Appleby Talking (20 page)

“But of course!” Mrs Crisparkle glowed. “Lady Appleby is so at home in the larger world of art.”

“Perhaps the Bullions’ was that. Their concern at that time was certainly with art on the large scale. The film people, it seems, have gone back to enormities. Vast crowds and illimitable vistas are the things to plug on the screen if you want to keep television in its place. And the real trump card is a pitched battle, preferably with a great deal of cavalry, and chain-mail, and improbable-looking tents.”

“I know those tented fields.” Mrs Crisparkle nodded brightly. “Like a counter covered with lamp-shades in an art-and-crafty shop.”

“Quite so. Well, the Bullions were to be starred in a tremendous film called
William the
Conqueror
. And one of its highlights, needless to say, was to be the Battle of Hastings.”

“Ten-sixty-six.” The fine certainty of Mrs Crisparkle’s expression gave way to misgiving. “But were there cavalry at Hastings?”

“I’ve no idea. But there were no end of archers, and in the film their arrows were going to darken the heavens. That’s why archery was all the go at the Bullions during that fatal weekend.”

Mrs Crisparkle was sympathetic. “Those fatal weekends! My dear Sir John, how well I know them.”

But Appleby shook his head. “This,” he said gravely, “was a
fatal
weekend. It led to murder.

“I doubt whether Mark Bullion or any of his guests was actually going to draw a long-bow in the film. Most of them must have been booked for nobler roles – dashing about on horseback, chiefly, and encouraging their vassals with heroic cries. Nevertheless, everybody was fooling about with bows and arrows at some improvised butts. And that went for the women too. Claire Bullion, as a matter of fact, was uncommonly good – the best even of the scattering of people with whom archery was a regular sport. She spent most of Saturday instructing a handsome chap called Giles Barcroft. You may recall his name. He had left the London stage for Hollywood about five years before, and now he was back in this country with a considerable reputation. He was to play a big part – one of King Harold’s principal nobles, torn between loyalty and his reawakened love for a great Norman lady.”

Mrs Crisparkle nodded intelligently. “The Norman lady being played by Claire Bullion?”

“Precisely. And now I must tell you about the Sunday evening. The Bullions had rather a grand house, which I suppose they had rented – furniture, servants, and all – from some impoverished peer. Half-a-dozen of us were drinking cocktails on a terrace before the west front. Beneath us was a long, narrow sunken garden in what used to be called the Dutch taste, and immediately beyond that was the park – of which, however, we could see no more than a line of rising ground, parallel to our terrace and rather higher, with two magnificent oaks at either end of it. Beyond, there was simply the sunset sky.”

“It sounds rather impressive, Sir John. I get the suggestion of a natural theatre.”

“That describes it very well.” Appleby glanced at Mrs Crisparkle with approval. “We might have been an audience looking across the orchestra-pit of that sunken garden and through the great proscenium-arch constituted by those tremendous oaks. What we were viewing was an empty stage, closed by the vast luminous backcloth of the evening sky.

“What was in fact concealed from us by the line of rising ground that formed our immediate horizon, was that part of the park in which the archery mostly went on. I could hear a couple of my fellow-guests rather maliciously discussing what
else
might be going on there at that moment. ‘They were fooling round together all yesterday.’ ‘True enough. But it’s my guess they’ve had a glorious row.’ ‘So what, my dear fellow? Before Giles went to the Coast they were always having rows, but everybody knew that that was just by the way.’ ‘I can’t make out what Mark thinks about it – can you? Have another of the poor old chap’s drinks.’

“All this wasn’t exactly obscure – and decidedly it wasn’t edifying. The people concerned were talking the more freely because Bullion himself was securely out of hearing – down in the sunken garden in front of us, in fact, playing the lord of the manor and showing off his roses to some enraptured old woman.

“So much for the setting. In another moment, the thing happened.

“Barcroft’s head and shoulders appeared silhouetted on that horizon – plumb centre, you might say, of that natural stage. He had the motions of a man scrambling up a bank – and indeed the ground did, as I knew, fall away sharply on the other side. Then he was on the ridge, and suddenly raising an arm. I believe we all supposed that he was going to wave to us. But he was raising
both
arms – flinging them above his head – and at the same moment his knees collapsed under him. With a horrible cry – I can hear it with an effect of terror yet, and I’ve heard some nasty noises in my time – with a single horrible cry, Giles Barcroft tumbled backwards and disappeared.

