Death at the Chase

by Michael Innes

  Copyright & Information

  Death At The Chase

  First published in 1970

  © Michael Innes Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1970-2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Michael Innes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 0755120930 EAN: 9780755120932

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

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  About the Author

  Michael Innes is the pseudonym of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, who was born in Edinburgh in 1906. His father was Director of Education and as was fitting the young Stewart attended Edinburgh Academy before going up to Oriel, Oxford where he obtained a first class degree in English.

  After a short interlude travelling with AJP Taylor in Austria, he embarked on an edition of Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s Essays and also took up a post teaching English at Leeds University.

  By 1935 he was married, Professor of English at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and had completed his first detective novel, Death at the President’s Lodging. This was an immediate success and part of a long running series centred on his character Inspector Appleby. A second novel, Hamlet Revenge, soon followed and overall he managed over fifty under the Innes banner during his career.

  After returning to the UK in 1946 he took up a post with Queen’s University, Belfast before finally settling as Tutor in English at Christ Church, Oxford. His writing continued and he published a series of novels under his own name, along with short stories and some major academic contributions, including a major section on modern writers for the Oxford History of English Literature.

  Whilst not wanting to leave his beloved Oxford permanently, he managed to fit in to his busy schedule a visiting Professorship at the University of Washington and was also honoured by other Universities in the UK.

  His wife Margaret, whom he had met and married whilst at Leeds in 1932, had practised medicine in Australia and later in Oxford, died in 1979. They had five children, one of whom (Angus) is also a writer. Stewart himself died in November 1994 in a nursing home in Surrey.

  Part One

  A Near Thing at Ashmore Chase

  1

  When out walking by himself, Appleby commonly obeyed his wife Judith’s rules. These – perhaps picked up from her American connections – could be summarized in the injunction, ‘Go on till you’re stopped’. When, on the other hand, he was accompanied by Judith, he still, after more than thirty years of companionable pedestrianism, made intermittent attempts to check her more obviously unlawful and even hazardous courses.

  That a stile had not necessarily been constructed for her use, nor a fence been allowed to fall into disrepair for her convenience, were propositions which Lady Appleby was indisposed to entertain, nor could she be brought to believe that the presence of a readily negotiable hunting-gate did not of itself guarantee the absence of an unnegotiable bull. Appleby for his part, although not much given to taurophobia, had no fancy for enforced tauromachy either, and he moreover owned a pronounced dislike of engaging uncivil landowners and surly farmers in fruitless disputation over field paths and rights of way.

  But the paradox remained, and was operative with Appleby in his unaccompanied condition now. For here was this rather high wall – beginning to crumble in places, but formidable nevertheless – and inset in it a zigzag of protruding stones which made scaling it easy enough. These no doubt attracted Appleby as forming a stile more in the manner of his own north country than of this southern England where he had spent most of his working life. Perhaps because of this, or perhaps simply because it promised access to a line of higher ground from which he could hope to orient himself on his map, Appleby hoisted himself briskly to the top of the wall. It was very improper; the stile clearly existed for somebody’s shepherd or keeper, and not in the least for a retired policeman, however respectably circumstanced in the county; but Appleby was, if anything, now rather pleased with the impropriety of his proceeding. He was also pleased with the sense that his weight was right, and that his muscles were therefore more than adequate to this small athletic occasion. He celebrated this sense of well-being by not bothering to feel for the steps on the other side of the wall. He simply jumped. So he was in mid-air – a vulnerable posture – when the howl of rage assailed him.

  Or had it merely been a cry of alarm? Appleby wasn’t sure. But he found he had taken the precaution – by a kind of second nature, acquired in more adventurous days – of landing with his back reassuringly against the high wall he had just tumbled over. This was of course absurd. And the appearance he now saw before him, although oddly ambiguous, stopped short of being in any degree alarming. It was not for example an infuriated bull. It was only an infuriated old gentleman. But was he infuriated? Or was the visible trembling of his stooped and scraggy frame occasioned by some violent and senseless alarm? It was in this that the point of ambiguity lay. The old gentleman’s first utterance would no doubt resolve the problem.

  ‘What the devil do you mean,’ the old gentleman demanded, ‘by pitching yourself into my property like that?’ He took a wary step backward as he spoke, and at the same time raised in air a blackthorn walking-stick of club-like proportions. It certainly wasn’t a gesture interpretable in terms of amiable salutation. The old gentleman was frightened and angry together. These after all were emotions which companioned each other often enough. Only it was hard to find in the present situation much occasion for either of them.

  ‘I am very sorry,’ Appleby said pacifically. ‘I must apologize for trespassing on your land. It was simply that, noticing the stile, I thought I might venture up to the brow of the hill there, and get myself straight on the map.’

