Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season

by Cecily Gayford

  ‘A good thing I filled up? You said – ’ Appleby broke off, having glanced at the petrol gauge. It was not one of those occasions upon which expostulation serves any useful purpose. ‘There’s under a gallon,’ he said. ‘And we haven’t got a spare tin. Civilisation is always lulling one into a false sense of security.’

  ‘But, surely, that’s all right? Just ticking over, the petrol will last, won’t it, for hours and hours?’

  ‘Undoubtedly. Into the small hours, in fact.’

  ‘The small hours?’

  ‘Two in the morning. Perhaps three.’

  ‘I see.’ Judith, who had been contentedly breaking up a slab of chocolate, seemed a little to lose heart. ‘John, when the heater stops, how long will the car take to … to get rather cold?’

  ‘Oh, a quite surprisingly long time. Fifteen minutes. Perhaps even twenty.’ Appleby picked up a piece of chocolate. ‘I think,’ he said rather grimly, ‘you’d better get out the map. And I’ll turn on this inside light. It’s getting dark.’

  ‘We are a surprisingly long way from the high road,’ Judith said presently. ‘I’d no idea.’

  ‘Um,’ Appleby said.

  ‘There’s that last signpost. At least I think it is.’

  ‘It’s a reasonable conjecture.’

  ‘I’d forgotten it was so deserted a countryside. There doesn’t seem to be a hamlet, or a house, for miles. But wait a minute.’ Judith’s finger moved across the map. ‘Here’s something. “Gore Castle”. Only it’s in a funny sort of print.’

  ‘That means it’s a ruin. They use a Gothic type for places of archaeological or antiquarian interest.’

  ‘But I don’t think Gore Castle is a ruin – or not all of it. I’m sure I’ve heard about it.’ Judith seemed for the moment to have forgotten their depressed situation. ‘Get out the Historic Houses.’ Appleby did as he was told. The work was very much Judith’s vade-mecum, and she flicked through its pages expertly. ‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Yes, I was quite right. Listen. “Three miles south of Gore. Residence of J. L. Darien-Gore Esq. Dates partly from the thirteenth century. Pictures, tapestry, furniture, stained glass, long gallery – ”.’

  ‘I never heard of a medieval castle with a long gallery.’

  ‘It must be the kind of castle that turns into a Jacobean mansion at the back. But let me go on. – “long gallery, formal gardens, famous well”.’

  ‘Famous what?’

  ‘Well. A wishing-well, perhaps, or something like that. “April 1 to October 15 – Thursdays only, 2–6. Admission 15p. Tea and biscuits at Castle. Catering facilities at Gore Arms, Gore.” I knew I was right.’

  ‘About the biscuits?’

  ‘About its being inhabited. This Darien-Gore person – and I’m sure I’ve heard the name – ’

  ‘It does seem to recall something.’

  ‘Well, he certainly lives there. We’ve only got to find the place and introduce ourselves.’

  ‘I’d say we only have to find the place. No need to put on a social turn. The chap can’t very well thrust us back into the night. Not that the question is other than academic. We can’t possibly set out to find Gore Castle. It’s almost dark already, and we’d be off the road in no time. That mightn’t be a joke. The drifts must be pretty formidable.’

  ‘But, John, I can see the castle. It’s positively beckoning to us.’

  ‘See it? You’re imagining things. Visibility’s presently going to be nil.’

  ‘Over there to the right. Let your eye travel past the back of the stranded car. You see?’

  ‘Yes – I see. But –’

  ‘J. L. Darien-Gore Esq. has turned on a light – perhaps high in the keep, or something. It’s rather romantic.’

  ‘If it’s high in the keep, it may be anything up to five miles away.’

  ‘We can follow it for five miles.’

  ‘My dear Judith, have some sense. Darien-Gore – if it is he – may turn the thing off again at any moment. We’re able to see it at all only because it has stopped snowing – ’

  ‘Which is encouraging in itself.’

  Appleby had produced a small pair of binoculars, and was focusing them on the light.

  ‘I think it possibly is the castle,’ he said, and slipped the binoculars back into his coat pocket. ‘But we mightn’t have gone a hundred yards before we lost it for good, owing to some configuration in the terrain.’

  ‘Bother the terrain. And I’d say we can each carry a suitcase.’

