Appleby's End

by Michael Innes

  Copyright & Information

  Appleby’s End

  First published in 1945

  © Michael Innes Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1945-2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Michael Innes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 0755120841 EAN: 9780755120840

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

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  About the Author

  Michael Innes is the pseudonym of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, who was born in Edinburgh in 1906. His father was Director of Education and as was fitting the young Stewart attended Edinburgh Academy before going up to Oriel, Oxford where he obtained a first class degree in English.

  After a short interlude travelling with AJP Taylor in Austria, he embarked on an edition of Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s Essays and also took up a post teaching English at Leeds University.

  By 1935 he was married, Professor of English at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and had completed his first detective novel, Death at the President’s Lodging. This was an immediate success and part of a long running series centred on his character Inspector Appleby. A second novel, Hamlet Revenge, soon followed and overall he managed over fifty under the Innes banner during his career.

  After returning to the UK in 1946 he took up a post with Queen’s University, Belfast before finally settling as Tutor in English at Christ Church, Oxford. His writing continued and he published a series of novels under his own name, along with short stories and some major academic contributions, including a major section on modern writers for the Oxford History of English Literature.

  Whilst not wanting to leave his beloved Oxford permanently, he managed to fit in to his busy schedule a visiting Professorship at the University of Washington and was also honoured by other Universities in the UK.

  His wife Margaret, whom he had met and married whilst at Leeds in 1932, had practised medicine in Australia and later in Oxford, died in 1979. They had five children, one of whom (Angus) is also a writer. Stewart himself died in November 1994 in a nursing home in Surrey.

  1

  The guard blew his whistle and waved his flag – how weighted with ritual have the railways in their brief century become! – and the train crawled from the little station. The guard walked alongside through the snowflakes, wistful for that jump-and-swing at an accelerating van that is the very core of the mystery of guarding trains. But the train continued to crawl. Sundry footballers in a glass box, some with legs swung high in air, stood immobile to watch its departure.

  The engine tooted. In pinnacled and convoluted automatic machines, memorials of an age wildly prodigal of cast-iron, the slowly moving traveller would have found it possible to remark that the final and unremunerative penny had long since been dropped. Long ago had some fortunate child secured the last brightly wrapped wafer of chocolate; long ago had the last wax vesta released a dubious fragrance from the last cigarette – and the once flamboyant weighing machine, pathetic in its antique inability either to bellow or print, seemed yet, in its forlorn proposal to register a burden of thirty stone, whispering dumbly of dealings with a race of giants before the Flood.

  Just such a well-cadenced if vacuous meditation as this might the passenger, drear and bored, have constructed for himself before the guard stepped resignedly aboard, the platform dipped, points sluggishly clanked and the train was in open country once more. Sunday afternoon, which in England subtly spreads itself over the face even of inanimate Nature, stretched to the flat horizon. The fields were clothed in patchy white like half-hearted penitents; here and there cattle stood steamy and dejected, burdened like their fellows in Thomas Hardy’s poems with some intuitive low-down on essential despair; and now on the outskirts of a village the train trundled past a yellow brick conventicle constructed on the basis of hardly more cheery theological convictions. Inside the carriage it was cold and beginning to be fuggy as well. The focus of attention was a large glass bowl rather like those used in cemeteries to protect artificial flowers, but here pendulous from the roof and sheltering gas burners of a type judged moderately progressive at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Flanking this were luggage racks of a breadth nicely calculated to cause chronic anxiety in those below. Then came photographs: a beach and promenade densely packed with holiday-makers dressed in heavy mourning: a vast railway hotel standing, Chirico-like, in a mysteriously dispopulated public square: a grove exaggeratedly bosky and vernal, bespattered with tea tables and animated by three stiffly ranked dryads in the disguise of waitresses.

  Under the photographs were the passengers, Over the faces of the passengers, or lying on their knees, or slipped to their feet, were the objects of Sabbath devotion traditional to Englishmen in the lower and middle ranks of society. There were instruments and blunt instruments, packets of weed-killer and bundles of incriminating letters. There were love nests. There were park benches over which white crosses and black circles hung mysteriously in air. There were serious offences and grave charges; there were faces, blurry and odd-angled, of judges, coroners, and detective inspectors from Scotland Yard. Thin-lipped and driven women stood between policemen outside assize halls; persons now of notorious life lay naked on horse-hair sofas waving rattles, or dangled booted legs over Edwardian tables.

