Appleby Talks Again (22 page)

Appleby paused. “Howley thought nothing of it. But, within a matter of hours, the Bearded Savage was in gaol.”

I was startled. “He had killed Harry?”

“My dear fellow, he
was
Harry. Surely that’s clear enough?”

“You can’t do much in a false beard,” Appleby explained, “except briefly and as
tour de force
. Well, it was like that Harry presented himself to his own housekeeper, after having sent himself the telegram. Then he went off to Yorkshire, showing among his friends in his proper identity. After that he went into seclusion and grew the real beard – making those occasional telephone inquiries of the housekeeper, and faking matters at the Gimlet, meanwhile. Once the beard was established, he was ready to make his permanent appearance in Tom’s shoes.”

“But why? What was this in aid of?”

“He had discovered that Tom had died in Canada – but in circumstances so obscure that nothing would ever be heard of it. And by himself
becoming
Tom, he bypassed Dick as his father’s heir. Or he would have done, if he hadn’t been found out.”

“And how, my dear Appleby, was he found out?”

“Dick’s ear. Harry was reckoning on Dick’s blindness – but he hadn’t thought about
that
. It was Dick on the telephone, and Dick knew Harry had answered it, despite his attempted Canadian accent. Of course the moment we started investigating, the bogus Savage was done for.”

“Some of the objects are a little problematical, I admit.” Sir John Appleby let his eye travel over what he called his museum.

“For instance, that perfectly innocent-looking copy of Jane Austen’s
Mansfield Park
. What do you make of it?”

I peered at the volume cautiously. “Nothing whatever. But I remember a famous sentence in it. ‘Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.’ So I hope its associations are not of a kind that Miss Austen would have deprecated.” I picked up the book. “It looks harmless enough.”

Appleby grinned. “As a matter of fact, it’s an infernal machine.”

“Bless my soul!” I made to drop the thing hastily. Then, thinking better of this, I laid it carefully back in its place. “The villain who contrived it must have had a most perverted sense of humour.”

Appleby shook his head. “I don’t think there was much humour involved. And I may say there were more than a dozen of these infernal machines. This just happens to be the one I begged for my little collection. Have another look at it.”

I took it up again cautiously.

“It’s quite harmless now?”

“Well – that depends.”

“The weight seems to be about what one would expect.” I opened the cover and stared in some perplexity at a first printed page. “But, my dear Appleby, this
is
Jane Austen’s
Mansfield Park
.” And I flicked over the pages. “In fact, it’s a perfectly normal book.”

Appleby was clearly delighted. “You would undoubtedly have said the same of the
Tom Jones
, the
Tristram Shandy
, the
Pickwick Papers
, and all the others. But they were, I assure you, infernal machines.
Very
infernal machines. But let me explain.

“You will no doubt recall the name of Lord Lombard? When the English language still kept its genius for understatement he would have been called a captain of industry. In point of fact he was pretty well its field-marshal. Moreover – to keep the figure for a moment – he had once carried his future baton in what was decidedly a private’s knapsack. Lombard was a self-made man.”

“There isn’t, is there,” I said, “much understatement in that traditional expression? Hyperbole could scarcely go further.”

“No doubt.” I felt Appleby was not disposed to do justice to the neatness of the point I had made. “But the old boy had really gone one better. He had contrived
several
self-made Lombards.

“The industrial empire he had built up was immense. It branched out into all sorts of widely differing activities – and he was said to keep almost every one of them under his own direct control. Then he was a philanthropist in the big, old-fashioned way, and had strong feelings about educating the masses. He founded technical schools and colleges dealing with pretty well everything under the sun. He collected paintings, and I believe he had a very genuine if rather naïve delight in them. And he collected books.”

“Did he,” I asked, “collect Jane Austen?”

“Ah” – and Appleby smiled – “that brings me to the story.”

“Old Lombard collected books just as one more rich man’s hobby, no doubt. But there was nothing he was more proud of than the fact that as a young man he had been a great reader. He had read the English classics as part of some early scheme of self-improvement. And although his later career had left him little time to follow this up, he was proud of what he remembered. His talk was often, in a very simple way, literary talk. And when he went about starting his evening schools and opening his free libraries and so forth, he would bring in these old memories with genuine enthusiasm and great effect.

