Death at the Chase

by Michael Innes

  ‘Jules?’ Miss Ashmore appeared startled. ‘Where was that?’

  ‘Near the Chase. He had been visiting your uncle. Isn’t he staying here?’

  ‘Yes – for a few days longer. He didn’t mention going to the Chase, although it is natural enough, of course, that he should visit my uncle.’

  ‘All you Ashmores are a bit at odds with each other, aren’t you?’

  If Rupert Ashmore’s daughter thought this an outrageous remark she refrained from saying so. But she did summon her dachshunds around her, as if proposing to conclude the encounter.

  ‘Can I give my brother a message?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s very good of you.’ Bobby now felt extremely awkward. It didn’t seem reasonable to go away without telling this girl – however little he had determined to fancy her – what had happened to her uncle. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I had bad news for him – which I think none of you can have heard. It’s about Mr Martyn Ashmore.’

  ‘Uncle Martyn? Has he done something hopelessly embarrassing?’

  ‘I hope it needn’t be called that. He has died – rather suddenly.’

  ‘Oh!’ Miss Ashmore had turned pale. ‘How dreadful! I hardly ever saw him. He was mad.’

  ‘If you hardly ever saw him, how can you know that?’

  ‘Mr Appleby, your manner is extremely strange. My uncle’s state was well known. My father has explained it to me. Martyn Ashmore suffered from paranoia. He had delusions of persecution. It was becoming apparent that something must be done about it.’

  ‘Well, nothing need be done about it now.’ Bobby glanced curiously at the girl. It was her manner that was extremely strange; she had spoken ironically and as if by rote. ‘Will you tell your brother, when he gets home? And your mother and fiancé, I suppose. The police will probably be trying to contact your father.’

  ‘The police!’ As if she felt not too steady on her shapely limbs, Miss Ashmore took hold of the door of Bobby’s car. ‘Is it something dreadful? Did my uncle kill himself?’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, Miss Ashmore. I don’t really know much about it. But I don’t think there is any suspicion of just that.’

  ‘Not through…fear?’

  ‘Fear?’ Bobby was puzzled. ‘I suppose fear – of disease, perhaps, or even of persecution – makes people take their own lives sometimes. I hope it’s been nothing of the kind. As a matter of fact, I’m on my way to the Chase now. I was to fetch Giles there. My father has gone over. The Chief Constable asked him to.’ Bobby had decided to be wholly frank. ‘Shall I bring back any news to you?’

  ‘Take me there – at once.’

  ‘But ought you not, perhaps, to tell your mother?’ Bobby was almost alarmed.

  ‘At once, please.’ Virginia Ashmore had actually opened the door of the car.

  ‘But what about the dogs?’ This was a perfectly sensible question, but Bobby somehow felt idiotic as he asked it. ‘Shall we,’ he went on more resourcefully, ‘put them in the back?’

  ‘They’ll go home. They don’t like cars.’ Bobby found that the girl was sitting beside him. ‘I suppose you know,’ she said, ‘about strange things that have been going on?’

  ‘Well, yes – I know about some. I think my father knows about rather more.’

  ‘So does mine, Mr Appleby.’

  Bobby said nothing. For good or ill, he had a passenger, and he concentrated on turning the long Mercedes in the narrow drive. He was conscious of wanting to make a neat job of it. For a moment it looked as if the beastly little dogs were going to be a complication. But they gathered into a small pack and made off towards the house – plainly disapproving of the whole thing. It was only when he was out on the road that Bobby spoke.

  ‘And your brother?’ he asked.

  ‘Giles is by himself.’

  ‘I know – if he hasn’t joined Miss Bunker.’

  ‘I don’t mean that. I mean that Giles walks by himself, like Kipling’s cat.’

  ‘He doesn’t muck in?’ It seemed to Bobby that Virginia Ashmore had made her first civilized remark. ‘Not with the rest of the family?’

  ‘Just that. Uncle Martyn was supposed to be frightening. But it’s Giles who frightens me.’

  ‘And Monsieur de Voisin – Jules?’

  ‘Jules has been very angry. The French are not scrupulous. But they detest the bizarre.’

