Appleby Talks Again

by Michael Innes

“Is that Sir John Appleby?” the voice asked. And it added, “Of Scotland Yard?”

  “Appleby speaking. But you’ve been put through to me at my home address.”

  “I know, I know. And I’m most terribly sorry.” The voice – it appeared to be that of a lowland Scot – was quite at ease in its apology. “I hope I haven’t fetched you from your dinner.”

  Appleby, who found that he had brought his table-napkin with him to the telephone, said nothing. He had received this sort of call before.

  “My only warrant for breaking in upon your privacy, Sir John, is a common friend. Lord Arthur Spendlove.”

  “Ah, yes.” Appleby didn’t precisely kindle. This gambit, too, he was familiar with.

  “Arthur has told me how absolutely one can rely upon your discretion. I ought to say that my name is Macrae – Robert Macrae.” The voice paused very briefly, as if upon this information Appleby ought decidedly not to have to cast about in his mind. And, in point of fact, the name did ring a bell. Robert Macrae was a very distinguished industrial chemist, and the head of a firm of high scientific repute. “Discretion,” the voice went on, “is the essential thing. I want to consult you in the strictest confidence.”

  “My dear sir, you speak as if I were a family solicitor or a physician or a private inquiry agent. As it happens, I’m an Assistant Commissioner of Police. I can’t possibly undertake to entertain confidential communications.”

  “Quite so, quite so.” The voice was now betraying a shade of agitation. “But this is so very difficult a matter. Threats. Menaces. Or can it be a joke? Your experience could advise me. I’d hate to visit disgrace on what may be a mere whim or prank. But there are circumstances that make me…apprehensive. Could you run down?”

  “Run down?” Appleby was so surprised that he repeated the words mechanically.

  “Yes – and at once.” The voice gave an address. “That’s on the river, you know, just short of Bainton. Say forty minutes.” Suddenly the voice spoke on a new queer note. “My God – it may be life or death to me!”

  “If you consider yourself to be in some immediate danger, Dr Macrae, you should contact your local police-station at once.”

  “No, no – that’s just what I want to avoid. But you’ll come?”

  “Yes, I’ll come.” In saying this, Appleby felt fleetingly that he was acting almost as oddly as Macrae was. Without ceremony, he put down the receiver. Five minutes later, he was driving rapidly west.

  An estate-agent would have described Dr Macrae’s house as standing in its own grounds. In the deepening summer dusk Appleby could just distinguish that these seemed to consist mostly of shrubberies, together with a tree-shaded lawn running down to the river at the back. A burglar’s paradise, he told himself professionally as he took the last curve of the drive. The house itself was large and gloomy, and from this aspect showed only a single light – a feeble glimmer in a porch before what must be the front door. The effect wasn’t welcoming.

  Not that the place was at all tumbledown. There was plenty of fresh paint in a forbidding chocolate tone, and through the open doors of a garage Appleby had glimpsed a couple of opulent cars. Their owner was presumably a wealthy man. But there was no sign that he was a particularly cheerful one.

  Appleby rang the bell. It was of the antique sort that peals loud and long in some remote kitchen. There was rather a lengthy wait and then the front door opened. An ancient female servant, heavily armoured in starched linen before and on top, peered at the visitor suspiciously. “Who are ye for?” she asked in a strong Scottish accent.

  “Good evening. I am Sir John Appleby. I have an appointment with Dr Macrae.”

  “An appointment?” The old woman seemed to regard this claim as an occasion of increased misgiving. “Come in, then. But ye’ll hae to see Miss Hatt.”

  “My appointment is with Dr Macrae himself.”

  “Naebody sees the Doctor until Miss Hatt’s had a worrd wi’ him. This way.”

  Appleby found himself in a high, dusky hall. The panelled walls were ornamented with enormous oil-paintings of deer and Highland cattle, interspersed with claymores, dirks and the species of small round shield conventionally associated with Rob Roy Macgregor. It was apparent that Dr Macrae cherished his Caledonian ancestry. They moved down a long corridor and came to a closed door at the end. In the room beyond, a man was talking, fluently and incisively, to the accompaniment of a clattering typewriter. The old woman opened the door and motioned Appleby forward. “A gentleman to see the Doctor,” she said.

