Appleby Talking

by Michael Innes

  “Never ask for whom the bell tolls,” said a deep voice from somewhere near the professor’s left hand. And the whole student body responded in a deep chant: “It tolls for THEE.”

  And now there was a more urgent bell – one that clattered up and down some adjacent corridor to the accompaniment of tramping feet and the sound as of a passing tumbrel. “Bring out your dead,” cried the deep voice. And the chant was taken up all round the theatre. “Bring out your dead,” everybody shouted with gusto. “Bring out your DEAD!”

  This was the signal for the entrance of Albert, Professor Finlay’s dissecting-room attendant. Albert was perhaps the only person in Nessfield who uncompromisingly disapproved of the last lecture and all that went with it – this perhaps because, as an ex-policeman, he felt bound to hold all disorder in discountenance. The severely aloof expression on the face of Albert as he wheeled in the cadaver was one of the highlights of the affair – nor on this occasion did it by any means fail of its effect. Indeed, Albert appeared to be more than commonly upset. A severe frown lay across his ample and unintelligent countenance. He held his six-foot-three sternly erect; behind his vast leather apron his bosom discernibly heaved with manly emotion. Albert wheeled in the body – distinguishable as a wisp of ill-nourished humanity beneath the tarpaulin that covered it – and Finlay raised his right hand as if to bespeak attention. The result was a sudden squawk and the flap of heavy wings near the ceiling. Somebody had released a vulture. The ominous bird blundered twice round the theatre, and then settled composedly on a rafter. It craned its scrawny neck and fixed a beady eye on the body.

  Professor Finlay benevolently smiled; at the same time he produced a handkerchief and rapidly mopped his forehead. To several people, old stagers, it came that the eminent anatomist was uneasy this year. The vulture was a little bit steep, after all.

  There was a great deal of noise. One group of students was doggedly and pointlessly singing a sea chanty; others were perpetrating or preparing to perpetrate sundry jokes of a varying degree of effectiveness. Albert, standing immobile beside the cadaver, let his eyes roam resentfully over the scene. Then Finlay raised not one hand but two – only for a moment, but there was instant silence. He took a step backwards amid the flowers which lay around him; carefully removed a couple of forget-me-nots from his hair; gave a quick nod to Albert; and began to explain – in earnest this time – what he was proposing to do.

  Albert stepped to the body and pulled back the tarpaulin.

  “And ever,” said a voice from the audience, “at my back I hear the rattle of dry bones and chuckle spread from ear to ear.”

  It was an apt enough sally. The cadaver seemed to be mostly bones already – the bones of an elderly, withered man – and its most prominent feature was a ghastly rictus or fixed grin which exposed two long rows of gleamingly white and utterly incongruous-seeming teeth. From somewhere high up in the theatre there was a little sigh followed by a slumping sound. A robust and football-playing youth had fainted. Quite a number of people, as if moved by a mysterious or chameleon-like sympathy, were rapidly approximating to the complexion of the grisly object displayed before them. But there was nothing unexpected in all this. Finlay, knowing that custom allowed him perhaps another five minutes of sober attention at this point, continued his remarks. The cadaver before the class was exactly as it would be had it come before a similar class four hundred years ago. The present anatomy lesson was essentially a piece of historical reconstruction. His hearers would recall that in one of Rembrandt’s paintings depicting such a subject –

  For perhaps a couple of minutes the practised talk flowed on. The audience was quite silent. Finlay for a moment paused to recall a date. In the resulting complete hush there was a sharp click, rather like the lifting of a latch. A girl screamed. Every eye in the theatre was on the cadaver. For its lower jaw had sagged abruptly open, and the teeth, which were plainly dentures, had half extruded themselves from the gaping mouth, rather as if pushed outwards by some spasm within.

  Such things do happen. There is a celebrated story of just such startling behaviour on the part of the body of the philosopher Schopenhauer. And Finlay, perceiving that his audience was markedly upset, perhaps debated endeavouring to rally them with just this learned and curious anecdote. But, even as he paused, the cadaver had acted again. Abruptly the jaws closed like a powerful vice, the lips and cheeks sagged; it was to be concluded that this wretched remnant of humanity had swallowed its last meal.

  For a moment something like panic hovered over the anatomy theatre. Another footballer fainted; a girl laughed hysterically; two men in the back row, having all the appearance of case-hardened physicians, looked at each other in consternation and bolted from the building. Finlay, with a puzzled look on his face, again glanced backwards at the cadaver. Then he nodded abruptly to Albert, who replaced the tarpaulin. Presumably, after this queer upset, he judged it best to interpose a little more composing historical talk before getting down to business.

  He was saying something about the anatomical sketches of Leonardo da Vinci. Again he glanced back at the cadaver. Suddenly the lights went out. The anatomy theatre was in darkness.

  For some moments nobody thought of an accident. Finlay often had recourse to an epidiascope or lantern, and the trend of his talk led people to suppose that something of the sort was in train now. Presently, however, it became plain that there was a hitch – and at this the audience broke into every kind of vociferation. Above the uproar the vulture could be heard overhead, vastly agitated. Matches were struck, but cast no certain illumination. Various objects were being pitched about the theatre. There was a strong scent of lilies.