  ‘I see.’ Bobby said this automatically, for in fact he felt in very considerable darkness. But it struck him that Virginia was by no means as dumb – in the slang sense – as very beautiful girls so often and so disappointingly were. ‘I think I ought to tell you that there is probably a whole posse of police at the Chase.’

  ‘Naturally, if what you are hinting at is true.’

  ‘I’ve no business to hint anything.’ Bobby suddenly felt very bad. ‘And there’s something else I must say. I was at the Chase last night myself. Along with your brother and my crackpot friend Finn. And we were being damnably silly.’

  ‘Where is Finn now?’

  ‘At the Chase. My father took him there. I haven’t seen him since – well, since the middle of things last night. There was a kind of row. He told Giles and me to sod off, more or less.’ Bobby’s use of this expression rather surprised him. It admitted Virginia into a kind of intimacy. He and his friends employed the idiom of their simpler contemporaries only among themselves. ‘And listen,’ he said. ‘I believe Colonel Pride – that’s the Chief Constable, who’s a friend of my family – is a very decent chap. Still – talk to my father, if you want to talk.’

  ‘Bobby Senior?’ For the first time in this strange encounter, Miss Ashmore faintly smiled. ‘I apologize for that crack.’

  ‘Not a bit,’ Bobby said. He was wondering how his father would react when, having failed to turn up with the aspiring curator of museums, he turned up with this show-piece of a girl instead. ‘You don’t think,’ he asked, ‘that we ought to go back and fetch Jules too?’

  ‘Why should we do that?’

  This question curiously discomposed Bobby – so much so, that he failed to find a reply.

  ‘Jules can look after the dogs,’ Virginia said. ‘He gave them to me.’

  ‘Really? They’re terribly jolly.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  Bobby’s head swam. This girl was getting at him badly. He saw with a horrid clearness that she was going to cause him sleepless nights.

  ‘Was it you who wrote The Lumber Room?’ Virginia asked suddenly.

  ‘Yes, it was.’ Bobby positively clutched at the wheel of his car.

  ‘I thought it – well, terribly jolly.’

  ‘You are a devil,’ Bobby said.

  ‘No, I’m not.’ The girl beside Bobby Appleby spoke in a changed voice. ‘But I think there may be a devil around.’

  Part Five

  Abbot’s Yatter and Elsewhere

  16

  The body had been removed, but not the blood from the hearthstone. Hearthstone and threshold, Appleby thought: blood found on these cries out louder than any other. Cries out, that is to say, in the remote recesses of the mind. But there are other symbolic places too. Odour of blood on the ancestral stair. Yeats.

  A wounded scalp bleeds freely, even if the wound has caused almost instant death. There was quite a lot of blood. Small splashes, which had congealed soonest, were now curling up at the edges. These might at any moment take flight, one could feel, like the autumn leaves in the park outside – but upwards to some supernal judgement seat to cry for vengeance. There had been one deeper pool, and some downward draught from the great chimney had puffed wood-ash into it from the extinguished fire. The effect was of some small fur-clad creature, mangled and flattened by a passing wheel.

  ‘The electric light was still on,’ Colonel Pride said. ‘I call that a sign that tells against foul play.’

  ‘Why?’ Appleby asked, and looked about him. This was not a room into which the dead man had taken him on that curious morning. The reason wa
s perhaps that there were no portraits in it. But it was well furnished and there were various signs of a willingness to enjoy rational comfort: the fire had been a large one; books and papers were scattered around; on a side-table there was quite an array of bottles. Appleby strolled over and inspected the bottles. What he didn’t expect to see – sure enough – he didn’t see. He turned back to Pride. ‘But why?’ he repeated curiously.

  ‘Think of having killed a man in a lighted room like this. What would it be your instinct to do as you cleared out? Switch off the light.’

  ‘I see. Only heaven can peep through the blanket of the dark.’

  ‘And cry “Hold, hold!”,’ Finn said unexpectedly.

  ‘Too late to cry that when the brains are already out,’ Appleby murmured. He had walked to the window and was gazing at the terrace. ‘And they pretty well were out?’ he asked, without turning round. ‘I suppose I’d better go and look. But that was the state of the case?’

