A Night of Errors

by Michael Innes

  15

  It was a turn in the affair, Appleby felt, eminently deserving of a curtain – and even of tumultuous and sustained applause. The villain screeching with triumph over the burning ancestral home, the heroine fainting away, justice baffled and scurrying over a countryside in vain pursuit: all this on its level could not well be bettered. Hyland, who had no fancy for the limelight and greasepaint which was thus become so uncomfortably prominent in the mystery, had called for maps, motorcycles and firearms, and was now seated at a little table comporting himself like some harassed major involved in inexplicable manoeuvres. Around him bewildered constables came and went, most of them smoke-blackened and with sweat pouring from beneath their helmets. In the middle distance the Chief Constable ominously paced the lawn; behind him could be felt the impalpable and appalling presence of critical coroners, censorious Grand Jurys, outraged High Sheriffs and implacable Lords Lieutenant of the county. Hyland’s hair was ruffled, so that he looked as if he had been tearing it; lacerated black braid depended from various parts of his person, so that he looked as if he had been tearing that too; his silver buttons were missing or in mourning. As all this witnessed to the fact that he had borne a vigorous physical part in the action it was doubtless unjust that the total effect should be of undignified desperation and plain absurdity. But so it was. Appleby commiserated with his official colleague. At the same time he was conscious of those inglorious but comfortable sensations which Montaigne ascribes to that fortunate man who, from the security of solid earth, watches the vessel labouring on a stormy sea. But, definitely, an act had ended and the orchestra was shuffling into its pit. Like an exhausted spectator edging his way out to the bar, Appleby retired to a secluded corner of the gardens and set himself to think.

  A fountain was playing and he paused, startled by so peaceful and undisturbed a thing. In the basin surrounding it suspended or darting goldfish were beginning to catch the slanting rays of the sun. At its centre stood an Apollo Sauroctonus in white marble; from the figure’s outstretched left hand a fine spray of water fell, drenching the little lizard that climbed the tree-trunk hard by. A pretty conceit, Appleby reflected, to make a fountain so – and doubtless the idea had flashed upon some long vanished Dromio as he dutifully paced the Louvre and came upon the original. A lovely youth was this Apollo, although faintly epicene to a modern eye. Had such a one stood in the flesh before Praxiteles in his studio? Appleby shook his head. That was not the way of it. Rather had the sculptor and his fellows laboured long after those obscure conceptions and then, some generations later, the actuality was born and just such over-graceful lads were to be seen sauntering in the green Arcadian valleys. For always it is in the wake of art that life lumbers tardily on to fresh expressions. Yesterday’s canvas is the girl’s face of today; the son’s fact had been but the father’s fable. And with melodrama – Appleby sat down on the fountain’s brim, conscious that he was back at work. And at least this might be said: that when for practical reasons our imagination must become urgent and working we tend to impose upon reality something of a make-believe world potent with us during our impressionable years. So what, in the light of this, was the significance of that gesticulating figure with its satanic laughter as Sherris Hall came finally tumbling down?

  Lucy read modern poetry of the most sophisticated sort. Lady Dromio, intellectually unambitious, read streamlined novels about big hotels. Such books as Sir Oliver’s study had contained – Appleby shook his head. Swindle’s literary world, were it to be supposed that he at all possessed one, would much more closely answer to the diabolic figure whom Hyland’s motor-cyclists were now pursuing. But, of course, it might not be a matter of chronology. It might be in geography that the significant point lay.

  Appleby stooped down and picked up a tiny flint. On the broad flat rim of the fountain on which he sat he scratched a serrated line roughly representing the eastern coast of North America. Then he drew the British Isles, so that a tiny Atlantic Ocean stretched between. From a bed nearby he plucked three rose-buds – red, yellow, and white. The red rose he pitched into England, the yellow and white into America. He looked at them for some time. Then he moved the red rose across the Atlantic and paused again. Then he brought red and white to England. This time he paused longer and looked enquiringly at the Apollo above him – but the Apollo continued to watch the little water-drenched lizard undisturbed. ‘An heiress,’ said Appleby aloud; he picked up a pebble and set it beside the yellow rose in America; shook his head and brought the white rose back to America as well. Start again. White and yellow in America, with the pebble, too, not a little apart. Red rose in England… Again he brought the red rose across the Atlantic to join the yellow and white. For a long time he stared at them with absolute concentration. Then his hand went out in a flash; he picked up the yellow rose and flung it away. He paused again and then brought both remaining roses to England. He flung one of them away in turn, so that only a single rose remained. This rose he transferred to America, then rapidly to England and back, then finally to England again together with the pebble… He swept them all away and scratched out the continents. He rose and nodded to the Apollo. ‘Obvious, my dear Watson,’ he murmured, and walked on.

