Appleby at Allington (19 page)

‘John, this makes me most uneasy. One doesn’t want to be uncertain about any neighbour over a thing like that. Let alone–’

‘Quite so. But at least you couldn’t have had an inkling of the affair when you sold him the Park. You’d never met him, had you, until he turned up as a possible purchaser?’

‘Dear me, yes.’ Osborne looked surprised. ‘Didn’t I tell you he was at the Park as a guest? Only two or three times, I suppose. But over a period of a couple of years. He was interested in the family papers.
His
family papers, that is. That’s why I eventually turned them over to him. My dear John, are you unwell? Or is it a wasp? Deuced bad this year.’

Appleby had certainly sprung to his feet in an agitated fashion. But he at once sat down again with tolerable composure.

‘Where was Allington actually living at that time?’ he asked.

‘In London, I suppose. But he had rented a weekend cottage in Outreach, and he seemed to spend quite a lot of time there. Carried on some of his researches, you know. Nothing to do with atoms and all that – or not so far as I knew. He explained one of his projects to me. Most interesting, I thought. It was why I lent him the lake.’

This time, Appleby didn’t even move. He simply stared at Wilfred Osborne as if that innocent country gentleman had been suddenly transmogrified into a two-headed calf.

‘You
lent
Owain Allington the lake? He picked it up and carried it off with him?’

‘Let him have the use of it, my dear John.’ Osborne sounded mildly reproachful. ‘He was perfecting some kind of light-weight diving-kit. I doubt whether he ever came across himself. Just sent a couple of fellows for a day or two. No mess at all. Quite harmless.’

‘And I suppose this would have been at the only deep part of the lake – down at the end by the bridge?’

‘Quite right. Not that it’s all that deep, you know. They didn’t need anything of that kind.’

‘In fact, Wilfred, this happened just where Martin Allington was drowned a couple of nights ago?’

‘Just there.’ Wilfred Osborne finished his beer, and stood up to go. ‘Coincidence, eh? They’re always happening.’

‘Wilfred, I think I must tell you–’

But Appleby was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone-bell.

‘Appleby – that you?’ The disturbed voice was Colonel Pride’s. ‘Thank the Lord you’re in. Look – I’m at this damned place again.’

‘Allington?’

‘That’s what I said. Can you come over? It’s the padre. Slope. Scroope.’

‘Scrape?’

‘Yes – can’t you hear me? Get in your car, and come straight across.’

‘I have Wilfred Osborne with me.’

‘Bring him too. And bring your wife. Be sure to bring your wife. She can talk sense to these damned women.’

‘Very well. But just what is this about Scrape?’

‘Haven’t I just told you? Confound this line! Fellow’s been found drowned in the lake. Hit on the head and drowned.’

It was dusk when they set out. Whatever the crisis at Allington Park, Judith had judged it not a good idea to arrive there unfed. Appleby spent the short drive in silence. He felt it ought to be possible to step out of the car with the whole matter cleared up in his head. Not that he must jump to conclusions – to any conclusions at all. The second-gate theory had been just such a jump – and it had landed him, so to speak, not in the lake but the ditch. And now the plot had thickened, concentrated itself, in the close vicinity of Gate One.

But the gate itself seemed no longer in the picture. Its removal hadn’t misled Martin Allington into overshooting his mark and driving on across the bridge. He had turned into the drive in the normal way. Nor could the gate’s new position then have affected the matter – or not, at least, short of some wholly unlikely mental aberration. But, if not the gate, then what?

Cow and Gate, Appleby suddenly said to himself. His children had imbibed a good deal of something called that long ago. So what about the Cow and Gate Mystery? The notion of the unfortunate Knockdown somehow blundering fatally in front of Martin Allington’s car didn’t much impress him. But why not a cow? A man driving just a little too fast, and driving with just a little too much liquor in him, could easily take some fatally ill-calculated evasive action if a large animal suddenly presented itself in his headlights.

