There Came Both Mist and Snow (25 page)

Appleby turned to Hubert. ‘And you saw Mr Ferryman come out of the study with the pistol. Between your stories there is, in fact, only one discrepancy. Mr Ferryman says that when he first recognized you you were carrying the pistol. Now–’

‘Not carrying it,’ I interrupted. ‘That is inaccurate. He had laid it on the balustrade just by his hand.’

‘You mean’ – Appleby’s voice was particularly calm – ‘you simply saw it
lying on the balustrade
? Mr Roper was standing by the balustrade facing the window, and the pistol was on the balustrade – close to, but not actually in, his hand?’

‘Yes.’

Appleby stood up. ‘Our investigation,’ he said formally, ‘is concluded.’

Tea had been brought in. There were stacks of muffins. Appleby’s appetite proved to be considerable.

‘It was fortunate,’ he said, ‘that Dr Foxcroft’s nerves gave way and that he came to cherish such extraordinary apprehensions about Sir Mervyn. That enabled me to give Ferryman – who is a most unusually obstinate person – the final jolt. And it is fortunate, of course, that Dr Foxcroft himself is alive and well. He will no doubt quickly recover nervous tone.’

‘Cecil is alive?’ Lucy Chigwidden, although she had received this good news several times, seemed too bewildered to take it in.

‘Certainly. Sir Mervyn – who most assuredly has the passionate interest I ascribed to him – may have his chance yet. And, as I say, I let case after case be built up in the hope that it would produce the truth – and the pistol. I was almost certain that it was Ferryman who was concealing something. When we met on the doorstep, and before he ought to have known that anything was wrong, he struck me as a man endeavouring rapidly to conceal some perturbation or other. In my job one develops a nose for that sort of thing.’

‘You also develop,’ said Basil dryly, ‘remarkable muscular control.’ He touched his bandaged head tenderly.

‘And you may also think that we develop distressingly thick skins. But I thrust myself forward as I did because I feared that my colleagues here might make only too efficient an attempted murder out of the mystery. That explanation I was myself reluctant to accept from the first. As you all assembled in the hall after the shooting I began to form an impression which was never seriously modified subsequently. I do not know that you are a very amiable household, but I do know that you are not the sort of household in which homicide crops up. That was what was so pervasively absent from the case: the atmosphere, the particular sort of tension which generates itself around a murder. You are, if I may say so, a theoretical and talkative lot, happy to sit about and accuse each other of the most extraordinary ingenuities. But you lack the passion to kill. Even Miss Anne’ – Appleby smiled – ‘Miss Anne whom I like the best of you – even she would use only impalpable daggers.’

Geoffrey Roper disengaged himself from a muffin and looked childishly pleased. ‘Uncommonly lucky,’ he said, ‘that a person of your penetration should happen along.’

Appleby rose and handed his cup to Lucy for more tea. ‘Of course,’ he continued as she hunted for the cream jug, ‘less indefinite factors pointed to the likelihood of accident. The entire household had been engaged in revolver-shooting. The injured man fancied himself as both a theoretical and practical gunsmith–’

‘Verona drops,’ I said.

Appleby smiled. ‘The drops exist – but are they
Verona
drops? I rather think not – and that is all to the point. Wilfred Foxcroft has a great deal of information, and much of it slightly muddled. His technical dexterity is no doubt in the same case.

‘Then there was the gun. The bullet, when recovered, proved to be jacketed – and that meant an automatic pistol. Such a weapon is always more dangerous than a revolver, for when the magazine is removed a live round is usually left in the chamber. It is because of this that such weapons commonly have a thoroughly effective type of safety catch. This particular pistol’ – and Appleby picked up the weapon I had so disastrously concealed – ‘normally has that. A grip lever is fitted at the back of the stock, so that the hammer and sear are disconnected unless the weapon is actually being grasped by the hand. But the designer didn’t reckon with the mechanical curiosities of Wilfred Foxcroft. He had emptied the magazine, quite failing to remember the round left ready to fire. And then he had fiddled. He had fiddled out there on the terrace. And then – growing bored, no doubt – he tossed the pistol upon the balustrade and abandoned it. It lay there – about the next best thing that could be devised to a deliberate infernal machine.

‘It lay there while Hubert Roper was strolling on the terrace; it lay there close to his hand as he stood and gazed into the study. It lay there, in fact, until Ferryman, having formed his not unnatural false conclusion, picked it up to conceal it. And its final mischievous appearance was in Ferryman’s hand as Roper came back from his stroll and observed it.’

‘But meanwhile,’ said Basil, ‘it had gone off.’

‘Meanwhile it had gone off. And that was the puzzle. Or rather the second puzzle. For me, clinging to the theory of accident, the first puzzle was the absence of a weapon. I put its disappearance down to some officious act’ – Appleby glanced at me ironically – ‘and then this second puzzle remained. Accidents commonly happen when a gun is in somebody’s hands, or is otherwise in movement. But if that were not the case – if this were an accident about which nobody knew – how could the thing have happened? The pistol could not have been on the desk: there would have been scorching had that been so. In fact it could
only
have been out on the balustrade – the shot passing through the open window and the chink left in the curtains by Wilfred Foxcroft. But if that were so how had it gone off? For, however perilous the equilibrium in which the mechanism had been left,
some
positive agency would be necessary. I thought of, and experimented with, various things: a trail of ivy, a blown leaf. Nothing answered. And all the time – infuriatingly – I knew that I had the explanation somewhere in my head.’

‘Mist and snow,’ I said.

‘Exactly. Sir Mervyn, returning from the hospital, said something about mist and snow. That made me think of a poem, a poem in which lay the solution. It eluded me until someone made another chance remark. Ferryman said something about Cudbird being like the Ancient Mariner. It was Coleridge’s
Ancient Mariner
that was lurking in my mind. Or rather just two lines of it.
And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold
. The solution lay there.
And it grew wondrous cold
. That, you will remember, is just what happened last night. And it was the cold, ever so slightly contracting the metal of the pistol in the perilous state Foxcroft had left it, that caused the tail of the trigger to slip from the bent of the hammer and so fire the round. It was as simple as that.’

Appleby stood up. ‘Wilfred Foxcroft is on the road to recovery. When I left the room a little time ago it was to ring up the hospital. He has been able to answer one question. They asked him if he remembered leaving a pistol out on the terrace. He replied that he did.

‘So the Belrive mystery has been what I always hoped it would be – a case of Much Ado about Nothing. Only for Dr Foxcroft I fear it was for a time – well, a Comedy of Terrors.’ And Appleby advanced upon Basil much as he might have done the night before had our dinner party gone as it was planned. ‘I hope you will forgive me that hard knock. And that your expedition to the mist and snow will be a success. Goodbye.’

John Appleby first appears in
Death at the President’s Lodging
, by which time he has risen to the rank of Inspector in the police force. A cerebral detective, with ready wit, charm and good manners, he rose from humble origins to being educated at ‘St Anthony’s College’, Oxford, prior to joining the police as an ordinary constable.

Having decided to take early retirement just after World War II, he nonetheless continued his police career at a later stage and is subsequently appointed an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, where his crime solving talents are put to good use, despite the lofty administrative position. Final retirement from the police force (as Commissioner and Sir John Appleby) does not, however, diminish Appleby’s taste for solving crime and he continues to be active,
Appleby and the Ospreys
marking his final appearance in the late 1980’s.

In
Appleby’s End
he meets Judith Raven, whom he marries and who has an involvement in many subsequent cases, as does their son Bobby and other members of his family.

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels