Appleby Talking

by Michael Innes

  “I say, sir–” The young man checked himself, recognised Appleby, and hurried on. “They’ve found something. A key. And it nearly got buried with the corpse.”

  Inspector Cadover sat down heavily at his desk. John Appleby, looking considerably less retired from the CID than he had done thirty seconds before, was staring at the contents of a small box which the young man had produced.

  “A Yale key,” he said, “–and an odd little bit of twisted wire.”

  The young man nodded. “Just found by the post-mortem wallahs in Honoria’s tummy.” With the confidence of one whose cheerful grin operates some inches above a most respectable school tie, the young man glanced from Appleby to his chief.

  “A flood of light.” Appleby was immobile and his lips scarcely moved. Only his hand had gone out and, very gently, his fingers were at play upon the little twist of thin, spring-like wire.

  “You mean that this – this lunacy positively improves matters?” Cadover had risen, taken three strides to his window, and was contemplating a considerable area of London with every appearance of extreme malevolence.

  “There ought to be a flood of light in it. Remember Dupin?”

  “Dupin?” The young man looked up as one who delights in the fruits of an extensive literary education. “You mean Poe’s Frog?”

  “Exactly. Poe’s Frog. Poe’s immortal and archetypal French detective. Look out, he said, for what has never happened before, and pin your faith on that.

  “Well, here it is. Never before, I’ll be bound, has Scotland Yard found in the stomach of a presumably murdered woman a Yale key and an inch and a half of twisted wire. It’s an uncommonly interesting thing.”

  “To be sure it is.” Cadover was suddenly convinced and hearty. “It’s a most interesting thing. And just the sort of thing to interest you. Now, my dear Appleby, if you should care to look into it, to poke around–”

  Appleby shook his head. “The doctors have done that for us. And if your mystery is ever to be solved” – he tapped the box–“it will be now, and on the strength of what is before our noses.”

  A knock at the door interrupted them, and a uniformed sergeant thrust his head into the room. “Beg pardon, sir – but we have Sir Urien Pendragon below, and wanting to see whoever is concerned with the case of the late Mrs Jolly.”

  “Good heavens! Well, show him up.” Cadover was very reasonably staggered at the august scientist’s name. “Appleby, do you think he can have been one of–”

  “I haven’t a doubt of it.” Appleby returned his hat to the peg from which he had taken it a few minutes before. “By the way, have you a line on the lately bereaved Jolly?”

  “He ought to be presenting himself any minute.”

  “Capital. I really think I’ll stay. Just for ten minutes or so, until the affair is cleared up.”

  Breathing hard, Cadover nodded to the young man. “Clear out,” he said. “A person like Sir Urien may take two of us. But he certainly won’t take three.”

  “Poor Mrs Jolly,” said Sir Urien, “was a near neighbour of mine in the country. We were quite intimate friends. So naturally I am much distressed.”

  “And you feel that you may have valuable information to give?” Cadover’s reaction to his visitor’s eminence was to turn eminently official and grim.

  “Well, yes – although the matter is rather a delicate one.” Sir Urien adjusted his eyeglass and for a moment let his fingers stray over his beautifully trimmed grey beard.

  “The fact is that there was – um – almost a sentimental element in the relationship – on poor Mrs Jolly’s part, that is to say. I was really afraid that a distorted view of it might affect her relations with her husband, who is a most violent and ungoverned man. They were already on very ill terms, and indeed rarely saw each other.”

  “We have some ideas on that.” Cadover tapped his writing-pad. “And you say, Sir Urien, that you have been abroad?”

  “I have. It was indeed a sense of this possible awkwardness that made me decide to go abroad some ten days ago. I went to my friends the Mountroyals, at Mentone” – Sir Urien paused as if to let this impressive information sink in – “and I intended to stay for some three weeks.

  “But government business brought me home a couple of days ago, and I heard of the shocking tragedy only this morning.”

  Appleby, who had been standing silently by the window during these preliminary exchanges, suddenly spoke. “May I ask, Sir Urien, if during your holiday you were constantly in the society of your friends?”

  “Most certainly.” Sir Urien looked blandly surprised. “Charles Mountroyal and I are very old friends. Arcades ambo would be a just description of us.”

  “Thank you.” Appleby appeared to relapse into abstraction.

  “Sir Urien, the facts as we know them are these.” Cadover’s tone was quite expressionless. “The body of Mrs Jolly – or Miss Honoria Clodd – was discovered yesterday morning by a hiker who, having lost his way and got no reply at the door, was sufficiently curious to peer through the kitchen window.

  “She had died of coal-gas poisoning at some period which could not have been less than three, or more than six days previously.”

  “Dear me, I am more than ever distressed. Had I not been abroad, I might have done something to prevent so rash an act.”

  “We think it was murder.”

  “You appal me. But I am not wholly surprised. Her husband is unbalanced – is subject, indeed, to overwhelming fits of pathological jealousy. And while one must admire, as in Shakespeare’s Othello, the devotion from which such a passion takes its rise…”

  “Sir Urien, I have to tell you that our information in this matter is quite different. As we see it, Mrs Jolly was not a virtuous woman. And she and her husband conspired to exploit the fact in a manner that would have brought them well within the grasp of the criminal law.

  “Jolly posed as the outraged discoverer of his wife’s infidelities, and then accepted money as the price of his silence and, I suppose, complaisance.

  “Your picture of an outraged husband committing murder in a fit of uncontrolled jealousy is therefore nonsense.”

  “You pain me inexpressibly. You horrify me.” Sir Urien, who had certainly gone a little pale, nevertheless again stroked his beard comfortably enough. “And if I may say so, Inspector, I am much disturbed by the fact of a man in your position displaying so strange an ignorance of human nature.

  “Suppose – as I do not for a moment admit – the position to be as you describe. It is tolerably well known that a man who exploits a woman after the fashion you mention is particularly likely to react with an insane fury should that woman import any element of – um – genuine regard into a relationship initially entered into for gain.”

  Cadover, thus blandly schooled, breathed harder than ever. And once more Appleby stirred by the window.

  “That,” he said, “is perfectly true. I see, Sir Urien, that you possess some insight into the minds of the criminal classes. You know this fellow Jolly?”

  Sir Urien hesitated. “We have met. He is not a person whom I should wish to admit to my familiar acquaintance.”

  “I believe it might be interesting if you met him again.”

  And Cadover, taking the hint, leant forward at his desk and pressed a bell.

  Jolly was a grey and clammy creature, at once insubstantial and acutely disagreeable.

  “We appreciate that you were not often in your wife’s society.” Cadover had the air of gazing straight through the human cobweb before him.

  “But it will at least not be difficult to prove that she was your only visible means of support. She had money, Mr Jolly, and you knew how she came by it.

  “I suggest that you need not look far” – and Cadover glanced quickly at the silent Sir Urien Pendragon – “in order to recall one quite considerable source of income.”

  “I tell you, there was no vice in Honoria.” Jolly licked his lips and looked sidelong at Sir Urien wit
h what appeared to be furtive fear and fury.

  “There was no vice in her, at all. I don’t say she didn’t have some very pleasant gentlemen friends. And I don’t say she didn’t have presents.”

  “Might it have occurred to her to borrow a car?”

  It was Appleby who spoke. Quite suddenly, he had taken the middle of the room.

  “I don’t say it wouldn’t, and I don’t say it would.” Jolly, thoroughly wary and alarmed, seemed to find reassurance in this formula.

  “In fact, was there not a particular car? Rather a grand car–”

  “I protest!” Sir Urien had risen to his feet. “In Mr Jolly’s interest I protest against this highly irregular interrogation. I demand that he be permitted to withdraw, and to answer no more questions except upon legal advice.”

  “I have no objection in the world.” Appleby gently smiled – and simultaneously made a gesture that sent the spare Cadover with an agile bound to the door. “But with you yourself, Sir Urien, it is another matter.”

  “She told her own story.” Cadover and Appleby were again alone, and it was now the latter who, as he spoke, gazed out far across London.

  “As to whether there was vice in Honoria, we have our own opinion. But there was certainly brains. And guts, of a sort. She knew she was being murdered, and she was determined that her murderer should pay.

  “As for Pendragon, it was the demand for his car that was at once a last straw and an inspiration. They were near neighbours; she had pestered him to have the use of this grand car; he went abroad – and posted her the key of the particular garage in which it was housed.

  “At a guess, I should say it was at a little remove from his house. Or perhaps he had sent away the servants and the place was deserted: that will be something for you to find out.

  “He knew the wretched woman’s mentality; had good reason to know it. She was selfish in her pleasures, and went off to possess herself of the gorgeous new prize alone.

  “She unlocked the garage and entered. She got into the car and slammed the door. In a matter of seconds, I fancy, she knew that she was done for – that she had shut herself up in a brilliantly contrived lethal chamber.

  “Pendragon was a scientist. It wasn’t difficult for him to arrange that when the door of that car shut several other things happened simultaneously. The doors locked themselves.

  “I have no doubt that the door of the garage – probably of the roll-up sort – slid down and presented a blank and innocent face to the world. And already coal-gas was pouring into the car.

  “Honoria struggled, trying to smash her way out through what would certainly be a virtually unbreakable glass. The signs of that struggle were on her body when it was found.

  “Within minutes she was dead. And as the date of her death would later be approximately determined by the state of her body, Pendragon with his Mentone alibi would be safe.

  “When he did return to England he had only to drive round to Honoria’s deserted cottage and leave her with her head in the oven. He used her fingers to turn on the gas for a bit, and then turned it off again – being afraid that a great stink of gas might attract the notice of a passer-by a little too soon.

  “Pendragon was invulnerable, or would have been but for the swift working of Honoria’s wits, intent on retribution.

  “She swallowed the key, which would have carried us a good long way in the end. And she swallowed something else that ought to have cried motor car the moment we looked at it, even though it is twisted a little out of shape.

  “You might find that little twist of wire on the floor, or in the glove box of any car, for it is simply the little clip often used instead of a nut to secure a terminal to its sparking-plug.

  “Honoria knew there would be a post-mortem, and she sent us the only message she could. One can’t but admire her. Even when dying, it must have taken resolution to swallow those things.”

  Cadover nodded. “I hope a jury will swallow them.”

  “There’s a good chance that they will. The key is indeed the key to the case, for it will certainly prove to be the key of Pendragon’s garage. And it is very unlikely that he has had time to remove all traces of the elaborate set-up he had to contrive.”

  “He made a solid bid for freedom.” Cadover had joined Appleby, and now both were staring out over the grey city. “Shall you be sorry if he hangs?”

  Appleby considered. “I didn’t like him, but I like Honoria’s kind of game no better. So my answer must be like the abominable Jolly’s. I shall and I shan’t.”

  THE FLIGHT OF PATROCLUS

  “Anything in the news?” Appleby asked the question idly as he sat down and stretched his legs before the clubhouse fire.

  “Singularly little.” The Vicar dropped his evening paper on the floor. “And certainly no sign that the world grows more honest. Numerous petty thefts and robberies – and one big one. A valuable painting – a Titian – has been stolen from Benison Court.”

  “The place can very easily spare it.” Appleby spoke with a serenity altogether culpable in an Assistant Commissioner of Police. “And it will probably give its new owner far more pleasure than it gives the Scattergoods and their guests in that chilly long gallery.”

  “My dear Appleby, to apply such a criterion is surely to invite the merest moral chaos. But who will the new owner be?”

  “Some mad collector in America, building up a whole secret museum of stolen masterpieces. Think of the thrill of that. It would give Titian himself a tremendous kick. Whereas the long gallery at Benison would leave him cold – in every sense. But that reminds me” – Appleby had begun to fill his pipe – “did I ever tell you about the Counterpoynt affair?”

