The Open House (8 page)

The shout rapidly produced footfalls, the glimmer of a match guarded behind a cupped hand, and then the bearded face of the butler in the chiaroscuro thus created. It wasn’t, Appleby told himself, the face of a frightened man; one didn’t warm to Leonidas, but there seemed to be plenty of stuffing in him. And of his employer there could be no question. Snodgrass was agitated, and no doubt in acute anxiety as to the identity of the shot man. But the possibility of further shooting didn’t alarm him.

‘Leonidas, go back to that telephone, and summon your local doctor at once.’

‘The telephone appears to be out of order, sir. Dr Absolon has just discovered so on trying to call the police. If there has been a robbery, one must suppose the line to have been cut.’

‘There’s been more than a robbery, as you can see,’ Appleby said grimly. ‘Is there a car here at the Park?’

‘My own car is in the stable-yard. I save time by coming across in it.’

‘Good. Then go and fetch the doctor yourself. As fast as you can possibly manage. And have a call put through to the police from his house.’

‘Very good, sir. And the lights?’

‘Yes – give a moment to that as you go. But don’t let it hold you up, if you can’t get them on instantly. And take one of these candles.’

Leonidas hurried off. It was only when his footsteps had died away that Appleby knelt down again, and for a moment half-turned the body over.

‘Snodgrass,’ he asked gently, ‘is this your nephew?’

‘Yes.’ The Professor spoke in a low voice, which for a moment broke into a sob. ‘And in the very moment…’ He checked himself. ‘It is Adrian,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Is it quite certain that nothing can be done?’

‘Quite certain, I am afraid.’ Appleby lowered the body again to its first position. ‘Take a candle,’ he said, ‘and go into that bedroom near the dining-room. Bring a sheet. It will be all that is required.’

It was just as Snodgrass was stooping to do as he was bid that the lights snapped on. The two men stared at each other, momentarily dazzled, and then both looked down at the corpse. It was, somehow, the most macabre moment yet. Appleby was glad that Adrian Snodgrass’ face was concealed again. The shot had been fired straight into it – so that the crime seemed to cry out the additional horror of a revolting brutality. Beddoes Snodgrass turned away, and now it was slowly and painfully again that he made his way across the great marble expanse of the hall. It was as if his years, and more than his years, had returned to him.

‘Somebody has been killed?’ It was Dr Absolon who asked the question. He had emerged through the music room, and had now stopped dead at the spectacle before him. ‘Snodgrass’ nephew?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Appleby suddenly remembered the somewhat odd speculations in which this country clergyman had been indulging. ‘But I could almost believe he had made the identification too confidently. There’s no need for you to look – indeed, I’d rather the body wasn’t disturbed again until the doctor and the police have seen it – but the features have suffered pretty badly.’

‘I see.’ Absolon (who might be momentarily shocked by the fact of death, but presumably was professionally immune from being puzzled by it) knelt down by the body, put a hand gently on its shoulder, and then stood up again and unobstrusively crossed himself. ‘Would you say,’ he asked curiously, ‘that he has been killed just as he
has
been killed precisely with that end in view?’

‘Preventing his uncle from positively identifying him?’

‘Preventing
anybody
from doing so with certainty.’

‘It’s conceivable, I suppose.’

‘Or at least may that be the actual consequence? May it never be certainly known who this unfortunate man is?’

‘I’d have thought that barely possible.’ Appleby was again fleetingly conscious of something idiosyncratic in the mental operations of the vicar of Ledward. Perhaps they really were coloured by an obsessive reading of mystery stories. The archetypal reader of such things, after all, was popularly thought of as a blameless parson with long afternoons to put in on a vicarage lawn. ‘It would be something extremely unusual – in England, at least. Particularly where there’s the presumption of a specific identity. We have every reason to suppose that here is Adrian Snodgrass – an elusive character, perhaps, but of some position in the world, and to be read about, if you care to, in
Who’s Who
. Of course,
Who’s Who
doesn’t record his dentist. But we can probably run him to earth.’

‘ “We’’?’

‘You catch me out there.’ Appleby might have been laughing if propriety hadn’t appeared to forbid. ‘I’ve passed my active days among policemen, and ended up running a certain number of them. I still talk like a policeman.’

