Death at the Chase

by Michael Innes

  ‘Your father,’ Judith said, ‘also has benevolent impulses towards an Ashmore. But an older one. By the way, your friend doesn’t happen to have invited Mr Giles Ashmore to dinner? I ought perhaps just to know.’

  ‘Of course not!’ Bobby appeared decently astonished. ‘Only to drive across and drop in afterwards. I suppose all those Ashmores are old family friends.’

  ‘Before the Flood,’ Judith said, ‘your great-uncle Everard knew them all. And of course we’ll be glad to see the young man. As a matter of fact, I think your father has some notion of extending his acquaintance among the whole Ashmore tribe.’

  ‘Then he can begin with this one.’ Bobby glanced curiously at his father; he was a young man whose mind was readily prompted to speculation. ‘Wasn’t that Colonel Pride who was here when Finn and I arrived?’

  ‘It was Tommy,’ Appleby said. ‘In future when you meet him you will address him as “Tommy” and not as “Sir”. But you will preface this familiarity with a suitably diffident speech. Verbs ought not to figure in it.’

  ‘I’ll remember.’ Bobby turned to his mother. ‘Daddy can’t forget, can he, that our excellent Chief Constable was one of your earliest loves? But you’ll find it’s a basis on which they eventually get tremendously chummy. Like Finn and this Giles because of Robina.’

  Appleby’s first reaction to Mr Giles Ashmore was one of surprise that he was quite young. This was irrational. It was clear that a contemporary of Bobby’s and of the character called Finn ought to be quite young. But Appleby had arrived at the persuasion that all Ashmores must be, if not old, at least ageless. As here one may find a bevy of maidens, roes, quails, or larks, or simply a gaggle of geese, so on the farther side of the downs (he had come to suppose) there dwelt a crawl of tortoises, and Ashmore was the name of each.

  But Giles Ashmore could be described only as immature, as having indeed scarcely as yet developed a carapace. Perhaps it was in compensation for this that he appeared to have a somewhat excessive interest in old armour. The late Luke Raven (who, unlike his great-nephew, had been a poet and not an anti-novelist) had during his post-William Morris phase accumulated various chunks of chain-mail, the continued rusting presence of these in various unregarded corners of Dream was the occasion of young Mr Ashmore’s embarking on the subject at somewhat tedious length.

  He had arrived a shade early for an after-dinner call, and Judith had marked the circumstance by inviting him to wash the sherry glasses. He had taken this outrage – Appleby judged – extremely well; it was undeniable that, even if rather a bore, he had deserved his coffee and brandy when these came along. He was a nervous youth – one felt one knew why the notion of an artificial skin of steel attracted him – and gave the impression of being only imperfectly in contact with material things. If Robina (as Appleby somehow suspected) was very much a material thing, it was hard to imagine how he could have got away with her. One would have supposed that Finn – although he seemed to specialize in being a Bertie Wooster or Bingo Little type – would make the running every time. But Giles no doubt had something which, even with a Robina, counted for something. Perhaps it was just being an Ashmore. Giles, one supposed, had a pretty clear recollection of relatives who had been edified by Joseph Addison or got drunk with Dick Steele. Perhaps Robina was sensitive to things of that sort.

  Finn did a good deal of the talking – quite enough to suggest that he was the master mind behind whatever hopeful design was going forward. And certainly there was a design. It wasn’t at all possible for the elder Applebys to feel that the charm of their company alone had drawn to Dream these two oddly assorted friends of Bobby’s. It was true that Giles Ashmore seemed as ready to stare round about him as to talk – perhaps in the hope of spotting an interesting basinet or placcate from Luke Raven’s collection. He did not suggest himself as a very enterprising young man. If he was in a scrape – as Bobby had suggested – he would certainly need friends to haul him out of it.

  ‘You see,’ Finn said expansively to Judith, ‘old Giles is all fixed up to get married. Jolly good, don’t you think?’

  Judith agreed that it was jolly good. The reference could only be to Robina, and it could only be presumed that Finn’s magnanimity in relation to his and old Giles’ late rivalry was unflawed. This seemed probable enough; nothing in Finn suggested what could be called a brooding temperament.

  ‘But there’s trouble about the mun,’ Finn went on. ‘Giles hasn’t any, and he hasn’t even a fat pay-packet to look forward to later on. That’s right, Giles?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Giles’ reply was absent – perhaps because he had just spotted the gorget by Jacob Topf which had been the most notable of Luke’s acquisitions.