  Nevertheless he had not the air of a man whose problems are all behind him. Twice he restlessly paced the length of a gravel walk; he returned to the fountain and peered down at the fish. For a moment two or three would be clearly in focus; they would dart hither and thither and yet it would appear impossible that they should escape the eye; a moment later they would have vanished. He shook his head at them and frowned. ‘Geoffrey Gollifer,’ he said.

  Water trickled down the back of the lizard and fell with a tiny continuous splash into the pool. There was no other sound. ‘Geoffrey Gollifer,’ said Appleby again and with a different inflection. The effect was rather that of a man who doubtfully rotates some troublesome fragment of a jigsaw… ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘–Geoffrey Gollifer! Impossible to get away from it, much as I should like to. And that means – well, it means something like genius.’ He considered this. ‘Improvisation,’ he said. ‘That’s the point of astonishment.’ He looked up and saw Mr Greengrave bearing down on him.

  ‘Do I disturb you?’ asked Mr Greengrave. ‘I am sure that you must have much on your mind.’

  Appleby smiled. ‘I came into this corner of the gardens to think. But I appear to have been soliloquizing instead.’

  ‘It is sometimes helpful. And you and I, you will recall, first met upon a mutual confession of recitation and song – or perhaps I ought to say hymnology.’ Mr Greengrave shook his head. ‘Incredible that it should have been less than twelve hours ago.’

  ‘I agree that it is odd. I get the feeling of playing out a rapid theatrical piece before an invisible audience. No doubt my soliloquy was for their benefit.’

  ‘And now we are providing a dialogue for several goldfish, a lizard, and a heathen deity.’

  Appleby laughed. ‘Actually I have been thinking that this is an interval. There has been a big build up, a crashing climax, and now we are all set for the last act.’

  ‘The last act? I am sure I hope so.’ Mr Greengrave had become serious. ‘The tragedy has spread far enough.’

  ‘It has been a complicated crime, but it has also been a bloody one. Grubb is dead. A man whom it is reasonable to suppose an unknown brother of the late Sir Oliver’s is dead too. Somebody else, who may either be a second brother, or Sir Oliver himself–’

  ‘Lucy is convinced it is Sir Oliver. She recognized him at once.’

  ‘How could she do so? He was standing at a distance, and the air was full of smoke.’

  Mr Greengrave nodded. ‘That is true. But she is convinced, nevertheless. I have questioned her myself. Apparently it was his wave – that final gesture as he turned and ran. It was, she says, Oliver’s wave.’

  ‘Whoever it is, he is at large, and with a gallows, it may be, waiting for him. Geoffrey Gollifer is at large and in the same situati
on. It occurs to me to wonder about Swindle.’

  ‘The butler? I am afraid there can be no doubt as to his fate.’

  Appleby shook his head. ‘I don’t know just what the evidence is. A few seconds after we had become aware of the fire you may remember something like a scream–’

  ‘It had nothing to do with Swindle. Apparently it was Lady Dromio’s maid, who had been got up to attend her mistress. And she was successfully extricated. All that is known of Swindle is that he was probably in his basement room. As his senses were defective and he was accustomed to an atmosphere of almost intolerable heat it is supposed that he became aware of the fire too late to save himself. And unfortunately nobody else thought of him.’

  ‘I wonder. You see, he might have been so uncommonly useful.’ Appleby paused. ‘However, we shall know more or less for certain when they get in among the ruins.’

  ‘They are already attempting that, although the heat must still be terrific. Lucy Dromio, by the way, has a theory connecting Swindle with the origin of the fire. What a strange girl she is! Disasters have accumulated around her, and yet she is able to indulge in an untimely pleasantry. She declares that Swindle’s body will never be found.’

