Death at the Chase (15 page)

‘Oh, yes – please. Black will be splendid. I don’t terribly care for milk. Hot and in coffee, I mean. It was awfully good of you, sir, to find me that milk last night.’

‘Just what did happen when you recovered from this brutal assault?’

‘The chap had disappeared. I was rather relieved about that. He might have been standing over me, prepared to slosh me again. I got up and rubbed my jaw. And then I thought I shouldn’t be put off.’

‘By this vexatious interruption?’

‘Just that, sir. I decided to go on having that look around – even if this maniac, and Ibell as well, were still about the place.’

‘Don’t you think,’ Judith asked, ‘that the maniac and Ibell may have been one and the same man?’

‘Well, no – not really.’ Finn considered. ‘I had a strong impression that the maniac was a gent.’

‘One always knows,’ Appleby asked gravely, ‘when it is a gentleman who has knocked one out?’

‘Not exactly that.’ Finn looked at his host with a kind of reproachful suspicion. ‘It was the clothes, and all that. There was this moonlight around, remember.’

‘You would recognize the maniac again?’

‘Oh, yes – I’m sure I should. Well, I dusted myself down, and moved along the terrace. There was still that lighted window – the one we’d been doing the spying at. But when I got to it I found it was no go, so far as seeing into the room went. There had been a small gap in the curtains before, you see. But now they were drawn close. After that, I got a funny idea in my head.’ Finn hesitated. ‘It’s really so silly that I hardly like to mention it. Particularly to you, sir, since they’re your sort of thing.’

‘Just what are you thinking of as being my sort of thing?’

‘Fingerprints.’

‘You got round to thinking about fingerprints?’ Appleby was looking at Finn in considerable astonishment. ‘On the door-handle and the door-bell?’

‘It just came into my head, as I say.’ Finn sounded extremely apologetic. ‘The maniac had rung the bell and turned the handle. And when I saw him he was removing any tell-tale marks. Awful nonsense, of course. I must have been reading too many thrillers.’

‘Might this man have come out of the house?’

‘Well, that’s the next thing I have to tell you. The last thing, really. I decided I’d try to make sure that Mr Ashmore was all right. The fact that there was a light on still in that downstairs room suggested he hadn’t started going to bed. So I decided I’d ring the bell myself, and just say hullo to him.’

‘As he has never set eyes on you, he might have been mildly surprised. But your plan didn’t come off?’

‘No, sir. I rang twice, and nothing happened. So I felt a bit of a fool. I had a notion Mr Ashmore lives all alone in the place, and it struck me there might be an hour after which he just didn’t care to open his door. So I gave up, and came away. It took me a terribly long time to get back to Dream. I did a kind of Snakes-and-Ladders hitchhiking.’

‘Did you, by any chance, try that door-handle?’

‘Well, yes – I did. It sounds awful cheek, and if the door had turned out to be unlocked I don’t think I’d have had the nerve to walk in. But I did try it.’

‘Could the maniac have come out of the house and locked the door behind him?’

‘He could have, in a way. It’s a Yale lock. He could have shoved up the little button thing inside as he came out, and then it would have locked itself automatically.’

‘I see.’ Remarking that Finn had now concluded a substantial repast, Appleby pushed forward a cigarette-box. ‘There’s one thing I’d like to ask you more particularly about this man you came upon at the door. And we’ll stop, for the moment, calling him the maniac. You say he looked ferocious. Are you speaking of what had the appearance of a settled disposition, or of features momentarily contorted by anger or fury?’

‘Oh, I say!’ For a second it looked as if this discrimination was beyond Finn’s powers to reflect on. But this proved not to be the case. ‘Well, sir, I don’t think he’d ever look a terribly nice person. But there was quite a lot just happening on his face in the very short time I had my dekko at it. At bay – that sort of thing.’

‘Rage?’

‘Rage, all right.’

‘Surprise?’

‘Surprise, certainly.’

‘Terror?’

‘I think I’d rather say fear, sir.’ Finn paused, as if rather astonished by this nicety. ‘He was scared, all right – which was why he hit out quick, I suppose.’

‘I wonder whether–’

Appleby paused, for the breakfast-room door had opened, and Mrs Colpoys stood framed in it.

‘Colonel Pride is on the telephone, sir. And he says it’s urgent.’

Bobby Appleby came downstairs half an hour later, and made his way hopefully to the kitchen. Mrs Colpoys was polishing silver.

‘If you want coffee, Mr Robert, you must make it for yourself. A busy woman can’t be expected to run a cafeteria service. But at least the milk has come.’

