The Weight of the Evidence (10 page)

Poor old Pluckrose. That shabby and fallen archangel had certainly known what the pains of Pandemonium are… Appleby looked up and became aware with some alarm that a large chunk of skylight had detached itself and was floating down at him in a leisured but purposeful way. Ballistics, he thought – and realized that it was merely a large and purple-clad lady descending a gloomy staircase. Miss Dearlove advanced, carrying his card. ‘Commander Appleby?’ she said – and her voice was at once deep and tuned to a professionally cheerful chirp. ‘A relation of the dear Admiral, no doubt? I think it may be possible to receive you. I
hope
it may.’ And in the gloom Miss Dearlove graciously smiled.

‘Inspector Appleby,’ said Appleby.

Miss Dearlove looked at the card again. ‘Though now I come to think of it–’ She looked at Appleby in severe appraisal. ‘I fear that just at present–’

‘My business concerns the late Professor Pluckrose.’

‘Ah.’ Miss Dearlove dived at her skirts and produced a contrivance which Appleby suspected might be called a reticule. ‘My housekeeper informs me–’ She brought out a notebook and opened it. ‘Thirty-eight pounds, eleven shillings, and fourpence.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Thirty-eight pounds, eleven shillings.’ Miss Dearlove paused. ‘And fourpence,’ she added briskly.

‘You mean that Professor Pluckrose owed you – ?’

‘The professor owed the
establishment
that sum. These are matters in which he was a little
absent
at times.’

‘I see.’

The clock had begun again, and now there was a cuckoo clock operating too. In a corner the spaniels had fallen into a senile quarrel, and this disorderly behaviour was spreading to a number of cats. The doves, the vacuum-cleaner, the bull, the engine, and the cascade were tireless; the hound was intermittent but effective; the clatter of the cutlery it was possible to feel was a little dying down.

‘Poor Sir Archibald’, said Miss Dearlove, ‘was a little the same. He was, of course, a very old man – a contemporary of my father’s, the late Sir Horace Dearlove.’

‘Ah,’ said Appleby respectfully.

‘KCMG.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘My father, the late Sir Horace Dearlove, KCMG. But it was not so with the dear General. In these little matters, as in others of greater moment, he was the most punctilious of men.’ Miss Dearlove’s eye returned to her notebook. ‘Thirty-eight pounds, eleven shillings, and fourpence.’

‘Quite so. It is a charge which the executors will no doubt settle. I must explain that I am from the police. I understand that Mr Pluckrose had been, ah–’

‘Received,’ said Miss Dearlove.

‘–had been received in your household for a number of years?’

‘For some fourteen or fifteen. He was a person of retiring habits and relished the quiet of the country. We are a very quiet household, though I fear there is a
little
disturbance this morning.’

‘Disturbance?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Miss Dearlove moved her left ear nearer Appleby.

‘Disturbance?’ Appleby raised his voice to a sort of modified bellow.

‘The piano-tuner.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The piano-tuner.’ Miss Dearlove, also raising her voice, spoke so loudly that her face momentarily took on the same shade as her gown. ‘But presently I think he will leave us in quiet. You can hear him playing through a set piece now.’ Appleby strained his ears, but in vain. The only fresh sound to be distinguished was a periodic and reverberating crash – extremely puzzling until one realized that somewhere near at hand a water-mill had been put into motion. ‘You were naturally acquainted’, asked Appleby – as loudly as if he were addressing an aged metropolitan magistrate in court – ‘with the habits of the dead man?’

‘That is so.’

‘And perhaps you can suggest–’

‘Though, naturally, there were aspects of his personality which were unrevealed to me.’

‘I see,’ said Appleby.

‘Mr Pluckrose was a bachelor.’

‘Quite so.’

‘An
elderly
bachelor.’ Into this point Miss Dearlove, smiling brightly, contrived to inject an almost boundlessly sinister implication. ‘There were matters into which I did
not
inquire.’

The water-wheel was now operating smoothly and made less noise. But the whole house gently vibrated, and on the mantelpiece an elaborate contrivance of Venetian glass had begun to tinkle. ‘An
elderly
bachelor,’ agreed Appleby heartily. To what a god-awful age Miss Dearlove and her father the late Sir Horace belonged. Minds like drains. How infinitely wholesome and honest was that bellowing bull. ‘Naturally,’ Appleby pursued, ‘there would be – reticences.’

‘Precisely so.’ Miss Dearlove lowered her flowing purple skirt an inch further over her ankle. ‘How upset the university will be. How
very
upset must be dear Sir David Evans.’