But there was no reason to suppose that any such creature had been around. So the celebrated tenet known to philosophers as Occam’s razor must apply. For the purposes of explanation things not known to exist should not, unless it is absolutely necessary, be postulated as existing. This put the Cow and Gate theory – or even the Dog-or-Cat and Gate theory – at least on the shelf. But Leofranc Knockdown (unlikely as he sounded) was known to exist – or at least to have existed. He was existing and on the spot. This applied, too, to the now defunct Mr Scrape, who had turned up so pat on his bicycle. But the young Italian, Enzo, had turned up pat too. Had he told the truth as he knew it? Had he told the whole of the truth as he knew it? Appleby could find no reason to suppose otherwise. Enzo, might, of course, have been in some sinister conspiracy with his employer. For that matter, so might Knockdown – or even Scrape. And it was certainly Owain Allington himself who had most to be thought about. Three men had met unnatural deaths on his property within forty-eight hours – and there was something out of the way in his relationship to at least two of them. With his nephew he had almost certainly been mixed up in the dubious business Appleby had been hearing about in his telephone-calls to London. And it was almost certain that his assertion that he didn’t know Knockdown had been detected by Mr Scrape as untrue. Incidentally, Scrape was a liar as well. Or he was a liar unless Enzo was. On Enzo’s showing, he could not have failed to recognize Knockdown as he went past on his bicycle on the fatal night.

But Owain Allington was the man to stick to – Owain Allington and his treasure. And the treasure, first of all. The entire mystery, weird as it seemed, really stemmed from that unlikely hoard.

Appleby had first heard of the treasure from Allington himself. Allington had been professing to regret having had the treasure mentioned in the
son et lumière
– this because it had actually brought foolish nocturnal prowlers around the place in the hope of finding it. But had it really done that? It was an unlikely story, when you paused on it. Perhaps Allington had simply wanted some occasion for mentioning the treasure. But why? Well, he’d said nothing about any record of
sunken
treasure. Only
buried
treasure. It was almost – Appleby suddenly thought – as if the fellow was playing a game. And playing it with his new neighbour, Sir John Appleby.

Take the business of the treasure a little further back. There was now a fairly clear picture – and it was a thoroughly astonishing one. The stuff had really existed, there in the lake. Allington had known enough about it, if only as a matter of uncertain family tradition, to prompt him to make Wilfred Osborne’s acquaintance, stay as a guest at the Park, get at documents in the muniment-room which could never have been adequately scrutinized before. These had enabled him – one simply had to put it this way – to plant that red cross on the significant spot on the ancient map or chart. Straight boys’ adventure-story stuff. But what had succeeded upon it was truly wonderful. Allington had faked an interest in developing diving-kit, been ‘lent’ the lake for a day or two, and possessed himself of the treasure as a result. It had been a fantastic subterfuge, which could have seemed feasible only as the result of an accurate assessment of the honourable simplicity of Wilfred Osborne’s mind. It must have amused Owain Allington very much. He had then bought Allington Park with the proceeds. That must have amused him a great deal more. Moreover it had all happened round about the time that those ugly rumours were rendering it expedient that he should change his way of life. He had done so. He had become the model of an English landed proprietor that he now was.

It suddenly came to Appleby – but with the effect of an aside which he mustn’t spend too much time on – that Allington had been playing some sort of joke on young Tristram Travis too. He had deliberately put him in the way of finding the record which he himself had already found and profited by. He had probably fostered Travis’ relationship with Hope Allington. And he had been watching them scheming to possess themselves of what was no longer there in the lake. Since his scientific career had come to its dubious end, time had been hanging rather heavily on Owain Allington’s hands.

But at this point the picture gave out. Owain Allington was the centre of the jigsaw puzzle. Appleby now had no doubt about that. But there was one piece missing. And it was missing – one had to say – plumb in the centre of the figure of Owain Allington himself. Appleby knew precisely what he wanted to lay his hand on. But at the moment he was scanning the table for it in vain.

‘Just here,’ Colonel Pride said. ‘It’s getting a bit dark for a recce, but you can see the idea. A pretty sheer drop. Still, you could say he might have hit his head on something on the way down. Odd sort of place. Fake, of course. Even the little precipice.’

‘I’ve been here before.’ Appleby advanced from the base of the ruined tower, and peered down at the surface of the darkening lake. ‘My wife and I walked round this way, when we’d had enough of the fête for the time being. We even asked each other what would happen if one fell over. How was the body discovered so soon?’

‘A leg remained out of the water, caught in the cleft of an old shrub. He can’t have been conscious, I’d say, or he would probably have got it free. Spotted by one of my men, going up the drive over there on his bicycle.’

