Death at the Chase (16 page)

Bobby Appleby began to whistle as he drove – and then checked himself, feeling that perhaps it wasn’t quite decent. It struck him that it was a bit feeble to be hoping that any real excitement over Martyn Ashmore’s death would fade out. What was involvement (in not too desperately intimate a relation) with crime and guilt and misery except very much an access of fresh human experience? Bobby assumed a more serious expression, waited for a signpost that said ‘King’s Yatter 12, Abbot’s Yatter 4’, and turned off the high road.

The house was a half-timber affair with a thatched roof; there was plenty of it, but it was probably more picturesque than comfortable. At the back there was a large garden, walled round in ancient brick. There didn’t seem to be more land than that. Bobby wondered whether Rupert Ashmore did, or had ever done, anything in particular. He wasn’t a Colonel or a Commander or an Honourable, like so many people living in this sort of style round these parts. A City gent, perhaps. Or just a gent.

Bobby remembered that his instructions were to get hold of Giles Ashmore ‘quite quietly’. He was sure that these had been his mother’s words, and they suddenly struck him as a little odd. Rupert Ashmore was presumably the next proprietor of the Chase, and he was quite certainly what was called the dead man’s next of kin. Surely he would have been told by this time of his brother’s death? It seemed impossible that even Colonel Pride could take the responsibility of keeping him in the dark about it for more than an hour or two. Perhaps Rupert was known to be away from home. That might be it.

Giles – as Bobby had now worked it out – would undoubtedly still be absent. He couldn’t even have changed his mind about London, for the train into which Bobby had shoved him, and which he had watched leave the Junction, travelled non-stop to Paddington. Even if Giles had lost his nerve there – which was likely enough – he could hardly have turned tail and got home by now. Bobby wondered whether there was a Mrs Rupert. He had a notion that Rupert himself was almost as old as Martyn. That meant well past the span allotted to us by the Psalmist. But then the Psalmist was almost gruesomely out of date. (Gruesomely, Bobby added to himself, except when one is thinking of one’s parents, old housemaster, former tutor, and a few other persons to be viewed in a sentimental light.) People – or at least people who inhabited houses like King’s Yatter – now invariably lived to an enormous age. Even if they were Ashmores only by marriage they did that. So in all probability there was a Mrs Rupert. Perhaps it would be Mrs Rupert – silver-haired, gracious, and rather puzzled – who would receive him when he asked for Giles. He would have to fish around to discover whether she had received the distressing news about her disagreeable brother-in-law. If she hadn’t, he would have to decide whether he was meant to tell her. And he hadn’t been given a clue. Perhaps his father designed that he should use those brains. Bobby himself had never been sure that he
had
brains. He had once been possessed of a sort of rapid cunning useful on a rugger-field. But his writing didn’t seem to have much to do with brains. It was something that bobbed up in his head – he really didn’t at all know how. It wasn’t even part of what could be called his normal personality – the personality, for example, of the chap who went around with chaps like Giles and Finn.

Bobby Appleby (it will be observed) had fallen as he drove upon an absorbingly interesting subject. This was why he had to brake rather sharply in order not to kill somebody.

It was a girl – surrounded by dachshunds of the long-haired sort, and behaving as if she and they owned the road. This, indeed, might well be the state of the case, since he was now on the very short drive leading up to Mr Rupert Ashmore’s residence.

‘I’m most frightfully sorry,’ Bobby said. At least – since the Mercedes was an open car – he didn’t have to stick his head in an idiotic manner through a window. Before looking at the girl he had looked at her nasty little dogs, since he felt that it was solicitude in that direction which would go down well. ‘I hope I didn’t startle them.’ He transferred his gaze, and as a result was uncommonly startled himself. She, was an overwhelmingly beautiful girl. The overwhelmingness was perhaps a consequence of that celibate life which Bobby – as he had lately informed Mrs Colpoys – had been maintaining for weeks. It was striking, all the same.

‘We weren’t startled, at all,’ the girl said politely. Very vexatiously, she gave no sign of being immediately prepossessed by Robert Appleby (Rugger Blue, promising anti-novelist). ‘Have you lost your way?’

‘Well, no – I don’t think so. I’m looking for a friend I believe lives here. Giles Ashmore.’

‘I’m Giles’ sister, Virgina. You must be Finn.’

‘I’m not Finn. My name is Appleby. Bobby. I haven’t known Giles for very long.’