‘Ah,’ said Appleby. In keeping a genteel boarding establishment Miss Dearlove was shamefully wasting her talents. As a rather low-class counsel on the criminal side a fortune awaited her power of abounding suggestiveness. One of the spaniels was rubbing itself against Appleby’s trouser-leg. He gave it a covert but ungentle kick. The general mêlée, as he had calculated, obscured the creature’s indignant yelp. ‘Sir David Evans and the dead man were close friends?’

‘It might be said’ – Miss Dearlove paused in search of a suitable expression – ‘that there was a mutually sensitive nerve.’

‘I see.’ Appleby raised his voice again against a sudden renewed screaming of cats. ‘Perhaps it would be possible for you to enlarge a little on that?’

‘I believe them to have been not without interests in common.’ Miss Dearlove folded her hands in her lap as she continued to speak in this gnomic vein. ‘But this is a subject which we will not pursue.’

‘You would not care to say more than that these two men had common interests?’

‘Very
common,’ said Miss Dearlove.

And for some time the conversation continued under discouraging acoustic difficulties. From the murk of the Dearlove psyche little of illumination emerged. Pluckrose, as Appleby had rather gathered before, had been a busybody, with a diversity of interests outside his own particular scientific field. He was fond, he had said,
of looking over the fence
– and by this he had apparently meant getting up enough of some colleague’s subject to make a nuisance of himself in an argumentative and critical way. This could not, Appleby reflected, be at all an uncommon academic foible, and should scarcely lead to murder. Still, in even so innocent a place as a university a busybody might conceivably hit upon some piece of knowledge not good for the health.

Take forgery, thought Appleby. There are few things odder than the fascination which a career of learned and wholly unremunerative forgery can exercise upon persons of erudite and seemingly blameless life. Eminent Shakespearean scholars have been known to discover pedantically important documents in out-of-the-way libraries, to publish them with copious notes, to engage in severe debates on their significance with unsuspecting fellow-workers – and finally to be exposed as laborious coiners of counterfeit knowledge. Their motives are childish and scarcely criminal; they like to be laughing in their sleeve at persons who fancy their own acuteness. But the learned world does not relish such jokes and exposure is likely to be distinctly blighting. Now suppose that this rather nosy-parker Pluckrose had discovered that, say, Prisk –

But Miss Dearlove’s peaceful retreat was a most unsuitable environment in which to endeavour to follow up a train of speculation. Appleby applied himself to asking a few final questions. ‘And now may I inquire if you have lately received any other members of the university staff?’

Miss Dearlove stiffened in her chair. ‘There was Mr Marlow,’ she said. ‘He left.’

This, plainly, was turpitude not merely hinted at, but plainly spoken. Pluckrose and Sir Archibald and the dear General might have been elderly bachelors making too free, say, with wenches in a neighbouring village. That was one thing. But young Mr Marlow had left. That was quite another. ‘Dear me,’ said Appleby. ‘Did he, indeed.’

‘Some months ago. I am inclined to suppose that he was unsettled by Nesfield Court.’

Appleby sat up much as if one of Miss Dearlove’s cats had stuck a set of claws in his leg. ‘The Duke of Nesfield’s place?’ he said.

‘The dear Duke’s seat. I have no doubt that life there is surrounded by every refinement of luxury. That is perfectly appropriate and proper in a noble household. But it was most unreasonable of Mr Marlow on his return to quarrel with the modest comfort befitting private gentlefolk. I can think of only one explanation.’ And Miss Dearlove paused awfully. ‘The origins of Mr Marlow must be low.’

‘That is very probably it,’ Appleby said easily.

‘Only a plebeian young man would be likely to have his head turned by such a commonplace experience as temporary residence in a nobleman’s family. And the actual excuse he gave for leaving us was almost insultingly baseless. He complained of noise.’ Miss Dearlove looked severely at Appleby. ‘– of
noise
,’ she repeated loudly.

‘Good heavens!’ Appleby looked properly amazed. ‘Can you tell me, by the way, what took him to the Duke’s?’

‘Certainly. It was in no sense a matter of being received into the society of the county. As you may know, and as my dear father used to remark, we are if anything a shade too exclusive here. I remember the Dowager Duchess remarking when I was a girl–’

Appleby ruthlessly cut short these splendours. ‘It was in the nature of a professional engagement?’

‘Precisely so. Mr Marlow was engaged as a vacation tutor to the Duke’s youngest grandson, dear Gerald. Actually I believe as one of several tutors, though I am not clear as to that. Gerald is a most charming boy.’ Miss Dearlove paused. ‘But extremely stupid,’ she added unexpectedly.

‘You say there may have been several tutors. Do you think that any of the professors of the university – the senior men – would be likely to accept a job like that?’

‘It would not be quite dignified.’ Miss Dearlove was judicial. ‘But then dignity is largely a matter of the way things are managed. It is a fact that I realized when adopting my own present means of subsistence many years ago. Certainly it would be less trouble to the dear Duke to have younger men only. He would not have to go out of his way to be civil to them.’