  The typewriter stopped, but the voice – a Scottish voice – continued. It was advancing cogent reasons for being unable to subscribe to a charity organisation. Then the voice stopped too. Miss Hatt had silenced it by turning a switch on her dictaphone. “Your name?” she said.

  “Sir John Appleby.”

  “You have an appointment with Dr Macrae?”

  “He made an appointment with me by telephone, just an hour ago.”

  Miss Hatt, although her speech was quite dauntingly severe, was personable and in early middle-age. She suggested the possession of high professional proficiency, together with certain quite different qualities which might declare themselves upon appropriate occasions. At the moment, she appeared rather at a loss. Appleby guessed that his name had conveyed quite a lot to her. There was nothing surprising about that. But he rather wondered why she was so clearly perplexed by his visit. There might he half a dozen occasions for it, after all. “Then will you wait a moment,” she asked, “while I tell Dr Macrae you are here?”

  Briskly and competently, Miss Hatt rose and left the room. Her manner was entirely as it should be; nevertheless Appleby found himself obscurely called upon to notice that her figure was excellent and her complexion really beautiful. He waited in solitude and patience – for he wasn’t, as it happened, without something to think about. He waited rather a long time. And then Miss Hatt came in again. She was still brisk and competent – which made it a little odd that the beautiful complexion had vanished. Her face was pale and seemed faintly moist. “Did you know?” she asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You are Sir John Appleby – of the police? When you sent me to find Dr Macrae, you knew that…he was dead?”

  The queerness of this question was almost as surprising as the news it conveyed. But it wasn’t quite crazy. It was, in fact, just the sort of logic one sometimes gets from persons suffering from severe shock. “Nothing of the sort, madam. Put such an idea out of your head.” Appleby walked up to the woman and looked at her searchingly but sympathetically. “You have actually found Dr Macrae dead?” he asked. “You are certain of it?”

  She turned and gestured him out of the room. He could hear her taking a deep, gasping breath, as if determined to regain control of herself. “You will be certain yourself in a moment, Sir John. Dr Macrae has been…he has been murdered.”

  They went down another corridor and through a couple of baize-covered doors. The dead man appeared to have prized seclusion. His study was a book-lined apartment, sombre like everything else in this house, and fronting the lawn that ran down to the river. A french window was open upon the warm July night, and directly before this the body of Robert Macrae sat at a large desk. Appleby walked round this. “Or perhaps,” he heard Miss Hatt say behind him, “it might be suicide?”

  It certainly hadn’t been that. Macrae had been shot clean through the forehead at just short of point-blank range. His assailant had presumably walked up to the french window out of the darkness, killed his man, and walked away again. Appleby frowned. He didn’t like the simplicity of the thing. It is the elaborately conceived murder that it is easier to get a grip on. “Suicide?” he said, and turned to Miss Hatt. He spoke as if with an entirely open mind. “It comes into your head as likely? Was Dr Macrae a sick man, or worried?”

  “His arthritis was troubling him, and he found it rather difficult to get about. But I don’t think it seriously worried him. Of course, he h
ad been working very hard. He and Mr Ivor – that is his nephew, Ivor Macrae – have been on the verge of some extremely important discovery – a chemical process which would revolutionise man-made fibres.”

  “I see. Does Mr Ivor Macrae live here?”

  “No, not now.” Miss Hatt hesitated. “Only Mr Colin lives in the house. He is Mr Ivor’s brother.”

  “And also a chemist?”

  “Colin – Mr Colin – is an author.”

  “Ah, an author.” Appleby, intent on examining the body, seemed to repeat the word absently. But he was really wondering if he had been right in detecting a note of warmth in Miss Hatt’s voice. “But Mr Ivor too lived here until recently?”

  Miss Hatt nodded. She was standing quite still near the door. It wasn’t necessary to tell her not to wander about. As well as a good figure she had a good head. “Yes,” she said. “But now Mr Ivor has a cottage of his own just up the river. He had a – a dispute with his uncle. It has been a great worry to Dr Macrae, particularly as they work so closely together at the laboratories.”

  “A professional dispute?”

