Appleby File

by Michael Innes

  ‘At least a change of job, one supposes, may bring out something roughly of that sort. Was there any particular regard in which he appeared to you to be changing?’

  ‘I can scarcely answer that without appearing very much at sea, Sir John. In one aspect Durham was a man growing detached, remote, fatigued. In another, he was becoming irascible, authoritarian, and increasingly prone to flashes of odd behaviour. He could behave like an old-fashioned headmaster with a vindictive turn of mind.’

  ‘Dear me! That sort of thing surely doesn’t cut much ice with undergraduates today?’

  ‘Decidedly not. They can be a very great nuisance, our young men. But it is reason alone that is of any avail with them. It’s something they have a little begun to get the hang of. Talk sense patiently enough and without condescension – and round they always come.’ Fordyce had delivered this high doctrine with an effect of sudden intellectual conviction. ‘Durham had lost grip on that.’

  ‘How did he get along with the younger dons?’

  ‘Ah! Not too well.’

  ‘To the extent of anything like feud? With Button himself, for instance?’

  ‘With Button, I’d scarcely suppose so – although the lad may have annoyed him. Nor with any of them to what you might call a point of naked animosity. Bone might be an exception.’

  ‘Bone? A young man called Bruno Bone?’

  ‘Yes. I’m not sure that Bone, for whatever reason, hadn’t got to the point of hating Durham in his guts.’ It was rather unexpectedly that the Vice-Master had produced this strong expression.

  ‘But Bone, too, would scarcely be bloody, bold, and resolute?’

  ‘Of course not. He–’ The Vice-Master, who seemed to have produced this reply by rote, suddenly checked himself. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that I wouldn’t be quite confident of that? But then I’m coming to wonder what I shall ever be robustly confident about again. This is an undermining affair, Sir John.’

  Bruno Bone, a lanky, prematurely bald young man, was spending his Saturday afternoon banging away on his typewriter. Perhaps he was writing a lecture, or perhaps he was writing a novel. Whichever it was, he didn’t seem much to care for being interrupted by the mere father of the author of The Lumber Room.

  ‘Yes, of course I know they’ve arrested Button,’ Bone said. ‘So what?’

  ‘I’d rather suppose you might be distressed or concerned. Not that they have, perhaps, quite arrested him. He’s helping them with their inquiries. They have to tread carefully, you know. But it’s true they hold a document from a magistrate. It’s in reserve. But I’d simply like to ask, Mr Bone, what you think of the affair.’

  ‘Absolute poppycock. Brian Button’s an irresponsible idiot, and I wouldn’t trust him with looking after the beer in the buttery, let alone those Cannongate Papers. But he wouldn’t shoot old bloody Durham. Wouldn’t have the nerve.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘If you weren’t old enough to be my father, I’d tell you that was a damned impertinent question.’

  ‘Never mind the impertinence. Would you?’

  ‘I don’t know that I know.’ Bruno Bone was of a sudden entirely amenable. ‘It’s an interesting speculation. On the whole – I’m ashamed to say – I guess not.’

  ‘Or would anybody else in the college?’

  ‘Can’t think of anybody.’

  ‘Then I’m left – so far as anybody who has been put a name to goes – with a London journalist whom Button sent for and talked to a shade rashly. There are journalists, I suppose, who are fit for anything.’

  ‘This one may have scented a hopeful whiff of blackmail, or something of that kind? And the Master may have got on to what he was up to, and had his brains blown out for his pains? I wouldn’t like to have to render such a course of events plausible in a novel.’

  ‘If you ever try, I’ll hope to read your attempt at it.’ Appleby gave this quite a handsome sound. ‘When did you last see Dr Durham?’

  ‘When did I last see my father?’ Bruno Bone was amused. ‘Quite late in the day, really. I’m not a bad suspect, come to think of it. Smart of you to be chasing me up, Sir John. Quite Bobby’s father, if I may say so. Bobby’s bright.’

  ‘I never judged him exactly dim – but the point’s not of the first relevance. Be more precise, please.’