‘All right, Mrs C. Do you mind if I get busy on the grill as well?’

‘Well, don’t make a mess.’ Mrs Colpoys rubbed vigorously. ‘There’s plenty of bacon, but don’t touch those kidneys. They’re for a
sauté
tonight. If you look in the brown bowl you’ll find some particularly large eggs.’

‘You spoil me, you splendid woman.’ Bobby moved contentedly about the kitchen. ‘I say, Mrs C, do you happen to know whether my friend came in last night?’

‘Of course he came in. He’d be no gentleman if he hadn’t. There are limits to the ways college boys can carry on.’

‘We’re not college boys any longer, Mrs C.’

‘Perhaps not – but it’s the behaviour that counts.’ Mrs Colpoys shook her silver-polish vigorously. ‘Your friend came in at I don’t know what hour in the morning. And disturbed your father, it seems. Your father poured a pint of milk into him, and then had to listen to I don’t know what nonsense. Not that your friend sounded as if he were drunk. I won’t say that of him. But so excited that your father had to put him to bed. He might have got you up to do that for him I’d have thought, Mr Robert. Not that you came home at a very early hour yourself. I heard you. And her ladyship’s light didn’t go out until she heard you safely in the house. But she won’t have let on to Sir John about that.’

‘Mrs C, you’re a very observing woman. I had to see somebody off on a train at Linger Junction.’

‘Well, I’ve no doubt an escort must do his duty.’ Mrs Colpoys sounded mollified. ‘I’m glad to know it was at least a lady, and not one of those young trollops from the village.’

‘You have a shocking old mind, Mrs C. It comes of a lifetime in good service. As a matter of fact, I haven’t spoken either to a trollop or a young gentlewoman for weeks.’

‘I don’t call that anything to be proud of.’ As she achieved this volte-face, Mrs Colpoys picked up a Georgian cream-jug. ‘Not wholesome, at all. And now you come gossiping, and keeping an old woman from her work. Now, stop it, Mr Robert.’ Mrs Colpoys flushed with artless pleasure as Bobby kissed her. ‘Here I am, behind-hand already, and not even knowing whether your father will be home to lunch.’

‘He’s gone out?’

‘Appealed to by that Colonel Pride. The Chief Constable.’ Mrs Colpoys made this communication with great satisfaction. ‘Urgent, the Colonel said it was. Sir John is a long-suffering man. Hurried away, he has, and taken your precious friend with him.’

‘Taken Finn?’ Bobby put down his knife and fork in astonishment. ‘Taken Finn to see the Chief Constable?’

‘That he has. And left a message for you with her ladyship. If you’ve finished eating me out of my kitchen you’d better be off and find her.’

Bobby did as he was told, and came upon his mother arranging a bowl of chrysanthemums in the hall. He wondered why she was putting in time in this ladylike way instead of slapping clay around in her studio. Then he saw that she had the rather still expression she wore when something disturbing or unfortunate had happened.

‘Mummy, what on earth is this about Daddy and Finn and Colonel Pride?’

‘Have you had breakfast?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tommy Pride rang up to tell your father that Martyn Ashmore is dead. Tommy just heard.’

‘That old man dead!’ Bobby looked blankly at his mother. ‘I’m very sorry to hear it. But why on earth should Pride have heard about it so soon – and want to get hold of Daddy?’

‘It ties up with other things, I suppose. Including the nonsense that you and those two young men were up to last night. I gather you actually did go to the Chase?’

‘Yes, we did.’

‘It seems to have been rather a dangerous place recently. Your father was very nearly killed there the other day. Has he told you?’

‘Good God! No, he hasn’t. You mean in some accident?’

‘It didn’t seem very like an accident. Equally, it might have been Martyn Ashmore who was killed…then.’

‘Daddy ought to have told me – I mean, when he knew we were going to be fooling around there.’

‘I rather agree with you.’ Lady Appleby was extremely calm. ‘But you must remember how much such things have been part of the day’s work with him all his life.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Bobby was surprised to find himself feeling rather sick. ‘Do you mean that the old man has been
killed
?’

‘Killed? Murdered? I’m not the police, and I can’t tell you. They can’t tell themselves, for that matter. Your father has gone off with his fingers crossed.’

‘Mummy – what do you mean?’

‘He told Tommy at once about what you three had been up to. Tommy was very nice. He said instantly he had some hope that it would turn out to have been a CVA.’

‘What on earth is that?’

