Appleby at Allington (12 page)

Appleby was perhaps more offended at being addressed as ‘old boy’ than he was by the lubricious and indecorous character of this sentiment. He was also getting tired of hearing about Martin Allington as a drunk – and indeed he was getting tired of Allingtons as a clan. So he said a few words more, and then moved on – having made a polite bow to Mrs Lethbridge and offered Mr Lethbridge a fairly frigid smile.

‘Chin-chin,’ Lethbridge said cheerfully. He wasn’t offended, and Appleby felt rebuked. A decent, vulgar soul, from one of our best public schools, who knew that it is only tennis balls that you tan on a tennis court. Not that it was possible to feel much curiosity about him. Eugene and Digby might be more interesting. Were they, in a secret way, clever boys, in whom was beginning to smoulder an intellectual arrogance, a contempt for the flailing racket, for the flying ball with its everlasting top-spin six hours a day? Or were they untroubled philistines, like Mum and Dad? It would be quite amusing to know. But, just at the moment, tight on flat champagne and showing off to their younger cousins, Eugene and Digby mightn’t be at their best. It would be unfair to investigate.

Appleby went in search of Judith, and of Wilfred Osborne. It was his turn to be firm. The party was over. And henceforth there would be only intermittent and rather formal contacts between Dream Manor and Allington Park.

As they left Allington, Judith took the wheel.

‘Which way?’ she asked. ‘John, would you like me to take the other drive: the one you came and went by last night?’

‘I don’t think so. It was pretty bumpy. I’d rather go out as we came in this afternoon, straight down the lake-side. I’m not sure that I wasn’t being defective as what you call a man of observation as we drove up.’

Judith made no reply, but turned the car in the direction indicated. Wilfred Osborne was carrying a pair of embroidered carpet-slippers, a random purchase at which he was now looking without confidence.

‘An enjoyable afternoon,’ he said. ‘Pleasant to wander round the old place. And Allington isn’t a bad fellow.’

‘He’s better than some of his relations,’ Appleby said.

‘Well, of course, they’re rather urbansouls – those Leatherbreeches and Bartenders, or whatever they’re called.’ Osborne seemed to have produced these names in honest vagueness, and without derogatory intention. ‘As for Martin Allington, we’ve had no fresh impression of him. He didn’t turn up. But all very pleasant, as I say. Nice to see poor old Scrape enjoying himself. Decent chap.’

‘Wilfred, are you being quite honest?’ Judith exercised some caution in edging past a final band of stragglers from the fête. ‘Seeing all these Allingtons, don’t you rather feel the incursion of the lion and the lizard?’

‘Of the what, my dear?’

‘They say the Lion and the Lizard keep

The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep.’

‘Oh that!’ Osborne was delighted that his memory now reached out to this learned citation. ‘There were Allingtons there long before there were Osbornes, after all.’

‘But doesn’t that, in fact, make it
more
annoying?’

‘I really believe it does.’ Osborne’s pleasure this time was in being presented with so surprising a piece of psychological penetration. ‘When I sold the place, I was at particular pains to make it appear otherwise. And I think I really felt that way at the time. It was a satisfaction that, since I had to sell, the purchaser came from that family. But now – yes, it’s perfectly true. I’d prefer an entirely new chap.’

‘Who wouldn’t talk about
Pax in bello
.’

‘Fair enough, my dear. But he meant no harm. Lived all his days among test-tubes and things. And you can’t speak out of turn to a test-tube. Lovely light on the lake now.’

‘Wilfred’ – it seemed to Appleby that Judith was in one of her perverse moods – ‘if you knew where that treasure was, would you agree to you and me stealing in one night with dark lanterns and things, and nobbling it?’

‘Of course not!’ This time, Osborne was really amused. At the same time he peered out, first at the surface of the lake and then up and down the drive, as if suddenly tempted to a very easy way of getting rid of the carpet-slippers. ‘I wouldn’t mind breaking into the house, you know, and making away with all that Georgian silver, with heaven knows whose crests and arms and mottoes, which one feels Allington has simply picked up in sale-rooms. But the treasure – not that it exists – is another matter. Very much Allington property, that must be. Their wealth poured out for the King, and all that, while the Osbornes were running up and down Cheapside, doing a brisk trade in continental armour for Cromwell’s New Model Army. That’s what they called it, wasn’t it?’