  ‘Yes – and it’s what worries my surgeon.’ Pride looked doubtfully at Finn; it wasn’t very clear to him why the young man should be there. ‘His first conviction was that there must have been a blow; that no simple fall could produce such damage. But he seems to have shifted ground now, and to be having doubts. Or say making reservations. He doesn’t want to be too positive one way or the other, if you ask me, until some chap much higher up in all that forensic stuff has given an opinion. I’ve asked for a real swell to be sent from town.’

  ‘Very wise.’ Appleby turned back into the room, nodding absently. ‘It’s a fact that these things can be very tricky. And various aspects of them can be pretty easily faked.’

  ‘My sawbones says that too.’ Pride pointed to the fireplace. ‘That big firedog on the left – the one tilted over, but with the charred log still resting on it. There was blood and hair on it. They were almost certainly–’ Pride hesitated. ‘Almost certainly his. Of course, there have to be tests. But my chap says that they could be faked. Or, alternatively, that they are the product of a fortuitous accident-like sequel to a deliberate and lethal assault.’

  ‘Always alternatives,’ Appleby said. ‘Lots of them. Common form. People fall with a very varying velocity, you know. And with very varying results. Their weight can be a factor. And sudden spasm of one sort or another. As for results – well, bones differ, skulls differ, old age takes one body one way and another quite another. How many expert witnesses have I heard debating such things in my time.’

  ‘No doubt, my dear – um – John.’ Colonel Pride appeared not to find this reminiscent note useful. ‘My fellow says all that. He also says one ought to begin by simply considering the most obvious and most natural thing.’

  ‘Quite right – and that’s what we’ll do. And – do you know? – we’ll ask Finn. The unprofessional angle is often the most productive. Finn, what is the obvious and most natural explanation of this unfortunate affair?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking, sir.’ Finn was less startled by Appleby’s sudden appeal than might have been expected. ‘When we did that Peeping Tom stuff–’

  ‘Can’t understand that,’ Pride interrupted gruffly. ‘Behaviour of mere louts. Most unaccountable.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Finn, properly humble, directed a cautious grin at Appleby. ‘But there we were; and there was Mr Martyn Ashmore, comfortably settled with a book – and rather close to what looked like rather a warm fire. He must have got up and had one prowl around, I’d say, because he seems to have noticed that the curtains were not properly drawn, and to have put that right. I think he probably went on reading for quite a time before anything happened–’

  ‘Not much doubt about that.’ Colonel Pride had interrupted again, and this time it was impatiently. ‘Whatever happened, the result was his pitching head and shoulders into that fireplace. But he wasn’t burnt or even singed. Fire must have been pretty well out. Hours after your last sight of him. Young man, go on.’

  ‘Well, sir. I’d say the room got a bit hot, and he simply fell asleep. Deep sleep and perhaps – as you say – for hours. Then he started awake and got confused, as old people are said to do. I expect, sir, you know the sensation.’

  ‘I know nothing of the sort.’ Pride spoke with some asperity. ‘Continue.’

  ‘That’s about it. The poor old chap jumped up, stumbled, and went down with a crash. And that firedog thing cracked his head open. That’s the obvious explanation.’

  ‘Do you believe it?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s material, sir.’ Finn said this with some dignity. ‘I’m not an expert on smashed skulls or the – the physiology of senescence.’

  ‘I suppose not. But you were around this house last night when you had no business to be–’

  ‘I can’t quite agree to that, sir.’ Finn was unexpectedly firm. ‘We were led into something a bit silly. But we had a perfectly proper occasion for calling on Mr Ashmore.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Appleby said. ‘Don’t forget, Tommy, that my own boy was in on it. And Bobby would certainly not lend himself to any impropriety. Reflect on your knowledge of his mother’s character, my dear chap.’

  ‘Quite so, quite so.’ Somewhat to Appleby’s surprise, Tommy Pride allowed himself to be cautiously amused. ‘But Mr Finn has this uncommonly odd story about somebody knocking him down. Mark you, I accept it. The other story – the one about the fellow with the gun – seemed a pretty tall yarn to me. But, of course, it has been substantiated. The keeper Ibell admits to having fired the thing several times. A matter of warning shots, he says. Most improper, to my mind. Still, he behaved quite sensibly when he found the body.’

