Hamlet Revenge!

by Michael Innes

  Appleby remembered his uncle George, who used to recite at parties a poem beginning ‘A chieftain to the Highlands bound’ – and at ‘bound’ bound into the middle of the room… Fate did not come on like that. On the great stage the common traffic of life was proceeding with an even, untroubled rhythm – and then Fate was there, his entrance unnoticed, his menace waiting to strike home.

  It was nearly over. The gentlemen had appeared in a new and yet more cosmic kit; they were machines, they were infantry crossing broken ground under fire. The evil in Man, as the programme had it, had aroused the angry passion of war – and the puce ladies, also metamorphosed, were themselves subjected by the martial glamour. If only as mere miming, this was impressive; the symbolism pierced to the contemporary nerve. And now the finale: dubious victory; the Hero leaping to a tableau on somebody’s shoulders, stretching out arms – perhaps to the Future, but unescapably as if to an invisible trapeze, so that one thought of tumblers again and half expected the corps de ballet to clap hands and make admiring Japanese noises.

  The woman in the next seat groped for her chocolate-box.

  Appleby emerged from the theatre and walked luxuriously through the London night, discoursing with himself on his own character as a modified philistine. He worked hard as a policeman, he often made his work his play, it was pleasant to have given three hours to something that could have no possible bearing on shop – the monotonous pursuit of burglars in Earl’s Court and injudicious philanthropists in the City. Coming down the Duke of York’s Steps, his eye rested on the Admiralty and travelled along the jumbled line of government buildings. One had Palmerston to thank that the Treasury – or was it the Foreign Office? – was not a monument of Ruskinian Gothic. High up, just beyond Downing Street, there shone a solitary light. Were his more orthodoxly gifted contemporaries who had made their way here similarly immersed in a dull routine? What were they doing up there now?

  Appleby had one of the humblest flats in one of the largest blocks in Westminster; his three rooms, he suspected, had originally been intended as a bathroom, a kitchenette, and a shoe-cupboard for some more magnificent tenant. But the situation gave him St James’ Park as a detour to and from work; his living-room window commanded Mr Epstein’s admirable Night while ignoring his less admirable Day; and sitting up in bed he could distinguish the upper half of the flag-staff on Buckingham Palace. Approaching the entrance of this building now, Appleby quickened his pace. A car was standing outside, a car which meant business. A moment later he became aware of a second car, and whistled. And when he saw a third car – a car which every policeman must know – he ran.

  The night-porter, usually inaccessible to any under six-room tenants, came scurrying out of his cubby-hole to say something Appleby didn’t stop to hear. The lift-boy, hitherto familiar and conversible, looked at him on this occasion with awe. He ran along the corridor and burst rather breathlessly into his room.

  It was an overwhelming spectacle. The Chief Commissioner was pacing up and down the available eight feet of floor. Appleby’s immediate superior in the CID, Superintendent Billups, stood, plainly bewildered and slightly affronted, in a corner. In the only easy chair sat the Prime Minister, holding a large gun-metal watch some three inches from his nose.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ said Appleby. The words represented, he felt, one of the major efforts of his career.

  The Prime Minister exploded. ‘Is this the man? Haddon, if you have a plain Number One man don’t let him clear out of sight again. Theatres have names, you know, and theatre-seats numbers. Ask your doctor.’

  While prime ministers speak to commissioners thus, detective-inspectors look modestly down their nose; Appleby attempted this. But now the Prime Minister tucked away his watch and sat back as if he had simply dropped in for a chat. ‘And where have you been, Mr – um – Appleby?’ he asked amiably.

  ‘Les Présages, sir.’

  The Prime Minister shook his head. ‘The ballet’s gone modern since my day. When Degas was painting, now…but the point is the Lord Chancellor’s been shot. At Scamnum Court, playing at Hamlet apparently – a strange play, Mr Appleby, a strange atmosphere about it. Shot thirty-five minutes ago by goodness knows whom. But whatever it’s about the business has no political significance. You understand me?’