‘I think so. But I expect the greater part of the treasure wasn’t Allington wealth, at all. It would have been amassed here from all sorts of sources.’

‘If it were to turn up, I’d think it ought to go to Owain Allington, all the same.’

‘The coroner would have to sit on the stuff first,’ Appleby said. ‘As he’ll have to do on poor Mr Knockdown.’

‘John, that reminds me.’ Judith was still driving cautiously down the drive. ‘Did you tell the Chief Constable–’

‘Of course. I named his corpse as Leofranc Knockdown, an electrical enthusiast from out Potton way. Pride was dumbfounded. He clearly thought I’d had computers and things hurried down from Scotland Yard. But he was very decently grateful.’

‘And will now be eating out of the hand?’

‘Oh, decidedly. He’s quite a decent chap, your Tommy Pride.’

‘It’s astonishing,’ Judith said, ‘how many quite decent chaps there are in these parts. Wilfred goes in for them quite a lot. And now you.’

‘Judith, will you pull up?’ Appleby had spoken quite abruptly. ‘Get the car on the verge if you can. You won’t chew it up more than it has been chewed up already.’

They had been about to emerge on the high road, which ran at right-angles to the drive. The lake, close on their left, was narrowing to the final deep point at which there flowed into it, beneath the road and through a low, unnoticeable bridge, the slow-moving stream by which it was fed. And now they were standing on the brink, staring out over the water. But not staring very far. For what was on view on the surface, perhaps less than fifteen yards away, was a large, darkly iridescent patch of oil. It had the appearance of having broken up some time before, and patches of it could be seen drifting slowly on a diagonal course down and across the lake.

‘We were right about the explanation of the oily boy,’ Appleby said slowly. ‘He bobbed up through one of these. But what do you think is under that big patch now?’

‘A fractured pipe of some sort,’ Judith suggested.

‘Or something entirely natural.’ Wilfred Osborne contributed this. ‘I believe small pockets of oil can exist in the soil here and there, and that it needn’t in the least mean any extensive deposit below. You sometimes see it bubbling up in a sluggish stream, and perhaps take it for marsh gas, or something like that.’

‘Not on a scale like this,’ Appleby said.

‘You’re quite right.’ Osborne spoke soberly, and after a moment’s thought. ‘Judith may have guessed correctly about a fractured pipe. But – By God, John! – it’s a fractured pipe in a motor vehicle.’

‘I’m afraid so. In fact, we’re looking at the only visible sign of a nasty accident. And goodness knows when it happened. The oil may have escaped instantly, or only after several days. It’s certain that a patch of it would take at least an hour or so to get anywhere near Richard Cyphus and his friends at the bathing-place. One can tell no more than that.’

‘It can’t have been visible for very long,’ Judith said. ‘With all this coming and going to the fête, somebody would have been sure to notice it. We’d have noticed it as we arrived.’

‘I doubt the certainty of that very much.’ Appleby was looking broodingly at the sluggish, and now strangely sinister, patch. ‘It’s not all that large or noticeable.’

‘John, could it have been what that young man – Tristram Travis, I mean – was really looking at through his field glasses? He certainly wasn’t honestly after birds.’

‘Nor a bird, either – if Miss Junkin may be described as one. But why should Travis be studying this – and keep mum about it? Your mind’s hawking after melodrama again.’

‘He was scanning this end of the lake. I remember that.’

‘And talking about something, or pointing something out.’

‘The mess made by the lorries of the
son et lumière
people. And a gate, which he said they had knocked off its hinges. But I didn’t think that was right. The gate had just been lifted off, and moved away.’

‘To give heavy stuff an easier turn in and out,’ Osborne said. ‘But it would increase the risk of an accident, with the verge of the lake so near. Deep, too. It’s why, long ago, I had that gate hung the way it is. You’ll see.’

‘Not
in situ
, any longer. But we’ll get the idea. Now, just where have they shoved it? It certainly wasn’t in its right place when we drove in. I’d have noticed
that
.’

‘So you would,’ Judith said. ‘And there it is.’

