The Weight of the Evidence (13 page)

Mrs Tavender was large, vague, and vehement, and her party had approximately the same qualities, so that it was easy for Appleby to slip in once more on the strength of a word of introduction from Hissey. How one learns to snoop around, he thought – and proceeded to lose himself skilfully in the crush. One walks about with a politely restrained shouldering movement, as if one were bent on reaching a friend at the other end of the room. And so nobody pays any attention and one collects a sort of cross-section of such conversation as is going forward.

Two largish rooms and a hall were required for Mrs Tavender’s afternoon: they served as a somewhat uneasy meeting-place for the learned and artistic societies of Nesfield. The walls were hung with pictures in tiers and rows, as in a gallery. There were surrealist compositions in which the cleverest bits proved to be scraps of colour photogravure cunningly fitted in; there were pictures made of tram tickets; there were nudes looking rather like heaps of salmon straight from the tin. And on pedestals about the floor there were Carvings and Objects – the latter being often assemblages of pebbles which discerning artists had picked up on their last visit to the sea. There were also Constructions: these were made of broom handles, wooden spoons, brightly coloured rubber balls suspended on string, and coils of a sort of chromium-plated barbed wire. And amid this aesthetic profusion the guests performed something between an obstacle race and a saraband. Mrs Tavender urged them on. She wore an enormous necklace which she clutched before her bosom and swung to and fro as if to impart a more urgent tempo to the gathering. In a corner Mr Tavender, giggling, disagreeable, and acute, watched the whole performance with evident pleasure.

Appleby secured a cup of tea and a sandwich which had gone slightly curly at the edges. The artists ate more than the academics; for some of them the occasion was clearly quite an important fill-up. There were young men in flowing ties and velvet jackets; there were other young men who had been to Paris more recently and were extremely quietly and precisely dressed. The artists looked at the other guests and didn’t say much. The other guests looked at the exhibits and seemed to feel in honour bound to talk copiously and in an animated way. If one were engaged upon the manufacture of what is called light fiction, Appleby thought, all this would be just the thing. But to one concerned with the ponderous verity of an errant and lethal meteorite the significance of the proceedings was depressingly hard to discern… It was at this moment that a woman came up to Appleby and shook hands. A small woman, and of a genteel appearance modified by a large black hat – in fact, Appleby said to himself, a sort of artistic-academic centaur. And she was shaking hands with him firmly and kindly, as if she had seen through the restrained-shouldering business and were taking him for a lonely soul. And now she spoke. ‘Pata pata, ko-ko-ko,’ she said. ‘Rondo rondi, ripalo.’

It sounded more or less like that. And, issuing as it did from a source whence intelligible communication had been expected, it was momentarily disconcerting. Appleby tried something cautious. ‘How do you do,’ he said.

The centaur looked at him with surprise and perhaps a hint of reproach. ‘You don’t mean to say,’ she cried, ‘that you are
not
one of those interesting new Russians?’

‘I’m afraid I’m not – in fact, not a Russian at all.’ Appleby spoke as apologetically as was reasonable. ‘I wonder why you should suppose–?’

The centaur laughed quietly and with much social assurance. ‘It must be because you don’t put your hands in your pockets. Have you never noticed it of Russians? No well-bred Russian would dream of standing about a drawing-room with his hands in his pockets. So interesting a people, don’t you think?’

Appleby agreed that the Russians were of interest. The centaur looked at him appraisingly for a moment, plainly selecting some further topic. ‘Have you’, she asked brightly, ‘had anything much on hand lately?’

‘Well, yes – a fair amount. A murder in Bermondsey.’

‘How very interesting!’

‘And a woman trying to poison her grandmother in Bow.’

‘Indeed! Do you know, I would so like to see them sometime?’

Appleby was again somewhat dismayed. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said vaguely. ‘Quite.’

‘I take the greatest interest in the new anecdotal school. Genre painting is something we have long missed. I am a great admirer of Firth. And Tissot too. And my father was a close friend of Holman Hunt. We have really been most unfair to that generation for a long time. I should particularly like to see your poisoning.’

Somewhat laboriously, Appleby took his bearings amid this prattle. ‘I’m afraid there’s a mistake,’ he said. ‘It was a real murder and a real poisoning. You see, I’m a policeman, not a painter. My name’s Appleby.’

