Hare Sitting Up (6 page)

‘Very good. You will pack your bag, and mention to the relevant people that you are an executor of your late friend’s estate, and that after the funeral you may be detained by business for some days.’

Juniper frowned. ‘I suppose,’ he asked, ‘there must be a funeral?’

And Appleby caught his meaning. ‘
Absit omen
,’ he said.

Three days later Dr Herbert Clandon came to see Appleby. He was a large comfortable rumbling man, but his comfortableness didn’t prevent his being at present heavy-eyed and anxious.

‘No news?’ he said, when he had shaken hands.

‘Not a glimmer.’ Appleby was far from looking carefree himself.

‘Nice view you have here.’ Clandon, who wasn’t the sort of person that one bothered to ask to sit down, had strolled over to the window and was looking over the Thames. ‘Top man gets choice of room – eh?’

‘Just that.’

‘Never happen to me.’ Clandon rumbled contentedly. He was aristocratic, wealthy, and an FRS ‘Back room boy’. He accepted a cigarette from the box held out to him. ‘Not a glimmer, you say? Now, that would be significant of what?’

‘Certainly not of Professor Juniper’s wandering around, harmlessly mad. We’d have picked him up by now. If that was the initial situation, it’s over.’

Clandon nodded. ‘So I’d have supposed, Appleby. Let’s face it.’

‘Let’s face it, by all means. Of course, it mayn’t have been the initial situation at all. He may have walked out, as sane as you are, to a prepared hide-out where he can be snug till the Greek Kalends.’

‘Or till Kingdom Come – which is better English, my boy.’ Clandon had enjoyed a nodding acquaintance with Appleby for a long time.

‘Alternatively, he may have had an equally well-prepared plan to leave the country. No highly intelligent man would find difficulty in evolving one.’

‘Clearly not. Nor is it difficult to drown oneself with a millstone round one’s neck – if one’s intent on leaving behind one as much mystery and anxiety as possible.’ Clandon rumbled again – but gloomily this time. ‘I don’t think, by the way, that you’ve mentioned what must be the commonest occasion of a fellow’s cutting the painter.’

‘Something about a woman?’ Appleby shook his head. ‘My sense of the matter is all against that, somehow.’

‘And I think you’re right. Howard never had any interest in women, as far as I could see. Or in sex in general. Which doesn’t mean, mark you, that he was extravagantly out of the way. Plenty of busy men just never bother. They don’t, somehow, get into novels and plays and suchlike trash. But they exist. This brother’s rather the same, I’d say.’ Clandon came lumbering over to Appleby’s desk. He was dressed in tweeds so hairy as to suggest some sort of cave man. ‘You’ve landed me, by the way, with the hell of an assignment there.’ Clandon rumbled more than ever. ‘I admit it has been a good idea. But it’s a headache, I don’t mind telling you. Bloody bad actor, Howard’s brother the usher. Even now that he’s calmed down a bit.’

‘Bad, is he?’ Appleby was rather surprised. ‘Tell me all about it. You don’t think anybody has guessed?’

‘Lord, no. Our crowd has no eyes for anything outside a test-tube, thank goodness. Getting the deception going was perfectly easy. As soon as brother Miles arrived I whisked him into Howard’s private lab, dressed him up in a white coat, and had in a couple of junior people just to get a word from myself. So it went round at once that the Head Man was back. Lucky that brother Miles didn’t have to put up more of a show at the start. He was in a poor way.’

‘He was sufficiently strung up when I saw him at his school and gave him the news. But I’m rather surprised by what you say. Miles struck me as quite tough, down below. And the brothers used to play ball with each other’s identities long ago. So the job oughtn’t to have been too disconcerting. Although it’s Howard, it seems, who has been a bit of an actor since.’

‘Certainly it isn’t the usher, as I’ll make clear. But first – about his being in a state. That hasn’t lasted, thank goodness. The next morning, he was a different man.’

‘A different man?’ In its particular context, Appleby found this phrase startling.

Clandon roared with laughter. ‘One can see it turning into an old-fashioned farce,’ he said. ‘First twin going out by the door and second twin climbing in by the window. But all I mean is that this Miles had got a grip on himself. He was far less anxious.’

‘About his ability to carry the impersonation through?’