  ‘You see, he wants to curate things in a museum,’ Finn went on, ‘and it isn’t a career that leaves you rolling. But the real trouble is that Giles’ father is feeling the wind a bit.’

  ‘I see,’ Judith said, and for a moment cast around for a diversion. It didn’t seem proper that the res angusta domi at King’s Yatter should be familiarly canvassed to virtual strangers in this way. But then she remembered that John was becoming curious about the whole tribe of Ashmores, and she let Finn go on.

  ‘Things not too good in the City,’ Finn amplified. ‘That kind of thing. So Giles’ father feels that, if Giles wants both to marry and to curate he ought to have found somebody well in the mun herself. But, of course, love isn’t like that at all. It isn’t this girl’s fault that she hasn’t got a bean.’

  ‘But perhaps,’ Appleby asked helpfully, ‘she has at least some means of honest earning?’

  ‘Well, yes – she has. Just at the moment she has. She sings, as a matter of fact. A bit of dancing too. At a place in London. You wouldn’t know it.’

  ‘Probably not. So Giles’ present predicament is essentially economic?’

  ‘That’s it!’ Finn seemed to feel that Appleby had penetrated to the heart of an intricate mystery. ‘And that’s where Giles’ uncle – or perhaps it’s his great-uncle – comes in.’

  ‘Martyn Ashmore?’

  ‘Jolly good, sir.’ Finn’s manner positively suggested a small round of applause. ‘That’s where the family mun is. Giles, that’s right?’

  Giles Ashmore nodded. He was attending now, but with an appearance of some gloom.

  ‘So something has to be done. Giles has to bestir himself. Think of all those generations of enterprising Ashmores. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Armour rusting on the walls,’ Bobby Appleby interposed, ‘on the blood of Clifford calls. Seize the lance. Bear me to the heart of France. That right, Giles?’

  Giles Ashmore – whom it appeared customary to attempt to rouse by means of this formula – smiled wanly, and then ventured to speak.

  ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘Must do something. And Uncle Martyn seems the man.’

  ‘Only there’s been a coolness,’ Finn said. ‘Bit of bad blood, and all that. Happens in families, wouldn’t you say? Happened in yours, I expect, Lady Appleby.’

  ‘Uncle Martyn might weigh in with something handsome?’ Appleby asked – rather hastily, since he felt Judith might not reply wholly urbanely to Finn’s last speculation. He was himself beginning to feel Bobby’s friends to be tiresome. Young men forming improbable plans to ‘touch’ a rich relative struck him as a somewhat faded species of comedy. He wondered why Bobby was mixed up in it. Perhaps there lurked in it something more interesting than at present appeared. ‘It is even perhaps relevant,’ he added, ‘that this wealthy kinsman has no obvious heir?’

  ‘All that sort of thing.’ Giles Ashmore nodded without much conviction. ‘Finn says that even if he carved up quite handsomely among the whole crowd of us, it mightn’t be for a dishearteningly long time. I don’t know whether you happen to be aware of it, sir, but the Ashmores are an exceptionally long-lived lot.’

  ‘It is, as a matter of fact, information that has lately come my way.’ Giles, Appleby was thinking, if not eager was at least candid.
‘It would appear that what you have in mind is a gift rather than a bequest?’

  ‘Well, yes. For a start, anyway.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Appleby was aware of Judith as refraining from looking at the clock. Young Mr Ashmore’s mercenary designs would be less depressing, she was probably feeling, if advanced with rather more élan. This seemed also to be Finn’s view, for he now intervened again on a livelier note.

  ‘So the question,’ he said, ‘is ways and means. Good phrase, don’t you think? My father’s an MP, and he’s on something called the Committee of Ways and Means. Does all the thinking up of how to raise the wind. We’re a committee like that now.’

  ‘You must not regard my wife and myself as having been co-opted,’ Appleby said. ‘And perhaps your deliberations ought to be in private.’

  ‘Oh, we’re not thinking of anything underhand!’ There was an offended note in Finn’s voice. ‘We just have to find the sound psychological approach. Make sure we know the sort of old boy we’re dealing with. Bobby says he’s a pathological miser, like somebody in Proust.’

  ‘Balzac,’ Bobby said.

  ‘It’s the same idea. Would you say, sir, that Bobby’s right?’