  ‘No political significance,’ said Appleby.

  The Prime Minister rose. ‘But, you know, I like Les Sylphides. And now, Mr Appleby, come along and don’t stand there talking. I’ll tell you about it in the car.’

  Appleby opened the door, and felt the blood tingling in his finger-tips as he did so – perhaps it was with the increased physical consciousness that follows ballet. ‘Les Sylphides, sir?’ he murmured demurely.

  ‘Yes. Damn it – no! Auldearn.’ The Prime Minister turned conciliatingly to the Commissioner. ‘Excellent plan coming on here, Haddon; got our man at once. Advise keeping that lead on him another time, though.’ His eye strayed to Superintendent Billups. ‘You’ll see that Mr Dollups works a machine or net or what not in town here if it’s necessary? I suppose he’ll get his instructions direct from Mr Appleby at Scamnum.’ The Prime Minister was innocently oblivious of the hierarchies of the police. And having during the proceedings sacrificed some forty seconds to the conscientious whimsicalities that endeared him to the electorate, he now pushed Appleby into the lift and cried ‘Down!’ so fiercely that the already overwrought lift-boy lost his head and shot them straight to the top floor. It was, Appleby thought, an excellent prelude to adventure.

  And so was the fire-engine. Billups would not have thought to requisition a fire-engine; the Prime Minister had. Its bell, he explained, gained more respect than did a police siren – and in addition the sound was somewhat less disagreeable. So the fire-engine tore through the rapidly thinning night-traffic towards Vauxhall Bridge, the Prime Minister’s car followed, and the police car – it was the great yellow Bentley that always gave Appleby a schoolboy’s thrill – brought up the rear.

  Appleby looked cautiously at the silent figure of the Prime Minister humped in his corner; he was not quite sure that he was not part of a dream. Only fifteen minutes before he had been skirting the Horse Guards’, murmuring against routine and looking as from an immense distance at an enigmatical light in the Foreign Office that had symbolized the very vortex of Empire. Now, far out on either side of him, Earl’s Court with its burglars and the City with its twisters, were hurtling into the thither darkness at forty miles an hour – a sweeping turn at the Oval and the pace was working up to fifty on the Clapham Road. It was a gorgeous and fantastic procession, and Appleby thought comfortably of the fourth car going off in another direction, with a grim Commissioner giving Billups a gloomy lift to bed. He stole another glance at the great man beside him. Yes, it was true. This was the Prime Minister and ahead of them lay one of the famous houses of England. Death at Scamnum Court – what a title for Giles Gott!

  The Prime Minister had out his ostentatiously rural watch again; when the road narrowed in New Wimbledon and the pace dropped he swore. It was his only utterance until, a mile down the Kingston by-pass, the fire-engine swung right for Putney and disappeared. Then, as the cars opened out, he talked.

  ‘Lord Auldearn motored down to Scamnum on Friday afternoon. He meant to stay five or six days and join in this Hamlet business …you don’t know the Duchess?’

  Mr Appleby confessed to not knowing the Duchess.

  ‘Remarkable woman – and fond of that sort of thing. Daughter of Lionel Dillon – fellow who could make prosperous counter-jumpers look like saints in El Greco. Well, Auldearn went down on Friday and that same evening’ – the Prime Minister hesitated – ‘something important came in. We sent it straight down to him.’

  ‘To the Lord Chancellor.’ The matter-of-fact amplification was as near to a fishing question as Appleby thought it discreet to go. The Prime Minister took up the implicatio
n easily; he pursed his lips, evidently feeling his way.

  ‘Auldearn’s death’, he said carefully, ‘is a terrific blow – not merely personally to many of us, but nationally. He had more political wisdom and experience than anyone. And a wonderful brain. And he had a curious career – for a lawyer. He was Foreign Secretary, you remember, at a very ticklish time.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Appleby. There was a long silence. Some unidentifiable South London common was slipping past, at once banal and mysterious under the garish London sky. Far to the east a train whistled – the profoundly disturbing whistle of a train in the night.

