A Night of Errors

by Michael Innes

  They raced along the side of the house. A window belching flame forced them to a circuit, and now heavy wafts of smoke made it hard to see what was happening above. ‘There he is!’ The man next to Appleby threw up his arm and pointed. In the next instant there was a single cry, the swift impression of a body hurtling through space, a dull impact – inexpressibly horrible – straight before them. Hyland ran forward, pale before this fresh disaster. ‘More than thirty feet,’ he said. ‘Not a hope.’

  But Sebastian Dromio was alive. He opened his eyes upon Lucy kneeling beside him. ‘Dam’ Jacquerie,’ he whispered. ‘Trying to burn the place down. Took my gun to them and cleared them out. Glad to see you all right, my dear. Had an idea’ – he paused and his breath was laboured – ‘had an idea you’d got into a pickle. If Oliver–’ Some spasm shook Sebastian Dromio’s broken body. ‘If Oliver–’ His eyes closed and his head fell back. He was placed on a stretcher and carried to the shelter of the waiting ambulance.

  And now across the still and empty countryside, over which light mists were beginning to stir in level shafts of sunshine, came an urgent jangle of bells. Making as much noise as if all Oxford Street had to be cleared before them, the two fire engines from Sherris Magna were hurrying to the scene.

  At last, Appleby thought, it might be possible to reflect on the events of the night. With the arrival of the fire-engines everybody was organized and busy. Indeed, nearly everybody was happy too. The rescue of Lady Dromio and the heroic if crazy conduct of Sebastian had marked a turning-point. For the time people appeared to forget the earlier horrors and mysteries to which this conflagration was a sequel; instead they gave themselves to united effort against the impersonal force of the flames. Appleby passed a bucket – he had slipped into the line of men working from the lily pond – and saw Hyland blessedly busy organizing matters some thirty yards away. Another fire-engine, an emergency tender, an ambulance and a mobile canteen had arrived from a neighbouring town; several car-loads of sight-seers were already parked beyond the lawn; nearby, and under the eye of a watchful constable who could apparently be spared for the purpose, a line of children from neighbouring cottages watched the blaze with delight and awe. Somebody had found Lady Dromio a garden chair. Mr Greengrave, not without a wistful glance at the manipulating here of a hose and there of a ladder, was discoursing to her apparently in his professional character. Mrs Gollifer stood a little apart, gazing quietly at the flames.

  Appleby gazed too. What was the meaning of them? To what end had this devouring monster been let loose upon Sherris? Was it inconceivable that the fire was an accident? A sheer coincidence it could scarcely be. But in Sir Oliver’s study there had been no fire kindled for many months; that evening one had been kindled either for fantastic or for obscurely practical motives; into that fire a body had been pitched, and out of it the same body had been hauled. These circumstances did suggest the possibility of accident – perhaps of some smouldering ember having been kicked unwittingly into a corner. It was not possible, then, positively to assert that the blaze was the consequence of design. But it did look uncommonly like it.

  Long ago there had been a fire at Sherris. If Lady Dromio was to be believed, that fire had been the consequence of design – and of design equally fantastic and wicked. Sir Romeo Dromio through some queer freak of mind had resented the three sons who came to him at a birth; for two he had substituted dead bodies; and the third he had then rescued from a disaster of his own contriving. That third son had lived to be Sir Oliver Dromio, and it was impossible to say that his father was not a madman. Was there madness in this second lurid act of the Dromio drama? Appleby thought that there was. Sir Romeo’s crime – for it was that – had been freakish and unscrupulous; and that was the complexion which this crime might finally be seen to wear too. A superstructure of guile upon a foundation of insanity. An elaborate and intricate construction mirroring a fertile but unbalanced mind, rather like a scientific contrivance by Heath Robinson… But this, Appleby thought, was prophecy, not detection. He swung another bucket along the line. Just what had this fire been calculated to conceal or destroy? And, conversely, what had it revealed?