  Albert’s voice made itself heard, cursing medical students, cursing the University of Nessfield, cursing Professor Finlay’s final lecture. From the progress of this commination it was possible to infer that he was groping his way towards the switches. There was a click, and once more the white shadowless light flooded the theatre.

  Everything was as it had been – save in two particulars. Most of the wreaths and crosses which had been designed for the end of the lecture had proved missiles too tempting to ignore in that interval of darkness; they had been lobbed into the centre of the theatre and lay there about the floor, except for two which had actually landed on the shrouded cadaver.

  And Finlay had disappeared.

  The audience was bewildered and a little apprehensive. Had the failure of the lighting really been an accident? Or was the popular professor obligingly coming forward with one of his increasingly rare and prized pranks? The audience sat tight, awaiting developments. Albert, returning from the switchboard, impatiently kicked a wreath of lilies from his path. The audience, resenting this display of nervous irritation, cat-called and booed. Then a voice from one of the higher benches called out boisterously: “The corpse has caught the dropsy!”

  “It’s a-swelling,” cried another voice – that of a devotee of Dickens – “It’s a-swelling wisibly before my eyes.”

  And something had certainly happened to the meagre body beneath its covering; it was as if during the darkness it had been inflated by a gigantic pump.

  With a final curse Albert sprang forward and pulled back the tarpaulin. What lay beneath was the body of Professor Finlay, quite dead. The original cadaver was gone.

  The vulture swooped hopefully from its rafter.

  “Publicity?” said Detective-Inspector John Appleby. “I’m afraid you can scarcely expect anything else. Or perhaps it would be better to say notoriety. Nothing remotely like it has happened in England for years.”

  Sir David Evans, Nessfield’s very Welsh Vice-Chancellor, passed a hand dejectedly through his flowing white hair and softly groaned. “A scandal!” he said. “A scandal – look you, Mr Appleby – that peggars description. There must be infestigations. There must be arrests. Already there are reporters from the pig papers. This morning I have been photographed.” Sir David paused and glanced across the room at the handsome po
rtrait of himself which hung above the fireplace. “This morning,” he repeated, momentarily comforted, “I have been photographed, look you, five or six times.”

  Appleby smiled. “The last case I remember as at all approaching it was the shooting of Viscount Auldearn, the Lord Chancellor, during a private performance of Hamlet at the Duke of Horton’s seat, Scamnum Court.”

  For a second Sir David looked almost cheerful. It was plain that he gained considerable solace from this august comparison. But then he shook his head. “In the anatomy theatre!” he said. “And on the one day of the year when there is these unseemly pehaviours. And a pody vanishes. And there is fultures – fultures, Mr Appleby!”

  “One vulture.” Dr Holroyd, Nessfield’s professor of human physiology, spoke as if this comparative paucity of birds of prey represented one of the bright spots of the affair. “Only one vulture, and apparently abstracted by a group of students from the Zoo. The Director rang up as soon as he saw the first report. He might be described as an angry man.”

  Appleby brought out a notebook. “What we are looking for,” he said, “is angry men. Perhaps you know of someone whose feelings of anger towards the late Professor Finlay at times approached the murderous?”

  Sir David Evans looked at Dr Holroyd, and Dr Holroyd looked at Sir David Evans. And it appeared to Appleby that the demeanour of each was embarrassed. “Of course,” he added, “I don’t mean mere passing irritations between colleagues.”

  “There is frictions,” said Sir David carefully. “Always in a university there is frictions. And frictions produce heat. There was pad frictions between Finlay and Dr Holroyd here. There was personalities, I am sorry to say. For years there has been most fexatious personalities.” Sir David, who at all times preserved an appearance of the most massive benevolence, glanced at his colleague with an eye in which there was a nasty glint. “Dr Holroyd is Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, look you. It is why I have asked him to meet you now. And last week at a meeting there was a most disgraceful scene. It was a meeting about lavatories. It was a meeting of the Committee for Lavatories.”

  “Dear me!” said Appleby. Universities, he was thinking, must have changed considerably since his day.

  “Were there to be more lavatories in the Physiology Puilding? Finlay said he would rather put in a path.”

  “A path?” said Appleby, perplexed.

  “A path, with hot and cold laid on, and an efficient shower. Finlay said that in his opinion Dr Holroyd here padly needed a path.”

  “And did Dr Holroyd retaliate?”

  “I am sorry to say that he did, Mr Appleby. He said that if he had his way in the matter Finlay’s own path would be a formalin one. Which is what they keep the cadavers in, Mr Appleby.”

  Dr Holroyd shifted uneasily on his chair. “It was unfortunate,” he admitted. “I must freely admit the unfortunate nature of the dispute.”

  “It was unacademic,” said Sir David severely. “There is no other word for it, Dr Holroyd.”

  “I am afraid it was. And most deplorably public. Whereas your own quarrel with Finlay, Sir David, had been a discreetly unobtrusive matter.” Dr Holroyd smiled with sudden frank malice. “And over private, not University, affairs. In fact, over a woman. Or was it several women?”

