Appleby's End

by Michael Innes

  Mark left the room with alacrity and appeared to be away rather a long time. Rainbird moved softly about clearing the table, or rather making such redispositions as he appeared to think requisite for breakfast. Every now and then he murmured “Heyhoe,” softly; but Appleby, after listening carefully, decided that this was a mere ejaculation, made without reference to the dead coachman. Presently Mark returned; he looked relieved – perhaps only because he had succeeded in finding the cigars. Everard opened the box with an air, disclosing the largest Romeo and Juliettas that a leisured smoker could wish to see. It looked as if at least an hour’s further confabulation with the Raven menfolk lay ahead. Appleby, forlorn in borrowed clothes, considered the prospect without enthusiasm. But at least it would give Rainbird ample time to add soap to the towels or towels to the soap. And now Everard remembered that Clarissa might find the cigar-smoke oppressive in the morning, and that it would be better to move to the library. So they all left the dining-room – a large apartment hung with innumerable oil paintings which the light was inadequate to distinguish – and passed across what was already familiar to Appleby as an excruciatingly draughty hall. Robert Raven padded as if through a zone in which skill in unarmed combat might at any moment be required; Luke’s lips moved in an inaudible threnody; Everard, who had put on a faded rose-pink jacket salvaged from some wine club of his youth, toddled ahead like a careworn cockatoo; and Mark contrived to stand aside and view the whole procession with his most louche grin.

  The hall of Dream Manor, as well as being draughty, was long, narrow, and sadly disproportioned as the result of the injudicious addition of a pretentious Regency staircase. But what made it really odd was the Mongolians. For each Mongolian had a glass case to himself, and these were disposed in a quincunx pattern all over the available floor space. There is something markedly disconcerting in a miniature Madam Tussaud’s deposited in a country gentleman’s hall, and where there has been loving concentration on the more inscrutable Oriental types this effect is accentuated. The Mongolians – they had been collected by Ranulph’s third brother, Adolphus, a person of some talent who had joined the Romish Communion and become a bishop in partibus, but who was later converted on his death-bed to the religious system of the Zend-Avesta – the Mongolians eminently possessed that creepy half-life which all waxworks share, and which analysis shows to proceed from our conviction that they are uneasily aware of their own mere waxiness. The Mongolians, then – tirelessly exacting this obscure psychological manoeuvre – stood dotted about the hall and Everard, threading his way between them, explained to Appleby that they were arranged according to the best ethnological knowledge of the eighteen-eighties. “A landmark,” he said. “In its day our uncle Adolphus’ collection was something of a landmark in its own field. Pray notice the ferocious countenance of the Kurd. And only a few years ago (this one is a Tartar, and I think the force of the expression to catch a Tartar will immediately come home to you), only a few years ago the whole thing was wanted by a museum. In Idaho, I think, or perhaps it was Oregon. Only there was a hitch at the last moment.”

  “They didn’t,” said Luke, “see their way to pay.”

  “And here we are.” Rather hastily Everard threw open a door. “How pleasant to see an excellent fire.”

  The library fire was really not at all bad. But any cheerfulness which this might have imparted to the room was countered by the noticeable absence of some ten or fifteen thousand books. The library, that is to say, was lined with shelving from floor to ceiling, but, with the exception of islanded volumes and groups of volumes here and there, the shelves harboured nothing but dust, empty cigar boxes and tobacco tins, pipes, carpet slippers, fragments of dog biscuit, some foils, a fencing mask, ink bottles and a small model horse, hinged at the tail and opening so as to display the muscular system and internal economy of the animal. But if the Muses as most classically conceived had taken flight from Dream, they lingered as patronesses of the most oppressively permanent of the plastic arts. Ranged round the room were some dozen life-size figures and groups in gleaming white marble. The Rape of Europa was immediately distinguishable – Europa being in high spirits and needing only a frilly skirt to present the appearance of a bare-back rider in a circus. A companion piece, in which a bull and a glossy lady were yet more inextricably entangled both with each other and with two astoundingly contorted young men, Appleby identified provisionally as a Punishment of Dirce. He was looking round with some apprehension for a Pasiphaë when Everard Raven patted him amiably into a chair.