  ‘Certainly not. My acquaintance with Mr Martyn Ashmore is both recent and slight. But I’m not in a position to say that Bobby is wrong. And if you have estimated Mr Ashmore’s disposition accurately, he would appear to be a particularly unpromising person to whom to direct an application of the kind envisaged – would he not?’ Appleby frowned as he spoke. He was never pleased when he heard himself producing this kind of sub-ironic note. ‘And I’m blessed if I’d know how to begin, anyway.’

  ‘Genuine cheer,’ Finn said readily. ‘We think he probably feels lonely, and only imagines he dislikes his relations as he seems to say he does. Waiting to be approached, really. If he can just be given the impression that Giles is really fond of him–’

  ‘But is Giles really fond of him? I seem to have gathered that he knows virtually nothing about him.’

  ‘Then he will thaw at once,’ Finn concluded, unheeding. ‘There will be a benefit all round.’

  ‘Because old Mr Ashmore,’ Bobby amplified with every appearance of gravity, ‘will be drawn back into the main stream of wholesome family affections and solicitudes, and Giles will be given the means of uniting himself to his Robina forthwith. Giles, isn’t that–’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Giles Ashmore said automatically.

  The fire was burning low. Appleby, obeying the iron law of hospitality, put another log on it, and thought gloomily of Hoobin and Hoobin’s birthday whisky. This at least diverted his mind from the childish confabulation going forward. It was his wife’s name that recalled him to it.

  ‘And it’s about this,’ Finn was saying, ‘that we want Lady Appleby’s advice. It seems clear to us that Giles should simply drive up to the front door of the Chase – or better perhaps walk up – and ring the bell.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Appleby said. ‘Only I’m inclined to think that he ought first to take out a life assurance policy. Made in the lady’s favour. But go on.’

  ‘I suppose he ought to think of that sort of thing.’ Not unnaturally, Finn was a little at a loss. ‘Giles should simply pay a friendly family call. Only we feel that he ought to take a present to the old boy. Something really appealing and likely to soften the heart. What do you think, Lady Appleby? What would you advise? Remember he’s a shocking old miser – or so they say – who lives more or less on dog-biscuits and water. Would a Stilton be a good idea?’

  ‘I doubt whether Stilton is the right cheese with dog-biscuits. And if Mr Ashmore is really penurious he will only use it to bait his mouse-traps.’ Judith paused as if in serious thought. ‘I’d be inclined to advise something mice don’t care for.’

  ‘Or bats or owls,’ Bobby said. ‘Ashmore Chase is quite certain to abound in them.’

  ‘I know!’ Giles suddenly said. It was his first moment of perceptible animation, so that everybody stared at him. ‘A bottle of wine.’

  ‘Or a dozen bottles of wine.’ The expansive nature of Finn was at play here. ‘More than that might be awkward. Kind of Father Christmas effect. But a case would be just the thing.’

  ‘You mean I’d have to walk up the drive with it?’ Giles asked apprehensively. ‘Wouldn’t it be a bit heavy?’

  ‘Perhaps, in that case, you could drive, after all. I think it’s just the thing. A gentleman can always drop in on another gentleman with a dozen bottles of wine. It’s always happening to my father.’ Finn looked gratefully at Judith. ‘A first-rate notion. We’ll get hold of the stuff in the morning.’

  ‘I think–’ Appleby began – and then checked himself and said something else. Why should he say disillusioning things about Château Lafite to these cheerful young idiots? ‘I think,’ he said gravely, ‘that you will find a reputable licensed grocer next door to the post-office in Linger.’

  ‘Then that’s fine!’ A blessed moment had come, for Finn was on his feet – and plainly with the intention of shoving Giles Ashmore out of the house. ‘We’ll collect the stuff in the morning, and push the whole thing through. Giles, that’s right?’

  Perhaps because he was advancing politely upon Lady Appleby, Giles Ashmore for a moment made no reply. But when he spoke, it was with surprising decision.

  ‘The whole thing,’ he said. ‘We’ll push it through.’

  8

  Appleby’s interest in the numerous Ashmores of King’s Yatter, Abbot’s Yatter, and other rural localities on the farther side of the downs was surprisingly gratified on the following day. Armed with a chain-saw, he had spent a good part of the morning coping with the impending timber crisis. On the ground was an aged and twisted oak, brought down by the October gales. Standing by – also aged and twisted, but as yet resistant to the seasons – was Hoobin, equipped with an axe and a wheelbarrow. Appleby’s task was to saw the trunk and larger branches into sections, shear away the smaller branches, and pause every now and then to take up a second axe and help his assistant to catch up with the cleaving. Every now and then, also, Hoobin would load the barrow with the logs and amble off to the wood-shed. It was on his return from one of these missions that he paused, eyed with critical appraisal his employer’s manipulation of the chain-saw, and then drew from a pocket an enormous silver watch.