Clandon looked doubtful. ‘Well, I suppose so. Although if he thought he was being good at it, he was quite confoundedly wide of the mark. Still, there it was. If you’d been able to weigh his quantum of anxiety on a balance, I’m pretty sure you’d have found that about half of it had evaporated.’

Appleby considered this. ‘Perhaps it was a sudden swing to over-confidence?’

‘Perhaps it was. Part of the trouble with his passing himself off as Howard during these last two days has been that there’s been no discretion about it. He’s drifted round the labs – and even entered into conversation with people – far more than has been necessary. And it isn’t, as I’ve said, as if he were capable of putting up a virtuoso performance. I’ve seen him make several hair-raising blunders myself.’

‘How very odd.’ Appleby had risen from his desk and himself paced rather restlessly to a window. ‘Rusty, in a manner of speaking – wouldn’t that be it? Nothing like up to his old level of performance, and yet instinctively aiming at it.’

‘It’s an idea.’ Clandon sounded dubious.

‘Consider the sort of turns the two brothers used to put on as lads. You must have heard of some of them.’

‘I’ve heard’ – Clandon rumbled with renewed cheerfulness – ‘that Howard played Rugger for England. Eighty thousand people looking on, and supposing that it was Miles scoring the vital try against Ireland.’

‘Precisely.’ Appleby swung round to face the room. ‘To you and me, a thing like that is amusing and admirable. But think of the scandal, if it had ever come out officially: a rowing Blue – which is what Howard was – smuggling himself into an International Rugger match! Think of all the old gentlemen who played against Wales in ’97, and so on. Criminal irresponsibility would be their verdict. Fellow who could do that, sir, ought to be ducked in a horse-pond. Wouldn’t that be the reaction?’

Clandon nodded. ‘Certainly it would. No doubt as undergraduates the terrible Juniper twins made their fun as risky and outrageous as possible. But would that really prompt Miles to be unnecessarily venturesome – now, in this desperately serious situation? No, I think it must be simply that he lacks judgement. And technique. He’s simply just not a convincing Professor Howard Juniper. But, I dare say, we can get by for a few days more. At least the man isn’t the nervous wreck he showed signs of being when he arrived.’

Appleby stared at Clandon thoughtfully. ‘That wouldn’t be because of your playing down the possible calamitousness of the thing?’

‘Certainly not. It was my idea that it might brace brother Miles to be told straight just what the conceivable stakes were. I put it in the same entirely untechnical language that I treated you to, my dear Appleby, when this bombshell first burst on us. We have all sorts of checks and precautions at our little game, and according to the book of rules I ought to have known, day by day, precisely what Howard was, or was not, in possession of. But Howard is far too brilliant – and wayward, if you like – to stick to all that. So, when he vanished, I was in no position to check up with certainty. Supposing him to have been quite, quite mad – which we are agreed is one possible starting point – then he
may
conceivably have had it in his power to walk out with something almost inconceivably lethal. I put that to brother Miles straight.’

‘And how did he react?’

‘Reasonably enough. He asked me for my own opinion – my own estimate of the degree of probability that it was such a situation we are up against. I gave him my own honest answer: that there’s a slight balance of probability against Howard’s being in possession of anything of the sort.’

Appleby frowned. ‘I see. Well – that’s why Miles’ nervous tone has improved. He has confidence in your opinion – which is the only well-informed one, after all.’

‘Perhaps so. At the time, I was chiefly struck by his inability to make much of it all. No doubt he’s a classical man, and all that. But his ability to grasp some elementary scientific conceptions is pretty dim. I doubt whether he understood the nature of a filter-passing virus.’

‘Didn’t he, indeed?’ Appleby had turned away rather absently, and was once more studying the Thames. ‘But Miles’ intellectual constitution is less relevant than Howard’s emotional one. That’s what I want to get clearer from you, Clandon. What I
have
got doesn’t help. I mean that, in a way, I’d like to think of Howard as a bit battier than you seem able to bring him out.’

‘I understand that – and, mind you, Howard’s a dark horse. Although I’ve worked with him so closely for some time, there are few men I’m conscious of being so uncertain about. Of course he lives on his nerves, as so many top-flighters do. He’s a worrying type, in a way. But then so does brother Miles seem to be – so that’s perhaps no more than a family trait.’

Appleby reflected for a moment. ‘But I gather you don’t suspect Howard of regarding the whole drift of his work as a nightmare?’