‘How do you do? I’m afraid Giles is away. That’s to say, he went off yesterday, and hasn’t come back yet. I don’t know why. He isn’t at all wild.’

‘I suppose not.’ It had just dawned on Bobby – to an effect of somewhat absurd dismay – that this girl was engaged to the young Frenchman he had stumbled upon on the previous evening. It seemed a most unnecessary entanglement. Bobby felt rather cross. This made him speak abruptly. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘Giles has gone off in a hurry to see Robina.’

‘Oh.’ Miss Ashmore put something decidedly chilly into this monosyllable.

‘Is either of your parents at home?’ Bobby had remembered that there
was
a Mrs Rupert. She had accepted Robina sufficiently to tote her round. Hence the plebeian girl’s fatal
rencontre
with the late Martyn Ashmore. Socially regarded, Mrs Rupert must be more open-minded than her daughter.

‘My mother is at home. My father went to London yesterday afternoon.’

‘I don’t suppose
he
went to see this Robina Bunker, by any chance?’

‘I hardly suppose so.’ Virginia Ashmore said this very coldly indeed. ‘My father does not wholly approve of my brother’s engagement. It is kind of you to be so interested in us, Mr Appleby. Are you the police officer’s son?’

‘Yes, I am.’ Bobby felt angry. ‘Police officer’ contrived to be both accurate and derogatory.

‘So your father is a Bobby too.’ Miss Ashmore produced this impertinent joke as if it were a substantial witticism. ‘Should you care to see my mother?’

‘I don’t think so, thank you.’ Bobby, although he had decided to hate Virginia Ashmore, hesitated for a moment. Regarded merely as a visual object, she was so compelling that he almost felt prepared to stand and be insulted by her indefinitely. Were one to venture to imagine her as a tactile sensation – Bobby pulled himself together. ‘I had the pleasure of meeting Monsieur de Voisin last night,’ he said with some formality.

‘Jules?’ Miss Ashmore appeared startled. ‘Where was that?’

‘Near the Chase. He had been visiting your uncle. Isn’t he staying here?’

‘Yes – for a few days longer. He didn’t mention going to the Chase, although it is natural enough, of course, that he should visit my uncle.’

‘All you Ashmores are a bit at odds with each other, aren’t you?’

If Rupert Ashmore’s daughter thought this an outrageous remark she refrained from saying so. But she did summon her dachshunds around her, as if proposing to conclude the encounter.

‘Can I give my brother a message?’ she asked.

‘That’s very good of you.’ Bobby now felt extremely awkward. It didn’t seem reasonable to go away without telling this girl – however little he had determined to fancy her – what had happened to her uncle. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I had bad news for him – which I think none of you can have heard. It’s about Mr Martyn Ashmore.’

‘Uncle Martyn? Has he done something hopelessly embarrassing?’

‘I hope it needn’t be called that. He has died – rather suddenly.’

‘Oh!’ Miss Ashmore had turned pale. ‘How dreadful! I hardly ever saw him. He was mad.’

‘If you hardly ever saw him, how can you know that?’

‘Mr Appleby, your manner is extremely strange. My uncle’s state was well known. My father has explained it to me. Martyn Ashmore suffered from paranoia. He had delusions of persecution. It was becoming apparent that something must be done about it.’

‘Well, nothing need be done about it now.’ Bobby glanced curiously at the girl. It was
her
manner that was extremely strange; she had spoken ironically and as if by rote. ‘Will you tell your brother, when he gets home? And your mother and fiancé, I suppose. The police will probably be trying to contact your father.’

‘The police!’ As if she felt not too steady on her shapely limbs, Miss Ashmore took hold of the door of Bobby’s car. ‘Is it something dreadful? Did my uncle kill himself?’

‘I’m terribly sorry, Miss Ashmore. I don’t really know much about it. But I don’t think there is any suspicion of just that.’

‘Not through…fear?’

‘Fear?’ Bobby was puzzled. ‘I suppose fear – of disease, perhaps, or even of persecution – makes people take their own lives sometimes. I hope it’s been nothing of the kind. As a matter of fact, I’m on my way to the Chase now. I was to fetch Giles there. My father has gone over. The Chief Constable asked him to.’ Bobby had decided to be wholly frank. ‘Shall I bring back any news to you?’

‘Take me there – at once.’

‘But ought you not, perhaps, to tell your mother?’ Bobby was almost alarmed.

‘At once, please.’ Virginia Ashmore had actually opened the door of the car.