“We were all stunned – and the next sound was Bullion’s voice calling out hoarsely in the garden. But it wasn’t Barcroft’s name that rang from him. It was his wife’s.

“I believe I jumped pretty smartly from that terrace, and I wasn’t much behind Bullion himself in scrambling up that incline and down on the other side. He was kneeling by Barcroft, who lay on his face, rolled over and over in dust. ‘Giles,’ he was calling out, ‘Giles – my God, what’s happened?’ And then he started back – as well he might. Barcroft was transfixed by an arrow, dead between the shoulder-blades. The feathered shaft had a glint of sunlight on it, and was quivering as if from some last pulsation of the body of the dying man.”

Mrs Crisparkle drew a long breath. “That glint of sunlight. It’s all terribly good theatre still.”

Appleby nodded soberly. “Certainly a veritable
coup de théâtre
succeeded at once. Claire Bullion appeared in the background – horrified, scared, and carrying a bow. Her husband took one look, jumped to his feet, and in a high, cracked voice denounced her as a murderous fiend. But that wasn’t all. In the silence that followed, Giles Barcroft spoke. It was no more than two whispered words, but they were perfectly clear. ‘I…win,’ he enunciated. Within five seconds he was dead.”

“How very bewildering.” Mrs Crisparkle was round-eyed. “Sir John – whatever did you do?”

Appleby smiled grimly. “I grabbed Bullion.

“It had indeed been a natural theatre, and we had been decidedly invited to watch a play. What Barcroft had won was, of course, a bet – a bet that, returning from his archery, he would put over that death-agony convincingly, and hold the illusion until the entire house-party was weeping round the supposed corpse – that sort of thing. And Bullion had carefully planted himself down there in the garden, thereby giving himself a start that would take him over that bank seconds before anyone else – a sufficient number of seconds to drive that waiting arrow straight to the heart of his play-acting friend. It was a pretty plan for disposing of his wife’s lover – and his wife, as you will have seen, was to have come in for a spot of trouble too.”

“I see – I see!” Mrs Crisparkle’s eyes were now saucers. “But how did you
know
?”

“Barcroft had done his turn whole-heartedly – rolling, as I have told you, over and over in the dust. But the arrow that was supposed to have occasioned this, was sticking straight out of the body, with its very feathering unruffled. It was a bad slip on Mark Bullion’s part. May I get you a drink?”

And Mrs Crisparkle nodded. “Yes,” she said rather faintly. “I think you may.”

Catching the eight-five had meant an early start for Derry Fisher. A young man adept at combining pleasure with business, be had fallen in with some jolly people in the seaside town to which his occasions had briefly taken him, and on his last night he had been dancing into the small hours. As a result of this he was almost asleep now – and consequently at a slight disadvantage when the panting and wide-eyed girl tumbled into his compartment. This was a pity. It was something that had never happened to him before.

“Please… I’m so sorry… I only–” The girl, who seemed of about Derry’s own age, was very pretty and very frightened. “A man–” Again speech failed her, and she swayed hazardously on her feet. “You see, I was alone, and–”

But by this time Derry had collected himself and stood up. “I’m afraid you’ve been upset,” he said. “Sit down and take it easy. Nothing more can happen now.”

The girl sat down – but not without a glance around the empty compartment. Derry guessed that she badly felt the need of some person of her own sex. “Thank you,” she said.

This time she had tried to smile as she spoke. But her eyes remained scared. It suddenly occurred to Derry that part of the nastiness of what had presumably happened must be in its anonymous quality. “My name is Derry Fisher,” he said. “I work for an estate agent in London, and I’ve been down to Sheercliff on a job. I caught this train so as to be back in the office after lunch.”

Whether or not the girl took in this prosaic information Derry was unable to tell. Certainly she did not, as he had hoped, do anything to supply her own biography. Instead, she produced a handkerchief and blew her nose. Then she asked a question in a voice still barely under control. “I suppose I must look an utter fool?”

Derry resisted the temptation to say that, on the contrary, she looked quite beautiful. It mightn’t, in the circumstances, be in terribly good taste. So he contented himself with shaking his head. “Not a bit,” he said. “And I wish I could help in any way. Did you have any luggage in the compartment you had to leave? If you did, may I fetch it for you?”