  ‘A pretty story!’ The old gentleman produced an unexpected and displeasing cackle of dry laughter. ‘A very pretty story, indeed. Do you think I don’t know the date?’

  This irrational response to a speech which had been eminently correct naturally occasioned some indignation as well as bewilder-ment in Appleby. And this was rather less than assuaged when he suddenly th
ought he had a glimpse of what occasioned it. The old gentleman’s laughter had been echoed nearby by a not dissimilar sound: the harsh clattering call of a cock pheasant. This was answered by a second bird on a note of sharper challenge or alarm, and a moment later both were airborne and their dialogue fading amid a whirr of wings. The owner of these creatures – in whose presence Appleby presumably stood – was supposing himself to have apprehended a poacher. There was indeed something in his glance that supported this bizarre suspicion. He could be sensed as, so to speak, peering into Appleby’s pockets as he stood – or at least as endeavouring to assess the bulk and weight of anything they might contain. That was it. This outrageous landed proprietor was supposing them filled with lengths of fishing-line, bread-pellets, and small bottles of gin.

  Appleby wondered how to proceed. One possibility was to produce a visiting-card. But there was a flavour of pomposity about that; it was the sort of thing his children made fun of. Perhaps it would be better to give the equivalent information – or some of it – verbally.

  ‘My name is Appleby,’ Appleby said. ‘I live about twelve miles from here, at a place called Long Dream.’

  ‘Long Dream Manor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense. You’re an impudent impostor. Everard Raven lives at Dream. Old friend of mine. I see him regularly.’

  Appleby opened his mouth, checked himself, and spoke gently.

  ‘Everard Raven died about fifteen years ago. One and another thing has happened since then, and now my wife has inherited the place. We’ve lived there since I retired a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Retired?’ The old gentleman glowered suspiciously at Appleby as he went off at a tangent. ‘Why should you have retired? You’re a perfectly able-bodied man, so far as I can see. Idleness and mischief, eh?’

  ‘I was a policeman. It’s thought quite a good thing that they shouldn’t hang on too long.’

  ‘I don’t believe a word of it. The Raven girls were always a queer lot, but I don’t see one of them marrying a copper. Where was your last beat?’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly a beat. I was Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. Of course I was other things earlier on. And now, my dear sir, with renewed apologies, I’ll take myself off your land.’

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort!’ The old gentleman was still studying Appleby’s pockets. And suddenly Appleby was visited by the fantastic notion that it wasn’t a mere poacher’s kit, but rather some lethal weapon, that he was suspected of carrying. Moreover the old gentleman was also listening – listening for something that didn’t exist: footfalls, whispers, stealthy stirrings behind a bush or on the other side of the wall. The old gentleman lived in fact in some unfortunate condition of chronic anxiety. It was this perception that governed Appleby’s conduct in the succeeding moments. ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort!’ the old gentleman was repeating. ‘You’ll come with me to the house. This is the sort of thing that must be checked up on.’ He brandished his walking-stick in a feeble but spectacular fashion. ‘In front of me, please. You see the path. Quick march! Allez-vous en, vite!’

  It was clear that neither law nor courtesy required Appleby (who surely couldn’t be taken for a Frenchman) to pay any heed to this extraordinary command. He had only to inquire whether this unreasonable person would prefer him to retreat as he had come or to terminate his trespass by some other route. It was no doubt a mixture of curiosity and compassion which prompted him to do as he had been told. He was to reflect afterwards that the mixture was an unholy one, and that he had no business to complain that trouble followed.

  The house lay in a hollow, and this was no doubt the reason why Appleby hadn’t spotted it earlier. It was ancient – as ancient as Dream and a good deal larger. Architecturally it would have to be called a mess, for from some nucleus which had long since been swallowed up and vanished it wandered indecisively here and there in half-timber work, red brick, and stone – and this now on one scale of pretension and now on quite another, no doubt according to the several whims and material circumstances of numerous generations of its owners. All appeared to have been very fond of chimneys; clusters of these, some weathered smooth and others still distinguishably carved with Tudor elaboration, sprouted from a grey stone roof which had turned sinuous and undulant with the years. The effect was rather that of some improbable monster in a medieval Bestiary, horripilant like the porpentine against its foes. Although the autumn day was chilly, and although the mansion scarcely had the appearance of one in which an unobtrusive central heating had been laid on, Appleby observed that from one of these numerous stacks did there come the faintest trail of smoke.