“In his old age – for he had come to that – he lived with an unmarried sister, who was a clever woman a good deal younger than himself, and with a middle-aged nephew, Amos Lombard.

“Amos held various subordinate responsibilities in some of his uncle’s concerns, and it was natural to suppose that eventually he would come into full control. But old Lombard showed no disposition to get out of the saddle, and when he did give Amos a new job from time to time, it was generally just on the philanthropic and educational side.

“The venerable gentleman was full of drive still, and when he took time off from the detailed direction of a large whack of England’s heavy industry, it was to make speeches to apprentices on self-help, and how to gain a liberal education after working hours, and the profit and pleasure of reading George Eliot and Dickens and the rest – all backed up with plenty of those well-remembered quotations. He looked as if he was going on for ever. And then – rather rapidly – he began to crack up. It was decidedly queer.”

I didn’t make much of this. “Queer?” I asked Appleby. “If Lombard was an old man at the end of a tremendously hardworking life, wasn’t it natural enough?”

“That was what I said myself when his sister first came to me. It wasn’t, by the way, an official visit. Miss Lombard had formed some connection with my wife’s family, and they sent her along. I listened to her at first with no more than politeness, I must confess. But in the end I was convinced that there was something in her story. Her brother’s mind and memory, she said, were still perfectly sound and clear. But he had unaccountably begun to lose all confidence in himself.”

I considered this. “In his power to conduct all his industrial enterprises? That sort of thing?”

“It was more or less pervasive. From a thoroughly efficient and rather harshly dominating personality, Lombard was turning into a weak and indecisive old man who appeared to harbour some shameful secret. And Miss Lombard was convinced that his nephew Amos was responsible.”

“What a sinister notion! Did Amos appear to be a villain?”

“Well, yes – I’d say he did. He struck me as having the family brains, a great deal of ambition, and a growing determination to get his uncle shelved and to take charge himself.

“They lived in the same house, and I inquired into the extent of their association. They met, it seemed, for business in the morning, with secretaries and so on present, and with Amos for the most part simply receiving instructions about this and that. In the evening they dined
en famille
with Miss Lombard, and then the two men would spend an hour together in a sociable way in the old man’s library. Old Lombard still liked his little literary chat.”

“Was it possible that, during this regular period at which they were alone together, Amos had hit upon some technique for getting his uncle down? This was Miss Lombard’s suggestion. It seemed fantastic, but I felt it must be investigated.

“I set about inquiring after any
new
activities to which Amos might have been giving himself lately. And I found a very curious one: certain of the higher branches of printing.”

I looked at Appleby in astonishment. “He took to it himself?”

“No. He simply got what he wanted through one of those technical colleges. You know how, when a few pages are missing from a rare and valuable book, they are sometimes supplied in facsimile? Under cover of that fact, Amos faked a number of his uncle’s favourite books – for example, this edition of
Mansfield Park
.”

“Faked them! You mean–?”

“Yes. He ingeniously falsified the stories in one or another prominent particular, upon which any sane man would feel he could trust his memory with confidence. If, for instance, you read this
Mansfield Park
you would find that Fanny marries Henry Crawford.”

“Good lord!”

“Precisely. Amos, you see, would get his uncle involved in argument, work round to one of these fakes, and then confound him on the evidence of his own eyes. Old Lombard was on the verge of being persuaded that his mind must be going, and that it was indeed high time he should retire.”

Appleby paused. “I shall always remember his relief and astonishment when I gave him an authentic copy of Jane Austen’s novel.”

“Is that Sir John Appleby?” the voice asked. And it added, “Of Scotland Yard?”

“Appleby speaking. But you’ve been put through to me at my home address.”

“I know, I know. And I’m most terribly sorry.” The voice – it appeared to be that of a lowland Scot – was quite at ease in its apology. “I hope I haven’t fetched you from your dinner.”