  Sebastian Dromio was a selfish and callous old man: this there was required no conflagration to show. But Sebastian Dromio had risked his life in an effort to save Lucy, and perhaps there was revelation in that. Indeed, had he conceivably taken such a risk twice that night? Among the mere impressions which the affair had brought him none, Appleby found, was stronger than this: that Sebastian Dromio had been playing a part – and playing it with very sufficient skill. If he had been uneasy under interrogation his uneasiness had not really lain precisely where it had appeared to lie; and if he had drunk much he had yet appeared to drink far more.

  What had Grubb the gardener seen in the neighbourhood of Sir Oliver Dromio’s study that night? That he had seen Sebastian was not unlikely – and at some moment when Sebastian would rather not have been observed. But was that why Grubb had died from that apparently irresponsible shot from Sebastian’s hand? Or had Grubb seen something else as well – or at least had Sebastian believed him to have done this? Had Grubb known too much about Lucy Dromio – Lucy, who had declared that she might kill her foster-brother Oliver? Was Sebastian’s aim to shield this one person for whom he cared?

  But it was not enough to ask what Grubb had seen near Sir Oliver’s study; one must ask too what he was doing there. And here was something characteristic of the case. Every question brought another in its train; and as soon as one concentrated upon one aspect of the affair one was uneasily conscious of others which had drifted out of focus…

  Appleby looked about him. The firemen were bent upon saving the two extreme wings of the mansion, and its centre, abandoned to destruction, was now from top to bottom compact of fire. The dawn had brought a breeze; under its influence an interplay of smoke and flame chequered the advancing daylight and gave an effect of confusion – almost of the phantasmagoric – to the scene. A group of men, red-eyed and begrimed, stood with mugs oddly poised beside the canteen; above them on their lofty pedestals the Dromio hippogriffs appeared to take motion and curvet and prance in air; dogs had collected in surprising number and their barking mingled with the throb of engines, the crackle of the fire and the hiss of steam.

  Where lay the heart of the case? Huddled up in its incident within a few hours, it yet when brought under review appeared to sprawl away in more directions than it was easy to follow. Yet some nexus there must be; some point, perhaps quite tiny, at which the beginnings of precise revelation lay… As Appleby made this obvious reflection he suffered an odd experience.

  It was rather like the experience which Mr Greengrave had described as befalling him in his car. Appleby saw something; was aware of a compelling visual image. And this image he obscurely knew was vital to the matter; it ought to lead to some precise point at which enquiry might begin… Appleby frowned. For the image was simply that of Lucy Dromio, falling or floating down from her window, with her dress blown back like the petals of a windswept flower. It could not be called an erotic vision, yet markedly it was an anatomical one. And urgently but in vain it recalled some word – some vital word – which had been spoken, Appleby knew not by whom, that night.

  He shook his head, dismissing this mere vagary of mind. The house is burning, he told himself doggedly, in order to conceal the truth about a dead body now consumed to ashes within it. But this is the second time that fire has been evoked for such a purpose – the second within a few hours. Somebody was killed. His body was so disposed upon a fire that the arms and hands were virtually destroyed. The body was then identified. And hard upon its identification there was more fire and it was destroyed in toto. From these facts certain conclusions were surely clear. The body had been partly burnt in the first instance because without burning the desired identification would not have been made. And now it had been wholly destroyed because, even when made, that identification would not have held for long. Nor had it. T
hat the body was not Sir Oliver Dromio’s had in fact been discovered at a very brief interval before this ghastly bonfire. And Appleby looked grimly at the flames. They were too late. This large act of destruction was in vain.

  But was it? The body had been identified as Sir Oliver Dromio’s – and by witnesses who included Sir Oliver Dromio’s mother. Later other witnesses had come forward who were of a contrary opinion. And now there was no further opportunity of determining between them. Except the teeth – thought Appleby, following the thought of the admirable Sergeant Morris. Freakish amateur criminals with a strain of madness commonly do not think of little matters like that. The fire might burn on…

  The fire might burn on. Nevertheless Appleby swung the next bucket with a will. As he did so he was aware of a stab of pain. He looked down at his hands and found them begrimed and blistered. And that of course might be it. That the body had gone into the fire to destroy fingerprints was a false cast. There was a far more immediate give-away to be avoided by the criminal. The features of that identical triplet had been virtually indistinguishable from those of his brother Sir Oliver. But his hands had been different; they had been the hands – the wholly undisguisable hands – of a labouring man.