  ‘Dash it all!’ Very incautiously, Appleby allowed himself to be diverted by this manoeuvre. ‘We can’t turn up on the fellow’s doorstep as if he ran a blessed hotel!’

  ‘I think it would be only considerate. Otherwise Mr Darien-Gore would have to send grooms and people to rescue our possessions.’

  ‘Sometimes I think you are beginning to suffer from delusions of grandeur.’ But Appleby was fishing the suitcases from the back of the car. He’d taken another careful look at that light, and decided it couldn’t be very far away. The venture was worth risking. ‘At least we’ve got a torch,’ he said. ‘So come on.’

  They plunged into the snow. But Appleby paused again by the abandoned car. If the fellow had just contrived to steer into the side of the road, they themselves would probably have managed to get past the obstruction, and so be on their way by now. Appleby felt the radiator. He looked again at the surface of the road immediately in front. The snow was thick enough. But it wasn’t as thick as all that. He shook his head, and trudged on.

  II

  ‘Not at all,’ Mr Darien-Gore said. ‘The gain is all mine – and my guests. Most delighted to have you here.’

  Jasper Darien-Gore was in early middle age. Spare and upright, he would have suggested chiefly an athlete who has carefully kept his form – if he hadn’t more obviously and immediately impressed himself as the product of centuries of breeding. His appearance was as thoroughly Anglo-Norman as that of his castle. And he had the air of courteous informality and perfect diffidence – Appleby thought – that masks the arrogance of his kind.

  ‘And I do hope,’ Darien-Gore added, ‘that this will prove a reasonably comfortable room.’

  Appleby looked around him in decent appreciation. It was at least a rather more than reasonably splendid room. If it was comfortable as well – which seemed very likely – this hadn’t been secured at the expense of disturbing the general medieval effect. The walls were hung with tapestries in which sundry allegorical events dimly transacted themselves; logs crackled in a fireplace in which it would have been possible to park a small car; there was an enormous four-poster bed. It was no doubt one of the apartments one could view (on Thursdays only) for half-a-crown. Appleby wasn’t without an awkward feeling that he ought to produce a couple of half-crowns now.

  ‘Ah!’ Darien-Gore said. ‘Here is my brother Robert. He has heard of the accession to our company, and has come to add his welcome to mine.’

  It seemed to Appleby that these last words had been uttered less by way of politeness than of instruction. Robert Darien-Gore was not looking very adequately welcoming. He was much younger than Jasper, equally handsome, equally athletic in suggestion and decidedly colder and more reserved. Heredity, perhaps, had dealt less kindly with him. His, in fact, was a curiously haunted face – and not the less so from its air of now quickly assuming an appropriate social mask.

  ‘Robert,’ Jasper said, ‘let me introduce you to – ’ He broke off. ‘By the way, I think it is Lady Appleby? But of course. I was sure I recognised your husband. One never knows whether it is quite civil to tell people one has spotted them from photographs in the public prints. Robert – Sir John and Lady Appleby. Sir John is Commissioner of Metropolitan Police.’

  ‘How do you do. I’m so glad you found your way to Gore. It might have been awkward for you, otherwise.’ Robert was producing adequate interest. It couldn’t have been put higher than that.

  ‘We couldn’t possibly have been luckier,’ Judith said. �
�We had a guidebook, you know. And it said “Tea and biscuits at Castle”. I had a wonderful feeling that we were saved.’

  ‘And so you are, Lady Appleby.’ Jasper Darien-Gore, who appeared to be more amused than his brother, nodded cordially. ‘The kettle, I assure you, is just on the boil.’

  Judith, Appleby thought, was made to take this sort of situation in her stride. One couldn’t even say that she was putting on a social turn. She was just being natural. Judith, in fact, ought to have married not a policeman but an ambassador.

  ‘I hope that being held up for a night isn’t desperately inconvenient,’ Robert said. ‘And I really came in to ask at once whether we could do anything about a message. The snow has brought our telephone line down, unfortunately – and it’s the same, it seems, at the home farm. But I think we might manage to get one of the men through to the village.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Appleby said. ‘But there’s no need for anything of the sort. Nobody’s going to miss us tonight, and I’m sure we can get ourselves dug out in the morning.’

  ‘Then, for the moment, I’ll leave you.’ Robert turned to his brother. ‘They’re amusing themselves in the gallery again. I’ll just go and see they do nothing lethal.’ With the ghost of a smile, he left the room.