  “No. It has been entirely a family matter. Mr Ivor’s father left a peculiar will, giving the control of very considerable property to Dr Macrae during his lifetime. Mr Ivor has felt the position to be increasingly absurd. As a result there was – well, almost a quarrel.”

  Appleby looked hard at Miss Hatt. “And now” – and he pointed with a certain grimness at the dead man – “Mr Ivor will get what he has wanted?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And Mr Colin too?”

  Just perceptibly, Miss Hatt hesitated. She was still quite startlingly pale. “Oh, certainly. But, of course, he didn’t break with his uncle in any way. I don’t think property and money mean very much to Mr Colin Macrae. As I’ve said, he is an author – an artist.”

  “That makes a difference, no doubt.” Permitting himself this fleeting irony, Appleby took a prowl around the room. “Is Mr Colin at home now?”

  Miss Hatt was about to reply when there was an interruption. Abruptly out of the night, a man had appeared at the French window. “Hullo,” he said. “Who’s t-t-talking about m-me?”

  It couldn’t be said, Appleby reflected a few minutes later, that Colin Macrae took his uncle’s sudden and shocking death very hard. But then it seemed likely that he didn’t take things in general that way. He was easy-going, loquacious despite his pronounced stammer, and possessed of a personal modesty that Appleby didn’t seem to recall as a very regular endowment of authors. And there was certainly something between him and Miss Hatt. He would do a lot for her, Appleby guessed. And perhaps she would do even more for him.

  “B-b-but doesn’t Ivor know?” Colin turned inquiringly to Miss Hatt. “He hasn’t b-been over?”

  “Certainly he has been over. I came upon him with Dr Macrae in this room half an hour ago.” Miss Hatt was now impassive. “So it surprised me that Dr Macrae had made an appointment with Sir John. But when I came to tell Dr Macrae of Sir John’s arrival, Mr Ivor, of course, wasn’t here. There was only…the body.”

  A moment’s silence succeeded upon this. It was broken by Appleby. “When he came to see his uncle, Mr Ivor was in the habit of simply walking in?”

  “Yes. Or sometimes he would drop down the river in his dinghy and walk across the lawn.”

  “He had that familiar habit, despite the quarrel?”

  “I wouldn’t c-c-call it a quarrel.” Colin Macrae had broken in, suddenly eager. “It’s t-t-too strong a word. But Ivor is no good at p-personal relations. Too intellectual and h-h-highly strung. B-brains all the time. Archeology instead of g-g-golf. Chess problems, and competitions in highbrow weeklies, instead of thrillers and the p-p-pools. The P-p-proceedings of the Royal Society as a b-bed-time book.” Colin paused, as if vaguely aware of rambling. “N-n-not quarrelsome – n-n-not really.”

  “But he did quarrel with Dr Macrae, all the same.” Miss Hatt’s impassivity had hardened.

  “Were they quarrelling when you came upon them half an hour ago?” Appleby asked this question gently.

  Miss Hatt had one of her moments of fleeting irresolution. “Dr Macrae was denying something. I heard him say, rather hotly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I had taken Dr Macrae one or two letters to sign. But it was clearly an awkward moment, and I came away at once.”

  Again there was a silence. This time it was broken by the purr-purr of a telephone on the desk. There was something indefinably sinister in this summons addressed to an ear now sealed by death. Appleby brought a handkerchief from his pocket and picked up the receiver gingerly in its folds. He listened for some moments in silence. “Unfortunately not,” he said. “I am, in fact, a police officer… I regret to have to tell you of Dr Macrae’s sudden death… Yes, death… Yes, I think you very usefully might… At once? But certainly. Come right over now.” He put down the receiver and stood motionless for a moment, frowning. He might have been trying to make sense of something he had heard. “Somebody called Cokayne,” he said presently. “Declares himself to have rung up Dr Macrae because he felt uneasy.”

  “Uneasy?” Miss Hatt spoke sharply.

  “Yes – but he didn’t explain himself further. He’s coming along, however, straight away. A colleague, I gather.”

  “The principal research assistant, working closely with Dr Macrae and Mr Ivor. He lives in the village.” Miss Hatt was now composed and once more entirely businesslike. “Ought we not to try to contact Mr Ivor, Sir John?”