  “Ah,” said Everard, “I see you are looking at poor uncle Theodore’s work. Most of it, of course, is in Judith’s studio, but the choicer pieces were brought in here. The youth clasping what Mark insists is a beer barrel is Genius guarding the Secret of the Tomb. Theodore’s chef d’oeuvre, however, is generally taken to be the one opposite the fireplace. It is called Struggle between a She-Bear and a Man of the Old Stone Age. A bear was brought specially from Russia and accommodated, it is said, in the butler’s pantry. And the Old Stone Age Man was inspected and approved by Charles Darwin.” Everard paused and unexpectedly chuckled. “Of course, this sort of thing is not exactly in a modern taste. I myself prefer Judith every time. Indeed, a few years ago we explored the possibility of selling Theodore up. But there were unexpected difficulties.”

  Mark struck a match and lit Appleby’s cigar. “You see, we left it too late. Until recently these things could be put in vast machines and ground into powder for making a very superior sort of bathroom tiles. But now it appears that they use sour milk. Books, on the other hand, always have their price. We have found that a folio volume of eighteenth-century sermons is a reasonably good breakfast all round. And the works of Voltaire in full calf it isn’t easy to eat one’s way through under a month.”

  “Mark,” said Everard, “is referring to the fact that the library has been – um – in part dispersed. We have kept a working library upstairs in the Scriptorium. But the books down here were not of much interest to any present members of the family. It seemed a pity, therefore, to – ah – keep them idle.”

  Mark flung himself into an ancient sofa. “So we passed ’em through the larder. Mr Appleby is at present in process of digesting a volume of Dodsley’s Miscellany or a badly cropped copy of Dryden’s Fables.

  Everard Raven looked mildly pained. “Mark,” he said, “when I was a boy I was taught that gentlemen don’t talk money after dinner. And even if that good habit has fallen into desuetude–”

  The conversation of Mark Raven, it seemed to Appleby, was in even poorer taste than the marble statuary of his great-uncle Theodore. Perhaps the Heyhoe affair had got this odd young man badly rattled. Anyway, a change of subject would be all to the good. “I don’t suppose,” asked Appleby, “that any word has come in about the carriage yet?”

  Everard shook his head. “Nothing at all. And I am afraid that it will have gone over Tew Weir and that the battering will be the end of it.”

  “A great loss,” said Mark. “For Spot, that is to say.”

  “The carriage was in very poor repair.” Robert Raven, whose features under the influence of warmth and cigar smoke were beginning to lose the extremity of ferocity which had hitherto distinguished them, seemed to put this as a comforting suggestion to Everard. “It would have fallen to pieces of its own accord, in time.”

  “Which,” said Mark, “goes for Heyhoe too.”

  “Time?” Luke Raven, who had been leaning against the mantelpiece and gazing in a melancholy way at what was evidently Theodore’s idea of the Rape of the Sabines, came forward like an actor who has been presented with his cue. “Time with a Gift of Tears,” said Luke. “And Grief with a Glass that ran.”

  “There were potatoes.” Everard’s voice held a harassed note. “And cake for the cow. Billy Bidewell must be asked how long cows will go without cake.”

  “Pleasure, with Pain for leaven,” said Luke
.

  “When one comes to think of it, of course, the carriage would be of little use without Heyhoe–”

  “Summer, with Flowers that fell.”

  “–or Heyhoe without the carriage. But it is extremely distressing, all the same. I can see that Judith has had quite a shock–”

  “Remembrance, fallen from Heaven.”

  “–and that Clarissa, too, is upset. The events of the evening have been–”

  “Madness risen from Hell.”

  Mark Raven gave a yell of laughter. “One to the poet!” he cried. “Luke has hit the nail on the head. Somebody grabs a half-witted old coachman, yanks him along to a snowdrift, buries him up to the neck and leaves him to the operation of the laws of thermodynamics. Everard says it is extremely distressing. Luke says–”

  “Swinburne,” said Luke with gloomy modesty.