  ‘On Saturday afternoon,’ the Prime Minister continued quietly, ‘Auldearn decided he must come back to town. On Sunday there were various…discussions. But he made it a point of honour to return to Scamnum for the play today. You will readily guess that he made no sacrifice of public duty to do so. Only…he took with him for study another document. Mr Appleby, I wish to God he had not done so.’

  The Prime Minister, so shortly before practising his pertinacious eccentricity of speech and manner, had become direct and grim. ‘At eleven-five tonight they brought a telephone into my dressing-room – an urgent call. It was the Duke of Horton. He told me that Auldearn had been shot dead on the stage, apparently in circumstances which afford no light on his assailant. That is very extraordinary, but I suppose it may be so. Horton either knew or guessed that public issues might be involved. He said he was holding everybody tight and he begged me to act at once. He particularly asked for somebody who would not be scared by a high and mighty mob; he was referring, no doubt, to the sort of house-party he has down there. When I got hold of Haddon he named you.’ There was a pause. ‘Much may depend on you.’

  Appleby said nothing. He would not have liked to swear that at the moment, at least, he was wholly unscared. But when the Prime Minister suddenly thrust forward a cigar-case his hand was perfectly steady under the other’s gaze. It was a sort of ritual of confidence. Efficiently, Appleby supplied matches.

  The Prime Minister drew a rug round himself and spoke again. ‘There is no reason to suppose that this horrid affair is other than an act of random madness or of private vengeance. All public men are a mark for such things. And for that reason cannot afford to go straight to the Intelligence. Who is known and marked there one can never know, and the knowledge that they had been sent down might be undesirable. And so we send’ – the Prime Minister smiled wanly – ‘a straight policeman.’

  Appleby asked his first question. ‘Was he guarded?’

  ‘He would never hear of it. I am sure they would never let me get away with such an attitude, but Auldearn carried it.’ The Prime Minister eyed his own detective sitting beside his chauffeur and sighed. ‘He was a powerful man.’

  The cars swerved through Esher. ‘Please Providence, Mr Appleby, this document is now safe and undisturbed in Auldean’s despatch-case. But should it be involved you will be able to carry on for a time without being at a disadvantage with the specialists. If they have a line on anything at Scamnum at present the information will be waiting for us at Guildford, where I shall leave you. Have you struck the fringes of that sort of thing – espionage?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Appleby briefly.

  ‘So much the better. It’s a crazy and surprising business; a complicated game that every country plays at – with a big bill and, just occasionally, a successful piece of mischief to show. What is to be remembered, I think, is that it is crazy – continually offending against probability, like bad fiction. You never know who’s in on it, particularly – I’m told – among the women. To put it absurdly, Mr Appleby, don’t trust anybody, not even the Archbishop of Canterbury should he be there. Trust nothing but your own nose.’

  Appleby pondered these skilfully imparted instructions for a few moments before venturing on a question. ‘Can I have more information on the nature and importance of the document, sir?’

  The Prime Minister answered readily. ‘The document concerns the organization of large industrial interests on an international basis, in the event of a certain international situation. The general drift towards the matter such a document embodies cannot, you will realize, well be secret; nothing big can be secret. But the details may be. And this document might be useful in two ways: the detailed information might be useful to one powerful interest or another; and accurate possession of the details, as circumstantial evidence of something already known in general terms, might be useful to an unfriendly government. And that is why I am gravely concerned: the document at this moment would be a lever, a lever where a lever is being looked for. Or call it a switch, Mr Appleby; a switch that might release a spark.’