  ‘I haven’t gathered how he came to do that,’ Appleby said.

  ‘It seems that nobody except Ashmore has been sleeping in the house, and that Ibell has had the job of giving him a call at eight o’clock. Literally a call. Not coming into the house, but simply bellowing up at his window.’

  ‘Is that a usual sort of thing?’ Finn asked innocently. ‘I mean, among the rural gentry?’

  ‘Of course it is nothing of the kind, sir.’ Pride looked severely at Finn. ‘Mr Ashmore was plainly a most eccentric character. Just how eccentric, we perhaps don’t yet know. Well, Ibell failed this morning to get any response from his employer, and when he saw that there was still a light on in this room, he became alarmed, and entered.’

  ‘Entered?’ Appleby repeated. ‘Although he wasn’t allowed to come in and rouse Ashmore in a reasonable manner, he nevertheless had a key?’

  ‘Apparently not. He says that Ashmore believed he went round locking up everything at night, but never quite managed to complete the job. You could always find a way in, if you wanted to.’

  ‘I wonder whether many people knew that?’

  ‘I don’t see why they should.’

  ‘I bet I could have got in last night, if I’d wanted to,’ Finn said cheerfully. ‘A pity, really, that I didn’t do a little lawbreaking in a serious way.’

  ‘Mr Finn, I don’t advise you to cultivate that attitude of mind,’ Pride said. His disapproval of this young man appeared to be mounting. ‘And I don’t know that you can be of further help to us at the moment.’

  ‘I don’t at all object to getting out of this,’ Finn said. ‘I’ll take a walk in the park until Sir John’s ready for me.’

  ‘Just a moment, Finn.’ Appleby had picked up his hat. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. As a matter of fact, I don’t intend to let you out of my sight.’

  ‘Oh, I say!’ Not surprisingly, Finn was indignant and alarmed. ‘Do you mean I’m being suspected of something?’

  ‘I mean no more than that you and I will go for a short run. If you will be so good, that’s to say. Only a matter of making a call somewhere.’ Appleby turned to Pride. ‘I expect Bobby over a little later in the morning,’ he said. ‘And with a companion, I rather hope. But Finn and I may be back by then.’

  ‘I’d rather hoped we might – um – confer,’ Pride said. He spoke a shade stiffly, and with a fu
rther glare at Finn.

  ‘I think that, by lunch time, we may have rather more to confer about.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ Colonel Pride brightened visibly. ‘I’m bound to say I’d like to get this wretched affair cleared up quietly.’

  ‘I can’t promise quiet,’ Appleby said, and motioned Finn out of the room.

  ‘And the first thing is a telephone,’ Appleby said, as he climbed into his car. ‘Do you know that Martyn Ashmore’s line was cut off because he refused to pay what he said were exorbitant bills from the Postmaster-General? I don’t know how Pride’s coppers are getting along. Probably they have some sort of wireless.’

  ‘Probably,’ Finn said politely, and reflected that Bobby’s father didn’t sound quite with it in modern techniques of fighting crime. He’d let things slip rather, no doubt, since he retired. ‘There’s an AA telephone a quarter of a mile along the main road,’ he added helpfully. ‘I noticed it last night.’

  ‘Then we’ll make for that – before paying this social call.’ Appleby smiled benignly. ‘One mustn’t let a disturbance like this, you know, interfere with neighbourly duty.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ It suddenly struck Finn that old Appleby was actually a bit gaga. This perception embarrassed him, and he remained silent until after the telephone call had been completed.

  ‘I rang up my wife,’ Appleby said, as he slipped into gear again. ‘Bobby’s on his way over, but it won’t be after having collected Giles Ashmore. It seems that Giles departed for London on the midnight train.’

  ‘He’s bolted – Giles?’

  ‘Bolted?’ Appleby glanced curiously at Finn. ‘I suppose it could be called that. But the ostensible object of the exercise was to reproach the faithless Robina.’ Appleby paused. ‘What puts the idea of bolting in your head, Finn?’