  ‘Very well. I went to see the old brute about an hour before he was indubitably dead. Probably the last man in, so to speak. A breathless hush in the close, and all that. I wanted to sound him out about the prospects of my touching the college for a travel grant. California. Awful universities, but a marvellous climate. Durham treated me as if I was a ghost. Bizarre, wouldn’t you say? Considering he was so well on the way to becoming one himself.’

  ‘No doubt. What was the Master doing?’

  ‘Concocting a letter.’

  ‘On some sort of dictaphone?’

  ‘Nothing of the sort. Laborious pen and ink. And putting a lot of concentration into it, I’d say. He made a civil pretence of listening to me for about thirty seconds, and then turfed me out. He was back on his job before I’d reached the door.’

  ‘And that was the last you saw of him?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’ Bruno Bone was sardonically triumphant. ‘And here’s where I get off the hook. I saw him ten minutes later – and so must plenty of other people – crossing the great quadrangle, with his letter in his hand. He went out through the main gate, crossed the road to the post office, shoved his letter into the box, and came back.’

  ‘There would be nothing particularly out of the way, would there, about all that?’

  ‘Of course there would. He had only to leave the thing on a table in his hall, and it would have been collected and dealt with by a college messenger.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mr Bone. And I apologize for disturbing you.’

  Appleby’s final call was on the senior History Tutor, an elderly man called Farnaby. Farnaby, he supposed, was in some vague and informal fashion Brian Button’s boss.

  ‘One of Button’s indiscretions,’ Appleby said, ‘appears to have been dreaming up some popular articles based on the documents in his charge, and calling in a man from some paper or other with whom to discuss the matter. Would you term his doing that a grave breach of confidence?’

  ‘Certainly not. Button ought, no doubt, to have mentioned the proposal to the Master or to myself in the first instance. It might even be said that there was a slight element of discourtesy in his conduct of the matter; and anything of the kind is, of course, greatly to be deprecated in a society like ours.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But let us simply call it an error of judgement. Button has the makings of a competent scholar; but of what may be called practical judgement he has very little sense.’

  ‘I see. Would you say, Dr Farnaby, that the young man’s lack of practical judgement might extend to his supposing it judicious to murder Dr Durham?’

  ‘Of course not. I am almost inclined, Sir John, to say that the question could be asked only in a frivolous spirit. It is utter nonsense.’

  ‘So everybody except the police appears to feel. Might Button be described as a protégé of yours?’

  ‘I don’t think we go in for protégés.’ Farnaby had frowned. ‘But I certainly feel in some degree responsible for him. He was my pupil, and it was I who recommended him for his present employment.’

  ‘Thank you. Now, it appears to me, Dr Farnaby, that we have at present just one hard fact in this affair. The day before yesterday, or thereabout, some person unknown abstracted eight sheets from a file of photocopies, photocopied those photocopies anew, and then returned the newer and not the older photocopies to the file. The switch was almost certainly fortuitous rather than intentional. It could not have been designed to attract Button’s attention, since th
ere was no particular likelihood of his turning over those particular papers again before the static electricity had faded from them. At this specific point, then, we have no reason to suspect any sort of plot against the young man.’

  ‘Clearly not.’

  ‘Button went to the Master and told his story. The Master – if Button is to be believed, and if he didn’t form a false impression – the Master responded to the story as if he had some inkling of what lay behind it. It rang a bell. That is Button’s phrase for it. Does that suggest anything to you?’

  ‘Nothing whatever, I fear.’

  ‘I suppose everybody would have learnt almost at once about Button’s cleverness in tumbling to the implications of that small electrical phenomenon?’

  ‘Almost certainly. He’s a young man who can’t help chattering.’

  ‘Do you think that his chatterbox quality, and perhaps other forms of tiresomeness, may have been irritating the Master in a manner, or to a degree, Button himself wasn’t aware of?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is only too probable. Poor Durham was becoming rather intolerant of folly.’

  ‘That seems to be a view generally held – and it brings me to my last point. The Vice-Master has given me some impression of Durham as a man. And he judges it rather odd, for one thing, that Durham should have thought to dictate a letter to the Cannongate trustees that could only have resulted in Button’s being sacked. But again – and rather contradictorily – he represents Durham as increasingly irascible, indeed vindictive. How would you yourself describe the man?’