  Here, then, was a reasonable hypothesis forming – forming by the very light, as it were, of the blazing pyre that was now Sherris Hall. The plot was Sir Oliver Dromio’s, and it turned upon several factors. First, that he was of criminal mind – and this the peculiarly nasty blackmail in which he had engaged documented convincingly enough. Secondly, that he was sufficiently crazy to envisage following murder with arson, and this at the not inconsiderable risk of incinerating his mother and his foster-sister. Thirdly, that some difficulty or combination of difficulties came upon him just at the time of his discovering that he was one of three identical brothers. It was a fantastic discovery, Appleby reflected, and might well lead the mind of the man who made it to some construction of answering fantasticalness. What then had Sir Oliver done? He had lured one of those new-found brothers to Sherris and into his study. And there he had killed him, changed clothes, kindled a fire with which to destroy the tell-tale hands, raised an alarm before there was risk of the body being too pervasively burnt. Then when he knew that the body had been discovered and a first identification had been made he returned and started the major conflagration which should ensure that closer scrutiny would not reveal the truth. And now he had vanished, confident that none would inconveniently look for Sir Oliver Dromio among the living again. Only he was mistaken. Dr Hubbard’s swift realization that the body was actually another’s had spoilt the plan.

  But why, then, had Geoffrey Gollifer told so strange a tale? Why had he declared, and with such a labour of circumstantial detail, that he had called Oliver Dromio from his study, quarrelled with him, and killed him there and then? He appeared not an imaginative youth, and of such an impassioned flight of fancy only one explanation seemed possible. Geoffrey Gollifer was shielding someone with whom his emotions were deeply engaged.

  Appleby continued to pass the buckets. This particular amateur effort in which he had joined clearly possessed not the slightest utility. It would be altogether more sensible to stop and gather round the mobile canteen for whatever creature comforts the modern technique of fire-fighting provided. And yet perhaps this exercise had its utility. Did it not stimulate the brain?

  Whom, then, was the young man Gollifer shielding? The real Sir Oliver, whom he knew to have killed a brother hitherto unknown? This was evidently impossible. Gollifer might not positively wish his enemy to the scaffold, but it was altogether unlikely that at deadly personal risk he should endeavour to save him from it. Gollifer, then, had indeed believed that it was the real and unquestioned Sir Oliver who was killed. He was shielding the person whom he believed guilty of that killing. His mother and Lucy Dromio were the likely people. But here, surely, Sebastian Dromio came in again. Sebastian had no demonstrable feeling for Mrs Gollifer. But for Lucy he had shown devotion enough. If he too, then, were shielding somebody; if he had killed Grubb because he feared some impending revelation –

  Appleby paused and mopped his brow, feeling as one who has entered the last lap of a race. Lucy Dromio could have had no part in the killing; that she should, hard upon the revelation of that evening, have acted in any sense as Oliver’s accomplice was a thing wholly incredible. But if Geoffrey Gollifer was shielding her, and Sebastian was shielding her, and there was something against her which Grubb could have said; if it could by several people be believed that she had been involved, then surely in some way she must have been sufficiently close to the affair to have at least something to tell. Here was a case – almost a complete case – and perhaps there were particulars in which she could confirm it. Appleby glanced round him, wondering where she might be. And as he did so, he saw her.

  But again it was with the inward eye. Perhaps his sight, dazzled with the flames, was predisposed to play him tricks. There, with almost hallucinatory vividness, and strangely carrying with her the feeling of a misgiving, of a warning, was Lucy Dromio falling into the waiting canvas, a brief vision of silk-clad legs and thighs, of billowing white draperies blown about her head. It had no meaning; it could have none; its quality as of a threatening obsession was a mere freak of the mind, a reflex of some buried interest of the sensual man… Appleby passed one more bucket and fell out of line. For some time he had been tired. Now he was depressed.