  ‘Gone eleven,’ Hoobin said above the uproar of the saw.

  ‘What of it?’ It had to be admitted that Hoobin’s age asked ease, and in this interest he had in fact spent a placid quarter of an hour with a pipe some time after ten o’clock.

  ‘Doctor Verity do go out on his rounds come eleven.’ Hoobin spoke with gloomy satisfaction. ‘And there be times when only haste will serve.’

  ‘No doubt.’ With what he was conscious of as foolish bravado, Appleby performed an intricate manoeuvre with the chain-saw. It was an implement the lethal potentialities of which it would be rash to question. But that Hoobin should be rapt in a gratifying inward vision of an amputated and writhing employer was faintly disagreeable even to one well-acquainted with the harmless vagaries of the rustic mind. So Appleby attempted distraction. ‘Hoobin,’ he asked, ‘have you any acquaintance over at the Yatters?’

  Hoobin put down his axe. Although not to be described as of a conversible habit, he was not averse to talk when he judged it not compatible with labour.

  ‘My brother Alfred,’ Hoobin said, ‘has worked for Farmer Blowbody – at Low Yatter, that be – these forty year. And these forty year have I heard never a report on him.’

  ‘You’ve heard nothing of a brother in a neighbouring parish, as it almost is, for forty years?’

  Some slight note of surprise in Appleby’s voice perhaps offended Hoobin, for he remained broodingly silent (without however taking up his axe) for a full minute. And then he spoke.

  ‘Words passed,’ Hoobin said.

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear it. Is Alfred married, and with a family? It seems a pit
y you shouldn’t make it up.’

  Hoobin was again silent for a space – plainly to mark his scorn of this flaccid suggestion. He then condescended to take up the question that had preceded it.

  ‘A wife there be, and childer too. But none come my way. Or none but Solo – and that only because I be a perusing man.’

  It was undeniable that Hoobin was a perusing man. He owned a pair of spectacles which proved the point, and was even rumoured to be a subscriber to the local weekly paper. Indeed it was this paper which proved to be in question now. Solo Hoobin – he was apparently among the younger of Alfred Hoobin’s numerous progeny – had lately figured in this public print. This had been because of the assault committed upon him by Mr Ambrose Ashmore of Abbot’s Yatter. Appleby’s Hoobin, although of late so sadly estranged from his kinsfolk, must have followed this large rural scandal closely, for he was able to give a surprisingly particular account of it.

  Solo, it appeared, had been employed by Mr Ambrose Ashmore in the humble but honourable condition of a garden boy, and he had come to regard a certain toll or levy upon his employer’s orchard as a legitimate perquisite. As a consequence of this, Mr Ashmore had one day come upon him with his pockets full of Worcester Pearmains. Whereupon (according to Solo) Mr Ashmore had surprisingly produced an enormous whip and belaboured Solo with it to such good – or ill – effect that Solo’s parents had been constrained to take the boy to the doctor. Eventually the matter had come before the gentry on their Bench (‘All magistrates be gentry,’ Hoobin had explained). And the magistrates had brought it out that Mr Ambrose Ashmore had acted only in the most playful – not to say affectionate – manner, and that Solo’s injuries were the consequence of his father’s subsequent stern view of his delinquency. In other words, according to the official view of the matter, Mr Ambrose Ashmore had unlawfully but venially flicked at Solo’s shoulders with a switch; Solo’s father had larruped him; and Solo’s mother had – unnecessarily but again venially – called in medical aid. The summons against Mr Ashmore had been dismissed on the ground that the magistrates didn’t want to be bothered with it. (Their clerk, Appleby imagined, had been able to remind them that de minimis non curat lex.) Solo’s father had been rebuked. And Solo himself had promptly been given employment by Mr Rupert Ashmore of King’s Yatter – a gentleman who appeared to be on as bad terms (or at least non-terms) with his brother Ambrose as was Appleby’s Hoobin with his brother Alfred. But brothers be often that way inclined, Hoobin pointed out. For blood be thicker than water, after all.