‘And act like one too – and very convincingly. Do you know, I find that reassuring?’ Dr Absolon gazed candidly at Appleby across the body of the dead man. ‘Otherwise, I shouldn’t find your presence here tonight altogether unalarming. Beddoes seems only to have the vaguest notion of who you are, or where you’ve turned up from, or why. You are the mysterious stranger who has been the first to find the body.’ Absolon paused. ‘But I see, my dear sir, that you judge me flippant. What has become of Beddoes?’

‘Professor Snodgrass has gone to the other side of the house to find a sheet. He ought to be back by now – but I suspect he is under some strain, and has sat down for a few minutes to rest and recollect himself. I suggest that you and I take a look at this drawing-room.’ And Appleby moved forward, skirting the body. ‘We can keep an eye on one another,’ he added dryly.

‘Very well.’ But Dr Absolon was looking thoughtfully down at the poker in the dead man’s hand. ‘Do you know, I’d have expected that to go flying as he fell?’

‘Indeed? That has been your experience, in cases in which persons carrying or brandishing weapons have been dropped by a revolver-shot as they ran?’

‘My dear sir, now you are making fun of me.’ The vicar was not at all offended. ‘But let me make one more observation in the character of Dr Watson. I am convinced, my dear Holmes, that there have been thieves in this room.’

If a joke had been any more appropriate to the circumstances than a laugh, this wouldn’t have been a bad one. A resourceful novelist might have declared that the drawing-room was like a place hit by a tornado. In one large sash window there were only a few jagged and evil-looking spears and sickles of glass, as if somebody had been sufficiently in a hurry to chance making an exit that way under the impulsion of a hurtling shoulder. Of the smaller
objets d’art
with which the place had been stacked and littered Appleby judged at a rapid glance that about a third had disappeared. And something more striking had disappeared as well. Over the mantelshelf only an expanse of faintly discoloured white enamel showed where lately there had hung a landscape by Claude Gelée, called le Lorrain. It had been, Appleby recalled, a View of the Campagna, with some banditti – no doubt supplied by one of the Courtois brothers – lurking rather unconvincingly in a corner. Now one could imagine these ruffians as having broken out of their own picture, grabbed at it frame and all, and made off with whatever they could hastily tip into a couple of sacks.

‘It isn’t surprising that there’s a bit of a draught,’ Absolon said. He walked over to the shattered window. ‘But this isn’t like the private wing, you know. No terrace. We’re simply perched above the basement storey. Booty and all, they had to find some means of taking a twelve-foot drop. It can’t have been a planned exit this way. They were surprised – and bolted in an unpremeditated and highly hazardous fashion. What’s the odds they got at least a gash or two from all that flying glass? There will be blood down there, if you ask me.’ Having peered briefly out into the night, the vicar turned round to look at Appleby. ‘But why did the lights go out?’

‘My dear Dr Absolon, that is a question to which I don’t doubt that you can supply me with more answers than one.’

‘One needs an answer that fits into the simplicity of the thing.’

‘Its simplicity? Are you sure you don’t mean its nonsensicalness?’

‘Essentially its simplicity, surely. On this night of the year alone, the Snodgrasses keep, as it were, open house. Anybody can walk in – and be sure of finding nobody around. By “anybody” we have to mean, of course, anybody who knows just how our friend the Professor’s annual ritual has evolved. Well, in they come, having a mind to the Claude I see you mourning, and to much else. Unfortunately, what nobody except Beddoes himself believes will ever really happen
has
happened. Adrian Snodgrass has turned up; he has sat down to the waiting meal; his uncle’s faithful old servitor (I refer to that patent rascal, Leonidas, my dear Appleby) presents himself, opens a bottle of champagne, and makes his way – full of glad tidings – to the library. The thieves, meanwhile, have arrived. Adrian hears something suspicious; something so suspicious that he picks up a poker and goes to investigate. He appears at the door of this room. The criminals panic; one of them shoots at him point-blank, and they make a disorderly retreat through the window. Appleby, don’t you see it that way?’

‘I fear I lack your amateur
élan
, sir. I shouldn’t dream of asserting that I see it at all.’ Appleby offered this reply absently, since he was prowling restlessly and enquiringly around the room. ‘However, it may well be that you have arrived at some part of the truth. You were asking yourself, by the way, why the lights went out.’

