The Weight of the Evidence (12 page)

Only this was Ladies’ Day. And although the female element in the case appeared meagre, it was by no means exhausted. Miss Dearlove did not look like being a very active element, but she had made one or two remarks which, as far as searching out the woman was concerned, might be described as a sort of passing the buck. For instance, when she had said of Pluckrose and Sir David Evans –

At this point, Appleby, looking absently about him as he speculated, let his eye stray to a far corner of the buffet at which there were a half-a-dozen small tables. The buffet too was a preponderantly masculine affair; if you were a woman it appeared that you were prescriptively confined to this retired corner. And on one of the tables Appleby’s glance halted. Those broad shoulders and that untidy hair were surely familiar; they belonged in fact to the belligerent young mathematician, Timmy Church. And opposite him was a girl of about his own age – what one might call a wholesome girl, Appleby thought; a girl of reasonable features, equable disposition, and sufficient intelligence. For a young scholar of somewhat unruly temperament it looked like a very sound match. Only at the moment things were clearly going far from smoothly; the girl was leaning forward and speaking with what looked like precise and controlled indignation; Church was leaning back with his hands in his pockets and his chin sunk on his chest – and probably scowling ferociously. And suddenly this melancholy scene came to a crisis. The girl paused for breath and then said something briefly and with particular decision; the young man jumped to his feet, banged down what looked like half-a-crown on the table, and marched out without looking behind him.

Appleby sighed. Duty, duty must be done. He picked up his cup of coffee, moved across the room, and sat down in the young man’s vacant chair. ‘Are you’, he asked, ‘Timmy Church’s girl?’

The young woman, who had been continuing her meal quietly, laid down her knife and fork. ‘I don’t know you,’ she said. ‘Please go away.’

Appleby got to his feet again. ‘I’m sorry. But I assure you I’m something perfectly respectable. In fact a policeman.’

She looked at him with startled eyes. ‘One of the policemen about the murder?’

‘Yes. Indeed, the principal policeman about the murder.’

‘Then you may sit down again. My name is Joan Cavenett.’

Appleby introduced himself. Miss Cavenett, he thought, if not a cool card, was yet having a good shot at appearing one. A business girl of the superior, private-secretary-to-someone-important sort. Or that was a good guess. At any rate, a young person much impressed with the necessity of coping with the world. First, then, a little fishing after the young woman’s background. ‘I’m sorry to see there’s been a rumpus.’ Appleby looked at her gravely. ‘Have you known Mr Church for long?’

‘We were at Cambridge together.’

‘I see. Then don’t you think you ought to have got your quarrelling over by this time?’

‘You’ve no business to come barging over and talk about it.’ Joan Cavenett spoke with decision; nevertheless, Appleby noted, her tone was now not really hostile.

‘I have, really. It’s unpleasant, of course, but my business is to barge into pretty nearly everything. This quarrel hasn’t anything to do with the Pluckrose affair? But of course it hasn’t; it’s older than that.’

‘Did Timmy tell you so?’ Now she was looking at him with a smouldering eye.

‘Of course not. He didn’t say anything about you. It was just a piece of vulgar gossip. Somebody wondered what had become of you – I suppose because the two of you haven’t been seen about together.’

‘How perfectly odious. Ordinary people ought to be able to mind their own business, even if policemen can’t.’ She glanced at him suspiciously. ‘You don’t
look
like a policeman.’

‘I’m a new and rather hazardously experimental sort. I have approximately the same smell as Mr Church and yourself.’

‘It doesn’t seem to me that that improves matters at all. If I’m to be badgered I’d rather be badgered by a man in thick boots and a helmet. I’d feel I knew better where I was.’ She paused. ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t go on quarrelling with him if I could help it. Not now this has happened. I know he was always arguing with this awful Pluckrose. And I know you think–’

Appleby interrupted her with a chuckle. ‘Mr Church is an aggressive young man, isn’t he? And you’ll probably find later on that a temperament of that sort goes with a mild and perfectly normal leaning towards persecution fantasies. He’s been telling you we’re hunting him as a murderer?’

Miss Cavenett looked at him uncertainly. ‘More or less.’

‘Well, it’s all bosh. An elderly professor called Crunkhorn–’

‘He’s his boss. Not a bad old chap really. But hasn’t much mathematics.’