The gate had simply been carried off to the other side of the drive, and deposited on the turf a few yards back. Appleby inspected it, inspected the firmly based post from which it commonly hung, and then went back and stared at the water.

‘We’re not talking sense,’ he said abruptly. ‘It
isn’t
all that dangerous. Who in his senses would have something thoroughly hazardous at one of the two principal entrances to his grounds?’

‘John, something
might
have gone in.’ Judith was poking around at the edge of the lake. ‘Things going up and down have really been going awfully close.’

‘My dear girl, that’s quite a different matter from clutching your steering-wheel and making a bee-line for the spot where all that oil now is. But I’ll grant you one thing. If anybody
had
done that – suicidally, say – the mess here is such that you couldn’t easily find the marks of it. Certainly not if it was a little time ago. Before all the heavy stuff being trundled out this morning, for instance.’ He turned back to the gate and stared at it. ‘Bother the dumb thing!’ he said. ‘I believe it’s trying to tell me something.’

‘Perhaps,’ Judith said, ‘to suggest appropriate action.’

‘That, of course.’ Appleby shook his head grimly. ‘But whatever has happened, a further five minutes is going to make no difference to it now. Has Pride left the Park, did you notice?’

‘I don’t think so. He and his wife must be about the last people there. Apart from all those relations.’

‘Wilfred, do you mind?’ Appleby turned to Osborne. ‘There’s almost certainly something here for the police. The simplest thing will be to go back to the house. And Allington should know at once, too. For let’s face it.’

‘Face it, my dear John?’ There was dismay in Osborne’s voice.

‘If there’s anybody down
there’
– and Appleby pointed into the lake – ‘it’s a little more likely – wouldn’t you say? – to be the missing Martin Allington than anybody else.’

‘But why should–’

‘He’s said to be quite a bit of a drunk, for one thing. It’s claimed as something of a factor in motor accidents, from time to time.’ Appleby realized he had spoken impatiently. ‘I’m sorry, Wilfred. There’s something else in my mind, and I just can’t lay a finger on it. But I keep on feeling that it’s about that gate.’

‘We can find out about just who moved it,’ Judith said. ‘And when, and why.’

‘Yes, almost certainly we can do that.’ Appleby paused. ‘As you know, I never drove into the Park by this route until today. But I’ve been along this road often enough. And somehow–’ He broke off.

‘My dear fellow, it’s bound to come back to you.’ Osborne offered this consolingly. ‘And now, we’d better get this unfortunate news off our chests. Too bad, if there’s really been a fatal accident. One yesterday and one today would make a pretty poor show.’

‘Quite so,’ Appleby said. ‘And unfortunately you never can tell when that sort of thing is going to stop.’

Twelve o’clock and Two o’clock

Martin Allington seemed not to have changed much – except that, this time, there was to be no struggle back to life again. Resuscitation had been attempted – it always is with the drowned – but from the first it was clear that he had been dead for some time. Probably – or so the police surgeon now declared – he had been dead for many hours.

He hadn’t changed. He was the same young man – or almost young man – who had nearly died as the sequel to some discreditable and bungled exploit a few years ago. This time he
had
died. And Appleby, as he glanced at the body for the last time before they finally drew a sheet over it and shoved it in the ambulance, supposed there must have been something discreditable in this exploit too. Nothing criminally so – except, indeed, that it is highly criminal to be driving a powerful car when drunk. And drunk he must have been. No man, when sober, could have produced a miscalculation that would so send his vehicle and himself like a projectile into the lake.

It was true that the steering might have failed at a critical moment. The accident could certainly have been produced by that. Or conceivably a sudden failure of the brakes might have had the same effect, although this seemed less likely. All that would have to be investigated. They had managed to hoist the car out of the lake now, and it was lying on the other side of the drive, with a constable standing guard over it. It was covered in mud and its own oil; it was festooned with duckweed. Otherwise, there didn’t seem to be much wrong with it. After it had been poked about in for the coroner’s benefit, it might well run again. It was a smart as well as powerful affair: a coupé (which was why the man inside hadn’t had a chance) that would look well in a second-hand saleroom. Another proud owner might take that wheel – and never know anything about this small, unfortunate occasion.