  ‘The dickens she does!’ Appleby looked sharply at Mr Greengrave. ‘And why–’

  ‘She gives it as her opinion that what has occurred is a case of spontaneous combustion. Swindle had drunk so much port that his flashpoint, so to speak, had sunk dangerously low. Eventually he simply went up in flame and nothing more will be seen of him.’

  Appleby shook his head. ‘I think it quite likely that a body has disappeared without trace. Unless I am completely out in the whole matter – which is only too likely, you may well say – that appears to be an essential inference to make. Only I don’t think the disappearance has been exactly in the neighbourhood of Sherris. I should guess at something like an accident on a lake or river… Did any word ever come to Sherris, do you know, of Sir Oliver’s having been involved in some serious accident?’

  ‘I think not.’ Mr Greengrave peered absently at the darting goldfish. ‘For a good many weeks there had, it seems, been a complete absence of news.’

  Appleby nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose it would be. It almost follows, indeed, from the nature of his ties.’

  ‘I know very little about them. But they would appear, I am afraid, not always to be very moral.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Appleby stared in astonishment. ‘Oh, I see! I wasn’t speaking, actually, of ties of that sort, I meant neckties.’

  ‘Neckties?’ It was Mr Greengrave’s turn to be perplexed. ‘I hardly see–’

  ‘Ah – but then you don’t wear them. It is not a field in which a clergyman need be at all knowledgeable. Nor could Apollo here have a word to say on the matter. Shall we go back and see what’s happening?’

  Mr Greengrave nodded emphatically. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘we better had.’

  Firemen and policemen were cautiously exploring the ruins. Bathed in sunshine, they still in places dully glowed; smoke hung over charred woodwork and tumbled brick; everywhere the windows gave upon queer emptiness or blue sky. The lawn was muddy and trampled, the flower-beds ravaged, the lily pond half drained away. All in all, Sherris showed forlorn as a deserted theatre littered with the debris of an audience gone home to bed.

  Hyland still sat at his little table, an imaginary office disposed around him. ‘Well,’ Appleby asked, ‘are all those desperate characters still at large?’

  ‘All? Dash it all, there are only two: Geoffrey Gollifer and Sir Oliver – if it is Sir Oliver. But two is bad enough.’

  ‘Might there not be three? There were three brothers, you know: two long-lost and one common-or-garden. And only one is certainly dead.’ Appleby shook his head. ‘Now, if there had been Dromio quintuplets matters would be really complicated.’

  ‘It’s no time for levity.’ Hyland was harassed and morose. ‘You haven’t heard the news. Sir Oliver – for I don’t really see that it can be other than he – is behaving like a madman.’

  ‘I’m sure he is.’

  ‘A pyromaniac. This’ – and Hyland waved a hand at the smoking ruins of Sherris – ‘is only a beginning of the mischief. From all accounts he’s racing across country in a big car firing anything he can. Hayricks going up all over the place. Mad as a hatter. So what are you to make of that?’

  ‘Well, of course, Oliver’s father went more or less mad, didn’t he? We rather gathered he died quietly insane. And it came on with his fantastic firing of his own nurseries, and substituting two children for his own. So I suppose this looks like history repeating itself, more or less? Sir Oliver learnt the truth while he was in America; his mother wrote and told him about it. Clearly it sent him quite balmy and he became obsessed with the idea of fire and substituted bodies himself. Then he hitched this obsession on to something else – the fact that he was in perhaps more than one uncomfortably tight spot. Blackguards often are. He brought home one of those long-lost brothers, hit him on the head, proposed to pass off his body as his own, and himself make a comfortable get-away to another identity, with no curiosity pursuing him. He managed all this, complete with a little loopy – but nevertheless practically useful – incineration in the study, burning away the evidence of his brother’s work-coarsened hands. So far, there was a sort of fantastic rationality in his proceedings. But then, as was almost inevitable, all this criminal excitement finally overthrew any vestiges of sanity and calculation, so that now he is wandering the country like a maniac firebrand. Is that right?’

  Hyland nodded emphatically. ‘That’s right. But it’s uncommonly complicated.’