  ‘He owned a certain complexity of character, I suppose. Sit beside him at dinner, and you might judge him rather a dull – even a morose man, particularly during his recent ill-health. But in solitude and at his desk he must have become something quite different, since his writing was often brilliantly witty. And maliciously witty, it may be added; whereas in all his college relations his sense of the academic proprieties extended almost to the rectitudinous.’ Farnaby paused, and seemed to become aware of this speech as a shade on the heavy side. ‘In fact,’ he added, ‘poor Robert Durham, barring occasional acts of almost alarming eccentricity, was a bit of a bore. But it would have been a safe bet that the memoirs he was working on would have been highly entertaining. You will recall that he was in political life as a younger man, and knew everybody there was to know. It was probably because he found Oxford a bit of a bore that we found him one. But I must not speak uncharitably. A horrifying mystery like this is a chastening thing.’

  ‘It is, no doubt, horrifying.’ Appleby stood up. ‘Or, if not horrifying, at least distressing. Whether it is a mystery is another matter. We can only wait and see.’

  ‘Wait and see, Sir John! I very much hope that the most active steps are being taken to clear the matter up.’

  ‘In a sense, perhaps they are. A little patience is what is required, all the same.’

  ‘And my unfortunate young colleague has to set us an example in the matter?’ Farnaby spoke with asperity. ‘Button has to rest content in his cell?’

  ‘I think not. It is improbable that any very definitive step has been taken in regard to him. Perhaps I can make myself useful – in this way if in no other, my dear sir – by persuading my former colleagues to part with him. In fact, I’ll take him back to Dream with me. He and Bobby can play tennis.’

  ‘And for how long will they have to do that?’ Although he uttered this question challengingly, Farnaby was clearly much relieved.

  ‘Oh, until Monday morning. It’s my guess that between breakfast and lunch on that day Dr Durham’s demise will effectively clear itself up.’

  And it was at ten o’clock on Monday that Appleby strolled out to the tennis court. A police car had arrived at Dream and departed again, and Appleby now had some papers in his hand.

  ‘Relax,’ he said to the two young men. ‘Your late Master wilfully sought his own salvation. Or that’s how the First Grave Digger would put it. Felo de se. The letter has arrived, and all is clear.

  ‘The letter?’ Brian Button repeated. ‘The one he was dictating – ‘No, no, B B. Have some sense, my dear boy. The one your friend Bruno came on him writing, and that he took over to the post office himself. Stamped, of course, as second-class mail.’

  ‘I don’t understand you, sir.’ B B had sat down on a garden seat; he was almost as pale as when he had arrived at Dream in the first instance.

  ‘And I’m blessed if I do either.’ Bobby Appleby chucked his tennis racket on the grass at his feet. ‘Explain – for goodness sake.’

  ‘Come, come – where’s all that absolutely top-detective stuff?’ Appleby was in irritatingly good humour. ‘And, Bobby, you had an instinct it was all a matter of Durham’s calling it a day: don’t you remember your prattle about the fire of life, and euthanasia, and whatever? As for the letter, it stared us in the face. The Master didn’t want it to go out of his lodging through the college messenger service, so he took it to the post himself.’

  ‘He was anxious,’ B B demanded, ‘to conceal whom he was writing to?’

  ‘Not exactly that. The letter was to somebody in college. And he didn’t want to risk its being delivered, after his death, more or less straight away by hand. Despatched by second-class mail, it would be delivered this morning. And it was. To the Vice-Master.’

  ‘And just what was this in aid of?’ It was clear from his tone that Brian Button already dimly knew.

  ‘It was in aid, my dear lad, of what his seemingly interrupted communication to the Cannongate trustees on that tape-recorder was also in aid of. Something quite extravagantly malevolent. For let’s face it, B B. You’d annoyed him. You’d annoyed him quite a lot. And he was maliciously resolved to make his departure from this life the occasion of your experiencing un mauvais quart d’heure. Or rather more.’

  ‘He thought it was really me who had done that monkeying with the photocopies?’

  ‘No B B. He couldn’t have thought that. For the Master had done that copying turn himself. Incidentally, the photocopying machine has been in use this morning. By the police. And they’ve sent me out this.’ Appleby handed a paper to B B. ‘From the Master to the Vice-Master. Robert Durham’s testament, poor chap.’