‘But civility is never out of the Duke’s way.’ Appleby paused. ‘I was reflecting on that only yesterday, when I happened to have luncheon with him.’

Even in the purple gloom of Miss Dearlove’s hall it was possible to see that this was staggering information. It demanded, at this belated point, an entire social reorientation of the interview in progress. Miss Dearlove peered at the grandfather clock. ‘Dear Mr Appleby,’ she said, ‘I hope that
today
you will be able to take luncheon
here
.’

‘I should be delighted. But unfortunately I must return to Nesfield at once.’ Appleby got up. ‘And Marlow is the only other university man you have had?’

‘During the past ten years, yes. Except, of course, Mr Lasscock. The senior lecturer in history. A quiet and charming man.’

Drag the river for Lasscock
. It had been one of the recommendations of those deplorable young men at Hissey’s Symposium. ‘Mr Lasscock is at home now?’ Appleby asked.

‘Yes. He has a slight chill and is spending the morning in the orchard. It must be half-term.’

‘Half-term?’

‘Poor Mr Lasscock commonly has a slight chill about halfway through the academic term. His half-term holiday is quite a little joke with us. Though Mr Marlow, I fear, used to be rather rude about it.’

‘I see.’ Appleby prepared to take his leave. ‘But, you know, the term isn’t anything like half over. It has only been going for about three weeks.’

‘Dear me! That is quite true.’ Miss Dearlove looked perplexed.

‘Perhaps it’s – well – a real chill this time.’

‘I hardly think so.’ Miss Dearlove was quite decided. ‘You see, Mr Lasscock is a peculiarly healthy man. He
never
has chills.’

Appleby frowned. ‘Then there must be some other explanation. And I think I should like to introduce myself to him. Would you mind if I went out that way?’

Miss Dearlove rose, threaded her way expertly through a congeries of cats, and majestically tugged at an ancient bell-rope. Then she turned round. ‘Dear Mr Appleby, goodbye. And should you at any time care to be received–’

The water-wheel thumped and the engine pounded. The vacuum-cleaner had not failed and, just at this moment, the bull bellowed and the hound brayed. The rest of Miss Dearlove’s words were lost in the clamour. But Appleby had a suspicion that it was the establishment’s tariff which was being explained to him. Dignity is largely a matter of the way things are managed, after all.

The psuedo-convalescence or truancy of Mr Lasscock had as its setting a restful and wholly charming scene. Always supposing, that was to say, that Mr Lasscock was deaf – for the auditory characteristics of Miss Dearlove’s orchard were as shattering as its visual aspects were pleasant. High and mellow brick walls, comfortably fretted over with apricot and peach, radiated grateful warmth even on this day of early spring. Within these were irregular lines of apple trees, gnarled and twisted and breathing the tranquillity of age. And within this again lay a prodigal kitchen garden: strawberry plants and raspberry canes, gooseberry bushes and asparagus beds, potatoes and cabbages and cauliflowers, carrots and onions and radishes and dwarf and climbing peas. All this Mr Lasscock sat and contemplated – and with very much the expression, Appleby thought, which the Deity must have worn on the Seventh Day. Mr Lasscock was an elderly, rosy person with untidy ginger hair, a brocaded dressing-gown, and a large yellow muffler. And he sat and contemplated the fruits of the earth with a mild and benevolent attention. Clearly he liked to watch them grow. Conceivably he was providing a little sympathetic magic by way of helping things on. Yes, quite conceivably he was feeling himself into the radishes and the cauliflowers and then luxuriously opening his leaves to the sun… Appleby drew nearer, and saw that actually Mr Lasscock’s eyes were lightly closed – not grossly in plain sleep, but with the flower-like quality of an infant replete upon the mother’s breast. And the thump of the mill-wheel and the throb of the engine, the battle of wills between the myriad small birds and the doves, the mournful passion of the bellowing bull, the sudden, shrill, and horrifying sexuality of circumambient cats: these things were all as lullaby to Mr Lasscock. He sat close by the high brick wall, wrapped in warmth radiated as from some vast maternal flank. Around him the branches of an overhanging horse-chestnut, just breaking into big and flaky bud, threw a light dapple of shade. A rug was over his knees, and under his slippered feet was an ancient hassock; by his side stood a table upon which were ranged a spirit-kettle, lemons, sugar, and a bottle of rum. Mr Lasscock opened his eyes slowly as Appleby approached and immediately made as if to close them again. Then, perhaps reflecting on the unnecessary muscular effort this involved, he let them stay open in a placidly interested stare. ‘Nice mornin’,’ said Mr Lasscock.