Appleby chuckled again. ‘You’re not really wholly estranged, you know, or you wouldn’t go on repeating your young man’s favourite dogmas.’ Well, this Crunkhorn – whom he rather irritates at times – seems to have had an idea that he might have perpetrated some joke which fatally miscarried and resulted in Pluckrose’s death. But there’s nothing in it at all. Timmy Church is no more suspected than the Duke of Nesfield is. Put it right out of your head.’

She looked at him quickly, at once suspicious and enormously relieved. ‘Then–’

‘Then you can, as far as that is concerned, go on quarrelling with him as long as you like. Except that it’s rather silly and unnecessary, likely enough.’

‘It’s nothing of the sort.’

‘Very well, then; it isn’t.’ Appleby sipped his coffee and waited. A competent young woman, but at a very considerable strain. Ten to one, out it would all come.

‘It’s not just a silly tiff. We’re not kids. He wants me to–’ She hesitated. Appleby sipped again, outwardly unperturbed. Some intimate and probably utterly irrelevant disclosure. A policeman’s lot –

‘He wants me to – to commit bigamy,’ said Joan Cavenett.

‘Well, well,’ said Appleby. ‘That isn’t too bad. It might be worse. So cheer up.’

‘Worse than bigamy? I don’t believe a policeman can think there’s anything worse than bigamy. A stupid, horrid thing you read about in corners of the paper.’

Appleby shook his head. ‘It’s very trying, no doubt. But at least it’s something perfectly definite and clear-cut. And trouble between lovers is really serious only when they don’t at all know what it’s about.’ He paused on this piece of homely wisdom and looked at Miss Cavenett with a slightly malicious eye. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘–what’s wrong with your present husband?’

The young woman opened her mouth as if to say something very decided indeed. Then she changed her mind and laughed softly. ‘Must you really play the benevolent uncle?’ she asked. ‘And lighten the young people’s troubles with quiet merriment? You understand perfectly well it’s Timmy who’s married already.’

‘I’ve turned uncle because as policeman it’s plainly not at all on my beat.’ Appleby smiled reassuringly. ‘But you might tell me about it, all the same.’

‘There’s nothing to tell. I mean I know nothing about it. Once when we were talking about getting married Timmy just said in an off-hand way that it would be bigamy. And then he shut up and wouldn’t say any more.’

‘Which was very unreasonable of him. But then probably you made a bit of an ass of yourself too. Flared up and talked at him like something out of a book.’

‘Perfectly true.’ Joan Cavenett had finished her meal and now sat back with elaborate composure. ‘But he’s kept it up, which seems stupid. He says it’s no business of mine – which is absurd. And that it doesn’t matter – which is absurd too. And when I said well, couldn’t he get divorced, he said it was too difficult and that I had better forget about it.’

‘And so you better had.’

‘And be a – a bigamist?’ She stared at him, amazed.

‘If you want him I really wouldn’t let any little irregularity stand in your way. The thing will clear itself up, likely enough.’ He was looking at her maliciously still. ‘He hasn’t mentioned which you’ll be?’

‘
Which I’ll be?
’

‘Third or fourth or fifth? I mean, you don’t know
how many
wives he’s got already?’

She stood up. ‘This is horrible. And I thought you were going to be rather nice.’

‘I suppose he goes abroad fairly often?’ Appleby spoke softly, looking up at her still from the table.

‘Yes.’ She sat down again, suddenly limp and bewildered. ‘You seem to know a lot.’

‘What we do in my profession is guess. And I think I’ve guessed right. Your Timmy goes abroad just to get married. And I think it will be all right.’ Appleby was perfectly grave now. ‘It will be quite all right, Miss Cavenett.’

‘All right!’ Suddenly she blazed out at him. ‘When he’s conducting himself like a howling cad? If it was just that he’d had a mistress–’

‘You’re talking like that book again. And he’s not conducting himself like a cad. On the contrary. He’s conducting himself like an English gentleman.’

‘Isn’t that out of the book too?’

‘Maybe it is. But it’s true.’

She was silent for a moment, and Appleby saw that she was trembling. ‘Will you explain?’ she asked quietly.

‘I think I’d better not – even though I have guessed. See him again yourself. Tell him you don’t mind if he’s Bluebeard.’

‘But I do.’

‘My dear, we men are all kids. You have to say things to us. But tell him too that somebody’s told you he’s quite the English gentleman. You’ll enjoy seeing how startled and foolish he looks. And then say the same person thinks the secrecy business can be overdone. Caution is no doubt necessary, but is romantically attractive too. Tell him to contact his boss about it.’

‘His boss? Crunkhorn?’