  My Dear Adrian,

  First, let me say how much I hope that the Fellows will elect you into the Mastership. If it should come about that I am permitted to look down upon the college from on high, or obliged to peer up at it from below, this will be the spectacle I shall most wish to view. Bless you, my dear man.

  Secondly, pray have the police release that wretched Button. (Is not this appropriately reminiscent of some of the last words of Shakespeare’s Lear?) If he be not in custody as you read this, it is because they have been so stupid and negligent as to neglect the tape-recorder on my desk. But surely not even Dogberry and Verges could be so dull.

  Button needs a lesson in (as we used to say) pulling his socks up. He is also (what, most illogically, I cannot quite forgive him) the immediate occasion of the step I am about to take. The Cannongate Papers contain some fascinating things, and the censurable carelessness of this young man prompted me to help myself in a clandestine fashion to certain material useful to – shall I say – a historian of the intimate mores of the more elevated classes of society at least not very long ago. Unfortunately the beastly Button is very acute; he detected the theft, and came to tell me about it with a mingling of trepidation, uneasiness, complacency and self-congratulation which has extremely offended me.

  I need not speak of my present state of health. What has told me that the time has come is really, and precisely, this Button business. He hasn’t found me out but I have found myself out. And in an action of the weirdest eccentricity! As that equally tiresome Bruno Bone would tell you, the poet Pope speaks of Heads of Houses who beastly Skelton quote. But who ever heard of a Head of a House given to petty n
octurnal pilferings?

  Ave, Hadriane, moriturus te salutat.

  ROBERT DURHAM

  Master

  The Memorial Service

  In the fashionable church of St Boniface in the Fields (mysteriously so named, since it was in the heart of London) a large and distinguished congregation was assembled to give thanks for the life of the late Christopher Brockbank, QC. The two newspaper reporters at the door, discreetly clad in unjournalistic black, had been busy receiving and recording all sorts of weighty names. It was the sort of occasion upon which sundry persons explain themselves as ‘representing’ sundry other persons even more august than themselves; or sundry institutions, corporations, charities and learned bodies with which the deceased important individual has been associated.

  Legal luminaries predominated. An acute observer (and there was at least one such present) might have remarked that a number of these did not settle in their pews, kneel, and bury their noses devoutly in their cupped hands without an exchange of glances in which a hint of whimsical humour fleetingly flickered. All this for Chris Brockbank! they appeared to be telling each other. Just what would he have made of it?

  Sir John Appleby (our acute observer) was representing his successor as Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. For Brockbank long ago, and before he had transformed himself from a leading silk into a vigorous and somewhat eccentric legal reformer, had owned his connections with Scotland Yard, and this fact had to be duly acknowledged today. Appleby possessed only a vague memory of the man, so that a certain artificiality perhaps attended his presence at the service. It hadn’t seemed decent, however, to decline a request which was unlikely to occupy him for much more than twenty minutes – or thirty-five if one counted the time spent in scrambling into uniform and out again.

  It would have been hard to tell that it wasn’t something quite different – even a wedding – that was about to transact itself. Gravity now and then there had to be, but on the whole a cheerful demeanour is held not improper on such occasions. The good fight has been fought, and nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail or knock the breast. Six weeks had passed, moreover, since Christopher Brockbank’s death, and anybody much stunned by grief had thus had a substantial period in which to recover. Whether there had been many such appeared doubtful. Brockbank had been unmarried, and now the front pew reserved for relations was occupied only by two elderly women, habited in old-fashioned and no doubt frequently exhibited mourning, whom somebody had identified for Appleby in a whisper as cousins of the dead man. If anything, they appeared rather to be enjoying their role. It was to be conjectured that they owned some quite obscure, although genteel, situation in society. Nobody had ever heard of any Brockbanks until Christopher QC had come along. In some corner of the globe, Appleby vaguely understood, there was a brother, Adrian Brockbank, who had also distinguished himself – it seemed as a lone yachtsman. But the wandering Adrian had not, it seemed, hoisted himself into a jet for the occasion.