  “His cottage is on the telephone? Then would you mind, Miss Hatt, going to another instrument, and trying to get him on that? I want this one handled as little as possible. And get the local police-station at the same time, and tell the fellow on duty what’s happened. And tell him that I’m here. He’ll know how to proceed.” Appleby waited until the secretary had left the room, and then turned to Colin Macrae. “Is there – or was there – anything very valuable in this room?”

  Colin shook his head. “I d-d-don’t think so. All my uncle’s things were s-s-solid, but not really good. He had no t-t-taste whatever.” Colin paused to glance at the body. “And the s-s-set-up doesn’t suggest his coming upon a thief.”

  “Perfectly true.” Appleby was now systematically searching the room. “There’s nothing,” he said suddenly and sharply, “you ought to tell me?”

  “I d-d-don’t think so.” Colin seemed unperturbed by the abrupt question.

  “Do you think Miss Hatt knows anything?”

  “It’s not my business to speak for her.”

  “But you might be described as in one another’s confidence?”

  “That’s quite irrelevant. I won’t d-discuss it.”

  Appleby looked curiously at Colin Macrae. “Very well. But we don’t yet know what is relevant. This is a complicated affair.”

  “I’d have thought it rather a s-s-simple one.”

  “That was my way of thinking, until a few minutes ago.” Appleby was walking over to the fireplace – in which, despite the mildness of the summer night, a low fire was burning. “But now I’ve changed my mind.” For a moment he stood quite still, staring into the small dull glow. Suddenly he stooped and fished something from a corner of the grate. It was a piece of charred paper.

  “Have you found a c-c-clue, Sir John?” Colin Macrae, who a moment before had been reticent and dry, now spoke almost mockingly.

  “It looks to be precisely that, doesn’t it?” Appleby’s reply was in the same tone. Nevertheless it was with an absorbed seriousness that he carried his find to a table, smoothed it out, and studied it. He studied it for a long time. Then he brought a notebook from his pocket, tore out a couple of leaves, and with these covered all but a narrow strip of the paper. “What I have found is part of a letter,” he said. “Would you mind coming over and looking at it?”

  Colin crossed the room silently and looked. Having done so, he showed no disposition to speak.

  “Perhaps you can
tell me whose writing this is?”

  “It isn’t c-c-clear to me that I ought to offer an opinion – or discuss the matter f-further with you at all, Sir John.”

  “I’m not asking for an opinion. I’m asking for assured knowledge, if you happen to have it.”

  “V-v-very well. It is my brother’s writing – Ivor’s writing.”

  “Thank you. And can you–”

  Appleby paused as Miss Hatt entered the room again. They both turned to her expectantly. “I got the police,” she said. “But there was no reply from Mr Ivor. I wonder whether–” Suddenly she broke off with a startled cry. Following her gaze, both men swung round.

  Somebody else was now standing in the french window. It was a young woman. She could scarcely have been more than twenty. She was staring at the dead man with a look of transfixed horror. And then she cried out. “Ivor… Ivor – where are you?” She looked round the brightly lit room helplessly, and began to sway oddly on her feet. Making a dive forward, Appleby caught her as she fainted away.

  The local police had come, and with them the police surgeon. Presently there would be detectives and photographers. Appleby had dismissed both Miss Hatt and Colin Macrae for the moment, and had himself withdrawn into another room. The latest arrival had been quickly restored to consciousness. But there seemed to be no reason why she should be interviewed in the presence of the corpse. Her name was Joyce Hereward. Once calmed and reassured, she gave an entirely coherent account of herself. But she remained in a considerable state of anxiety, all the same.

  “Ivor Macrae and I are engaged. We are to be married this autumn. I live with my parents just beyond the village. Ivor and I go on the river a lot. He has a dinghy for messing about, and also a small motor-launch. This evening we were going to take a late picnic out in the launch. So I told my parents, and walked over to the cottage.”

  Joyce Hereward paused. She had felt it important, Appleby thought, to get in that bit about her parents. She was very young, and almost certainly wholly ingenuous. “You had arranged this picnic some time ago?” Appleby asked.