The Daffodil Affair (25 page)

Hudspith must be murdered here.
And he must know it
. Appleby frowned as he hit upon this point. If you do not know that you are being murdered it is conceivable that your ghost will never know that you were murdered. Hudspith must be brought back all unsuspecting; he must be made aware that his murder is imminent; he must be murdered with the knowledge of as few persons as possible; his body must be disposed of safely and instantly; all must be as if he were still smoothly dropping down the river in the company of Beaglehole.

These were the conditions of the experiment. Most of them Lucy had worked out already; and Lucy had seen how drastically they limited the enemy’s power of manoeuvre. How could the thing be done?

Appleby looked up into the empty South American sky. It needed an aeroplane, he thought.

The steamer could not come back. But Hudspith must come back. Suppose, then, that Beaglehole affected to remember some vital point in the proposed deal with Radbone which Wine had not cleared up. Suppose that, some way down the river, a plane of Wine’s opportunely turned up. Suppose Beaglehole proposed a quick hop back in this to the Happy Islands and then a return hop before the steamer had gone much farther on its way. This would serve to bring an unsuspecting Hudspith back and – what was equally important – it would serve to get Beaglehole quickly away again after the murder. For nobody must know of Beaglehole as mysteriously returned and hanging about. The moment Hudspith was murdered it would be desirable that Beaglehole should make himself scarce. And for this a plane would be the thing. An amphibian plane could come and go in darkness. And Wine was almost certain to possess one. It all combined to bring Lucy’s plan within the fringes of the feasible… Appleby knocked out his pipe and started down the hill. Lucy Rideout was all right. One knew where one was with her – now. But what of Hannah Metcalfe – and Daffodil? He looked out over the dark luxuriant fringe of the river to the infinite spaces beyond. An army could manoeuvre there.

Black coffee is the best vehicle for administering a surreptitious sleeping draught, and at half past eight that night Appleby gave the appearance of drinking a good deal of black coffee. An hour later he told Wine and Mrs Nurse that he was feeling sleepy. And half an hour after that again he was in bed. He was in bed and in darkness – for the night was very dark. He lay in bed thinking of the curious turn which it was proposed that things should take. Finish was required; there must be a constant care for convincing detail. And Appleby put out his arm and turned on a little lamp by his bedside. He tossed an open book, spine upwards, on the floor. It would be thus with a man whom an opiate had surprised.

Everything was very quiet by eleven o’clock; so quiet in this over-populated house that it was tempting to believe there must have been laudanum all round. The sluggish river slapped half-heartedly at the stone steps before the front door of 37 Hawke Square; a light wind intermittently clattered in some metropolitan chimney-top contrivance overhead; far away the creatures of the South American night called to each other sparely and without conviction – the call of wild things perpetually half awake on the off-chance of alarm or catastrophe. For Appleby it was an off-chance too; it would mean a hitch if he were called out into the violent stream of things that night. But he was very wakeful.

Wine came at twenty past eleven. He tapped at the door – lightly; slipped into the room – softly; spoke – very quietly indeed. ‘Appleby, my dear fellow, I hope you don’t mind–’ He was across the room and by the bed; and now he said nothing more. Appleby, breathing heavily, sensed him as sitting down. And then he felt a touch, light but purposive, on his wrist. Wine was feeling his pulse.

Constantly one had to remember that it would all be very scientific. The way to avoid surprises was to remember this. Doubtless this pulse business would be repeated at frequent intervals during the next hour or so. For, hard by the sleeping man, stirring events were presently to accomplish themselves. How interesting – how scientifically interesting – if that pulse quickened to some obscure intimation of drama from the waking world!

Wine must be watching him intently. And as Appleby visualized that intent glance he felt his own eyelids flicker as those of a man heavily asleep ought not to do; he contrived to stir uneasily, groan, and bury his head in the pillow. And what, in fact, would his pulse tell? Wine was a hard man to cozen.

The light from the bedside lamp still seeped faintly through to Appleby’s retina; outside the room, on the second-floor landing, another faint light would be burning. But everywhere else there would be a velvet blackness now; only from high overhead the river would show, perhaps, as a streak of dullest silver. No doubt a skilful pilot – Appleby listened. From far down the river came a murmur of sound that grew momentarily in volume and then faded away. There was silence and then far off a bird cried. A bird cried and another answered; many birds were calling, and the blended sound made the same murmur but louder, so that it drowned the sullen slap-slap of the river and the creak of the London chimney pot overhead. But again there was silence, and then again the murmur grew, louder still. Colony by colony up the long reaches of the river the birds were coming awake and crying and then once more sinking to rest. High above them something was passing – and now a new vibration could be felt, a new sound heard. The faint quick throb of the engine grew. And again Appleby felt the touch on his wrist.

The engine cut out. Seconds passed. Now the plane must be on the water. But nothing more was heard, and the lengthened minutes crawled interminably by.

‘Appleby!’ It was Wine’s voice, sudden and commanding hard by Appleby’s ear. But this was something abundantly to be expected, and the sluggish movement of the head which alone resulted must have been convincing enough. For now Wine took Appleby’s right arm and cautiously pushed up the sleeve above the elbow. Something cool, firm, binding was applied and faintly the arm began to throb. More science. A mere finger on the pulse was not enough; here was one of those gadgets which gives much more accurate information on how the human engine behaves… Minutes passed again, and then a sharp jarring sound came up and in through the open window. That was a boat, thought Appleby; Hudspith and Beaglehole had arrived. And
that
– there was a click and a distant bang – was the front door opening and closing. And in a moment there would be footsteps on the stairs.

Mr Smart’s stairs – the stairs up which that respectable merchant had mounted on returning from his good-humoured holiday at Yarmouth. And now Hudspith was coming up, with Beaglehole, maybe, a couple of treads behind him… The throb in Appleby’s arm changed its tempo; nothing could be done about that; Wine must make what he might of it. And now they were outside on the landing and there seemed to be a pause. Here they would have to halt if the proposal was to knock up Wine in his bedroom. Would they go higher? Beaglehole had a room on the next floor – the floor where Mr Smart’s nurseries had lain. Could a pretext be manufactured out of that? Appleby strained his ears. Yes, they were going up. Wine sat very still.

A murmur of voices floated briefly down. Voices in talk – and then a voice in surprise, in anger, in alarm. There was a split second’s silence, and then a queer crack or smack followed by a thud. Silence flooded the house, was broken by a deep gasp as of a man raising a burden. Then a brief slither, a bump, a slither again and again a bump. And finally, from below, one single and very horrible sound.

Appleby rolled over, groaned and again lay still; the performance gave some little ease to his nerves. Probably there were beads of sweat on his face; of that too Wine must make what he would. Steps were descending. They went past the landing and down again without hurry but without pause. And then the front door must have been opened once more. For from outside came up a heavy splash. The incomparable digestive system of the crocodile genus was being invoked – and perhaps the affair held no worse moment than that… A very long pause followed. On those smooth marble slabs, transported so far for this far-fetched destiny, a good deal of mopping up would have to be done. But presently that too was over, and up from the river came the low plash of oars cautiously plied. The sound died away, and as it did so the pressure on Appleby’s arm relaxed. Wine was packing up his instrument. Now, with the quiet satisfaction of an investigator who has successfully laid the foundations for an important experiment, he would take himself off to bed.

Breakfast was even better than usual. There was melon in monster slices which the servants had cut so as to give an appearance of quaintly serrated teeth, and Wine, though a modest host, had to confess himself quite proud of the grilled trout. Mrs Nurse placidly poured coffee at the head of the table. Behind her, through the incongruous urban window, the morning showed fresh and lovely, an almost English affair of cool breezes and fleecy clouds. On one of the nearer islands, nestled in greenery, there could just be distinguished a
schloss
and a
chalet
pleasantly recalling the curious fantasy of the late Schlumpf. Everything was smiling and cheerful. Only Lucy Rideout looked a little worn and pale. Sick Lucy had looked rather like that.