Appleby, who found that he had brought his table-napkin with him to the telephone, said nothing. He had received this sort of call before.

“My only warrant for breaking in upon your privacy, Sir John, is a common friend. Lord Arthur Spendlove.”

“Ah, yes.” Appleby didn’t precisely kindle. This gambit, too, he was familiar with.

“Arthur has told me how absolutely one can rely upon your discretion. I ought to say that my name is Macrae – Robert Macrae.” The voice paused very briefly, as if upon this information Appleby ought decidedly not to have to cast about in his mind. And, in point of fact, the name did ring a bell. Robert Macrae was a very distinguished industrial chemist, and the head of a firm of high scientific repute. “Discretion,” the voice went on, “is the essential thing. I want to consult you in the strictest confidence.”

“My dear sir, you speak as if I were a family solicitor or a physician or a private inquiry agent. As it happens, I’m an Assistant Commissioner of Police. I can’t possibly undertake to entertain confidential communications.”

“Quite so, quite so.” The voice was now betraying a shade of agitation. “But this is so very difficult a matter. Threats. Menaces. Or can it be a joke? Your experience could advise me. I’d hate to visit disgrace on what may be a mere whim or prank. But there are circumstances that make me…apprehensive. Could you run down?”

“Run down?” Appleby was so surprised that he repeated the words mechanically.

“Yes – and at once.” The voice gave an address. “That’s on the river, you know, just short of Bainton. Say forty minutes.” Suddenly the voice spoke on a new queer note. “My God – it may be life or death to me!”

“If you consider yourself to be in some immediate danger, Dr Macrae, you should contact your local police-station at once.”

“No, no – that’s just what I want to avoid. But you’ll come?”

“Yes, I’ll come.” In saying this, Appleby felt fleetingly that he was acting almost as oddly as Macrae was. Without ceremony, he put down the receiver. Five minutes later, he was driving rapidly west.

An estate-agent would have described Dr Macrae’s house as standing in its own grounds. In the deepening summer dusk Appleby could just distinguish that these seemed to consist mostly of shrubberies, together with a tree-shaded lawn running down to the river at the back. A burglar’s paradise, he told himself professionally as he took the last curve of the drive. The house itself was large and gloomy, and from this aspect showed only a single light – a feeble glimmer in a porch before what must be the front door. The effect wasn’t welcoming.

Not that the place was at all tumbledown. There was plenty of fresh paint in a forbidding chocolate tone, and through the open doors of a garage Appleby had glimpsed a couple of opulent cars. Their owner was presumably a wealthy man. But there was no sign that he was a particularly cheerful one.

Appleby rang the bell. It was of the antique sort that peals loud and long in some remote kitchen. There was rather a lengthy wait and then the front door opened. An ancient female servant, heavily armoured in starched linen before and on top, peered at the visitor suspiciously. “Who are ye for?” she asked in a strong Scottish accent.

“Good evening. I am Sir John Appleby. I have an appointment with Dr Macrae.”

“An appointment?” The old woman seemed to regard this claim as an occasion of increased misgiving. “Come in, then. But ye’ll hae to see Miss Hatt.”

“My appointment is with Dr Macrae himself.”

“Naebody sees the Doctor until Miss Hatt’s had a worrd wi’ him. This way.”

Appleby found himself in a high, dusky hall. The panelled walls were ornamented with enormous oil-paintings of deer and Highland cattle, interspersed with claymores, dirks and the species of small round shield conventionally associated with Rob Roy Macgregor. It was apparent that Dr Macrae cherished his Caledonian ancestry. They moved down a long corridor and came to a closed door at the end. In the room beyond, a man was talking, fluently and incisively, to the accompaniment of a clattering typewriter. The old woman opened the door and motioned Appleby forward. “A gentleman to see the Doctor,” she said.

The typewriter stopped, but the voice – a Scottish voice – continued. It was advancing cogent reasons for being unable to subscribe to a charity organisation. Then the voice stopped too. Miss Hatt had silenced it by turning a switch on her dictaphone. “Your name?” she said.