  The place might have been untenanted. He began to wonder indeed if it was untenanted; if he was being led – or rather driven or shepherded – into some fiendish trap prepared for casual passers-by by a maniac. Perhaps when they reached the shelter of the building the old gentleman – already so unnervingly padding along behind him – would expertly cosh him on the head with the blackthorn and then manacle him for life amid a congeries of random victims in anabandoned wine-cellar. This morbid persuasion became momentarily so strong in Appleby that he halted, turned round, and casually felt in a pocket for his pipe and tobacco-pouch. At the same time he looked the old gentleman steadily in the eye – a proceeding, as everybody knows, highly correct when maniacs are in question.

  ‘Chilly,’ Appleby said. ‘But these gleams of sunshine are pleasant, all the same.’

  The old gentleman appeared nonplussed. He even neglected to brandish his stick. Appleby took the opportunity to have a better look at him. He wondered why, if his dwelling had suggested some fabulous creature, he himself so strongly suggested a tortoise. He was thin, angular, and capable of at least a certain range of rapid nervous movements, so the image ought not to have fitted at all. Then Appleby remembered that tortoises are reputed to live for a very long time – the really big kinds for several centuries. And this is what the old gentleman gave the impression of doing. He looked by no means what could be called exceptionally old, but he did look as if he were engaged on the job of living almost indefinitely. It was a pervasive desiccation perhaps that rendered this impression; one felt that nothing could happen to his physical frame except – at some utterly remote future time – a slow crumbling and turning to dust. In a humbler walk of life he would be destined eventually to a booth in a fair, surrounded by impressive-looking documentary evidences of his extreme longevity, and offering to shake hands at sixpence a time.

  This would have been an uncomfortable fancy in itself. But what made Appleby feel obscurely uneasy was his impression that the life thus suggesting itself as abnormally hardwearing and tenacious seemed also a life abnormally burdened after some nervous fashion. Here in fact was Pilgrim grown old with his bundle still on his back. It might be full of remorse and guilt and morbid scruple, as was the case with Bunyan’s character. Or it might be full of the standard horrors of a modern psychiatric clinic: senseless obsessions, phobias, chasms of depression, self-hatred, despair.

  The old gentleman had made no reply to Appleby’s inane remark about the sunshine. He had simply stood in silence, watching him stuff his pipe. Something had changed in his manner, all the same. And this was signalized by the words – wholly surprising words – with which he greeted Appleby’s first puff.

  ‘What’s that stuff you’re smoking?’

  ‘John Cotton 1 and 2.’

  ‘I thought so.’ The old gentleman hesitated. A new species of agitation appeared to have possessed him. ‘I think I’ve got a pipe in the house,’ he said.

  ‘Then may we go and find it?’ Appleby turned to walk on, but then paused until the old gentleman had come abreast of him. It was like dropping in on Treasure Island and coaxing Ben Gunn with an offer of Parmesan cheese. He wondered whether his host – as it suddenly seemed reasonable to term this curious old creature – was quite fantastically impoverished. The house they were now approaching certainly suggested it.
So did the wild garden they had entered through a gate from the small park with its ill-repaired wall. Appleby took a cautious sideways glance at his companion. He wore a knickerbocker suit of antique cut. It was piped and patched at appropriate points with stout leather, and the cloth seemed of a quality that would last forever anyway. The outfit might well have been tailored for the old gentleman’s father round about the time of the Boer War. It carried a strong suggestion of the earliest days of cycling. Anything much in the way of shape had long since departed from it. But it was quite clean.

  ‘My name is Ashmore,’ the old gentleman said abruptly. He had come to a halt – and this time it was he who appeared to look Appleby steadily in the eye. If there was something wild in his gaze, there was something uncommonly penetrating as well. ‘You’ve heard of me,’ he said.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite–’ Appleby broke off. It was, he supposed, as a local magnate that the man called Ashmore presumed he must be known to his visitor. But the name rang only some faint and elusive bell. Unlike Judith, Appleby hadn’t the knack of regarding anybody within fifteen miles as a close neighbour. If Judith had talked about this ancient Mr Ashmore as among the attractions of the neighbourhood her husband had been most culpably not listening to her. Nevertheless it was awkward to have to deny something that Ashmore had so dogmatically assumed, and Appleby was for a moment at a loss. Ashmore himself resumed the conversation.

  ‘Don’t think I’m a fool,’ he said. ‘Don’t think I’m an old fool, or a bloody fool, or even just a born one. Didn’t you say your name was Appleby, and talk about the police? I’ve placed you, you know. It’s taken me a minute or two – but that doesn’t mean my wits are wholly decayed. Mind you, they may be, but this isn’t evidence of it. You’ve been an important man – Sir John, isn’t it – but not all that important. So it takes a little thought to sort you out. And of course you’ve heard of me. Nobody in your position could have failed to.’ Ashmore paused. ‘Did you use to see those plays by that fellow Bernard Shaw?’