  ‘To be sure it is.’ Appleby sighed. ‘But not nearly so complicated as the truth.’

  It was at this moment that a constable approached. He was holding before him, rather in the manner of a servant who has been bidden to handle some repellent object, a single battered and muddy boot. He placed it on the table before Hyland. ‘Sergeant’s orders, sir,’ he said, ‘that you were to see this.’

  Hyland eyed the object without enthusiasm. ‘Well,’ he demanded, ‘what of it – and where did you find it?’

  ‘In a ditch, sir, about half-way down the main drive.’

  ‘And what the deuce were you doing in a ditch, man? Did you expect to find this madman lurking in it?’

  ‘I wasn’t in the ditch, sir.’ The constable spoke reproachfully. ‘I was just passing by, like, and my eye fell on it. So I thought I’d better show it up.’

  ‘Show yourself up, I should say. Ditches are full of old boots. What do you expect us to do? Fit it triumphantly to the vital footprints?’ Hyland’s frayed temper was making itself evident again.

  ‘Well, sir, I did think it might be some sort of clue.’

  ‘Good lord! Well, I dare say you acted very properly. And now’ – and Hyland turned the constable’s clue distastefully over – ‘take it away again. It’s nothing but an old boot abandoned by a tramp. Some mud sticking to it, and some feathers. It’s no more a clue than is the nose on my face.’

  ‘Excuse me. I wonder if I might–?’

  They turned in surprise. Mr Greengrave, who had been standing beside Appleby, was advancing and peering at the boot. Hyland picked it up and handed it to him with a sigh. ‘Yes, sir?’ he asked patiently.

  ‘I hope you will not – that is, I should hate to claim any power of observation in matters of this kind. But – well, yes, I am sure of it.’

  ‘We are glad to hear of anybody being sure of anything round about Sherris these days.’ Hyland, not venturing to glower at a clergyman, glowered at the unfortunate constable instead.

  ‘You see, it is like this. Last night I happened to be planning out the heads of a sermon, and it occurred to me to wonder whether I might not judiciously animadvert upon certain minor misdemeanours which have been troubling the parish of late–’

  ‘Well, sir, you have more than minor misdemeanours to speak of, I’m afraid, next Sunday. And I
hardly see–’

  ‘The fact is that old Mrs Marple has missed a couple of her Khaki Campbells. And the feathers on this boot are from a Khaki Campbell. I think it not possible that I could mistake them. And I know of nobody else who keeps that particular sort of duck.’

  ‘But this is interesting.’ Appleby spoke decidedly. ‘Does Mrs Marple live near Sherris?’

  ‘No. She lives at the other end of the parish, on the Sherris Magna road.’

  ‘Then it would be wise to visit her Khaki Campbells at once. Hyland, have you got a car? Your men have borrowed mine.’

  Hyland appeared to swallow with difficulty. ‘Of course I have a car. But do you really think–’

  ‘Certainly I do. It may bring us no nearer to your criminal. But just conceivably it may confirm a hypothesis – in rather a grim way.’

  ‘You mean that you are beginning to get this affair clear?’ Hyland’s voice sounded incredulous but faintly hopeful.

  ‘It comes clear in bits. Have you got a map?’

  Hyland picked up a sheet from his table. ‘Here you are. Leave the main road at this fork, and Mrs Marple’s is the first cottage with a patch of land on the right. You can’t miss it.’

  ‘Thank you. And now have you got one of the whole country?’

  This too was produced and Appleby studied it silently.

  ‘Fellow has almost certainly got a car,’ Hyland said ‘–and a powerful one too. But we have no description of it, and by the time a blaze is reported he may be fifty miles away. It’s awkward.’

  ‘You think he will go driving about England, firing things indefinitely?’

  ‘I’m sure he will. You’d know he was mad as a hatter just from that laugh we heard – let alone from the accounts of what he’s up to now. Of course it can’t last. He probably looks as much of a chimneysweep as we do, and his manner will be strange. Quite soon he will be spotted, the car described, and then we shall have him within a couple of hours. But there will have been the deuce of a lot of damage meanwhile. And when I think that we let that young fellow Gollifer slip through our fingers too–’