‘It’s barely three hours since he was in my own house, Pride. He came to tea.’

‘You don’t say so!’ The Chief Constable appeared to search for a relevant comment. ‘Always coming to tea, aren’t they?’ He shook his head. ‘Crazy affair, this. Three deaths. To my mind, accident won’t do. What d’you think, Appleby?’

‘Accident certainly won’t do. Yet Scrape’s end isn’t self-evidently anything else. I rather think he had the habit of a potter round the lake. He started off on something of the sort with Judith and myself. This tower would be a good secluded rendezvous for a conference.’

‘And for a bit of a rough house afterwards? Queer affair for a clergyman to get mixed up in. Who would want to do in this chap Scrape?’ Colonel Pride shook his head in perplexity. ‘Rather the crawling sort, he seemed to me. Nothing against padres in general, mark you. Salt of the earth, some of them. Remember one of them at Dunkirk. First class chap. It’s the Christianity does it, I suppose.’

‘I’m afraid it was Scrape’s Christianity that was his undoing.’

‘Good Lord!’ Pride looked properly shocked. ‘Bashed by the atheist, eh?’

‘Not exactly that. He had rather a fanatical project in his head. He wanted to build something ecclesiastical in a big way. I’m pretty sure his death was the consequence of an injudicious fund-raising effort. He was going after the mammon of unrighteousness. It didn’t work.’

‘It’s a comfort to me, my dear Appleby, that you appear to be getting a grip on this damned thing.’ A shade of dubiety might have been detected in Pride’s voice. It was evident that he felt Scrape’s getting himself murdered had been something wholly improper in a beneficed clergyman. ‘Had we better be getting back to the house?’

‘I suppose so.’ Suddenly Appleby pointed across the head of the lake. ‘The end of the drive is just over there. Have you noticed whether any electricity runs down to it from the house?’

‘I’m sure it doesn’t. And there isn’t any on the high road. I see you’re thinking that the confounded turn in ought to be lit.’

‘It might have made a difference, certainly.’ Appleby turned round. ‘The castle looks rather well against the evening sky. The house too, for that matter. Allington’s rather a lovely place, really. It’s a pity it should be stained by three revolting murders. And they’ll be remembered – if you ask me – for rather a long time.’

‘Three murders!’

‘We certainly have to face up to that, Pride. And we must just hope it stops there.’

‘A confoundedly upsetting day,’ Ivon Lethbridge said. Appleby and Pride had run into him in the hall. ‘Inconsiderate to the last.’ He seemed to become aware of a certain incomprehension in his hearers. ‘Martin behaving like that. Choosing the doorstep to die on, you might say. Of course the kids have got wind of it. They had wind of it last night, if you ask me. And then the yokel as well. And now the local padre. It’s outrageous.’

‘Your boys are upset?’ The Chief Constable spoke with rather perfunctory sympathy. ‘Too bad. Fond of their uncle, no doubt.’

‘Nothing of the sort!’ Lethbridge was indignant. ‘Of course my wife had taught them that Martin was a precious blackguard. She’s very strict. A right-thinking woman. At least since our marriage. Made her toe the line.’

A loud guffaw greeted this. It came, naturally, from the robust Charity Lethbridge, who had entered the hall.

‘No laughing matter.’ For once, Lethbridge was offended by his wife’s levity. ‘Hopelessly off their game. We kept them at it all day, you know. Only thing to do. But Digby’s topspin has followed Eugene’s down the drain. Desperate situation. George’s kids too. Can’t hole a two-foot putt, George says. Serious thing, at that formative age.’ He looked round. ‘Ah, here
is
George. Pack up and clear out’s the word, if you ask me. George, what do you think?’

‘First thing in the morning.’ George Barford nodded vigorously. ‘I’ve told Faith to get our traps together tonight. Of course the brats are all asleep now. But we had a shocking afternoon.’ He turned to Appleby. ‘We caught them at some sort of make-believe. Pretending to be gangsters, or pirates, or Lord knows what. Thin end of the wedge, eh? But I’m not going to have my daughters grow up to waste their time. I’m damned if I am.’

‘You are afraid,’ Appleby asked, ‘that these unfortunate events have stimulated the children’s imaginations?’