘You mean on this particular night last year?’

‘Of course – on Adrian’s birthday. I came over to the Park to see if he had turned up. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t, and I decided to wait for a while. Not here, come to think of it, but in the drawing-room. I was on the
qui vive
, you know. Odd expression that. It means
Long live who?
Same sort of challenge as
Under which king, Bezonian? speak, or die!
Are you a Shakespeare man? I’ve always been a strong Shakespeare man myself. Used to have long chats about the plays with Mr Kipling. Another strong Shakespeare man. Bible too. Amazing.’

‘And what was the result of your being on the
qui vive
?’

‘I heard these noises outside. Thought it was opossums.’

‘Opossums?’

‘Yes – but the Australian kind. Got to know them when I did an ADC spell there as a young man. Climb on the roof or under it, or fool around on your verandah. Cough and wheeze and jibber so that you’d swear it was half a regiment of senile tramps.’

‘You thought you heard half a regiment of senile tramps outside your drawing-room?’

‘Well, approximately that. Just some fellows up to no good. Proposing to break and enter, eh? But they cleared out when I shouted at them.’

‘I see. But I suppose they could have entered
without
breaking? Walked in, I mean, through your symbolically open door, just as I’ve done tonight.’

‘I’m very sorry there was nobody to receive you, my dear Appleby.’ The Professor’s port appeared to be prompting its proprietor to cordiality. ‘Must have appeared uncommonly uncivil. But it just so happens, you see, that you’ve turned up on rather an exceptional night.’

‘I’ve tumbled to that.’

‘Nothing of the kind. I’ve been most uncommunicative. Another uncivil thing. Very conscious that I owe you an explanation. So I’m going to tell you about Adrian.’

It is a principle of the human mind that information which it may be
intriguant
to ferret out for oneself becomes potentially boring as soon as it is volunteered by somebody else. And this principle obtains with particular force in the minds of retired professional detectives. Appleby in his retirement found himself at times positively prowling round for some small mystery to bite on; conversely, being addressed in an instructive way by other people frequently prompted him (as it did Dr Johnson) to remove his mind and think of Tom Thumb. So he was suddenly not at all sure that he wanted to hear the life-story of Adrian Snodgrass. The mild duty he had felt to protect property wantonly exposed to larceny had lured him into and around Ledward, and the sounds he had heard outside the library disposed him to believe that his solicitude had been by no means idle. But in the face of Professor Snodgrass’ regardlessness in the matter there seemed to be little more he could do. And as for Adrian (Appleby suspected), the more one heard about him, the less was one likely to be charmed or edified. He bore all the signs of belonging to that sizeable flock of black sheep which the English upper classes, collectively regarded, are concerned to maintain at pasture in regions of the globe as remote as possible. Adrian Snodgrass was perhaps peculiar in that he possessed, in the Ledward estate, a tolerably rich home pasture which he didn’t appear much to bother about – and in that he possessed, too, in the form of an aged military historian, a doting relative who yearly made bizarre and elaborate preparations for a return to the fold which, in all probability, was never going to happen. And if it
did
happen – if by any conceivable chance the long-lost heir turned up this very night – the occasion would not be one at which a total stranger could with any propriety assist.

Nevertheless Appleby was fairly caught. He could not now with civility rise to his feet and offer brief farewells. And the Professor, he noticed, had poured another glass of port for each of them. If he had kept this vigil in solitude for years – as was rather to be supposed – he was far from disconcerted at having a companion on this occasion. In fact, he was enjoying it. Simple humanity required Appleby to sit back and listen.

‘As a young man, or indeed as a boy,’ Professor Snodgrass began, ‘Adrian was remarkable for…’ He broke off. ‘My dear Appleby,’ he said, ‘have you heard anything?’

It must certainly have been true that Appleby
looked
as if he were hearing something. His sitting back had abruptly become a sitting forward as if at the bidding of an alerted sense. He had turned, moreover, to look at the French window which he had shut again after his recent survey of the terrace beyond it. The window was shut still.