  Snow fell outside, as perhaps on half a dozen Sundays in the year. But every Sunday there was this sift and silt of newsprint in the domestic interiors of England. Big money lay in and behind it. In their brief elevation into objects of national curiosity these inconsiderable criminals and furtive amorists were sought out by vast organisations, groomed, glamorised and sub-edited in cliff-like buildings, multiplied and distributed with miraculous speed by powerful machines. And thence were sucked into millions of minds. It was the sucking that was really operative in the process: had the suckers not an instinct to suck, it was likely that the vast organisations would find other things to do. And so this laboriously garnered world of crime and misconduct and sensation was, in fact, a mythology �
�� a fleeting and hebdomadal mythology called into being by the obscurely working but infinitely potent creativity of the folk. In the green Arcadian valleys Pan is dead but still a numerous Panisci lurk and follow in the parks. Armies of thieves are still littered under Mercury. The rape of Proserpine – gathering flowers, herself a fairer flower – continues still, and Dis’ wagon is a borrowed limousine.

  Why in these latter days should the perennial myths have so squalid an embodiment – this same splendid car in which Pluto carried off Demeter’s daughter decline into Madame Bovary’s patiently perambulating cab? John Appleby, himself a detective inspector from Scotland Yard and with a weakness for cultivated reverie, had arrived at this large question when the train jerked to a halt. Twisting his neck as he sat cramped in a corner, he peered through the window. Mere dejection seemed to have occasioned this stoppage, and in mere dejection too the countryside was fading on the sight. In a field beyond the telegraph wires there stood a single gaunt tree. A tree, thought Appleby, of infinitely sinister silhouette. But this impression was, of course, a matter of simple projection. From the sog and wash of Sunday newspapers littering the carriage a species of miasma arose and seeped into the mind. And the mind, like a well-fed fire-engine, promptly sprayed this out again upon a waiting and neutral Nature…

  Appleby stooped and picked up one of the abandoned papers from the floor. It opened on a youngish man, bowler-hatted, well nourished and – surely – repulsive, standing with a truculently elevated chin before what appeared to be the shell of a burnt-out stable or hovel. Appleby glanced at caption and legend, and sighed. The Gaffer Odgers Murder. Old Gaffer Odgers had been unlovely in life, and in death he had been a faint stench as of roasted carrion. And the bowler-hatted person was Appleby himself. About eight years ago, that had been; and here was somebody writing it up for a new generation of connoisseurs. When current crime fell flat the public was very willing to be regaled from hiding places ten years deep.

  It was at this point that the man sitting opposite Appleby spoke. He had lowered his book – he appeared to be not one of the hebdomadal mythologists – and was looking appraisingly at his fellow passenger. “On the 27th of September 1825,” he said, “Stephenson drove a train of thirty-four vehicles, making a gross load of about 90 tons, at a speed of from ten to fifteen miles an hour. This was on the Stockton and Darlington railway. It is sometimes possible to feel that our rural railway system has made little progress since.”

  “This is certainly a tedious journey enough.” Appleby in his turn looked curiously at the man who had addressed him. “But trundling along is not without its charm. I’m quite content myself to leave progressive railways to the Americans.”

  “In America,” said the stranger, “the development of the locomotive dates from almost the same time as in England. In 1828, on behalf of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, Horatio Allen ordered three locomotives from Messrs Foster and Rastrick, of Stourbridge. One of these, the Stourbridge Lion, was actually the first practical steam locomotive to run in America, which it did on the 9th of August 1829.”

  “Most interesting.” Appleby groaned inwardly. No doubt this elderly person had an attic at home full of toy trains and signal-boxes, and on these he would now discourse for some considerable time. But at least he appeared to be unattracted by popular criminology. “I see, sir,” Appleby added civilly, “that you are interested in railway history.”

  “Dear me, no! In fact, certainly not. I have no interest whatever in such a subject.” The elderly man raised his book again, rather as if positively offended. Then, seemingly feeling that he had been too abrupt, he spoke once more. “I wonder if I might have the pleasure of lending you a book during our journey? This” – he tapped the book he had been reading – “is Dr Bossom’s recent work on the Docetists. A somewhat diffuse exposition, I am afraid. But here” – and the stranger rummaged in a small suitcase beside him – “is Stuttaford on the Monophysites – an altogether more concise monograph, if one may judge by bulk.”

  “You are very kind” – Appleby was somewhat at a loss – “but I’m afraid that the subject of Heresy–”

  “Is of no interest to you? Nor is it to me.” The elderly stranger was becoming quite cordial. “You would be inclined to say that the Docetists and the Monophysites – and for that matter the Pelagians and the Gnostic Ebionites – are today subjects of very limited popular appeal?”

  “Extremely limited, I should imagine.”