  “Swinburne says it is Madness risen from Hell. Let Mr Appleby, who is entirely unprejudiced in the matter, decide which is right.”

  Appleby remained silent. It was clear that the Ravens enjoyed desultory conversation among themselves and were capable of keeping it up indefinitely. No need to interrupt. And there was – surely there was – much about them that required a little quiet thinking out. Were they really birds as queer as they now seemed to be to a strayed policeman at the end of a long day first of massive monotony and latterly of fantastic incident? And where had they all been between the serio-comic episode of the ford and the ghastly discovery of Heyhoe? Appleby frowned. Where had he himself been? Floating down the river in an ancient carriage and in the company of an unaccountable girl – a ludicrous performance which circumstances had decreed should now, in all probability, become a front-page story. Inspector Appleby, what happened when visibility became so poor that you could momentarily proceed no further? We climbed into a haystack. Into a haystack, Inspector? A haystack. And, I suppose, fell asleep there? I’m afraid I really don’t know; perhaps so; certainly not for very long… Decidedly it sounded silly. And had he conceivably been asleep? Had Judith been asleep?

  The Old Stone Age Man – whose gaze passed, most improbably, just wide of the She-Bear’s left ear – squinnied at Appleby with all the cunning suspicion of the primeval forest. Dirce, on his right hand, looked as if she might at any moment perform a further somersault on her bull and land him a well-directed whirret on the ear. The Mongolians in the hall, mildly disconcerting though they were, had nothing of the restlessness of Theodore’s marmorean creations. Nor, in their multiplicity of faded barbaric garment, did they look anything like so chilly…

  Heyhoe. Only the graceless young Mark, so far, had really faced up to the nastiness of that icy end.

  8

  There existed, Appleby reflected, a highly esteemed school of prose fiction which represented the rural inhabitants of the British Isles as possessed by a ferocity and general nastiness to which the Kurd and the Tartar of the late Bishop Adolphus could scarcely hope to measure up. Was this, then, a regular winter sport, unsuspected in the Metropolis? At stated seasons did the simple peasantry delight in stamping their senior brethren into compacted snow? The effect as of some horrid decapitation had certainly been striking; was it an example of the lingering art of the folk? Or – since this macabre fantasy was surely baseless – what rational purpose could be served by such a deed? Was it within the bounds of possibility that–? Appleby, here beginning to frame some professional question, found that his thoughts on the whole matter led nowhere. Just nowhere – unless conceivably to the late Ranulph Raven?

  Why had Judith told him all that rigmarole, ending with the story of the preposterous harnessing of Spot? Probably just because she had felt that way, and with no ulterior motive whatever. Appleby shifted his gaze from the Old Stone Age Man to a rapturous Sabine lady, and suddenly quite a new idea started into his head. He turned to Everard. “I suppose,” he said, “that Heyhoe was a fairly elderly man – older than any of you?”

  Perhaps because they had been talking of something quite different, perhaps because the question had an odd turn to it, all the Ravens looked mildly surprised. “Heyhoe?” said Everard. “Dear me, yes. Old as the hills, poor chap. Must have been a stable lad about the place when I was a baby in arms. About a contemporary of Rainbird’s, I should say. Wouldn’t you, Robert?”

  “Rainbird and Heyhoe,” said Robert carefully, “were both born some years before any of us.”

  Which brings us back, thought Appleby, to Ranulph. Judith has already built up Ranulph as such a legendary figure in my mind that it is hard to realise that three of his sons are here in the room with me. And a fourth has been dug out of the snow. And a fifth – it now almost appears – is pottering round arranging a breakfast table across the hall. In fact the Dream Manor household is eminently a family affair. But if Heyhoe –

  “Heyhoe,” said Everard. “How right Mr Appleby is to recur to him. You know, we must get all that clear. What happened to each of us after our – em – dispersal at the ford? The jotting down of a note or two would not, to my mind, be by any means amiss.”

  “Ask Mr Appleby,” said Mark. “It’s just his line. Judith tells us he’s a policeman.”