  13

  Mrs Gollifer stood immobile by the lily pond. In her long evening gown and white cloak she might have been a statue of Hera, poised to look fixedly towards the dawn. Whatever life this stately woman had contrived to build for herself upon a basis of deception and lies was now over. She was a confessed bigamist – a squalid crime, reflected Appleby, commonly associated with the lower classes. Her son, whether truly or not, was a confessed murderer. Her daughter had been in love with a man who was blackmailing her over that daughter’s existence; and this relationship had now been revealed to a girl who was wholly unprepared to make any emotional response to it. Mrs Gollifer’s position might be called tragic. In addition to which she must be feeling a fool.

  Appleby grabbed a second mug of coffee and approached her. ‘I am afraid,’ he said, ‘that you must be exhausted. Try this.’

  She took the mug and thanked him. ‘Mr Appleby, is it not?’ she asked. ‘Speak, if you have a mind to.’

  ‘It would seem that there is not much chance of saving the house.’

  ‘Nobody will regret it. Kate, it is true, will miss her embroidery task of the moment, and there may be difficulty in remembering the title of the novel she will want replaced. It is about a large hotel. But more than one writer, I have been told, has essayed the theme.’

  Oddly, the woman spoke with something of the accent of that daughter who had grown up orphaned and unacknowledged; here was the same disguise of hard talk. ‘Is Lady Dromio, then, so unfeeling?’ Appleby asked. ‘She would seem to have taken some risk for you long ago.’

  ‘In accepting Lucy? It was her whim. Later she tired of it and I do not think that Lucy has been happy. And Kate would not be logical about it. She was used to me as a friend and she would not exchange me for Lucy. She must have both. Of course I ought to have lived far away and known nothing of Sherris. But the position of the Gollifer estate made that difficult, and to watch my daughter growing up was a temptation into which it was easy to fall.’

  ‘Had you no misgivings over your son Geoffrey?’

  ‘You talk idly. Remorse and horror have never left me from the first day. But Geoffrey’s danger – the danger he stood in with regard to Lucy – I became aware of only lately. It was doubtless what drove me to speak last night. We used to speak of Geoffrey and Lucy as growing up almost like brother and sister. It was a foolish irony.’

  ‘It was a wicked one.’

  Mrs Gollifer glanced at Appleby with a flicker of surprise and what was perhaps respect. She inclined her head. ‘I could see that Lucy wa
s very much in love with Oliver. When Oliver turned out bad – a worthless man growing middle-aged – the security there seemed to be in this was mingled with pain. But when Oliver came upon the truth of Lucy’s birth and basely proposed to make money out of it the painfulness became intolerable.’

  ‘I can well believe it. You would have gladly killed him, I should imagine.’

  Mrs Gollifer smiled – and although a drawn smile it was genuine. ‘You have been a police-detective, have you not, Mr Appleby? I suppose that every trail must be pursued.’

  ‘Assuredly it must.’

  ‘I do not think I had any impulse to kill Oliver Dromio. Of course the impulse may have been there in what they call the subconscious mind.’

  ‘We won’t trouble ourselves about that.’

  ‘But I saw that I must in a sense kill Oliver; I must kill him in Lucy’s mind. But then where might she come to stand in regard to Geoffrey, her own half-brother who had fallen in love with her? It appeared to me that nothing would serve except the truth all round.’

  ‘It is an excellent maxim of conduct, in a general way. But here it would seem to have precipitated disasters enough.’

  ‘Did it do that? Has anything that I have done or said had influence upon the events of this horrible night?’ Mrs Gollifer glanced from the lily pond to Appleby, and there was swift intelligence in her gaze. ‘Geoffrey’s was an independent discovery; it would appear that he rummaged among papers that were no business of his and came upon the truth that way. And only coincidence – or might it be telepathy? – brought this about on the same evening that I told the truth here.’