  “Exactly so.” The stranger nodded emphatically. “And if you will permit me” – he fished out a notebook – “I should like to make a note of your opinion. And now” – he rummaged again – “here we have two romances by Anthony Hope, Spratt’s History of the Royal Society, somebody’s recent life of Dostoievsky, Swincer and Tiver on the Tyrannosaurus, a current Turf Guide, a volume of Livy, two pamphlets on artificial respiration–”

  “I think Anthony Hope would be best.” Appleby was now thoroughly mystified. Model railways had been a guess far wide of the mark. But what could one put in its place? The personal appearance of the stranger was itself puzzling. If it were possible to think of one of His Majesty’s judges as reduced to obtaining his apparel from a superior second-hand shop while at the same time retaining the services of a competent valet – But Appleby shook his head. Judges don’t go down in the world – or not in England. “I suppose,” said Appleby boldly over the first page of Anthony Hope, “that you are a bookseller or publisher?”

  “Sir,” said the stranger, “I have never engaged in trade.”

  This was distinctly crushing. The stranger, however, did not intend it to be final, for he was fishing in a pocket once more and presently produced a worn morocco case. “Allow me,” he continued, with formality, “to offer you my card.”

  Appleby took the card. Everard Raven, he read, Barrister-at-law. So that was it, after all. And perhaps barristers go down in the world, even if judges don’t – but not so far down as to engage in trade. On this some form of apology would no doubt be tactful. “Appleby’s my name,” Appleby said. “I made my guess merely on the strength of the books you have with you. The subjects are so various that I can scarcely imagine even the most catholic reader being interested in them all. Indeed, there seems to be no possible connection between any two of them.”

  Mr Raven closed Dr Bossom on the Docetists and crossed his hands comfortably over his carefully pressed waistcoat. “You are mistaken,” he said. “Pardonably so, it must be confessed. For the link, although it is there, is scarcely as philosophical as I would wish. As a man of letters – for I must explain, Mr Appleby, that I have long since given over the practice of the law in favour of literary pursuits – as a man of letters, I must confess, indeed, that the link is a sadly arbitrary one. It is very much that which had to content the good Fluellen when he came to compare Macedon and Monmouth.”

  “A river in each,” said Appleby. “And salmon in both.”

  Mr Raven nodded, evidently much pleased. “I perceive that you are a student, Mr Appleby. And the common factor among my small batch of books should now be obvious to you. The Docetists and the Monophysites may be subsumed under the common term Religion; Dostoievsky suggests Russia; the Tyrannosaurus is a Reptile; Livy treats of the history of Rome; the Turf Guide concerns Racing; artificial respiration is an aspect of Resuscitation; and Anthony Hope wrote about Ruritania. The link, in fact, is alphabetical. I am deep in the doggy letter, sir.” Mr Raven paused and chuckled. “What the grammarians were fond of calling litera canina. And hence too those floating scraps of information on Railways with which I had the pleasure of initiating our acquaintance.”

  “Then would I be right,” asked Appleby, “if I were to have another guess and say that you are editing an encyclopaedia?”

  “Your guess,” said Mr Raven, “would be approximately correct. Unfortunately” – he spoke with sudden gloom – “the word ‘edit’ scarce
ly meets the case. You would do better to say ‘compile.’”

  “Compile?”

  Mr Raven nodded. “I write it.” He lowered his voice. “I write,” he said unexpectedly, “the whole damned thing.”

  2

  It was dark now and the journey had become interminable. The engine, while daylight lasted simply an obsolescent locomotive tugging grimy carriages across English ploughland, was now a creature alien and dragonish, panting on some vast and laboured quest. The engine was a monster – one of Swincer and Tiver’s Dinosauria, Appleby thought – with ghastly respirations striving to free itself from an engulfing Jurassic slime. Its reeky breath, faintly luminous, flipped momentarily at the windows. Sometimes, with an indescribable eeriness, it howled against the night. The pinch of famine this, perhaps – for station by station its clanking and jerkily oscillating maw was voiding itself into the murk: more passengers were getting off than getting on. Behind the grimed glass bowl the stinking little light now shone on the dusty red of empty seats, on cigarette butts and the dottles of pipes, on banana skins and orange peel mingled and pashed with the weed-killers, the love-nests, the ephemeral renaissance of Gaffer Odgers. Only the four corners of the carriage were occupied. In one a priest, heavy-breathing and rumbling dyspeptically within, stared with glassy concentration at an open breviary. In another was a slatternly woman clutching an idiot boy. Mr Raven, with a censorious pencil poised over Dr Bossom, occupied a third. And in the fourth Appleby, his overcoat buttoned up to his nose, endeavoured to grapple with Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda. “Being the History,” he read, “of Three Months in the Life of an English Gentleman.” Well, perhaps the unfortunate man had attempted a cross-country journey in an English railway train.