‘Heard anything?’ Appleby repeated. ‘Well, no. But what about smell? Do you smell anything out of the way?’

‘I can’t say that I do.’ The Professor was reasonably surprised. ‘A whiff of stale tobacco, perhaps? I smoke a cigar in this room from time to time. Delighted to find you one now. Neglectful of me.’

‘Not tobacco. I’d be inclined to say Chanel.’

‘Camel?’ Appleby’s host seemed gratified rather than puzzled. ‘You must be right. Not a thing it’s easy to mistake, eh? Adrian arrived on one, no doubt. Capital means of transport, as I think I said.’

But Appleby had jumped to his feet, and was making for the door of the library. Either Professor Snodgrass had failed to close it on entering, or somebody else had opened it subsequently. For it was certainly ajar by rather more than a chink now. Appleby was perhaps acting out of turn once more – for here again was something which, strictly regarded, was no business of his at all – but he nevertheless made no bones about going across the room at the double, and throwing the door as wide open as it would go. There was no doubt about the scent; it was faint and delicate, but undeniably present. Equally – if only for a moment – there was clear evidence of how it had, as it were, come on the air. The figure of a woman had disappeared round the curve of the quadrant corridor. Appleby hesitated, and decided not to follow. He really could not go pounding after somebody who might well enjoy a better right to be here than he did. Then he found that Professor Snodgrass was standing beside him, sniffing vigorously.

‘Not a doubt of it,’ Snodgrass said with satisfaction. ‘Unmistakably camel.’

‘Then it was a white camel,’ Appleby said, ‘and it walked on two feet.’

‘Puzzling thing.’ Professor Snodgrass received this exasperated remark quite seriously. ‘Might be a trick of the light, perhaps? In mirage conditions, I’ve seen them with up to eight. Feet, that is.’

‘There was a woman at this door, and presumably she was listening to us.’ Appleby pursued his plan of dogged rationality. ‘A woman in white. Have you…’

‘A woman in white? Fellow wrote a yarn called that. Not at all bad. Much better than modern stuff of the same sort.’

‘No doubt.’ Appleby felt no disposition to digress upon the literary merits of Wilkie Collins. ‘Have you any idea why a woman dressed entirely in white should be wandering round Ledward?’

‘None whatever. It sounds a shade eccentric to me.’ Having produced this brilliant riposte, the Professor at once capped it. ‘Do you think she might be impersonating a ghost?’ He picked up the decanter, and held it interrogatively over his guest’s glass.

‘No more, thank you – although it’s a capital port. May I ask whether you have many women in your household?’

‘Lord no, my dear fellow. Lost interest in them years ago. And in a quiet country situation it just doesn’t do.’ Professor Snodgrass shook his head a shade nostalgically. ‘Adrian found that.’

‘Did he, indeed? I was thinking of servants, as a matter of fact.’

‘Oh, I see. Not quite the same thing, eh? Not that one can’t have what you might call an overlap.’ Whether genuinely or not, the Professor’s glance momentarily suggested a ripe Edwardian depravity. ‘There’s my cook, Mrs Gathercoal. Invaluable woman. Understands a
soufflé
. Set her to one for you, if you’re kind enough to stay on. Manage you a bit of rough shooting, too. Brought your gun?’

The wandering course of these remarks, and much else in his host’s conversation, might be the result, Appleby supposed, of their being offered in a large absence of mind. There could be no doubt that, as he talked, the old gentleman never ceased to
listen
. And it wasn’t for those problematical personages whom Appleby was coming to judge rather thick on the ground. Women in white, for example, didn’t interest the present guardian of Ledward Park in the least. His mind was entirely concentrated upon that imposing property’s missing heir.