The centaur, it was impressive to observe, didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘That’, she said cheerfully, ‘is more interesting still. And it is poor Mr Pluckrose, no doubt. In fact, you are the high official people are talking about. And a friend of our dear Duke’s.’

Never before had Appleby been referred to as a high official. It was almost as difficult as being taken for a new Russian. ‘The Duke of Nesfield?’ he said. ‘I met him yesterday for the first time.’

The centaur smiled – mysteriously. ‘I knew from the beginning that there was a great inwardness to this affair of Mr Pluckrose. I am not at all surprised that the Foreign Office should be concerned.’

‘The Foreign Office!’ Appleby was startled.

‘But we shall say no more about that. A policeman you shall be.’ The centaur’s voice was now both conspiratorial and arch. ‘I must tell you that my name is Isabel Godkin. I am Warden of our women’s hostel, St Cecilia’s. Two hundred girls, Mr Appleby. Two hundred quite
simple
girls. And I have to lick them into shape!’ Miss Godkin gave a practised little laugh indicating comical dismay. ‘A little music, a little deportment,
something
of the outlook of gentlewomen. I assure you it is most fascinating work. A sort of finishing school that has to start from the beginning.’ This was evidently a well-worn gag, and Miss Godkin paused on it. ‘It is arduous but important –
quite
as important as their purely academic work. I do hope you will come and visit us one day.’

‘I should like to very much.’ Appleby looked at this awful woman gravely. ‘And I can see that it must be very exacting indeed. You must sometimes have the discouraging feeling that the whole process is an orgy of snobbery.’

This time Miss Godkin’s eyes did open wide. ‘I don’t think that I have ever–’

‘I suppose it’s rather like the savings bank.’

‘The savings bank!’

‘One gets people to put in a little money, and quite soon they feel they have a vested interest in the way that property is at present disposed. Similarly you teach your girls, say, to talk about dinner instead of tea, and soon they feel a sort of invisible tie-up with whatever is the Nesfield equivalent of Mayfair. Cardinal Newman observed somewhat similar efforts in Birmingham. He called them, if I remember aright, uncouth imitations of polished ungodliness.’ And Appleby smiled in the friendliest way at Miss Godkin. Stupid to be pricked into this assault and battery. Perhaps the Warden of St Cecilia’s would insist on his being expelled from Mrs Tavender’s afternoon forthwith…

But Miss Godkin was smiling with the greatest friendliness too.
‘How
like the dear Duke!’ she said. ‘A
most
stimulating conversationalist, is he not? And I am myself extremely interested in radical ideas. A number of my father’s friends belonged to the Fabian Society at one time. Men with beards and very distinguished records in economics and so on. I do hope that you will visit us. It would be so
good
for my girls to know that in the Foreign Office there are really
progressive
minds. Some of them are a little inclined to socialism, I fear.’

There is no coping, Appleby reflected, with an assured and thoroughly illogical woman. All that remained was to escape from Miss Godkin as quickly as possible. And then a thought struck him. Why should she have supposed that there was an ‘inwardness’ to the Pluckrose affair? And why should she have taken it into her head that he himself came, of all places, from the Foreign Office? Before Appleby’s mind as he pondered these questions there arose the image of Joan Cavenett telling her odd story of the bigamous Church. Might it be possible – ? Appleby turned to Miss Godkin again. ‘I suppose’, he said, ‘that at St Cecilia’s they are for the most part local girls?’

‘They are mostly country girls from the area that the university serves. If a girl has not a home in Nesfield she must live in the hostel. Lodgings for girls are no longer allowed. An excellent measure, I am sure you will agree.’

‘One is always glad to hear of things being no longer allowed.’ Appleby looked very seriously at Miss Godkin. ‘But do you have others as well? Foreign girls, for instance?’

‘Ah!’ Again Miss Godkin was conspiratorial. At the same time she was appreciably uncertain, so that Appleby had the impression that there was something by which she was herself a good deal puzzled. ‘We have had quite a number of late. From Germany, for the most part. And of very good family, some of them. For some time, now, Sir David’ – Miss Godkin hesitated. ‘But I think you are likely to know more about it than I do.’

This was mysterious and rather awkward. Appleby decided to persevere. ‘You say that Sir David Evans has had something to do with–’

He was interrupted by a cheerful voice behind him, and a hand was laid on his shoulder. ‘Well, well,’ said the voice. ‘Just the place where one would expect to find the Vice Squad at work.’