Appleby had stood up. He laughed aloud. ‘Crunkhorn? I hardly think so. But of course one never knows.’

Outside, the sky was delicately grey behind dark buildings. Newsboys were shouting and Appleby bought a paper. Sir Nevile Henderson, he read, was reported to have had an interview with Hitler. Appleby shoved the paper in his pocket and crossed the street, frowning at the shape of things to come. From a railed-off plot of ground a pedestalled Queen Victoria looked down at him sourly – an old lady enormously bored with the business of clutching a truncheon and a thing like a plum pudding. What, Appleby wondered, would she make of it all? What, for instance, would she make of the proceedings of Mr Timothy Church? Mr Gladstone would disapprove, but then the Earl of Beaconsfield – so much more discerning a man – would be enthusiastic. Would have his own reasons for being so, Appleby grimly thought. The opinion of the Prince Consort could alone provide comfortable certainty in the matter, and he most assuredly had died without leaving any memorandum on so unlikely a state of affairs.

Appleby was arrested by a fanfare of trumpets and the glimpse of a scarlet-clad figure climbing the steps of Nesfield town hall. The Assizes were on. Well, next time the judge would perhaps be dealing with the affair of Professor Pluckrose. And now it was time to get back to that. For surely the matter of Timmy Church and his Miss Cavenett, though interesting and odd in itself could have no connexion with the real business on hand. Or could it? Suppose that in this mysterious activity upon which he had stumbled, Pluckrose had been the boss. And suppose it to be organized on a considerable scale. Might there not be danger – danger of a decidedly melodramatic but yet quite possible sort? But with this supposition nothing in Pluckrose’s known character seemed to fit. No, it was unlikely that Timmy Church’s peculiar form of bigamy was at the bottom of it all. And it was equally unlikely that Mrs Tavender’s tea-party had anything to do with it either. Nevertheless Mrs Tavender was next on Appleby’s list. For it was Ladies’ Day still. He boarded a tram.

The Tavenders’ was a quiet district. On the long, tree-lined road on which their house was to be sought only one figure was visible, that of a man in a bowler hat who was walking some hundred yards ahead of Appleby. Presently this figure halted, walked on a few paces, halted again. And now he was looking up at the sky – rather, Appleby thought, as if hoping to receive guidance or information from that quarter. It was, in fact, Professor Hissey. Perhaps he was working out a nice point for
Annotatiunculae Criticae
. Appleby drew level with him. ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ he said.

Hissey lowered his gaze from the heavens and looked at Appleby with momentary suspicion. Conceivably he took him for one of those dangerous tramps to ward off whom it is desirable to carry a big stick. But presently his brow cleared and he took off his hat – so that Appleby, who had been forgetful of the nicety of academic manners, had hastily to make the same gesture. ‘My dear Shrubsole,’ said Hissey, ‘how do you do?’

‘Very well, thank you.’ Williams and Merryweather and Grant, Appleby was reflecting, had been one thing. But Shrubsole was really a bit steep. ‘A nice afternoon for a walk.’

‘It is, indeed.’ Hissey appeared mildly puzzled. ‘But, do you know, I hardly think I came out with that object in view?’ Once more he looked up at the sky. ‘I am inclined to think that I am doing something else.’

‘So am I. I’m going to call on Mrs Tavender.’

‘How extraordinary! So am I.’ Hissey laughed, delightedly. ‘But just for the moment it had somehow slipped my mind. This, of course, is Mrs Tavender’s afternoon. So come along, my dear fellow. Or come away, as a Scot would so quaintly put it.’

‘And so would Shakespeare. Come away, come away, death.’

‘Dear me, yes. How very interesting. Could Shakespeare, I wonder, have been a Scot? He has been shown, quite conclusively, to be a Welshman. And a German. And recently, I believe, an Italian too. You know, a most amusing essay might be written on the quite peculiar sense of evidence that the professional English scholars have developed.’ And Hissey, very pleased with this mild and learned pleasantry, took Appleby by the arm and walked him forward. ‘By the way, how very stupid of me to call you Shrubsole, my dear–’

‘Appleby.’

‘Dear, dear – I am really very weak on human nomenclature. But much stronger, believe me, on human motive. I always know what a fellow is about, even if I can’t put a name to him. How goes the hue and cry after poor Pluckrose’s assailant today?’ And Hissey smiled, innocently proud of his awareness of the world. ‘But here we are. A pleasant house, is it not? Mrs Tavender has means, I have been told. A most superior woman, and with artistic interests.’