  ‘Thank you!’ Judith was saying – not to her host, but to her host’s butler, whose name appeared to be Frape. The fact that Frape himself had brought up their suitcases was a simple index of the grip Judith was getting on the place. ‘There, please.’ Judith had pointed to an enormous expanse of oak – it might have been a refectory table of an antiquity not commonly come by – upon which the suitcases would modestly repose. She turned to Darien-Gore. ‘It’s so stout of you,’ she said. ‘Sheer pests hammer at your door, frostbitten and famished’ – Judith quite shamelessly emphasised this word – ‘and you don’t bat an eyelid.’

  ‘I had no impulse to bat.’ Darien-Gore was amused. ‘And, of course, one mustn’t – not on one’s own doorstep. But, come to think of it, I almost did – bat, I mean – shortly before you came. You see, somebody else has turned up: a fellow who had to abandon a car – ’

  ‘The car that prevented ours from getting through, I expect,’ Appleby said.

  ‘That may well be. And a perfectly decent fellow, I imagine. Yet I had an obscure impulse to get rid of him – or at least to murmur that Frape would fix him up comfortably – ’

  ‘I should be very willing to, sir.’ Frape, who had been giving a little ritual attention to the appointments of the room, interrupted his employer. ‘And it’s not, I think, too late. Nothing very definite has been proposed.’

  ‘Thank you, Frape – but I think not.’ Darien-Gore had spoken a shade sharply, and now he waited until the butler had withdrawn. ‘Frape finds the fellow not quite qualified to sit on the dais, as one might say. No doubt he’s right. But of course he’ll dine with us. Under the circumstances, anything else wouldn’t be the hospitable thing. Perhaps I was put off when he told me his name was Jolly. Difficult name to live up to – particularly, of course, when your car has been stranded in the snow.’

  ‘I wasn’t terribly clear that his car was stranded,’ Appleby said. ‘He didn’t say anything to suggest it had broken down?’

  ‘I don’t recall that he did. Oh, by the way.’ Darien-Gore, who had appeared to be about to take his leave, now changed his mind, and walked over to a heavily curtained window. ‘I’m terribly sorry that, in the morning, you won’t find much of a view. This room simply looks out on the inner bailey – an enclosed courtyard, that’s to say. Perhaps you can see it now. The sky’s cleared a little, and there’s a moon.’ He drew back the curtain. ‘Step into the embrasure, and we’ll draw these things to again. No need to turn out the lights.’

  Appleby and Judith did as they were told. The effect was suddenly to enclose them in a small darkened room, one side of which was almost entirely glass. And as a moon had certainly appeared, they were looking out on a nocturnal scene very adequately illuminated for purposes of picturesque effect. Directly in front of them, the keep of the castle was silhouetted as a dark mass – partly against the sky and partly against the surrounding snows. It was a bleakly rectangular structure, at present encased in a criss-cross of metal and wooden scaffolding. This added to its grim appearance. It was like a prison that had been thrust inside a cage.

  ‘You seem to have quite a job of work on hand, over there,’ Appleby said.

  ‘Perfectly true. The weather has halted it for a time, but during the autumn we had masons all over the Castle. The Office of Works pays for most of it, I’m thankful to say.’ Darien-Gore laughed whimsically. ‘Odd, isn’t it? My ancestors built the place to defy the Crown, more or less. And now the Crown comes along, tells me I’m an Ancient Monument and spends pots of money propping up my ruins.’

  ‘Is that the famous well?’ Judith asked. She pointed downwards. The inner bailey was a virgin rectangle of untrodden snow – part in shadow and part glittering in the moonlight. In the centre of it a low circular wall, about the size of a large cartwheel, surrounded a patch of impenetrable darkness.

  ‘Yes, that’s the well. I see you must really have been reading that guidebook, Lady Appleby. It’s certainly what everybody wants to see. We put a grid over it when the castle’s being shown – otherwise we might have a nasty bill for damages one day.’

  ‘But why is it famous?’ Judith asked. ‘Is there some legend connected with it?’

  ‘Nothing of that kind. What’s out-of-the-way about it is matter of sober fact. It oughtn’t really to be called a well. Think of it as a shaft – an uncommonly deep one – going down to a subterranean river, and you get the idea of it. The guide recites “Kubla Khan” to them, you know. To the tourists, I mean.’