It was young Pinnegar. Like Miss Godkin, he appeared to have deferred to the aesthetic nature of the occasion by a modification of his attire, for he wore a decidedly
outré
jacket of orange-coloured corduroy. ‘Come to think of it,’ he said, ‘I fancy you’re here on a tip of my own.’

Appleby nodded. ‘Just that.’

‘Well, well.’ Pinnegar raised a bitten macaroon and pointed it at Miss Godkin. ‘This is Mr Appleby – a cop. And I’m a nark. I passed him the word about Mrs Tavender’s Disorderly House.’

Miss Godkin, by looking coldly at the macaroon, indicated that this was a disagreeable jest.

‘Odd phrase, when you come to think of it. Why disorderly? I’ve been told such places have a sort of drab propriety and decorum of their own. But of course what Appleby is really on the trail of is the busting of the bust. Pluckrose, having attempted to bust the bust, was himself busted. Appleby, that’s it, isn’t it?’

‘Very possibly.’ Miss Godkin, Appleby noticed, though she looked disapproving, was not bewildered. So there must be some sense in Pinnegar’s gibberish. ‘Where is the bust?’ he asked. ‘Can I see it?’

Pinnegar nodded. ‘The bust, bottle-bashed, is in the hall. This way.’ And he began to push through the crush. Appleby followed, and so did Miss Godkin. And presently they were confronting a marble effigy of Sir David Evans. The thing was executed in a markedly modernistic manner, but the material was the glaring white stone that had its chief popularity in the Victorian era. So Sir David’s complexion, in nature ruddy or even florid, was represented as of a deathly pallor. But what was odd was that Sir David’s hair, so snowy in the actual man, was here tinctured quite a bright green.

‘I think it’s fading,’ said Miss Godkin. ‘It was really a most eccentric thing to do.’

‘I wonder’, asked Pinnegar, ‘if it could be anything to do with Jumblies? Was their hair green? I forget. Perhaps the sense of the affair was this: Evans is no better than a Jumbly. He puts to sea in a sieve. His intellectual gear and tackle are grotesquely inadequate to the pretentious philosophical voyages he attempts. It’s a new interpretation, anyway.’

‘But Mr Hissey?’ said Miss Godkin. ‘The thing really appeared to happen in the course of an argument between Pluckrose and Hissey. I was standing quite close and can vouch for that myself. We would have to suppose that Mr Hissey was protesting against Pluckrose’s plan to turn poor Sir David into a Jumbly. And I don’t know that he would do that. I really believe that Pluckrose could have painted the real Sir David in stripes all over and Mr Hissey wouldn’t have minded a bit.’

‘They say’, said Pinnegar, ‘that Lasscock was in it too. The argument, I mean. He was distinctly heard to call upon Pluckrose to desist. Quite an unwonted display of energy on Lasscock’s part.’

Miss Godkin nodded. ‘It is perfectly true. I myself saw Mr Lasscock try to take the bottle from Pluckrose’s hand.’

‘The bottle?’ Appleby, half enlightened, looked from Miss Godkin to Pinnegar. ‘Am I to understand that Pluckrose, during one of these parties, emptied a bottle of green paint over Sir David Evans’ bust?’

Pinnegar shook his head indulgently. ‘Officer, officer,’ he said, ‘how you jump to conclusions! Miss Godkin will agree that you have contrived a shockingly inaccurate reconstruction of the crime. Not
emptied
the bottle.
Broke
it. Think how much more dramatic that was. And not green paint. A colourless fluid in a clear glass container. Several people will swear to that. He brought it down with a bang, and instantly the bust went green on top. What you might call a display of parlour chemistry. But the effect is now fading somewhat, as Miss Godkin says. The thing happened a fortnight ago.’

‘I see.’ Appleby stared at the bust in considerable gloom. If there could be anything odder than the bigamous proceedings of Timothy Church it was surely this demonstration by the dead man. But that these two affairs were related either to each other or to the central drama of the meteorite it was hard to see. Appleby turned again to Pinnegar. ‘But was no explanation sought? After all, it was a most out-of-the-way thing to happen in a lady’s drawing-room. What had Pluckrose to say for himself?’

‘Nothing at all, as far as I know. He just left. It was felt to be very awkward, of course. But Pluckrose was known to be rather eccentric.’

‘Did he have breakdowns?’ Appleby was remembering Sir David Evans’s theory. ‘I mean, did he periodically break out into markedly neurotic behaviour?’