‘Well, no – not quite that. Of course, he does brood at times on the insane purposes science is being harnessed to. We all do that. And I’ve known him, in phases of discouragement, declare our own particular position – at the research station, I mean – to be on the verge of becoming morally impossible and unendurable. But then he bobs up again, damns all governments roundly, and says that we’ll whack some sense into them yet. By “us” he means, you know, scientists as a class – or as a calling or vocation or whatever. If I have doubts about Howard having cracked up and gone batty, it’s because of that intensity of faith in “us”. No doubt, if something happened to undermine that faith, he’d be in for a bad time.’

‘But, so far as you know, nothing has?’

Clandon nodded emphatically. ‘So far as I know, nothing has. Rather the contrary. In June he went to a conference in Amsterdam, and met some top Russians. He came back quite cheered up. Those chaps, he said, were pretty cautious, of course. But it was clear that, in a last analysis, they belonged to “us” one hundred per cent.’

‘Not meaning more, really, than that they are good and sincere scientists?’

‘Oh, quite so. Still, Howard was rather cheered up, as I say. Although worried, at the same time, by the whole damned thing.’ Clandon shook his head impatiently. ‘I find it hard to give you the picture of Howard as I see or feel it. Comes of being no sort of psychologist, I suppose.’

Appleby smiled. ‘Aren’t you simply saying this: that your Head Man has been at times sorely troubled, but has shown no signs of really acute anxiety?’

‘That’s it.’ Clandon looked relieved. ‘That’s it exactly. No acute anxiety. Except, conceivably, about his brother.’

‘What’s that you say?’ For a moment Appleby was left staring. ‘I’m quite clear that
Miles
has been subject to rather acute anxiety about
Howard
: about his brother’s whole moral position and so on. Are you telling me that
Howard
has been in acute anxiety about
Miles
?’

‘Well, yes – I am, as a matter of fact.’ Clandon was almost apologetic. ‘Mind you, Howard hasn’t often talked to me about Miles. And, when he has, his overt attitude hasn’t been of anxiety at all. He’s professed rather to envy Miles his obscure and blameless life. You can imagine the sort of thing: decent job teaching decent boys decency. Not, like ourselves, walking a razor’s edge between science and lunacy. Obvious line. Wholesome line, for that matter. I take it about my own elder brother, who’s happy all the year round, just improving the estate and chasing foxes.’

‘Bother your own elder brother.’ Appleby was almost excited. ‘What has seemed to lie under Howard’s obvious line?’

‘The notion, I imagine, that Miles is thoroughly unstable. And it’s so strong in Howard, if you ask me, that it has to peep out whenever Miles is in focus at all.’

‘A kind of morbid apprehensiveness?’

‘My dear chap, you do put these things well. Comes of constantly having to size people up, I suppose.’ Clandon seemed genuinely admiring. ‘Put it this way: if Howard read of something pretty calamitous happening to somebody, he’d be apt to think that that’s just the sort of thing likely to happen to Miles. A foreboding attitude, you might say. And occasionally sticking out so that even a mere nose-in-test-tube type like myself must notice it. Brotherly instinct for protectiveness, I suppose.’

‘No doubt it can be put that way. And I’m no sort of psychologist either. But wouldn’t it be orthodox psychoanalytical doctrine that the basis of such an attitude – at least if at all obsessive – lies in deep unconscious hostility?’

Clandon was silent for a moment. ‘Deep waters,’ he said quietly. ‘And I suppose Cain and Abel are latent in every pair of brothers. But identical twins may be a special case. Probably one pundit would regard them as one sort of special case, and another would regard them as another. Meanwhile, where do we go? Unconscious hostility is a queer notion to take up – having landed ourselves with the fantastic situation we have.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’ Appleby paced the room. ‘So take it, for a start, in terms of common sense. Excessive anxiety about a brother – or any other relative – would be too pathological altogether if there weren’t some reasonable springboard for it. Well, I suppose Miles might be said to afford something of the sort?’

‘I wonder.’ Clandon hesitated. ‘Do you know, I don’t think much of it? Remember that our only experience of brother Miles is in a thoroughly upsetting context. First, you go down and tell him his brother’s vanished. And second, he’s yanked off to undertake a decidedly queer assignment. Well, he’s had his bad time, as I’ve described. But it’s not clear to me that in any circumstances he’d be a really bad risk. Would you agree?’