  Everard frowned. “I certainly heard Judith make some obscure joke. But I hardly suppose–”

  “It’s quite true.” Appleby, who was becoming very sleepy, endeavoured to give his features an adequate expression of mild apology. “I am a detective inspector from Scotland Yard, and on my way to inquire into some troublesome affair at a place called Snarl. As I explained to Mr Raven when he was good enough to bring me along, I hope to get over there tomorrow morning. The death of your coachman is, of course, no business of mine whatever, and I haven’t the remotest intention of taking down notes about it.”

  Mark Raven jerked up his chin with a movement that sent the yellow hair tossing above his forehead. “Then why did you ask whether Heyhoe was older–”

  “If I may say so, these are uncommonly good cigars.”

  Everard beamed. “As I think I remarked, the New Millennium people are most enlightened in matters of that sort. It comes of one or two of their directors being of decent family, no doubt. I’m sorry to say the Enlarged Resurrection folk don’t sound nearly so promising.” Everard shook his head and looked gloomy again – almost as gloomy as Luke. “And, of course, we must not worry Mr Appleby with Heyhoe. His profession is purely – um – fortuitous and coincidental. Any further reference to it, my dear Mark, will be uncivil. We shall piece the matter out as best we can tomorrow morning and give an account of it to our own local police. Robert, I think Mr Appleby might be interested in the group at the far end of the room. It is called Nausicaa and her Maidens Washing, and is estimated to weigh seventeen tons.”

  Appleby doubted if he had any substantial interest left except bed. It would, of course, be satisfactory to know whether among the voluminous writings of Ranulph Raven there was anything prophetic of Heyhoe’s displeasing end. But on that Judith was the authority, and he would himself, no doubt, be off to Snarl on quite a different matter before Judith was up and about again. Everard too must know a good deal about the body of his father’s writing; had he also the impression that the ghost of Ranulph haunted Dream? On this a little fishing might be done while consuming the last third of the New Millennium people’s cigar.

  But at the moment Robert Raven held the field. Standing before Nausicaa and her Maidens Washing, and eyeing their nicely rounded contours much as if disposed to bite out great collops of gleaming marble flesh, he was discoursing mildly on the harmless if expensive nature of his late uncle’s pursuit. “Of course, he did very little actual carving himself. Nineteenth-century sculptors didn’t. At least one scarpellino was employed chipping away full-time. Among the benefits of the growth of science, you know, is this: that it gives the Theodores – talented, second-rate men – something more or less useful to do. His sort of fair-to-me
dium intellectual energy is drained off elsewhere. Science and pseudo-science. Today Theodore would be a professor of economics in some hole in Wales.”

  “Science?” said Everard. “Well, I don’t know. But certainly there’s a terrible lot of it. I ought to be getting on with Science. Devilish near, by the time one’s got to Religion.”

  Luke too had placed himself in front of Nausicaa – whose innocent exhibition of les tétons et les fesses he seemed to view without even the faint carnal curiosity which the art of Theodore seemed alone calculated to arouse. “Science?’’ said Luke. “Consider the rocket gun and the time bomb. Science has done nothing but sharpen the fangs of the sabre-toothed tiger.” And Luke, who appeared to vary quotation with epigram, walked gloomily away.

  “But,” said Appleby, “there is such a thing as specific inclination or talent, after all. Your Uncle Theodore might have been a professor of economics, in Wales or elsewhere. But your father, surely, would never have been other than the kind of writer he was.”

  “The kind of writer he was?” Everard was amiably discursive. “Now what kind was he, would you say? I don’t know that we’ve ever as a family got that fixed. You see, Ravens have never done anything in what you could call a popular way – or not as a rule. I suppose the New Millennium might be called popular” – and Everard looked momentarily rueful, as was proper in a scholar who yearned to labour on the frontiers of knowledge – “but anything of the sort has always been the exception with us. Even this stuff of Theodore’s was regarded as utterly refined in its day. Chaste was, I believe, the word commonly applied to it.”

  “Do you hear that?” Mark Raven interrogated the most nubile of Nausicaa’s Maidens, and enforced the question with a resounding spank. “Le mot juste, if ever there was one.” He shook a finger warningly. “No, no, my girl – it won’t do.”