‘But what about the dogs?’ This was a perfectly sensible question, but Bobby somehow felt idiotic as he asked it. ‘Shall we,’ he went on more resourcefully, ‘put them in the back?’

‘They’ll go home. They don’t like cars.’ Bobby found that the girl was sitting beside him. ‘I suppose you know,’ she said, ‘about strange things that have been going on?’

‘Well, yes – I know about some. I think my father knows about rather more.’

‘So does mine, Mr Appleby.’

Bobby said nothing. For good or ill, he had a passenger, and he concentrated on turning the long Mercedes in the narrow drive. He was conscious of wanting to make a neat job of it. For a moment it looked as if the beastly little dogs were going to be a complication. But they gathered into a small pack and made off towards the house – plainly disapproving of the whole thing. It was only when he was out on the road that Bobby spoke.

‘And your brother?’ he asked.

‘Giles is by himself.’

‘I know – if he hasn’t joined Miss Bunker.’

‘I don’t mean that. I mean that Giles walks by himself, like Kipling’s cat.’

‘He doesn’t muck in?’ It seemed to Bobby that Virginia Ashmore had made her first civilized remark. ‘Not with the rest of the family?’

‘Just that. Uncle Martyn was supposed to be frightening. But it’s Giles who frightens me.’

‘And Monsieur de Voisin – Jules?’

‘Jules has been very angry. The French are not scrupulous. But they detest the bizarre.’

‘I see.’ Bobby said this automatically, for in fact he felt in very considerable darkness. But it struck him that Virginia was by no means as dumb – in the slang sense – as very beautiful girls so often and so disappointingly were. ‘I think I ought to tell you that there is probably a whole
posse
of police at the Chase.’

‘Naturally, if what you are hinting at is true.’

‘I’ve no business to hint anything.’ Bobby suddenly felt very bad. ‘And there’s something else I must say. I was at the Chase last night myself. Along with your brother and my crackpot friend Finn. And we were being damnably silly.’

‘Where is Finn now?’

‘At the Chase. My father took him there. I haven’t seen him since – well, since the middle of things last night. There was a kind of row. He told Giles and me to sod off, more or less.’ Bobby’s use of this expression rather surprised him. It admitted Virginia into a kind of intimacy. He and his friends employed the idiom of their simpler contemporaries only among themselves. ‘And listen,’ he said. ‘I believe Colonel Pride – that’s the Chief Constable, who’s a friend of my family – is a very decent chap. Still – talk to my father, if you want to talk.’

‘Bobby Senior?’ For the first time in this strange encounter, Miss Ashmore faintly smiled. ‘I apologize for that crack.’

‘Not a bit,’ Bobby said. He was wondering how his father would react when, having failed to turn up with the aspiring curator of museums, he turned up with this show-piece of a girl instead. ‘You don’t think,’ he asked, ‘that we ought to go back and fetch Jules too?’

‘Why should we do that?’

This question curiously discomposed Bobby – so much so, that he failed to find a reply.

‘Jules can look after the dogs,’ Virginia said. ‘He gave them to me.’

‘Really? They’re terribly jolly.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

Bobby’s head swam. This girl was getting at him badly. He saw with a horrid clearness that she was going to cause him sleepless nights.

‘Was it you who wrote
The Lumber Room
?’ Virginia asked suddenly.

‘Yes, it was.’ Bobby positively clutched at the wheel of his car.

‘I thought it – well, terribly jolly.’

‘You are a devil,’ Bobby said.

‘No, I’m not.’ The girl beside Bobby Appleby spoke in a changed voice. ‘But I think there may be a devil around.’

Abbot’s Yatter and Elsewhere

The body had been removed, but not the blood from the hearthstone. Hearthstone and threshold, Appleby thought: blood found on these cries out louder than any other. Cries out, that is to say, in the remote recesses of the mind. But there are other symbolic places too. Odour of blood on the ancestral stair. Yeats.

A wounded scalp bleeds freely, even if the wound has caused almost instant death. There was quite a lot of blood. Small splashes, which had congealed soonest, were now curling up at the edges. These might at any moment take flight, one could feel, like the autumn leaves in the park outside – but upwards to some supernal judgement seat to cry for vengeance. There had been one deeper pool, and some downward draught from the great chimney had puffed wood-ash into it from the extinguished fire. The effect was of some small fur-clad creature, mangled and flattened by a passing wheel.