‘It’s doctors’ and coroners’ shorthand for cerebro-vascular accident.’ Lady Appleby smiled faintly. ‘And that’s just technical jargon for a stroke.’

‘I see,’ Bobby said slowly. ‘I was taken in, you know.’

‘Taken in? Hoodwinked?’

‘No, no – I don’t mean that. Taken into the Chase by his nephew – Finn’s friend Giles. I talked to him. He seemed quite all right.’

‘But odd things were happening?’

‘I suppose one would have to say that. Ashmore and Giles had a talk about that beastly girl. It seems that the old man himself–’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘So there was that – shabby deceptions with the makings of something nasty in them, I suppose. And, for good measure, there was a demented keeper with a gun.’

‘I’ve heard that too, Bobby. And your friend Finn – he continued to hang around, you see – ran into something odder still. It’s my guess that a great many inquiries will have to be made. And that brings me to your father’s message. You know where King’s Yatter is?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘You are to go straight there now, get hold of Giles Ashmore again quite quietly, and take him over to the Chase. Daddy will be there – as a policeman more or less, you should remember – and so will the Chief Constable and his surgeon and a whole crime squad. I’m sorry.’

‘Mummy, it won’t get me down – not even if I’m to be painfully exhibited as having been fooling around like a kid. Will Daddy think it awful?’

‘No, he will not. Of course, he will like it better if you show some brains. I expect you will.’

‘Thanks a lot. But, by the way, I don’t know about Giles. If I can get hold of him, I mean. It’s quite likely he won’t be back yet. But I’m forgetting I haven’t told you. I shoved him on the midnight train for London. He was determined to see the girl. Quite right, in a way.’

‘I suppose so.’ With an effect of some concentration, Lady Appleby stepped back to examine the effect of her flowers. ‘Whatever has happened,’ she said, ‘there is bound to be an inquest. Not all the doctors in the county, with the Lord Lieutenant himself behind them, could prevent that. In fact there’s a disgusting scandal ahead.’ Lady Appleby stepped forward again, and altered the position of the chrysanthemums in relation to the dark panelling behind them. She gave a nod of satisfaction. ‘Never mind,’ she said briskly to her son. ‘And now be off.’

‘Even if I don’t find Giles, I still go on to the Chase?’

‘Yes, of course. Don’t waste time.’ Lady Appleby smiled suddenly. ‘Only don’t drive that ancient thing
too
fast. Remember there will be coppers all over the place.’ She put down a pair of scissors. ‘Hoobin’s cocoa,’ she said. ‘That’s the next thing.’

There was no Appleby or Raven fortune to speak of, and neither Bobby Appleby nor his brother and sisters had much thought of anything that could be called a patrimony. Probably Dream would have to be sold up one day, and that would be that. This situation had one consequence at the moment: Bobby had driven halfway to King’s Yatter before it came into his head that numerous Ashmores must have fresh expectations as a result of Martyn Ashmore’s death. Rupert Ashmore, father of Giles and of de Voisin’s fiancée Virginia, was probably the person most immediately affected. Unless Bobby had got things wrong, Rupert was now the head of the family, and would be due to inherit the Chase. But Martyn Ashmore had at least enjoyed the reputation of being very wealthy, and if this was true there would be a lot more going. Of course the dead man had notoriously disliked his relations (doubtless including the wretched Giles, whom he had been amusing himself by making a fool of), and this might mean that he would leave all the wealth he could to, say, an Oxford college or a home for stray dogs. But Bobby had a notion that this was something which didn’t often really happen. Even detested relations usually came in for their whack.

It was a sunny morning with a nip in the air, and as he crossed the downs at a good pace once more Bobby’s spirits rose. The notion that on the previous night the Chase had really seen some deed of dreadful note was surely extravagant. There wasn’t all that to be said for the country gentry; he seldom found them other than dismally dull; but at least it wasn’t their habit to go in for crimes of violence. His father probably found them dismally dull too – and perhaps for precisely this reason. That was it. His father, in too placid and uneventful a retirement, was taking to fancying things. Bobby shoved the accelerator farther down. He felt a little sorry for his father. As for his mother, she was easily upset. She didn’t at all want crime bobbing up in the vicinity; as John Appleby’s wife she had come in for quite enough of it. But by now she would have taken Hoobin his cocoa and gone off to mess about with her clay. That was clearly one of the pleasant things about a career in the plastic arts. You could keep it up pretty well to the grave. Since it was all a matter of exploring formal relations it didn’t really require – as writing, on the other hand, did – any constant access of fresh human experience.