“Thank you very much.” The girl appeared steadied by this unexciting proposal. “I have a green suitcase, and the compartment is the last one in this coach. But first I should tell you about…about the man.”

Derry doubted it. He knew that, unless the man had been so tiresome that he ought to be arrested, it would be wise that no more should be said. The girl could tell her mother or her best friend later in the day. She would only regret blurting things out to a strange young man. “Look here,” he said, “I wouldn’t bother about the chap any more – not unless you feel it’s only fair to other people to bring in the police at Waterloo. In that case, I’ll see the guard. But at the moment, I’ll fetch the suitcase. And you can think it over.”

“I don’t think you understand.”

Derry paused, his hand already on the door to the corridor. “I beg your pardon?”

“Please stop – please listen.” The girl gave a sharp laugh that came out unexpectedly and rather uncomfortably. “I see I’ve been even more of a fool than I thought. You’ve got the…the wrong impression. The man didn’t–” Suddenly she buried her face in her hands and spoke savagely from behind them. “It was nothing. I imagined it. I must be hysterical.”

Derry, who had sat down again, kept quiet. He knew that women do sometimes get round to imagining things. This girl didn’t seem at all like that. But no doubt it was a trouble that sometimes took hold of quite unexpected people.

“I mean that I imagined its
importance
. I certainly didn’t imagine the
thing
. Nobody could have a…a hallucination of that sort.” As if nerving herself the girl put her hands down and looked straight at Derry. “
Could
they?”

It was Derry who laughed this time – although he could scarcely have told why. “Look here,” he said. “I think I
have
misunderstood. What was it?”

“It was his shoes.” For a moment the girl’s glance was almost helpless, as if she was aware of the absurd anticlimax that this odd statement must produce. “It was something about his shoes.”

The engine shrieked, and the express plunged into a tunnel. In the wan electric light which had replaced the early summer sunshine, Derry stared at the girl blankly. “You mean – this isn’t about anything that…
happened
?”

“No – or yes and no.” For a moment the girl appeared to struggle for words. Then she squared herself where she sat. “May I tell you the whole thing?”

“Please do – I’m awfully curious.” Derry spoke sincerely. The story, whatever it might be, was not going to be an awkward chronicle of attempted impropriety. “You did say
shoes
?”

“Yes. A brown shoe and a black one.”

The train had returned to daylight. This did not prevent Derry Fisher from a sensation of considerable inner darkness. “You mean that this man–”

“Yes. He is wearing one brown shoe and one black… How incredibly trivial it sounds.”

“I don’t know. It’s not a thing one ever sees.”

“Exactly!” The girl looked gratefully at Derry. “And when you see it, it gives you a shock. But the real shock was when
he
saw that
I
saw it. You see?”

Derry smiled. “Not really. Hadn’t you better start at the beginning?”

“The beginning was at Sheercliff. I thought I’d only just catch the train myself but this man cut it even finer than I did. He tumbled in just as we moved off. With any sort of baggage, he couldn’t have managed it. But he has nothing but a briefcase.”

“Is he tidily dressed apart from this business of the shoes?”

The girl considered. “He certainly isn’t noticeably untidy. But what chiefly strikes me about his clothes is that they look tremendously expensive. He’s in the sort of tweeds that you could tell a mile off, and that must be terribly good if they’re not to be ghastly.”

“Is he a loud sort of person himself?”

“Not a bit. He’s middle-aged and intellectual looking, and quite clearly one of nature’s First Class passengers. I think he jumped into a Third in a hurry and hasn’t bothered to change. He simply put his briefcase down beside him – there were only the two of us in the compartment – and disappeared behind
The Times
. I had a book, and I didn’t do much more than take a glance at him. It wasn’t perhaps for half an hour that I noticed the shoes. They gave me a jar, as I’ve said. And although I went on reading, the queerness of it stuck in my head. So presently I had another look, just to make sure I hadn’t been mistaken. And as I looked,
he
looked. That is to say, he happened to glance over
The Times
, saw the direction of my eyes, and followed it. What he discovered was a terrific shock to him. His legs jerked as if he’d been stung, and his feet made a futile effort to disappear beneath the seat. I looked up in surprise, and just caught a glimpse of his face before he raised
The Times
again. He had gone a horrible grey, as if he was going to be sick. It made me feel a bit sick myself. And matters didn’t improve when he turned chatty.”