‘And a couple of other women,’ Snodgrass said. ‘Housemaids, I suppose they’d be called. And, of course, there’s my butler, Leonidas. Uncommon name, eh? Very decent one, too. I engaged him on the strength of it. Can’t say he’s turned out all that Spartan. Still, it puts one in mind of what was a damned good show. If the Phocians had just held on to that mountain path by Anopaea, it might even…’

‘I suppose so.’ Appleby judged the tactics of the battle of Thermopylae to be even more irrelevant than the literary accomplishment of the author of
The Woman in White
. ‘Does Leonidas keep an eye on the Park as well as your own house?’

‘Dear me, yes. They all have to lend a hand. And some of my outdoor people as well. Must stay shipshape.’ Professor Snodgrass paused. ‘But I was telling you about my nephew Adrian. Boring you, I expect.’

‘Not at all. And, for that matter, you haven’t told me very much. We were interrupted. South America, for instance. Your nephew spends a good deal of his time there?’

‘He certainly used to.’ It was conceivable that the Professor – unmindful of the uses of
Who’s Who
– had glanced at Appleby with fleeting suspicion and surprise. ‘We have family connections in more South American countries than one. In fact, both the Snodgrasses and the Beddoeses have. I daresay you may have heard of my maternal grandfather, Beddoes Beddoes. Known as the Liberator, in that part of the world. Liberated a pretty packet for himself, in a quiet way.’ The Professor produced his hoarse chuckle. ‘Still, a great patriot in his adoptive land, and so forth. Decapitated a pretty ugly dictator called Gozman Spinto with his own hand, they say, and then gave the place a constitution. Literally handed it over, handsomely bound in full morocco, to some ruffians he’d appointed vice-presidents and judges and senators and what have you. But really held all the strings himself up to the day of his death. Smart politician, was my grandfather Beddoes the Liberator.’

‘And Adrian has also interested himself in politics there?’

‘Decidedly – and fished in some deuced muddy waters, if you ask me. The boy has all the Beddoes spirit of adventure. He also has the Snodgrass brains. He needed both for that affair in Azuera. As revolutions go, a classic of its kind.’

‘I think I remember what you’re talking about. Adrian was in on that?’

‘Master-minded it, my dear fellow. And then led the assault on the Ministry of War himself.’

‘There was a certain ruthlessness to it, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘Dear me, yes. I don’t think Adrian actually took an axe to anybody’s neck. But he didn’t precisely stay the hand of his supporters.’

‘Did they remain his supporters for long?’

‘Ten days or a fortnight, I think it was – and then young Adrian – he
was
young Adrian then – was on his travels again.’

‘What has he been doing during the last ten years?’

‘The last ten years?’ For the first time, the conversable Professor Beddoes Snodgrass had hesitated. ‘We haven’t heard much of him, as a matter of fact. I don’t know that we’ve heard anything at all.’

‘So you simply keep this place going, and expect him to turn up? It seems rather strange to me – if I may say so – that with such a splendid patrimony in his own right your nephew should remain a wanderer on the face of the earth. For I take it that Ledward
is
Adrian’s absolutely?’

‘Of course it is. Not a doubt of it.’

‘Doesn’t his absence – or at least his complete silence added to that – produce any legal difficulties?’

‘Nothing of the kind. There are trusts, and powers of thingummy, and so forth – all fixed up by the sharks. I have no difficulty at all.’

‘Who would inherit Ledward if Adrian never came back – if he got himself killed in another palace revolution or military coup?’

How Professor Snodgrass might have responded to this outrageous curiosity was never to be known. For he had suddenly raised an arresting hand.

‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Here he is.’

For seconds Appleby heard nothing at all. As his ear remained tolerably acute, he was inclined to suppose that the Professor was imagining things. Anybody, after all, who mounted so odd an annual occasion as Appleby had stumbled upon must be regarded as harbouring a certain liability in that direction. But in this supposition Professor Snodgrass’ fortuitous guest proved wrong. It was simply that Professor Snodgrass’ own ear – at least for the matter in hand – was very acute indeed. For now there
was
a sound. It was that of a car which was still a long way off. Perhaps it was simply passing in the night, and would come no nearer than the road upon which Appleby’s own car was stranded. But in a moment this conjecture too was falsified. The car was coming up the drive.