‘How charming it will be,’ said Wine, ‘sailing down the river this morning. I declare I quite envy our friends. Mrs Nurse, another trout? They are toothsome but small. Or will you take a boiled egg?’ He looked round the table in momentary perplexity. ‘I am sure I saw boiled eggs. But here is what looks like quite a capital ham. Lucy, my dear, a slice of ham will certainly help you on with your Latin later in the morning. We seem quite to have dropped our Latin lately. And quite soon we must begin German. A language full of interesting shades. What do you think, now, is the difference between
essen
and
fressen
?’ Wine looked gaily round the table. ‘It’s
essen
when we eat the trout and it’s
fressen
when the alligators eat us. I wonder if they thought to put some of these delicious little fish on board the steamer? Hudspith, I am sure, would be not unpartial to them.’

The man had a macabre imagination which seemed at the moment too much even for Lucy’s robustly melodramatic taste. She pushed away her melon – it had rather an alligator-like look – and slipped from the room. Wine watched her go without curiosity; already it was on Appleby that most of his interest was concentrated. How long did a ghost take to get going? Perhaps there would be a preliminary period of obscure intimations. Or perhaps it would walk in as promptly as the shade of Banquo. Appleby, like Wine looking round vaguely for the boiled eggs, frowned sombrely.
Fail not our feast…
What if the dead man should really walk? And he in turn pushed his plate away – a gesture more expressive than elegant – and left the table. The dead man… Appleby disliked the idea of homicide.

Lucy was on the veranda, and he went up to her with a question in his eye. She nodded – cautious, careful and excited. ‘Dead,’ she said.

‘Instantaneously?’

‘Quite.’ Her glance became troubled. ‘Jacko, about those eggs–’

‘Eggs?’

‘Was it too risky to pocket them? After all, he must–’

Appleby smiled faintly. ‘One must take risks.’ He paused. ‘Do you know, Lucy, I’m rather troubled about – well, about the ruthlessness of the whole affair.’

She looked at him, wondering. ‘But it was one or other of them. Or probably it was him or all of us. And I’m certainly not going to be done for if I can help it. After all, you must remember I’m only just beginning as – as a person.’

‘That’s true, Lucy. And good luck to you.’

‘And now we’ve gained a lot of time, and perhaps we’ll be able to wind the whole thing up. All we have to do is to keep on stealing eggs and things without being noticed.’

Appleby laughed. ‘This ghost must eat. By the way, where is he?’

‘I’ve got him hidden in my room. And we’ve got the plane hidden too.’

‘There was a pilot?’

‘No. Beaglehole piloted it himself. So afterwards we just taxied up the river and into a creek.’

‘But, good lord, he’s never–’

‘He seemed quite good at it. But he’s worried about being concealed in my room. He doesn’t think it quite – quite proper.’

‘No more it is. But, bless him, I don’t suppose anyone since Casanova has had more frequent occasion to hide himself in girls’ rooms than Hudspith.’

‘Who was Casanova, Jacko?’

‘Never mind.’

Undoubtedly time had been gained. The liquidation of Beaglehole at the moment when Hudspith was to be liquidated had been a master stroke in its way. Hudspith, preserved, could live on filched boiled eggs indefinitely. And Wine, by the very conditions of his experiment, was obliged to wait patiently upon events. No doubt there would be a limit to the scope of the deception achieved. The Beaglehole who was to have flown down the river again had presumably tasks to perform and reports to make; when these were unachieved Wine’s suspicions would be aroused; and although various explanations of Beaglehole’s disappearance could be imagined, something like the true explanation would certainly present itself to his late employer as one of the substantial possibilities.

Time had been gained, thought Appleby – and once more he frowned over the way the thing had been done. Beaglehole – disagreeable wretch that he was – had been murdered by an aggressively moral policeman and a green and engaging girl. It was true that he had been murdered in the act of committing murder; true that the killing of him had been in a certain sense an act of self-defence. Any other way of attempting to deal with the situation would probably have been fatal to the ultimate interests of law and order. Still, Beaglehole had been deliberately killed as the result of a course of action carefully and ingeniously thought out beforehand. Legally that was homicide in some degree. Morally it was murder. Or so Appleby thought it wise to think. A policeman, if forced to essays in manslaughter and assassination, ought to view them somewhat on the sombre side… And Appleby looked out over the green and yellow of the incredible river. Anyway Beaglehole’s death, whether criminal or not, had been all one to the alligators.