  “These,” said Appleby rather hastily, “are matters which it may be unnecessary to take up.” Detectives are commonly supposed to expend all their energy in dragging information out of people; actually, much of it goes in preventing irrelevant and embarrassing disclosures. “May I ask, Sir David, your own whereabouts at the time of the fatality?”

  “I was in this room, Mr Appleby, reading Plato. Even Vice-Chancellors are entitled to read Plato at times, and I had given orders not to be disturbed.”

  “I see. And I take it that nobody interrupted you, and that you might have left the room for a time without being observed?”

  Sir David gloomily nodded.

  “And you, Dr Holroyd?”

  “I went to poor Finlay’s final lecture and sat near the back. But the whole stupid affair disgusted me, and I came away – only a few minutes, it seems, before the lights went out. I composed myself by taking a quiet walk along the canal. It was quite deserted.”

  “I see. And now about the manner of Finlay’s death. I understand that you have inspected the body and realise that he was killed by the thrust of a fine dagger from behind? The deed was accomplished in what must have been almost complete darkness. Would you say that it required – or at least that it suggests – something like the professional knowledge of another anatomist or medical man?”

  Holroyd was pale. “It certainly didn’t strike me as the blind thrust of an amateur made in a panic. But perhaps there is a species of particularly desperate criminal who is skilled in such things.”

  “Possibly so.” Appleby glanced from Holroyd to Sir David. “But is either of you aware of Finlay’s having any connections or interests which might bring upon him the violence of such people? No? Then I think we must be very sceptical about anything of the sort. To kill a man in extremely risky circumstances simply for the pleasure of laying the body on his own dissecting-table before his own students is something quite outside my experience of professional crime. It is much more like some eccentric act of private vengeance. And one conceived by a theatrical mind.”

  Once more Sir David Evans looked at Dr Holroyd, and Dr Holroyd looked at Sir David Evans. “Finlay himself,” said Sir David, “had something theatrical about him. Otherwise, look you, he would not have let himself pecome the central figure in this pig yearly joke.” He paused. “Now, Dr Holroyd here is not theatrical. He is pad tempered. He is morose. He is under-pred. But theatrical he is not.”

  “And no more is Sir David.” Holroyd seemed positively touched by the character sketch of himself just offered. “He is a bit of a humbug, of course – all philosophers are. And he is not a good man, since it is impossible for a Vice-Chancellor to be that. Perhaps he is even something of a poseur. If compelled to characterise him freely” – and Holroyd got comfortably to his feet – “I should describe him as Goethe described Milton’s Paradise Lost.” Holroyd moved towards the door, and as he did so paused to view Sir David’s portrait. “Fair outside but rotten inwardly,” he quoted thoughtfully. “But of positive theatrical instinct I would be inclined to say that Sir David is tolerably free. Good afternoon.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Sir David Evans’ fixed expression of benevolence had never wavered. “Pad passions,” he said. “Look you, Mr Appleby, there is pad passions in that man.”

  Albert was pottering gloomily among his cadaver-racks. His massive frame gave a jump as Appleby entered; it was clear that he was not in full possession of that placid repose which ex-policemen should enjoy.

  Appleby looked round with brisk interest. “Nice place you have here,” he said. “Everything convenient and nicely thought out.”

  The first expression on Albert’s face had been strongly disapproving. But at this he perceptibly relaxed. “Ball-bearing,” he said huskily. “Handles them like lambs.” He pushed back a steel shutter and proudly drew out a rack and its contents. “Nicely developed gal,” he said appreciatively. “Capital pelvis for child-bearing, she was going to have. Now, if you’ll just step over here I can show you one or two uncommonly interesting lower limbs.”

  “Thank you – another time.” Appleby, though not unaccustomed to such places, had no aspirations towards connoisseurship. “I want your own story of what happened this morning.”

  “Yes, sir.” From old professional habit Albert straightened up and stood at attention. “As you’ll know, there’s always been this bad be’aviour at the final lecture, so there was nothing out of the way in that. But then the lights went out, and they started throwing things, and something ’it me ’ard on the shins.”

  “Hard?” said Appleby. “I doubt if that could have been anything thrown from the theatre.”

  “No more do I.” Albert was emphatic.
“It was someone came in through the doors the moment the lights went out and got me down with a regular Rugby tackle. Fair winded I was, and lost my bearings as well.”

  “So it was some little time before you managed to get to the switch, which is just outside the swing doors. And in that time Professor Finlay was killed and substituted for the cadaver, and the cadaver was got clean away. Would you say that was a one-man job?”

  “No, sir, I would not. Though – mind you – that body ’ad only to be carried across a corridor and out into the courtyard. Anyone can ’ave a car waiting there, so the rest would be easy enough.”

  Appleby nodded. “The killing of Finlay, and the laying him out like that, may have been a sheer piece of macabre drama, possibly conceived and executed by a lunatic – or even by an apparently sane man with some specific obsession regarding corpses. But can you see any reason why such a person should actually carry off the original corpse? It meant saddling himself with an uncommonly awkward piece of evidence.”