  Again there was silence. The Prime Minister contemplated the glowing end of his cigar. And Appleby had before him in the darkness – and with a new impressiveness – Masson’s angry stage and Massine’s loam-coloured personifications of conflict, beating out their obscure warfare to that mounting chaotic music. ‘War?’ said Appleby, carried to generalities despite himself, ‘the springs of war are surely not in spy-work and filched papers?’

  His companion regarded him with a new interest. But his voice was harsh and rapid as he answered. ‘War! No, no – that is something no bigger than a man’s hand. It must remain so.’ He tapped the window at his side. ‘Do you know this part of the country? Out there somewhere, a couple of miles short of the river, there’s a little place called Mud Town. War means Mud Town for Europe, Mr Appleby. And do you know what’s ahead of us – just north of Bisley, suitably enough? Donkey Town. War means that too. Certainly its springs are not in filched papers! Its springs are in the profound destructiveness deep in each of us, the same madness that has killed Auldearn – yes, however calculated that killing may turn out to have been. But these things, documents, plans’ – he returned obstinately to his former figure – ‘can be levers; damnable engines.’

  He let the dead ash fall from his cigar. ‘Well, Mr Appleby, so much you must certainly know, if you are to face the unexpected. And you must know how to identify the document. It is endorsed Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries: proposed Pike and Perch Joint Scheme.’ He smiled on the astonished Appleby as he revealed this Cabinet secret.

  ‘Auldearn’s last joke,’ he said. ‘And not without salt.’

  Just beyond the environs of Guildford the car drew to a halt. And almost instantly a dim figure appeared at the window and opened the door. The Prime Minister, followed by Appleby, got out.

  ‘Captain Hilfers?’

  ‘Yes, sir; beaten you by five minutes. There’s no report whatever. I’ve had the Scotland Yard people up since I left you, and our own people as well. There has been trouble at Scamnum twice in the last five years. Once when you yourself were there an undesirable guest was discovered and quietly turned out; and once a servant was found to be taking money from a well-known agent. But just now – we have knowledge of nothing.’

  ‘You’re an experienced man; just how much does that mean?’

  ‘Little enough, sir. But if there’s been shooting I think the thing incredible. And on the other hand I’ve found myself sparring with the incredible before now.’

  The Prime Minister nodded impatiently in the darkness. ‘Yes, yes. No government, no bureau would venture such a thing. But no doubt there are amateurs…irregulars.’ He laughed shortly. ‘Well, we have our own irregular. Hilfers, you know Inspector Appleby? Mr Appleby, come along.’

  To the north the sky still held the ruddy smear of London; to the south were stars and a low-riding moon. They trudged in silence to the police-car. Huddled in the back were the Yard’s best searchers, man and woman – evidence that the Prime Minister left little unthought of. Appleby, wasting no time, sprang into the front. The Prime Minister shut the door, tossed in his cigar-case. ‘You may have time for another. And you’ll find there the telephone-number I’ll be at the end of for th
e next twelve hours… Did you see Woizikowsky?’

  ‘In Les Présages, sir? Yes, as Fate.’

  ‘Fate?… Well, good luck.’ The Prime Minister turned on his heel and with Captain Hilfers – that mysterious Mercury – melted into the darkness.

  ‘Let her go, Thomas,’ said Appleby. The Bentley rocketed south.

  Just at twelve-forty, with some eight miles to go, they met the first car – a large limousine dimly lit within, and with a footman beside the chauffeur. ‘Nobs,’ said Thomas as they flashed past with dipped headlights.

  ‘The Brazilian Minister,’ Appleby responded absently; he had spotted the flag. A moment later Thomas had to swerve violently to avoid a sports car cutting a vicious corner in the darkness. It held a hatless youth in tails, one hand on the wheel, one resigned to a lady submerged in white fur. And close on its tracks followed an enormous scarlet sedan.

  ‘Earl of Luppitt,’ said Thomas, well-informed on the equipage of one of England’s sporting peers. ‘Party on somewhere hereabouts.’

  ‘Thomas, what’s down this way?’