‘They went out as they did – with a shattering simultaneity – simply because they
could
so go out. It has been Beddoes’ whim so to order matters that he can turn on every light in the house at the flick of a single switch. So they can similarly be turned off, and therefore…’

‘My dear Vicar, there is nothing singular about that. Almost every lighting system is arranged in that fashion.’

‘Is that so? I am bound to admit I have never enquired. But my main point remains unaffected. There can be safety in sudden darkness where lawless behaviour is in question. The criminals had one of their number at the strategic point, wherever it may be. And he switched off the lights the moment he was aware that Adrian Snodgrass was alerted, and that danger was therefore imminent.’

‘There is much to be said for your reading of the matter.’ Appleby had come to a halt, and was now looking at Dr Absolon with attention. ‘But I wonder whether it can be made to accommodate something else?’

‘There
is
something else?’

‘Well, for me there is. You see, it was I alone who saw her. The woman in white. But I think you too heard her scream.’

But now there was a new sound to be heard: one less definite than a scream, but somehow equally unnerving. Professor Snodgrass’ uncertain footsteps, and the dull tap of Professor Snodgrass’ stick on marble were elements in it. But so was a species of sobbing respiration, and what sounded like a muttering or babbling of broken sentences. And then Snodgrass was in the drawing-room. He had turned deathly pale – a state which might be accounted for by the fact that he had again had to skirt his cherished nephew’s dead body. But he had also been reduced – momentarily, at least – to a condition of painful incoherence. He looked about him, stammering and feebly gesticulating. It was an awkward and painful confrontation.

‘I’m afraid,’ Appleby said, ‘that a good deal has gone.’ He had concluded that it was the ravaged state of this richly furnished and adorned apartment that had dealt the guardian of Ledward Park a culminating blow.

‘Gone! He’s gone?’ Snodgrass had plainly misunderstood. ‘But I must see him! Call him – call him at once. Find…’ He broke off with a bewilderment of his head, as if he had suddenly been unable to find a word, or a name.

‘Leonidas?’ Absolon said.

‘Yes, yes. I must speak to him. What have you done with him?’

‘I gave him an order,’ Appleby said. ‘This is a situation, I’m afraid, in which we can’t stand upon ceremony. The telephone line has been cut. I’ve sent your man in his car for a doctor – and the police.’

‘The doctor will be able to do nothing for your nephew,’ Absolon said gently. ‘But the police may catch…’

‘Yes, William, yes. The murderers. The thieves. The thieves have killed him, haven’t they? They’ve killed Adrian?’ Suddenly Professor Snodgrass produced an extraordinary sound in his throat, so that Appleby expected him to fall senseless to the floor as the consequence of some cardiac or circulatory disaster. But Snodgrass only slumped into a chair. ‘But I’ve seen them!’ he cried. ‘Can you understand?
I’ve seen them!
’

‘They’re still here?’ Absolon asked sharply – and looked swiftly round as if in search of a likely weapon. Then he shook his head. ‘Beddoes, calm yourself, for God’s sake. The ruffians have bolted through that window. It’s against reason that they should have come back. There’s no danger. Appleby here will tell you so. And your nephew’s death is our only real calamity.’

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ The Professor made an effort to control himself, and wholly failed. ‘In the bedroom,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Where I went for a sheet, as…as that man told me to.’ He pointed wildly at Appleby. ‘I was unnerved. I behaved like a poltroon, cowering by the door. And then I heard your voice, William, and ran to join you.
Ran
.’ And Professor Snodgrass, having reiterated in this way what is a soldier’s ugliest word, was suddenly quite still.

‘It was only prudent,’ Appleby said quietly. ‘But I think you may have been mistaken. One’s imagination can play tricks on one in circumstances like these. Remain where you are for a moment, while I go and see.’

‘My dear sir…’ Absolon began urgently. But he was addressing the back of another running man. For Appleby was out of the drawing-room and crossing Ledward’s bleakly splendid hall at the double.

The odd lay-out of the mansion’s principal apartments took him once more through the dining-room. Fleetingly, he glimpsed disorder. The single chair which had been set for the long-lost Adrian Snodgrass had been overturned, as if too hastily thrust backwards. It was a fine Hepplewhite chair, and its fretted lateral members had been fractured. The silver ice-bucket had rolled across the floor. A shattered champagne glass lay in a small puddle on the dark walnut table.
It all adds up
, Appleby told himself, and ran on without pause to the bedroom. The door was open. He went straight through. It was very much a moment recalling old times.