  ‘How very strange!’ Judith said. ‘Where Alph the sacred river ran?’

  ‘Exactly. And through caverns measureless to man. There’s some vast underground system there in the limestone. Ever been to those caves outside Rheims, where you walk for miles between bottles of champagne? It’s said to be like that here – only on a vastly larger scale. And, of course, no champagne.’

  ‘Can it be explored?’ Judith asked. ‘By the kind of people who go pot-holing – that sort of thing?’

  ‘Not possible, it seems. Cast anything down my well, and it’s gone for ever. And that doesn’t apply merely to orange peel and threepenny bits. If you wanted to get rid of an elephant, and no questions asked or askable, the well would be just the place. It’s had its grim enough uses in the past, as you can guess.’ Rather abruptly, yet with a touch of achieved showmanship, Darien-Gore closed the curtains. ‘We dine at eight,’ he said. ‘Before that, people often gather for an hour or so in the gallery. At this time of year, it serves its original purpose very well. All sorts of games are possible, and we even manage a little archery. I don’t know whether either of you happens to be interested in that sort of thing.’

  ‘I’ve tried archery from time to time,’ Judith said. ‘And I’d like to improve.’

  ‘Then you must have a go under Robert’s instruction. He’s quite keen, I’m glad to say.’ Darien-Gore paused, as if uncertain whether to proceed. ‘As my small house party consists of intimates, perhaps you will forgive me if I say something more about my brother. He is moody at times. In fact his nervous health has not been good over the past year, and allowances must sometimes be made for him. I think you will like his wife, Prunella. She’s a courageous woman.’

  ‘And who else is staying at the Castle?’ Judith asked. She had received with the appropriate mild concern the confidence just imparted to her.

  ‘Well, there’s Mr Jolly, whom you’ve heard about. By the way, we’ve put him in the room next to yours. My glimpse of him doesn’t suggest that he will be quite as entertaining as he sounds. Then there’s my very old friend Ned Strickland and his wife, Molly – ’

  ‘How nice!’ Judith said. ‘We know them quite well.’

  ‘That’s capital – and shows,
my dear Lady Appleby, how well house parties arrange themselves at Gore. The only other guest is a fellow called Charles Trevor, who does something or other in the City. We were at school together, and have been trying out a revived acquaintance. And now I’ll leave you. The bells do ring, by the way – and just at present there even appear to be young women who answer them. But I don’t know what my father would have thought of running Gore on a gaggle of housemaids.’

  ‘A gaggle of housemaids.’ Appleby was opening his suitcase with an expression of some gloom. ‘I suppose one might call that rather a territorial joke. Would you say I’d better put on this damned dinner jacket?’

  ‘Yes, of course. And it’s lucky I brought a decent frock.’

  ‘Our fellow waif-and-stray, Mr Jolly, won’t have a dinner jacket.’

  ‘You’ll find that one or another of the Darien-Gores will keep him company by not dressing. But the other men will.’

  ‘Oh, very well.’ Appleby had little doubt that it would turn out just as Judith said.

  ‘We’re lucky to have hit upon such civilised people. And I look forward to seeing the Stricklands.’

  ‘My dear Judith, General Strickland is an amiable bore.’

  ‘Yes – but he’s a very old friend of the family. Get him in a corner, and he’ll tell you all about the Darien-Gores. I’m curious about them.’

  ‘I’m sure you are. But I doubt whether, there’s a great deal to learn. I’ve a notion that Jasper was once a distinguished athlete – ’

  ‘Yes, that rings a bell. Something aquatic – high diving or water polo or – ’

  ‘No doubt. And he’s simply lived on his rents ever since. As for the melancholic Robert, perhaps the less one learns the better.’

  ‘Just what do you mean by that?’ Having found the dress she wanted, Judith was shaking it out on its hanger. ‘You don’t think he’s mad, do you?’

  ‘I’d hardly suppose so. But when a chap like Jasper Darien-Gore starts apologising for his brother in advance, one has to suppose there’s something rather far wrong. And I’ve an impression that Robert, and presumably his wife, Prunella, aren’t simply here on a weekend visit. In some obscure way, Robert has taken refuge here. And you and I, my dear, butting in in the way we have butted in, have very precisely the social duty to discover nothing about it.’