  The Vicar smiled. “Go right ahead.”

  “Even in his early eighties Lord Counterpoynt was an exceptionally handsome man – not merely in his features, but in his whole figure. As an undergraduate he had refused to stroke the Oxford boat, saying that it would be a waste of time; and there were several other fields in which he was regarded as being, potentially at least, the leading athlete of his generation. His interests, however, were mainly aesthetic; and he was a great patron of the arts.”

  The Vicar looked perplexed. “But surely he became an extremely well-known–”

  “Precisely. But back in the nineties, nobody could have guessed that young Counterpoynt would eventually revert to type – family type, I mean – and become a leading philanthropist and writer on social and moral questions.

  “Among the painters he encouraged was Orlando Say, at first a great rebel and Bohemian, but eventually a Royal Academician, celebrated for his mythological subjects, and for ambitious figure compositions in classical settings. Nobody thinks much of Say now. But his canvasses have their virtues. In the age of Burne-Jones, when the nude figure commonly had the air of having been painted in indecent pinko-grey tights, Say carried on from Etty the ability to paint honest nakedness – skin that you could really believe had pores to it, glinting above water or shadowed among leaves.”

  The Vicar nodded. “I am not among those, my dear Appleby, who consider the Nude to be a Pity. But if it is to be done, let it be done well.”

  “An excellent sentiment, Vicar. And now to my story. One November morning some years ago, the aged Lord Counterpoynt was shown into my room at New Scotland Yard. He was in great agitation. Somebody, he said, had stolen his best Orlando Say. And he asked me to come to Counterpoynt House at once.”

  “It was still standing?”

  “Yes – and one of the last surviving town houses of that tremendous sort. A Say was small beer in such a place, and I wondered why the old boy was so upset. I presently found out.

  “Counterpoynt took me to the smoking-room – an apartment, it appeared, designed exclusively for male habitation, as the Edwardian habit was. Among a good many paintings there was one empty space, and the proportions of this suggested at once that the stolen picture had been a single full-length figure-composition. And this was
confirmed when Counterpoynt showed me a photograph of it. It was called The Flight of Patroclus, and represented the young Grecian warrior, stark naked, hurtling through the picture-space from left to right. Hector presumably was after him, but Hector wasn’t in the picture. And now I come to the crux of the matter. The nude youth was quite clearly the young Counterpoynt. This was why the painting had been kept in the smoking-room. It was an utterly blameless and rather lovely thing. But ladies – at least in Victorian or Edwardian times – might conceivably have been embarrassed if called upon to admire their host represented in just that way. And here too, apparently, was the reason why his lordship was so upset. He didn’t fancy the notion of his own unclothed image – even if from sixty years back – being carried off to some thieves’ kitchen.”

  The Vicar considered. “But was nothing else stolen?”

  “An admirable question. Counterpoynt House had been successfully broken into – and nothing but this curious Orlando Say had vanished. And this very smoking-room held a small Rembrandt landscape and a particularly fine Cuyp. It didn’t make sense. Or rather it did. Malice rather than any mercenary motive must have been responsible. The thing was a prank – an ill-natured practical joke.”

  “But with so old a man–”

  “Exactly. Sixty years earlier one could have supposed that some young rips had hit upon a means of discomfiting another young rip. But who could now want to badger this eminent old person? Conceivably another old person, not risen to any eminence, and enjoying a crazy senile revenge. But the actual robbery was an able-bodied piece of work. If a malignant contemporary of Counterpoynt’s had conceived the stroke, he had employed someone else on the job. And that, somehow, seemed unlikely.

  “Well, I understood Counterpoynt’s being upset – but not his being quite so upset as he was. There wasn’t much to do except put some routine measures in operation and promise that the Yard would do its best. A thorough examination of the scene of the robbery yielded nothing, nor did a close watch in certain likely quarters produce any hint of the stolen picture’s going on an illicit market. But about a fortnight later there was a very odd development indeed.